1.0 Introduction:
Author of this paper was born in a village of Ballia, UP, India. After completing his Bachelor and Master in Computer Engineering from India, he did his Ph.D. in management from USA. He served as a scientist in Department of Space, Government of India. He is also a recipient of Indian Science Congress Association’s (ISCA) Young Scientist award for the year 1999 of Computer Science section. He has about 30 papers in his credit published in various journals and proceedings of National and International level. He is currently in US and directing an IT company.
Whenever he visited his native place, he got touched by the plight of the poor villagers. Terrible instances that he saw during his visits to India have forced him to indulge into the social work. He has very much involved himself in social welfare of the UP and devoted himself for the uplifting of the poorest of the poor. He is working on upbringing of downtrodden, poor and underprivileged people of UP. During the time of elections, the political parties make lot of promises. Author of this paper has analyzed the promises that political parties have made in past and assured to follow if they get the majority.
To improve the life style of poorest of the poor, he researched the functioning of various departments of government agencies and organizations. He has come across the loopholes of government functioning and provides his feedbacks in this paper to improve its functioning. The recommendations stated in the paper are based on the ground scenario and real experiences. Implementation of these recommendations may certainly help in improving the conditions of UPaites in general and would pay for their long awaited dues owed by UP government.
1.1 British Rule:
The author has grown up in a village and he has seen the pitiable condition of the villagers. He has analyzed the administrative system carefully and found that the system is still based on the British rulers. The faultless democratic system is a system where public doesn’t like any one ruling them. The public forms government for not to rule but to take care of state or country. So, the whole public in all is ruler but not the individuals. In past, British ruled India by appointing officers at the different levels. Those officers were basically involved in monitoring the public and ruling them. They were there not for helping or serving the public. They were treating the general public inhumanly and came up with relation called master and servant. Those officers wanted themselves to be treated as the master (malik) by the general public and were trained to look on general public as servant (gulam) with disrespect. They preferred to be called by the words like Your Excellency, Sir, Hakim, Your Majesty, Reverend, Your Honor, Me Lord, Mahamaheem, Honorable etc.
The same concept still carries. Most of the ministers and bureaucrats have in mind that they are rulers and respectable. They don’t think they are public servants and they are there to serve the people. They think they are Very Important Person (VIP) and they should be respected. In a true democratic system, there is no place for such thinking. The author read in a popular Hindi news paper that one of the chief ministers of a state was behaving like a God. He was asking few people gathered around him on some occasion to beg for whatever they need and he will fulfill their wish. Such kind of mentality is dangerous to democracy. It should be opposite. A minister should think as he/she is servant of public and rather than he/she being a VIP, the general public is VIP. If they don’t think like that, public should not allow them to reach that level. This is absolutely in hand of the public and that is what called democracy, where a state is ruled by the public. In democratic system, a government is formed by the public for the service of the public.
The public service commission (Lok Seva Ayog) is established by government to provide efficient and capable public servants (Lok Sevaks) to serve the people but most of us want to join that because of not serving the people but to get power to rule the public. Therefore there is craze to become Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, minister etc. If we really imagine we have to work as servant of public and not as VIP, only those of us can opt for this job whose real aim is to serve the public. The author is not sure how many of ministers, governors and bureaucrats (let’s call them as lok-sevaks in future references) think themselves that they are servants of public and they should use words like Your Excellency, Me Lord, Your Honor, Sir, Hakim, Your Majesty, Reverend, Mahamaheem, Honorable etc for general public rather than expecting the same for themselves.
It is a big responsibility of public to only elect those representatives who can really serve them. It is in their hand and they have power to do so by having an invaluable vote. If we appoint a domestic help or an employee in privately owned enterprise, we screen and check whether he/she is efficient from each and every angle. So, why can’t we do this in electing the representatives? If we elect right representative, he/she automatically would appoint a right officer in government organization. The author read in a news paper that IAS association doesn’t want an IAS officer to be summoned by Information Commission (Suchana Ayog), solely because it could hurt his/her ego. That is a quality of faulted democracy. This is what happening in our state. Our officers’ mentality is of get treated like a master (Malik) and not as a servant, and we need a will to change this mentality. This can only be achieved by public and political parties who have a will to change the system for the welfare of the public to make UP truly democratic.
1.2 Accessibility of Lok-Sevaks:
Easy accessibility of a Lok Sevak is also very important for the healthy democracy. The author was reported that villagers make many trips to Tahsil or district head quarter to meet an officer to get their work done. This is basically because sometimes officers are busy in meeting or on leave or even absent without notice. This costs a villager a lot. There are many people in village who leave on daily income and if they loose that in making round for an officer to meet, you can imagine what would be their feeling. Only a person who has this experience can only realize. To avoid this, accessibility of an officer should be made certain. It must be ensured that there is always a customer service representative at each and every office controlled by government to hear the grievances of a customer and act on that.
Also, this is the age of telecommuting. It should be made sure that an officer, minister, governor or elected public representative is easily accessible by e-mail, fax or telephone. He should make sure that each and very phone call is answered or each and every e-mail or fax is responded well. If a lok-sevak is too busy, his/her public relation representative should manage the telecommuting messages and should make sure for an appointment for telecommunication.
A lok Sevak should never think he/she is not there to take a call of public or serve the public. Most of the lok sevaks think this way and that is not good for UP. If a lok-sevak thinks like that, he/she is not fit for the job or office and he/she should quit. There are a lot of there in queue to pick up his/her job. In several such cases the author has observed that even public relation officers or secretaries in the offices of lok sevaks are trained to deny the accessibility of lok sevaks. They make excuses like lok sevak is in bathroom or eating or in a meeting or resting or sleeping or so on so forth. This is very dangerous for a democratic state and such an act must be avoided. If a lok sevak is available, he/she should be made accessible by his/her supporting officials to general public. Supporting staff should help in providing the accessibility rather than denying it. This could be achieved by political will and by casting intelligently the valuable vote.
1.3 Services:
The first and foremost duty of a lok-sevak must be to provide quality services to his/her customers. It should be ensured that public get due respect and their complaints or requests are addressed properly and sorted out in specified time period responsibly. If a person’s request takes longer than specified time to resolve, he/she should be communicated time to time in a proper manner so that he/she couldn’t run around the officials and waste money and time. His/her records must be maintained and should be easily available, if he/she needs status on his/her request. Author remembers an instance here.
One villager of UP had applied for handicapped benefit to respective office of her district head quarter. She didn’t receive any correspondence on her application in six months. She again visited to the office and asked about the status of her application. The office clerk said there was no such application, write and submit new one. That poor villager didn’t have any option but to file again. This story ran many years and still she is in the hope that she might get her benefit due one day or some day an angel will come to her help and solve her problem. If she would have paid money to corrupt officials, her case could have been resolved, but she didn’t do so. If we evolve a system where each and every complaint is taken care of in a pre-defined manner, we may be able to provide efficient quality service to public. If even an individual complaints against an officer for his/her wrongful deeds, the system should investigate against the officer and take action without fail and should communicate to individual about the action.
Author also analyzed that there are lot of opportunities where we can make reduce the government costs. Bureaucrats, ministers and elected representatives are given with lot of perks and facilities. Are these really required? Why they aren’t equal to other employees. Don’t they get salary for their work? The UP government should think in this direction. It should just provide the salary and remuneration as per their work and cut the all other facilities. For example, we see that a District Magistrate (DM) is provided with body guards, big bungalow, drivers, cars, secretaries, public relation officers, clerks, peons, cooks, gardeners etc apart from many other facilities. This is really a luxurious life that seems as has filtered from British rule. Is there any need to provide all these facilities? Author thinks no. Government should just provide the allowances for car, house and other as part of salary. Office set-up with a helper is sufficient for him/her to work. DM’s bungalow may be used for developing the Indira Awas-Vikas (Home for poor) or any other plan. It does work in other developed country, then why not in India. People drive their car themselves and hire domestic help on their own expenses. If this could be applied from top to bottom in each and every government institution, there could be a great saving for government and may make realize a lok-sevak to serve without developing egoistic culture. Also, government must ensure that government employee at any level of hierarchy should never use government expenses for his/her personal affair. For example, if chief minister attends a marriage party of his/her friend or relative, he/she should make sure that he/she does it on his/her own expenses. Also, at that time he/she should be given treatment as a general public and not a single government official should go to receive him anywhere.
The statuses in UP is also measured by the Lal Batti, Neeli Batti, Peeli Batti (colorful lights on vehicles) etc. and government distributes it like ravadis (special sweet in UP) to survive. The main goal of Lok-Sevaks is to serve the public. Are these Battis (lights) really needed by Lok-Sevaks to serve better the public of UP? The author surveyed the people of UP on this and 99% said, no. In the best interest of public of UP, the government must make law to abolish the use of these lights and make every Elected Representatives, Lok-Sevaks and Ministers use vehicles without lights. This could avoid discriminations and also bring equality among the citizens. The basic idea behind the lights was to provide prompt services to public in cases of emergencies, but our systems in UP has become so corrupt that these lights have now become the status symbols. Most of the developed countries use these lights only on emergency service vehicles to provide emergency services to their citizens and only fire, police and health departments are authorized to use them. The government of UP should also think on this line, if it really wants to care the common people.
Educated public is very much important for healthy democracy. The government should aim for 100% literacy. Public should be educated to know their rights and must be communicated that the lok-sevaks are not their bosses but servers. In one of instances reported to the author, a villager requested to his Member of Parliament (MP) of his constituency to visit and see the apathetic conditions of the villagers and help to provide road, water, drainage etc to improve the living standards of the villagers. Do you know what the response of the MP was? His response was that he was not the villager’s servant and he was not there to repair drainage system of the villager’s house. He was there to look for the welfare of the country. If an MP or Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) has this kind of mentality and thinks him/her as VIP on that position, public must not vote him/her to make him/her reach at that position. But, the sad thing is that, it is not happening. UP really need honest and service oriented lok-sevaks rather than rulers or VIPs. If a public representative can understand this, he/she will be happy in being in opposition rather than forming the government by any means (hook or crook). This phenomenon basically results in general public/opposition as boss and not the government/lok-sevaks.
In one of the author’s encounters with a resident of his district Ballia in UP, India, he found that resident was unhappy with the DM of Ballia. This was because DM wasn’t handling his complaint properly. He reported that DM treated him in-humanly and shouted on him because he pointed out the DM’s mistakes and faults. The DM took it heartily since his ego was hurt and didn’t solve the problem. This should not happen in democratic state. A citizen has right in a democratic state to argue and correct the government official for his/her mistakes. A citizen is eligible to check the accountability of DM and not only MLAs, MPs or DM’s bosses. Rather than inhumanly treating the general public, the DM should correct himself/herself and apologize, if he/she is wrong. Author’s district-man explained beautifully that in a democratic structure, he is one of the bosses of DM, Chief Minister (CM) or even Governor and has right to direct and govern them. Author asked him how? He described as DM bends to CM, ministers or politicians because they are DM’s boss. Also, politicians help in appointing the governors. CM, ministers, politicians and public representatives bend to general public for getting the votes. Since he is part of a general public, thus is indirectly the boss of DM. The author was stumped by the analogy given by his district man. But does this really work in UP or will work in UP, is a million rupees question. Do politicians and bureaucrats allow the democracy to work like this in UP? This would be an ideal democracy which we would like to see happen one day in UP. We listen in political rallies where politicians regarding public as their god and say they are there to serve them, but this could be only a gimmick, or trick and tactic to please the public and rule them. In real life, they don’t think so.
1.4 Corruption:
Nowadays India is struggling with problem of corruption which has affected Law & Order, Judiciary and Development and is in the process of paralyzing them. Because of distress and our societies becoming unmoral and uncivilized, the Supreme Court (SC) has commented as stating that every one is looting our country and we need some stringent laws to make country corruption free. It even went a step further and proposed for uncivilized law (hanging corrupts in the lamppost) to check the corruptions.
Corruption is one of the biggest problems in UP that don’t make development visible. It has become part of life of every UPaite. They think this is necessary for the progress. Takers think this is very much important to live life king size and givers think this is must to get their work done. This way even an illegal work becomes legal. Each and every person of government department knows that but nothing works in controlling this. Author’s research shows the situation is so worse that if a person doesn’t have a job where he/she can’t get any bribe, his/her job would be no longer respectable. People have forgotten the phrase, “honesty is the best policy”.
Everyone needs money to live beautiful life but this is not the way to get that. This impacts the development and also involves the exploitation of the needy people. Students of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur complained to the President of India about the corruption in getting a passport, which has so rooted in the police department that even it doesn’t spare the students too, who are the future of our state and country. It is untrue that this is unknown to the police officers but they don’t want to stop because their one of the source of incomes may be snatched away. There are several plans government offers to the villagers but are they really implemented with 100% going out to them? Also, there are government programs like Kanya Dhan Yojana, Indira Awas Vikas Yojana, Unemployment Allowances etc., but are they really effective? Author observed, no.
Author made a comprehensive survey on these programs and his observations were that the selected candidates for any program were happy to share half the money as gift to government officials for making them into the awardees list. This is because they say it is free money and getting it without any hard work so what is wrong in sharing it. Head of Village (Gram Pradhan) collects about half the money of the benefits from each candidate and distributes it to the government officials from bottom to top in hierarchy. Officials are happy because they are getting butter (malai), apart from salary and other benefits, too. But does there anyone who truly thinks that how the hard earned money of tax payers getting looted? Government must be responsible in ensuring that each and every penny of tax payers goes to the needy and not shared among the corrupt government officials, otherwise it would be injustice to taxpayers. To ensure this, we may need effective anti-corruption system that every day monitors the day to day activities of government officials and elected representatives. Non-Government Organizations (NGO) can play a great role in this and government may need to assign budgets for this purpose. There are many government institutions that are mainly established to look into corruption cases but they aren’t yet so effective since corruption is there too.
The NGO can be involved in controlling the corruption by help of their sting operations based on public complaints, and net the officials red-handed. These operations should take place every day at every levelviz. Village, Block, Tehasil and District. But the rule should be not to spare any individual, if he/she is caught red-handed, on any cost. He/she should be asked to resign from the job without any mercy, even if he/she caught for taking a single penny or small amount. With the dismissal from the job and imprisonment, a penalty can also be fixed based on the seriousness of the corruption. A DM can also be fixed responsible and punished for such corruption when it’s found that the government official involved in corruption is state government employee worked under his/her district and amount involved in corruption is more than certain limit. Only transfer or suspension could not solve this problem. This may need some stern action to remove the evil of corruption from our society. Even the DMs in serious cases are just getting the transfer as punishment, but they should be dismissed from duty immediately, if they are either found involved or unable to check the corruption.
Special courts only to deal the cases of corruption could also be set-up to help finish such case with fast-pace. There may be occasions in such cases where elected representatives or lok-sevaks at top level constitutional positions may pressurize authorities to spare the corrupted individuals because of their link to them, but in doing so they may also need to be exposed and punished. The NGO can play here role also in trapping them and disclosing the telephonic conversations related with the case. Making a DM accountable for serious corruption cases at district level, may pressurize him/her to check the corruption at the district level. For a serious corruption case in district, an inquiry can be ordered after DM’s suspension and if found lapses on his/her part, he/she must be asked to resign or otherwise dismissed. Transfers or suspensions are not going to solve the corruption problem since they have become part of life of government officials, and not the punishments anymore. Also, government must make it compulsory to audit the bank accounts and properties of government servants and elected members including their family members every year to check the corruption. If their earnings found more than their sources of incomes, they must not be let go Scot free in any circumstances. Also, to develop a corruption free society, we need to ensure our new generations are honest and we may do so by initiating a process of taking oath of honesty from schooling. But after all, all these need people to unite together to vote for the right candidates and elect the dutiful representatives.
1.5 Law and Order:
Law and order is most important aspect of services to public of UP. In ideal scenario, a state may have an atmosphere where valet of a person is left on the road and no one steals it, or even a girl can freely move in nigh without any fear. We may think this could be a dream right now for the public of UP, but there are lot of scope to improve the law and order conditions in UP to make it a better living place. There are many investors considering investing in UP but because of poor law and order and high in corruption, they are hesitating in doing so. We hear every day about murders, kidnappings, rapes, robberies, corruptions etc and people compare rule in UP with jugle-raj (animals kingdom), but who are made accountable for all this to avoid the repetitions.
We need to enforce the accountability of crime at different level in police department and if it’s not being controlled by police officers at that level, they may be recommended for a stringent action. If an official has fear of losing his/her job because of his/her corrupt practices or inability to act promptly, he/she won’t be influenced by unconstitutional pressure and will perform his/her duty honestly and dutifully. Murder of an innocent person is most heinous crime and it’s the duty of UP government to make it possible that not a single murder should take place in the state. This could be achieved by directly accounting the Superintendent of Police (SP) for a murder in the district. SP can be allocated with certain number of days to nab a murderer and put him behind the bar. If SP is not able to do so in given time period, he/she needs to be punished without fail. If there is increase in number of murder cases beyond certain limit during an SP’s tenure in a district, he/she must be shown the door and asked go home. This kind of punishment to police officials assigned for various levels of crime controls may certainly bring back the state of UP to path of normalcy and right developmental track.
Also, the judiciary system in our state is not as optimum and efficient as it should be in a democratic state. There are lawsuits and cases pending from many years. We need to improve the functioning of judiciary system to speed-up the process and deliver the final verdicts on the pending cases in timely manner. As we know that justice delayed is justice denied, the government must ensure this not to happen. This could be done by increasing the benches and judges in a court. Also, government can make laws based on the categories of cases and assign number of days in delivering the judgment. For example, in case of a murder, maximum of a year can be assigned to a judge to deliver the verdict, whatever the circumstances could be. Verdicts delivered earlier than the assigned time period could be used as the good performance of the judges and the investigation agencies, and could be a base for rewarding them. If a verdict is delivered beyond the specified time period, associated agencies and the judges would be accountable for the delay and could be imposed punishment.
Most of the rich, influential or powerful persons have speculation that the law & order is only for the general public but not for them. These people think that even if they do the major law violations, they could not be booked or caught because of their influence. This is happening because the system is having weaknesses. System must be empowered not to be lenient to these influential and even if the chief minister or his/her son is being involved in any kind of breaking law and order, he/she must not be forgiven. The police officials involved in such cases should be encouraged and recognized publicly for taking the bold steps. Action against influential will send strong signal to public that law and order is equal to every one and no one is above the law. Being lenient to poor but not to the influential may discourage influential from breaking the law and it would definitely help improving the deteriorating law and order conditions in UP.
There is need of inquiry commission at every level of state machinery to monitor the act of elected public representatives, ministers and bureaucrats. The levels may consist but not limited to Village, Block, Taluk, District, Headquarter of Districts and State. The commission may be formed with honest judges, public representatives and government officials. The commission at a particular level will have authority to hear the plea and complaints only about lok-sevaks at that level and empowered with suspension and dismissal of an officer at that level. For example, the commission at district level may work on complaints at district level officers, say DM and/or SP, and based on the findings in inquiry, it may suspend or even dismiss the DM or SP. There are many such commissions at state level, but they are either ineffective in taking action against powerful bureaucrats/ministers or out of reach of the poor public. Even we have seen at several occasions that court orders are being violated by top level bureaucrats in UP.
Author came across a person in UP, who had filed an application for his passport. Few police men contacted that person for the inquiry purposes and asked him to pay rupees two thousands to prepare a clean police report, though his police records were clean and perfect. He didn’t pay the bribe and complained about the act of police officials via letters and e-mails to authority in hierarchy, but no one heard him and there was no action taken against the corrupt police officers. He tried several times to contact to Director General of Police (DGP) of UP by phone, but the DGP’s staff never allowed him to talk to DGP and he found DGP’s cell phone always switched-off. Therefore, that person was forced to pay the bribe to clear the police report. If commission would have been set-up at block level, he would have told his story presenting himself personally to the commission and commission would have punished the involved officials. After hearing about the punishments, other officials would have not dared to continue the process. Everyone thinks about the salary and if he/she has fear about lay-offs, he/she will certainly restrain himself/herself from engaging in corrupt practices.
1.6 Equality:
One of the main principles of democracy is equality. A state can’t be developed, if its citizens are not treated equally in every aspect of life. Equality could be socialistic or gender-wise. Both, a person on post of governor and a rickshaw puller, should be treated equally by government institutions. There is no difference between them. Governor is carrying his/her responsibilities of serving the people like rickshaw puller, whereas a rickshaw puller is doing his duty by providing mobility to public. The only difference among them is in the salary, since the governor’s responsibilities are to provide his/her services to whole public of state whereas a rickshaw puller serves limited ones. But, they should not be differentiated by their positions and should be treated equally by each and every government agency. There were many incidents reported to the author where influential persons (MLAs, MPs, bureaucrats etc.) were given preference over general public.
One person told a story that while he was waiting in a queue at office of SP to register his complaint, a local MLA suddenly appeared at the scene. All the office staffs of SP’s then were diverted to welcoming the MLA and he was allowed to see the SP out of turn, and thus delayed the turn of other individuals by couple of hours. Generally speaking, an MLA is a lok-sevak, but that MLA didn’t care about the suffering of the loks (public) at that time. It would have been better; if either the MLA would have waited in queue for his turn or SP’s office staff would have not entertained him. This incident shows that there is no equality in UP and a person is being respected based on the position he/she holds. Very Important Person (VIP) word should need to be abolished from the government dictionary. Only the general public has right to be called VIP in a democratic state rather than the government servants. Author’s research shows that persons at high positions (like MLAs, MPs, IAS, IPS etc.) don’t want to change the system in fear of they would loose the respect and authority to rule.
The author remembers one instance when he was working in one of the fifty states of United States of America (USA). There was a function organized in the gymnasium of his daughter’s high school. The gym was packed with teachers, students and their parents/guardians, and there were many people sitting on the floor of the gym due to lack of space. The author was surprised to find that the governor, the head of the state, and his wife were sitting together on the naked floor, just beside him as general persons, and then the author realized the taste of the true democracy in US. The governor’s daughter was one of the participants in the function and his visit was a low profile personal visit in the function. Therefore he didn’t get any better attention than the general public. At the end of the function, the organizers thank the governor for his presence and when he was leaving the place, children rushed to him to get his autograph. We also would like to see UP in that position and author is always dreaming for that. Above example is one aspect of the equality, the other is no differentiation based on caste (last name), religion, rich and poor.
Castiesm is very dangerous to integrity of a state. If the government decides to provide any packages to uplifting of needy, it should be made purely on the basis of economic backwardness rather than the caste. If we don’t resolve the castiesm problem, we may never achieve the equality, the one of the pillars of democracy. Reservations are required to make rich and poor equal, but without referencing the word caste. Government can have the reservation policies to help the poor, and if it is required, it can decide to have the quota of reservations divided into categories based on degree of deprivation/underprivilegement (low, medium and highly underprivileged) of the poor. With that, the highly underprivileged can also be provided with free education till their under-graduation. It’s the government responsibility to make everyone equal to make UP a developed state. This could be done by helping poor using the tool of reservation to up-bring everyone to equal status. If each and every public of UP becomes self sufficient to afford the cost of daily need with able to save for his/her future, ours will automatically become a best state.
Till now we discussed the equality based on the socialistic framework. The next one is equality based on the gender of a person. There should be no differentiation between males and females. The backwardness of the UP is mainly because the major population of women is dependent on men and also the lack of illiteracy among them. Since women in UP are not yet as literate as men, there is need of hour to have women enrichment policies in our state. There should be policy to provide scholarships and free of cost education to all the women to make them capable to complete their under-graduation without fail, irrespective of their castes and creeds. Also, the government should make sure that all the graduated women get a job or unemployment allowances or interest-free loans to start their own businesses. Until a woman is enriched, a state can’t progress and prosper. We have to make our goal to achieve 100% literacy among women as soon as possible to make them sustainable and self-reliant to help transform UP in a best state.
Our research shows that there are inequalities in development of the state of UP region-wise. We find that some regions are underdeveloped and some regions are overdeveloped. This must be avoided to suppress the regionalism and division. Development should be equally distributed and should not be based on partiality. Every citizen of a state is equal and therefore the regions. It is observed that the chief minister’s or influential politicians’ belonging regions are being more developed than the other regions. We should keep in mind that UP is not only limited to home towns of influential politicians, but it contains many other regions too, and politicians should also overcome with the mentality of regionalism. If it would not be taken care of early, there could be misbalances regions-wise which may hurt the sentiments of regional citizens and may arose regional differences. Thus it may finally result into insurgencies and people of underdeveloped region may demand for a separate state, or even a country. To not to meet with such situations, the government should