Abstract
Introduction
The word ‘grievance’ can be defined as a complaint or resentment against an unjust or unfair act and system. Public grievance redressal (PGR) mechanism is part and parcel of the machinery of any administration. No administration can claim to be accountable, responsive and user-friendly unless it establishes an efficient and effective grievance redressal mechanism. A citizen-friendly government should give high priority to redressal of public grievances. The government, being a biggest service provider, is bound to meet people’s needs and aspirations. Effective and timely redressal of public grievances is the hallmark of responsive and responsible governance in a democracy. This has become more important after the enactment of Right to Information Act. In fact, the grievance redress mechanism of an organisation is the gauge to measure its efficiency and effectiveness as it provides important feedback on the working of the administration.
The grievances of citizens against government machinery need to be heard and redressed, otherwise citizens will tend to withdraw their loyalty towards it. Grievance redress mechanism is a system set up by organisations to receive, record, investigate, redress, analyse, prevent and/or take any other appropriate action in respect of grievances lodged against them. Improving governance is a part of developmental process. Arguably, corruption can be curbed by systematic changes in governance by introducing participation, transparency, accountability and probity in administration. Accordingly, several initiatives have been taken by the Government of India to provide clean administration to the people.
The basic principle of a grievance redressal system is that if the promised level of service delivery is not achieved or if a right of a citizen is not honoured then the citizen should be able to take recourse to a mechanism to have the grievance redressed. This mechanism should be well publicised, easy to use and prompt, and, above all, citizens must have faith that they will get justice from it. The present note reinforces that a good fit between the organisation and stakeholders is essential for efficient and effective service delivery (
Sevottam for Quality Public Services Delivery
In order to improve public service delivery, a service excellence model called ‘Sevottam’ was initiated in 2005 to give a new thrust to the implementation of Citizens’ Charter, which has been successfully piloted, in a few chosen organisations of the Government of India and states and is being up-scaled considerably. Centralised Public Grievance Redressal and Monitoring System was launched in 2007, which is a web-based portal for lodging complaints by the public. It is now operational in all the ministries and departments of the Government of India and their subordinate organisations.
Any system of public grievance redressal can be sustained only if it becomes instrumental in making the organisation citizen centric and capable of instituting responsive governance. The organisation can save itself from public resentment and improve its public image as well as the capacity to deliver by facilitating corrective and preventive action in respect of the various tasks undertaken by it. To produce these outcomes, the public grievance redressal system must have three essential attributes: (a) effectiveness, (b) efficiency and (c) credibility (
Effectiveness of the PGR System
The effectiveness of the PGR system implies its ability to provide redress. It is important to look at the extent of redress which emanated or failed to result from its functioning. Most organisations, however, tend to present their effectiveness in terms of the number of grievances received, redressed and pending. There is rarely an attempt to assess the level of citizen satisfaction with the redress process and its outcomes. It is, therefore, not possible to gauge the extent of effectiveness of the PGR system in terms of statistics. Even so, one may take note of the fact that only a small proportion of the grievances received are actually redressed in most organisations with large public interface. Many of the grievances received are rejected on grounds such as jurisdictional limitations, legal constraints, lack of evidence and so on. Others, which are redressed from the viewpoint of the organisation, are not considered redressed by the aggrieved, and often the latter tends to move to other channels available to them such as the courts or tribunals. The PG Cell of the organisation, in many cases, is unable to offer redress because the matter involves other organisations and cannot be decided upon by the Cell. From the viewpoint of the aggrieved, this implies ineffectiveness of the mechanism to provide redress. Ineffectiveness also results from the inability to ensure redress from the relevant levels within the organisation. The history of poor effectiveness has been a significant reason for the aggrieved often not approaching the available mechanism of redress. The citizens feedback mechanism suggests that, in case of most organisations, effective redress was perceived to be impossible through the normal course of events on account of apathy of officers (Arora, 2008).
Efficiency of the PGR System
Efficiency of the PGR system essentially implies its capability to deliver timely redress in a cost-effective manner. Redress that is delivered late is often a wasted exercise. It neither serves the purpose of effective policy implementation nor does it help retrieve the image of the organisation lost on account of grievances. In most organisations, it emerged that the process of redress was quite tiresome and prolonged. Several cases remained pending for long. In some cases, the grievance process itself became a source of grievance because of the complex or unclear procedures that added to delayed redress. Inefficiency of the system results from the inability of the organisations to reduce its own delivery cost and ensure that the service users/citizens actually benefit from the processes without having to incur high costs in terms of money, time and energy. From the user perspective, efficiency deficit has been a characteristic of most organisations, which get a large number of grievances and find it difficult to handle these due to either lack of staff or poor training or lack of coordination within the organisation. Inefficient PGR system is also due to poor management of available resources and inadequate capacity building initiatives (Arora, 2008).
Credibility of the PGR System
Credibility of the PGR system pertains to winning the trust of the people who are recipients of services. A cursory glance at the number of grievances received itself reveals that, in many organisations, lack of public confidence has been quite pronounced. Very few grievances were received although widespread discontent regarding the working of the organisation and policy or programme delivery could be seen from the media reports. The grievance redress mechanism provided in government organisations failed to invite the trust of people in its ability to redress their grievances. People usually do not approach the PG Cell even when they know about it. Unless the PGR system is perceived as a fair, accessible, effective and efficient mechanism for seeking redress, it is unlikely to be used by those who need it. A large number of organisations are characterised by the inability to cultivate trust based either on its past performance or its future promise.
Organisational efforts in the direction of projection of the PGR system as a credible mechanism for redress have remained limited to a few advertisements, that too, depicting only the existence of a mechanism rather than the performance of the system. The past performance has been either poor or remains poorly projected and fails to ensure the credibility of the PGR system. The inability of most organisations to streamline grievance redress machinery and processes, ensuring the issuance of prompt acknowledgements, maintenance of regular communication until final disposal, delivery of timely and satisfactory redress through involvement of the aggrieved in the process, communication of reasons for rejection and acknowledgement in case of acceptance necessitated a constructive change for a sound grievance redress system (Arora, 2008).
Sustainability of the PGR System
The sustainability of the PGR system depends on its ability to become a worthwhile mechanism for both citizens and the organisation. The former gains from it in terms of improved service delivery and the latter in terms of enhanced public trust and support. There can be substantial reduction in public resentment when an organisation gets the opportunity to take timely corrective action on its policies and decisions through the public grievance system. A review of the prevailing state of the PGR system suggests that any sustainable improvement requires a four-fold strategy, covering questions of allocation of authority and resources, accessibility of the mechanism, institution of accountability and prevention strategy.
It is in this context, the Sevottam model was developed with the overarching objective of improving the quality of public service delivery in the country. The model has three components:
Effective charter implementation: This relates to opening up a channel for receiving citizens’ inputs which help organisations determine service delivery requirements. Citizens’ Charters publicly declare the information on citizens’ entitlements, making citizens better informed and hence empowering them to demand better services. Public grievance redressal: A good grievance redress system operating in a manner that leaves the citizen more satisfied with how the organisation responds to complaints/grievances, irrespective of the final decision, is imperative. Excellence in service delivery: This postulates that an organisation can have an excellent performance in service delivery only if it is managing the key ingredients for good service delivery well and building its own capacity to continuously improve delivery.
Any assessment model needs to be updated periodically to keep itself abreast with emerging developments. Change management as well as research and development have, therefore been identified as important focus areas for running this model in addition to administration of the assessment process and its culmination in certification or awards (Arora, 2008).
Jammu and Kashmir Public Services Guarantee Act, 2011
The Services Guarantee Acts brought out by the states acknowledge the citizen entitlements and create internal checks and balances through effective grievance redressal mechanism. They mark a significant departure from the earlier mode of governance that had little or no institutionalised process of making governance responsive or citizen-friendly. Many states have also enacted right to public services delivery legislation.
In this context, it was felt that rights-based approach be followed by making the ‘Citizens Charter’ statutory and endowing public with the right to get delivery of services within stipulated timelines. The Jammu and Kashmir Public Services Guarantee Act, 2011 had come into effect from 10 August 2011. The Act provides for the delivery of public services by the designated officers to the eligible persons of the state within the specified time limit. The state government notified the services to be delivered to the eligible persons under the Act, time limit for providing the notified services, particulars of the designated officers, first appellate authorities and second appellate authorities. All the administrative secretaries concerned are to supervise the implementation of the Act in letter and spirit and to make suitable arrangements for monitoring the implementation of the various provisions of the Act. Programmes are to be undertaken by the individual departments for capacity building and to maintain the records consistent with the relevant provisions of the Act and rules.
Followings are the rights under the Act:
Access to the public service within stipulated time in a transparent manner, Enforce accountability of the designated officers for any lapse/deficiency in service, Avail compensation for non-providing or deficiency in service.
Grievances redress mechanism under the Act is as follows:
The first and second appellate authorities are designated/notified in respect of each public service. The first and second appellate authorities enjoy the powers of a civil court while trying a suit under the code of civil procedure in respect of
Requiring the production and inspection of documents and Issuing summons for hearing to the designated officer and to the appellant. First appeal can be filed within 30 days of rejection or expiry of specified time limit for the particular service. First appeal to be disposed of within 45 days of receipt. The first appellate authority to hear both appellant and the designated officer. Second appeal can be filed by aggrieved party within 60 days of disposal of the first appeal. Second appeal to be disposed of within 45 days of receipt (
Online Complaint Monitoring Portal in Jammu and Kashmir (jkgrievances.nic.in )
The ever-changing environment and rising aspirations of the citizens seek greater accountability, improved efficiency and effectiveness of the government. The Jammu and Kashmir government administration by harnessing the e-governance has come up with an online complaint monitoring portal (Awaz-E-Awam) with innovative solutions for redressing the grievances to improve the system.
This system provides facility to lodge complaint/grievance online of any kind, including relief, law and order, land compensation, roads connectivity, electricity problem, education facilities, agriculture, health facility, natural calamities and so on. The status of applicant can be public, political party or any government servant. In this portal system, an applicant can give the details of grievance and the complaint is booked over web/fax//phone/mobile/video/cd-clip. The applicant can also upload an electronic copy of evidence if available. Each complaint is assigned unique complaint number using which the applicant can monitor his/her complaint/grievance status. Moreover, to make the process of monitoring more effective, technological intervention has also been made in a big way. The state government has also felt it imperative for the departments to designate nodal officers, who would be responsible for the disposal of the grievances received from the J&K Government Grievance Cell (
J&K Government Grievance Cell
The J&K Government Grievance Cell (
Public Grievance Redressal System: Challenges
The 21st-century administrative challenges call for a redefinition of the role of government functions and its focus to serve the public effectively and ensure efficient, cost-effective, clean and responsive administration. It is necessary to converge the efforts of various public agencies for the delivery of basic services in rural and urban areas.
A major challenge to the institutionalisation of the public grievances redressal in organisations is to ensure back-end support. Organisations need to institute back-end support in their subordinate offices to enable smooth reception of grievances. In most organisations, due to lack of such support, grievances get stuck, creating a glut like situation, which inhibits smooth running of the process. This is a serious matter of concern. This implies that each organisation is required to undertake a process re-engineering and switch over from a manual system of registering grievances to a web-based system of registration and tracking of grievances. To make the process of filing grievances more user-friendly for people who do not have access to the electronic medium, it should also be possible to send in grievances pertaining to different ministries and departments through a single window. A decentralised single window system is crucial to improve access to redress mechanism.
Accessibility of the PGR system also depends on its capacity to reach the people who feel inhibited by the formal structures of bureaucracy, especially the underprivileged sections of society. In spite of the emphasis laid by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on evolving a grievance redress mechanism that would serve the non-literates and despite all ministries and departments being apprised of this, little effort has evidently been made in this direction. Mechanisms to provide direct public interface, such as Jan Sunvais or Lok Adalats, if instituted, can go a long way towards redressal and prevention of public grievances with regard to specific policies, programmes and procedures. These would also put the organisations under public view and thereby increase their credibility. Hence, these need to be seriously considered in order to improve both vitality and trust in the PGR system.
A major factor inhibiting the service users, citizens from accessing the PGR system is the lack of public trust in the effectiveness of the PGR mechanism itself. It is important that the organisations are proactive in improving the visibility and credibility of these mechanisms. Information about the PGR system as well as its performance should be displayed widely at public places, such as bus stops, railway stations, post offices and so on, besides being communicated through the print and electronic media. Publishing the outcome of the grievances registered can improve the credibility of the system. Engaging a professional agency for the purpose may help in a limited way, but organisational effectiveness and its projection can go a long way to alter public perception and the public trust deficit in the PGR system.
Conclusion
Steps such as rightsizing of public services, value for money on public expenditure, restoring effective audit, monitoring, evaluation and good financial management systems and so on, are needed to introduce greater transparency and openness in the functioning of government and public bodies. This would include transparent and well-publicised procedures for approvals by the general public and entrepreneurs under various statutes and regulations for the allotment of land and immovable property, systems of assessment, levy and collection of various taxes and charges, the award of work tenders for construction and provision of services, procurement of goods and services and contracting of services and infrastructure projects by suitable amendment of relevant laws. The citizens in urban and rural areas should be provided with widespread and easy access––through the media, posters and various forms of neighbourhood level communications––to all information relating to government operations, details of various government and local schemes, information on award of tenders and procurement, procedures for identification of beneficiaries under various government schemes.
Implementing an effective grievance redress system for assessing the quality of service delivery by various government departments is an important step towards citizen-centric governance. The real benefits will also depend on the commitment from the highest political and administrative levels to effective PGR system in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
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