Governance is a concept that refers to the process of decision-making and the manner in which those decisions are implemented for the welfare of society. The World Bank defined it in its 1992 report, Governance and Development, as the way power is exercised in managing a country's economic and social resources. The term's root comes from the Greek verb Kubernao, meaning "to steer". The modern focus on "Good Governance" emerged to solve the problem of inefficient public sectors and to ensure a responsible, people-centric use of power.
The mechanism of good governance is characterized by eight core principles: participation, rule of law, consensus-orientation, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, and equity and inclusiveness. These principles are designed to minimize corruption and ensure public institutions are answerable to the people.
In India, governance connects directly to the constitutional framework of Indian Polity. Key legislative mechanisms promoting it include the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, which mandates transparency, and the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, which empower local bodies and facilitate decentralization. Recently, governance has been transformed by the Digital India initiative, which uses e-governance tools like Aadhaar and UPI to streamline service delivery. A significant administrative change after 2014 was the introduction of self-attestation of documents, replacing bureaucratic suspicion with trust in citizens. Furthermore, Mission Karmayogi was launched to shift civil service capacity building from rule-based to role-based and competency-driven governance. The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) also simplified domestic trade and increased transparency.