GENERAL STUDIES - II
GOVERNANCE
2. TRANSPARENCY
India has been ranked at 81st position in public sector corruption in the Transparency
International Corruption Perceptions Index 2017. Top performers share key
characteristics including high levels of press freedom and access to budget
information among other things.
Transparency is an important pillar of a democratic government. Citizens rely on
information for making decisions which impact upon their social, political and
economic lives. Transparency ensures that the stakeholders have the information
necessary for them to make decisions necessary for the progress of their lives. In this
case, information forms the cornerstone of transparency. Thus information sharing
is the means to attain the goal of transparency in government.
Transparency is one of the pillars of good governance that promotes openness.
Transparency in government operations improves the confidence of citizen towards
their government, while reminding government about the need to be transparent to
citizens in their decisions and associated impact.
A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is a
tragedy. Governments exist to serve the people. Information on how officials conduct the
public business as agents of serving the society and spend taxpayers’ money must be
readily available and easily understood. This transparency allows good and just
governance.
Government needed to be controlled, and the people were the most powerful tool to
do so. Control over the government would come in the form of an informed citizenry.
Bureaucratic administration always tends to exclude the public, to hide its knowledge
and action from criticism. Information is power. Whoever holds information holds
power. If the information is disseminated to the public, they have all the power to control
the government and hold its machinery accountable.
As newspapers die government transparency is a critical element in the new news
ecosystem that will fill the void. When government information is openly available, a
dwindling handful of journalistic watchdogs can be augmented by thousands, even
millions of watchdogs if citizen are empowered.
Information sharing is the key to the Government’s goal of delivering better, more
efficient public services that are coordinated around the needs of the individual. It is
essential to enable early intervention and preventative work, for safeguarding and
promoting welfare and for wider public protection. Prior information is the only means
to have an early intervention and preventive work. So information sharing is a vital
element in improving outcomes for all.
In many cases, the traditional method of information sharing is characterised by
delays, high cost and low transparency, as the result this allows for subversion of
accountability. Information sharing, collaboration and open government programs
can improve performance of mission delivery by enabling greater intra-agency and
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inter-agency collaboration, and citizen accessibility. Invoking these changes
necessitates changes to traditional organizational structures, processes, systems, and
culture which often times impede the flow of information and stress resources. The goal
of this approach is to ensure the right information is readily available to the right
individual when, where and as they need it in order to make the most informed
decision.
Transparency is about sharing all the information the receiver wants and not just the
information that the sender is willing to share. It is about putting all facts on the table,
even when some of them are uncomfortable. It is about being honest and open about
what actions are taken, by whom and on what grounds. It is about enabling people to
have conversations where questions can be asked and answered in open and honest
ways, creating mutual understanding. It is about removing any barriers that hinder
people from accessing the information they could need to be better at their jobs. It is
about making people and their skills, knowledge and ideas visible and accessible
to all. Transparency, however, may be defined as not only the disclosure of government
information, but the access, comprehension, and use of it by the public. Transparency,
as such, requires a public that can acquire, understand, and use the information.
Users of such released information must have the time and the tools to interpret and
understand the data in order to hold government accountable.
WHY TRANSPARENCY?
Basis for accountability
Check against mismanagement and corruption
Public confidence
Informed participation of citizens
IMPEDIMENTS TO TRANSPARENCY
Discretion without accountability
Excessive rules
Lack of timely, publicized information
Information not accessible to disadvantaged
Lack of service culture in government
One panacea to all the impediments can be proactive disclosure under RTI. Right to
Information laws not only require Governments to provide information upon request, they
also impose a duty on public bodies to actively disclose, disseminate and publish, as
widely as possible, information of general public interest even before it has been
requested, as per section 4(1)(b) of the Act. Proactive disclosure may even be
damaging to the one revealing it. So it will ensure that every actions of a public servant
will be oriented towards ensuring good and just government. When used in the terms of
open government, it is the practice of the government publishing government data, rather
than for an individual's public records request.
Though an accessible and transparent government is one goal of a functioning
democracy, access to government actions and information is often in tension with
information protection. Certain records may need to be kept secret by the government
to protect national security, personal privacy, or economic security. Openness, according
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to Nolan committee, also means the ability of a public servant to restrict information
when the wider public interest clearly demands it.
SOCIAL AUDIT AS A TOOL FOR TRANSPARENCY IN RURAL
EMPLOYMENT PROGRAMMES.
Though many rural employment programmes have been in operation since
independence, the fruits of these programmes have not benefited the target group
members uniformly. There could be several reasons for this state of affairs, but the most
important reason is prevalence of corrupt practices due to lack of information sharing
and transparency. Social audit can be used as a tool against this.
Social audit examines the impact of governmental activities on certain section of
society which are in contact with the government agencies. It has been considered as
an empowering tool of people, particularly in the context of right to information, to
demand accountability and transparency and maintain integrity in the developmental and
welfare activities. The appeal of social audit lies in the fact that it seeks to make the audit
process more transparent and seeks to take audit findings to a wider public domain
of shareholders, i.e. users of the government schemes, services and utilities. The
enactment of Right to Information Act, 2005, has strengthened the social audit
mechanism by making it easier to access information from government agencies for audit
purposes.
The impact of social audit method depends on several factors. They include: the
creation of conducive environments in the gram panchayats; positive attitude of
different stakeholders (beneficiaries, youth, elite, social groups etc.); formations of
vigilance and monitoring committee with honest and responsible citizens; awareness
and skills of the committee in conducting the social audit; reliability of information/data
supplied by the authorities concerned; active participation of the people, particularly
marginalized sections of society in the gram sabha forum; identification of the causes
of malpractices and its effects on the implementation of schemes; and review on action
taken report, etc.
The major bottlenecks in the social audit are: conflicting socio-economic interests;
political intervention; low technical competence of the members of the social audit
committee, at the grassroots level; lack of active participation of the people
particularly marginalized sections in the gram sabha forum; non-cooperation of the
officials; inadequate attention of the state to take necessary measures to arrest the
malpractices, etc. which collectively defeat the very basic purpose of social auditing
system in the state.
The social auditing process, if conducted properly, expected to result in: (i)
dissemination of information those who need it; (ii) identify the malpractices in the
delivery of schemes; (iii) pave the way for mid-course corrections; (iv) redresses the
grievances of the labourers/participants; (v)unveil a culture of participation and
openings in the implementation of the scheme; (iv) ensure horizontal accountability (it
refers to the host of mechanisms checks and balances internal to the state – judicial
oversight, auditing and accounting, performance incentives), through which state
agencies are held to account; (vii) ensure vertical accountability (it refers to the
mechanisms through which citizens hold the state to account);(viii) increased
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involvement of civil society in placing demands for accountability on the state; etc.
which are also the main features of the good governance.
In view of the potential of social audit mechanism to ensure transparency and
accountability in the formulation, implementation, and review of programmes, the
Government of India has incorporated social audit as an inbuilt provision for its
flagship programmes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(NRGES), Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), and National
Rural Health Mission (NHRM), etc.
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GRAM SABHA AS SOCIAL AUDIT FORUM
Article 17(1 of the) MGNREGA says gram sabha would monitor all works/Schemes
which are implemented in the gram panchayat. Further Article 17(2) of the MGNREGA
stipulates that the gram sabha shall conduct regular social audits of all the projects
under the scheme taken up within the gram panchayat. Article 17(3) says the gram
panchayat shall make available all relevant documents including the muster rolls, bills,
vouchers, measurement, books, copies of sanction orders and other connected books of
accounts and papers to the gram sabha for the purpose of conducting the social audit.
The guidelines of Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, indicate that there
should be continuous monitoring and as well as six monthly social audit through gram
sabha called social audit forum.
IMPACT OF SOCIAL AUDIT
The provisions like regular conduct of gram sabha meetings/social audit forums;
formation of vigilance and monitoring committees; participation of local beneficiary
committees; and self-help group members; evolving citizen characters; use of Right to
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Information Act, 2005; training civil society groups; regular conduct of social audit by
following the stipulated norms in the Act, etc., have acted as the key instruments for
streamlining corruption in MGNREGA in Andhra Pradesh.
CONCLUSION
While corruption remains the main villain, there were several other reasons which singly
or in permutations and combinations serve to dilute or even kill the government
programmes. They are: lack of knowledge, wrong perceptions, bad management, and
absence of coordination plus unforgivably an apathy and indifference down the line
towards the wage seekers contribute in varying measures and block achievement of the
intended objectives. To root it out would require untangling of the complex webs and
putting a flashlight on the micro processes of public programmes. Placing details of
the programme in the public domain, taking the information down to the primary
stakeholders, discussion on the non-negotiable and implementation details with all
stakeholders on a common platform and holding officials accountable for their work,
bringing individual issues to the forefront and forcing the system to take cognizance-all
of this constitutes putting a flashlight on the micro processes. In an ideal setting, this
would in fact ensure transfer of power slowly but surely from the hands of those
implementing the scheme to the beneficiaries of the scheme, ending a stranglehold not
challenged before.
PREVIOUS YEARS QUESTION
1. In the light of the Satyam Scandal (2009), discuss the changes brought in corporate
governance to ensure transparency, accountability. (12.5) (2015)
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