Rethinking governance, with citizen at the centre

Good governance is more than scheme outcomes. It is about being transparent, inclusive, and responsive

Who is governance truly designed for? As India observes the National Good Governance Day, this is the fundamental question before a rapidly transforming country aspiring to become a developed nation. Good governance can no longer be assessed only by the scale of schemes or the speed of execution. There is an urgent need to place the citizen at the centre of governance systems. A national resolve to enhance the lived experience of citizens in their interactions with the State – from panchayat to parliament, and across the life cycle, from birth to old age, spanning daily needs as well as pursuits of entrepreneurship, innovation and leisure – is the way forward. A citizen-centric governance model is key to delivering a quality of life that citizens truly deserve in a Viksit Bharat.

Over the past two to three decades, India has made significant progress in improving efficiency and citizen satisfaction in service delivery and development programmes. The adoption of citizen charters and social audits, the enactment of consumer protection measures, the Right to Information and the Right to Services, as well as digital service delivery platforms and grievance redressal forums, have all aimed to empower citizens. Yet, these initiatives have largely addressed individual dimensions of citizen experience in isolation. Neither transparency alone, nor rights-based service delivery, nor post-facto audits can, by themselves, secure sustained trust in governance. Nor can digitisation compensate for deeper structural deficiencies that inhibit citizen-centricity.

What India now needs is a systemic model of citizen-centric governance – one that applies holistically across the full spectrum of government functions, including policy framing and regulation, service delivery, and development, and across all tiers of government – from the Union and states to municipalities and panchayats. Citizen centricity is the measure of a government’s ability to design, implement, and continuously improve governance initiatives to enhance quality of life and build enduring citizen trust.

Citizen-centricity cannot be introduced only at the implementation stage. It needs to be embedded across the programme lifecycle, from conception and needs assessment to design, execution, and evaluation. It must be informed, continuously, by feedback from citizens and other stakeholders. A comprehensive citizen-centric governance framework rests on five interlinked pillars: transparency, participation, accountability, responsiveness, and continuous improvement.

Transparency enables informed engagement. It requires governments and their agencies to proactively inform and educate citizens about initiatives in ways that enable meaningful participation, feedback, and oversight. Before designing any programme or policy, basic questions must be asked: Is the information to be shared comprehensive and coherent? Are dissemination channels accessible to the affected communities? Information asymmetry remains one of the greatest barriers to trust. Transparency is not merely about dashboards or disclosures; it is about making information intelligible, accessible and actionable so citizens understand who decides, on what basis, and with what consequences.

Participation goes far beyond consultation meetings or feedback forms. It implies engaging citizens at every stage of the governance cycle: problem identification, planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring. Global experience and Indian practice both show that token participation breeds cynicism, while institutionalised participation builds ownership and trust. Governments must move decisively from treating people as mere beneficiaries to recognising them as partners. Ease of participation must be consciously designed into governance systems. Technology can enable participation, but it cannot substitute place-based forums such as gram sabhas, ward committees, and area sabhas, which remain indispensable.

Accountability is the bedrock of trust. When responsibilities are fragmented across multiple agencies and tiers, citizens are left unsure of who is answerable for outcomes. True accountability requires clearly defined service standards, time-bound delivery, and mechanisms through which citizens can hold both officials and elected representatives to account. Citizen-centric policies and programmes must therefore guarantee professional, timely and data-protected services that are independently verifiable.

Transformation beyond targeted programmes

Responsiveness adds a human dimension to governance. A responsive system listens early, corrects quickly, and treats citizens with dignity. Broken grievance redressal portals, unresponsive helplines, and opaque processes point to systemic design failures. Ease of access, respectful communication, effective grievance redressal, and user-friendly service design are not luxuries. As citizens experience increasingly professional services elsewhere in the 21st century, expectations from public institutions inevitably rise.

The fifth pillar – continuous improvement – ensures that citizen centricity is sustained rather than episodic. Governance systems must be capable of learning, adapting, and improving through robust evaluation frameworks that go beyond financial and output metrics to assess service quality, citizen experience, and trust. Feedback loops, citizen-led monitoring, independent performance evaluations, and outcome-based reviews must inform course correction. Good governance cannot be a destination; it must be a discipline.

These five pillars cannot stand alone unless viewed through four essential lenses: inclusion, decentralisation, institutionalisation, and technological enablement. Inclusion ensures that governance reaches the most marginalised, not merely the most vocal or digitally connected. Decentralisation brings decision-making closer to the first mile of governance: towns, villages, neighbourhoods, and workplaces.

Institutionalisation embeds citizen-centric practices in laws, rules, charters, and forums, rather than individual leadership. Technology, finally, must serve as an enabler, expanding access, reducing discretion, and strengthening transparency and participation.

India’s governance reforms have largely been incremental and programme-specific, delivering short-term gains without transforming the underlying relationship between the State and the citizen. A holistic citizen-centric governance paradigm is therefore essential to anchor development in world-class quality of life and citizen trust, as much as economic growth.

(The writer is the Director of Policy Engagement at Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)