Can disincentives bring accountability in governance? Experiences of Right to Public Services Guarantee Act in Madhya Pradesh State of India

• Date: 01 November 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1966
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Rakesh Arrawatia,Yogesh Kumar,Shyam Singh

ACADEMIC PAPER

Can disincentives bring accountability in governance?

Experiences of Right to Public Services Guarantee Act in

Madhya Pradesh State of India

Shyam Singh

1

|Yogesh Kumar

2

|Rakesh Arrawatia

3

1

Department of Social Sciences, Institute of

Rural Management, Anand, India

2

SamarthanCentre for Development Support,

Bhopal, India

3

Department of Finance, Institute of Rural

Management, Anand, India

Correspondence

Shyam Singh, Department of Social Sciences,

Institute of Rural Management, Anand

388001, India.

Email: shyamready@gmail.com

Many Indian states have enacted Right to Public Services Guarantee Act that prom-

ises the delivery of public services to citizens in time‐bound fashion, failing to which,

responsible government officials face financial penalty. Therefore, effective service

delivery, an indicator of good and responsive governance, is being attempted to be

achieved through a “system of disincentive.”The paper tries to analyze if the system

of disincentive is effective in ensuring administrative accountability. The paper is

based on primary and secondary data. The primary data were collected as part of

an action research carried out in 2012, which was supplemented with secondary data

collected for different studies during 2015 and 2016. The paper uses a governance

accountability framework to analyze implementation of the Act. The study finds that

although success rate of implementation of the Act is quite high, the Act presents a

narrow idea of accountability. There are no accountability norms for higher officials

and elected leaders who head the public service departments. The study also finds

that necessary accountability structures have not been developed and there is a

dearth of enabling environment that makes accountability structures effective. The

study also finds that, despite the provisions for financial penalty, responsible officials

find ways to escape. The study exposes weak points in the implementation of the Act,

which can be strengthened to achieve desired outcomes. The study can be an

important source for course corrections in the states/countries where right to public

service delivery is in effect.

1|INTRODUCTION

The Right to Public Services Guarantee Act (RPSGA) is a recent gover-

nance innovation in India. Madhya Pradesh (MP) state was first to

enact this Act in 2010. The paper tries to analyze this Act from

accountability perspectives. The major provision of this Act is that if

the concerned government department fails to deliver public services

to citizens within the stipulated timeframe, concerned government

officials would be penalized financially. This Act is a unique step where

state makes lower level bureaucracy responsible for service delivery

failure by institutionalizing a “system of disincentives.”This is impor-

tant to note that if a service is delivered within the stipulated time,

the Act does not provision for any reward or incentive. Being first of

its kind, the RPSGA in MP, which has also been received as a model

Act and followed by 19 other Indian states, calls for an enquiry into

the viability of the “system of disincentive”making the public service

delivery system accountable. The objective of this paper is to analyze

how system of disincentive addresses accountability in public service

delivery in MP. Additionally, paper also analyzes if the system of

disincentives has been provided with enabling environment and if

the required administrative structures have been put in place to

ensure accountability in public service delivery.

The public service delivery has gone through various levels of

public sector reforms approaches, majorly known as “New Public

Received: 23 April 2019 Accepted: 24 April 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.1966

J Public Affairs. 2019;19:e1966.

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1966

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa 1of13