Odisha has been in big news for quite some time. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is severally adjudged the best administrator. Researchers brand him an enigmatic political entity who is capable of mesmerising masses with rare, difficult-to-decipher and phenomenally-magical skills. Naveen is the only Chief Minister to have won all last five elections successively with increasing popularity between 2000 and 2019. The BJP, once the closest ally of the Naveen-headed BJD, was discarded in 2009 by Naveen when poll masters and political gurus had forecast doom for him. Late Pyarimohan Mohapatra, Naveen’s principal advisor and mentor who had very skilfully emboldened the BJD, too proved to be only a strategist par excellence but no a mass leader as he imagined soon after the party’s historic 2009 victory.
Until recently, as per the Bengaluru-based think-tank Public Affairs Centre, Kerala is the best-governed State evaluated on 10 broad themes including essential infrastructure, support to human development, social protection, women and children development and, above all, law and order; 30 focus subjects, and 100 indicators. Tamil Nadu and Telangana follow Kerala. All the three are ruled by non-BJP outfits. Himachal Pradesh was the only State of the northern region which had gained some respect as a well-governed State for some time. Among smaller States (with populations of less than crores), Himachal Pradesh topped the list, followed by Goa, Mizoram, Sikkim and Tripura which figured among the top 5 States with good governance. The bottom of the grading list was occupied by Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar glaringly indicating horrific socioeconomic inequalities. Similarly, Nagaland, Manipur and Meghalaya too ranked very low among the small States.
As mentioned earlier, Odisha has been popularly known as a well-governed State across the last two decades. Though Odisha has not bagged ‘best governance’ awards, the reticent, gentlemanly Naveen Patnaik has been declared the best Chief Minister and the best Indian administrator several times by highly credible media and academic agencies. Osisha people evidently perceive and feel Naveen’s administration as impressively pro-poor; hence, the spree of political victories in the last 20 years without a single break. On the development index too, Odisha has improved a great deal in a number of domains in the recent years particularly in ‘poverty alleviation'.
‘Good governance', as an expression, has gained popularity only in recent times though in spirit it had always existed as a desired objective of all democratic leaders. Good governance describes and prescribes how State institutions should conduct public affairs and manage public resources in the most-preferred way by making perfect decisions and implementing them failsafe for the greatest public good. The universally-accepted and absolutely non-negotiable components of ‘good governance' include:
Rule of Law indicating fair legal frameworks that are enforced by impartial regulatory bodies for full protection of stakeholders.
Transparency which means all that the decision makers do are all publicly ‘see-through’.
Responsiveness that shows public grievances are instantly addressed and all issues are resolved in shortest time.
Consensus-oriented meaning the stakeholders have consciously endorsed steps to be taken by policy and decision makers.
Equity and inclusiveness are the guiding principles of good governance, which simply mean being fair and impartial to all irrespective of social status.
Effectiveness and efficiency mean getting things done with minimum money, labour and time.
Accountability is the most critical condition which would hold decision makers and delivery agencies responsible in case the outcome is much below the desired extent.
Participation is about true democracy – all stake-holding citizen consumers having a say in planning and implementation processes.
Naveen, a born sentimental person having been deeply moved by people’s unflinching love and trust, decided bro dedicate his present term to excelling in real good governance.
His superbly-dedicated and skilled lieutenants slugged for days in end to devise methods of bringing the masses close to the administration. Thus emerged the ‘Mo Sarkar' initiative, an attempt at turning the entire Government system into a people-centric machinery. Mo Sarkar would ultimately make the ordinary citizen the master as is expected in a democracy.
Salient features:
Feedbacks on government officers are to be collected from public.
Mo Sarkar is an initiative under the newly-conceptualised 5T model of governance ensuring at all stages: Transparency, Teamwork, Technology, Timeliness and Transformation.
In this programme launched on October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary, all Ministers would be expected to dial common citizens to seek feedbacks on the kind of response they get during their most recent visits to police stations and District Headquarters Hospitals (DHHs) as these two service agencies are the worst-rated by the masses all these years.
The programme was launched by Naveen at the Capital Hospital and the Saheed Nagar police station. Naveen made it amply clear that the only objective is to make the ordinary people real masters in a manner that facilitates democracy to thrive in every institution so that it serves citizens in a manner that makes the citizen-consumer feel highly dignified and enormously empowered.
The Mo Sarkar programme will immediately apply to at least 620 police stations and 21 DHHs and a few medical colleges. The services under the unique initiative will be extended to more DHHs by the end of the month.
Under the initiative, a citizen will not chase police to register a complaint; on the contrary, police officials will follow up with the complainant to know whether or not he was treated respectfully at the police station and how his complaint was dealt with.
This means that the Government will collect feedbacks from the masses on the behaviour and professionalism of its officers. These officers will then be graded on the basis of feedbacks. Further, the Government employees with good grades will get promotions while action will be taken against those with low or negative scores.
It is worth mentioning that mobilephone numbers of all citizens visiting police stations and DHHs will be registered, following which an SMS will be sent to them within 24 hours confirming that they are seeking service from servants. All the names and numbers of people who visit police stations or hospitals will be stored in a highly-sophisticated portal, which will randomly seek feedbacks from at least 10 people every day.
Meanwhile, Naveen also launched a novel 'Mu Safaiwala' or ‘I am the scavenging guy' awareness drive and urged people to join the cleanliness movement. More than 300 students participated in the launching event wherein they painted walls with messages and graphics on cleanliness.
The whole country is watchful about the recent moves by the Naveen administration to only figure out how the magical political boss operates so well and so smoothly without talking too much. Insiders say the trick lies in his choice of lieutenants.