ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 on “Governancing’ Contagion: Lockdown or Meltdown?’ traces the roots of the now-dominant notion of ‘governance’ by identifying it as a particular brand of governing, emerging from the neoliberal project in circulation since the 1990s. The basic argument in the chapter is that notwithstanding the periodic theoretical endeavours to reframe and refine the idea of governance the ‘actually existing governance’ – governance-as-it-is/governance-in-practice – characterised by strategic, codified, technocratic and decontextualised knowledge – has grossly underperformed during the pandemic. Highlighting ‘good governance’, the most publicised and the most aggressive form of governing in contemporary times, the analysis shows how its foundation pillars – accountability, transparency, participation, responsiveness and efficiency – are found to be deficient in the crisis times. The dominant mode of governance communication is critiqued by noting the steady weakening of the human-sourced connections by the digital network-sourced connectivity. In a balanced assessment the chapter also refers to the failure of the counterforces seeking to come up with viable alternative/s to (good) governance.
