Public Grievance Redressal Speed in India

The grievance redressal mechanism of an organization/country is its instrument to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of its administrative policies and procedures. Persistence of public grievances in any administrative system speaks of a wary state of administration. The absence of any record of public grievances can, however, indicate a worse scenario as this may suggest non-acknowledgement of grievances of serious nature which may later become humungous and unmanageable. Therefore, ventilation and redressal of grievances remain to be one of the major goals of an administration that wants to be citizen friendly. It also ensures the good health of the system.

Public Grievance Redressal Mechanism in India:

At the apex level, there are primarily two designated nodal agencies in the Central Government for handling these grievances: (i) the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, and (ii) the Directorate of Public Grievances, Cabinet Secretariat. A Standing Committee of Secretaries for Grievance Redressal, headed by the Cabinet Secretary, conducts the review of grievance redressal mechanism of different Ministries/Departments of Government of India.

The DARPG has undertaken initiatives in the fields of administrative reforms and public grievances in the government, aimed at the delivery of citizen-centric administration and quality public services in order to improve governance. The main responsibility of the DARPG is to lay down broad policy guidelines for the institutionalization of grievance redress system in the Ministries/ Departments/ Organizations. The grievances received by the Department are forwarded to the concerned Ministries/Departments/State Governments/Union Territories, dealing with the substantive functions related to which a particular grievance has been received. On the basis of the grievances received, the Department identifies the problem areas which are analyzed with a view to suggesting substantive and procedural improvements to the Ministry/ Department/ Organization concerned.

The Directorate of Public Grievances is an appellate body investigating grievances selectively with regard to complaints where the complainant had failed to get redressal at the hands of the internal machinery and the hierarchical authorities. At present, this Directorate is handling grievances pertaining to 20 Central Government organisations. Wherever the Directorate is convinced that the grievance has not been dealt with in an objective and just manner, it makes suitable recommendations for consideration and adoption by the concerned Ministry/Department, which is required to implement these within a month.

The uniform software called Public Grievances Redress and Monitoring System (PGRAMS) developed by the National Informatics Centre has been installed in a number of Ministries/ Departments/ Organisations. In an endeavour to further improve the system, the Department has developed and introduced a centralized web-enabled module (CPGRAMS), which is being installed to facilitate the Public Grievances Officers of various Ministries/ Departments/ Organisations to log in and view the grievances forwarded by DARPG to the concerned Ministries for expeditious redressal. The CPGRAMS offers to the citizens the facility of lodging grievances, viewing their current status and getting reminders online. It facilitates the Ministries/ Departments to add subordinate organizations and forward grievances to them for redressal.

Current Scenario:

There is considerable variation across organisations in respect of the Charter commitments as well as their implementation with regard to the redressal of public grievances. The commitment of Charters in respect of timely response and redress, however, remains poor. Nearly 41% of the Charters did not indicate any timeframe for redress of public grievances. 61% of them did not indicate any time frame for acknowledging the public grievances and nearly 43% of them did not have a timeframe for giving responses to the petitioners. There is also considerable variation in respect to the number of grievances received, disposed off and pending in various organisations, as also the extent of institutionalisation of the redress processes. In a few organizations, there has been an increasing trend towards online registration of complaints. Others have not moved towards online system because of the lack of human resource development. CPGRAMS has still not been introduced by some Ministries and Departments. In departments and ministries where CPGRAMS is working, in many cases, the replies to grievances are still being sent by post rendering the process to be slow despite the efforts. Also, since CPGRAMS has been introduced in most organizations only recently, efficient processes of delivery of the grievances to the attached/subordinate offices or the PSUs /autonomous bodies, and getting feedback/comments from them and transmission of final replies to DARPG are yet to be developed.

However, one encounters a disturbing similarity in respect of inadequate publicity, the burden of other work on the PG officers and staff, lack of required human resource support, lack of comprehensive training to address technological, managerial and behavioural needs of effective grievance redress system and lack of efforts to institute innovations to improve Citizen-administration interface.
Institutionalization of jan-sunwais or lok-adaalats, the constitution of social audit panels, regular monitoring and reviews to assess performance, etc. are lacking in most organisations, making the grievance redress machinery more of a ritual than an effective instrument of organisational reinvention.

In most organizations, it has emerged that the process of redress is quite tiresome and prolonged. Several cases have been pending for long. In some cases, the grievance process has itself become a source of grievance because of the complex or unclear procedures that have added to delayed redress. The inefficiency of the system has manifested from the inability of the organisations to reduce its own delivery cost and ensure that the service users/citizens actually benefit from the processes without having to incur high costs in terms of money, time and energy. From the user perspective, efficiency deficit has been characteristic of most organisations, which get a large number of grievances and find it difficult to handle these due to either lack of staff or poor training or lack of coordination within the organisation. The poor handling of the location factor, the speed of the process and the expenditure that has to be incurred by the user have made the PGR system poor on the count of efficiency. It is also a result of the poor management of available resources and inadequate capacity building initiatives. Some organizations, which did not get many grievance cases, felt that the mechanism itself was a source of inefficiency as the set up took away considerable resources without generating enough work, and without contributing to any change in the image of the organization.

What can be done?

The timely redressal of grievances by the PGR system depends considerably on the appropriate arrangement of authority and deployment of adequate resources with the redress mechanism. There’s a need to eradicate widespread discontentment among the PG officers regarding the gap between their responsibilities and powers. Also, the PG Cell often does not enjoy/ exercise any power to offer relief or even to give directions to the concerned officers in the matter or do a follow-up of the grievance redress process. At the same time, there is a need to address the issue of an overload of responsibilities due to the shortage of staff. In the case of many organisations, the personnel in the PG Cell carry out many other responsibilities too, and can, therefore, spare only a limited time and effort to meet the challenge of public grievances. Director’s answerability to many organizations as well as handling of miscellaneous files to the office also puts extra pressure on the office. This calls for vesting of more resources and staff for the cause.

The hard reality which needs to be confronted is that the PGR system has been poorly utilized in most organizations of the government. In spite of having a grievance, people do not generally access redressal mechanisms. Access depends as much on the location, technological competence and resource position as on their awareness of the existence of the mechanism and conviction about its utility, dependability and ease of access. Making information technology-based systems simpler to use and using these creatively to cross the physical barriers to reach those seeking redress, is a challenge for all organizations in a country where access to technology is limited for reasons of lack of education and resources. At present, the CPGRAMS is being used mostly by the staff, that too, in a few organisations. Organisations need to institute back-end support in their subordinate offices to enable smooth reception of grievances from their respective ministries and departments, who, in turn, would receive forwarded grievances from the DARPG, the entire process being online. It could make the process a lot faster.

To ensure accountability and adherence to timeframes allotted, monitoring of compliance to standards and commitments, holding periodic review meetings as a formalised mandatory process to appraise
Charter implementation, as well as the functioning of the PGR system, are crucial. The meetings should examine the extent of compliance with the timeframe for sending acknowledgements and final replies to petitioners. The reasons for delay should be explained in case of violation of time norms.

Providing effective channels for timely communication of decisions as well as the voice of the people is also a necessity. Information about many decisions remains confined to the small elite, close to the administrators. There is no space for inviting for policy or for improving ways of its implementation of decisions. This can take care of many possible grievances even before the decisions get taken.

A large part of grievances in most organizations owes themselves to ambiguity and complexity of rules and procedures. If these can be taken care of, the likelihood of grievances can be substantially reduced, resulting in lessening the burden on the office and leaving it with more time to dedicate to redressal of other grievances.

Don't forget to leave your valuable feedback in comment section.

Kailasha Foundation – Bringing Solutions To You

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn for regular updates.