The Hindu Business Line : Disservice delivery

REDUCED to its bare essentials, good governance, whether in the context of governments, or public and private sectors, is nothing but making services in an adequate measure, at reasonable cost and in a timely manner available to those entitled to, or in need of, them. Judged by this yardstick, almost no service provider is seen to make the grade by the general mass of citizens. There are of course citizens' charters for government departments and seductive advertisements issued by corporates, but the actual performance has never come up to the expectations of the average householder (who is a customer, consumer, citizen, voter and taxpayer all rolled into one). This is patent to anyone who has attended the various adalats held by government service providers.

Things are getting out of hand on this front as evidenced by the people being compelled by the apathy and lethargy of officialdom in respect of supply of drinking water, working of hospitals and health centres, demand for electric power and the like to take the law into their hands in order to extract what is their legitimate due.

The prevalent discontent was also reflected at a seminar on service delivery, organised on August 29 by the University of Madras, Institute of Management Consultants of India and the Public Expenditure Round Table, and attended by serving and retired mandarins of the Central and State Governments.

A respected representative of a couple of reputed voluntary agencies said bluntly that the bigwigs making promises about a host of things were sweetness personified when they came to address such seminars but once they got back to their official chairs, threw to winds all norms of decent and considerate behaviour. She complained of their personal staff shooing citizens off when they wanted to air their suggestions or grievances in person or over phone, and not showing the basic courtesy of noting down the number and returning the call. Getting replies to letters is, of course, a far cry.

The problem with such seminars is that they devote a lot of time to long-winded power-point elaborations of stale shibboleths, whereas the pressing need is to ensure that the top echelons are sympathetic and responsive to those at the receiving end of their omissions and commissions.

B. S. Raghavan

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