Answer:

♤ Jawaharlal Nehru, in his famous ‘tryst with destiny’ speech had articulated our main challenges as ‘the ending of poverty, ignorance, disease and inequality of opportunities’. India’s democratic experience of the past six decades has also clearly established that our central challenges still relate to social opportunities and mass poverty.

♤ Good governance, as a concept, is much larger than mere administrative reforms as understood in the conventional sense of the term, to the extent that it covers much more ground and substance. It relates to ethical grounding of governance and must be evaluated with reference to specific norms and objectives of a particular society.

♤ Moreover, the concept of good governance is applicable to all sections of society such as the government, legislature, judiciary, the media, the private sector, the corporate sector, the co-operatives, societies registered under the Societies Registration Act, duly registered trusts, organizations such as the trade unions and lastly the non government organizations (NGOs).

♤ In the context of India, good governance can be defined as that system of governance, which helps in securing justice, leads to empowerment of people, provides employment and ensures efficient delivery of pubic services. These aspects are relevant to the extent that they help us deal with our central challenges

effectively. Thus, first and foremost, good governance must aim at expansion of social opportunities and removal of poverty.

♤ The concept of social justice, on the other hand, is mostly interpreted as “poverty alleviation for the working poor”, in both formal and informal sectors, the employed and underemployed.

♤ However, in the specific context of India, ensuring social justice means not only to address poverty, distribution of material goods and social exclusion, as it is in western societies, but also to remove social discrimination of the ex-untouchables.

♤ But these aspects of social justice will hold relevance only if they can be secured and accessed as well as ensured through rule of law.

♤ It is in this context that good governance becomes important. Securing justice is in fact, an important aspect of good governance, not only in India, but throughout the world. For instance, it is only through good governance that security of life and property, an important public good, can be ensured. Securing justice is based upon the basic principle that people should be able to rely upon the correct application of law. It is only through good governance that such access to justice can be ensured. Moreover, rule of law, which is another important aspect of securing justice, is related to good governance. This is because it is only good governance that can ensure that no one is above the law.

♤ Thus good governance and social justice not only strive towards the same goals, but securing justice is also an important facet of good governance.