Time to Invoke the Power of Acknowledgement

By Prof. Bejon Kumar Misra, International Consumer Policy Expert,

New Delhi, INDIA. [email protected]

What happens when you come across some glaring irregularities in a deal of the Public Works Department with a contractor for repairing the roads in your area? As a conscientious citizen, you consider it your duty to bring the wrongdoing to the notice of the concerned authorities. You are totally charged up about blowing the lid off the ongoing corruption right under the nose of the government. You decide to take the methodical route and first consult the Citizen’s Charter to reconfirm the established standards of service and the system of redressal for grievances. While not much information is available on the public forum, you still find a way to make a representation to the concerned agency and request them to initiate the necessary action.

A deep satisfaction envelopes you as you have done your duty and wait for justice to take its course. Alas, the wait keeps getting longer and longer. Let alone taking action, you don’t even hear anything from the agency!

Fed up with the silence and inaction, you try to get a handle on the proceedings by calling upon your Right to Information! But shocked puzzlement is waiting around the corner when you file an RTI application with the Public Information Officer (PIO) about the status of your representation. The authorities categorically deny receiving any such submission at their end!

So, where is your representation? Is it caged in one of the chunky bureaucratic files spilling over from the office desks never to see the light of day? Is the officer-in-charge deliberately disclaiming your application in a bid to hide the dodgy game that is at play? Or is it just an attempt to buy time to verify the facts of the case? Fed up with the shenanigans, you have no choice but to let the matter go. Yet, it continues to rankle that the unscrupulous players were not taken to task for their transgressions!

Contrast this with another scenario – what if you had received an acknowledgment when you filed the initial representation with the department? Rather than running from pillar to post just to prove that you have made the representation, you can easily quote the reference number in your RTI application to jog the authorities’ memory about the previous communication. This will open up a streamlined process wherein your complaint would be easily accessed and you will be apprised of the proceedings per se. Ideally, you will receive an acknowledgment for your RTI application too!

What does this mean?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines an acknowledgment as accepting or admitting the existence of an act or fact. It forms the basic fabric of the chain of communication. Conceding this recognition with a declaration indicates receipt and affords validity to the occurrence. In our context, it will directly signify that the communication has been received by the authorities!

This can turn into a powerful weapon as the affirmation will validate the actions taken by the common man to bring the squeaky wheels of governance to light even as it generates faith and confidence in the authorities. After all, once an acknowledgment is issued, the bureaucrats will become accountable to the public; they are well aware that they can be pulled up for any inaction. There is no scope for sleeping on any communication received from the citizens!

The acknowledgment will also work as a ready reference in the hands of the citizens to easily call upon their previous contact with the government. All they have to do is quote the acknowledgment number to remind the authorities whenever needed. The applicant should also be able to use this registration number to check the status of his grievance either over the phone or on the concerned website.

This notion of accountability will promote transparency and efficiency in governance. It will also control the systemic failures faced by successive governments due to poor processes in service delivery – a mainstay of the Citizen’s Charter so to speak!

Putting it into practice

Issuing an acknowledgment for any and every kind of communication received from the public should be made mandatory. This is actually a constitutional obligation of the government and there is a pressing need to make it legally enforceable.

What is happening to date is that when a common man submits a letter, application, complaint, petition, or representation to a government department, the authorities fail to issue a due acknowledgment of the same. At times, the acknowledgment is refused even after a direct request from the citizen. This allows them the leeway to dodge the responsibility by saying that they did not even get the application in the first place. The applicant has to resort to the RTI to find out the status of his representation, but this only elongates the process for no reason. With no remedy or relief in sight, he may even file a case for redressal, but it will only stay pending in the court for years to come. There is no proof of the application or complaint anywhere at all.

Indeed, the right to acknowledgment forms a part of the basic fundamental rights of the citizens in keeping with the democratic principles enshrined in our Constitution. It is high time the policymakers wake up to the importance of issuing acknowledgments. We are making an appeal to the Central Government to make acknowledgment a mandatory rule either through legislative changes in the existing Right to Information Act, 2005 or consider bringing in a separate new law for the same.

Accordingly, the PIO or assistant PIO officers in every government department will be required to issue an acknowledgment for every application, representation, or grievance that crosses their desk. A Citizen’s Service Center can also be constituted that will serve as a sorting center to issue on-the-spot acknowledgments to citizens’ applications irrespective of whether they are submitted in person or by post, courier, or email.

This acknowledgment should always be issued on the same day itself and include salient information like the date of the application, the receiving officer’s name and position, and a tentative timeline (15 to 30 days later) by when the applicant can expect a response. It should be duly signed and stamped and include a unique registration number. This can be given to the petitioner in person or sent by SMS, email or post.

There is no need for additional personnel that will weigh down the exchequer either. The existing staff is largely underutilized and can easily handle this workload once their duties are better organized and streamlined.

Another point to note - Giving an acknowledgment should be obligatory irrespective of the merits or demerits of the petition. In other words, always issue an acknowledgment no matter how impertinent, untenable, vested or absurd the contention! The contents of the application or claim can always be clarified later, what is important is that the person should have the corroboration that his request has been received, will get due consideration and an appropriate response will be forthcoming in a stipulated time.

Adherence to this rule should be made mandatory and any non-compliance can cause the officer-in-charge to be penalized, lose the job or even face criminal proceedings. Once the authorities realize that they will be prosecuted, a sense of responsibility and efficiency will seep into the proceedings. Being answerable to the public will promote the much-needed culture of timely relief and redressal as well.

Dawn of a novel era

Supposing a whistleblower risks life and limb to disclose highly confidential information about unethical, illegal, or corrupt goings-on in a company, political circles, or even a government department only to have the officials sit on it quietly. Where is the provision to protect him and ensure that his surreptitious efforts to reveal the truth bear fruit? Isn’t he entitled to an official acknowledgment that will shield him even as it bears testimony to his clandestine revelations?

Enforcing the right to acknowledgment will go a long way in effectuating the Right to Information Act on the one hand and strengthening the Citizen’s Charter for efficient delivery of public services on the other. It will serve as an effective mechanism to plug the loopholes in these otherwise path-breaking and noteworthy legislations.

Indeed, the Citizen’s Charter is supposed to be a pioneering move for promoting transparency and accountability. The government departments and ministries are expected to disclose their mandate, standards of service, accessibility, grievance redressal, and other parameters on a voluntary basis. But in terms of on-the-ground performance, these principles of service delivery are not implemented in an acceptable manner. For instance, the recently drafted Taxpayers’ Charter merely pays lip service to the government’s commitment to the taxpayers while ignoring the key concerns nagging the public. But how can we be assured that the issues we raise will be addressed or even acknowledged?

The ground-breaking RTI Act, 2005 empowers the common man with the freedom to question the local, state, or central government, extract information from the public authorities, and examine any mechanism that they find even the slightest bit flawed, unfair, or corrupt. However, the primarily indifferent and laidback attitude of our civil servants does a great service to the ethos of the Act. They often refuse to share the requested information, let alone issue a formal acknowledgment for the request!

In fact, the RTI form does feature an acknowledgment section at the end which should be duly signed, stamped, and returned to the applicant. However, this practice is seldom, if ever, followed by the inertia-prone babus. This ingrained culture vitiates the otherwise bold concepts of the Citizen’s Charter and RTI as there is no sense of accountability to the public.

The irony is that our legislators themselves keep questioning the government over the lack of timely acknowledgment and replies to their letters. In January 2017, some Members of Parliament submitted an official complaint to the Prime Minister’s Office regarding the delayed response from central government departments. In fact, as per the established guidelines, any communication received from the MPs should be acknowledged within a span of 15 days…..

If this is the fate of our elected representatives, what can the common man even expect? Why is a simple confirmation so taxing for the bureaucrats? Is there an overriding fear that the practice of acknowledgments will cut away at the efficiency of the government departments?

On the contrary, acknowledgment is a global best practice that is primed to inculcate responsiveness, enhance performance, and will surely lead to positive results. The proof is in the pudding after all! Let us make acknowledge the heart and soul of the RTI Act.

At this juncture, I would like to highlight that our honorable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has already adopted the spirit of the right to acknowledgment digitally on his online www.pmindia.gov.in portal!

Why can’t we extend this kind of acknowledgment at all department, district, state, and central levels of the government?