Governance and popular democracy: A case of TRAI and CERC

Governance has become a buzzword in contemporary discourse on government and politics. The current debate on governance represents not just a semantic shift or hyperbole, but it has much to say about the changing role of state and society. The emerging notions of governance today include a wide range of shifts in the form of the state franchising much of its welfare functions to private actors, corporatization, more measures of transparency and accountability, the proliferation of market- based solutions to societal and political ills etc. In this new scenario, a number of institutions, for instance Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) have sprung up to mediate the outcomes of these shifts in the role of the state. In the context of India, it is pertinent to ask whether the emerging notions or forms of governance are conducive to a widening of democratic processes in India. Newer modes of governance seem to impede democratic processes as seen in terms of exclusion of majority of people from development, crises of political accountability and transparency, rampant cases of large-scale corruption, widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the widening base of the marginalized etc. Democratic governance should enable equal distribution, participation, and social justice, empowerment of depressed classes and secure rights and equality of the people. This becomes possible when policies and reforms reflect actual realities of the people