The most effective way to deliver basic public services such as healthcare and education in far flung areas is to transfer the ownership of state assets to the user community, argues union petroleum secretary Raghaw Sharan Pandey in his new book on how this strategy worked in Nagaland where he was the top bureaucrat some time ago.
?Communitisation: The Third Way Of Governance? describes how absenteeism among government staff declined sharply in schools, hospitals and other public utilities after Nagaland began transferring salaries of teachers, doctors and nurses to elected village committees as per a ?no-work-no-pay? policy. The coming together of the government and the user community is a new way of governance, different from government management and privatisation.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who scripted India?s reforms, was the first to get a copy from Pandey last week in the presence of petroleum minister Murali Deora.
The book notes that through communitisation, ownership of government assets is transferred to the user community, who are empowered with delegated governmental authority. It helped in training the community as well as the employees alongside performance monitoring. ?This generates motivation strong enough to trigger the social capital, latent and dormant so far, to creatively mange and promote institutions and the services,? Pandey stated.
The former Nagaland chief secretary looks at ‘communitisation’ as an innovative response to a major public administration challenge posed by dismal delivery of grass root level government-provided services such as elementary education, primary health care, supply of drinking water and power. It can contribute enormously to improve of grass roots level public utilities, he says. The book, brought out by New Delhi-based Concept Publishing Company, presents a first-hand account of the communitisation programme in these sectors in the state.