Governance 2.0

The second area of concern is the rule-making process. Parliament delegates the writing of rules to regulators, an enormously powerful tool to hand unelected officials. While it is valuable to have officials with professional expertise, we should be mindful of the extent to which unelected officials can pursue their own interests. Hence, the delegation of rule-making powers must be accompanied by an elaborate array of checks and balances in the rule-making process. Regulators must be made to demonstrate that the gains to society from a proposed rule exceed the costs of complying with restrictions. Draft rules must be released to the public and specific responses must be released for every comment. There should be convenient forums for appeal, where rules are subject to judicial scrutiny.

The third area of concern is the rule of law. India's economic policy today has seen numerous failures in that respect, partly due to the socialist policies of the past. There is a need to strip regulatory agencies of arbitrary power. Laws should be known before an action is taken; laws should be applied uniformly; when a law is invoked, it should be accompanied by the rationale employed for its use; and specialised courts for appeal should be available.

The fourth element of accountability is reporting. Once an agency has been properly structured and its objectives have been clearly defined, it should be asked to report on the extent to which it has met these objectives and how it will do better in the future. For instance, a government agency set up for the specialised purpose of addressing consumer complaints in finance must document the case backlog and the extent to which its orders were upheld on appeal, survey evidence about the satisfaction of citizens who filed a complaint, and report the cost of the process as seen by individuals, the compliance cost imposed on firms, etc. Annual reports today are filled with general platitudes about the economy, and reporting must shift away from that to include specific outcomes that the agency was mandated to achieve.

... contd.

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