(Sample Material) Gist of Important Articles from IIPA Journal
Topic: Citizen’s Charter - An Instrument of Public Accountability: Problems and Prospects in India R.B. Jain
Strategy of Introducing Citizen’s Charter in U.K.
Until the decades on 1980s, growing state activity, increasing complexity of administration, consequential explosion of points of contact between the State and the citizen has made control of maladministration and administrative injustice an impossible task for both an over burdened court system and elected representative injustice an impossible task for both an over burdened court system and elected representative. Even introduction of the idea of a system of Ombudsman has failed to secure a modicum of public accountability, which would ensure prompt, qualitative, and cost-effective services to the citizens.
Three Reform Steps Preceding the Charter
Since the time of Margaret Thatcher as the Prime Minister in 1970s, the government of Britain has introduced the idea of rolling back the frontiers of State as a means of reducing unnecessary burden of State in the name of ‘welfarism’. By early 1980s, the government was seeking ways of improving quality of public services without adding to their costs. A series of major reforms were instigated, aimed at injecting greater economy, efficiency and effectiveness into the public services. These were Efficiency Scrutiniser (introducted in 1979), the Financial Management Initiative (FMI in 1982), and the Next Steps Programme (NSP in 1988), which provided the foundation from which the citizen’s charter was launched. In order to raise standard of public services by making them more responsive to the wishes and needs of the users, Prime Minister John Major launched the strategy of the Citizen’s Charter in June 1991.