WHAT is good government? This question, albeit rhetorical, has been exercising thinking individuals the world over. John Jay Chapman would like to give credit to private virtue for a good government. But, as we all know virtue is not exactly in abundance anywhere. As it does not grow naturally, it has to be enforced or instilled with the help of a strict regimen. Some compare it to cultivating a barren land — but that appears rather harsh.
Why is it necessary to have a government at all? As Shelley states in An Address to the Irish People, “Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.” In other words we need a government because we have not yet reached the stage of enlightenment that would make all external forms of governance redundant.
Indeed, if only we could govern ourselves and lead a life of virtue all governments would vanish. But then where would politicians be? And our junket hungry bureaucrats? Imagine, no annual ritual of IAS exams and mug shots of preening successful candidates in the local press! No comic scenes of the grown ups going through juvenile wiles just to get a piece of the sarkari cake. Life will lose a lot of lustre... and colour. The US journalist HL Mencken takes a cynical view when he states: “Government is actually the worst failure of civilised man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.”
Some have tried to compare different forms of government like democracy, communism etc. However, they have not been able to conclude whether our system of governance is an abject failure, a resounding success or a mixed blessing. No attempt has been made to differentiate between a systemic failure and the individual inadequacy.
For example, was the Emergency an example of a chink in our Constitution or was it because our ruling elite could not uphold the principles of our Constitution in letter and spirit? Is the current spate of violence – political, social, and domestic – in different parts of the country a proof of our governing agencies’ ineptitude or some deeper, more sinister malaise? Why is the common man left to fend for himself — generally speaking?
Let Thomas Carlyle have the last word: “Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a ‘taxing-machine’; to the contented, a ‘machine for securing property.’ Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.”
Your sentiments exactly, dear reader?
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