Events & Issues

New Delhi, 6 January 2014  

Mohalla Sabhas

AID TO SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

By Dr S Saraswathi

(Former Director, ICSSR, New Delhi)

Arvind Kejrival’s experiment of an open government is refreshing, but certainly not entirely unusual. All over the world, experiments in reforms of public administration are going on with new strategic management ideas. Public administration that is more visible, more understandable, and more accountable is required everywhere. And, this is what the Aam Aadmi government’s venture in instituting a mechanism of ‘Mohalla sabhas’ (residents’ general body) endevours to achieve—a means to an end.    

In “Re-inventing Government”, Osborne and Gaebler have given certain principles in the early 1990s to reform the system of governance that was gradually becoming undemocratic and unresponsive. One of these principles refers to government as “community owned” and sets out its role as to empower citizens and communities to exercise “self-governance”. Another principle propounded by these authors is to maximize participation of people and institutions in decision-making process. Local community can decide the way a public service should be delivered.

The World Bank in its project on “Voices of the Poor” collected the perspectives of the poor by using participatory methods. People raise their voice through several means – petitions, demonstrations, protests, lobbying and so on – means that are in existence for centuries in India. 

The AAP government has, as stated, planned to set up 2700 Mohalla Sabhas in Delhi as centres of decision-making bodies. Each sabha will have officials from various government departments to deal with the problems presented to the sabhas by the people.  The object is to bring the government closer to the people and ensure responsive, accountable and transparent model of decision-making.

The plan seems to be to provide for 10 Mohalla Sabhas per ward covering roughly on an average 5,000 people. Demarcation of boundaries will not be mechanically done. It will take into account common factors and requirements of the residents so that each Mohalla can be treated as one unit.  

The plan is obviously in keeping with AAP’s promise of instituting a mechanism for open decision-making to replace the present closed door system where decisions are taken in camera and the process guarded by official secrecy.  

The mechanism has revived historic memories of Greek city-States and “republics” of ancient India and their “sanghas” and “ganas” (communities). Though different the aim is the same. Athenian democracy was “direct democracy”. Decisions were taken in the assembly of people and officials were also selected by lot – a device that ensures absolute equality. Indian republics could not have ensured equality because of varna-jati (colour and caste) barriers.

Delhi’s Mohalla Sabhas are open to all residents where they can bring their grievances and demands. Grievances will be dealt with by officials and demands discussed and decided by the residents of the mohalla. Therefore, AAP is going a step further by trying to create a regular mechanism for people-officials/authority contact to facilitate direct exchange of views in law making and implementation. It will be a forum where common people can give their ideas and concerned authorities will hear them. Its legality and authority, however, are to be clarified. For, it cannot supersede or supplant existing constitutional mechanisms.

The relationship between people and the government in many parts of the world, including countries with democratic governments is going through a period of mutual distrust. Disillusionment in India is due to a variety of reasons – all round corruption and lack of responsiveness to the “aam admi” in general on the part of government. 

Representative system of government is becoming more and more a rule by the “elite”, a tiny minority of the powerful and high technocrats with political influence. Careerism in politics, growth of political families, pervasive politicization of institutions and systems has colluded to make politics a big business in the hands of a few. 

Globalization has widened the gap between government and people, i.e. between high level decision-making process and low level decision-affected body politic. The governing mechanism and the governed feel separated despite tremendous advances in information dissemination and communication techniques. Presently, governments in many developing countries are experiencing this problem of reconciling the economic compulsion to accept the dictates of globalization, and the democratic duty to respond to the situation of local people.

Mohalla Sabhas will have to face many challenges. Indeed, any mechanism for direct assessment of people’s ideas is likely to fall in a trap. Apart from knowledge and understanding of serious problems, the participants are required to think of common good overriding individual preferences. There are many issues in which there may not be any unanimous thinking of all residents even within a small area. Issues may also overlap mohalla borders requiring people with broader outlook to handle these. Decision by majority will promote the politics of groupism already present in Indian politics.

The sabhas, therefore, can be little more than a forum for personal presentation of demands and ventilation of grievances. Some State governments such as Tamil Nadu started Mass Contact Programmes and Grievance Redressal machinery in the 1960s but with limited results.  

True, there is a growing demand for accountability, transparency, and responsiveness from government. Decentralization of decision and policy-making is indispensable as “development” is for the people. We witness today simultaneous growth of globalization meaning global decisions, and localization of actions. The Mohalla Sabha has to be thus viewed in this context as a relevant experiment and not a remedy for all ills from corruption to price rise.

The experiment must go along with other tested concepts of social accountability in other countries. These include participatory budgeting at local levels favoured by many international agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, Public Expenditure Tracking to find out the real cost of various services, Citizen Report Card system to evaluate performance of service providers.

The concept of social audit is accepted in many Asian countries to ensure transparency and accountability and to obtain feed back on government programmes. In India too, Kerala has made some progress in using this system.

The adoption of the Right to Information Act has been instrumental in breaking the veil of secrecy in public administration.  Judicious use of this can promote people’s awareness of what is happening and create an urge to promote participation.

There is, therefore, no point in either eulogizing or criticizing the Mohalla Sabha concept.  It has a limited role and cannot take the responsibility for the decisions to be taken by the government. Nor can it function like a parallel legislative Assembly. Its value lies in its educative role and it could be welcomed as such. ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)