Inducing a conscious client focus in bureaucracy and banishing the scourge of secrecy and client-subordination from public domain constitute the two major doctrinal emphases of the citizen’s charter initiative. In this book, it has been argued that the traditional bureaucracies, characteristically supply-driven and of a top-down variety, are an unsuitable vehicle for manning a programme which by building strong compulsions for innovation at every level of the pyramid would, in fact, dictate augmented delegations down the line. The authors throw into a sharp relief the dilemma of a bureau-centric, power-focused civil service in navigating the intricacies of a participation-centred dispensation. The book discusses strategies to resolve that situation; these centre, principally, around the proposals for a revamp of the bureaucratic culture and the strengthening of the local self-governing institutions. The authors propose a methodology for constructing a charter implementation matrix, based on which the government agencies might be able to keep tract of their progress and administer correctives to prevent a possible derailment of the programme. This first detailed account, since the initiative was launched in India in August, 1997, scrutinises the status of the discrete components which collectively compose the citizen’s charter programme. Based on this, the authors make suggestions to bridge the gulf between what the programme promises and what it might achieve. In this sense, the present work is a veritable handbook, virtually a do-it-yourself guide, for the practitioner. And for the scholar, it presents a cluster of hypotheses that would help him to further advance the frontiers of knowledge on the subject.
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