When a gifted and learned man like Arun Shourie talks of ‘Governance deficit’ and why India needs to – and how it can – bridge the troubling gap between its potential and performance all need to take notice of it.

Here are the main points that were brought to the notice of the elite audience present at Rama Watumull Hall on the 6^th of December in Mumbai.

“India needs to take a fresh look at the Constitution.”

“We need to plug the loopholes which have been deliberately kept in the existing laws,” he said, giving examples of lacunae in the Representation of People Act, which has seen incompetent people being elected to the Parliament and the State Legislatures for decades.

“When we say that we need to re-examine the Constitution of India, it does not mean that we are against Dr. B. R. Ambedkar or his ideals,” he explained.

He agreed with Mr. Narendra Modi, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in the 2014 general elections, that “bad governance is like diabetes… it invites all other diseases.”

He was particularly critical of the government highlighting the incomplete construction of a road in the sensitive Daulat Beg Oldi region on the India-China border by the Border Roads Organization since 2007, which, according to him, was a sign of tactical weakness.

He was concerned that the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, one of the country’s most sensitive decision-making bodies, was headed by film actor and MP Raj Babbar, “India’s greatest strategist,” drawing loud guffaws from the audience.

Regarding selection of officers to the country’s bureaucracy, Mr. Shourie said that currently the system was riddled by “second-rate people who selected third-rate people for government jobs” and this has become a vicious cycle since decades.

Underlining the need for the industry and other stakeholders to “initiate a dialogue with the judiciary,” he said that “judges too should ensure their blanket pronouncements do not jeopardize even all the good work.”

“Instead of making the CMs partners in governance, they are subjected to being completely submissive to institutions like the Planning Commission, which he equated with a “shed for derelict people.”

He also highlighted five key measures to fight corruption in India:

1. There should be no adjournments in any court matter pertaining to public servants;
2. Burden of proof must be on the accused, in corruption cases just as in narcotics cases;
3. Limit arguments to control the lifetime of litigations and ensure that cases do not drag on endlessly;
4. Confiscate all assets of accused in cases where there is little room for doubt about complicity;
5. Physical incarceration and being banned for life from all public life.

Mr. Shourie was an economist with the World Bank, a consultant to the Planning Commission, a Union Minister for Disinvestment and also Minister of Communications and Information Technology in the NDA government and also Ramon Magsaysay Awardee.