Topic: Transparency, Accountability, E-governance and Civil Services
Q1. What measures does the citizen's charter employ to ensure transparency and accountability within the administration? To what extent has it succeeded in promoting citizen-centric administration? (10 Marks)
Model Structure
Introduction:
- The Citizen's Charter is an optional and non-binding document that outlines the commitments made by a government organisation to its citizens regarding the services provided to them.
- It includes the organisation's vision and mission statement and aims to promote accountability within the administration.
Main Body
Measures Citizen's Charter employs to ensure transparency and accountability within the administration:
- It sets a measurable standard of service, allowing high expectations from an organisation, and pushing them to work diligently.
- It promotes participative governance by making citizens aware of the aims and goals of the organisation and facilitating a feedback mechanism.
- It makes provisions for the time-bound delivery of services, thus ensuring accountability by cutting into bureaucratic delays.
- It promotes transparency in governance by clearly defining the service delivery process, thus reducing the element of discretion.
- It provides for grievance redressal, thus giving citizens a recourse against poor service.
- It streamlines the service delivery process, making the organisation efficient and cost-effective.
Challenges associated with Citizen Charter:
- The content, language and design are not user-friendly, which makes it difficult to understand.
- Ex. Charters are often unavailable in regional languages, creating a linguistic barrier.
- It is observed that in most cases, the citizen’s charter is not formulated through a consultative process, resulting in a copy-paste charter for every department/organisation.
- The service providers, especially at the cutting-edge level, are not familiar with the philosophy, goals and features of the charter.
- Poor awareness about the charter among the public makes it limited.
- Charters are not updated promptly, failing to reflect the aspirations of the changing society.
Way Forward:
- Consumer groups, CSOs, etc., and stakeholders should be involved at every stage of formulating the citizen’s charter.
- The language and design of the charter should be easily comprehensible. The charter should be made disabled-friendly.
- E.g., the Charter should be brought into the braille system.
- Orientation and training of the staff about the features and requirements of the charter.
- Citizens’ charter should be publicised through hoardings, pamphlets, text messages etc.
- Third-party involvement in assessing the charter and revising it periodically.
- To make the charter more effective, it can be given a binding character through legal backing.
Conclusion:
The Citizen's Charter reduces the information gap between citizens and the government. To enhance its effectiveness, it is essential to incorporate global best practices and implement the Sevottam model recommended by the 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC).
Q2. E-governance is not only time saving but also citizen friendly which ushers in participatory democracy. Discuss the importance of e-governance and the challenges involved. (10 Marks)
Model Structure
Introduction
- E-governance is the application of information and communication technology to bring in more efficiency, transparency, accountability and accessibility in governance.
- The World Bank defines e-governance as the use of information technology which can transform government relations with businesses and citizens, and also at an intra-governmental level.
Main Body
- Importance of e-governance
- It has enabled swift transfer of information with better data storage and retrieval systems for all the stakeholders involved like citizens, businesses, governments etc. Eg. Bhoomi Project (Karnataka), MCA21 Portal.
- More digital penetration means more awareness among citizens and more use of their rights for vibrant and functioning democracy. Eg. Awareness about PDS after mandatory biometric verification.
- It enables bypassing of red tapism, delays and complex approvals which affect smooth functioning of the governance process. Eg. Setu Suvidha Kendra
- There is a feedback system like in case of citizen charter by which organizations and authorities know what improvements need to be done in line with changing times and demands. Eg. myGov portal
- A lot of government procurement for office work goes in stationery which e-governance eliminates. This not only prevents extra recurring expenditure but also makes the process hassle free.
- Challenges
- Digital divide and lack of awareness is the biggest hurdle as people either don’t have access to means required for e-governance or lack the required skills to access it.
- Affordability- cost of setting up digital infrastructure to provide as well as access e-governance services is huge.
- Lack of skilled workforce and human resources.
- Data security and privacy issues- If the servers are not located in India, there is a risk of data compromise.
- Just like the linguistic barrier in case of citizen charter, there is this barrier also in case of e-governance which excludes a lot of people who are comfortable only in their mother tongue.
Conclusion
- E-governance is a very important tool to usher in smart and effective governance but it is not possible without focusing on ease of governance. This can be done by making digital services more affordable and accessible so that even the weakest section can avail them.
Q3. India's growth as a global superpower also needs a constructive role by the diaspora abroad. Discuss. (10 marks)
Model Structure
Introduction
- As per recent Global Migration Report, India is the largest country as a source of international migrants with around 32 million strong diaspora globally and also the top remittance receiving country.
Main Body
- Diaspora is crucial not only from economic and trade perspective but also cultural and strategic purposes.
- Importance of India’s diaspora can be gauged by -
- Being employed in the IT sector and other skilled jobs, the Indian diaspora is one of the richest and affluent groups which plays an important role in lobbying. The civil nuclear deal of 2008 was a crucial outcome of this engagement.
- Impact on balance of payments is huge as India is top ranked remittance receiver in the world. Not just money, but there has been a continuous flow of ideas, information and technology which has helped evolve the work environment.
- Soft power is sustainable and sustains itself with minimal capital. Indian cuisine, clothing, spices and now yoga is an important aspect of furthering our presence overseas.
- Many Indians hold key political positions like members of house, secretaries etc and recent election of UK Prime Minister who is of Indian origin, will hold key for India’s interests in the country.
Conclusion
- The Government of India in general and the Ministry of External Affairs in particular have launched many initiatives to connect with the diaspora and further our interests.
- Pravasi Bhartiya Divas, Pravasi Kaushal Vikas Yojana, welfare of PIO and OCIs etc are important initiatives in this direction.
Q4. Social audit has the potential to better implement schemes at grassroot level. What is social audit and the challenges in its implementation? Suggest some measures to address the challenges. (15 Marks)
Model Structure
Introduction
- Social audit involves scrutinizing and surveying of schemes by the government and citizens in general and the people affected by those schemes in particular. It is an effective tool to ensure accountability, transparency and improvement of schemes owing to participatory approach.
Main Body
- Social audit in India was started in 1979 by TISCO in Jamshedpur to ensure social accountability and was institutionalized by 73rd and 74th constitutional amendment acts. Its effectiveness is ensured by key principles like participatory, comprehensive, verified, holistic, transparent and regular.
- But even after 30 years since it got institutionalized, the impact has not been visible due to challenges like
- One size fits all approach for social audits neglects local factors and makes the exercise less effective.
- Lack of awareness and illiteracy are other roadblocks which affect participation of people.
- Digital divide and data availability is also an issue which decreases active participation of stakeholders involved.
- An independent agency is needed to monitor social audits and their outcomes which is currently missing.
- There is lack of political will and politicization of audit work in many places means compromised social audits.
- There challenges can be addressed by reforms like
- Data storage and distribution needs to improve along with skilled workforce, which entails capacity building of systems and staff.
- There has to be an active role played by civil society and non-government organizations to bridge the gaps between government and citizens.
- Periodic training to social audit members by a team of experts at district level to ensure that there is no lapse in the main part of exercise.
- Involvement of civil society to ensure awareness among people so that social audits are effective.
Conclusion
To ensure that the exercise of social audit is more effective, there is a need to put in punitive actions against violations, giving more finances for audits, timely monitoring and assisting implementation agencies so that there is a holistic approach to making social audit a success.
Q5. More than 17 years since passage of the Right to Information Act, 2005, access to information is still a big issue. Enumerating the challenges, explain the need for widening scope of this law to ensure better access. (10 Marks)
Model Structure
Introduction
- India is in line to be the most populated country in the world but when it comes to development parameters, it lags behind. This is majorly due to lack of transparency and accountability of public officials whose mandate is to implement government schemes and eliminate disparities.
Main body
- To foster this accountability, the Right to Information Act was passed in 2005 to make democratic governments accountable. But it has not translated into access to information due to issues like:
- RTI amendment act 2019 which has limited powers of this law by giving parliament the powers to determine salary and service conditions.
- Misuse of the law due to lack of locus standi and frivolous RTIs for seeking information.
- High pendency and backlog of applications.
- Many exceptions and being antithetical to Official Secrets Act 1923 thus bringing in more secrecy rather than transparency.
- Poor enforceability as information commissioners lack such powers.
- Low awareness among citizens to avail advantages of such law for their own benefit.
- In this scenario, scope of the law needs to be widened by-
- The 2013 Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) ruling says that political parties must be declared as public authorities but CIC is powerless to enforce its own ruling.
- Association for Democratic Reforms opined that political parties receive huge indirect funding in the form of tax exemptions, free airtime, free tracts of land etc. So just like NGOs, trusts etc who are public authorities under the act, political parties must be treated the same way.
- With the rise in fake and paid news, it's time to bring the fourth pillar of democracy, i.e. the media under RTI act to ensure credibility of the news.
- Some aspects of corporate governance can be brought under RTI because they hugely fund political parties and there is ample scope of quid pro quo.
Conclusion
At the end, it can be concluded that although there are lots of benefits of widening scope of RTI act but the real challenge is that like politicians, the media, corporate houses, NGOs too
Integrated Test Series 2027 with Mentorship
Not just a test series but complete guide to Prelims MCQ Solving and Mains Answer Writing