Public_Administration

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ADMINISTRATIONS We must be able to answer: • Why are we studying and what are these two • Differences: what and why • Similarities: what and why • What do scholars think about it • Role of public & private administrations in developed countries • Role of public & private administrations in developing countries • Respective roles in pre-LPG: divergence • Respective roles in post-LPG: convergence • Final analysis o Ultimate aim o Whither future and how should the change be directed (in both cases) With the change in economic milieu world-over, the role of public and private sectors is being reviewed and reoriented to meet the emerging challenges of society. DIFFERENCES The difference in their values, objectives and contribution to society fundamentally differentiates the business of public and private administrations. Simon, Stamp and Drucker endorse this viewpoint. 1. Service motive and general welfare of the public are the ends of public administration, while private administration by contrast, is basically oriented towards earning profit. 2. Public administration operates under constitutional laws, rules and regulations. While the private administration works under market environment recognized by greater autonomy, competitiveness and freedom. 3. Public Administration enables accessibility to all, any deviance is exposed to public gaze and censure. While discrimination on the other hand, is almost a part of business culture. 4. Public administration is exceedingly complex, with lots of pulls and pressures and political directions. Private administration by contrast, is much more well-knit and single minded in operation. 5. Urgency and comprehensiveness of functions ranging social, cultural and economic activities identifies the Public administration. Natural calamities and man-made disasters force the government to provide immediate relieves without waiting for the private sector to help. 6. Efficiency criterion of private sector is guided by socially narrow tests of resource use, while effectiveness in terms of achieving specific policy goals assumes critical significance in public administration. “Managing for Performance” puts public administration at higher pedestal than the private administration. SIMILARITIES • Several aspects of public management are generic to both. There are many grey areas where the line of separation between the two is not well-marked. • Organisational structures, managerial processes and office techniques are quite similar in the two. • Hierarchy, planning, communication, budgeting and reporting are well-practiced in the two administrations. • Fayol, Urwick and Follett believe that same principles can be applied to both irrespective of the size, description and purpose of the organisation. • Lateral entry system in USA, movement of retired bureaucrats to private sector in Japan and the recently initiated lateral entry of public servants in private sector in India at higher levels well endorse the similarities in the two sectors. [pic] ROLE IN DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES • In developed countries like USA, private administration plays an important role in economy and society. There is blurring of lines rather than a distinct bifurcation of responsibilities. • In developing countries like India, public administration plays instrumental role in societal change while mixed role of both directs economic development. [pic] CHANGING ROLE OVER TIME • The public-private relationship has undergone an overhauling change from divergence in pre-1990 period to convergence later on. While the public administration is adopting practices of private management, private administration increasingly subject to government regulation in public interest e.g. the ‘Investment Commission’ was constituted with corporate involvement to explore ways to attract investment in India. Corporate planning and performance budget have become the buzz words today, which clearly demonstrate their merging roles. [pic] CONCLUSION Ultimately the aim of governance is to provide people’s self development and empowerment. Public and private administration are the tools to achieve this and by directing and accelerating the change in development enterprise. The public administration needs to be aggressively managerialized and given entrepreneur tilt, while private administration must realize that the whole enterprise can not just be about higher profits, there must also be a higher purpose. PUBLIC CHOICE APPROACH The Public Choice Approach is basically an application of economics to political science. Its principal contributors have been micro-economists like Buchanan, Tullock, Niskanen and Ostrom. It is essentially a state-reducing and market-expanding doctrine, justified by its view that government decision making is not based on individual citizens’ interests. The Public Choice Approach is based on the behavioral assumptions that human beings are:- • Individualistic, and • Rational-economic In other words, humans in general are utility-maximizers seeking to further their self-interest. In particular, it is true for actors in the politico-administrative spheres. Thus civil servants are self-aggrandizing bureaucrats interested only in expanding the activities under their charge, and increasing their departments’ budgets. Similarly the political leaders are vote seeking politicians, maximizing their votes for perpetuating their stay in power as their sole end. For this, they go on recklessly promising more and more programmes to their constituents. The natural consequence of this is state overload or enlargement of the public sphere. In turn, this overload has following consequences:- 1. The government machinery becomes unwillingly large. This calls for an increased public revenue and thereby increases the tax-burden on the citizens. Most of it is spent on maintaining the government and very little is left for actual provision of goods and services. 2. In the absence of market conditions, there is no compulsion to innovate or raise quality and reduce costs. The government activities become increasingly bureaucratic, leading to inefficiency. 3. A large government increases the powers of bureaucracy threatening individual liberty. 4. In the absence of organizational pluralism, a citizen has no freedom of choice. This is anti-democratic. Having this built up a case against governments, Public Choice Approach gives the following prescriptions:- 1. The role of the state needs to be minimized. In particular, no role to be played in the production and distribution of goods and services, social or economic. As large a sphere of activities as possible should be handed over to the private sector, operating under the market mechanism. 2. Even in those activities in which the state must keep itself, there should be multiple agencies delivering the same public good. Such kind of institutional pluralism ensures competition. If possible, even these services should be contracted out or leased to private parties. This has the following benefits:- 1. Market ensures competition. There can be as many players as warranted by demand. Such organizational pluralism is in accord with democracy, the freedom to choose, that competition also results in efficiency, innovation and price reduction. This benefits the citizens. 2. Due to roll back of state, there are several benefits. The size of the government comes down and thereby, reducing the tax burden on citizenry alongwith the power of bureaucrats and politicians. 3. Government can focus on regulating common goods better, providing public goods and rationally design other goods and services. 4. With the cutting of all unnecessary functions, the government can concentrate on important activities like defence, law & order, and foreign policy. CRITICAL APPRAISAL It is a fact today that governments have become very big, even unwieldy. Several of their functions are plain unnecessary. This naturally leads to avoidable expenditure and reduce effectiveness. In this context, the call for roll-back of state by the Public Choice theorist seem correct and timely, and it finding wide acceptance too. Public Sector Undertakings are being privatized from New Zealand to China to India, and being disinvested. Downsizing of government is accompanying a re-definition of its functions. Reducing fiscal deficit is the focal concern. Countries like USA and Germany have gone in for outright privatization, allowing the market a free play bin the economy. Australia and Singapore are shifting operating responsibilities from the central departments to specific decentralized agencies. This allows competition. Most developing countries from India to South Africa to Malaysia are undergoing structural adjustment which is only shifting the economic balance from government to the private sector. Overall the trend is towards state-minimalism. Nevertheless, the theory has certain weaknesses for which it has been criticized:- 1. It is a throwback to laissez-faire. This, we know leads to the state monopoly being substituted by the far more dangerous private monopoly. 2. The market-mechanism does not automatically ensure competition. Big multi-national corporations first establish and then exploit their market dominance to eliminate other players. Citizens’ choice is thus constricted. Scandals in USA and other developed countries in private sector are not unknown. 3. Market has no sympathy for those who cannot afford. This is especially a cause of concern for developing countries which have a large no. of poor, even destitute population. 4. It looks like a new right ideology being propagated by the capitalist states like America to open the lucrative markets in the Third world to their rapacious trans-national companies. 5. Its criticism of political leaders and civil servants as being motivated solely by self-interest is unfair. 6. It forgets the important role of the state vis-à-vis the market. The state has to enforce contracts, adjudicate disputes, curb monopolies and build physical infrastructure. No market is possible without these. 7. It is crudely ahistorical. In the early stages of development, a country e.g. East Timor or Afghanistan may not have any private enterprise. State is the only instrument of development there. 8. The assumption about human nature- individualistic and utility-maximizers is too simplistic. Plural societies need communitarianism than self-centered individuals. 9. In advocating market-led development, it prescribes “one-best way”. 10. To say that efficiency is the sole aim of government is to trivialize government. The latter has higher goals like equality, equity and welfare. 11. The theory justifies consumption of ever increasing amounts of goods and services, and so apotheosizes the western way of life. E-GOVERNANCE IN INDIA: PROBLEMS CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES E-Governance is a new version and a novel variety of governance. E-governance is not only the new, but also the now trend occurring in India. It is fast taking the form of a movement. Many benefits are flowing from its adoption in various spheres of administration. Several advanced governments of the world have switched over and many other seem to be switching over to electronic administration. India lacks however, a national perspective one-governance, although, there is space of flourishing eloquence among some ministers, bureaucratic techno experts and other pundits combined with a fairly widespread awareness and more or less universal realization of the positive aspects of this informative revolution. With most aspects of citizen life and most sectors of governmental functions coalescing, in a mutually beneficial, friendly ambience through an electronic convergence system, there will emerge one day, a one stop, non stop shopping approach in the governments, involving ‘cross-cutting’ over-joined up governance – the idea simply being to create capability for providing the citizens access to government services across departments though electronic networks. [pic] There is no doubt that seriously implementing e-governance programme calls for basic restructuring of an age-old archaic and colonial procedures – it indeed involve almost wholesale elimination of the existing dysfunctional system of governance. What is urgently needed is change in the mindset of the people in government, change in the philosophy, spirit and processes in bureaucracy, development of a national infrastructure, and a governing body on e-governance for the whole country. There seems to have come about a welcome change, rather dramatic. Inaugurating the first meeting of state IT ministers on July 15, 2000 in New Delhi, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced major initiatives aimed at propelling development of IT and telecom infrastructure in the country. These included the end of VSNL’s monopoly on international band width access, full deregulation of the national long distance telecom market to private competition and formation of a task force on human resource development in IT. As 13-Point Common Action Plan for promoting IT in India has been adopted, divesting the Union and State governments to promote e-governance and to improve efficiency. People have long been a harassed lot in their relationship with the government with endless forms, regulations, by-laws, paperwork, delays, secrecy, authoritarianism and negativism. They would not take these any more and hence the demand for ‘good governance’ slogan, for ‘paperless office’; cry for transparency and death of secrecy and insistence on right to information. Technology can give them all that stands for good governance. E-governance is the other name of good governance. People cannot go without good governance. It is their right to have it. It is government’s duty to govern, and govern well. Government is a mandated pledge that has to be fulfilled. The state has to be welfare oriented, people directed and service driven. Government can justify the existence only by providing good, transparent and effective governance. Suddenly, e-governance through a technological revolution have brought in healthy changes. The basic character of governance, operational methodology, functional style, ideological orientation has undergone changes. In fact much more transparency, demolition of discretion and arbitrariness, and above all, clientele orientation and citizen savvyness have been brought about by the e-governance. [pic] The IT Act 2000 has been passed. Chapter III of the act deals with electronic governance. The Act marks a watershed in the conduct of affairs in the government, signaling a new beginning in the official transactional mode. More importantly, paper work, files fastened by red tape, elaborate noting and drafting – all delay producers – may be a relic of the past, if in future, e-governance becomes the order of the day. And there is no reason why it should not. Areas targeted for bringing in information technology are revenue carving departments – such as registration department, commercial tax department, ration-card and public distribution system, treasury, health department, municipality functions etc. If future is the place where we have to live the rest of our lives, we all must have stake and concern for its regulation, control and development. IT is the tool for that. IT is an instrument for enrichment of quality of people’s life. IT is the promise for a brighter future. E-governance is certainly a legitimate hope, and not a tall order to be sure, that our traditionally lethargic, leisurely and old worldly public administration must sooner than later, rid itself of its inherited “burdensome baggage” through the intervention of IT. The need for conceptual clarity to realize mutually reinforcive relationship between IT and public administration is indicated. Applying and developing IT in different spheres of activities and other programme sectors of development administration in our country that the poor people, illiterate masses, underfed men, particularly inhabiting the rural interiors, the under-privileged, disadvantaged and handicapped sections of our society can get a better deal in life. Therefore, full potential of IT need to be tapped and harnessed in the following fields: Education, health, banking, tax administration, water and power supply, transport system, export and import, ports and docks and shipping administration, traffic control, immigration, public distribution system law and order maintenance, security, criminal justice administration and environmental protection etc. Prosperity through IT is at our door step. We must open the door fully, and not keep it shut. We have lived in the past, in the dark, for far too long. E-governance is the future, and we must go in for it, to make the future secure for our future generations. IT REDEFINED THEORY AND PRACTICE OF ADMINISTRATION As far as the theory of administration is concerned, no other change was as penetrating as the one brought about by IT. It has affected the theory in the following ways:- • Principles of management: • Simplification of Hierarchy • Centralization in organizations • Expansion of Span of Control • Enhanced Co-ordination • Change from emphasis on structures to delivery • Reduced role of human element: this has reduced the element of errors in administration. However, IT can only supplement and support but cannot supplant the human factor. • Change from generalist to specialist administration As far as the practice of administration is concerned, IT has far reaching positive consequences for the governments as well as the citizens. • For the government as an organisation, IT has brought in systems like MIS (Management Information System) and DSS (Decision Support System). Further, it has redefined the POSDCORB activities of Gulick and revolutionalized the Communication across the various levels of government horizontally as well as vertically. It has helped in the improvement of work culture in the government transforming an ivory tower approach into a people centric one. • For the government as a State, IT has improved the reach, speed and quality of various government driven programmes and policies. • More than for any other thing, the practice of IT in the form of e-governance has benefited the citizens most. The SMART administration (Small, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent) has had a direct impact on the application of 4Es (Efficiency, Effectiveness, Economy and Equity) on the citizens. [pic] • Besides, e-governance also helped in the evolution of a participative-governance, ultimately leading to the empowerment of citizens. ROLE OF IT IN MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONS The information technology revolution has been called as the second industrial revolution. Both computer technology and communication technology has grown very rapidly, contributing to each others’ growth; the two have become very interdependent. The term IT has come into common use since the mid 80’s with the integration of the computer technology and the communication technology. Today, IT provides integrated solutions for development of information systems in organizations and society. Information system is the nervous system of any organization and since qua non for its survival. Information lies at the heart of any management process, information systems are playing greater role in providing integration in organizational and pubic functioning. The developments in IT have affected every industry and every profession. The main subsystems or components of information systems are: i) Information storage, selection and retrieval (data base) system. ii) Information consolidation system (data and text processing) iii) Information communication system (networking) and iv) Information analysis (decision support) system. Operational information is used daily and routinely and allows the organization to carry on its daily tasks. It serves the operational level of functional units of the organization. The information needs of planning consists of knowledge of current and past performances, forecasts on future performance, view of government policies, technological developments, market changes, and a feel for the political, social and economic climate. Effective control requires detailed information on performance at the lowest level of the organization. OPTIMUM UTILIZATION OF IT IN PUBIC ADMINISTRATION There is a need for improvement in quality of services rendered by the government. The importance of computers can be attributed to its speed, accuracy, deterministic characteristics and connectivity, which has conquered time and distance. Today, IT is more than a resource, it is an environment. Development is a complicated process, which involves not only economic aspects, but also social, political and environmental forces. The major challenge facing the systems analysts and designers is to overcome the built-in resistance in the bureaucracy and official systems that do not permit changes many a times. IT is an integrated technology, which includes within its sphere, computer, telecommunication and broadcasting products, by recognizing the technological convergence of these three fields. IT is an essential pre-requisite for providing basic infrastructure inputs to secure the desired industrial development and economic progress. Adequate dissemination of information is essential for social change. Government should understand the enormous potential of IT not only as a tool for improving governance and creating more jobs, but more significantly as a means to greatly enhance the standard of living of the people. Use of it in enhancing the delivery of government services leads to a very responsive and transport administration, facilitating empowerment of people, satisfying their right to information. The following steps could be taken to enhance the quality of administration:- 1. Ensure involvement of people from professional bodies in governmental decision-making process 2. Shift to performance orientation, rather than a procedure oriented bureaucratic set up 3. Ensure full participation of personnel working at all levels of management 4. Identify the common factors and differentiating characteristics in developing a model information service. 5. Besides strong political will, a programme/ project needs honest implementation with a definite and clearly defined objectives 6. IT strategy must stem from business models to ensure that mission critical applications get top priority SUGGESTIONS TO ENHANCE IT APPLICATIONS • Management comprises three levels: operational, tactical and executive (in ascending order). The data requirement varies which the level of management. As one moves up the hierarchy, the data gets refined, filtered and in the process quantity of data is reduced but its quality is enhanced. The application of IT should thus be consistent with the goals and objectives of management. • Emphasis should be on IT training rather than IT education. Schools need to shift from mere teaching technology to teaching application of technology as well. • One has to look at specific application areas of IT that can make a real impact on the Indian scene during the next two decades. The contents and subject matter to be available through these technologies must be consistent with the need of different categories of users. • The officers should be linked by network, and the businessman may get a single – window clearance. • Experiment with the new may be made only when existing and available resources have been optimally utilized and fully exploited. • One department at national level should be responsible for the development and import of required hardware and application software to be used by other departments in the country. This would save time, energy and resources. EXAMPLES OF IT PROJECTS IN INDIA 1. BHOOMI - Karnataka - Land reforms 2. APSWAN - Andhra - Secretariat 3. WARNA - Maharashtra - Co-operatives 4. GYANDOOT - M.P. - Education 5. RAJSWIFT - Rajasthan - Organisation Effectiveness 6. FRIENDS - Kerala - Delivery Services MARXIST VIEW OF BUREAUCRACY Marx did not write extensively on bureaucracy. Yet, what he did write was not insignificant. He placed bureaucracy and studied it, in the context of his study of state of in the capitalist society. For him, it was the apparatus of the state i.e. civil service. PERSPECTIVE ON ADMINISTRATIVE REALITY Marx’s assumptions are the following: 1. He saw the individual human being as selfish in nature, promoting his self interest. In particular, the bureaucrat is self-seeking and self-aggrandizing. 2. This was a materialist conception of the state, in contrast to Hegel’s idealist view that regarded state as an ethical entity. In regarding state as representing the interests of the capitalist class, there are 2 marxist positions: 1. Fundamentalist model – Aaronovitch sees bureaucracy as directly manned and controlled by the ruling class. Thus, given that top civil servants and members of government advisory bodies are directly connected to the capitalist class, it will naturally favour this class. 2. Relative Autonomy Model – Poulantzas says that bureaucracy need not necessarily be from the ruling class to serve the latter’s interests. State as part of superstructure being conditioned by the base, bureaucracy automatically represents the interests of capital. This in fact, better serves the capitalist class as free from internal squabbles of groups within the class, bureaucracy serves the whole class and also it can easily portray that it serves the entire society. HOW DOES THE BUREAUCRACY PROMOTE INTERESTS OF CAPITAL' In explaining this, Marxists Westergaard and Resler are explaining the 20th century state, welfare state. 1. State makes laws to safeguard private property, the basis of exploitation of the subject class. 2. Bureaucracy is engaged in a large no of activities that appear to benefit the subject class in particular or society as a whole. These include regulatory legislation to improve health and safety in the workplace, direct provision through national health services and free education for all and also distribution i.e. security benefits as old-age pensions and unemployment and sickness insurance. 3. These it says are meant to act as safety-valves to diffuse working class unrest that might threaten ruling-class dominance. But these activities only smoothen the rough edges of insecurity while leaving the basic structure of inequality intact. Further, even these have been financed from the wages of those they are intended to benefit, resulting in little redistribution of wealth. 3. State’s direct production role in economy is explained as establishing the basic conditions for business prosperity and growth. This objective explains nationalization of basic industries as energy and transport. State also contributes financially to the private sector e.g. by pubic finance institutions. BUREAUCRACY 1. Represents interests of the dominant class i.e. from the fundamentalist model, its own interests. It only parades these interests as the public interest, if the people get taken in by this; it is false-class consciousness. 2. The individual bureaucrat is self-aggrandizing, chasing after promotions, high posts and has excessive attachment to status and prestige. 3. Apart from being selfish, bureaucracy is oppressive. Thus it enmeshes and controls civil society in every aspect of existence – from the most important to the most trivial. 4. In turn, it does not submit itself to any control by others. This, it ensures through its secretive nature secured internally by hierarchy and externally by its character as a closed corporation. It keeps aloof from society, frowns upon any and complicates its political consciousness among people, its affairs to a degree that most people cannot comprehend it. In fact, Lenin believed, contrary to Weber, parliaments are mere talking shops and cannot control bureaucracy which really conducts governmental work. 5. Not being directly or organically linked to the mode of production, bureaucracy leads a parasitic existence. 6. Bureaucracy is inherently incompetent. The superior does not know the specifics of the case, the subordinate does not know the general objectives and thus, none comprehends the totality of the situation. Hierarchy of structure thus means hierarchy of knowledge too- Vertical and functional differentiation. 7. A bureaucrat thinks he can do everything but in fact, lacks initiative and imagination. This leads to mere combination and mutual reinforcement of incompetence. 8. The mentality of bureaucracy is idolatry of authority and is passively obedient of authority. In other words, anyone who has authority can direct the bureaucracy to any end. 9. Bureaucracy is and status-quoist, believing in fixed principles, attitudes, behaviours and traditions. FUTURE OF BUREAUCRACY State, being an instrument of ruling class domination and exploitation of subject class, must be eliminated. This can only be ensured by changing the nature of economic base to which the state bureaucracy owes its position. In other words, with social ownership of means of production, bureaucracy will disappear. While recognizing the need for some form of administrative organization in the socialist society, Weber’s ideal typical model was rejected both by Lenin and Mao. Thus, administrators would be directly appointed by the people and subject to recall any time. Their wages would not exceed those of any worker. They would only lead, not command. Division of labour and technical specialization and the professional administrator are replaced by a system where everyone can take care of everything in the organization. Administrative tasks are simplified to the point that only basic literacy and numeracy are sufficient skills to perform them. Thus, everybody in the community would have the skills necessary to directly administer the organization as also directly control and supervise it. Thus, all can become bureaucrats for a time and so no one can become a bureaucrat. Administrative leaders would also spend some time in actual production, in field and factories. The rigid hierarchy will be abolished as it stifles the energy and initiative of the masses. Fixed rules and regulations only repress the masses and so will be changed as the masses see fit. Thus the repressive state bureaucracies of the capitalist society will be replaced by a truly democratic system. The organization would be directly controlled and administered by the masses. However these prophecies have not come true. In the former USSR, under Lenin himself, there was expansion, than dismantling of state bureaucracy. Even accounting for the transitional dictatorship of the proletariat, a mature USSR did not reverse trend of bureaucratization. In fact Alfred Meyer says, bureaucracy is the organizing principle of the soviet Society which may be seen as a large, complex bureaucracy just like any large organization of the west. As to its exact nature, opinions are divided. Milovan Djilas says Soviet bureaucrats have directed the polity and economy for their benefit, exploiting the masses and allowing the latter no opportunity to participate in or control administration. In fact, bureaucracy has itself emerged as an elite – a ‘power elite’ as Bottommore and Raymond Aron see it – controlling political, economic and military power, using this absolute and unbounded power for self-enrichment than for the society as a whole. David lane agrees that bureaucratization in USSR is opposed to democracy but it does not take away from the fact that the industrialization and the social change brought about by the centralized bureaucracy has benefited all members of society. An attempt to remove the bureau was made in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. One, there was ‘role shifting’ i.e. leaders moved to the base of the organization to empathize with the workers and minimize status differences. Secondly, there was group-based decision-making i.e. workers directly participate in decision making in the factory. The impact of these however was as short as the revolution itself. Yeo-Chi King saw Mao’s intervention as a kind of charismatic break from bureaucratic routine. Weber proved correct and this charismatic authority was rapidly routinized back to bureaucracy. MARX VS WEBER In general, Weber’s work is seen as providing a corrective to Marx’s mono-causal determination of events. Weber thus responded to most themes touched upon by Marx insisting the comment that he was having a dialogue with the ghost of Marx. In particular, both studied bureaucracy. • To Marx, bureaucracy meant only the bureaucratic apparatus of the state i.e. the civil service. For Weber however, it had a wider meaning. It meant a form of organization – public or private. Weber’s view was correct hill 1950s when both public and private sector organizations were bureaucratic. Since then, private sector has started abandoning bureaucracy. • For Marx, bureaucracy was a specific creation of the capitalist society. Bureaucracy serves interests of ruling class. For Weber, bureaucracy is a more general phenomenon – a manifestation of rationalization i.e. rise of industrial society. It is found in all industrial societies, capitalist or socialist. Studies of Milovan Djilas, David Lane, Raymond Aron and T.B. Bottommore confirm Weber’s view. • Weber believed Parliament can effectively control bureaucracy. Marxists as Lenin have rejected this view. They say parliaments are mere talking shops; while bureaucracy, away from parliament, really conducts work of government. • The nature of administrative organization prophesied by Marxists for socialist society is the antithesis of Weberian ideal type. • Weber rejects Marx’s view that bureaucracy is a parasitic entity. • Marx believed bureaucracy is inherently incompetent and non-rational while Weber believed, it is the most competent. ----------------------- [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] [pic]