SYNOPSIS- IASbaba’s TLP 2017 [3rd April] – Day 55

 ARCHIVES

1.Frame a short citizen charter for the Public Distribution Department of a state along with vision and mission statements.

CITIZEN’S CHARTER

Vision: Ensure Food Security and make Agriculture a sustainable and economically viable vocation with emphasis on small farmers and backward areas.

Mission:

1. To achieve the targeted growth rate of 4.5% in the agriculture sector by enhancing agriculture production and productivity.
2. To evolve and implement various schemes of state and central government for improving the income level and livelihood of small, marginal and women farmers.
3. To devise and implement specific schemes for drought prone areas.
4. To offer quality educational opportunities, promote research, generate appropriate technologies to address the relevant challenges faced by agriculture and allied areas.
5. To improve human resource including all stakeholders to promote sustainable agriculture development.
6. To effectively conserve, develop and promote judicious use of natural resources in a sustainable manner.
7. To ensure proper disaster and risk management in Agriculture including climate resilient agriculture.

Functions:

1. To undertake appropriate land use and protection, conservation measures in order to minimize erosion through watershed approach and simultaneously increase the productivity of the land and income of the farmers.
2. Improve agriculture extension services by adopting new institutional arrangements with the involvement of farmers, NGOs, organizations and agriculture universities.
3. Endeavoring for adequate and timely supply of inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural credit and implements to farmers.
4. Enforcement of various Acts to ensure supply of quality inputs.
5. Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) and Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) to provide relief to farmers in event of crop failure

A good citizen’s charter should contain the following things:

1. type of services provided by the organization.
2. Fees and Surcharge charged for the service.
3. Time limit for the service.
4. Person concerned to approach for the service.
5. Format for request of service.
6. Grievance Redressal authority: name, Designation, address and phone numbers.
7. Fine levied for delay in service and time limit.
8. Appellate authority’s details.

the image given below shows how a Citizen charter must look like.

 No Best Answer.

 2.What is work culture? How does good work culture improve productivity of a workplace? Discuss.

Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave in organizations. These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. Every organization develops and maintains a unique culture, which provides guidelines and boundaries for the behavior of the members of the organization.

The seven characteristics of organizational culture are:

1. Innovation (Risk Orientation) – Companies with cultures that place a high value on innovation encourage their employees to take risks and innovate in the performance of their jobs. Companies with cultures that place a low value on innovation expect their employees to do their jobs the same way that they have been trained to do them, without looking for ways to improve their performance.
2. Attention to Detail (Precision Orientation) – This characteristic of organizational culture dictates the degree to which employees are expected to be accurate in their work. A culture that places a high value on attention to detail expects their employees to perform their work with precision. A culture that places a low value on this characteristic does not.
3. Emphasis on Outcome (Achievement Orientation) – Companies that focus on results, but not on how the results are achieved, place a high emphasis on this value of organizational culture. A company that instructs its sales force to do whatever it takes to get sales orders has a culture that places a high value on the emphasis on outcome characteristic.
4. Emphasis on People (Fairness Orientation) – Companies that place a high value on this characteristic of organizational culture place a great deal of importance on how their decisions will affect the people in their organizations. For these companies, it is important to treat their employees with respect and dignity.
5. Teamwork (Collaboration Orientation) – Companies that organize work activities around teams instead of individuals place a high value on this characteristic of organizational culture. People who work for these types of companies tend to have a positive relationship with their coworkers and managers.
6. Aggressiveness (Competitive Orientation) – This characteristic of organizational culture dictates whether group members are expected to be assertive or easygoing when dealing with companies they compete with in the marketplace. Companies with an aggressive culture place a high value on competitiveness and outperforming the competition at all costs.
7. Stability (Rule Orientation) – A company whose culture places a high value on stability are rule-oriented, predictable, and bureaucratic in nature. These types of companies typically provide consistent and predictable levels of output and operate best in non-changing market conditions.

The permutations and combinations of these characteristics gives a unique culture to an organization.

A good work culture is required for following reasons:

• Fixed norms bring a uniformity in the working style of people and it is explicitly clear what an organization expects from its workers.
• It gives a sense of belonging to the workers and they don’t take work as a burden.
• A healthy work culture helps workers to maintain a balance between their personal and professional life.
• Retention of workers becomes high in the organization.
• It creates positivity around workers and their efficiency increases.
• A good work culture brings the best out of an employ.

(More points can be added to this.)

Best Answer: abhishekrwt597

Work culture refers to the intangible aspects of an organisation. It includes inter-alia factors like the organisations core beliefs and principles, the environment at the workplace, beliefs and attitudes of the employees and the leaders, the leadership styles employed,etc.
Work culture has a direct relationship on the productivity of the workplace as:

1)By emphasising on the organisational beliefs and principles, it seeks to influence employees and align them with it. Thus:

1. a) Service delivery centric administration can get the best out of bureaucrats.
   b)Can help eliminate employee apathy and increase productivity.

2) Reduces intra-organisational stress and conflicts, fosters cooperation, team building and productive competition. By doing so:

1)Budgetary overshoots are prevented.

2)Deadlines are respected.

3)Organisational efficiency(And thus productivity improves)

3) Prevents a dictatorial approach to decision making. Employees are involved in the decision making process(PARTICIPATIVE DECISION MAKING IN LEADERSHIP). this leads to :
a)Lower employee turnover

b)Greater loyalty and increased employee input

c)Increased productivity

4)Provides certainity and clarity about what the organisation aims for. This is vital in increasing dynamism in the external environment, and helps employs deal with uncertainty better.(Uncertainiity=demotivation=lower productivity)

Organisational culture is being increasingly emphasised by the current govt through its various initiatives like:

1)Emphasis on a SMART police.

2)Top level messaging on the emphasis of citizen centricity in administration.

3)The tough stance and action on graft and corruption

4)Increased accountability(PMES,etc) along with removal of non performing employees(recent compulsory retirement of some bureaucrats)

Thus, Work culture plays a key part in increasing organisational productivity.

3.Service delivery is not an end itself. It must result into measurable outcomes. Discuss in light of the public service delivery mechanism in India.

Delivery of various public goods and services is one basic responsibility of the State. Though with expansion of the market many services are available in the private sector but some of the core services will continue to be delivered by the State only, because of nature of such services.

The State has a very important role to play in making available some essential public goods and services (henceforth to be called services only), which ensures certain minimum level of wellbeing to everyone in need of those. Financial and other resources under command of the State are always limited and, therefore, the services are to be delivered efficiently and effectively to ensure desired level of wellbeing to all the citizen and within as  short time as possible.

Generally, the focus is what the delivery system perceives what has been delivered and not what the citizen receives in meeting their needs. Assessing that requires change in mind set in developing citizen-centric way of looking at things and to see the success through them and in terms of outcome leading to better wellbeing of the citizen.

The bureaucracy has failed in transforming itself by developing right attitude and responsiveness towards the citizen and in perceiving that they have obligation in reaching various public services to the citizen as their right.

State interventions in transforming the society have, therefore, not achieved desired results when seen from the point of view of the outcome for the citizen.

Delivery of services to the poor needs special mention because of their dependency on public services for survival and coming out of the vicious cycle of poverty and poor human development. Quality of delivery of such services is adversely affected by the low level of awareness of the service recipients, particularly their inability to assess the quality of service delivered in absence of knowledge about what is their entitlement and there is lack of empowerment to articulate their grievances.

Delivery of services continues to fail in such cases because of poor responsiveness of the service providers, who have been conditioned in the current bureaucratic environment of controlling and patronizing various welfare measures for the poor. Also, the institutional mechanism is such that they can continue to ignore the grievances of the poor. Experiences from other developing countries also show that service delivery to the poor normally fails leading to substantially worse outcome for the poor. Thus they continue to gain the least from economic development programme, have poor educational attainment and  health outcome (in spite of having programme for universal coverage for health and education) because of services failing to reach them as well as other determinants of service outcome which affect them badly. Services may not reach the poor due to difficulty in accessing services including their failure to bear the implied cost, even for receiving free services.

In order to improve this, a service model was proposed by World Development Report 2004. It has five features namely, delegation, finance, performance, information about performance and enforceability.

The report also identifies four broad roles by different actors in the chain of service delivery, which are:

• Citizens/clients – Anyone who receives service such as patients, students, ration card holder pensioners, traders etc;
• Politicians/policymakers – Political executives like ministers, elected office bearers of local bodies etc;
• Organizational providers – Civil servants at the management level who have authority and command on the frontline service providers; and
• Frontline professionals – The service providers who remain engaged in actual delivery of services like Block Development Officer, doctor, nurse, police officer, teacher, Inspector of Food, ICDS worker etc.

The accountability of these four actors in the PD system can ensure measurable results once the service is delivered.

Go through the following link to understand the PD System in India in Detail.

http://atiwb.gov.in/index_htm_files/Delivery%20of%20Public%20Services.pdf

Best Answer: No best Answer for this

4. What is your opinion on the recent controversies surrounding Goa and Manipur Governments? Discuss.

Goa and Manipur contravercy revolves around the recent appointment of Chief ministers in both the states by the governor. Where even after a majority share or being single largest party,the Chief minister was appointed from other party.

Article 164(1) of the constitution states that “The chief Minister shall be appointed by the Governor and the other Ministers shall be appointed by the Governor on the advice of the Chief Minister, and the Ministers shall hold office during the pleasure of the Governor:”

Those in favor of the appointment

1. The constitution vests this power in the governor and this should be respected by everyone.
2. By this power of appointment the Governor uses his discretion keeping peoples welfare in sight.

Those opposed to appointment

1. When one party enjoys majority and is supported by a larger share of voters, appointing individual from other party amounts to disrespecting democracy and peoples mandate.
2. This takes away the trust and faith of people in governance institution.
3. According to past precedence it is the prerogative of single largest party to get invited by the governor for the formation of government.

The issue in Manipur and Goa also highlights the dominance of political party an the centre using power equations to create its own government at state level.This also neglects the minority voice which are in significant numbers  in these two states.

The foundation of Indian democracy in based on respect for peoples mandate and respect of democratic principles instead of a power tussle between legislators.It is the responsibility of constitutional functionaries to abide by the democratic ideals and abstain from setting a bad precedence for future government formation.

Best answer: Axi Tak

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https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b370ec8b31d68b12984f842a7c78ed26108874451361003ce557524d64d39708.jpg

5. Many steps have been taken by the government to regulate the funding of political parties and bring transparency. Are these provisions adequate? Examine.

Election financing in India comprises funding received by political parties and expenditure incurred by the candidates during elections, these are regulated by multiple laws such as Representation of Peoples Act , Income Tax act , FCRA etc. Despite having multiple regulatory mechanisms lack of transparency in the whole process is resulting in corruption and black money.
.
Problems in election financing –
1.Lack of Transparency – Various reports showed that majority of funds received by parties are declared as by anonymous donors and many parties do not file income tax declarations on time.
2.Corporate Funding – Despite having tax exemptions, many corporates does not reveal their contributions to secure their relationship with other parties.
3.Foreign Contributions- Recent amendment to FCRA allows political parties to receive contributions from foreign companies, there by leaving a scope of external influences.
4.Expenditure – While their are restrictions on the amount that can be spent by a candidate, allowing other party men/relatives of the candidates to spend without restrictions is resulting in ‘money politics’

Govt. has announced certain reforms to bring transparency in funding to political parties-

• The maximum amount of cash donation that a political party can receive will be 2000/- from one person.
  • Political parties will be entitled to receive donations by cheque or digital mode from their donors.
  • Proposal for the issuance of electoral bonds
  • Every political party would have to file its return within the time prescribed in accordance with the provision of the Income-tax Act

Although these measures will help to root out the problem of financing of Political Parties using black money and money power in elections will decrease significantly but, these measures are not adequate as –

1. These measures does not disrupt the flow of illicit political donations but only channels it differently.
   2. Electoral bonds have never been used anywhere before. Further, the need for donor anonymity inbuilt in them is debatable.
2. In the absence of extreme penal provisions , compliance of political parties to file returns within a time limit is likely to be low.
3. The current measures dont go far enough. Reduction in limit to 2000 only increases the no ofanonymous donors that a party has to seek.

5.) The EC limit of 70 lac and 28 lac per candidate for LS and Leg Assembly elections are extremely low and need to be changed.

6. Further, exemptions provided such as relaxation of expenditure for star campaigners, ,restricting freeby distribution but only after the MCC comes into force,etc increase money power in elections.
7. Exemption from paying IT to registered political parties, along with their refusal to come under the RTI also reduce transparency.
8. Little movement on state funding of elections, despite partial indirect funding(in the form of govt allocation, radio and tv time,etc)
9. Ban on lobbying pushes the politician-industrialist nexus underground, allows the entry of black money into funding, and reduces pol accountability.

Conclusion:

Write a suitable conclusion citing further reforms like making every donations public as done in US,Political parties under the ambit of RTI,State funding of elections as recommended by Dinesh Goswami committee etc.

Best answer: Navneet Khubber

Govt. has announced certain reforms to bring transparency in funding to political parties-

• The maximum amount of cash donation that a political party can receive will be 2000/- from one person.
  • Political parties will be entitled to receive donations by cheque or digital mode from their donors.
  • Proposal for the issuance of electoral bonds
  • Every political party would have to file its return within the time prescribed in accordance with the provision of the Income-tax Act.

Although these measures will help to root out the problem of financing of Political Parties using black money and money power in elections will decrease significantly but, these measures are not adequate as –

• These measures does not disrupt the flow of illicit political donations but only channels it differently.
  • Electoral bonds provide a mechanism of anonymity for its buyers.
  • The political parties would now have to do is to find more people to lend their names to these donations, hence transparency would still be compromised in funding.
  • In the absence of extreme penal provisions , compliance of political parties to file returns within a time limit is likely to be low.

Way forward

• donations should be made public as done in US
  • Political parties should be brought under the ambit of RTI as followed in countries like Bhutan
  • State funding of elections should be considered as recommended by Dinesh Goswami committee (1990)