THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES OF GOVERNANCE AND GOOD GOVERNANCE: A STUDY OF KINGDOM OF TRAVANCORE (1729- 1949)

Abstract

Good governance has always been the ideal concept of political thinkers, decision-makers, policy planners, and academics. Citizens’ primary concern in any society is the goodness of the government. And for this, governance systems and subsystems must be fundamentally efficient, effective, economical, ethical, and equitable. Similarly, the governance framework must be just, reasonable, fair, and concerned with citizens. In order to achieve these characteristics of good governance, the leadership machinery should also be able to take responsibility. The good governance had already long become the mainstay of assessing how the powers that be function. According to Banasree Devi, Governance can be both participatory and normative. Whereas the former emphasises citizen participation in the process of controlling the state, the normative definition of governance is value loaded, emphasizing the concept of good governance. This study is an attempt to analyze the concept of good governance and its application in the country’s current administrative system.