Normalising aberrations
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: February 11, 2014 -

Most post colonial States across the globe have been afflicted with a peculiar traumatic experience of normalizing aberrations.

When one closely scrutinizes the contours of recent history, there are adequate evidences to suggest that the ruling class in the post colonial period had been made to learn the intricacies of governing the ungovernable through acquired values rather than inculcated practices.

While making efforts to fulfil certain visions necessitated by choosing the correct path to development, envisioned objectives are rarely achieved despite the adoption of ideal techniques of implementing policy related programmes.

In the process of executing the set agenda of the States, societies in transition are often caught in a kind of dilemma mistaking the means as the end, putting to shame staunch proponents of the efficacy of the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, the three organs of the State.

It has become the norm for not only India but also developing States in the post colonial period to attach certain value to these organs.

While underplaying the value of the legislature by distancing oneself from politics of contemporary times, sections of the citizens subjectively overvalue the role of the executive.

In India for instance, a person who aspires to become a bureaucrat after overcoming the gruelling exercise of passing the annual civil services examination, fetches accolades from the society he or she belongs to.

The value attached to becoming a bureaucrat at times has been so much overemphasized as if bureaucracy is an end in itself. Thus, the raison d'être of playing a role as the means to an end diminishes.

When the citizens are made to assume the means as an end and there are no efforts to correct the lopsided vision, aberrations of the worst kind are spawned.

This leads to further distortion of the procedural approach and as a result, one can easily bypass norms of governance by adopting practices considered anathema to all types of visions.

Here, one should be reminded that desiring a radical change will have less impact if the practices of normalizing aberrations continue to afflict society in transition.