Straightening the System

Madhav Godbole’s book, Public Account ability and Transparency: The Imperatives of Good Governance is one of the outstanding additions to the literature on governance and the contemporary political, administrative social scenario in the country, including the largely untouched areas of judiciary, media and corporate governance. It presents a well-documented analysis of the current milieu and gives a balanced and a critical appraisal of what is happening in the country. He has touched upon all agencies involved in the functioning of the state, including the Parliament, the judiciary, media and the executive and the other well-recognized non-state actors i.e. the private sector, the cooperatives and the civil society. Godbole’s criticism is both balanced and constructive. He not only identifies the problem areas but also gives his own solutions to those issues. For example, starting from his first chapter ‘We, the People’, after making a well-documented analysis on working of Parliamentary committees, Parliamentary privileges and listing specific failures of Parliament which have “contributed to the erosion of the confidence of the people in its capacity to deliver”, he goes on to give a framework of Parliamentary reforms.