RTI Act - A tool to Identify Citizen’s Discontentment

 

Article

RTI Act - A tool to Identify Citizen’s Discontentment

Right to Information Act can be used as a powerful tool to bring to lime light the citizens’ discontentment and find out ways and means to bring reforms and modify the processes and procedures prevalent in government offices to remove the ills by questioning the same and making them realize to re-engineer the same. Interaction with a lot of citizens in public dealing departments, who visit such departments to avail various services reveals the citizens’ are not having a good perception about functioning of major public dealing government organisations. It can be summed up as under: 

‘Leaders are busy in greetings,

Officers are busy in meetings,

(By & large) Staff is busy in cheating,

Public is sweating & sweating’.

 The citizens suffer a lot due to inherent administrative problems like: 

i     Lengthy and faulty procedures: The decision making process in the government organisations is quite lengthy. The officers rarely take decisions across the table. Files are moved even for pettiest requests from one desk to other and cases are processed and submitted to number of officers for taking a decision.

 

The processes are cumbersome and lengthy in many cases, which result in delays. Though the Manual of Office Procedure provides for reducing the number of channels in decision making but it is not being adhered to.

 

ii              Over centralization: It is often observed that in most cases the decisions are to be taken at quite senior level in a centralized manner, because of inadequate delegation of powers. It delays the matters un-necessarily. Adequate delegation of power needs to be done at functional level.

 

iii            Mismanagement of records: One often finds that most of the records are not kept in an orderly manner. It takes hours and days to trace out concerned records. Many important files/records are reported to be missing. No one is held accountable for such lapses while the citizens suffer for no fault of theirs’.

 

The official records occupy nearly 50-60 per cent of the floor area in most of the offices still ‘what is required is not available and what is available is not required’.

 

iv            Lot of paper work: The citizens are made to file a large number of documents for seeking services. Many documents are sought time and again in support of the claim, which are not even required, under law. The staff seeks such documents to save their skin rather than to be sure about authenticity. It not only puts the citizens to inconvenience but also leads to record management problems.

 

v             Un-necessary affidavits: are requisitioned, without any statutory requirement. These are not even scrutinized or gone into. Citizens are spending millions of rupees in preparing such affidavits while the prosecution rate for giving false information through such affidavits is zero. It reflects that either the affidavits given are hundred percent true or these are not being scrutinized at all.

 

Most of the affidavits are not even attested by the authorised Notary as per requirement. Such misadventures therefore calls to be dispensed with.

 

vi            vi        Long queues even for payment of dues: The citizens are often required to stand in long queue even for payment of taxes/fee, which is horrifying. More and more counters need to be opened.

 

vii           Inaccessibility of officers and staff: The citizens are unable to lodge their grievances with senior officers who are either busy in a meeting, or have gone elsewhere or are busy in other important work. Similarly the junior functionaries are found to be missing from their seats with immunity.

 

viii          Un-sympathetic attitude: The citizens often complain that those occupying the seat on the other side of the desk are unsympathetic. They rarely are sympathetic to women, old or infirm, and others who have traveled long distance only to be told to come next time. Next time again the same happens without positive results.

 

ix            Favoritism: This is a common ailment prevalent everywhere. Those with pulls and pressures or having dubious means often get preference over others.

 

x              Lack of accountability: The concept of accountability is found to be missing. The officers in their wisdom may spend millions without achieving the desired results but no one is held accountable under the system.

 

xi            Lack of openness & transparency: There has been lack of openness and transparency in government functioning and this is why the civil society has forced to government to bring this new legislation to bring an era of openness and accountability.

 

xii           Failure to have checks & balances: One often finds lack of control and monitoring devices to check the progress of work and projects. It results in escalation of prices and additional costs.  A large number of statutory and non-statutory bodies have been established without much positive results.

 

xiii          Non-redressed of grievances: The citizens often find that the complaints and grievances sent by them land in the hands to those against whom these were lodged. Nothing can be more perverse than this. The complainant becomes a scapegoat in the absence of independent grievance redress mechanism.

 

xiv          Non filling up vacant posts: Nearly 40 percent of the posts are lying vacant in most of the departments that adversely affects the education, health, transport sectors and other public welfare schemes. 

The citizens are made to run from pillar to post to get his due with little results. They, by and large, get cold-shoulder when they approach most of the public dealing departments. It forces them to resort to dubious means by getting the services of middlemen, or using pulls and pressure or political favours, which do not come without a price. 

Lack of political accountability: The political leaders, who kneel at voters door steps to get the votes make promises at the time of election but turn a blind eye and deaf ears after getting elected. It is not easy even to reach them to explain them the problems, what to talk of the solutions. 

Lack of discipline amongst babus: Similarly, we find that most of the officers and staff are not available in their seats. It is often said- 

           Late coming is their habit

Early going is their right

Extending lunch hours is a tradition

Performing their job is an inhibition.

Though they are paid for working for 40 hours per week to serve but they are not available for 20-30 hours in their seats. All this is happening at the cost of taxpayer’s. 

All such ills need to be questioned through the Right to Information Act to make them answerable and accountable to the citizens of India.