On the road to better governance
V. Eshwar Anand

Splendour in the Grass: Innovations in Administration
Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. Penguin. Pages 305. Rs 495.

In the past four years, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken several measures to streamline the administrative system. He has motivated officers of the all-India services to contribute their best and make a significant impact on people’s quality of life. Last year, he had instituted the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration to develop a competitive spirit among the officers and improve governance with new techniques and strategies.

The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, GOI, has been bringing out special collection of success stories by statesmen, industrialists, social workers and administrators. Ideas That Have Worked (2004) and Learn From Them: A Compilation of Best Practices (2007) were big hits. These brought together enlightening essays about how the contributors have overcome challenges and developed indigenous and innovative technologies that have paved the way for the nation’s progress.

Splendour in the Grass: Innovations in Administration contains 16 articles covering such diversified areas as community policing, railway reservation, right to information, female foeticide, agricultural marketing and human resource management. These essays not only show new directions in administration in India but also some interesting experiments that have been tried abroad — Performance contracts (Kenya); Performance Budgeting (USA); Bringing animation to education (Australia); Equal access to technology for rural communities (Malaysia); and Boronia Pre-release Centre for low-security women prisoners (Australia).

In Foreword, Cabinet Secretary to Government of India, K.M. Chandrasekhar says that knowledge of these ventures in administration and their successful replication elsewhere will help administrators "accelerate the process of change in all areas".

In his essay on "Reaching out to people", J.K. Tripathy, Inspector-General of Police, Crimes, Chennai, who bagged the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration this year, writes about the improvement he brought about in the quality of life of the people of Trichy through his community policing approach. Initiatives such as the Beat Officers’ System, Community Liaison Groups, Wide Area Network, Helpline for Women in Distress and Slum Adoption Programme have all helped in reducing the crime rate in Trichy.

According to Tripathy, this approach ushered in effective people-police cooperation, reduced the workload of the police and enhanced their functional performance and morale. It also developed mutual trust among all the communities and promoted communal harmony. Indeed, this model proves how the police, as a catalyst and an agent of social change, can transform the lives of the citizens.

In his piece on "e-ticketing and computerisation of railway reservation", K.C. Jena, Railway Board Chairman, examines the critical features of various forms of reservation, including the latest innovation, e-ticketing, which enables the passenger to print his own ticket on a plain paper. The cancellation of an e-ticket could also be done on the Internet, without the passenger having to come to the ticket window. This indeed saves a lot of time, energy and money of the passengers.

Jena says, to achieve the aim of vendor independence and open systems, international standards have been adopted and enforced in technology used for the development of CONCERT software. With the advent of CONCERT on all passenger reservation systems, the terminals connected to the network would give a global view of all trains in the country and facilitate a better tour planning for the passengers. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Malaysia are in the process of replicating India’s success.

In a joint article on the Right to Information Act, Dr S.K. Sarkar and Anuradha S. Chagti, (Department of Personnel and Training, GOI), maintain that the Act’s successful implementation will depend upon the capacity of the system to develop. They have suggested computerisation of all records and documents in government offices, especially at the district and sub-divisional level on priority, to help officers readily access and provide information to the public.

Sheela Rani Chunkath, Chairperson, Tamil Nadu Industrial Investment Corporation, discusses her initiatives during her tenure in the Health Department in reducing the maternal mortality and female foeticide in Tamil Nadu. The initiatives included maternal death reporting and verbal autopsy, 24-hour delivery care in PHCs, institutional services monitoring, better birth initiative, empowerment of female field functionaries and improving female survival.

As the book is a compilation of unique success stories, it is a must for all those in public life, administrators, policy makers, planners, students and teachers and the general public.

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