The IMF has recently accepted `good governance' as one of the criteria for eligibility of loans. A loan to Argentina was put on hold on these grounds. The World Bank too in its latest World Development Report has stressed that good governance is a prerequisite for growth. But what does good governance exactly mean? And, is it really compatible with democracy?

There may exist a fundamental contradiction between the two. Good governance requires a long-term policy perspective while democracy works on a short-time frame. The time horizon of the democratically elected leaders at the most extends to the next elections. Thus they have no interest in implementing such suggestions which may yield results in the long run.

The suggestions extended by the World Bank are unable to overcome this contradiction. The first suggestion is to build public institutions such as an independent judiciary and people's organisations to check the arbitrariness of state actions and to compact entrenched corruption.

Good suggestion. But how does a minister who gets elected for five years gain from strengthening judicial checks on the government? He would face the ire of the vested interests the bureaucracy in particular whom his action would hit immediately. But the impact on the common man would take time to percolate. Moreover, whether the benefits would translate into votes after five years too would be uncertain.

Thus, for the ministers, the costs would be certain and immediate while the benefits would be uncertain and distant. Naturally, they are more likely to derail such efforts rather than promote them.Or, take the suggestion of the state putting in place `self-restricting rules' which specify the policies more precisely and limit the scope for arbitrariness by the bureaucracy.

Surely, such self-restrictions would lead to better governance. But the minister's own as well as the bureaucracy's scope for kickbacks would be reduced. The loss would be certain. The gain uncertain.

The same holds for most of the other proposals put forth by the Bank: restraint political patronage, install a merit-based recruitment system for government servants, establish an anti-corruption commission, and so on. These are all very good suggestions. But the Bank fails to answer, why should a person elected for a limited period take all this risk?

It is this short-sightedness of the rulers built into the very frame of democracy, not lack of knowledge of all these issues, that prevents such measures to be adopted.Perhaps it was for this reason that India had abandoned democracy nearly 2000 years ago.

Historian Romila Thapar tells us that around the time of the Buddha, the republican system of governance, which was more prevalent before those times, got marginalised to the less fertile hilly areas. The mainstream of our civilisation in the Ganges basin embraced monarchy instead. Both Ramayana and Mahabharata speak of a monarchical system of governance.

Although the republican system was well known, we, in the main, rejected it. This is not to say that monarchy is good. Our experience with it was mixed.The problem then reduces itself to a difficult choice.

A monarch has a long term interest in good governance for he expects to be around to reap the results of his presently difficult decisions. But, that very permanency of his can be a curse if an incompetent king ascends the throne. On the other hand, a democratically elected ruler has no long-term interest in good governance.

But, the fact that he has to be elected after a short span of few years helps remove the worst of bad governance. We have to chose between the devil and the deep blue sea.What about the success of the North with democracy? In the historical time scale, this civilisation is young.

Secondly, it is interesting that the longest surviving democracies have looted others, as in Britain, or prevented others from coming in (the United States).

There are no easy solutions. Maybe we need to experiment with newer forms of governance. Perhaps we must re-examine how monarchies ensured generations of prosperity. But, we will think about it only if we realise that democracy is fundamentally against good governance, notwithstanding high advice from the World Bank.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.