There is something inherently valid, invaluable and democratic about the idea that if a promised government service — whether it is to do with passport or ration card delivery, or the timely reaching of education or health services undertaken by the government — is not made available within the stipulated time, a citizen is entitled to redress. Delivery systems kick in after legislation has been enacted to give them effect. Therefore, the absence of service delivery is to do with government inefficiency, or worse of expectation of bribes not being met. In both cases, the citizen suffers injustice. Therefore, redress necessarily embraces the idea of punishment, typically at the lower rungs of the bureaucracy charged with fulfilling the government’s mandate to the people.
It was thus a revolutionary step for India when Madhya Pradesh’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, shortly followed by the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar, brought in state-level provisions to deal with problems of non-delivery which had become endemic over 60 years of sovereign rule. Their example was taken up by the state governments of Delhi and Punjab. It is a matter of signal importance that the Centre too now proposes to introduce legislation along similar lines in the Winter Session of Parliament. Some criticism of the Centre’s draft bill has been made by transparency organisations. This is essentially to do with having an impartial structure built into the mechanism of service delivery so that the grievances of citizens can be redressed speedily without easing up on punishment for the erring officials involved. This is an important detail which would no doubt be discussed when the matter comes up in Parliament. But there is no denying that a step of the first importance has been initiated.
The pioneering examples of MP and Bihar are as yet too new for us to draw lessons from their implementation aspect. So there could well be a period of trial and error — in the states concerned and at the Centre. But before we know it, people in all states are bound to demand such a lead from their governments. The MP and Bihar law came up before the Anna Hazare campaign was mounted. Seeing those cases, the UPA-2 government had begun to contemplate such a beneficial exercise before the idea of the so-called Jan Lokpal was pushed. The issue of non-delivery of services —and often their cornering by the powerful — is rampant across the developing world, not just in this country, on account of either shortage or corruption. In India the latter is generally the case. The success or failure of the effort in India should mean something for the study of the dynamics of development worldwide.