REASONS FOR THE

GROWTH OF PUBLIC
GRIEVANCES
INTRODUCTION
 Corruption has always loomed large within the ambit of citizens
grievances against the executive organs of government .
 In its widest connotation, corruption includes improper or

selfish exercise of power and influence attached to a public

office or the special position one occupies in public lie.
 But besides corruption, indifference, incompetence and

insensitiveness on the part of public servants can and do

frequently of citizens can be of two types, general grievances
and individual grievances.
 General grievances are against the government, its acts and

policies and may common to all or any section of the

community.
 Shortage of food, rise in prices, over-crowding in transport
 services, late running of trains are instances of such grievances

which do exist and find expression in widespread disturbances

that occur from time to time.
 LACK OF FACILTIES
 India is a welfare state and it is the responsibility of the
government to provide basic necessities to the people. But the
people of India are unable to get the benefit of them.
 When it comes to providing basic facilities education,
healthcare and infrastructure sector could be regarded as the
key areas.
 It is interesting to note that the number of public grievances
received by the government have crossed 14 lakh 2017, up
from about 12 lakh in 2016 and 8.8 lakh in 2015.
 The figure of 2017 was a seven-fold jump over about two
lakh grievances received in 2013 and 2014 when Congress-
led UPA was in power.
 The Quality Council of India (QCI), on the government’s
insistence, has done a study on the top 40 government
departments receiving maximum public grievances for
identifying the root causes for the same and suggested
systematic changes to reduce the number of complaints.
 Healthcare
 The health sector of the country could be divided in to two
broad categories: public and the private.
 The Indian Constitution makes the provision of healthcare
in India the responsibility of the state governments, rather
than the central federal government.
 It makes every state responsible for "raising the level
of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and
the improvement of public health as among its primary
duties
 India has only 10 lakh registered doctors to cater to 1.3
billion citizens.
 As per the MCI claims, half of the doctors in the country
are quacks( unregistered doctors who don’t hold a degree
in allopathy).
 While urban areas have 58% qualified doctors, in rural
areas the number is as low as 18.8%.
 India continues to spend about 1.2% of its GDP on health
sector far less than some of the poorest countries of the
world. We are ahead of only a few countries like Myanmar,
Pakistan, Sudan and Cambodia. At present, Government
spending on the healthcare industry stands at 1.15% of
the Gross Domestic
 However, the availability of public health care services is
abysmal.
 There is only one government allopathic doctor per
10,189 people, only one government hospital bed per
2046 people, and one state-run hospital per 90,343
people.
 Out of 1 million doctors in the country, only 10% of them
work in the public health sector(according to National
Health Profile).
 They lack good infrastructure, proper management,
dedicated staff and many other things which are required
to provide reasonable and appropriate healthcare.
In 2014, 38.2% of India’s population was below the
poverty. These people depend on government
hospitals for their treatment.
 Many times they go to hospitals with one disease

and come back infected with some other illness

due to improper sanitation and inadequate quality
of care provided by the staff.
 In 2017, around 300 infants died in Gorakhpur

Baba Raghav Das Medical College due to poor

management and a shortage of oxygen supply. But
there is little to no evidence to suggest that the
government has learnt from its previous mistakes.
 India spends only 1-2% of it it GDP on healthcare.

With the investment on private healthcare the

overall spending stands at 4.5%.
 Last year, Fortis Hospital in Gurugram billed a
dengue patient around Rs.16 lakh for 15 days
treatment in its intensive care unit.Despite that
they could not save that patient.
 Despite having new technology and well-trained

doctors, there have been many cases of medical

negligence in private hospitals.
 Max Hospital in Shalimar declared baby died when

he was alive.
 Education
 With the mushrooming of international and private
schools, it may seem that the education system of
India is healthy.
 In reality, only 29% of children are sent to the private
schools, while the remaining head for government or
state funded education.
 Article 21-A, (Eighty-sixth Amendment Act, 2002) of
Indian constitution states free and compulsory
education for children between six to fourteen years of
age as a fundamental right.
 In 2009, the consequential legislation of Article 21
was represented as The Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education (RTE) Act that states right to
full time healthy elementary education in a formal
school with certain rules and regulations, for all
children
 Lack of monetary funding 
 Though the RTE Act came out in 2009, three
consecutive budgets of 2013, 2015 and 2017 did not
allocate enough budget for implementation of the act. In
budget 2017, increase of Rs. 1305 crores for the
National Education Mission and Rs 300 crores in mid-
day meals was definitely insufficient for a significant
change.
 Though the Kothari Education Commission (1964-1966)
recommended 6% of GDP to be used in the government
education but at present only 4.6% of it is used.
  Lack of academic resources 
 As fund is limited, so there is crunch in availability of
academic resources in case of government schools.
Minimal requirements like blackboards, books,
stationery, desks are not available when compared to
the roll strength in each school
  During inspections, the school authorities arrange the
resources for short time span and the rest of the year
the scenario remains pathetic for government school
students.
 Even infrastructurally, electricity, toilet and so on are

at a very poor state within the premises of government

Indian government schools.
  Lack of teachers/trainers
  One of the constant deprivations that the government

schools struggle with is unavailability of teachers and

trainers.
 Lack of fund leads to compromise on tutorial abilities

of teachers. Some schools have one teacher training all

subjects for all classes.
 This is one of the real challenges that Indian

government schools face, yet no trivial action is called

for change the situation.
 Over admission than usual roll strength 
 Most government students take in students

without any admission test.

 They admit students as they come in and request

for education, overburdening the student class

ratio.
 This over populates the government schools of

India, resulting in adverse academic situation. As

mentioned earlier, mass students are taught by
relatively less number of teachers which is another
step where Indian government schools really need
to change. 
 INFRASTRUCTURE
 Indian is the second most populated country in the

world and over the next few years the population

growth rate is expected to be 1.6%.
 The growth rate of Indian real estate has been at

par with the growth in population, but still a house

remains a dream for about 78 million
 India being a fast developing country will have to

spend trillions of rupees for modernization and

expansion of water, electricity and transportation
systems in order to achieve a developed nation’s
crown.
 In India only 31% of the total population uses

improved sanitation and 88% of the total

population has access to drinking water.
 Previously the projects were carried out by the
government and no proper viability of the projects was
checked.
 Enron’s Dabhol Power plant failure (2001) is one such
example of the ignorance of the state government in
infrastructure project. Dabhol Power Station is located
near Anjanwel village in Ratnagiri
district in Maharashtra, India, about 160 kilometres
(99 mi) south of Mumbai. The power station was a built
by the Dabhol Power Company (DPC), which was a joint
venture of Enron, General Electric, Bechtel and
Maharashtra Power Development Corporation. At the start
of its construction in 1992, the Dabhol power station
project was, at $3 billion, the biggest foreign investment
in India. The plant was mired in controversies of
corruption and malpractices involving Enron and people
at the highest political levels of the Indian and the United
States (Clinton and Bush Administration) governments.
 India lacks regulatory framework for infrastructure.
Several projects overrun cost and time because of
the state or central government policies like land
acquisition, environment clearances, finance
approvals etc.

 The list of weaknesses would continuously go on.

It is very clear that in the end it is the public who
has to face the consequences of the cash crunch or
non- availability in the public sector.
 All these causes in turn increases the public

discontent which in turn takes the face of

grievance
 Unwarranted Delays
 Completing projects on time is an indicator of
efficiency, but the public works is subject to many
variables and unpredictable factors, which result from
many sources.
 These sources include the performance of parties,
resources availability, environmental conditions,
involvement of other parties, and contractual relations
 However, it is rarely happen that a project is
completed within the specified time.
 The recently completed Bandra-Worli sea link amply
demonstrates the state of project delivery system in
the country.
 What was planned as a Rs 300 crore project to be
completed by 2004 has actually cost Rs 1,600 crore
along with a delay of five years.
 Indeed, very few projects get delivered in time and on
cost. The quarterly reports of the Ministry of Statistics
and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) stand
testimony to a saga of unfettered delays and cost
overruns, which have become the hallmark of
development projects in India.
 Yet, the extent and causes behind these time and cost
overruns remain understudied
 Delays and cost overruns have significant implications
from an economic as well as political point of view.
 Due to delays in project implementation, people have
to wait for the provision of public goods and services
longer than is necessary.
 Services provided by infrastructure projects serve as
input for other sectors, and cost overruns in these
projects lead to an increase in the capital-output ratio
for the entire economy.
 Simply put, delays and cost overruns reduce the
efficiency of available economic resources, limit
the growth potential and reduce the
competitiveness of the economy.
 Moreover, at least as of now, most infrastructure

projects in India are funded by taxpayers’ money.

Therefore, taxpayers have the right to know how
efficiently their money is being utilised by the
officials while providing for public goods and
services.
 Indeed, inadequacy of research on the subject is

somewhat surprising and reflects a gross neglect

of an important public policy subject.
 Delays and cost overruns are generic to

infrastructure projects and a global phenomenon;

India is not an exception
 The government machinery is perceived to be incapable of
procuring and maintaining infrastructure facilities efficiently.
 Privatisation in the form of public private partnerships (PPPs), in

contrast, is believed to be capable of avoiding delays and cost

overruns
 In the beginning of the development phase, the project

sponsoring department prepares estimates of time and cost

(funds) needed to complete the project.
 An expected date of completion is also announced. The actual

date of completion is invariably different from the expected date.

 As has been mentioned before, during the development phase,

the project sponsoring department prepares the estimates of

project works as well as of the time and the cost (funds) needed
to complete the project works.
 These estimates are approved by the appropriate authority in the

department
 Therefore, whether a project can be delivered in time and on cost

depends on how well the activities and efforts of the departments

involved and the individuals concerned are coordinated
 Due to poor cost management these days, the
construction industry is facing a huge amount of
cost overrun.
 This has become quite a problem for the

construction industry. Poor cost management and

overrun are the huge problem and very serious
issue when they come to project cost in both
developed and emerging countries.
 This is an issue which needs attention, because

projects are rarely being finished within budget

 The results indicated that delay in decision making

is the second severest cause related to

government. Slowness of government in making
decisions may hold back some of project activities
 When the project is subjected to delay, it will exceed
the specified period which means waste of time that
may be used in other profit making projects.
 As well as that, delay causes cost overrun because
time is money. The government will pay more for
overhead, labours and machinery. On the other
hand, government’s money will be tied up with this
delayed project.
 Moreover, closing main roads for development and
construction will disrupt traffic movement and will
create problems for the daily commuters
 Additionally, roads provide links that connect the
road users to other areas that may include
recreational and investment projects.
 So delay in development projects may lead to delay
in these investment projects that depend on them.
 Harassment and activities of middlemen
 Whenever the middlemen comes the two sectors

which are comes in to our minds is the agriculture .

 The rising cost of food that has hurt both Indian

pockets and politicians' electoral prospects in the

past year is often blamed on a multi-layered
system of middlemen involved in the distribution
of produce from farm to fork.
 Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, was so

worried about the ballooning prices that he asked

all states where his party is in power to remove
fruits and vegetables from the grip of the
middlemen-dominated agriculture produce
marketing committees by Jan. 15.
 Introduced in the 1960s, these legally-enshrined
committees prohibit farmers from dealing directly
with buyers and require them to sell to licensed
middlemen. The aim was to give India’s huge
farming community a fair and consistent price for
their produce.
 But over the years, the system has created several

layers of intermediaries, lengthening the supply

chain and increasing the opportunity for cartels to
form, which in turn drive prices down for farmers
and up for consumers.
 A crop cultivated by a farmer in a far-flung

village goes through as many as four

intermediaries before reaching the local vegetable
market in a semi-urban or urban area, according
to analysts.
 Many of these intermediaries provide money in
advance to the farmers to cover cultivation costs and
recall their loan in the form of produce after the
harvesting.
 Unless the big retailers decide to take the same
approach and provide advances in terms of credits,
equipment and seeds to the farmer, the dominance of
middlemen will continue
 Another problem lies in India’s farming landscape:
More than half of Indian farmers have small holdings
and they don’t produce enough to dictate the price of
their products.
 Middlemen intervention raise price for consumers. The
result showed that farmers encounter high production
costs in their efforts to boost production but hardly
get fair pricing of their products from the middlemen,
the bulk farm gate buyers. 
 The real profit goes to the middlemen who buy up
the farm products at almost give away prices and
sell at outrageous prices to the consumers.
 This attitude of middle men have discouraged

genuine investors getting into agriculture because

of the marginal profit associated with it as the
middle men cart away the bulk of the profits.
 Thus, the activities of middlemen seem to be a

threat to food security.

 This leads to increase in the food prices and is

direct cause of the inflation which leads to public

grievances.
 Governance and public service delivery
 Citizens in low income democracies depend, to a
large extent, on the state for the provision of basic
services, viz. education, health and infrastructure,
either due to absence of a market for these services
or poverty.
 Thus the role of the state – exemplified by its elected
representatives and public officials – takes centre
stage in the governance and delivery of public
services
 The effective delivery of public programs is likely to
have a direct impact on growth via poverty reduction.
 Often the aim of public service provision is to reduce
inequitable distribution of resources and correct
historical inequities, such as caste based
discrimination and gender inequities
 In India, the government has been omnipresent in the
lives of its citizens, envisaged by the architects of the
nation following its independence from British
colonialism in 1947.
 With the aim of alleviating endemic poverty, free or
heavily subsidized provision of basic and essential
services has been the hallmark of public policy.
 However, there is broad consensus that the state has
failed to effectively deliver public services to its
citizens, particularly the poor
 Given the high levels of poverty and absence of a
social security program, subsidized public provision of
food grains through a public distribution system (PDS)
has accounted for the largest share of public
subsidies.
 However, leakages from the PDS are large and grains
are often siphoned off to the open market
 Expenditure on the public provision of education by the
state accounted for approximately 3% of the GDP in
2015-16 (Economic Survey of India 2015-16).
 Participation or enrolment in educational institutions

has been steadily expanding in India since

independence but acceptable levels of educational
attainment by students have remained elusive.
 Educational interventions in India have been directed

mostly towards increasing investments in public

education by building schools, improving existing
school infrastructure and training teachers
 For instance, although primary school enrolment has

increased from 79 percent in 2001 to 90 percent in

2007 due to public interventions such as the Sarv
Shiksha Abhiyan , the quality of public education
remains poor as reflected by high drop-out rates and
low levels of learning.
 As in the case of education, the primary responsibility
for providing health, drinking water and sanitation
facilities in the country rests with the state
governments, and the local bodies in the urban areas.
 Annual budgetary allocations for health, including

water and sanitation, have increased but remained

stagnant as a proportion of GDP at less than 1.5%
 Poor sanitation is a major public health concern –

over half the population defecates in the open, both

due to lack of public toilets (since the poor often
cannot afford private toilets), scarcity of piped water,
and perhaps cultural norms which condone open
defecation
 These low levels of human capital and inadequate

access to basic infrastructure highlight the failure of

governance in India in delivering public services
 Transparency International’s Corruption Perception
Index indicates that the public sector in India has been
consistently perceived to be more corrupt than other
developing countries with comparable growth rates such
as Brazil, China and South Africa, in the last decade.
 Politicians and service providers (e.g. bureaucrats) often
indulge in theft of public funds due to lack of
accountability mechanisms and monitoring.
 While the observers on governance has primarily
focused on politicians, there is emerging evidence on
the poor management practices of unelected public
officials – bureaucrats, education and health service
providers
 The public officials enjoy limited autonomy and their
postings, transfers and promotions are often linked to
whether they satisfy the interests of their political
masters
 CONCLUSION
 The above discussions highlight some key issues for issues
on governance and public service delivery in India which in
turn causes the increase of public discontent towards the
government
 The central question is what social, political and economic
institutions need to be built to improve governance and the
delivery of public services in India?
 The rationale behind any measure to reduce governance
deficit would be asymmetric information, exemplified by the
standard principal-agent problem - if the principal, i.e. the
stakeholders (i.e. citizens) are unable to assess the quality
of services being provided by the agent (i.e. the public
officials) then outcomes may be poor because the agent’s
interests are not aligned with those of the stakeholder’s.
 The government should make every endeavour to make
sure that the policies should reach the people rather than
just remaining on the paper