Playing with citizen-friendly scheme

Mamtha Sharma in Bengaluru

In 2011 when Sadanand Gowda, Karnataka's chief minister, began receiving a spate of general complaints during his Janata Darshans, he realised that something was wrong with the prevailing system. The complaints mostly related to the nondelivery of basic services like the birth, death, caste and community certificates or, for that matter, something as simple as a ration card. That too after fulfilling all the required formalities.
These were services which the common man had the right to receive without needing to run from pillar to post. The grievances also brought to the fore that corruption had become too deep-rooted. The average citizen really had no succour even as the government's image was going for a six. It was then that the idea of a legislation to ensure easy access of these basic services to the common man took shape.
It was, incidentally, also in line with the Citizens 'Right to Grievance Redressal Bill which the then Central government had introduced in Parliament. It is another matter that the bill lapsed with

That politics can override all good intentions is something that may get reiterated in Karnataka following the Siddaramiah government's neglect of the World Bank acclaimed "on time " citizen friendly scheme, Sakala. This is surprising considering that Karnataka has been a pioneer in promoting egovernance ,evidenced by its much acclaimed schemes like Bhoomi, which digitised land records, and the ReMs for farmers.

the term of the then Parliament. Luckily, however, around the same time, the state governments of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Bihar had already brought out such Acts. Accordingly, there was something for the Karnataka government to take a leaf out of the near-success of MP and Bihar at that time for the benefit of the people. As a first step, Suresh Kumar, the then law minister in the BJP government, went to study the schemes in the states concerned along with an official team.
Subsequently, an appropriate act was drafted and passed in the state assembly, after adequate preparations.

That is how the Karnataka Guarantee of Services Act, 2011 came about. It offered a host of services, under the Sakala or' on time "delivery system, something which won the acclaim of the World Bank later. Initially, it was rolled out to include 151 different government services comprising over 30 departments and institutions, touching every citizen's life.

Sadanand Gowda These related to caste, income, residence and the registration of birth and death certificates, not to mention driving and learners' licences, vehicle registration and house plans. And, for that matter, even a copy of the FIR filed with the police. The departments that were covered included transport, revenue, urban local bodies and revenue, to name but a few. That the citizens needed a scheme like Sakala badly was evident within a year of its launch as over two crore applications flooded different departments.

How did it work

The government decided to use the state's strength in information technology while laying emphasis on e--governance. The idea was to encourage transparency apart from monitoring the way the service was being delivered.
Appropriately, the state took the help of the National Informatics Centre, something that proved extremely successful. The website created by it, sakala.kar.nic.in, helped the government to monitor both the time of a particular request for a service as also its delivery. For heightened transparency, a system was devised under which every time a request for a service was made, the citizen concerned would get an acknowledgement slip, that is, a 15 digit number, the officials termed it the Guarantee of Services to the citizens or GSC number in short.
In one stroke, as it were, the GSC number enabled the citizen to know the status of his application without the need to repeatedly visit the government department concerned.
It helped that the information that was sought was available on the specially created website which listed the type of service and the time within which it would be delivered. All that the applicant needed to do was to send an SMS by typing the 15 digit GSC number he had received while applying for the desired service.
This was not all. The Karnataka government had learnt from the schemes launched in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar that the possibility of

There is, however, a silver lining, or so it appears. With elections barely four months away, the ruling Congress has decided to give a fresh lease of life to Sakala by launching what is termed as "Sakala -2." It proposes to bring about amendments in the existing act to give more teeth to Sakala, starting with a steep increase in the penalty to be imposed on the defaulting babu, if he fails to deliver the required service on time.

imposing a fine on the officer who did not deliver the service on time, could prove to be the ideal motivator. Consequently, it included a provision which allowed the imposition of a daily fine of Rs 20 while fixing the maximum cumulative collection at Rs 500 on the defaulting babu if the citizen failed to get the desired service within the stipulated time. The amount so collected from the babu's salary was to be given to the aggrieved citizen concerned.
Incidentally, the delivery time varied between seven days to even 21, depending on the type of service that was sought. A corpus of about Rs 5 crore was also created for the purpose.

The Sakala scheme also ensured that the services were delivered through a single window solution. Above all, it helped in minimising corruption even if it was not eliminated totally. A series of monthly reports and feedback systems, in which organisations like the IIM Bengaluru also played a part, helped in correcting the faults along the way. Especially as all the major departments had special cells for helping the citizen seeking service under Sakala. Besides, new services kept getting added with the idea of easing access for the citizen.

Change in government

There were doubts about the continuation of the scheme once the ruling party changed in 2013. These fears, however, were allayed as the Congress under Siddaramaiah continued to support it, with the minister in charge even taking time off to have weekly interaction on TV with the citizens.
This, perhaps, was the most important development as
invariably new governments do not like to continue popular schemes initiated by their predecessors. To that extent, the Congress government showed immense maturity. Yet, within a year, for inexplicable reasons, there was a sudden change in plans and the government decided against pushing or promoting Sakala
further. This was evident from the transfers of the officials who were incharge and even instrumental in taking Sakala to a new high

Narendra Modi Admittedly, such transfers are routine in the government. In this case, however, those who came in as replacement barely stayed long enough to contribute anything. In a matter of two years the Sakala department saw over three new heads. Subsequent enquiries also revealed that the government was not giving any emphasis on the scheme, evidenced by the sudden stoppage of monthly reports, monitoring of services. As if on cue, Sakala boards from the major civic department offices disappeared.

The result, as a recent study by the National Law school of India university, Bengaluru ,showed, middle men sprung up everywhere with the government looking the other way. The very practice that Sakala had sought to eliminate was encouraged, with the government turning a blind eye.

Siddaramaiah Officials that Power Politics contacted are reluctant to talk about the change and why it happened. Politicians, however, are more eager to point out that it had much to do with the praise that Prime Minister Narendra Modi lavished on Sakala once, especially as it was introduced by a BJP government. That nailed it for the Congress.
Be that as it may, the fact is today very few in the state know about Sakala or its existence. As Santhosh Naragund, founder trustee of an NGO, told a news paper, the original concept has been given a burial. In fact, he did raise his concern in January 2016 itself after analysing Sakala's functioning; even submitting a report to the law minister.

"Sakala is dead. People have forgotten their right to get services under Sakala as the signboards are missing in government offices and officers refuse to accept applications under the scheme," he was quoted as saying.. "Applications which are submitted under Sakala have to be given a GSC number for tracking their progress online. This is not happening," he had lamented.

The proposed amendment is expected to be brought about during the budget session of the assembly in February. All this is fine but the attempt also begs the question: why now? More importantly, why was the scheme which was aimed at benefiting the citizen allowed to collapse.

New hope

There is, however, a silver lining, or so it appears. With elections barely four months away, the ruling Congress has decided to give a fresh lease of life to Sakala by launching what is termed as " Sakala -2." It proposes to bring about amendments in the existing act to give more teeth to Sakala, starting with a steep increase in the penalty to be imposed on the defaulting babu, if he fails to deliver the required service on time.

Towards this end, it plans to raise the existing penalty from Rs 20 per day to Rs 250. In other words, the aggrieved citizen would be paid for the failure in service from the defaulting babu's account. It is another matter whether this can be done. Experts believe that there is a limit beyond which a babu cannot be penalised, at least in terms of his salary cut.
This apart, the government plans to give more powers to the Sakala officers to implement the provisions of the existing Act. In addition, the proposed amendment would seek to make it compulsory for all civic agencies and offices alike, to display citizens' charter and job charts besides introducing social audits and weekly public hearings. This apart, the government proposes to strengthen the information and facilitation centres, The proposed amendment is expected to be brought about during the budget session of the assembly in February.
All this is fine but the attempt also begs the question: why now? More importantly, why was the scheme which was aimed at benefiting the citizen allowed to collapse. Inevitably, the government exposed itself to charges of allowing a section of the corrupt to have a field day, if the allegations by the opposition are to be believed.
This is surprising indeed. Especially, as the ruling Congress has much to its credit when it comes to introducing citizen friendly e-governance steps. For example, three years ago it had launched Mobile-One, touted as the first citizen service app. The app had promised to host multi channel services and that too without any transaction charges.

It is another matter that the initiative flopped because the government, again inexplicably, did not show interest in strengthening and monitoring it. Three years since its inception, the app largely remains unused as the citizen finds it user unfriendly. Or, for that matter, he is not aware of it. Here again, with the transfer of the officer who had initiated Mobile-One, the government appears to have lost the zeal to carry it forward.

Ironically, Mobile –One had many things in its favour. Its SMS, IVR as also its unstructured supplementary data services were found useful in rural Karnataka. It was also a large multi channel mobile services platform, offering hundreds of services. It made it easy for citizens to pay their bills and allied taxes. Again, with elections in mind, the government now wants to look at the app afresh before relaunching it.

Yet another successful initiative of the Siddaramaiah government is its Rashtriya eMarket Service. Through ReMs, the state has been able to take the farmers' market system to a virtual world through a joint venture with NCDEX e Markets Ltd..

According to a farmer in Mysuru, under the e-mandi platform , " we get a unique licence number and instead of using a chit for bidding, we can view the lot online. We can decide whether the price is okay." As the farmers can see the prevailing rates in other Agriculture Produce Market Committees, they know what the real price is.

That the online marketing for farmers has become quite a hit is evident from the fact that other states too are showing interest in replicating the system with the Centre itself recommending it.

"The success of this new online marketing system has created ripples and will revolutionise the agricultural sector in the country, greatly benefiting poor farmers and other stakeholders in agricultural markets," according to a senior official.
The new system is enabling farmers to even get paid online once they sell their produce in the APMC yards. As over a million farmers are said to have already registered after selling their produce in APMC yards, he explains.

The state's interest in promoting egovernance, inevitably, has drawn praise from across political parties. This, however, is not the first time that Karnataka has taken the lead, going by the success of its Bhoomi project which had made digitising of land records easy.

It is difficult to understand how a government, which is so progressive and keen on implementing e-governance, can allow a citizen-friendly scheme like Sakala, to get neglected. Politics, perhaps, can override all good intentions.

The author is a keen watcher of Karnataka's grassroots realities.



		EDITOR'S MAIL FROM THE EDITOR Economic Scene Farmers' community Rural India Tribal Community Education Need to focus on Higher Education Frontiers of science PNB Scam Law and order Growing inequality Job creation Sakala Syndrome Environment Sports management The Power of Yoga Art of living US STRATEGY DATELINE BEIJING SIGNS OF THE TIMES Issue:Mar' 2018 Subscribe Now	Sakala Syndrome Playing with citizen-friendly scheme Mamtha Sharma in Bengaluru In 2011 when Sadanand Gowda, Karnataka's chief minister, began receiving a spate of general complaints during his Janata Darshans, he realised that something was wrong with the prevailing system. The complaints mostly related to the nondelivery of basic services like the birth, death, caste and community certificates or, for that matter, something as simple as a ration card. That too after fulfilling all the required formalities. These were services which the common man had the right to receive without needing to run from pillar to post. The grievances also brought to the fore that corruption had become too deep-rooted. The average citizen really had no succour even as the government's image was going for a six. It was then that the idea of a legislation to ensure easy access of these basic services to the common man took shape. It was, incidentally, also in line with the Citizens 'Right to Grievance Redressal Bill which the then Central government had introduced in Parliament. It is another matter that the bill lapsed with That politics can override all good intentions is something that may get reiterated in Karnataka following the Siddaramiah government's neglect of the World Bank acclaimed "on time " citizen friendly scheme, Sakala. This is surprising considering that Karnataka has been a pioneer in promoting egovernance ,evidenced by its much acclaimed schemes like Bhoomi, which digitised land records, and the ReMs for farmers. the term of the then Parliament. Luckily, however, around the same time, the state governments of Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Bihar had already brought out such Acts. Accordingly, there was something for the Karnataka government to take a leaf out of the near-success of MP and Bihar at that time for the benefit of the people. As a first step, Suresh Kumar, the then law minister in the BJP government, went to study the schemes in the states concerned along with an official team. Subsequently, an appropriate act was drafted and passed in the state assembly, after adequate preparations. That is how the Karnataka Guarantee of Services Act, 2011 came about. It offered a host of services, under the Sakala or' on time "delivery system, something which won the acclaim of the World Bank later. Initially, it was rolled out to include 151 different government services comprising over 30 departments and institutions, touching every citizen's life. Sadanand Gowda These related to caste, income, residence and the registration of birth and death certificates, not to mention driving and learners' licences, vehicle registration and house plans. And, for that matter, even a copy of the FIR filed with the police. The departments that were covered included transport, revenue, urban local bodies and revenue, to name but a few. That the citizens needed a scheme like Sakala badly was evident within a year of its launch as over two crore applications flooded different departments. How did it work The government decided to use the state's strength in information technology while laying emphasis on e--governance. The idea was to encourage transparency apart from monitoring the way the service was being delivered. Appropriately, the state took the help of the National Informatics Centre, something that proved extremely successful. The website created by it, sakala.kar.nic.in, helped the government to monitor both the time of a particular request for a service as also its delivery. For heightened transparency, a system was devised under which every time a request for a service was made, the citizen concerned would get an acknowledgement slip, that is, a 15 digit number, the officials termed it the Guarantee of Services to the citizens or GSC number in short. In one stroke, as it were, the GSC number enabled the citizen to know the status of his application without the need to repeatedly visit the government department concerned. It helped that the information that was sought was available on the specially created website which listed the type of service and the time within which it would be delivered. All that the applicant needed to do was to send an SMS by typing the 15 digit GSC number he had received while applying for the desired service. This was not all. The Karnataka government had learnt from the schemes launched in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar that the possibility of There is, however, a silver lining, or so it appears. With elections barely four months away, the ruling Congress has decided to give a fresh lease of life to Sakala by launching what is termed as "Sakala -2." It proposes to bring about amendments in the existing act to give more teeth to Sakala, starting with a steep increase in the penalty to be imposed on the defaulting babu, if he fails to deliver the required service on time. imposing a fine on the officer who did not deliver the service on time, could prove to be the ideal motivator. Consequently, it included a provision which allowed the imposition of a daily fine of Rs 20 while fixing the maximum cumulative collection at Rs 500 on the defaulting babu if the citizen failed to get the desired service within the stipulated time. The amount so collected from the babu's salary was to be given to the aggrieved citizen concerned. Incidentally, the delivery time varied between seven days to even 21, depending on the type of service that was sought. A corpus of about Rs 5 crore was also created for the purpose. The Sakala scheme also ensured that the services were delivered through a single window solution. Above all, it helped in minimising corruption even if it was not eliminated totally. A series of monthly reports and feedback systems, in which organisations like the IIM Bengaluru also played a part, helped in correcting the faults along the way. Especially as all the major departments had special cells for helping the citizen seeking service under Sakala. Besides, new services kept getting added with the idea of easing access for the citizen. Change in government There were doubts about the continuation of the scheme once the ruling party changed in 2013. These fears, however, were allayed as the Congress under Siddaramaiah continued to support it, with the minister in charge even taking time off to have weekly interaction on TV with the citizens. This, perhaps, was the most important development as invariably new governments do not like to continue popular schemes initiated by their predecessors. To that extent, the Congress government showed immense maturity. Yet, within a year, for inexplicable reasons, there was a sudden change in plans and the government decided against pushing or promoting Sakala further. This was evident from the transfers of the officials who were incharge and even instrumental in taking Sakala to a new high Narendra Modi Admittedly, such transfers are routine in the government. In this case, however, those who came in as replacement barely stayed long enough to contribute anything. In a matter of two years the Sakala department saw over three new heads. Subsequent enquiries also revealed that the government was not giving any emphasis on the scheme, evidenced by the sudden stoppage of monthly reports, monitoring of services. As if on cue, Sakala boards from the major civic department offices disappeared. The result, as a recent study by the National Law school of India university, Bengaluru ,showed, middle men sprung up everywhere with the government looking the other way. The very practice that Sakala had sought to eliminate was encouraged, with the government turning a blind eye. Siddaramaiah Officials that Power Politics contacted are reluctant to talk about the change and why it happened. Politicians, however, are more eager to point out that it had much to do with the praise that Prime Minister Narendra Modi lavished on Sakala once, especially as it was introduced by a BJP government. That nailed it for the Congress. Be that as it may, the fact is today very few in the state know about Sakala or its existence. As Santhosh Naragund, founder trustee of an NGO, told a news paper, the original concept has been given a burial. In fact, he did raise his concern in January 2016 itself after analysing Sakala's functioning; even submitting a report to the law minister. "Sakala is dead. People have forgotten their right to get services under Sakala as the signboards are missing in government offices and officers refuse to accept applications under the scheme," he was quoted as saying.. "Applications which are submitted under Sakala have to be given a GSC number for tracking their progress online. This is not happening," he had lamented. The proposed amendment is expected to be brought about during the budget session of the assembly in February. All this is fine but the attempt also begs the question: why now? More importantly, why was the scheme which was aimed at benefiting the citizen allowed to collapse. New hope There is, however, a silver lining, or so it appears. With elections barely four months away, the ruling Congress has decided to give a fresh lease of life to Sakala by launching what is termed as " Sakala -2." It proposes to bring about amendments in the existing act to give more teeth to Sakala, starting with a steep increase in the penalty to be imposed on the defaulting babu, if he fails to deliver the required service on time. Towards this end, it plans to raise the existing penalty from Rs 20 per day to Rs 250. In other words, the aggrieved citizen would be paid for the failure in service from the defaulting babu's account. It is another matter whether this can be done. Experts believe that there is a limit beyond which a babu cannot be penalised, at least in terms of his salary cut. This apart, the government plans to give more powers to the Sakala officers to implement the provisions of the existing Act. In addition, the proposed amendment would seek to make it compulsory for all civic agencies and offices alike, to display citizens' charter and job charts besides introducing social audits and weekly public hearings. This apart, the government proposes to strengthen the information and facilitation centres, The proposed amendment is expected to be brought about during the budget session of the assembly in February. All this is fine but the attempt also begs the question: why now? More importantly, why was the scheme which was aimed at benefiting the citizen allowed to collapse. Inevitably, the government exposed itself to charges of allowing a section of the corrupt to have a field day, if the allegations by the opposition are to be believed. This is surprising indeed. Especially, as the ruling Congress has much to its credit when it comes to introducing citizen friendly e-governance steps. For example, three years ago it had launched Mobile-One, touted as the first citizen service app. The app had promised to host multi channel services and that too without any transaction charges. It is another matter that the initiative flopped because the government, again inexplicably, did not show interest in strengthening and monitoring it. Three years since its inception, the app largely remains unused as the citizen finds it user unfriendly. Or, for that matter, he is not aware of it. Here again, with the transfer of the officer who had initiated Mobile-One, the government appears to have lost the zeal to carry it forward. Ironically, Mobile –One had many things in its favour. Its SMS, IVR as also its unstructured supplementary data services were found useful in rural Karnataka. It was also a large multi channel mobile services platform, offering hundreds of services. It made it easy for citizens to pay their bills and allied taxes. Again, with elections in mind, the government now wants to look at the app afresh before relaunching it. Yet another successful initiative of the Siddaramaiah government is its Rashtriya eMarket Service. Through ReMs, the state has been able to take the farmers' market system to a virtual world through a joint venture with NCDEX e Markets Ltd.. According to a farmer in Mysuru, under the e-mandi platform , " we get a unique licence number and instead of using a chit for bidding, we can view the lot online. We can decide whether the price is okay." As the farmers can see the prevailing rates in other Agriculture Produce Market Committees, they know what the real price is. That the online marketing for farmers has become quite a hit is evident from the fact that other states too are showing interest in replicating the system with the Centre itself recommending it. "The success of this new online marketing system has created ripples and will revolutionise the agricultural sector in the country, greatly benefiting poor farmers and other stakeholders in agricultural markets," according to a senior official. The new system is enabling farmers to even get paid online once they sell their produce in the APMC yards. As over a million farmers are said to have already registered after selling their produce in APMC yards, he explains. The state's interest in promoting egovernance, inevitably, has drawn praise from across political parties. This, however, is not the first time that Karnataka has taken the lead, going by the success of its Bhoomi project which had made digitising of land records easy. It is difficult to understand how a government, which is so progressive and keen on implementing e-governance, can allow a citizen-friendly scheme like Sakala, to get neglected. Politics, perhaps, can override all good intentions. The author is a keen watcher of Karnataka's grassroots realities.