Can Government create a system of robust accountability for officialsIJ That’s the key challenge before the current regime
Someone may finally have lent an ear to the silent agony of air travellers who always rued exorbitant cancellation charges by airlines, if they had a sudden change of travel plans. Or so it seems. Civil aviation minister Jayant Sinha said on Monday that he believed that the cancellation charges of Rs 3000 were high and wanted it reviewed. Similarly, a day ago, Railway Board Chairman Ashwani lohani acknowledged that the growth in passenger traffic has not matched infrastructure upgradation and promised better maintenance of railway tracks to prevent accidents.
For many bewildered and hapless citizens who have been troubled by thousands of archaic and unreasonable rules and an apathetic government machinery, these two affirmations may bring some relief. They may also be symptomatic of the fact that there is a Government which has its earon the ground and connects with citizens far more effectively than in past.
But it may be premature to celebrate. For while those at top seem to be driven with a new desire to change the course of a new India, apathy still reigns supreme at various layers of government machinery. While successive governments have worked hard on bringing about transformations in the way they engage with citizens and effective delivery of services, yawning gaps remain. People in rural areas especially struggle to get access to government services. A dirty nexus of lower bureaucracy and touts coupled with illiteracy add more to their misery. This further gets aggravated with the giant wall of rules and laws, and many of them obsolete, that allow government officials to hide themselves behind it, and torment citizens.
little wonder, one of the first tasks of the BJP-led government was to get rid of these old laws, which act more as nuisance that making lives easier. “Our country suffers from an excess of old and unnecessary laws which obstruct people and businesses. We began the exercise of identifying unnecessary laws and repealing them. 1,827 Central laws have been identified for repeal,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said on January 29, 2016. According to the law ministry website, four Government enactments have repealed 1175 such obsolete and redundant laws. Sample some of these queer ones: Under the Indian Treasure Trove Act, 1878 you could have been jailed if you found anything worth more than Rs 10 and did not report it to a revenue officer. Under the Indian Aircraft Act, 1934, kites were also aircraft and you needed to obtain a permit as required for an aeroplane. And the list goes on.
Apparently, the intent of the Government is clear — to remove hurdles, enhance transparency, and bring in fair and effective governance that make people's lives easier. And we have seen numerous changes on the ground towards this. However, some major hurdles that remain need to be tackled earnestly before the government can enhance ease of access to its services. Three critical challenges need to be overcome.
The first and one of the fundamental problems is of accountability. Can the Government create a system of robust bureaucratic accountability for officials across all layers and ensure that citizens have unfettered access to the essential services and grievance resolutionIJ If the security of tenure is acting as a deterrence to better performance by officials, can a system of periodic, performance-based reviews be devisedIJ like members of the legislature including the Prime Minister obtain people's mandate every five years, can government officials too seek an endorsement from the public they serve, albeit not in the same manner as their political counterpartsIJ
The second issue on which the Government needs to step up is of transparency. If my neighborhood roads are in bad shape, is there a way I can know the corrective measures taken and the officials responsibleIJ There are innumerable such grouses that citizens have, and have little by way of an answer. And the third issue that needs fine-tuning is efficiency. lethargy and apathy, especially, at the lower rung of the Government machinery are rampant and there is an urgent need to curb this to alleviate citizens' troubles.
Sinha and lohani offer hope. But this hope gets severely clouded when pitted against the enormity of apathy of a Herculean bureaucracy that runs through the veins of India's system. One is reminded of laurence J Peter who said, "Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status." The Prime Minister has a tough task at hand to enhance ease of access of people to governance, and up the ante on this status quo.
(The writer is a strategic communications professional)