Date:15/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/15/stories/2008121550610600.htm

Tamil Nadu

Good governance critical to success of democracy: T.S. Krishnamurthy

Special Correspondent

Former Chief Election Commissioner releases book authored by Naresh Gupta

— Photo: R. Ragu

BOOK RELEASE: Former Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy (left), releasing a book authored by Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta (centre) in Chennai on Saturday. It was received by UNDP Deputy Country Director Pieter Bult (right).

CHENNAI: Good governance and good track record of human resources development are critical to the success of democracy, T. S. Krishnamurthy, former Chief Election Commissioner, said on Saturday.

Though the country could take pride about itself in certain aspects, what it lacked was good governance. There were still many parts of the country that had not yet tasted fruits of development, Mr. Krishnamurthy said, wondering what was the point in proclaiming that the country was recording a high growth rate under such circumstances.

He was releasing a publication authored by Naresh Gupta, Chief Electoral Officer in the State government, on democracy and human development. Pieter Bult, Deputy Country Director of the United Nations Development Programme received the first copy and C. Chandramouli, Planning and Development Secretary, got the second copy of the book.

Mr. Krishnamurthy called for a harmonious compromise between development and democracy. M.S. Swaminathan, agriculture scientist, who presided over the function, expressed concern over the adverse sex ratio, female foeticide and gender discrimination. “Unless we know our deficiencies, priorities cannot be set right,” he said.

Mr. Bult said his organisation was associated with the preparation of district-level human resource development reports in India and 50 such reports would be published soon.

Veena Jain, additional director general, Publications Division, which brought out the book, said the Division had published over 8,000 titles so far on a variety of topics.

Mr. Gupta said that when he was the member-secretary of the State Planning Commission some years ago, he was involved in the preparation of a publication on poverty and human development monitoring in the context of Tamil Nadu. The publication had only statistics. When N. Narayanan, the then State Finance Secretary, indicated to him that the data required analysis, the idea of writing a book, dealing with the entire country, struck him. A multi-media presentation on Mr Gupta’s book was made on the occasion.