Enhancing Accountability and Responsiveness in Public Utilities: Exploring the Potency of Public Feedback

Public services in India, despite huge investments over the years, are widely perceived to be unsatisfactory and deteriorating. Though a wide spectrum of factors could be forwarded to explain this condition - lack of resources, incompetent bureaucracy, irresponsible political parties and an inactive citizenry, to name a few - a major reason seems to be the issue of state monopoly in the provision of these services. Users of critical services like water, electricity and housing have to exclusively rely on the state for provision and maintenance of these services. On the operational front, this 'monopoly power' perpetuates and sustains a cycle of low accountability, low responsiveness and poor delivery of civic services. In such a disabling environment, 'voice' of the users becomes the only available mechanism to inform, influence and impact. This article illustrates the potency of such a mechanism - Report Cards on Public Services. Experiences with Report Cards confirm the value and potency of public feedback mechanisms both to enable citizens to signal service providers about their performance and to stimulate the latter to respond to these signals. A unique feature of the Report Card is the way in which it focuses attention on corruption, a phenomenon that has always been difficult to pinpoint and quantify. Getting the givers of bribes to identify the agencies involved achieves a measure of specificity and credibility. Again, comparison between agencies, locations, etc., attracts public attention and reflects the harsh glare of public scrutiny on the agencies. The Report Card also gives organized citizen groups the kind of information they need to seek reform in specific agen cies and to demand greater public accountability and responsiveness.