NEW DELHI, Mar 29: The responsibility to ensure that governance reaches the doorstep of the poorest and most vulnerable segments lies with the bureaucrats, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu said on Tuesday.
Asserting that public administration must seek to be more citizen-centric and predicated on the principles of justice and fair play, he also said administrators need to be more accessible to the needy and underprivileged to ensure that benefits of development reach all.
Addressing the first Dr Rajendra Prasad Annual Lecture organised by the Indian Institute of Public Administration, Naidu said a citizen-centric paradigm of governance hinges on an efficient public service delivery system.
Such a system must be able to adapt itself to the growing needs and aspirations of the citizens, he said.
“We must bear in mind that the onus is on civil servants to ensure that governance reaches the doorstep of the poorest and most vulnerable segments of our population.
“The benchmark of effective implementation of any development programme lies in the extent to which it can positively impact and transform the lives of the needy sections of society,” the vice-president said.
Naidu said the civil servants must remember that there is no better touchstone of a welfare scheme and development initiative than the prosperity of its beneficiaries through efficient implementation.
Among other things, Naidu said administrators need to be more accessible to the needy and underprivileged.
Civil servants must co-opt citizens from all sections of society down to the last individual as active partners in scripting India’s growth story, he noted.
The system, he asserted, must be able to adapt itself to the growing needs and aspirations of citizens.
“Inclusiveness, accountability, agility, transparency, objectivity and honesty constitute the key facets of the complex task of public governance. Some of the defining features of good governance, therefore, are comprehensiveness, fair play, integrity, efficiency and equity,” the vice-president said.
He stressed that civil servants must be open to upgrading their skills, adopting and scaling up best practices within India and outside the country.
“Only then can they come up with innovative, out-of-the-box strategies and solutions to complex challenges in governance and administration for effective implementation of programmes and policies on the ground,” he said.
Naidu, as the vice president of India, is the president of IIPA.
An official statement later issued by the Vice-President Secretariat said in his address, Union minister Jitendra Singh said IIPA has come a long way in the last 67 years of its existence.
From being a retired officers’ club, it is now transformed into a vibrant and dynamic institution in the field of capacity building, he said.
IIPA is a knowledge partner of DARPG and DoPT in the preparation of the ‘Vision @2047’ document and in providing valuable inputs to these ministries, he noted. (PTI)
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