When R S Pandey assumed charge as chief secretary of Nagaland in June 2000, the state had schools where teachers played truant, hospitals without doctors – not even the Munnabhai MBBS types – and electricity lines crisscrossing the state but no regular and adequate power supply. Pandey decided to harness the vast and rich traditional social capital of Nagaland through the user community in the management of public institutions and service.
Thus began a four-month “Imagine Nagaland” drive. It provided a platform for interaction between civil servants and the user community so that the solutions to problems, before being institutionalized in the files, would be relevant to the needs and demands of the community. This done, privatization and punishment were ruled out in favour of community participation. “I found that communitisation is privatization but in the hands of the user community. The managers are not selected on the basis of tenders,” says Pandey.
The first sectors to benefit were education, power and health. The user community comprised village committees for education, health committees and Village Electricity Management Boards (VEMB) with power and management functions transferred to them. Thereafter, the government enacted the Nagaland Communitisation of Public Institutions and Services Act, 2002 to provide legal support to the communitisation process.
An external evaluation of the education programme, done with the support of Unicef, has been gratifying for Pandey. Teacher attendance has improved to 70-90 per cent with a matching increase in children’s attendance – ranging from 70 to 100 per cent. Consequently, the passing rate improved to between 75 and 100 per cent and the dropout rate became nil. The health sector stepped up availability of treatment and doctors, and saw a massive return of patients to government hospitals. The power sector registered improvement in revenue collection and significant fall in power thefts. The overall crime rate in the state dropped to 25 per cent during 2002-04 and Pandey is hopeful that this will lead to more people joining the mainstream.
Pandey, now secretary in the Union Steel Ministry, has won the Prime Minister’s award for excellence in public administration for 2005-06 for his initiative in Nagaland. The officer was overwhelmed with emotion when the Chief Minister of Nagaland sent him a congratulatory note, saying: “The Nagas will always be grateful to you….” Obviously, communitisation has achieved what Panchayati Raj failed to.
The Prime Minister’s awards for excellence in public administration are relatively new, announced on Civil Services Day – April 21 – last year. The awardees were selected through a three-tier process involving a shortlist from the state government that was forwarded to an expert committee headed by the Secretary, Ministry of Personnel. The names were then vetted by an empowered committee chaired by Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi and other members, including former Comptroller and Auditor-General V K Shunglu, and veteran editor Suman Dubey.
