What's New

Q. Citizens’ Charters only have a symbolic presence and have not been successful in making a difference in altering the state of public administration and service delivery in India. Discuss.

Answer

• A Citizen’s Charter is a document, that represents a systematic effort to focus on the commitment of the public organizations towards citizens in respect of standard of services, information, choice and consultation, non-discrimination, accessibility, and grievance redressal.
• This also includes expectations from the citizens towards fulfilling the commitment of the organization. Introduced in India in the early 1990s, it represented a landmark shift in the delivery of public services.
• Citizens’ Charter emphasizes citizen-centricity by ensuring that public services are responsive to them.
• They aim to alter the state of public administration and service delivery in India by making the administration accountable and citizen-friendly, ensuring transparency, taking measures to improve customer service, adopting a stakeholder approach, and provisioning redressal of grievances.

However, even after their implementation dating more than 25 years, Citizens’ Charters in India have not been successful in achieving the above objectives and have been criticized as having only a symbolic presence. This is due to the following reasons:

• One size fits all approach’: Citizens’ Charters have still not been adopted by all Ministries/Departments. The tendency to have a uniform Citizen’s Charter for all offices under the parent organization has resulted in an overlooking of local issues.
• Lack of multi-stakeholder consultation: The consultation process in the formulation of Citizens’ Charter has been minimal or largely absent. Further, most organizations do not have adequate capability to draft meaningful and succinct Citizens’ Charters. Service providers are also not always familiar with the concept, philosophy, goals and the main features of the Charters.
• Issues with the functionaries: The personnel responsible for the implementation of Citizens’ Charter should have proper training and orientation in this regard, which is lacking.
• Lack of public awareness: Only a small percentage of end-users are aware of the commitments made in the Citizens’ Charters since effective efforts of communicating and educating the public about them have not been undertaken. As a result, there is no pressure on the departments to perform as per the Charters.
• Lack of measurable standards of delivery: This makes it difficult to assess whether the desired level of service has been achieved or not. Further, the standards of services mentioned in the Citizens’ Charters are sometimes too far-fetched and the timelines are too tight, thereby making them impractical.
• Lack of teeth: In the absence of penalties/punishment for not achieving the self-declared standards of public service delivery, Citizens’ Charters only pay lip service to their commitments.
• Lack of effective communication: Information brochures, publicity materials, and pamphlets produced earlier by the organizations are often mistaken for Citizens’ Charters.

In this regard, the Second ARC Report and the Indian Institute of Public Administration have given certain recommendations like enabling a participatory consultation process, periodic updates, creation of a database and clear-cut guidelines for grievance redressal, earmarking of specific budgets for awareness generation, etc. Further, efforts like changing the nature of the Charters from non-justiciable to justiciable and adopting penalty measures will make Citizens’ Charters a more efficient tool for raising standards of the state of public administration and service delivery in India.