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Aid Transparency Assessment

Publish What You Fund has developed an Aid Transparency Assessment. This is the first global assessment for aid transparency and the organisation plans to produce more in the future.

The assessment compares the transparency of 30 major donors using eight data sources across seven weighted indicators that fall into three categories – high level commitment to transparency; transparency to recipient government; and transparency to civil society.

“Aid transparency matters for many reasons– from improving governance and accountability and increasing the effectiveness of aid to lifting as many people out of poverty as possible. While some aid is helping address some of the most difficult problems in the most challenging places in the world, we also know that aid is not always delivering the maximum impact possible.

The understanding emerged that aid transparency is fundamental to delivering on donors’ aspirations and the promise of aid. The commitments donors made to improve their aid effectiveness in the 2005 Paris Declaration are important and welcome. The recognition that donors were struggling to deliver on those commitments1 resulted in a new focus on aid transparency in 2008 within the Accra Agenda for Action and with the launch of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

The methodological approach taken is fundamentally driven by a lack of primary data availability.”

The Aid Transparency Assessment is available for download by clicking on the attachment below. You can also click here to experiment with the weighting and see how it affects the overall score.

The organisation would appreciate feedback, suggestions and thoughts on how to take this work forward.

The YP Foundation: Call for positions

The YP Foundation is hiring!

The YP Foundation (TYPF) is a youth run and led organization that supports and enables young people to create programmes and influence policies in the areas of gender, sexuality, health, education, the arts & governance. The organization promotes, protects and advances young people’s human rights by building leadership, and strengthening youth led initiatives and movements. Founded in 2002, TYPF has worked directly with 5,000 young people to set up over 200 projects in India over the last 8 years, reaching out to 300,000 adolescents and young people between 3-28 years of age.

What does it mean to be ‘youth led and run’?

It means getting young people to design, execute, lead and implement all the processes and systems that involve creating social change. Our staff is a team of 21 young people (largely between 18 – 26) who work both part time and full time, with an active volunteer base of over 200 young people a year, across 6 programme divisions that work on the issues of Human Rights, Mental Health & Peer Pressure, Healthcare and Education for Street Children, Film and Literature, promoting Independent Music in India, Sexuality, Gender, HIV/AIDS, Governance and the Right to Information Act in India. We work both in English and Hindi.

TYPF works primarily in the National Capital Region (NCR) and works with youth led groups with partnerships at national, regional and international levels. We have collaborated with youth groups and young activists from 13 states across India, including Punjab, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Kashmir, Nagaland, Gujarat and Bihar. TYPF has supported 250 slum and street children across two locations in New Delhi.

We believe in empowering young people’s access to information, services and rights such that they can build collective platforms to challenge and develop their leadership potential.  

 Vacancies 

 

Full Time Positions

 Management Positions:

1.     Projects Manager

2.     Volunteer Management Head

3.     Trainer’s Cell Coordinator

 
 

Part Time Positions

 Management Positions:

1.     Administrative Coordinator

 

Blending Spectrum (Working with Child Rights, Human Rights & Life Skills Based Education)

1.     Life Skills Curriculum Head

2.     Location Head (Nizamuddin)

3.     Location Head (Mehrauli)

 

Silhouette (Working with Music Education and the Arts)

1.     Project Head

 

Right to Information Branch (Working with the Right to Information Act, Governance and Active Citizenship)

1.     Coordinator

 

 The deadline for submission is October 20th, 2010; please note that applications beyond this date will be entertained only if positions have not been filled.

Please find attached our Staff Applications Form and a list of Staff Vacancies.

For further details, please contact [email protected] or 46792243/44.

 

 

The Hungry Tide: Billions Spent and Millions Still Malnourished

The 16th of October was World Food Day– a day to take the pledge to “unite against hunger” (as this year’s theme goes). And this couldn’t have come at a more pertinent time. Just last week, the Global Hunger Index (GHI) Report 2010 – a joint initiative of the International Food and Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe, and Concern Worldwide ranked India as 67 out of a total of 84 developing countries and countries in transition, with a value of 24.1 points from its earlier 31.7 points in 1990 – thereby placing India in the “alarming” range of hunger.

This is well below all other South Asian countries except Bangladesh ( China in the 9th position, Pakistan in the 52nd spot and Nepal with 56th rank) and even below several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, and war-torn countries of Laos, Cambodia, Congo and Sudan.

 A multidimensional index for measuring global hunger and malnutrition, the GHI combines three equally-weighted indicators, namely the proportion of undernourished population reflected in calorific deficiency, the prevalence of underweight children under the age of five, and finally the mortality rate of children under the age of five. The index thereby takes into account the nutritional status of not just the population as a whole, but also focuses on a particularly vulnerable group –children.

While the report itself acknowledges this, the picture should be taken as indicative of the situation – rather than a current assessment as up-to-date data on global hunger is just not available. However, in a country that spends crores of rupees every year for improving health and nutrition of children as well as on food security, the report does give a damning picture.

Let’s put this in perspective. Table 1 outlines some of the main schemes dealing improving health and hunger and the amount of money being allocated for them.

Table 1.

Scheme

Funding
National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)

Includes components of immunization for children, reproductive and child health project.

 NRHM budget as a whole has more than doubled since FY 2005-06.

Rs. 250 crores was allocated for routine immunization in FY 2009-10, up from Rs. 177 crores in 2005-06.

 
Janani Surakha Yojana (JSY)

Aims at reducing maternal and neo-maternal mortality by giving cash incentives to expecting mothers to undertake institutional delivery.

The number of JSY beneficiaries has increased from 7.39 lakhs to almost 9.2 million in 2009-10.

 

 Rs. 1,241 crores was spent on JSY in FY 2008-09.
Food Subsidy

There are a number of schemes that exist to distribute food grains to vulnerable sections of the population, including the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS)-which provides 35 kgs per month of subsidised food grains to all families identified as living below the poverty line through fair price shops), the Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) for the poorest of poor families etc.

 

 Rs. 55,578 was allocated for food subsidy in FY 2010-11.

 

The total stock of food grains –lying in the central pool (including those in storage and transit) is Rs. 428 lakh metric tonnes.
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)

One of the world’s largest programmes for early childhood development, designed to provide young children with an integrated package of services including supplementary nutrition, healthcare and pre-school education.

 Between 2000 and 2010, Rs. 35,000 crores have been allocated for Integrated Child Development Services ( ICDS)- In FY 2009-10 itself, Rs. 4,022 crores was spent by states ICDS in general and Rs.7,867 crores on the supplementary nutrition component.

 

Moreover, in an order dated November 28th 2001, the Supreme Court converted the benefits of nine food-related schemes (including TPDS, AAY, and ICDS) into “legal entitlements” and directed the State governments to fully implement these schemes as per official guidelines.

 Yet despite this:-

  • India has over 230 million undernourished people. (FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008). In 2005-06, 44 percent of Indian children under the age of five were underweight and 48 percent were stunted. In fact, the figures would be higher if we were to take India’s norms for hunger – defined as a minimum of 2400 kilocalories per day as opposed to FAO’s 1800 kilocalories per day.
  • Every year 2.5 million children die in India, accounting for one in five deaths in the world.
  • To put it in a global perspective, India is home to 27 percent of the world’s undernourished population and a staggering 42 percent of the world’s malnourished children and 35 percent of the developing world’s low-birth weight infants.

 Clearly, the social security net and delivery functions just don’t seem to be working in the right manner. So where does the problem lie? There are broadly 4 main factors.

  • Firstly, there seems to be a lack of prioritization of nutrition in political and policy processes. Take for example the TPDS. Its focus has always been on rice and wheat. As a senior fellow at IFPRI noted, the public distribution system (PDS) is more of a grain policy than a nutrition policy. The same seems to be true of the upcoming Food Security Bill. In fact, the minutes of the meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers, responsible for drafting the National Food Security Bill explicitly (and shockingly) stated in Section 2.1(a) “The definition of Food Security should be limited to the specific issue of foodgrains (wheat and rice) and be delinked from the larger issue of nutritional security.” !!! How do we think we can reduce global hunger if our policies towards hunger categorically don’t want to deal with nutrition?
  • Second, is the problem of targeting.  According to the report, recent evidence suggests that there is a thousand day window of opportunity (spanning from -9 to +24 months) for improving child nutrition. This is the period when children are in greatest need of adequate amounts of nutritious food, preventive and curative health care, and age-appropriate care practices. However, even the ICDS programme, meant to deal with under-nutrition targets children mostly after the age of three, when the effects of under-nutrition are largely irreversible.
  • Third is the lack of a holistic approach for solving malnutrition.To achieve sustainable improvements in child nutrition, decision-makers must tackle the underlying causes of under-nutrition: food insecurity, insufficient care for women and children, and limited access to healthcare and a healthy environment through a convergent package of interventions. In India however, while we have a number of schemes, each scheme is running, somewhat disconnected from the rest. While immunization scheme is run by the Ministry of health and family welfare, the ICDS scheme is run by the Women and Child Welfare Department.  It has also been ascertained that gender inequality and malnutrition are highly correlated. Societies with higher levels of empowerment, tend to provide better care of children. With India ranking 112 out of 134 nations in the Global Gender Gap Report 2010, it is essential to tackle the problem of gender inequality along with programmes to improve child nutrition.
  • And finally, even within the existing schemes, accountability mechanisms are essential to ensure that the monies being pumped into the system, get spent properly and reach the targeted beneficiaries.

On the 2nd of October, ICDS celebrated its 35th anniversary. As the world approaches the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – it’s time for India to rethink some of its policies so that the fight to remove global hunger can be adequately achieved.

Avani Kapur is Senior Research and Program Analyst at the Accountability Initiative. 

Janaagraha: Call for positions

Janaagraha is a Bangalore based not-for-profit organisation that works with citizens and government to change the quality of life in India’s cities and towns. Janaagraha works toward changing the quality of urban life by improving urban governance, and seeks to do this by applying a well-defined framework of change that is based on a systems approach.

The organisation has two major types of activities: Grassroots efforts to educate citizens of their rights and responsibilities in a democracy, and advocacy work with the Union and State governments, to sensitize them to urban issues and affect policy changes. Its’ systems approach to solving the cities’ problems has the acronym “REED,” which stands for taking a Regional Approach, Empowering citizens and government, Enabling citizens and government, and demanding Direct Accountability from local government bodies.

Janaagraha is seeking applicants for several positions: Research Manager- RUC, Research Associate, and Area Suraksha Mitra Programme Manager, amongst others. Click here for details on position summaries, skill requirements and responsilbilities for these positions.

 

 

 

Data Matters: Linking Development Data to Government Performance

How come the government gets away with putting out data that is often inconsistent?  How come our politicians get away without having to justify their ‘performance’ in any tangible way when they seek re-election?

Let us look at the two worlds — first, the world of government data: The data that government collects is mostly used for administrative reasons — tracking, checks and balances, etc.  Most of this data is often locked up in files. There are often large variations in government data on the same parameter when accessed from two different sources within government.  The Right to Information is an important tool to get data out, but the bottom line in the government is that there still remains an absence of a culture of openness.

Second, the world of our politicians.  Politics anywhere is fiercely competitive.  As we have seen over these past few days, it appears to be especially so in Karnataka!  But the competition in our politics is a raw quest for power.  And we all know there is something fundamentally wrong with this.  What if we are able to get politicians to compete on real issues?  What if they are forced to refer to facts and figures in specific terms when they reach out to the people for re-election?

The work of IndiaGoverns really focuses on getting tangible data on performance as put out by government to matter to politicians and politics in the country.

As a starting point, we have taken the data from government sources in Karnataka at the local level, and organised it along MLA constituency boundaries.  Based on this, we have prepared one page reports on Education Indicators, and have sent it to MLA in the state. (Please see http://www.indiagoverns.org/summaries/ to access the reports.) We have chosen data for education for a year which is even before this set of MLAs was elected in 2008.  Our next report on education will be current, and will show the progress during his tenure.

The real challenge for us is to reach such data to citizens, NGOs, local journalists.  And even to politicians in the state who have lost elections.  Such data should become useful for all stakeholders to take up progress in the constituency using tangible data.  And the MLA should defend his record of progress in various sectors during his tenure as MLA.  Of course, the MLA can also use such data to ask for more government allocations if his constituency has a poor track record on any development issue. We are working on similar reports for health, water, etc.

We invite your suggestions, but also any concrete steps you can take in helping with dissemination of such information widely.

Veena Ramanna is the Executive Director of the IndiaGoverns Research Institute. You can find out more about the Institute’s work at http://www.indiagoverns.org/.

 

The RTI Act Turns 5

The cornerstone of the UPA government’s agenda when it was elected to government in 2004, the RTI Act celebrates its fifth birthday today, 12 October 2010.  Some might say that five years is not a long time in the history of a law, but perhaps no other legislation has captured the imagination of the public in quite the way the RTI Act has. Today, the right to information or “Soochna Ka Adhikar” (as it popularly known) has made its way into the everyday lexicon of most Indians. A recent study conducted by RAAG (Right to Information Analysis and Assessment Group) estimates that some 2 million RTIs were filed across the country in the first 3 years after the Act was passed (RaaG, 2009).  That’s a lot of RTIs! People have filed RTIs to redress individual grievances, probe government policies and decisions, expose corruption and misuse of government resources and  access their basic entitlements whether its ration cards, wage payments or driver’s licenses. At the Accountability Initiative we’ve used the RTI extensively to get budget and expenditure related data on centrally sponsored schemes and to get information on how department’s are complying with the RTI. We are also currently undertaking a small research study on the kinds of information people are seeking under the Act. We hope this analysis will help in identifying people’s information needs and assist departments in responding to these needs proactively.

The RTI Act is a powerful tool which if used effectively can help bring in greater transparency and accountability in the functioning of government. But, the Act’s five year journey has not been without incident. As early as 2006, the government made attempts at trying to amend the RTI Act to exclude key provisions from public access. Though civil society groups successfully stalled such efforts to amend the Act, the issue is still very much alive. The Department of Personnel and Training (the nodal agency implementing the RTI Act) in recent months has confirmed that the government is considering amending the law to exempt “file notings” and “frivolous and vexatious” requests for information. Sources within the government state the amendments are necessary since departments cannot cope with the growing volume of RTI requests they are receiving. However this has more to do with the lack of adequate infrastructure and human resources in departments.

 Amendments to the RTI have not been the only roadblock on the Act’s journey. In recent weeks, RTI activists have questioned the lack of transparency in the selection and appointment procedures of Information Commissioners in the country.  The recent appointment of AN Tiwari to the post of Chief Central Information Commissioner following the retirement of former Chief CIC Wajahat Habibullah has been severely criticized not only because Mr Tiwari is shortly set to retire in December but more so because the post of the Chief Information Commissioner is not intended to be a promotion post for other commissioners within the department. In other states as well, Information Commissions have increasingly become post-retirement hotspots for bureaucrats. The lack of transparency in the procedure for selecting information commissioners is a worrying trend and threatens to undermine the efficacy of an institution set up to champion and defend the RTI Act.

 At yet another level, governments at various levels face a number of challenges in implementing the RTI effectively. Over the past few months, I’ve interacted with officials implementing the RTI Act in different departments in the Central government and Delhi government. Across the board they have the same stories to tell: departments lack the infrastructure, staff and often even space to effectively implement the RTI Act. Public Information Officers are overburdened and have little training on how to respond to RTI requests and receive little support from senior officials. The poor state of government records makes responding to RTIs a difficult and cumbersome task. These factors combined mean that government compliance with the RTI Act at various levels remains patchy, uneven and often half-hearted. While the officials I’ve interacted with have all unanimously agreed that the RTI Act is a welcome change, the general picture that seems to be emerging is that departments at various levels have not set in place the administrative machinery and infrastructure to effectively and efficiently implement the RTI Act.

The way I see it, the RTI is like any other service delivery system except that information is the key public good being provided. Citizens file RTI requests with government departments who are obligated to provide this information within a particular time frame. But this service delivery system is only as good or as efficient as the different links in the assembly chain.  It’s really quite simple. What do you get when you have departments that are overburdened and undertrained with limited access to resources? A system which is basically inefficient and unresponsive. Evidence of this non-responsiveness is there for all of us to see in the growing pendency rate of complaints and appeals in Information Commissions across the country. If cases are likely to take up to a year or more to be heard, people are going to lose faith in the system and the RTI Act more generally.

 Amending the RTI Act merely a stop gap measure aimed at pacifying certain key factions within the bureaucracy and will not address the serious implementation issues cropping up. The real need of the hour is for governments at various levels to seriously commit themselves to implementing the Act more efficiently.  As they say, where there is a will there is a way.

Mandakini is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

Why do politicians transfer bureaucrats?

Elected politicians and bureaucrats are important pillars of governance. In India and in many other countries, politicians have very limited powers over the bureaucrats, at least in theory.  For example, a politician in India does not have any control over the recruitment of  IAS officers. He can’t change their wages, can’t dismiss them nor demote them. In some sense, this is desirable, to avoid the politicization of policy implementation. But then the question arises: how would a politician facing electoral pressures ensure that his pet projects are being implemented by the bureaucrats over whom he doesn’t have any control. Of course, a politician can offer the bureaucrat, non-monetary incentives or can pick somebody who shares his world view.

I just came across a very interesting research paper by Laxmi Iyer and Anandi Mani, (‘Traveling Agents: Political Change and Bureaucratic Turnover in India’, November 2009), which explores the phenomenon of the power of politicians to transfer the bureaucrats to retain control over them.

Transfer of bureaucrats by politicians is not something unheard of, at least in India. Some of our Chief Ministers are actually famous for their tendency to transfer bureaucrats. This has prompted demands to put explicit limits on the politicians’ ability to transfer bureaucrats before they complete, say, at least two years of service in that position.

The authors build a theoretical model, based on some realistic assumptions in the Indian context. A noteworthy feature of the paper is that the predictions of the model are empirically verified by using a very unique dataset on the career histories of 2800 IAS officers between 1980 and 2004, combined with data on political changes in major Indian states over the same period, proxy measures for bureaucrats’ ability, and a measure of the relative importance of different posts as viewed by the bureaucrats themselves. I won’t go into details about the data. But it’s worth reading to see the efforts taken by the authors to collect such unique data.

What are their findings?

First, they find that IAS officers are indeed transferred quite frequently. Over the period of 1980-2000, the probability that an officer gets transferred is 53%. The average tenure of the IAS officers is merely 16 months.

Secondly, consistent with the hypothesis that the politicians use transfers as a control mechanism, they find that the average rate of bureaucrat transfers increases significantly, by 10% over the baseline of 53%, when there is a new Chief Minister. Most of these transfers take place in the first four months after a new CM takes over.  Further, a CM who comes to power along with a new party in power, is twice as likely to transfer bureaucrats than a CM who comes to power without a change in the party in power.  The majority of such transfers are what authors call ‘lateral’ transfers, i.e. not accompanied by promotion. Thus, these transfers are not for a reward for past performance or routine promotions that merely coincide with a new CM coming into the office.

The bureaucrats with a higher ability invest more in developing expertise, they undergo longer durations of training over the course of their entire career. These officers are also significantly more likely to be recommended for senior positions in the central government (‘empaneled’).  But there is another way of obtaining important positions- by being ‘loyal’ to specific politicians. The authors find that the officers are more likely to be appointed to important positions when they belong to the same caste as the CM’s party base.

Disturbingly, the average importance of the posts held by an officer over the course of his or her career does not vary significantly with his ability– the officers with high ability are no more likely to be assigned to important posts than other (say, loyal) officers.

May be it’s time to pressurize the political establishment to pass the ‘Public Services Bill’, which stipulates that the bureaucrats can’t be transferred before completion of at least two years in that position. No wonder, only eleven states in India have agreed, while ten states have refused outright!

Assessing the pension scheme for unorganized sector workers

Social protection programmes have in the past (to a large extent) excluded the most vulnerable section of the Indian workforce; the unorganized sector. On 26th September the government sought to overturn this long-standing tradition by extending pension benefits to 85% of the workers who find employment in this sector. The scheme titled  ‘Swavalamban’(meaning self reliance), covers unorganized sector workers between the ages of 18-55 years. This implies that any worker between the ages of 18-55 years can become a subscriber and is liable for receiving  pension at the age of 60 years.

The Swavalamban scheme is essentially a contributory scheme which provides for a minimum monthly contribution of Rs 100 and a maximum annual contribution of Rs 12,000. The Union government on its part shall contribute Rs 1000 per year. The scheme shall be administered by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRD), which shall oversee the overall management, while the deposits shall be managed by private fund managers. The private fund managers shall be able to invest only 15% of the total funds in equity markets while the rest shall be invested in high quality fixed income securities such as government bonds. Upon attaining 60 years of age, subscribers will be able to withdraw 60% of their contribution, while the balance 40% will be given as monthly annuity by LIC (Life Insurance Corporation of India).

Sounds reasonable? Cynics might be tempted to ask—where is the glitch? While it may be too early to point out any glitches, some challenges and issues come to mind.

  • The scheme treats all workers as a homogenous group: It defines unorganized workers as those who are either not currently employed by the central/ state government or by any other autonomous or public sector undertaking of central government and those who are currently not covered by any of the existing social security schemes. This definition while inclusive spans all categories of workers from self employed professionals to Rickshaw Pullers and Construction Workers. The scheme does not appear to be tailored to consider the stratified nature of the conditions of work. Which begs the question of whether the scheme can be appropriate for such a large and heterogeneous group?
  • It assumes that workers will have the ability to save: the emphasis on regular monthly contribution assumes that workers will have the ability to contribute on a regular basis. This represents an important challenge given that one of the distinguishing features of the unorganized sector is irregularity of work which often impairs the ability to save. According to a report by NCEAR, the bottom half of the population by income distribution are responsible for only 2% of the savings in India (2000). Moreover savings by the poor are also mostly of a short term nature and are stored in instruments and assets having high liquidity. It remains to be seen whether the scheme will be able successful in promoting thrift and encouraging a shift from long term to short term savings.
  • Concerns of accessibility: For workers to gain maximum benefit, it is necessary that the scheme be structured in ways such that the cost of participation is low, i.e. the scheme should be accessible to workers both geographically and in terms of simplicity of procedures.  These are issues which are particularly relevant to workers employed in this sector, given their low levels of education and relative isolation from formal institutions and processes (especially financial institutions) (NCEUS Report, 2007). How the government plans to address the gaps in accessibility remains to be seen.

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative

 

CPWD, PWD, NDMC, DJB – Multiple agencies but no accountability!

Every year it’s the same story. The monsoons hit Delhi and life in the city comes to a grinding halt. For a city that so craves the rain every summer we are remarkably unprepared for it. Traffic snarls, blocked drains, flooded roads, power outages and road collapses make for an unpleasant experience. Couple these with the inevitable dengue, malaria and viral fever outbreaks and you’re in for a pretty rotten monsoon. And then there’s the Commonwealth Games…well I think enough’s been said on that front.  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of the déjà vu. I mean we all know the score. Delhi + Monsoons X Flooding, Road Cave-ins, Disease etc = Chaos. Check. Okay so maybe we had record rainfall this year and the Yamuna is flowing at an all time high, but still, shouldn’t government agencies at various levels be prepared for this?

The problem isn’t so much with the rain as it is with the structure of municipal governance in the city.

  •  Multiple agencies: Mind bogglingly, Delhi has over a 100 civic agencies tasked with overseeing municipal services such as land usage, roads, transport, water, electricity, sewage and flood control etc. These agencies include the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), the Delhi Cantonment Board (DCB), Delhi Jal Board, Delhi Development Authority, Central Public Works Department (CPWD), Public Works Department (PWD) etc.  What makes things even more complicated is the fact that these agencies report to different ministries and departments.
  • Dual Jurisdiction: Unlike other metropolitan cities in the country, Delhi has the dubious distinction of being the seat of both the Union Government and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). In practice this makes for a pretty complicated administrative set-up with some parts of the city under the administration of Central Government agencies and others under the Delhi government. So while agencies such as the MCD, DDA, Delhi Police and CPWD are answerable and accountable to the Central Government, the PWD, DJB and Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) report to the Delhi Government.  This makes for confusing and parallel structures of governance where it’s unclear where the jurisdiction of one government starts and the other ends. This duality has for long been exploited by various agencies to pass the buck.
  • Overlapping responsibilities: It’s often said that too many cooks spoil the broth and it couldn’t be truer than in Delhi. From water, public works, sanitation, land, you can be pretty sure there’s more than one civic agency involved.  Here’s a quick snapshot of the extent to which this is true.

 

Civic Agencies providing basic services in Delhi

 
Service Urban Planning & Development Roads Water & Sanitation Land

(Residential & Industrial)
Departments Responsible DDA

MCD

NDMC

CPWD

 

 CPWD

PWD

MCD

NDMC

Cantt. Board DDA etc.

 Delhi Jal Board

MCD

DDA

NDMC

 DDA

CPWD

L&DO

DSIDC Govt of Delhi

MCD

NDMC

Cantt Board.

 

 

  • No answerability or accountability: What do you get when you have multiple agencies responsible for the same services and reporting to different departments? No answerability and no accountability. The current CWG fiasco is a prime example where each agency blames the other. So we have PWD faulting the quality of CPWD construction work and the NDMC complaining the MCD isn’t doing what it should to keep the city free of dengue and malaria. As agencies play pass the parcel, Delhi’s residents are left wondering who to hold responsible.

Theory suggests that strengthening accountability relationships between citizens, service providers and policy makers is critical to ensuring the effective delivery of services. But that can be hard to do when there just is not enough information available about who’s supposed to do what. So if you’re not sure who is responsible for road construction and maintenance in your neighbourhood, it’s not going to be easy to pin them down and hold them accountable. Thus, in the context of public service delivery, access to better information is increasingly regarded as a key step towards strengthening citizen claims of accountability on service providers and policymakers (World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People).

The RTI Act instrumentalises this approach by requiring all public authorities to proactively disclose 17 categories of basic information on their websites and through other means. This includes information about their organisational structures, budget, directory of officials, projects, annual plans etc.  In practice this means agencies such as the MCD, PWD, NDMC, CPWD etc should be disclosing proactively information about the various public works that they are involved with on a regular basis. Sadly, Section 4 disclosure continues to be poorly implemented by most of these agencies. Scroll through their websites and the information you’re likely to find the information is usually out of date. Ensuring better and more effective information disclosure by municipal agencies is one way of ensuring that agencies perform the functions they are supposed to.  The Central Information Commission has been pushing for stronger implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act for the last few months with interesting results. It recently issued orders to municipal agencies in Delhi to disclose detailed information on the contracts issued to consultants for projects under the Commonwealth Games. In a rare instance, the NDMC has complied with the CIC’s orders and put up a detailed list of consultants hired to carry out CWG work  (click here to read the information disclosed by the NDMC).

There is clearly a need for broader municipal reforms in Delhi to streamline the provisioning of services and responsibilities of agencies. But as is the case with all major governance reforms – that’s likely to take a while! In the meantime, pushing for better information disclosure by municipal agencies may be one way of bringing in greater accountability and transparency.

Mandakini Devasher is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

 

Budget Manual released by Ministry of Finance

The Budget Division of the Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, has released a Budget Manual. This is a first of its’ kind document that is expected to serve as a reference material not only to the officers involved in the Budget process but other users and interested stakeholders as well.

The Budget Manual is a comprehensive document which captures the content of the Union Budget as well as the procedures and activities connected with the preparation of the Annual Budget. The processes and guidelines have been simplified and put in a logical sequence for easy comprehension.

Click here to view the Budget Manual in .pdf form.