Welcome Openness

Editorial:
The State Government’s decision to notify directions which the Chief Minister has been announcing of late is a welcome move towards more openness and collaboration. As per a gazette notification issues on 19 October, all sanctioned schemes will have to mandatorily hold a public hearing prior to implementation.
These public hearings are to be official deliberations for which a special gram sabha [for rural areas] or area sabha [in urban areas] need to be called to inform people of the project and all its details. These are different from public hearings called for hydel projects in that these will be about sensitizing the people about the schemes and projects and not necessarily about taking their assent. The awareness that these information-sharing effort can achieve will hopeful spark people’s involvement in the creation of public infrastructure. As things stand, the only people in the know of things at most times, are people who are directly involved either by way of being ‘affected’ or as contractors or suppliers. This limits the wider public involvement required to sustain the infrastructure created or even ensure that it is used for the purpose recorded on paper. It is obvious that once people know, they will keep track and develop a sense of ownership. This feeling is noticeably missing across Sikkim where people increasingly see investment in public infrastructure as projects for private profiteering by a handful. Now that they will be brought into the loop before the project/ scheme is initiated, they could feel involved and with a stake. From what can be gleaned from the official communiqué on the notification, this is not a token gesture and the implementing departments have been directed to follow the notification in letter and spirit and share any other information [apart from the complete project details] “that is deemed essential so as to ensure proper quality and transparency in the implementation of the scheme”.
While the Government is on the path to more openness, it is also perhaps time to relax the need to have only official spokespersons release information. Media persons, especially in the wake of the earthquake, have often hit against the stonewall of official processes to even confirm or seek comment on developing stories. Too many officials hide behind the directive which allows only official spokespersons to speak. It has to be understood by these officers that official spokespersons give out information which individual departments or the government as a whole want released in the public domain. Spokespersons release comments and information which the government is volunteering and cannot possibly have answers for all the questions that the people or reporters might have. Journalists working on specific stories cannot find their answers from the spokesperson who is not always briefed on everything that is happening in every department. This information is available only with particular officers in the concerned departments and they should be allowed to release such information when approached. They must bear in mind that if they don’t, important justifications/ explanations or significant aspects of the information in question could get left out and people provided incomplete details which could lead to confusion, and even panic in these times of jumpy post-earthquake nerves.
It is also necessary to point out here that the moves towards more openness and collaboration initiated with the latest gazette notification will end up as another token official exercise if the receivers of this openness do not do something with the advance information which is now mandatorily reached to them. They should ask more questions at the public hearings because bureaucratese has a way of remaining artfully unclear, and end the meetings only after they have a very clear picture of what is being attempted. Once so informed, they should keep track of the project through its implementation and upon completion, ensure that it is put to use for the purpose it was made, immediately.