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Killer quake
Modi’s calibrated stand |
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A nightmare tour
Rehabilitating retiring soldiers
The willow-patterned plate
Towards a Citizens charter
How to make a
citizen charter effective
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Killer quake Despite scientific advances, an earthquake can strike anywhere without a minute’s warning. On Sunday, it was the misfortune of Sikkim to be ground zero, though the effect of the 6.8 earthquake was felt in three countries – India, Nepal and China (Tibet). The death toll has been mounting steadily. Since the lines of communication to far-flung areas have been snapped, there are fears that more bodies may be found under the debris. One consolation this time was that the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) stepped in quickly, although its progress was hampered by blocked roads and foul weather. Still, food and medical facilities were made available to the worst affected areas with the help of helicopters. The army and paramilitary personnel too stepped in, unmindful of the risk to their own lives. The destruction is so widespread that much more still needs to be done. To mount an appropriate relief and rehabilitation effort would require compassionate participation of the whole country. This would be the time to show to the Sikkimese brethren that the entire India stands behind them in this hour of crisis. Many of the residents of the area are even otherwise laid low by poverty. Rebuilding their lives would be a Herculean task. As it is said, earthquakes do not kill people; buildings do. The damage caused by this temblor has been particularly heavy because most of the buildings in the affected areas were old and rickety. It is unfortunate that even newly constructed buildings do not conform to quake-resistant building norms. Most people do not take extra precautionary efforts, because these entail spending an extra buck. But that amounts to being penny wise and pound foolish. We must be alive to the fact that the entire North-East belt, Andaman and Nicobar islands and pockets of Kashmir fall in the very high risk Zone V. There is no way that we can escape building quake-resistant buildings there, even if that jacks up the construction cost.
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Modi’s calibrated stand The three-day ‘sadbhavana’ (harmony) fast undertaken by Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was a mixed bag in terms of mileage. Politically, it reaffirmed Modi’s iconic status in his home state with the Congress coming out rather poorly in the parallel fast by its leader Shankarsinh Vaghela, but it sent ripples among the BJP allies some of whom disapproved of any campaign, overt or covert, to catapult him to the prime ministerial chair. There was no mistaking Modi’s hardselling of his new face as a man looking for reconciliation and inclusiveness but while he paraded Muslim men and women at the venue and suggested in his speech that Muslim welfare was a subset of Gujarat’s overall growth, he skirted the issue of the 2002 riots which has been a millstone around his neck.
Arguably, an apology for the misdeeds of his then government when the minority was at the receiving end of large-scale violence by riotous mobs, would have healed some old wounds but Modi consciously chose to offer no such apology. The strategy was to re-package himself in a more acceptable image for a possible national role without shedding his hardline appeal among the harder core of the majority community. The first hurdle that Modi faces would be the next assembly elections late next year for which he has positioned himself well. The Congress is a weak opposition and is unlikely to pose any major challenge to him. Undeniably, under Modi the state has progressed much and the economy is in fine nick. But power at the Centre is quite another matter. With the official complicity in the 2002 riots a stigma that he cannot wash away, his acceptability quotient with the allies of the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance continues to be low. In particular, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has made known his opposition to Modi. By making sure that the likes of L.K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Rajnath Singh shared the stage with him, the BJP has built up at least a façade of unity. But while convincing the allies would be an uphill task in the light of the known antipathy of some towards him, and a hung Parliament is the most likely prospect, New Delhi is still a far cry for the abrasive and
self-centred Modi.
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A nightmare tour The England series turned out to be one of the most forgettable tours ever undertaken by an Indian cricket team. But those holding the reins of the sport in India would be well served to keep this debacle alive in their memories, and not forget the lessons learnt in a hurry.
This first lesson is in humility. There was a feeling in the team, as also among the selectors and other BCCI office-bearers, that all India needed to do was to arrive in the UK, and England would fold up and surrender meekly. This thought process ended up being disastrous since not only was England not going to surrender, it was all keyed up and prepared to dethrone the world’s No. 1 team in Tests. The subsequent results speak for themselves. The second lesson was that no team, however good, can go to another country without research or preparation. The Indian contingent arrived in England from all parts of the world, ranging from the West Indies, US, Australia and India. There was neither time for combinations to be thrashed out, nor an opportunity to gauge if certain players were in good enough form to actually be part of the side. The other telling lesson was that players’ professions of fitness, or the lack of it, should not be sacrosanct and experts need to be given a free hand to judge if a certain player is fit or not. There were a slew of injuries — carried to England or picked up there and by the end of the series, India was a rag-tag bunch of players who were called from all improbable corners to come and fill spaces left by injuries to many top players. There is also an element of bad luck about the way in which players like Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, or Rohit Sharma picked up their injuries but there were also cases like Virender Sehwag, who was never really fit, or Zaheer Khan, whose fitness has always been suspect. In all, it was a misadventure of huge proportions.
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Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. — Helen Keller
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Rehabilitating retiring soldiers More than 80 per cent soldiers retire at the age of 36 or 37 years and their annual number is almost 50,000. They do not even reach the midway point of their pay band, miss out on increments, get pension based on the point in the pay band they are retired, missing out 24/23 years of higher pay if they, like all civilian government employees, had to serve up to the age of 60 years. Consequently, they suffer multiple disadvantages. Retired too early and given inadequate pension, they, in addition, lose out on the largesse of at least two subsequent Central Pay Commissions. After taking the best years of a soldier’s life, we throw him out to fend for himself in the harsh realities of life: to find a job in mid-life. The Defence Minister has finally realised that ex-servicemen do need a second career. According to him, they could be accommodated in Central Police Organisations
(CPOs — now called CAPFS), government jobs, etc, and that he will also write to the states to employ ex-servicemen. Surely, he should know that instructions to the states and the CPOs already exist to that end, but are not implemented. Simply because implementation of orders/instructions, enforcement of laws, timely completion of projects, etc, are extremely poor in this country. Above all, there is so much money to be made in fresh recruitment! This trained manpower, instead of being taken as a national asset, is simply being wasted, resulting in an ever-increasing number of disillusioned veterans. The government must work out a comprehensive scheme to absorb this trained and disciplined manpower into gainful employment. Some percentage must be taken into government jobs, the
CAPFS, the railways, the state police, the forest departments and so on. Some others can be given technical training so that they can run their own little establishments or join the industrial force. These schemes will be implemented only when an Act of Parliament to this end is
passed. CAPFS units presently deployed against the Maoists and those special state police units created to deal with the Maoists, no matter how fanciful a name one may give them, (Grey Hounds, Cobras, etc) have simply not been able to measure up to the job. Reinforcing these units, presently fighting the Maoists, with retiring soldiers will not do. The latter will soon acquire habits and work culture prevalent in these units. The deficiency with these units is of leadership, which has failed to train their men and are unwilling to lead and share the risks faced by their constables, etc. Thus, policemen of all hues, ill trained as they appear to be, are being routinely killed in large numbers while their officers do not figure even among the wounded! How come in every “fire-fight,” Maoists are always successful in carrying away their dead! There is the other issue of morale of this constabulary. At the last Independence Day function policemen were given around 900 gallantry awards. This is an unusually high number. According to Sun
Tzu, the great Chinese soldier and scholar, indiscriminate grant of gallantry awards to a force is a sure sign of low morale. There is complete failure to infiltrate these groups with intelligence
organisations’ own operators (moles). Consequently, the police is being perpetually surprised. Raising more CAPFS and state police units in any form will not do, as these have simply not been able to meet the Maoist challenge. Moreover, these units will be on the country’s pay rolls for the next 40 years and on the pension list for another 15 to 20 years: long after the Maoist problem would have disappeared. Therefore, raising of such units should be stopped and instead financial resources earmarked for these be deployed for the betterment of people in the Maoist-affected areas. The practice of outsourcing an anti-Maoist operation to SPOs and Salwa Judum groups must be ended. Such groups tend to become law unto themselves, settle personal scores, indulge in contract killings, kidnapping, etc, as it happened in Punjab during the eighties and the early nineties. Such vigilante groups are no solution for combating insurgencies. Based on the indications from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the military is reported to be working on raising two Corps with Rashtriya Rifles (RR) units. RR battalions have been formed by milking regular units. This has resulted in serious deficiencies in the regular units, particularly of officers. This shortage is impacting training, administration and operational fitness of these units. Raising more RR units will aggravate this problem. It amounts to dealing with one problem and creating another far more serious. Further, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir does not appear to be stable enough to pull out RR battalions from there. In case these are raised as an additional manpower, the problem would be the same as in the case of raising more police units. A better and cheaper option is to raise military units from the retiring soldiers, who are already trained. These units should be headed by Short Service Commission and other officers who retire early. It may be advisable to take some retired and yet young brigadiers and
maj-generals who have a vast experience of counter-insurgency operations. This should be taken as their second career, spanning five (for officers) to 10 years (soldiers), with pay and gratuity in addition to the emoluments earned earlier. For cohesiveness and integration of personnel into
well-organised units, it would be preferable to form them out of their original groupings —
Dogras, Jats, Kumaon, the Artillery Regiment, etc. Where possible, officers for these units too should be from the same groups. Brigade and divisional headquarters as well as corps headquarters can be formed mostly from the pool of retired officers and others. This force should be mandated to operate across state boundaries and work in consonance and in coordination with the
CAPFS, state police forces, intelligence agencies and state governments. Such an arrangement will prove an effective instrument to completely eliminate the Maoist problem in a span of five to 10 years, which otherwise has all the portents of spreading. While these new units and formations are given six months to
organise, integrate and train at the regimental centres, minimum essential temporary accommodation must be there in various locations where these units and formations are to be housed. Once such a proposal is accepted, the other details can be worked out. The eventual remedy for the Maoist problem lies in undertaking developmental work in the affected districts. Therefore, anti-Maoist operations and developmental work must go apace; these should be well coordinated and be complementary to each other. While we go hammer and tongs after the Maoists, every step must be taken to avoid collateral damage and mishandling of innocents and those caught up in the vortex of Maoists violence. Operations should be coordinated by all agencies. The Maoist problem needs urgent attention. Though the Prime Minister considers it as the most serious threat to internal security, there is much delay and procrastination in the proper tackling of this menace. Left inadequately addressed, it will spread, with grave consequences for the country’s stability and
progress.n The writer is a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff.
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The willow-patterned plate
My
father was a prisoner of war and my mother was a patient in a TB sanatorium.
I was farmed out to my step-grandmother who made no bones about the fact that she resented this arrangement and never lost an opportunity to display her hostility. There was a family get-together. The dinner service used was a very pretty one which had been pulled out especially for the occasion: there were red hand-painted poppies on a cream background. But the service was one plate short and my grandmother, as was to be expected, immediately decreed that I was to be the odd one out. I was given a blue and white plate. The other children sniggered at me and I was so hurt and angry that I decided not to eat anything. Then my grandmother’s sister, Beant Masiji as we called her, took charge. She made place for herself beside me and patiently explained how special my plate was. Everyone else had only flowers on their plates, I had a story and she told me the story. She told the story so well that a hush fell over the dining room and everyone listened in to her. She told us of the rich mandarin and his beautiful daughter. We heard how she fell in love with his young manager and seeing no future to their love affair, how the two fled to a pavilion on an island. The cruel mandarin laid siege to the pavilion, locked the two lovers in and set it ablaze. The gods took pity on the two and before they could be burnt alive, transformed them into two birds that flew away from the conflagration. I looked at my plate in awe and amazement — it was all there, the entire story. It was a truly magical moment and I knew there was something very special about the fact that I alone was eating out of that plate. The magic of the willow-patterned plate and of that moment remained strong through the years and more than half a century later I finally acquired a dinner set with the willow pattern. But when I ate from it, there was none of the magic of that long ago occasion. Then a few years ago while driving back from Amritsar I got a telephonic message to say that Beant Masiji had lost her husband. I stopped at her house in
Jalandhar. After the customary condolences had been offered and some time had elapsed, she called out to her daughter,
Rana, for a nail cutter and taking my hand gently in hers, proceeded to cut my nails. I
realised, at last, that the magic of that tremendous moment had had nothing to do with the willow patterned plate — it had been created by this very special person who had sensed the loneliness and sadness of that little boy’s life and had reached out to let him know that she cared for him and loved
him.
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Towards a Citizens charter
All
the three conditions put forward by the Anna Hazare team were unanimously accepted by Parliament on August 27, 2011. The conditions were (i) bringing the lower-rung bureaucracy within the purview of Lokpal; (ii) Lokayuktas at the State level; and (iii) introduction of a Citizen Charter for the time-bound delivery of services and disposal of public grievances. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, while articulating the “sense of the House”, resolved to refer the Citizen Charter to the Standing Committee on Law and Justice. If the Citizen Charter demand is implemented in the right spirit, corruption at all levels of governance would recede. The Citizen Charter programme in India has been pending for 13 years. The Lok Sabha resolution has revived hopes of having a Citizen Charter finally.
Why public access to services is problematic
Another related policy initiative of the Right to Service Act patterned on the philosophy of the Citizen Charter is likely to give a fillip to this dormant programme. A host of states have passed the Right to Service Act, guaranteeing the time-bound delivery of services and invoking penalties against officials in case of non-compliance. Under the Right to Service Ordinance 2011 Punjab has ordered the time-bound delivery of 67 services. The state has also set up the Punjab Service Commission for monitoring the implementation of the Ordinance. The Bihar Right to Service Act, 2011, has covered 50 services. In Madhya Pradesh the Public Service Guarantee Act 2010 has the mandate to ensure the time-bound delivery of 19 services. The Right to Service Act is under consideration in Kerala, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. The traditional model of governance with regard to the provision of goods and services has failed, as empirical evidence suggests, due to (i) a bloated, procedure-driven and citizen-distancing bureaucracy; (ii) widespread corruption; (iii) the mounting financial burden of administrative machinery on the state exchequer; and (iv) alienation of citizenry from administration. In the arena of governance a paradigm shift has taken place. In advanced countries, particularly the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members, governance has moved from being bureaucracy-centric to citizenry-centric. In the new model emphasis is on quality and time-bound delivery of services, transparency, accountability, time-bound redress of public grievances, consultation with citizens, value for money and finally enhancing citizen satisfaction. Of many administrative devices the Citizen Charter has emerged as the most powerful tool to achieve these parameters of public services. The Citizen Charter is a document, which articulates the commitment of government organisations towards citizens through clearly specified yardsticks. The philosophy behind the Citizen Charter is to promote citizen orientation of administration by placing the citizen at the centre of administration. The Citizen Charter programme was introduced for the first time in the U.K. in 1991. Now most of the European countries, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Canada, Australia, Belgium, France, Malaysia and India have adopted the Citizen Charter for making administration citizen-friendly.
Awareness about Citizen Charter lacking
Starting in 1997, there are now 131 Central organisations and 729 State/UT organisations which have adopted the Citizen Charter. The prominent public organisations which are committed to the Citizen Charter include Indian Railways, the Department of Telecom, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, the General Insurance Corporation, the Reserve Bank of India, all nationalised banks, passport offices, the Central Board of Excise and Customs, the Central Board of Direct Taxes and the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. At the Central level the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances coordinates the preparation, publicity and evaluation of the Citizen Charters under the direction of the Cabinet Secretariat. A perusal of the Citizen Charter reveals that the documents are a set of statements of good intentions but are not supported by institutional arrangements to achieve the objectives. Evidence suggests that even after 13 years, the programme has not succeeded in making adequate dent on the quality and delivery of public services. These have mainly remained in office records and have not reached citizens for whom the programme is conceived. A survey result shows that ‘aam admi’ is not aware of the Citizen Charter what to speak of reaping their benefits. Most of the Citizen Charters are prepared in haste to meet the deadlines set by governments. In many cases the Citizen Charters are loose compilations of ongoing departmental programmes, lack internal consistency and thus reflect inadequate commitment. For example, the Citizen Charters of the Department of Posts, the LIC, Indian Railways and PNB are vague, qualitative and non-committal as for as citizen entitlements to services are concerned. Public organisations are not coming forward in a big way to provide wide publicity about standards of services. Barring a general yearly advertisement in the print media, no other media channel, specially radio and T.V., are used for informing people about the Citizen Charter. Of the four organisations covered in the study conducted by this writer in Chandigarh, two organisations, namely, Indian Railways and the Department of Posts, have displayed the Citizen Charters. A study by the Public Affairs Centre (PAC), Bangalore, reveals that Citizen Charters of the Central government are more accessible electronically than those of states except Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Delhi. None of the Citizen Charters is legally enforceable and thus indicates that public organisations have nothing at stake in their failure to meet the obligations spelt out in the Citizen Charters. For example, the Citizen Charter of the LIC clearly states: “This charter does not become part of the policy conditions of our customers....” The delivery of better quality services is one of the central concerns of the Citizen Charters. Unfortunately, a large number of Citizen Charters have not touched upon this issue, leave aside the documentation of the measureable parameters of quality. Access to information is another major drawback of Citizen Charters. The Indian bureaucracy inherited the highly confidential syndrome from colonial forces and hence is reluctant to adopt a new paradigm of free and open access to information. Thanks to the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, things have started improving regarding access to information. The Citizen Charter and the RTI Act can be made complementary to each other.
Feeble efforts to redress public grievances
Ensuring a time-bound redress of public grievances is another significance facet of the Citizen Charter. Here performance is mixed. In case of PNB out of 140 respondents from Chandigarh only four respondents approached for the redress of their grievances and all found that the mechanism was effective. In contrast, in case of the LIC only one respondent used the mechanism and found it ineffective. Out of eight respondents, four found the grievance redress mechanism working satisfactorily in the Department of Posts. In case of the Railways, two out of three found the system effective. According to the PAC study, 54 per cent of the charters reviewed have fully outlined the grievances redress mechanism, on the other hand 32 per cent Citizen Charters had incomplete information about the grievances redress structure. An objective assessment of Citizen Charters should be made by an independent agency rather than by an in-house team. Unfortunately, in India no independent institutional mechanism has been worked out for assessing the performance. There was a provision of independent scrutiny of Indian Railways, the LIC, the Department of Telecommunication and Delhi hospitals. It was neither repeated nor extended to other organisations. On the whole, the Citizen Charter programme theoretically is on a very sound footing, aiming to improve the delivery and quality of public services and also ensuring time-bound solutions to complaints of citizens. In practice, however, the programme has not succeeded in achieving its stated objectives. Inadequate political and administrative patronage has cast its shadow on the outcomes of Citizen Charters. Lack of awareness among citizens has further truncated the outcome of the programme. The writer is the Dean, Faculty of Arts, Panjab University, Chandigarh |
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How to make a citizen charter effective
The
recent pressure from civil society to reinvent the Citizen Charter programme has shown a ray of hope. The Citizen Charter can be made an effective tool for good governance by learning from our own 13 years’ experience as well as from international experience, especially from the UK. 1. listening to citizens and involving them in all stages of the Citizen Charter is very crucial. The citizen’s voice and participation can be sought through various methods, including citizen surveys, citizen panels, people’s panels, customer feedback cells/cards, written consultations, participatory workshops, focus groups, walking in citizens’ shoes, etc. 2. For improving the utility of the Citizen Charter, it is all the more necessary to involve the staff, particularly the frontline staff/street-level bureaucracy, in the process of the Citizen Charters. 3. A good Citizen Charter should be simple, clear and easily accessible, and available in vernacular languages also. 4. Ideal charters are accompanied by well-developed systems and procedures, including staff training, complaints handling and feedback as well as reporting and re-examining standards of services in consultation with stakeholders. 5. A time-bound and simple procedure of redressing public grievance is another essential feature of a model Citizen Charter. 6. Global experience suggests that the Citizen Charter Programme should be regularly evaluated against announced standards by independent agencies. 7. Effective political backing and commitment of the bureaucracy is all the more necessary for a good Citizen Charter. |
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