Building Trust In Governance

Context: Andhra Pradesh’s PuraSeva, a service delivery platform that builds trust between citizens and government, has shown results.

Social trust in India:

• Historically, Indians have had low social trust and have looked to authorities to enforce compliance. The frictional interactions pile up over time and lead to disengagement; a ‘nothing will happen’ mindset.

• • Major reasons:
    • Due to past experiences, where requests have not been responded to or have vanished.
    • Corruption makes this worse: The worst is paying a bribe and still not being served.
    • Inherent power imbalance: Citizens feel that they do not have any recourse.
• Rising social trust in the last decade: Indians are increasingly comfortable sending money to a phone number from their phones (UPI, PayTM) and getting into taxis driven by strangers (Ola, Uber).

Case Study: Andhra Pradesh’s PuraSeva, a citizen services delivery platform-

• Enabling multiple channels to interact with citizens:
  • Lodging complaints with prompt acknowledgement with a reference number assigned, SMS notifications providing an expected completion date and responsible person, and notifications of each status change.
  • Open dashboards: Where citizens and civil society groups can view the performance data for their localities.
  • Rating system: If a citizen does not provide a star rating, they will get a call from the local government, asking them to rate their satisfaction with the services received.
• Encouraging results: Speed of resolution and percentage of complaints resolved within designated time have both increased sharply.

Conclusion:

• Attention to small things creates trust-building environments: This trust is experiential: it is built as consumers get consistent information and predictability over time, every time. Each interaction is an occasion to send a trust signal, to raise low expectations and meet new, high ones.
• This is how the ‘nothing will happen’ mindset gets replaced with the confidence that, yes, something will be done.