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Citizen-Centric Governance
Vanam
Jwala Narasimha Rao
Telangana
Today (07-09-2019)
Interactive
policy-making, citizen panels, citizen charters, public facilitation centres
and other forms are being used to enhance public interface. In Telangana number
of welfare programs like Kalyana Laxmi, Shaadi Mubarak, Aasara Pensions, Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bhima, Sheep distribution, Fish
breeding, Double bedroom houses, Residential school education, Wellness
centres, KCR Kits etc. are public interface measures.
The Panchayati Raj Act aims to ensure
people’s participation to bring the desired qualitative change in village
administration. The Municipal Act envisages that all certificates as required from the municipalities such as birth certificate,
death certificate, land use certificate, child name inclusion in birth
certificates and corrections in the certificates shall be issued online in a
time bound manner. All these require the
public to get in touch with public servants at least once in a while. The
proposed Revenue Act aims to reduce corruption that is widely prevalent today
in the revenue department.
Responsive Government
The conference of Chief Ministers held n 24th
May 1997, presided over by the then Prime Minister IK Gujral discussed about Effective
and Responsive Government. The conference recognized the growing doubts about
the accountability, effectiveness and moral standards of administration and the
need to move together to justify the trust of faith of the people in the
Government both at the center and states.
AS resolved in the conference, the Accountable and
Citizen Friendly Government envisaged Citizens’ Charter, Redressal of Public
Grievances, Review of Laws, Regulations and Procedures as well as Peoples
Participation and Decentralization and Devolution of Powers. Transparency and
Right to Information envisaged a legislation for Freedom of Information. As
part of improving the performance and integrity of the public service the
conference noted that people-friendly and effective administration depends on
cleansing of civil services at all levels.
The conference also realized that
there was considerable frustration and dissatisfaction amongst the people,
especially the weaker sections of society, about the apathy, irresponsiveness
and lack of accountability of public servants. There was increasing anxiety
about growing instances of corruption and criminalisation in public life and
administration. Against this background, two decades ago, the state and central
governments were involved in some manner or the other, in providing public
services. We may take a cue from the conference.
Ensuring
Accountability
Apart from an overall lack of transparency and
accountability in the system, most government delivery systems all-over the
country suffer from adhocism and delay. It is therefore, important to identify
and publicize the standards of services and time limits that the public can
reasonably expect, particularly in critical activities with a public interface.
One of the important means of ensuring
accountability and transparency in the agencies engaged in providing services
to the people, or enforcing laws and regulations, is to organize their actions
around the concept of Citizens’ Charter. This is part of a national movement in
countries, like the UK and Malaysia, where it lays out the citizen’s
entitlement to public services and responsive administration of regulations. It
places the citizen at the centre of administration instead of making him a
passive recipient of services rendered indifferently.
Citizens’
Charter is based on the principle of, wide publicity of standards of
performance of public agencies and local bodies; assured quality of service; access
to information and courtesy and helpfulness of staff; Choice and consultation
with the citizens; Simplified and convenient procedure for receipt and
acknowledgement of complaints and time bound redressal of grievances and the
provision for independent scrutiny of performance with the involvement of
citizen groups.
Moral
Commitment
While
it is not justifiable, it represents the moral and democratic commitment of the
government to service of the public. In order to accomplish this task, each
Government Department should work out its own Citizens’ Charter and related
actions in terms of the nature of work and, more importantly, the groups of
clients or members of the public, geographical concept, nature of regulatory
function and paid-for services. It should also evolve a plan containing both
long term and short-term targets for improved public satisfaction and efficient
performance through systems improvements, technological and information inputs,
staff orientation, work place changes, use of alternate providers, partnership
with citizen groups, voluntary agencies and the corporate sector. An in-built
machinery to be set up in each department for independent system auditing and
periodic monitoring of performance with reference of the charter principles and
to attend to the capacity building and orientation of the staff.
The
poor record of most public in the area of prompt and effective redressal of
public grievances is a major cause of public dissatisfaction and a subject of
criticism. Public grievances primarily arise out of the inaccessibility of
officials’ failure to even acknowledge applications, non-enforcement of any
kind of time limits, and unsympathetic attitude of officials at various levels.
It is also found that adequate
facilities are often not available in the public offices for reception of the
public seeking various types of information or with various queries and demands
of services. Arrangements for seating and waiting of the public, water supply
and sanitation, protection from rain, sun etc are insufficient or non-existent
in public offices which the citizens are required to visit.
There
are often no display boards relating to information generally desired by the
public on the location of offices and facilities, various procedures involved,
fees, submission of forms, time taken in disposal. The names of grievance
redressal officers are not often widely published, and these officers are also
not accessible as stipulated to meet the public.
In
big cities, citizens are often required to travel long distances to visit
different offices due to lack of decentralized locations at the ward level for
providing information on dealing with complaints. As regards the villagers in
dispersed villages throughout the district, they face great problems in
approaching the tehsil and district offices for getting copies of records,
licenses, payments, and applications under various government schemes.
Measures
for improvement
A
number of measures could be considered for immediate improvement in the
situation. The language and tone of various application forms should be user
friendly, and the forms be widely available in various outlets, including post
offices. Every public servant should normally be available during working hours
to respond to the public in person or on phone at least in a specified time.
Every application or petition should be acknowledged. Every application should
also carry such a slip for future response. Time limits should be fixed for
approval or rejection of applications.
The real issue, however is the need to
bring about a total change in the attitude of public servants towards redressal
of public grievance at all levels and to pin point responsibility for action on
grievance of the people. A demonstrable and effective way of ensuring prompt
redressal of public grievance would be establishing Citizen Information Centres
and Public Facilitation Centres. Steps to promote widespread and easy access of
people in rural and urban areas to information on public services, details of
government schemes, status of application, issue of certificates have to be
initiated. This will ensure administration to be more effective and
responsive and help in preventing corruption and harassment to the common
people.
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