‘Jan bhagidari’: A platform to be part of governance

JAMMU: The Jammu and Kashmir administration has made ‘Jan Bhagidhari’ as main mantra towards making the dispensation more responsive, accountable and transparent besides ensuring rapid growth and development in the Union Territory. In order to ensure effective implementation of flagship and other government schemes at grassroots level, UT government has launched an intensive public outreach campaign to raise awareness about the schemes being implemented for empowerment of common masses. The campaign included targeted delivery of health insurance among the rural population, quantifiable panchayat wise self employment and installation of functional tap water connection to each household besides a slew of public programmes to facilitate Jan bhagidhari by making government working more transparent and participatory for general public. One of the major initiatives to further public participation in overall development process in the UT, the J&K government launched the ‘Janta Ki Scheme-Janta ki Bhagidari’ campaign. The programme focused on improving public access to BEAMS-EMPOWERMENT portal. It is a simple way of viewing details about all ongoing works in an area to inform and solicit people’s participation in development process and corruption free governance. The idea is to make working of government institutions more transparent at the grassroots level and enable people to keep a check on progress of development projects. Every citizen can now access details about the type and extent of work under execution in their area or any part of the Union Territory at the click of a button. This technologically advanced utility will ensure quality and timely completion of development works. The information available on this one-stop platform www.beamsjk. gov.in can even be utilized for timely feedback and suggestions by public for improving expenditure outcomes in spirit of ‘Jan Bhagidari’ thereby enabling them to directly participate in development of their area. As on date, the portal hosts 33099 works being executed in the Union Territory at a cumulative cost of around Rs 12200 crore with micro details of up to village level. Jammu and Kashmir is first in the country for taking lead in enforcing reforms in expenditure management and account of each penny has been made available in public domain. Another initiative of the government, Budget, Estimation, Allocation and Monitoring System (BEAMS) is an online computerized web based application for preparation and authorization of budget. It enables online flow of resources and the departments can allocate funds to their field offices through this system. It supports reliable, accurate and better monitoring control for budget planning and expenditure audit besides real-time reconciliation of accounts in comparison to manual budgeting process which lacks transparency. The government has taken a string of other e-initiatives in addition to BEAMS and EMPOWERMENT to achieve greater transparency and accountability in its functioning. Some prominent among those included PROOF (Photographic Record of On-site Facility), which is a mobile app for monitoring progress on all the works allocated to different departments. It gives the public a pictorial view of works along with its geographical coordinates including latitude and longitude besides user comments on work progress. JKPaySys (JK Payment System) is one another e-initiative of the government to enable online submission of bills to treasuries eliminating unwarranted delays and corrupt practices. Further, as a result of sustained institutional reforms in the UT and sharp focus on completion of works in a timebound manner, there is a substantial impact on ground in terms of completion of projects. Till date, a total of 21943 projects have been completed across the Union Territory including 9229 projects completed during 2018-19 and 12637 during 2019-20. The primary objective of all these remarkable initiatives is to ensure public participation in overall development process in the UT. These steps are aimed at strengthening the institution of Jan bhagidari (public participation) making it an integral part of transparent and accountable governance. The J&K administration is earnestly working since the past two years to make the entire governance structure transparent and accessible to the public in a total hassle free manner.