By Florine Roche 

Mangaluru, Jun 27: There was a time when Indians used to be helpless and diffident not knowing what to do or whom to approach for administrative lapses and corruption in various ministries and departments or for the inordinate delay in the implementation of government schemes or projects.   All this is past now as India is in for a major makeover in this regard and surprisingly Indians are unable to even envision such a change could happen in our country. Yes. It is a reality. 

India is in the cusp of quite a few remarkable changes to make the government more accountable, responsive, transparent and corruption-free in the true tradition of a democratic nation. The government has   given importance to put in place an effective and efficient grievance redress mechanism to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of various government ministries, departments and organizations by setting up http://www.pgportal.gov.in ,  an online grievance forum.

It is an effort in the right direction by Government of India to bring excellence and accountability in public service delivery in a coordinated and meaningful way involving different Ministries and Departments of the Central and State governments. The portal has become a powerful tool in the hands of the citizens to seek accountability from the elected government and also public servants.   

The governments expects people to use this powerful tool to highlight the problems they face or to highlight the deficiency of service in dealing with government departments like Railways, Posts, Telecom, Public Sector Banks, Civil Aviation and   many other departments.  Under this mechanism any citizen can file their grievance, raise their problems or pleas through online to the central and state government Ministries and Departments.  They will get a prompt response from the government and people can even monitor the status of their complaint. 

This online portal has caught the fancy of enlightened citizenry of the country and has become quite popular in the past few years. This is evident from the fact that as per the details available in the website in 2019 alone 8,20,778 grievances have been received in this online portal out of which 7,43,904 cases have been disposed off. 

Considering that this web based Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) is 11 years old and also the fact that lack of accountability, transparency is norm of the day and corruption is omnipresent the number of complaints registered are not up to the expectations. Lack of public awareness about this portal and its effectiveness could be the reason the portal has not got its due.   

A boost through PRAGATI    

The portal was created in 2007 by Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG). It was one of the many initiatives taken by the central government to provide a platform for the people, developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC) in association with Directorate of Public Grievances (DPG).   Grievances received by the departments are then forwarded to the concerned Ministries/Departments/State Governments dealing with the responsibility of grievance redress.  After registering their grievance people can track their grievances through the system generated Unique Registration Number and view the status of their complaint. Depending on the type of grievances they can be lodged either in Public grievance or Pension grievance category.   To lodge a grievance a user has to register in the portal with username and password which is easy and simple.   Complaints can also be sent by post or handed over in person from the public.   A time limit of 60 days is fixed to redress any complaint and failure to get the grievance redressed within the specified time the complainant can take up the matter with the Director of Public Grievances of the Ministry/Department concerned.  

Though CPGRAMS is in existence for 11 years failed to draw expected   response from the general public because people were unaware that such a portal exists for them to lodge their grievance. However in 2015 Prime Minister Narendra Modi   gave a new momentum to the existing system by launching Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation (PRAGATI), an in-house multi-purpose, multi-modal integrating and interactive platform developed by the Prime Minister’s team with the help of NIC. It portal aims at providing an opportunity for ordinary citizens to seek redress for their grievances and at the same time they can monitor and review important programmes and projects of the governments as well as projects flagged by the State Governments. 

Soon after assuming office in 2014 Narendra Modi evinced keen interest to ensure speedy implementation of the government projects and schemes launched by his government and also to have a credible public grievance redress mechanism with focus on concerns around corruption. PRAGATI is in fact, the outcome of this initiative. Though corruption feature did figure in the earlier CPGRAMS portal PRAGATI has made corruption a major feature with nine sub-categories to register complaints against various government departments.  With this the government wanted to send in a message that it is keen in weeding out corruption. The recent decision by the government to compulsorily retire some government officials who faced serious corruption and misconduct charges, has sent right signals that  the government is determined to tackle corruption with an iron hand and provide a transparency and accountability to the common people.   

PRAGATI platform is a combination of three technologies – digital data management, video-conferencing and geo-spatial technology. It also offers another importation feature in the direction of cooperative federalism since it brings Secretaries of Government of India and the Chief Secretaries of the States under one umbrella so that the issues raised during interaction get due importance they deserve.  The Prime Minister chairs PRAGATI meetings every month and based on database available,   discusses and reviews progress made in the previous meetings. Every week union secretaries and chief secretaries have to add their comments and updates prior to the Pragati meeting. As a result the Prime Minister  is able to discuss the issues and assess the ground level situation with the officials concerned to speed the grievance redress process. Prime Minister offers directions on every issue raised and the system will remain in the system for further follow up and review till the matter gets closed and that is an important in-built aspect of PRAGATI. 

Fixing Priorities 

During the first term of Modi government 29 PRAGATI meetings held dealing with issues ranging from Ayushman Bharat to specific consumer grievance issues like call drops.   In the recently held PRAGATI meeting, the first since Modi’s second term as Prime Minister, the government has fixed its priorities focusing on specific issues. The Prime Minister has instructed Secretaries to come up with a five year plan document for their ministry and also a significant impactful decision in each ministry within an approval period of 100 days.

It is a laudable effort by the government to put in place a robust system to usher in e-transparency and e-accountability within a time frame and by ensuring exchange among all various stakeholders. . The main aim of the portal is to keep the citizens in touch with the government machinery at the top level to   make them accountable to the people. It would also act as deterrent to the officials to delay the implementation of government schemes and their desired results which in turn would minimize corruption. On its part the government has made every effort to bring   e-transparency and e-accountability to the citizens. Now it is the duty of the citizens to make the best use of it.