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By Darryl D'Monte
A citizen in India tends to go to the public authorities 13 times to get a single complaint redressed! But increasingly, citizens are putting the State and its governance under the scanner. At a recent workshop 'Developing Mechanisms for Public Accountability in Urban Services', experts emphasised the ways in which citizens are being empowered to seek redress
Anyone who goes to a city utility knows exactly how frustrating it can be to seek information, let alone redress. Retaining information is a way of exercising power, and officials display utter and supreme callousness in denying citizens their right to obtain a range of services like water, electricity, solid waste disposal and transport.
However, throughout the country, several movements have successfully challenged the entrenched bureaucracy and served to remind these officials that they are the people’s servants, not the masters they pretend to be. These are slowly but surely coming to the notice of the public and serve to empower the ordinary person, helping him realise that he has several ways of seeking redress. Many of these were detailed at a recent workshop organised by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme on ‘Developing Mechanisms for Public Accountability in Urban Services’, held in New Delhi recently.
Participants heard from such veterans in the field as Dr Samuel Paul, who chairs the Public Affairs Centre in Bangalore . Paul cited how, through such measures as budget analysis, public hearings, public interest litigations (PILs) and the unique report card, citizens are able to keep a watchful eye on the progress, or otherwise, of civic authorities. “It is putting the state under a scanner,” Paul explained. Information serves to empower citizens and there is an increasing role for independent regulation. Through pressure from civil society the political process could be reformed, whereby elected representatives are made accountable.
By accessing information, activists can publicise standards of service -- for instance, how many hours a day water or electricity are provided in a particular locality, or which days of the week household garbage has to be collected. By highlighting remedies for the non-delivery of services, and making people aware of their rights by providing correct information, civic services can improve dramatically. This will increase transparency in the running of services.
Instituting an independent regulating agency, which enjoys autonomy and is immune to pressure from a utility, will also increase accountability. This will restrict the role of politicians, who tend to interfere in the running of civic services in order to safeguard their own constituencies. A case in point is the illegal tapping of electricity in many jhuggi-jhonpri colonies in Delhi , all done under the watchful gaze, if not active encouragement, of MLAs and councillors.
Paul explained how performance audits could make a world of a difference by helping utilities move from compliance to effective delivery, which is often not measured by physical parameters alone. It would help focus on delivering services to the poor. By providing feedback from consumers, utilities will be able to gauge deficiencies much more accurately. He also lauded electoral reform as a step in making urban services more socially equitable and efficient. Greater democracy and transparency within political parties would make them more accountable, but parties that do not have internal democracy -- witness the failure of virtually every party to hold party elections -- could hardly be expected to deliver.
Another veteran in the field is Dr Jai Prakash Narayan of Lok Satta, based in Hyderabad , a former IAS officer who is an indefatigable campaigner for cleaner elections. He believes that there are four missing links in urban services. Increasing the role of stakeholders is divorced from political decision-making. It isn’t a question so much of a utility providing more resources and technology, but of institutional reform. Secondly, a person’s vote should be linked to the public good, rather than to caste or other considerations. Thirdly, the payment of taxes ought to be linked with the provision of services, with a clear bias in favour of the poor. He also stressed that accountability devoid of authority -- the capacity to deliver -- was meaningless.
Jai Prakash Narayan noted how the stakeholders were clearly defined when it came to such services as water, garbage, street lighting and schools in cities. For instance, the delivery of health services could be reformed at the local level by charging a cess through property taxes or some other progressive mechanism. These resources would go into a dedicated fund, all within the public system.
Sunder Burra from the Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation SPARC (Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres), cited its alliance with the National Slum Dwellers Federation and the Mahila Milan, which mobilised the small savings of women in slums. He was critical of the policy of notifying certain slums as legal and others as not; no civic services are provided to the latter, the ‘illegal city’. SPARC has made commendable progress in getting communities to provide sanitation in Pune: experience had shown that the toilets the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) had built were unserviceable after one or two years. On the other hand, the Rs 150 payable by a slum family per month to private operators was too expensive.
SPARC entered into an agreement with the PMC, which provided the land and capital costs of constructing toilets, along with water and electricity. NGOs -- SPARC is one of eight -- provided the design and maintained the community toilets. Pune now has some 10,000 seat-toilets constructed in this manner. Each slum family pays between Rs 20 and Rs 25 a month, irrespective of the number of users or usage. As a result of such initiatives, Pune may meet the sanitation norm of providing a seat for every 50 slum-dwellers.
Ravikant Joshi, formerly with the Baroda Municipal Corporation, recounted how the bureaucracy tends to be super-powerful and overbearing. Officials, by merely sending a report to the state government, could overrule the municipality, even on the budget. In Gujarat , everyone remembers the stellar role played by dynamic municipal commissioner S N Rao in Surat , who, by his own example, was able to overcome the lethargy of the bureaucracy. Incidentally Surat wasn’t hit by plague, as is still erroneously believed, but as the World Health Organisation (WHO) conclusively concluded, by another virulent and often fatal viral disease. On the very first day of the cleanup following the epidemic, Rao demonstrated that he meant business by taking a broom and sweeping the streets himself. This set the tone for the rest of the campaign, which has ultimately led to a makeover of the city. Surat now has an efficient redressal system, with 22 kinds of complaints categorised in cards of three colours.
In Baroda it cost the municipality Rs 5, instead of Rs 3.50, to provide one kilolitre of water. In the country as a whole, state governments pick up 80% of the cities’ water bills. In one state, the poorer municipal bodies subsidised the richer ones. Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi has often pointed to the anomaly whereby in cities the poor as a class end up subsidising the excreta of the rich. Since the really poor are homeless -- as much as 55% in Mumbai and around 40% in Delhi -- and only a fraction of those housed (often in one-room tenements) are connected to the sewerage system, this means that those who have no sanitation are paying to dispose of waste generated by the better-off.
Joshi criticised a city like Baroda for not disclosing what it cost to provide water and what the price to the consumer was; this led to a lack of accountability all round. It was the responsibility of consumers to accept costs: indeed, the claim made on behalf of the poor in this regard doesn’t hold water (pardon the pun!), for the simple reason that they are paying more, volume for volume, than those who have access to a municipal tap in their homes. “Prices can improve accountability,” said Joshi.
Yazad Jal, the CEO of Praja, a Mumbai NGO, made an interesting presentation on re-establishing transparency in public governance through people’s participation. Praja has blazed a new trail by instituting a 24x7 telephone hotline -- 1916 -- for civic complaints. This was preceded by a citizen’s charter that called on the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) to provide information on various civic services, as well as the speed and quality with which the authorities provide these. The charter called for a clear procedure for the redressal of complaints and escalation to senior officers. Praja offered to train staff on customer service.
Praja carried out performance surveys, collating feedback from citizens. (In Delhi , 60% of complaints in the power sector relate to billing and consumer courts were proactive and prompt. In the water sector, redressal was prompt too, in relation to specific complaints. However, utilities were overburdened and there was no database of complaints.) Independent agencies like ORG-MARG also carried out performance and complaint audits of the BMC, as well as a survey of corporators. The results were published in a report card -- rather like those meted out to errant schoolboys!
Praja calls its hotline an online complaint management system and believes that it is the first of its kind anywhere in the world. This is the first time in the country that an NGO is partnering the administration in such an initiative. Complaints from every source -- letters, phone calls, public meetings, etc -- are put in one system, making it easier “to respond, maintain and evaluate”. There is direct data entry, with simple Web interface and easy-to-fill forms with instructions in Marathi. Consumers have 24-hour access to register their complaints and obtain an update on the progress of their queries. Officials have access to information on the website, depending on their designation, right down to the ward level. “The Praja server has never crashed or been hacked into,” say the organisers proudly. They take six-hour backups on their computers to ensure that the data is saved.
In December 2003, there was a complaint audit survey in all 24 wards in Mumbai, with a sample size of 2,456 citizens. It found that a citizen went 13 times on average to the BMC to get a complaint solved! Only a third of respondents expressed satisfaction with the services. While the BMC maintained that 88% of the complaints were redressed, the citizens said only 49% were, which clearly shows a huge gap between promise and performance. Interestingly, the complaint audit survey showed that the user profile was well divided, with a full third of complainants being slum-dwellers. Among Praja’s new projects is a Mumbai Governance Handbook, aimed at giving a comprehensive picture of governance on the ground. It will make “bold recommendations for improving the quality and effectiveness of governance”.
The workshop also heard about the effectiveness of PILs. There was the Taj Mahal case, filed a good 21 years ago by a lone legal activist in Delhi , M C Mehta, which was effective in getting the authorities in Agra to take protective measures. Bangalore citizen Almitra Patel filed a case regarding solid waste management, which set the precedent for the authorities in other cities, with her going right up to the Supreme Court. In Delhi , the Centre for Science and Environment campaigned for cleaner air, advocating the use of cleaner fuels in all public vehicles. This is how CNG has now replaced diesel in all public buses, taxis and autorickshaws, setting the standard for Mumbai as well. This gave rise to similar PILs in the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh , and has elicited interest in Iran , Nigeria and Indonesia .
Sunder Burra cited the downside of some PILs. In Mumbai, several prominent Marathi writers filed a petition to disenfranchise slum-dwellers who had occupied sites, post the 1995 cut-off date, on grounds that they were “not ordinarily resident” there (see http://www.infochangeindia.org/analysis45.jsp). However, the right to vote is not connected to occupation of land. He wondered whether the BMC, which had shown such alacrity in removing the slum-dwellers from the electoral rolls, would demonstrate the same zeal in re-registering them when they occupied alternative sites as “legal” citizens. In the country as a whole, the same rank discrimination was evident in denying as many as 70 million de-notified tribes the right to vote on grounds that they weren’t attached to any village.
Several questions remain regarding PILs. Participants wondered whether courts should engage in “judicial governance” or simply catalyse executive action. Often, the focus is on sharply defined technical solutions -- the use of CNG as a fuel for vehicles being a classic case -- rather than generic solutions for public transport. The PIL can also be a double-edged sword, as we witness in Mumbai today. In many cases, like decisions in favour of moving polluting industries out of Delhi , scant attention has been paid to the needs of workers. Most agreed that such litigation should be the last, rather than the first, resort.
InfoChange News & Features, February 2005 |
