How to Select the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi: 5 Steps
If the government really wants to provide good governance to the people of Delhi, it must follow these steps for the selection of the next lieutenant governor.
By Rakesh Raman
Today, Delhi is crying like an abandoned child. Its parents – lieutenant governor Najeeb Jung and chief minister Arvind Kejriwal – have completely neglected it. As a result, Delhi has become a virtual hell for more than 20 million people who live in it.
While Najeeb Jung – like other bureaucrats of India – lacks requisite skills to manage diverse activities of modern governance, Kejriwal is a careless politician who lost interest in Delhi after winning the election.
So, people of Delhi are suffering. For example, today Delhi is the most polluted and perhaps the dirtiest city in the world. But Delhi government has not made any attempt to get the city cleaned. Plus, the people do not get drinking water in homes and electricity supply is erratic.
Similarly, the education standard in Delhi is in a deplorable state, but Kejriwal and others in his government have been telling blatant lies about the quality of school education which has actually gone from bad to worse. And Jung is simply tossing files from one desk to another without doing anything meaningful to improve the standard of education.
[ Read: 10 Steps to Save Education in the Schools of Delhi ]
Although Kejriwal won the election with the promise to weed out corruption from Delhi, the truth is that corruption is so rampant in almost every street of Delhi that Kejriwal and Delhi government have failed to check it.
In an ongoing RMN Poll given below, a whopping 78% people say they are not satisfied with Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi.
You can select your poll option and click the small box under the options to vote and see the results so far.
Loading ...Meanwhile, Najeeb Jung has resigned from his post. Jung’s exit can be a blessing in disguise for the people who are already disturbed by the lack of governance in Delhi.
Now, this is the right opportunity for the President and the Prime Minister of India to select the right candidate in a professional manner for the office of the lieutenant governor of Delhi.
Here is the selection process comprising 5 steps that they can follow:
1. Applications
Instead of throwing an old, traditional bureaucrat or politician on the lieutenant governor’s chair, government must openly invite applications from interested candidates who should send custom applications specifically designed for the post. Simple file-pushers will not be able to manage the Delhi affairs.
2. Presentations
The shortlisted candidates should make presentations in front of qualified selectors in interactive sessions held over a period of time. The presentations of applicants should include the governance challenges in Delhi, their solution for each challenge, and the result that they can ensure.
3. Feedback
The presentations and the remarks of candidates for the post should be made available on the web and government should invite feedback from highly educated citizens representing different sections of society about the candidates.
4. Suitability
With these initial steps of the selection process, government should select 3 candidates who should be asked to make their own dedicated websites to explain their suitability for the position.
5. Debates
After a couple of weeks, these 3 candidates should be asked to compete in open public debates organized by the government with support from industry organizations, social service organizations, and domain experts.
The focus of the selection process should be to evaluate the problem-solving and communication skills of the candidates. An empirical method can be devised to quantify the performance of each candidate at each of the above 5 steps.
If the government really wants to provide good governance to the people of Delhi, it must follow these steps for the selection of the next lieutenant governor. This process can also be followed for other important government positions.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a government award-winning journalist and social scientist. You also can visit the REAL VOTER – Politics in India Information Center that he manages.
Photo courtesy: Delhi Government
