Governance should improve to achieve progress: Prez

President Pranab Mukherjee said here on Saturday that India cannot achieve true progress unless governance improves drastically.

“No one section is responsible for the ills. Society as a whole has to reset its moral compass,” he said. He also drew special attention to frequent disruptions in the functioning of legislatures and Parliament and said this trend should be corrected.  

Delivering the first N K P Salve memorial lecture on “Constitution and Governance,”
Mukherjee called upon legislators to spend sufficient time in discussing financial matters, the budget and the five year plans.

“If sufficient time is devoted, corruption can be nipped in the bud,” he said.  “To achieve social justice it requires not mere governance but the transformation of social ethos, a recasting of mindsets. This is the job not just of the legislature, the executive or the courts, but of each one of us.” 

The ultimate goal of any democracy is the empowerment of the individual, irrespective of his economic, religious or social standing.