Transform India Through Good Governance

Shashi was enjoying his pizza with his friend Raghav. A while later, Shashi plucked a hair strand out of his own hair, placed it well between the cheese and yelled to the waiter – “What is this nonsense? How can you compromise on quality by adding hair to my pizza? I will tweet and complain”! As usual, the pizza joint offered them a replacement and didn’t charge them as a gesture. Raghav and Shashi were overjoyed to enjoy their “Free” Pizza!

Here comes a question, although this was a little incident, is this leading to a Governance gap ultimately? It does!

#governance is not just about following compliant practices; it is a mind-set which needs pairing with skill-set and tool-set. Let us understand governance from an Indian priority perspective utilizing these 3 areas:

Mind-set:?Governance comprises 5 important principles: Accountability, #leadership , #integrity , #stewardship and Transparency. If we take a closer look, implementation of all these 5 areas comes from beliefs, thoughts, habits and behaviours. If Shashi feels discomfort in the unfair conduct at the pizza outlet, there is higher probability that Shashi will follow fair practices in bigger activities like business and employment. Governance in India will not come by increasing the rulebook content; it will come by “living” the principles. The biggest benefit is that such “living” of governance inspires and influences many more to follow suit. Mind-set towards good governance will benefit generations to come and strengthen sustainability of business entities

#skillset :?Ignorance is bliss, but we need knowledge especially in the area of good governance. The question here is, should only the key senior management or governance committee or directors only need this skill? In my opinion, No! Governance is a language, it a culture. By restricting it to senior management, we restrict it’s implementation! Many companies wait for a certain turnover, an incentive to exhibit #goodgovernance or similar parameters. Instead, governance must be a part of starting processes like induction programs for joinees, live projects for students, executive refreshers for working executives and even for startups as a part of their basic skilling platforms. We see media updates containing lot of negative content which criticizes non-compliant situations, it’s time we see a rise in content that highlights great governance! That will inspire the skilling across generations.

Tool-set:?We live in a world full of content, that too in various formats. – blogs,?vlogs, web series, social media and many more. The best tools to inspire individuals and organizations to get serious about governance is these platforms. A series on market scams became an instant hit, but where is a series on good governance? Is it not there due to lack of sensational content? Well, good governance comes with great struggles and setbacks. Every organization following good governance has its own story. Rather than just restricting it to a B-School case study, let us make it more vocal and resonating! These content pieces will be a very significant inheritance we will leave for upcoming generations. The tool-set will be a headstart to them and we will see the governance patterns evolving rapidly.

In a nutshell, let us be loud in appreciating governance. Neither a pizza buyer, nor a Golden Peacock award winner must play around with governance!?Let us bring it on across the country to build a Behtar India, holistically!?

Author:? Priyanka Acharya