• What is Jan Bhagidari and how does it work. How JB leads to citizen participation and ownership of civic initiatives.

The NDA government is silently nudging the government towards a more people-centric governance approach.

For a long time after independence, the government was literally a mai-baap sarkar - the primary provider and regulator of all goods and services.

After liberalization in 1991, the deregulation of the economy by the Narsimha Rao government saw the private sector enter areas primarily reserved for the government/ state sector. This necessitated a shift in the role and mode of governance from provider/ regulator to an enabler for creating the appropriate conditions for growth of the economy, combined with providing key “provisions” such as public goods like highways, education and healthcare. 

Prime Minister Modi is now bringing about the next shift in the role and mode of governance in India. He wants government agencies to enter into a citizen-centric mode in their dealings and engagement with the ordinary Indian.

He calls this mode of governance Jan Bhagidari – where civil servants collaborate and cooperate with citizens, become far more responsive to the needs and aspirations of citizens, and amplify their “power to serve” by harnessing citizen power along with government power.

How does Jan Bhagidari work? 

Consider for example, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

The Swachh Bharat Mission is not simply one more government initiative in Indore – rather the people of Indore have taken ownership of the initiative and transformed their own behaviors as a result. It is no wonder that Indore has been topping the list of India’s cleanest cities in recent years. 

As we can see in this example, citizen participation and ownership can transform even a small initiative into a social or economic, or even an educational revolution.

If India has to truly become a Viksit Bharat, then we need thousands of such “revolutions” taking place across the country. 

The way to do this is Jan Bhagidari.

But the path to get there is not easy. Government officials, used to hierarchy, power and rule-based thinking, have to change.

They need to, first of all, become responsive to citizens – they must learn to listen, pay attention, and give respect to the most ordinary citizen. They need to consciously engage and involve themselves in the life of citizens by understanding citizen needs better, working across silos with other departments, and consciously empowering citizens. Finally, they need to mature into becoming co-creators of social, educational, economic solutions with communities and ordinary citizens.

This journey is long. But the beginnings have already been made.

The government has begun large-scale capacity building interventions in several citizen-facing areas like India Post, Railways, etc., wherein it seeks to help government servants shift from a Karmachari mindset to a Karmayogi mindset.

A new online training program on Jan Bhagidari has been launched for all government servants recently. The Prime Minister himself has used several major forums like G20 to communicate his vision of Jan Bhagidari.

The elephant called Government of India is being gently nudged to learn how to dance.

Author Srinivas Venkatram is the founder of Illumine – which works on large-scale distribution of Swami Vivekananda’s ideas in the context of day-to-day work-lives, in corporates, government, universities, etc.

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Disclosure: Currently, Illumine is working on several large-scale Mission Karmayogi interventions in collaboration with the Capacity Building Commission set up by the government. These include interventions in India Post, Indian Railways, Common Service Centres of the Government, etc. – all of which are citizen interfaces. 

Illumine has also built an online Jan Bhagidari program, meant for government employees at all levels.