Date:07/12/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/12/07/stories/2004120702360400.htm

Back Regulatory regimes planned to improve governance

Our Bureau

New Delhi , Dec. 6

THE Government is working towards installation of regulatory regimes in various sectors such as the pensions business and infrastructure sectors, including railways and roads, as part of its strategy to improve the quality of governance.

"Our priority would be to install regulatory regimes in as many sectors as possible," Mr Prithviraj Chavan, Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, said here on Monday.

Outlining the Government's reform agenda, Mr Chavan said the focus would be on ensuring administrative, judicial, social, political and electoral and economic reforms .

"The biggest challenge facing the country is the challenge of improving governance. Administrative and bureaucratic reforms are badly needed and the Government would institute an administrative reforms commission to look into issues including downsizing the bureaucracy," he said at an interactive session on `Effective Governance' here at the India Economic Summit.

The Minister said the Government would bring about an amendment to the Right to Information Act for curbing leakages in developmental expenditure. On the electoral reforms front, he said the Government was looking at starting a dialogue on the issue of limiting the number of political parties contesting elections. The Global Managing Partner, Markets, of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mr William Brocker, who chaired the session, said that good governance was now a prerequisite for attracting capital and that India had "some way to go" in the area of governance.

Speaking at the session, Dean, Harvard Business School, Mr Kim B. Clark, sounded a note of caution on the prevalent practice in India to import governance standards and rules from abroad .