Watch the full video (above) of the panel discussion on ‘Tracking Government Spending: Challenges in Social Policy Financing’ featuring Rathin Roy (Director, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy); Alok Kumar (Adviser, NITI Aayog); Jeffrey Hammer (Senior Visiting Fellow, CPR); TR Raghunandan (Adviser, Accountability Initiative & Former Indian Administrative Service Officer) and moderated by Avani Kapur (Fellow & Director, Accountability Initiative, CPR). The panel marked the completion of ten years of the Accountability Initiative at CPR since it’s founding.

Despite significant investments in social welfare programmes, it is widely acknowledged that implementation is India’s Achilles heel and public service delivery is often plagued by inadequate quality, corruption and accountability failures. Yet, a discussion on the links between design and implementation is often constrained by the lack of evidence on the processes through which policies are translated on the ground.

What are the emerging trends of social policy financing in India? What should be the role of the Union Government in social policy financing in an era of more cooperative federalism? What is the role of technology in enabling a more efficient public finance management system? What is the optimal allocation of functions and capacities required across all levels of government to ensure an outcome-focussed financing system? By placing the current evidence on the processes involved in the delivery of social policies at the front and centre, this session aimed to revisit the current design of social policy financing given the recent changes in India’s fiscal architecture.

The panel was organised as part of the second edition of CPR Dialogues, held on 2nd and 3rd March 2020 at the India Habitat Centre. Addressing the theme of Policy Perspectives for 21st-century India, CPR Dialogues 2020 provided a window to the India of the future. Experts from around the country and the world engaged with and debated these very significant development and policy challenges that India faces in the coming decade.

ThePrint India was the digital partner for the event.

Media coverage of the session can be found below:

• Civil servants and politicians aren’t worried about outcomes of govt spending: Experts by ThePrint