Bhubaneswar: Enthused by the massive victory in the April elections and keeping pressing governance needs in view, the Naveen Patnaik dispensation has started changing its style of functioning in sync with its 5T agenda.
While the Chief Minister has repeatedly made it clear that Teamwork, Technology, Transparency, Time-bound and Transformation would serve as the beacons for the administration, the announcement on Thursday to launch ‘Mo Sarkar’ from October 2 has brought public services to the centre of governance. So much so that the usually reticent Naveen, while addressing the 73rd Independence Day celebrations at Exhibition Ground here, said he would personally make telephone calls to find out the response from people visiting police stations and hospitals. “Every day I will make such phone calls to different people to know about their experiences in government offices,” he said.
Ministers, chief secretary, director general of police and other senior officers will also have to make similar exercises regularly to get feedback from the public on the treatment they received, response of concerned authorities and facilities available at police stations, hospitals and other government establishments to create a new benchmark to assess delivery of services and satisfaction levels of the people. “We are putting in place a mechanism to capture the telephone numbers of those visiting police stations and hospitals,” an officer disclosed. Possibly, the CM wants to check the authenticity of replies to his favourite, “Apana Mane Khusi Tah (Are you happy?)” question.
This underlines plans for a paradigm shift in the governance model by according more emphasis to the bottom-top approach and injecting a rights-based approach to governance, pointed out a government officer. Under this approach, the first initiative was rolled out on Thursday in the form of ‘online land revenue payment system’.
All these are seemingly part of the BJD government’s 5T vision, which ruling party insiders believe will give a push to Naveen’s idea of a ‘New Odisha’ and also fetch electoral dividends in the next urban elections (likely to be held early 2020) and panchayat polls (scheduled in early 2022).
Naveen’s idea to give priority to the common man not only coincides with Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations, but also is an indirect admission that all’s not well on the governance front. While the government during the past two-and-a-half years was busy rolling out schemes dime a dozen with an obvious eye on the twin elections, the focus apparently is shifting to improve the administrative apparatus with emphasis on maximum use of technology to deliver public services.
And the person who has been mandated to drive this is the CM’s private secretary V Karthikeya Pandian. On July 29, Pandian got additional charge of secretary to CM (5T), making it amply clear that the 2000-batch IAS officer would, for all practical purposes, spearhead the administration. And he has seemingly got down to business by making certain changes to the CMO’s style of functioning. “Review meetings are now being held early morning and CMO is active by 8 am daily,” an insider said, adding, “The message has to go from the top and it has started percolating down. Even on fourth Saturdays every month, the functioning of department secretaries is being monitored.” Apparently, perform or perish has become the Odisha government’s new mantra.
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