SIR exercise “Be uncompromising about the objective, but compassionate and flexible about the method.”

 

And Vote Goes to ........ SIR woes of VIPs Cleared at home itself. ( TOI 9/9/26)

Today's Times of  India (9/9//26) reported  this news along with some good examples showing how elderly voters , accident victims, skip office visit.  Good to hear and the efficiency of the administration is admirable. That is the essence of people-centric governance: achieving the objective of the State while making the life of the citizen easier, not harder.

The SIR exercise need not become a choice between administrative efficiency and citizens' convenience. It can—and should—be a win-win exercise in which the legitimate objectives of the administration are fully achieved while genuine citizens are spared avoidable hardship.

The task is therefore not merely to eliminate ineligible names from the electoral roll, but to do so through methods that are intelligent, flexible and sensitive to the circumstances of different categories of citizens. Greater use of available records, technology, local verification and doorstep assistance for those who genuinely need it could help achieve both objectives simultaneously.

The administration gets a cleaner and more credible electoral roll; the citizen gets the assurance that his or her democratic rights will not be compromised by an inconvenient procedure. A government may be technologically efficient, procedurally compliant and administratively impressive—and yet fail the common citizen if the citizen has to struggle to access the system. That is precisely the distinction between administrative efficiency and meaningful governance.

Administrative efficiency should first serve those citizens who face the greatest difficulty in accessing the administration.  The test of an efficient administration is not how efficiently it serves the powerful and privileged, but how sensitively it serves those who find it most difficult to reach the system. Updating the electoral roll is not an ordinary administrative exercise. It directly concerns the citizen's fundamental democratic participation. Therefore, the administration should arguably adopt a citizen-first approach for the elderly, persons with disabilities, the seriously ill, bedridden citizens, people in their eighties and nineties, and daily-wage or self-employed workers who cannot sacrifice a day's livelihood to visit a designated office. The constitutional principle is that every voter is equal;  those facing greater barriers deserve greater administrative accommodation, not preferential  treatment.

The ultimate measure of administrative efficiency should therefore be not merely how successfully a rule is implemented, but how successfully its objective is achieved without unnecessarily inconveniencing the people whom the administration exists to serve.

A good administration should not ask the citizen, “How can you comply with us?” It should also ask itself, “How can we make it easier for the citizen to comply?” That is where efficiency becomes empathy—and governance becomes truly meaningful.When an idea recognises the legitimate objective of the other side, understands the practical difficulties of the people affected, and then offers a way for both objectives to be achieved together, it becomes much harder to oppose.

“Be uncompromising about the objective, but compassionate and flexible about the method.” This  principle goes well beyond SIR. It is, in fact, a good foundation for meaningful governance." 

Samastha Loka Sukhino Bhavanthu.

T V G Krishnan

(personal Views)