Bengaluru: Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said that the governance reforms introduced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the last eight years were actually social reforms aimed at achieving ‘ease of living’ for the common man and a "level playing field" for the aspirational youth.
Delivering the valedictory address at the two-day Regional Conference on Governance in Bengaluru organized by DARPG and Karnataka government, he said, the hallmark of Modi’s governance model was his capacity to take out-of-box decisions, break the taboos of the past and the capacity to convert government’s campaign into mass campaign on the basis of his courage, conviction and sincerity.
Referring to the theme of the conference, “Bringing Citizens, Entrepreneurs and Government Closer for Good Governance”, Dr Jitendra listed a series of such reforms having wider social implications. The Union Minister recalled that within three months of taking charge in May, 2014, Prime Minister took the most revolutionary and path-breaking decision of abolition of attestation of certificates by gazetted officers instead promoting self-attestation, thus reposing faith in youth of India. “Similarly, Narendra Modi had suggested the abolition of interviews during the Independence Day address from the ramparts of Red Fort on August 15, 2015 and the same was implemented by DoPT from January 1, 2016 that paved the way for level playing field for all the candidates,” he said.
The Minister said that the number of complaints in CPGRAMS increased from 2 lakh per year in 2014 to 25 lakh per year at present, which also reflected positively that there was a government which listened to citizens grievances promptly and addressed them.
“PM Excellence awards focusing on flagship schemes rather on the individual profile of officers were another far-reaching governance reforms promoting healthy competition among 750 districts,” he added.
Dr Jitendra informed the delegates that by the end of this year, the National Recruitment Agency (NRA) under DoPT was gearing up to conduct computer-based online Common Eligibility Test (CET) for recruitment to non-Gazetted posts. He added that to begin with, the test would be conducted in 12 Languages and gradually it would include all the 22 languages mentioned in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, which would overcome the complaints of language bias coming from some southern states.
The Minister said, “Prime Minister’s Mantra of Minimum Government, Maximum Governance means more involvement of citizens, innovation, use of latest techniques and transparency. The ultimate aim of all governance models is to reach out to the last man in the last queue to empower him economically.”
He said that there was a need to try to adopt best practices from each other and implement them in the respective sectors, regions and states. He mentioned that the government made the States coupled with similar problems so that they could share their expertise and experiences related to similar issues and also success stories to learn from each other.
