(a) What do you understand by the terms ‘governance’, ‘good governance’ and ‘ethical governance’? (b) Discuss Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of seven sins.

(a) The three concepts

Governance is the process by which authority is exercised and decisions are made and implemented in managing a country's affairs — a value-neutral description of the institutions and processes of rule.

Good governance qualifies that process with normative standards. As articulated by UNDP and the World Bank, it has eight attributes: participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, and accountability. It is concerned with how well authority is exercised.

Ethical governance goes a step further: it infuses governance with moral values — integrity, justice, compassion, honesty and public spirit — so that decisions are judged not merely by legality or efficiency but by their rightness. It asks not only 'is it lawful and effective?' but 'is it just and good?'

(b) Gandhi's seven social sins

Published by Mahatma Gandhi in Young India (1925), the seven sins are moral warnings against divorcing action from ethics:

• Wealth without work.
• Pleasure without conscience.
• Knowledge without character.
• Commerce (business) without morality.
• Science without humanity.
• Worship (religion) without sacrifice.
• Politics without principle.

Each names a domain of life stripped of its ethical anchor — productivity, enjoyment, learning, trade, technology, faith and public power. Together they warn that competence without conscience is corrosive. Ethical governance is precisely the antidote to the seventh sin: politics grounded in principle, where power is exercised as a moral trust rather than as private gain.