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20 Mar 2025
GS Paper 2
Polity & Governance
Day 10: ‘Citizen Charter is the necessity of Good Governance’. Elucidate. (Answer in 125 words)
Approach
- Define citizen’s charter.
- Explain the role of citizen charter in good governance.
- Conclude positively along with the issues faced in its implementation.
Introduction
A Citizens’ Charter represents the commitment of the Organization towards standard, quality and timely service delivery, grievance redressal mechanism, transparency and accountability. It empowers the citizens to demand the committed standard of services. However, it is not legally enforceable, hence, non-justiciable.
The objective of the citizens’ charter is to bridge the gap between citizens and administration and to tune the administrative workforce in line with the needs of the citizens.
Body
Role in good governance:
- Transparency: Citizen Charters promote transparency by clearly stating the services offered by government departments, the procedures involved, and the time frames for service delivery. This empowers citizens by making them aware of their rights and entitlements.
- Accountability: It provides a mechanism for citizens to hold public servants accountable for any lapses or delays in service delivery.
- Improved Service Delivery: It establishes benchmarks and timelines for service delivery, ensuring that services are provided in a timely manner.
- Public Participation: Citizen Charters encourage public participation by seeking feedback and suggestions from citizens. This creates a sense of ownership among the public and enables them to contribute to the improvement of government services.
- Redressal Mechanisms: Citizen Charters often include provisions for grievance redressal mechanisms. This provides an avenue for citizens to seek remedies and escalate complaints if they are dissatisfied with the services provided.
- Trust and Credibility: The implementation of Citizen Charters helps in building trust and credibility between the government and its citizens. When governments fulfill their commitments outlined in the Citizen Charters, it leads to increased trust in public institutions.
Conclusion
Good governance thrives on transparency, accountability, and responsiveness, ensuring efficient public service delivery. In this pursuit, the Citizens’ Charter initiative serves as a vital tool to bridge the gap between citizens and service providers, addressing the challenges people face while accessing public services.
Although Citizens charters have some issues like it is devoid of participative mechanisms, have poor design and content and the peoples in general lacks information about it, still the government can implement the Sevottam Model, along with the other recommendations like wider consultation process while formulating the citizens’ charter, grievances redressal mechanism, periodic evaluation of citizens charter will be of great help to make it more efficient.
