Good governance, key to growth

The unprecedented mandate in 2014 general elections for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spells people’s clear dictates to the Indian political leaders. They must perform or be removed. In earlier elections, the issue of good governance was mentioned in the campaign but never, it was so emphasised as it was in the just concluded elections. The credit for this must go to the prime minister in waiting Narendra Modi and the Indian media.

This is for the first time that a national party has emerged victorious by focusing on better governance and propagating the slogan-less government and more governance. The idea of development lies in freedom to actualise good governance-jobs creation, facilitation of infrastructure, skills education and removal of parallel economic corruption. A country with still low literacy level has to ensure skills based education, apart from guaranteeing health care and enough jobs for the aspirational youth who are coming out of the educational institutions in million. India’s burgeoning population at present needs to be made aware of quality of life and action. We can in general understand quality in the context of a commodity or service. However, quality is much deeper consciousness than is normally believed to be. It tails in one’s understanding of situations. Quality is the necessity of doing everything – functions at household, studies, doing the homework meticulously without missing a step, performing a job accurate, saving with forethought, spending with conscious prudence and timing one’s action as desired and promptly.

All this is a matter of skills consciousness. China has accomplished it in standard-12 models, that is : incorporating the quality awareness programme right into the primary schools levels. As the students grow up to the school-leaving stage, or the twelfth standard, the quality is instilled into becoming a habit for the student. According to the ASQ China, the ASQ-trained fundamentals have been put into Chinese education system right from the basic levels. Grown up, the Chinese students study through quality-based modules to set up their shops, do their businesses (all within the liberties granted by the communist governance), take up jobs on merit and excel at workplaces – all because nationally China has ensured skills development and thus quality awareness. Chinese corporations source their work force from the skill-trained youngsters and expand into all parts of the world. Thereby Chinese have created a standard of national character of excellence. The country is already the world’s second largest economy, through skills-based robust manufacturing. Chinese goods flood US markets, challenge Japanese manufacturing excellence, take South Korean competition neck to neck, only to excel at the end.

Chinese Premier Li Kiqiang’s recent statement last week about putting in place appropriate policies to boost manufacturing sector further is pregnant with newer levels of growth in Chinese economy. Quality thus has an inbuilt vision of economy which Indian education system needs to emulate.

ASQ-trained South Korean excellence in manufacturing is also showing increasing might to challenge Japan in automobiles sector, even as it was Japan which first started employing quality norms and education in its grassroots education system among all nations after the USA. Thanks to Edward Deming’s contribution to reconstruct War-II ravaged Japan. Skills development programme is a national call from the primary school stage in the USA. India has islands of educational excellence, but most of its efforts fail to elicit desired results because of absence of general system of fast justice administration and skills. For example, in an advanced world, where Community Colleges are models for skills development, India, which mooted to emulate these colleges in 2008-2010 through Indira Gandhi National Open University, now have removed it even from its educational architecture.

Lessons of hygiene and health are taught in India since school levels. But implementation of the knowledge in real life is absent due to callous awareness program. The health care system is such that hardly even 4% people are protected by any health insurance. Pathetically tragic conditions in government hospitals and public health centres in rural areas continue to endanger Indians’ body and mind as lack of the basic infrastructure of therapeutic and paramedical healthcare and knowledge of hygiene, hits the common patients.

As regards health care, quality knowledge has seldom been instilled in people’s minds from the beginning. This could have been done in 67 years of freedom, through good governance. Almost 40 per cent of deaths occur due to casual approach to para-medical support systems. Except in a few expensive hospitals and nursing homes, which are all in private sector, absence of responsibility for quality training among the nurses, dietary services to patients, house-keeping staff, laundry-handlers, document-keepers, fire-fighting apparatus management is responsible for recurring diseases and deaths. India has world’s reputed physicians and surgeons, but the absence of the quality healthcare support service lets them down. 

Creation of more and more jobs to employ the country’s new job-seekers every year is a prime task of good governance. IPA