Citizen's Charter: Still groping in the dark

new delhi: four years after its formation, the citizen's charter for improving the efficiency of public services in the capital and making the government more accountable, is found wanting in many areas. in a bold initiative, the delhi government set itself the task of finding out how effective the charter is in making information available to citizens and entrusted the responsibility upon independent professionals.a joint study made by the centre for media studies and transperency india international revealed that only a poor percentage of the public use the redressal mechanism because they are blissfully ignorant of its existence. "we held discussions with at least 1100 regular visitors to public service departments over a period of three days in october and found out that 40 per cent among them are ignorant of the citizen's charter," says k rangarajan, project director cms, who led the appraisal study. "three-fourths of the citizens are not bothered to approach authorities concerned with their problem which is a worrisome factor," says rangarajan. "citizen charter is one such mechanism through which government at various levels have been trying to improve efficiency of public services and make them more responsive to needs and expectations of the citizens", says rangarajan. "our study on citizen's charter was based on the 11 departments of delhi government- industry, excise, delhi vidyut board, delhi jal board, sales tax, education, social welfare, health, food and civil supplies, transport and public works- all adopted the charter", he says. "the charter has been formed with the object of making information availabale for the citizens but after four years it is unfortunate that the charter is still to progress", says vidyasagar, delhi chief secretary. vidyasagar says the government will take steps to rid the charter of any drawbacks after they receive the joint appraisal made by cms and transparency india international. rangarajan says the main duty of the charter is to make the citizens aware of the services a public department can offer them and to advice them of redressal mechanism if they have complaint. for instance, he says if a person has a difference with dvb he can follow the instructions listed in the citizen's charter which is flashed outside the office. "it is the right of the consumer that his meter should be read regularly and billed correctly and according to citizen's charter if the consumer receives a faulty bill he can approach assistant finance officer who is responsible to redress the grievance within three working days," he says. rangarajan says their study brought to light the fact that even the field staff of many departments are not familiar with the citizen charter. "our study reveals that even the concerned field staff of the respective department which adopted citizen's charter themseleves are not familiar with the concept or the relevance of the charter," he says. agreeing with this view, vidyasagar says a vigorous campaign is needed to make the people and officials aware of the charter. "the crucial element for the success of citizen's charter is the public awareness. the goverenment will make all possible efforts to display the guide to services in prominent places where citizens can see easily", he says. s d sharma, working chairman of transparency international india opines that the charter has failed to bring transparency to the administration. "citizen's charter is intended to provide transparency to administration but it has failed to achieve this aim mainly due to the lack of public and official awareness about it," sharma says. citing the involvement of middlemen as another reason that curtails the efficiency of the charter, rangarajan says they alienate people from the departments concerned and cause loss of time and money to the citizens. "one of the primary objective of the citizen's charter is to save the public from the agony of dealing with touts and make them somewhat redundant in order to get services directly from the concerned offices", says rangarajan. according to him to do away with middlemen staff responsible for public interface in most public service departments in the capital urgently need orientation and motivation about the charter and using it for transparency and efficiency. stating that passive citizenship is one of the main reasons that halt the progress of citizen's charter, n bhaskara rao, chairman of centre of media studies points out that many of the problems confronting public services cannot be resolved unless citizens themselves become active and civic society too takes interest. "delhiites by and large are passive citizens as they hardly complain about the poor services in public utilities. more than three-fourths of the citizens think that it is government's responsibility to ensure efficient and corruption-free services but they forget about their role", rao says. then what are the steps to be adopted for a more focussed citizen's charter? in terms of content it should be more like a general directory rather than a charter so that the obligatory aspects on crucial issues mentioned in it can be remembered, says rangarajan. as of now, the citizen's charter has no provision in it to provide compensation for aggrieved persons and the charter must ensure that the client receive compensation without having to go to the court of law. "in no country is it possible to provide satisfactory public service without active citizen cooperation and the citizen's charter should try to facilitate the process of changing the passive citizenry to active participation", he says.