There is hardly a citizen who doesn't have a problem of dead phones, incessant power cuts, tardy city transport, inefficient police, piling up of garbage, overcrowded hospitals, irregular water supply, to name a few. And to get the problems solved most people end up paying speed money.

To bring into focus the problems of the common man and to make the relevant authorities more accountable, the Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre (PAC) has carried out studies in Delhi, Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad. Says Smauel Paul, former director of IIM Ahmedabad and chairman of PAC, ``Public services are too important to be left to public servants alone. It isimportant to make the authorities accountable for their work involving the provision of services to the citizens. The significance of this study stems from the emphasis it makes on a critical but neglected aspect in the redesign and improvement of public services, namely citizens' feedback.''The Delhi study was designed and conducted by PAC in association with Gallup India. Separate sampling plans were developed for general households and slum dwellers. This process led to data being collected from 745 general households and 659 slum dwellers in the city.

Commenting on the report of public services in Delhi which was released by the PAC recently, Suresh Balakrishnan, associate director, PAC, says, ``Delhi gets low marks from its citizens for most essential public services. Around one-third of the Delhi households have interacted with one or more public agencies in the past six months to complain about service-related problems. Public dissatisfaction with services is much higher among the urban poor thanamong middle class households. The poor also end up solving fewer of their problems by interacting with service providers than the urban middle class.''

Higher levels of satisfaction have been reported by households with services of banks (94 per cent) and the postal department (96 per cent). Low levels of satisfaction are expressed with garbage disposal (30 per cent), power supply (33 per cent) and sewage system (33 per cent). Says Balakrishnan, ``The services in which there is a greater degree of monopoly (such as power, sewage and garbage) have evinced higher dissatisfaction than services where citizens have a choice or options (such as banks and postal services).''

The study further reveals that dissatisfaction has resulted in over half the respondents seeking remedial action through complaints. Feedback from those who chose not to complain indicates that inaction is perhaps due to a strong belief that making complaints is of no use (55 per cent). Feedback on experiences of those who made complaintsindicate that only 27 per cent succeeded in having their problem solved.

The process of seeking remedy is reported to take on an average, four visits spread over 10 days. The root of the problem does not seem to be in the availability of the staff or their competence. While citizens report that the staff are knowledgeable (76 per cent), courteous (81 per cent) and usually available (76 per cent), they have found them to be unhelpful (91 per cent) and slow to respond (82 per cent).

With taciturn babus biding their time away from 10 am to 5 pm, it is not surprising that they respond only when offered speed money. The study points out that among those who made complaints, 10 per cent reported paying speed money to service providers. Says Balakrishnan, ``This phenomenon seems to be more rampant in Delhi Vidyut Board (14 per cent), telephones (17 per cent) and police (19 per cent); average amounts paid were Rs 327, Rs 98 and Rs 994 respectively. People who paid speed money reported that it was demanded in over80 per cent of the cases.'' The average quantum of speed money paid by the sample of government employees (Rs 134) was less than half of that reported to be paid by the rest of the sample (Rs 300).

Some common complaints like dead phones, over billing by MTNL and Delhi Vidyut Board and slow response to enquiries always seem to persist despite improvement in technology.

The study is interesting as it closely looks at the problems of the citizens. But for a city of over 10 million the sample size of around 1,500 will at most give a thumbnail sketch of the dimensions of the problems.

Argues Paul, ``The sample has been carefully selected and comprises those who have had problems with service providers in the last six months. The standard error of the sample using the lowest sample split is no more than 3.4 per cent.''

The PAC intends to conduct a survey after a year to see how effective the report has been in alleviating the problems of the citizens. Only that will ensure that such surveys can helpchange things and are not purely academic.