Wisdom lies in knowing what to reckon with and what to overlook. An officer being engrossed with the periphery, ignoring the core issues before him, is no rare in the bureaucracy. Do you agree that such preoccupation of an administrator leads to travesty of justice to the cause of effective service delivery and good governance? Critically evaluate. [ MAINS 2022 - General Studies 4 - Ethics, Integrity & Aptitude]
- According to Aristotle Wisdom is the highest form of knowledge. That means Wisdom is about having adequate knowledge and understanding of any situation along with the application of this knowledge. For bureaucrats, wisdom helps to focus on core issues and to deliver effective service delivery and good governance.
Bureaucrats are disincentivized for applying the wisdom in the culture of bona fide error and onus to prove their innocence in the process or investigation. This leads to a lack of innovation and active participation in dealing with the core issues.
- For instance, an 11-year-old girl in one of the Jharkhand districts died of starvation because her ration card was not linked with the Aadhar. Here if the document being the periphery was engrossed by the bureaucrat then malnutrition is the core issue. This leads to inefficient service delivery with a lack of humanism. This is the best example of a travesty of justice with the preoccupation of administration on peripheral issues.
However, for an administrator to bring effective service delivery and good governance in the administration, he/she has to follow the right means and the right ends. To achieve this one should never compromise core values of good governance like transparency, accountability, empathy, and compassion.
- For instance – Civil servants bridging loopholes in healthcare and ensuring that the benefits of schemes, and health insurance schemes reach beneficiaries.
In today’s world, the administrator requires innovative approaches and adaptability to counter emerging issues like cybercrime, and the spread of hate speech via social media. This adaptability of the bureaucrats should become part of the government such that while focusing upon core issues, peripheral issues don’t get adequate attention and justice to be delivered to every citizen.
- However, Buddha’s “Madhyamgram” could be the path that could be adopted while dealing with peripheral issues and core issues to achieve ultimate justice for society.
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