The Hindu Business Line : <I>Reinventing Government </I>

Reinventing government is a hobby horse that many think-tanks and seminars ride every now and then. For all the gusto shown by them, the impression that one gets is that they have been unable to make participatory and transparent governance a universal phenomenon In fact, the Public Administration Review of November/December 2005 admits as much when it says that little notice is taken by the international public administration community of the extensive reports of the Global Forum for Reinventing Government, a UN-sponsored entity.

Each assembly is attended by about 5,000 participants drawn from member-States, experts from international organisations, and civil society representatives. All of them spend a lot of valuable time trying to squeeze the last ounce of significance out of the by now familiar buzz words such as accountability, transparency, participation, responsiveness, effectiveness, efficiency, equity, consensus building and inclusiveness.

For instance, at the Sixth Global Forum, the latest in the series, held at Seoul in May 2005, the President of South Korea, perorated on the imperative need "to create a government, that is efficient, a government that serves... a government that respects its citizens". Participants vied with each other in resorting to overkill, elaborating on the same old clichés in the same old jargonised parlance.

Here is a suggestion for the forthcoming Seventh Forum: Select a few impressive success stories from various countries and let the achievers concerned to place before the participants the methods followed by them. This will provide practical, down-to-earth pointers for good governance, which no amount of viscous theorising can.

B. S. RAGHAVAN