Developing and preserving good governance is essential for the country and it must become the passion of future Governments, according to Congress MP and former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor.
"Good governance transcends all administrative frontiers. It requires politicians of all parties to recognise the importance of working together for a common goal."
"When you see some parties disrupting Parliament...you see them marching into the well and shouting slogans so that the Speaker can't be heard, thereby getting Parliament suspended, there you see a classic example of a lack of quality leadership in our political system," he said.
Tharoor was speaking at the IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Awards and IMC Juran Quality Medal function here last night.
Quality solutions in a democracy like ours require a quality debate, the former UN diplomat said. "I think the pursuit of quality in India cannot happen without engendering a new political ethos. We need people in politics to provide quality leadership, just as we are doing in other areas."
"By and large, a leader is expected to lead. Even from time to time, a good leader must also know, how to be a good follower," Tharoor said.
"We have to identify quality solutions across the board to our long-standing national problems. Problems of clean drinking water, clean air, energy sufficiency, affordable housing, good health and education, the nature of our problem has not changed since Independence."
"We still have not solved the problems of providing the 'aam admi' with 'roti kapda aur makan'," the Congress MP from Kerala maintained.
The IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Awards and IMC Juran Quality Medal have been instituted to give special recognition to excellence in organisations.
This year, the awards were announced by a panel of judges headed by Anand Mahindra, vice-chairman & managing director, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.
Tharoor presented the IMC Juran Quality Medal 2011 to B.K.S Iyengar, founder of the popular Iyengar Yoga and a Padma Bhushan awardee.
The IMC Ramkrishna Bajaj National Quality Awards assess Indian organisations against a set of guidelines based on the Malcolm Baldrige model for performance excellence.