Chanakya's New Manifesto: To Resolve the Crisis Within India (19 page)

  3.13  Citizens know when governments act with the right intention and resolve. The Bihar RTPS Act came into effect on 15 August 2011. Within days, this single piece of legislation generated as many as 280,000 applications. People responded in such a way because they knew that a body—the Bihar Prashasnik Sudhar Mission Society (Bihar Administration Cleanup Mission Society)—had been specially created to ensure the proper implementation of the act. They were also aware that the fifty services within the ambit of the act encompassed the ten key departments of health, transport, education, food and civil supplies, registration and social welfare. Apart from separate provisions for manual access, the RTPS services were offered online from entry to exit. Each applicant got an acknowledgement, even in case an application was rejected and the appellate procedure was clearly spelt out. A dedicated team of 1,948 people was provided to ensure that the services sought were delivered on time. To ensure that the system actually worked, a qualified software engineer was appointed as the IT manager in each district. An IT manager was also appointed in each of the ten selected departments. In addition, 729 IT assistants across the state provided backup. The status of an online application could be ascertained through the official website or by sending an SMS.

  3.14  Not surprisingly, independent agencies have given a positive assessment to the working of the act in both M.P. and Bihar. In M.P., it has been estimated that 99 per cent of the applications were cleared within the specified time limit. In Bihar too, millions of applicants have benefitted from the act.

  3.15  The efforts of other Indian states have lacked political resolve and administrative rigour, and are seriously flawed. In Delhi, for instance, a misguided approach to management of the bureaucracy has led to the penalty for an ineffectual official to be as ridiculously low as
10 per day up to a maximum of
200. In Karnataka too, the penalty for an errant official is only
20 a day up to a maximum of
500. The justification for such low penalties is that officials need to be motivated by methods other than punitive means.

  3.16  Such an approach towards a bureaucracy predisposed to corruption is woolly-headed and unrealistic. Exemplary deterrent punishment is a must to ensure compliance by India’s officialdom.

  3.17  There is no reason why the best practices (as observed in the M.P. and Bihar acts) should not become the law across India. Corruption is a nationwide malaise. It needs a national response. It cannot be tackled by a hit-or-miss approach at the whim of states which choose not to adopt, or fully follow, what has been demonstrably proved to be effective. Such ad-hocism is criminal and amounts to colluding with the corrupt. The Centre needs to pass legislation making it compulsory for all states of the union to adopt an RTPS Act modelled on that passed by M.P. and Bihar. The legislation should be enabling in nature, allowing states to draft and pass their own bills, but on the basis of the guidelines prescribed by the parliamentary act, which should include a broad but generic enumeration of the scope of services; specific time frames for delivery; precise appellate procedures; exemplary penalty provisions; modalities for online, offline and manual access; and a standardized management information system for monitoring. An attempt should be made by all states to frame and implement their individual acts by July 2013.

  3.18  India would not be the first country to adopt such a nationwide act. In 1997, the UK adopted its ‘Citizens First: The New Charter Programme’; Belgium has its Public Service User’s Charter (1992); Malaysia announced its Clients Charter in 1993; Canada adopted its Service Standard Initiative in 1995; Australia, Sweden and Spain are other countries with similar legislation. Each country has adopted laws keeping their specific situation in focus. India too needs to do that, and the right to public services must be the primary focus of our legislation.

  3.19  The Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) could be mandated as the agency to monitor the working of the act in all states. The institute would be required to submit a biannual report to Parliament and to individual states giving, as precisely as possible, a state-specific evaluation of the implementation of the act. The report would not be binding in its recommendations, but will be made public.

  3.20  The evaluation by the IIPA is essential too because the process of guaranteeing corruption-free delivery of public services will necessarily remain a work in progress for a while, given the environment in which it is being initiated. With the adoption of an efficient RTPS Act across the country, a large percentage of the corruption that afflicts the common man in routine interactions with government can be effectively tackled.

  3.21  There are three other subsidiary issues that need to be examined in this context. The first is whether the larger area of grievance redressal should not be included as part of the guaranteed delivery of notified services in a time-bound manner. The Government of India’s Citizens Right to Grievance Redress Bill, 2011, seeks to combine the two and deals with the right to public services in Chapter 2. However, the problem with the bill is that it is largely a statement of intent. It seeks to cater to grievance redressal through central as well as state public grievance redressal commissions, which are toothless bureaucratic bodies, whereas the RTPS Act, in its most effective versions, clearly designates a specific authority and an appellate authority to perform this function. Moreover, the central bill lays down no penalty provisions, and is generally vague or rhetorical on issues of standards, monitoring instrumentalities and institutionalized mechanisms of service delivery.

  3.22  The second issue relates to Citizens’ Charters. Such charters are useful in providing to citizens the rights to which they are entitled from public service providers. However, keeping our own situation in mind, the mere announcement of Citizens’ Charters is unlikely to significantly alter the actual performance of our administrative bodies. Hundreds of charters have already been finalized or announced, with little to show in terms of real improvement in terms of deliverables. ‘In fact, a 2008 study conducted by the IIPA found that besides enjoying a symbolic value, many charters were non-existent and outdated, invisible both within the organization and in the public domain, and lacked precision on standards, commitments and mechanisms. Poorly conceived by government officials as being a ritualistic and received document, they were reduced to one-time exercises frozen in time, suffering poverty of participation and failure of communication, and characterized by an absence of accountability and review mechanisms’
²⁴
. The truth is that in our country, declaratory statements of intent—however well-intentioned—make little impact and need to be replaced by enforceable legislation.

  3.23  The third issue relates to the interface between the public service delivery acts and the Lokpal (or the Lokayuktas in the states). The Jan Lokpal Bill, which has been spearheaded by Anna Hazare, seeks to designate under the Lokpal, a public grievance redressal officer, and an appellate grievance officer in each district. The National Campaign on People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) goes even further and seeks to set up a Public Grievances Lokpal (Shikayat Nivaran Lokpal) at the Centre and in each state, with branches going down to the block level.

  3.24  It is probably managerial overkill to overburden the institution of the Lokpal by giving it responsibilities that are already part of the right to public delivery services acts as in M.P. and Bihar. Little purpose is served by trying to duplicate through the Lokpal or a separate Public Grievances Lokpal what the acts already largely ensure. Multiple agencies do more harm than good; they confuse the citizen and provide officials alternative avenues to avoid erring penalties. The Lokpal, as we shall discuss later, has a very important specific job to do. It should focus on that, and not take on responsibilities already performed by other effective bodies.

  3.25  The harnessing of technology to combat corruption has great potential. In course of time, there is no reason why all public services should not be made available through the electronic mode. Currently, India ranks a dismal 119 out of 192 countries on the UN E-Government Development Index 2010 in using IT to provide services to citizens. We need to rectify this, and have the technological prowess to do so. The Centre has drafted the Electronic Service Delivery Bill, 2011, which aims to take all services online in five years. Maharashtra has already adopted the Maharashtra Mandatory Electronic Delivery of Public Services Act, 2010, (MMEDPS Act) which, by eliminating intermediary officials, seeks to provide at least 100 services online within the next five years. These are laudatory initiatives. But a graduated approach is a surer way to reach that goal.

  3.26  The third key area that needs to be looked into in the battle against corruption is the introduction of absolute transparency in the disposal and acquisition of state resources and procurement processes, and in the way in which civil contracts and services are awarded. This area has seen big ticket corruption for years now. Licences for the sale or use of state resources—land, minerals, forests, spectrum etc.—are routinely given away by government authorities as favours, at throwaway prices. The 2G scam involving allocations in 2008, where spectrum usage was distributed at a pittance to favoured clients, awakened the nation to the extent of corruption in such matters. The Coalgate matter, where over 140 coal blocks were allocated without competitive bidding to private parties over 2004-2009, many of them with suspect credentials, is another case in point. Annual government spending on procurement is estimated at between
250,000 to
300,000 crore, about one-fourth of the union budget. With funds of this magnitude available to government for disbursement, the scale of opportunity for corruption can only be imagined. In addition, government spends large amounts on awarding civil works and service contracts. Here, too, there is much corruption, not only in the choice of awardees, but also in the implementation of the projects. Deliberately opaque rules, arbitrary discretionary powers, lack of full disclosure, inadequate public audit and the absence of transparency are the reasons for corruption in these areas.