Ensuring accountability

During this monsoon season, several precious lives were lost due to drowning and electrocution in rain water and countless people were put to difficulties due to water-logging in several towns and cities across the country including in the national capital of Delhi. The incidents occurred due to poor maintenance and/ or faulty designing of the storm water channels in urban areas and thus could have been easily averted.

These are not isolated cases; administrative lapses and the resultant suffering of the people is a routine matter in India. Such lapses are reported and even criticised by the media; these also become subject of public discussion, condemnation and even outbursts on certain occasions. The courts also make adverse comments and sometimes even lambast at the administrative functioning. Yet the things do not change for better.

How does the administration respond?

What is more pathetic is the way the administration responds even in the face of such incidents. The fact that two administrative agencies were fighting in the Delhi High Court at the time of hearing of one such case involving drowning of a mother-child duo in Delhi on the issue of jurisdiction of the place where they drowned and the place where their bodies were recovered may be just one more instance indicating the extent of administrative callosity.

Initially, there is considerable uproar whenever some disaster occurs allegedly due to an administrative negligence. Every time such an incident occurs, there is media reporting, public outcry and even protests on streets/ roads by the agitated public. To pacify the charged tempers, administration wakes up and exhibits to have come in action mode. Statements like ‘those responsible will not be spared’ and advices to the protesters to 'have faith in law' or 'let the law take its own course' are some of the usual practices. Assurances of all support to the victims of the calamity and tall promises in their favour are made.

Gradually, however, as the hysteria subsides, the administration comes to the ‘business as usual’ mode. The files related to the incident are buried under the debris of several other such tragic episodes; barely anything changes in the ways the administration acts and responds. The victims, who were promised all support, are also usually left alone to grapple with the hard realities of their life post-disaster. They even have to struggle hard to realise whatever was promised to them. In the name of action taken, usually officials at the lower levels are held accountable and punished, if at all, and the well-acknowledged principle of ‘higher the post higher the responsibility’ is given a decent burial. In the absence of exemplary punitive action, the administration appears to have come to believe, and quite genuinely so under the current circumstances, that 'whatever do they do', they are not going to be punished and hence they act the way they do.

This kind of administrative conduct is not in sync with a democracy and needs to be changed. Unless there are perceptible changes in the administrative behaviour, it appears difficult to attain the goal of Vikshit Bharat by 2047.

Extant mechanisms of administrative accountability

In a democracy, administration is indirectly accountable to the citizens through the latter’s elected representatives. Administration is accountable to the political executive, which is accountable to the legislature, which, in turn, is accountable to the electorate. However, this theoretical arrangement is currently not delivering in India; the political executive and the legislature, for various reasons, seldom hold the administration accountable resulting into how administration acts and responds.

In a democracy, administration is also accountable to the judiciary. Even though there have been numerous instances of judicial exhortation, and even rebuff and castigation, these do not appear to have the desired effect since, had it been so, such incidents would have registered a perceptible decline, which is nowhere in sight. One of the probable reasons therefore may be the delays in delivery of judicial pronouncements. Cases in the courts linger-on year after year and by the time the case reaches its logical conclusion, the witnesses usually become disinterested, if don’t turn hostile, and even the victims, having reconciled to their fate, lose interest in the case, which, accordingly, weakens and erring officials usually get spared. All this appears to prompt the officials to let not take the courts seriously.

Also, adverse comments by the courts especially at the time of initial hearings of such cases are usually ‘general’ rather than ‘personal’ and, therefore, in consonance with the good old dictum ‘everybody’s responsibility is nobody’s responsibility’, even such unpalatable observations also prove to be less-than effective.

The way forward

In view of the fact that conventional mechanisms of administrative control are not delivering, some innovative approach needs to be adopted to let the administration deliver. One such mechanism may be that the citizens are given the right to assess the public services availed by them and their assessment may be added to the list of indicators for performance appraisal of the administrative officials responsible to deliver those public services.

To facilitate the beneficiaries of a public service to make assessment, a web portal may be devised. Public services on the portal may be classified state-wise and district-wise for easy accessibility. Then the names and designations of all the administrative functionaries responsible for effective delivery and maintenance of every public service in a district may be posted on the portal. The beneficiaries of public services in a district may then be given the option to rate the delivery of services offered to them.

The ratings awarded by the beneficiaries for a public service may then be seeded to the performance appraisal of the officials responsible for delivering the said public service. To ensure avoidance of frivolous ratings, the beneficiaries, in the first instance, may be required to register on the portal using their Aadhaar number before being able to make their ratings.

Also, in order to ensure avoidance of any potential vindictiveness of the citizens at the hands of administrative officials rated by the former, the system should be so devised that the identity of the citizens making the ratings does not get revealed lest the administrative officials should become vindictive towards those who made poor ratings.

Epilogue

Since the performance appraisal will get broad-based and linked to their efficiency, the administrative officials are likely to get motivated to deliver and act more responsibly. Besides, the mechanism also offers at least two other perceptible benefits. It will empower the citizens and thereby reinforce democracy in India. It is also likely to address the issue of administrative elitism.

The writer is Dean (Research & Academics), Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, New Delhi. Views expressed are personal