accountability, Author at Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Decentralisation delusion

There is no political will to hand over the powers and resources to local govts to respond to peoples needs.

On April 24, 2013, India celebrated the 20th anniversary of the passage of the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments mandating the creation of a third tier of the elected governmentthe panchayati raj institutions (PRIs)in rural areas and municipal councils in urban India. hen passed, these amendments embodied the aspiration of transforming Indias top-down, district magistrate raj babu culture through greater decentralisation. However, 20 years on, there is little argument that this aspiration remains unfulfilled and efforts to decentralise government, despite the constitutional provisions, have been half-hearted at best.

On RTE,do the math

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional validity of reservation of 25 per cent of admissions at the entry-level in private unaided schools for disadvantaged sections, focus should shift to the implementation of this provision. The Right to Education Act stipulates that private unaided schools shall be reimbursed expenditure so incurred by it to the extent of per child expenditure incurred by the state, or the actual amount charged from the child, whichever is less. So if the state spends Rs 1,500 per child and a private unaided school charges Rs 2,000,the school would be reimbursed Rs 1,500 per child admitted under the reservation policy. However, to implement this clause effectively, we need to know precisely how much both state and private schools spend on a per child basis. Unsurprisingly,given the paucity of data,this information is difficult to find and hence has become a hotly contested issue.

Visible government for invisible people

India has a strong, vibrant economy with a confident middle class, but governance — especially the capacity to deliver basic amenities such as education and health — is its greatest weakness. For India’s burgeoning middle class, the solution seems to lie in the market, but what of the poor?

The Post Office Paradox: A Case Study of the Block Level Education Bureaucracy

Elementary education administrators at the block level primarily perceive themselves, or report themselves to be, disempowered cogs in a hierarchical administrative culture that renders them powerless. They refer to their own roles and offices as “post offices,” used simply for doing the bidding of higher authorities and ferrying messages between the top and bottom of the education chain.

Using the case of education delivery, this paper attempts to probe an administrator’s perspective in resolving the implementation problem at the last mile and is based on detailed primary fieldwork in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh along with some quantitative surveys conducted in Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh. It endeavours to trace the “cognitive maps” of administrators by capturing how last mile public servants see themselves and their jobs, and how notions of job performance are internalised and interpreted within the administrative context of elementary education in India.

Pull, not push, to open up spending

In the run-up to every budget season, public debate on social sector schemes inevitably turns to the question of the paltry sums allocated. True to script, the question of allocations and potential budget cuts is already making headlines. What gets relatively less attention is the issue of how well the government spends even the limited sums of money that it does commit. In recent years, there has been some debate on the question of outcomes—especially in sectors like health and education. Indeed, this annual budget series is an effort to engage with precisely this question.