Grievance redressal mechanism as the barometer of effectiveness of public service delivery

We should move away from looking at grievance redressal mechanisms as merely a fire-fighting mechanism and actively use the information gathered to improve public service delivery. 

In Andhra Pradesh, every Monday in every district is a “grievance day”. In essence, the citizens could approach the higher echelons of administration namely the District Collector and all other district officers with their grievances. These grievances could be of many types. Citizens could approach the administration with a genuine grievance that they haven’t been receiving their entitlements namely pensions, rations etc. They could also approach the administration with legal entanglements or disputes. They could also approach for favors which do not technically fall under entitlements, but would require the grace of the district officials and it would be perfectly legitimate to help them by providing some support through existing schemes/programmes of the government. 

Interestingly, people also approach the officers where they deliberately know that they are not entitled to a service, but they know that someone else who is also not entitled got that service. For instance, I am not entitled to pension, but I know that my neighbor who is also not entitled is getting pension, so why shouldn’t I throw my hat in the ring?

Occasionally, to lighten up the day of Collector and other officers, you get some grievances (albeit genuine in nature) wherein they might ask you to get the mobile tower removed from their vicinity because radiation causes cancer! I don’t know how to categorize such a grievance! Frankly, the officer attending such a grievance also has to use her own tact to assuage the applicant. 

Usually the people write their grievances on a piece of white paper or on a pre-formatted application depending on the local procedures adopted. It is highly likely that most of these people are illiterate and therefore use the help of brokers who station themselves outside the offices of the collectorate to offer their services for a fee. It is commonly found that when they offer their services they do not usually offer a quality service for the fee they collect from the people. With an intention to maximize their revenues, they fill up the wrong application for their grievance because they want to economize on time taken in filling up forms and maximize their customers’ footfalls. It is also possible that they do not have the appropriate forms and therefore they fill the grievance on the wrong forms. The applicant will have to face the consequent hassles while presenting their grievance to the Collector. 

Once the grievance comes to the Collector, she forwards it to the relevant department. If you happen to be new to public administration and are reading this blog, you might be wondering why should the District Collector, the chief executive of the district merely act as postman? The answer lies in our hierarchical culture of administration. It is believed that (perhaps rightly so) if a piece of paper comes from the higher officers or the Collector in this case, it will be acted upon. This is unlike the most commonsensical process, where a citizen with a grievance approaches the relevant officer far down the hierarchy of the government and his grievance is looked into and resolved at that level itself. So because of lack of adequate accountability, the citizen has to travel up to the district headquarters and present to the district officers who in turn would merely send it back to the relevant officer. If only our administration was a bit more citizen-friendly our grievance redressal mechanism would have been adequately decentralized. Technically, the same grievance redressal mechanism exists at the block levels, but the citizens seem to prefer approaching the district administration. 

Now the grievance is sent to the relevant officer. What is missing in the whole process is tracking of applications. How can an applicant assure herself that her application will be resolved in due course of time without a tracking mechanism? How can the superior officers assure themselves that the applications they forwarded to their subordinate officers will be resolved? Therefore, this is a crucial juncture where the system goes for a toss. So we don’t know what happens to the grievances after they are presented. Yet, the citizens come with enormous hope every Monday to present their grievances. If we are not even sure that the grievances are getting redressed appropriately, expecting the following steps might just be wishful thinking. 

Ideally, we should aspire for the day when there would be no grievance. In essence, the administration is able to resolve all the hassles that exist for the citizens. Although this is just a utopian goal, one can practically set a goal to minimize the grievances they get over time. The process should start by codifying the grievances and sorting them out by regions and departments/offices. While ensuring that every department in every region resolves the grievances in a time-bound manner is a priority, one should also start investigating the reasons for emergence of such grievances. This in turn will help identify best practices in public administration in certain regions/departments, ignorance of citizens with regard to government services, adoption of corrupt practices, etc. Such investigations will help generate innovative solutions generated by the best performers in administration and promote mutual learning. It will also stir up yardstick incentives for offices who would like to showcase themselves amongst their peers. 

In this fashion, the grievance redressal mechanism could be effectively used as a barometer for public service delivery and perhaps result in a citizen-friendly government in the long run, improving the faith of citizens in government.

P.S. Incorporating some of the above ideas, I re-drafted the Grievance Redressal Bill currently in Parliament and sent it to Parliamentary Standing Committee on behalf of my previous employer. If interested, you can download it from this link: Rajendra_Redrafted_Grievance_Redressal_Bill.