Service to the Citizen

Couple of days back I was with a Municipal officer to discuss a project, while we were busy discussing he got to know that old age pensions for that particular month were yet to be distributed, he looked upset and inquired the concerned clerk on the reason for delay, the response was modem was not working hence instructions could not be passed to the bank. It was 22nd of the month and the pension is a paltry 300 Rs /month and it is delayed by 3 weeks. The pensioners would have gone to the bank multiple times to collect Rs 300. They would have spent have the money on travel.

This is a typical example of government services reaching the citizens; a hardened and emotionless bureaucracy does not have accountability. There are exceptions like this officer who was genuinely concerned however the general apathy in the bureaucracy is a reason for disaffection among citizens on govt services.

As citizens we need to interface with multiple govt depts/services on a regular basis water, electricity, property tax, Income tax, Public Distribution Shops, Passport etc being a few of them. Citizens experience friction whenever they come in contact with govt services. Rule books are thrown at the hapless individuals by the babus to make a quick buck to help resolve some or other teething issues. The babus have an advantage of better knowledge of the policies and procedures hence they twist and turn the citizens till they oblige with some bakshsish.

The RTI act is a great tool to shake the govt but there are attempts being made to dilute it and more importantly RTI activists are being threatened by mafias with dire consequences. A colleague of mine is an RTI activist and focuses his energies on saving lakes in and around Hyderabad; he says real estate mafias keep bothering them hence they need to tread carefully.

The issue is the formidable collusion between the politician and the bureaucracy, combined they are robbing the hapless citizen day in and day out. How can the govt energize its cadre to serve the citizens efficiently, is there an incentive for the bureaucracy to be efficient?

This is a country where we allow food grains to rot and let millions suffer from malnutrition, no one is accountable, some story is told to the Supreme Court. We should learn from China, they too are corrupt but are learning fast and are improving services to the citizens at an amazing speed. They rank better than India in the Transparency International corruption index.

Take the example of Income tax, they harass the common man but we do not see them going behind the high and mighty. Are we saying all politicians and industrialists have clean income tax records? The raids on this class of people are only for headlines, post the raid it is cold storage and back door settlement. I know one of my colleague had to shell out 30,000 Rs recently for a minor infraction after being harassed on some technical aspects which is difficult for the common man to understand. Govt wants to increase the ambit of income tax coverage but the process is not yet friendly and the dept is not citizen friendly. Their aim is to harass the honest and hard working citizen and let go the powerful.

There is lot of despondency about all this but there is a ray of hope, penetration of IT is helping improvement of services but our babus are finding ways to circumvent the process that needs to be fixed. I find ESeva of AP to be good example. It should be made more popular (this service started of well but seems to be on the decline) and penetrate into the towns. Govt should open more such kiosks across the country and provide most services to the citizens, take away the discretionary powers of the bureaucrats and perhaps the bureaucrat himself.