Good governance and rights-based approach to development: A review of public service delivery system in India

The wave of globalization lefts no country isolated from its twists and turns. But the question comes; up to what level a concept/principle/discourse influencing the local arenas (states) at large? And that decides a concepts/principles validation to be Global. In this regard, certainly Good Governance and Openness have become the buzzwords to define the credentials of contemporary version of democracy throughout the world. However, the linkages between the well-recognized and much discussed principles of Good Governance like transparency and the progressing development debate, wearing the human rights robe etc. are still not potent enough to channelize and energize the public service delivery system in developing countries like India to better cater the demands of people and to suffocate the leakages in the processes, leading towards an equitable- distribution. This paper argues that in legislating such global concepts to address the two sets of issues- functional as well as socio-economic, where functional reforms like mechanism of resource distribution is a way to address the socio-economic issue like poverty, involving people participation at large, the states need to design their own frameworks, locally to better fit/suit these norms in their own socio-economic and political systems. This paper further focuses India's style and approach in institutionalizing these norms, motivating and joining hands for an inclusive and sustainable development democratically, locally as well as globally, however is facing impediments being a developing democracy in transition.