RESPONSE STILL NOT ADEQUATE TO TAKE CARE OF THE COMPLAINTS ON CORRUPTION
By K R Sudhaman
In a country, where corruption is rampant, one question that is often asked: is the public grievances redress mechanism effective. India may claim to be the largest democracy in the world with widespread freedom to question the authority when they go wrong. In reality, does it work in true sense of the term or the authorities use it as a potent weapon to dodge the public to redress their grievances rather than solving them. The general impression is that in India public grievance mechanism is pretty bad and the voice of the people and their genuine grievances are hardly heard by the government.
To change this opinion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken major initiative in the last few years to address this issue based on the recommendations of Parliamentary Standing committee at the turn of the century as part of the administrative reforms. The Parliamentary Standing committee had met several times subsequently and had come out with some far-reaching recommendations as late as the current year.
Based on the directives from the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to create ‘one nation one portal' for addressing the grievances in a centralized manner has been set up. Modi's strategy has been to universalize solutions for nation-wide issues. This is also aimed at invoking national spirit among people apart from standardizing solutions. Modi believes in one nation one ration card, universalization of education through common entrance exams for engineering and medical admissions, one payment system so on so forth.
On the ground general public might not be happy with the way grievances are handled particularly at lower levels when one has to deal with corporation authorities, thasildars, district administration, policeman or for that matter government babus and politicians. But figures provided by the government during the last few years seem to tell a different story. There is rampant corruption at the local levels, general public is made to run from pillar to post to get their things done, even mundane things like birth certificates, castes certificates. Digitisation might have addressed the issue to an extent, but administrative authorities and politicians lose no opportunity in exploiting the people to make some quick buck.
Rajasthan cadre IAS officer, V Srinivas, who is secretary to the department of administrative reforms and public grievances has reeled out statistics at a recent lecture to highlight the improvement in disposing of public grievances at both the centre and states in recent years. As part of the administrative reforms, public grievances portals of both the centre and states are getting linked so as to ensure aa centralized and faster handling of grievances.
According to Srinivas, percentage of grievances redressed annually in central government departments and ministries have gone up from 78 per cent in 2018 to 85 per cent in 2022.
But the grievances carried forward every year has doubled from 2.5 lakh in 2018 to five lakh in 2022 while the number of new cases have gone up from over 15 lakh in 2022 to over 19 lakh in 2022. But the percentage of grievances addressed annually has remained around 93 per cent.
In the case of states, Srinivas says the percentage of grievances addressed annually has remarkably improved from 44 per cent in 2018 to a little over 70 per cent in 2022.
The cases that have been brought forward has more than doubled from 1.7 lakh in 2018 to 4.3 lakh in 2022. The number of cases has increased from 4.6 lakh cases to 6.6 lakh cases.
As far as one nation one portal, Srinivas says it is being established to have seamless digital processing of grievances across central and state governments to a ‘whole of government approach'. As on date only two state government portals are yet to be integrated with the central portal. Central ministries operationalizing large Grievance Portals – Rail Madad, Champions of MSME, MeriSadak of MORTH, SCORES of SEBI have also been integrated with the central portal. The portal will also be available in English and all scheduled languages –Assamese, Bengal, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili and Dogri.
That apart, Artificial Intelligence based monitoring of grievances too has been established with the help of IIT Kanpur to improve redress of grievances. Apart from monthly progress report, special campaign for disposal of grievances are being undertaken.
As part of administrative reforms, these efforts of the centre and states look impressive on paper, but as long as there is no drastic political and judicial reforms, the rampant corruption will continue and redress of grievances of common man at the local, state and central level remain pathetic in spite of digitalisation Some forward movement is there but the measures are still not adequate to take care of the requirements of the nation.
