Citizens’ Charter Schemes In India

Recommendation Of Chief Secretaries Conference (1996)

Sharing the concern for ensuring responsive, accountable, transparent, decentralised and peoplefriendly administration at all levels, and with the objective of restoring faith of the people in the fairness and capacity for administration against the prevailing frustration and dissatisfaction, the then Prime Minister of India, while inaugurating a Conference of Chief Secretaries in 1996 called to develop An Agenda for an Effective and Responsive Administration to make the public services more efficient, clean, accountable and citizen-friendly. The conference inter alia recommended that a accountability should be interpreted in a larger sense in relation to public satisfaction and responsive delivery of services, and a phased introduction of citizen’s charter for as many service institutions as possible by way of citizen’s entitlement to public services, collaboration of consumer organisations and citizen groups, the wide publicity to standards of performance, quality, timeliness, cost, etc. for public services, and promotion of periodic and independent scrutiny of performance of the agencies against the standards.

Action Plan The Chief Ministers Conference (1997)

As a sequel, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Services in 1997 evolved an “Action Plan on Effective and Responsive Administration”, based on the responses and reactions received from officials, experts, voluntary agencies, citizen’s groups, media, etc. The three main areas of Action plan that were discussed in the Conference of Chief Ministers on May 24, 1997 were:

Making administration accountable and citizen-friendly
Ensuring transparency and the right to information; and
Taking measures to cleanse and motivate civil services.

An implementation committee was set up under the Chairmanship of the Cabinet Committee to formulate ways and means to implement the above stated concerns of the Action Plan. Among the various other steps taken in this respect, a core group was formed under the Chairmanship of the Secretary (Personnel) for monitoring the formulation of Citizen’s Charter by identified Ministries/Departments with substantial public interface, and to assist them in finalising the Charter. As a result of the efforts of the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), 43 Citizen’s charters had been finalised by the end of the financial year 1997-98 by various Central departments and agencies, and 14 by the governments of the National Capital Territory, Delhi, Haryana and Tamil Nadu. Model charters have been prepared for public hospitals by the Department of Health, and for the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) by the Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs. The DARPG has been coordinating the entire exercise with the involvement of consumer groups.

Role Of Consumer Coordination Council Of Common Course

The concept of citizen’s charter in India was picked up and pushed forward by the Consumer Coordination Council (CCC) and its associate the Common Cause’ (headed by H.D. Shourie) in association with the Cabinet Secretariat. Field surveys were undertaken by the Consumer Coordination Council in the five areas of Health care, Electricity, Banking, Telecommunication and Municipal services. Assistance of other consumer organisations was taken in developing and supporting this effort. Since then, many charters have already been published by the respective service agencies, copies of which are freely available.

A Tentative Assessment Of Citizen’s Charter

Although not justiciable, these charters aim at affirming the commitment of an organisation to the people, that it will deliver its services promptly, maintain quality and a redressal machinery will be available where this service is not of the standard which it is committed to maintain. However, an analysis of various charters indicates that a at present there is no specific provision available in the various charters about the action that can be taken by an individual who feels that the commitments made by an organisation have not been fulfilled, and that as a consequence hurt or loss has been caused which needs to be compensated. It is desirable that service providers should become conscious of the need for action to compensate for any default on the part of their functionaries resulting in delay or loss in the provision of services. At present the only option that the citizen who suffers loss or hurt has to take the matter to consumer court for award of compensation.

Findings Of Ray’s Study

Although it is too early to make any objective assessment of the functionaries of charters and their impact on citizen satisfaction, and, therefore, any conclusions drawn are merely tentative, but an exercise at a review of the existing Charters in India, undertaken recently by Dr. C.N. Ray of the School of Planning, Ahmedabad, reveal that in the charters undertaken for study, there is a great variation in terms of coverage, procedures, redress of grievances system and the information necessary for the citizens. Some charters (like that Delhi Development Authority ) are very brief, while some are very detailed, are very detailed ( e.g., Department of Telecommunications, or Passenger Services on Indian Railways ). While many do not provide any information about the redressal functionaries (names, address, telephone numbers, etc. ), some other (e.g., Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion) do provide useful addresses for redressal system. However, in a almost all cases, there is an absence of provision for any compensation for any loss or damage suffered by citizens in the absence of the targeted services not being provided by the concerned agencies.

Dr. Ray makes a strong plea for:

Participatory process to be evolved in formulating any charter.
Procedural reforms so that the agency concerned has in- built machinery for auditing and periodic monitoring of performance.
Percolating of the role and relevance of the Charter right down the line to the officer who interacts with the user, (the interface), and
Need to extend the charter scheme to private initiatives in public arena as well.

Check out the Observations On Citizens’ Charter Schemes In India