To bring people staying in far of places from district headquarters closer to the administration, to get feed back from the people and to improve transparency “Dial Your Collector” programme was introduced in Nizamabad district from 6th August,2001. This program is done on every Mondays from 9:30 AM to 10:00 AM. So far it has been held uninterruptedly,( except during JBs) and the response from the public and the press has been overwhelming. The credibility of the program is so high that many prefer to wait to get through the dialup line to giving written petitions. Phone calls have come even from NRIs settled abroad.

Modus Operandi:
District Heads of all departments assemble at 10.00 AM every Mondays in Collector’s chamber. From 10.00 AM to 10.30 AM Collector personally takes the phone calls from public. There is no specific subject scheduled. Any grievances of public importance, common community problems, irregularities in any works done, complaints against officials or non-officials, corruption and harassment by staff -all are received. Individual issues and establishment matters of government employees are discouraged. Preference is given to callers from far off Mandals. A “call line identifier” instrument has been installed. This helps to grab the telephone number of caller. It is useful to trace out the caller later on, if necessary, and to ignore calls from the mandals adjoining to the district HQs. Local calls from adjoining mandals are avoided because when compared to people staying in remote Mandals, they have better opportunities to come to district headquarters and represent their grievances. The caller identifies himself and states his/her grievance. This is computerized on real time basis, kept in a database and also recorded in a voice recorder. The concerned District Officers also note down the issues related to their department. However, a formal letter is sent to the District Head by Monday evening on the grievances received concerning his department, asking him to get the reply by the ensuing Friday. The reports are collected and compiled on the Saturday and the action taken on each of the grievances is released to press. If any department has sent an interim report, a Superintendent in the collectorate follows it up till final reply is got.

As only about 20-25 complaints are taken up in a Monday, almost 90% of them are sorted out by the following Saturday. The “action taken report” is published in the local newspapers on the Sunday. Any wrong information given by any department gets exposed, as the petitioner would call up the next Monday and counter it. Quick redress of the issues and accurate reporting has increased the faith of people in the program. In fact, many calls are received thanking for the quick action taken.

Analysis of the calls show that most of the calls attended are from very far off Mandals or from interior villages who would have otherwise had to spend a day to come to district headquarters, give petition and get back. People from interior villages call from neighboring public STD booths.The program has been a phenomenal success with many old issues in which people had given up hopes were solved. The overwhelming success of the program and the response in the press has encouraged many other departments to start similar program. Superintendent of Police started it in the month of January,2002. Many Dy.Superintendents of Police and even CIs have also followed the suit.

The advantages of the program noticed are:

1. The petitioner gets opportunity to speak directly to the Collector which itself is a great satisfaction to many of the petitioners. The Collector can ask for clarifications to the caller & comprehend the issue in a better way.

2. As all the district level officers are present at the time of the call, delay in correspondence is avoided. Action is taken immediately and the reports received by ensuing Friday.

3. In this program people have complained about staff harassing for illegal gratification, irregularities in works etc. The contents of the calls are also reported widely in the press and media on the very next day (Tuesdays). This has acted has a great deterrent and check on corruption to the large extent in the district.

4. Action Taken report is published in the local newspapers on Sundays. This helps in public audit of the report given by the officers as well as act as a confidence booster to people to make calls the next day (Monday).

5. Since no topic is specified for the day, the topics that are “hot” and of immediate relevance come up. The district administration and the Government is getting good name because the action is being taken immediately on the most pertinent issues of the people at a given point of time.

6. This has helped to bring people of far-flung mandals closer to the administration. They generally feel neglected and lower level staff tends to take things easily due to lesser supervision from the district officials.

7. The biggest spin-off effect of this program is the presence of all district level officers on Mondays by 10.00 AM in the district. This has resulted in ensuring regular attendance of officers, putting an end to complaints of Officers not being available in the headquarters on Mondays. ( Nizamabad is just 2 ½ hours away from Hyderabad).

8. The meeting of officers every Mondays also has helped in bringing about better convergence among departments, sorting out of issues between various departments and act as a forum for giving general instructions of common importance.