Mains Practice Questions

Approach

• Introduce by defining the term Citizen’s Charter
• Discuss how it empowers people and ensures accountability of the people in power
• Enumerate some of the challenges in realising the spirit of Citizen’s Charter
• Conclude by giving some suggestions to address these challenges

Introduction

Citizen’s Charter is a document which represents a systematic effort to focus on the commitment of the organisation towards its citizens in respect of standard of services, information, choice and consultation, nondiscrimination and accessibility, grievance redressal, courtesy and value for money. This also includes expectations of the organisation from the citizen for fulfilling the commitment of the organisation.

The concept was first articulated and implemented in the United Kingdom by the conservative government of John Major in 1991 as a national programme. The basic objective of the Citizen’s Charter is to empower the citizens in relation to public service delivery.

Body

Citizen’s Charter ensures that the power of people remains stronger than the people in power:

• It makes a public institution transparent and accountable. It enhances people's participation in governance process and the credibility of the government.
• The very existence of the Citizen’s Charter acts as a deterrent to the acts of maladministration. It makes government more responsive and acts as an effective tool to engage the civil society and to curb corruption.
• The involvement of the consumer organizations, citizens groups and other stockholders in the formulation of the Citizens’ Charters is emphasized to ensure that they meet the needs of the users and enhance standards of service delivery.
• Citizen’s Charter helps in revamping people’s faith and confidence in the administration and the political executives by providing effective channels for redressal of citizen’s grievances. Such faith and fair amount of satisfaction with the administration are of utmost importance for the success of Indian democracy.

Challenges in realising the spirit of Citizen’s Charter:

• Absence of legal backing to charters: The Citizen’s Charter is not legally enforceable and, therefore, is non-justiciable in a court of law.
• Devoid of participative mechanisms: In majority of the cases, the end-users, civil societies, NGOs etc are not consulted while formulating the charter.
• Poor design and content: Lack of meaningful and succinct Citizen’s Charter, absence of critical information that end-users need to hold agencies accountable.
• Lack of public awareness: Only a few end-users are aware of the existence of the Citizen’s Charter since effective efforts of communicating and educating the public about the standards of delivery promise have not been undertaken.
• Charters are rarely updated: The review and updation process of the Citizen’s Charter are rarely done, making it a one-time exercise.

Conclusion

• Citizen’s Charter should be formulated based on decentralised method with each independent unit preparing its own citizen charter under the overall umbrella of the organization’s charter.
• There should be extensive consultations within the organization followed by a meaningful dialogue with civil society while formulating the citizen charter.
• Periodic evaluation of Citizen’s Charters, effective grievance redressal and end-users feedback mechanisms should be in place.
• Along with these, drawing from best practice models such as the Sevottam Model (a Service Delivery Excellence Model) can help Citizen’s Charter becoming more effective and citizen centric.