Citizen Charter in India

The Department of Administrative Reform and Public Grievances (DARPG) is in charge of coordinating, drafting, and implementing citizen charters. Various government agencies and organisations are given guidelines on how to build citizen charters, allowing them to create charters for their own organisations.

The charter should include the following items:

• Vision and mission statement of the organisation
• Description of the businesses which are done by the organisation.
• Client Details.
• Specifics on the services offered to each client group.
• Information on grievance remedies and how to get it.
• Obligation from the user. 

Critical issues in implementation of Citizen Charter:

In 2008, the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances carried out a study evaluating the Citizen’s Charters. It found out that although it has been a success at some places, that’s very rare as, on the whole, it has been a failure in India.

It found the following issues in its implementation:

1) Non-existent at field agencies:

• Citizen’s charters are there mainly at the headquarters level. There rarely exists any citizen charter at the field agencies which have the most interaction with the people.

2) Issues in the ‘Procedure of designing’ citizen charter:

• Top-Down approach:

⇒ Generally, only the top-level executives are involved in formulating the charter.

⇒ Citizens who are provided with the services (outsiders) and functionaries who deal with the public (insiders) are not consulted in formulating citizens’ charter.

• One size fits all approach:

⇒ There is a tendency to have a uniform Charter for all field officers under the department.

⇒ This is even though the field units across the country/state differ on human resource, workload (i.e. no. of cases, the complexity involved) etc.

3) Issues in the content (vague, incomplete, and outdated):

• Vague: Many Citizen Charters are written in a very ambiguous language. Instead of writing specific services, organisations write about the aims, goals of an organisation.

• Incomplete:

⇒ List of services: All the services to which a citizen is entitled are not written in the charter.

⇒ Standard of services: The services included in the charter are not included for them the Standard & norms. I.e. there is no mention of “time–frame,” i.e. in how much time will the citizen be given the service.

⇒ Grievances Redressal mechanism: There is no mention of the Grievance Redressal Mechanism in many citizen charters if the service is not provided.

•  Outdated: There is no periodic revision of charters to include the new services or changed objective etc.

4) Issues in implementation:

Even if we have a charter which is designed very well, then also it has not made much difference due to various reasons such as:

• Poor Implementation mechanism: There is  no change in the ground level mechanism and mind set of functionaries to enforce the charter’s provisions.
• Poor awareness: Leave citizens, even the public servants themselves, are not aware of the charter’s existence. Thus how can they even implement it? The key reason for poor awareness is the absence of ‘display boards’.

Thus we should remember that merely announcing the charter won’t do anything.

Recommendations:

Following are some of the principles that can make Citizen’s Charters effective:

• One size fits all approach can be done away with.
• Every independent unit or sub-office of an umbrella organisation should have its own version of Citizens’ Charter.
• A comprehensive consultation process that incorporates Civil Society.
• Firm commitments to be made.
• Changing an organisation’s internal processes and structure to align with the citizen’s charter’s obligations.
• In case of default, a Redressal mechanism should be available.
• Mechanism for the periodic external and internal evaluation of Citizens’ Charters.
• Benchmark using end-user feedback.
• Officers should be held accountable for the end results.