Newspaper
today carried a story about the number of Holidays in Government offices in
Tamilnadu and other states of India.Based on this news most government offices
in India except for Revenue, Police, Health, Transport departments work just
about six months a year. Additionally the time wasted by the employees taking long
tea/lunch breaks, gossiping and procrastinating cuts down the effective working
hours of the office to 5-6 hours per working day .There is absolutely no accountability
for delays in governance and the cost overrun thereof .This certainly takes its
toll on the efficiency and there is no mechanism or a system to measure the
productivity of the Government sector.
General public is aware of the delays and pitfalls they encounter in a government office and to avoid these they are prone to grease the palms of the government official to speed up the processing of their papers ... an indirect catalyst to bribery. Lok Pal bills if passed would only be a tool to curtail the bribery but it does not address the root cause of the problem... inefficiency and accountability. There needs to be an immediate change in the way the Government operates, should India aspire to become a fully developed nation in the near future. Why not follow the rules and regulations being used in Private sector where an employee need to work
for nearly 10 hours a day 6 days a week for over 280 days a year since deadline
and targets are sacrosanct and stiff penalties are levied for non performance.
I know that this is a very difficult task to be undertaken as there would be lots of objections and protests from the government sector employee unions and other bodies who are used to easy life and easy money.
Hope there is a change for good in the coming years.