The scourge of over - governance

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Shantanu Dutta

28 April, 2011

What this country needs is not an all seeing, all knowing big brother who has rules and laws touching every area of our life; but a fewer number of over - arching laws that can be well monitored and well enforced.

IT IS quite interesting to read in today’s paper that the Andhra Pradesh government has decided to “wait and watch” and has said that they will intervene in the affairs of the Sai Baba trust only in the case of eventualities. This statement is particularly ironical because at this point of time, it can be perhaps creditably said that while the Sai Baba’s Central Trust is full of luminaries whose credentials no one has questioned; the government is facing a situation where its credibility as a governing institution is at an all time low. Sending a few people in high places here and there to jail will not mend matters much because through gestures like the Jan Lokpal bill, the message is being unambiguously passed out that the government – both as an institution as well as the people who make it up are no more individuals who enjoy the confidence and respect of the people.

If in Andhra Pradesh, the government were to intervene, it would do so under the provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Charitable and Hindu Religious Institutions and Endowments Act 30/87. When this law and laws of this nature were enacted, the basic premise was the government was a better and more trust worthy custodian of the public good than the general public who had their own vested interests and selfish agendas in place. A precedent of the many laws governing government intervention lies in the Gurudwara Act of 1925, a piece of legislation in which the Akali Dal was involved to liberate Gurudwaras from the clutches of self serving priests.

But what ought to be the limits of governance that a government should have ? Does it have the right to intervene anywhere and everywhere, particularly when its own record in managing affairs that are directly assigned to it by the Constitution, so patchy ?

Imagine for a moment, that the late Sai Baba’s Trust, which to all accounts has been functioning admirably thus far begins to malfunction ? Why should the government interfere? Sai Baba has innumerable followers who are more than capable of taking adequate legal action against the trustees without the government involving itself here. What could the government do? Set up dead machinery to administer the flow and use of funds that would be devoid of any heart or soul?

This is not the only instance of where the government can poke its long nose and rather unsuccessfully. Take the Foreign Contributions Regulations Act, through which the government attempts to control the misuse of foreign funds by charitable trusts. Well charities and NGOs are no saints and some of them like Sai Baba’s trusts are like oceans with turnovers running into many hundred crores. But with the government’s own former ministers and other senior functionaries from the ruling coalition either in jail or facing serious charges themselves, what gives anyone in the government the moral right to look over my shoulder and check out that I am doing the right thing in the manner that I am using the funds and other resources entrusted to me.

May be it will take another Anna Hazare to take up the crusade of over governance; but let us face it; we have just too many laws and too little enforcement. Besides with every new law, hangs the sword of Damocles that we are breaking one or the other. With so many laws and rules around, we are bound to trip somewhere, aren’t we? What this country needs is not an all seeing, all knowing big brother who has rules and laws touching every area of our life; but a fewer number of over arching laws that can be well monitored and well enforced. Let us hope that some activist will pick up that agenda and make it his or her own!