I am following up from Ambrish’s blog that suggests involving parents in monitoring the Mid Day Meals (MDM) Scheme in India, via the relatively new Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) launched in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Having participated in the same survey, I too came across instances where meals had not been served in schools for weeks, sometimes months. Reasons ranged from grains going bad due to inadequate storage containers, lack of cooking vessels as they had been stolen from the school premises, to insufficient receipt of grants required to convert grains to meals. Sporadic monitoring through MDM registers will not be able to record these discrepancies, but if data is recorded every day, amends can be made in time.

There are two sources that can provide us with information about MDM: the school — Head Masters, Teachers and Cooks (current respondents of the IVRS), and the home — parents and students (left out of the present feedback system). I will not assume that all parents ask their children everyday if they have eaten a meal in school, but it would be safe to suppose that a significant number of parents would know if their children had been going hungry for weeks. This makes parents an important source of information, one that needs to be drawn on, as per Ambrish’s suggestion. This post attempts to build on the idea of citizen feedback.

While collecting information for our survey at the school level, principals and teachers often enquired about what would come of the data we were collecting and whether they would hear back from us. An in-person survey like the one we completed at least has a human element, one that allows the respondent to interact with the surveyor and the other way around. However, with ICT feedback programmes such as IVRS, where the respondent keys in a number, it is hard to imagine where the information goes and what will happen to it once you have turned off your phone.

An IVRS for parents may initially work in capturing data at the family level, as the opportunity costs for parents to respond to a phone call are not very high.  However, unless parents feel empowered to change the system, the IVRS will not increase the level of parents’ participation in their child’s education, thus losing the true potential of including parents as respondents.

Enforcing a government mandated monitoring system ensures consistent data recording but does not empower beneficiaries. According to Cornwall (2008)[i], “Being involved in a process is not equivalent to having a voice. Voice needs to be nurtured. People need to feel able to express themselves without fear of reprisals or the expectation of not being listened to or taken seriously… …Translating voice into influence requires more than simply effective ways of capturing what people want to say; it involves efforts ‘from above’ and ‘from below’.”

For IVRS for parents to work, three things must be ensured ‘from above’ to influence the current system:

1)      Action must be taken based on the feedback provided: If data does not result in change, respondents would not be motivated to answer calls. For example, the Punjab Model for Proactive Governance in Pakistan is a system where the state calls and sends SMS to citizens to inquire about the quality of public service delivered to them and if they encountered any form of corruption. If an official or office is repeatedly reported as corrupt, they can be suspended or dismissed from service. Compared to the Philippine system (described below), this initiative, as the name suggests, proactively checks corruption rather than waiting for the citizen to call in.

2)      Respondents must be kept in the ‘feedback loop’: The system should respond to the participant and share information back with them. For example, the Philippines Civil Service Commission has initiated the Text CSC, an SMS initiative introduced in 2004 to improve the delivery of government services. If the respondent has any grievance against a government service provider, they can SMS their complaint to the Civil Service Commission. Once action is taken the respondent receives a customised answer to their query informing them of the outcome. Similarly, if parents from a particular school consistently record that their child has not received food, officials should be deputed to monitor these schools to verify the information. Data should then be recorded at a central system, which reroutes this information to the participants of the IVRS, informing them of the action taken and the outcome of the action.

3)      Anonymity of respondents must be maintained: Parents would only participate if they are assured that the IVRS system is anonymous and their children will not face the repercussion of sending in feedback to officials. Any reprisal or breach of trust will be enough to dissuade parents from participating in this monitoring process. Data gathered must be treated sensitively, as negative feedback from parents may make school authorities feel cornered and/or antagonistic towards parents. To ensure this, phone numbers should be selected randomly, and, controls should be put into place at school, block, district and state level for accessing data depending on its sensitivity. Further, respondents should be made aware beforehand of how the data will be used.

To ensure that feedback mechanisms for public service delivery work ‘from above’, gathering the accurate data is only the first step. Addressing concerns is the next. However, perhaps most important is the need to create an environment ‘from below’ where beneficiaries not only have knowledge but also the ability to use this mechanism to get what they are entitled to.

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[i]  Cornwall, A. 2008. “Unpacking ‘Participation’: Models, Meanings and Practices.” Community Development Journal 43 (3) (June 5): 269–283. doi:10.1093/cdj/bsn010.