A MINDSET OF SERVICE| Towards A Collaborative Effort by Naina Lal Kidwai | Transforming the Steel Frame

A MINDSET OF SERVICE| Towards A Collaborative Effort by Naina Lal Kidwai

The civil services, particularly the All-India Services, have always commanded considerable respect from the people of India. The twenty-first century has witnessed a significant expansion of the civil services processes and responsibilities. Recruitment has become more competitive, and training norms and procedures more rigorous and stringent. There is a greater emphasis now on performance management practices. Effective management of public resources has
necessitated open, transparent and accountable systems of delivery. The appointment of India’s first Lokpal is a clear demonstration that India is second to none in making its public administration clean and fair. Clearly, accountability levels in government today are far higher than they were ever in the past.
On the one hand, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is referred to as the ‘Steel Frame of Governance’, with neutrality and anonymity as its core character attributes. On the other hand, there is the growing perception that it has failed to deliver on its promise and
has accordingly invited criticism, including from the prime minister of India.
In this context, it is time the country implements civil services reforms rather than blaming the bureaucracy for all the ills facing the nation. It should start from recruitment itself and then be expanded to cover induction and other specialized trainings with a view tocreating a cadre of accomplished civil servants who can then deliver on what falls within their remit. Civil servants (IAS) must possess the necessary knowledge or skills to perform specific functions. However, they cannot be expected to and will never be experts in everything and hence, the need to collaborate with partners for better delivery of social services on the ground.
Collaboration
Civil service reform aims at strengthening administrative capacity to perform core government functions. One of these functions is to forge collaboration and adopt a multi-stakeholder approach to achieve the good governance outcomes. I have attempted to highlight some success stories to strengthen my arguments for collaboration and ‘multi-stakeholderism’ as weighed against a go-it-alone approach. Recording these success stories hopefully also encourages replication and scaling up across the country.
It needs to be underscored at the outset that collaboration is not an end in itself; rather, it is a means of delivering better results for the public by meeting their needs in a seamless way. Its other benefits include saving money, reducing duplication and promoting innovation. The idea of ‘joining up’, collaborating and working across departmental and other public bodies to meet government’s objectives needs greater emphasis now more than ever before in view of the growing complexities. Cases of good convergence between line departments leading to the attainment of collective outcomes for the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) are relevant.
An example is the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) and SBM-Gramin convergence in several blocks of Ranchi and West Singhbhum districts, in Jharkhand, during SBM-Gramin Phase I. Village Organizations (VOs) formed under NRLM have played a leading role in the construction of individual household latrines (IHHLs) in the villages of these blocks of Jharkhand with funding support from the mission. These VOs were instituted by the Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society (JSLPS) with active support of Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSCs). Effective convergence between SBM-Gramin and the VOs accelerated the construction of toilets in these blocks. For starters, to equip VO members, VWSC, Block Development Officer, UNICEF, Public Health Engineering Department and JSLPS field staff collaborated to organize a one-day triggering exercise-cum-orientation programme. In addition, five-day duration mason trainings were organized by the VWSCs with support from UNICEF at the block level. Notwithstanding the different roles played by each of the organizations, they actively participated in the triggering exercises and follow-up activities carried out subsequently. Their dedication towards the SBM-Gramin campaign motivated VWSCs and VOs to put in place all possible efforts to ensure the success of the mission.
Prior to this training, the village communities had no experience of constructing toilets or maintaining them. In fact, it was a first-hand experience for the VO members to undertake IHHL construction work under SBM-Gramin. They also had to deal with procurement of material from multiple vendors in these districts while recruiting masons from neighbouring villages. In areas that lacked manpower, the VO members took the lead and provided Shramdaan, or voluntary service, to construct toilets. The village community and Panchayati Raj Institution members actively supported the efforts of the VOs by providing all necessary guidance and inputs to accomplish the targets.
Experience gained from this activity of building individual toilets motivated members of the VOs to promote toilet usage. The success of this case led to the development of a model for convergence for SBM, as well as for other schemes with VO as a viable platform. It also built up a healthy competition between VWSCs and VOs; and the blocks worked towards their open defecation free (ODF) targets with renewed vigour and speed.
Another great example, in an activity which usually does not have any well-known women participation, is that of Jharkhand’s trained women masons (or rani mistries, as they are popularly called). These pioneers in masonry work were instrumental in building over 15 lakh toilets in a single year (2018–19) and the state was declared ODF (rural) much ahead of the national cut-off date of 2 October 2019. The rani mistry training drive in the state was meant to solve a problem associated with the stymied progress of the SBM campaign
in the state in 2017 and 2018. The conventional strategy of routing work and funds through the local administrations to village panchayats and mukhiyas was not yielding results quickly enough. The raj mistries (male masons) were not showing any interest in the work either.
The then SBM Secretary, Government of Jharkhand, Ms Aradhana Patnaik adopted a different strategy to capitalize on the potential of the state’s 1.5 lakh women self-help groups (SHGs).3 This was a well-calculated move towards a hitherto unexplored gender activity. It was a request from a woman in Gumla district that triggered the mass training of women through the SHGs—and the rest is history. This movement, the first of its kind, emerged as a mammoth uprising of female interest and skill motivation, thereby transforming into a typical example of multi-stakeholder coalition engagement with convergence between different centrally and state-sponsored schemes (NRLM, SBM, rural and urban development, etc.), to create community-based livelihood opportunities benefitting every partner in the coalition. It was a grassroots-level movement that gained traction and fervour from among the women themselves. They had neither been encouraged nor permitted to display their skills in this activity, and once given the opportunity transformed the challenge to a tangible asset-creation movement. Many of these women have not let the opportunity go by and have already graduated to home construction, getting absorbed as trained masons to undertake construction both under rural and urban housing schemes.

There are several other successful models of convergence and multi-stakeholderism which have proven to be hugely successful models of government–stakeholder collaboration and I would therefore recommend a ‘best practices’ compilation that can then be used as a module for training the civil services cadre.

Read more about the ‘steel frame’ in Transforming the Steel Frame: Promise and Paradox of Civil Service Reform, curated by veteran bureaucrat, former Comptroller and Auditor General Vinod Rai.

Get the book here.