Enabling People to Govern Themselves

Context: With the pandemic showing up flaws in governance institutions, there is a need to provide local systems solutions to face new challenges.

Issues with present governance systems:

• Flaws in the design of Institutions: There is a mismatch in the design of governance institutions at the global level with the challenges they are required to manage.

• Interconnectedness of issues: Environmental, economic, and social issues cannot be separated from each other and solved separately.

• A solution to one can create more problems for others, For E.g. simultaneous management of health crisis and economic distress was hard to conduct.

• Complex tasks at the district level: The District Collector’s task becoming complicated due to increased numbers of government schemes. 

• The citizens do not know how many schemes there were entitled to. 

Way Forward:

• Local participation: Local people must be active contributors to knowledge and active participants in the creation of the solutions. 

• Local systems solutions are the best to solve local problems.
• Knowledge of different experts also come together to address the realities on the ground.

• Stronger local governance: States and countries in which local governance was stronger have done much better than others.

• States such as Kerala addressed pandemic better than others. 
• Countries such as Vietnam and Taiwan, have done better than others. 

• Role of Government: Enable people to govern themselves to realize the vision of the government of the people, for the people, by the people.