Blog Archive - Page 119 of 130 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Learning to Complain

Honk…. Splash…. Flooding…. Crawl… Blank…..Neon amiss….Frustration…. Underlining despair… Belied…Forgotten.

These are just some of the sights and emotions that we all encounter the moment we step out of that little island of comfort we call home. Whether it’s the frustrating and wholly unforeseeable traffic jams or the debiliting condition of roads which lend a whole new meaning to the term wear and tear, or even the whimsical traffic light whose temperamental nature inspires a host of caricatures (or maybe that’s just me!).

Such conditions appear to surround us all, but how we have been shaped by it? If our surroundings are governed by chaos then what is it most suitably captures our mental state… apathy, frustration, confusion or just plain helplessness? My many musings have led me to conclude that while we might experience different shades of these emotions what we really are is incapacitated. We appear to lack the basic capacity/ability to act, to change the very situation we find ourselves in. Academics classify this as a lack of agency but in my opinion its not just agency that we lack-we are stuck in this state of impotence, in which we are fundamentally attuned to the belief that things cannot change. The system or the lack of one is assumed to be so much more powerful than the individuals who comprise it; is imagined that it will never bend to their will. So while the so called powerless sections in our societies (farmers in Uttar Pradesh, Tribal’s in Orissa) launch protest marches and clash with repressive forces in staking their claims – we the privileged educated class sit back, circumventing on most occasions any and every direct engagement with the powers that be.

But if we aren’t revelling in this situation then the question arises whether we can actually do something to change it? Can we do something to demand what is classically and most nebulously defined as accountability? I believe we can. I don’t say this because of my innate idealism but out of some amount of experience in trying a variety of strategies, which despite not being entirely successful have been instrumental in shaking off that feeling of utter inertia. I realize that a lot of the strategies that I have tried are not entirely revolutionary but sometimes even the most basic attempts can make a difference. So try the following when you find yourselves confronting the maddening and the inconceivable, even if it seems lame and entirely uninspiring.

1) Stuck in a frustrating traffic light- call the traffic police just dial 100 and report the place of the jam. I have tried this and some times it has yielded surprising results.

2) Traffic lights not working- call the traffic police in this situation as well. I have found them to be extremely polite on some occasions. Sometimes they are just as lost as us.

3) Dilapidated roads- File an RTI with the concerned authority. In Delhi you can file it with the Department of Road Transport and Highways, Ministry of Shipping Road Transport and Highways, or with the Urban Development Department of the Delhi government. This is extremely easy as it costs only Rs 10 and the RTI can be posted through speed post.

4) Garbage piling up on the streets- File a complaint with the designated MCD office, if that doesn’t work file an RTI on the status of your complaint.

Its time we learnt to complain!

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initaitive.

Gaps in the Whistleblower’s Bill

The Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Persons Making Disclosure Bill, 2010 (the Whistleblower Bill) has been tabled in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of India’s Parliament) yesterday (26th August 2010).

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Government of India, which piloted this Bill did very little to consult with people on its contents. They refused to publicise the contents of the Bill while formulating it despite being mandated to do so under Section 4(1)(c) of the Right to Information Act, 2005. During a full bench hearing at the Central Information Commission in my complaint case, representatives of the DoPT acknowledged that they had not disclosed anything about this Bill in the public domain. The Commission’s decision in this case is awaited.

Meanwhile the text of the Bill as introduced in the Lok Sabha is not available on the DoPT’s website, nor does the link to the text of the Bill on the Lok Sabha website work. The attached link for the Whistleblower Bill has been sourced from the website of PRS-India. Congrats guys, you have proven again that civil society puts information about public documents in the public domain faster than public authorities themselves.

The following issues have been highlighted CHRI’s preliminary analysis of the Bill (see attachment):

1. Limited coverage of reportable actions

2. Only one authority prescribed for receiving public interest disclosure

3. CVC permitted to disclose the identity of whistleblowers to the Head of the Department

4. Whistleblower Bill does not apply to the private sector

5. Armed Forces have been left out

6. Vexatious complainants will be imprisoned but no policy for rewarding whistleblowers

7. No clarity on the kinds of protection that a whistleblower is entitled to receive

Advocacy Recommendations:

Given the several major lacunae in the Whistleblower Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha, there is an urgent need to have this Bill referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice for detailed deliberations and improvement.

The DoPT has recently uploaded the complete text of the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Persons Making Dislcosure Bill, 2010 (Whistleblower Bill) on its website a short while ago. People have been invited to make submissions on its contents by 30th September.

It is rare for Governments to table a Bill in Parliament and then invite people to comment on it. Nevertheless this shows that the Government may be willing to consider amendments to the Bill. It is advisable to engage with this process. I request readers to send their analysis of the Whistleblower Bill highlighting other weaknesses. I am sure a more detailed examination will reveal more grey areas which need rectification.

For more email updates from CHRI on the Whistleblower’s Bill click here.

Venkatesh Nayak is the RTI Programme Coordinator, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative

Transparency and Access to Information key to realising the MDGs

With only five years to go to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, 2010 is a critical year for countries around the world. While many countries have made significant progress towards reducing extreme poverty and hunger, providing access to clean water, improving maternal and child health, combating HIV/AIDs etc, such successes have been uneven across regions and countries. If countries are to achieve the 8 MDG targets by 2015, much more needs to be done. According to the UN MDG Goals Report 2010 “unmet commitments, inadequate resources, lack of focus and accountability…” are responsible for the shortfalls in the progress of many countries.

Prioritising and promoting transparency and the free flow of information may just be one way of fast tracking countries efforts to achieve the MDGs. This was the theme at a recent conference on “Transparency, Free Flow of Information and the MDGs” organised in London from 24-25 August 2010. Organised by Article 19 (an international human rights organisation promoting the freedom of expression and information), the conference brought together leading experts on the MDGs, development, access to information and transparency to brainstorm about how countries, donors, civil society organisations and activists can integrate transparency and access to information into global debates and efforts on the MDGs.

But, in what ways can encouraging the free flow of information really help?

Today there is a substantive body of literature which recognises the critical importance of access to information in enhancing citizen voice and people’s participation in government. Think about it: people need information in order to make informed decisions – whether it’s deciding who to vote for during an election or determining which government policies to support or resist. Access to information is also critical for strengthening accountability relationships between citizens, service providers and policy makers. The World Development Report (WDR) 2004 highlighted the importance of access to information in accountability relationships stating that:”….Better information – that makes citizens more aware of the money allocated to their services, the actual condition of services, and the behaviour of policymakers and providers – can be a powerful force in overcoming clientelist politics”. Put simply, if you know what your local MP is up to – how much money he received as part of his MP local area development fund and how he did (or did not) spent that money – you are better placed to decide whether or not to vote for him in the next election. Recognising the importance of access to information, countries around the world have enacted laws guaranteeing their citizens the right to access information held by the government.

So access to information is important. But how is it relevant to the MDGs?

For one thing there are a lot of people out there who simply don’t know about the MDGs or the fact that their countries have signed up to them. For instance, how many of us know about India’s progress on the MDGs? Setting in place systems at the country level to ensure that there is greater access to information about the MDGs is key to ensuring that there is public interest and oversight of a country’s efforts. Speaking at the London conference, NAC member and MKSS activist, Aruna Roy said: “My neighbours do not know what the MDGs mean. If they don’t know what the MDGs are, how can there be a demand for accountability? So the first demand is communication and information.”

Furthermore, there is not only a lack of awareness in many countries about the MDGs but a paucity of information about how countries are investing and spending to achieve these goals. This has been underscored by the preliminary results of the 6 Question Campaign. Launched in 2009, the 6 Questions Campaign is a first ever effort to test public access to budget information in different countries. From February – June 2010, civil society organisations in 86 countries asked governments a series of 6 questions on their budgets for the MDGs. The results are quite astonishing: out of 79 countries, 20-40% ignored the requests and refused to provide information; 10-20% said they did not have any information; 40% gave some information and less than 30% gave a proper answer. These results highlight the urgent need for budget transparency to determine how MDG funds are being utilized. According to Helena Hofbauer of the International Budget Project: “The UN does not require countries to say how much they are spending on reaching the MDGs. Without budget transparency, recharged efforts to win the MDG race will fall short. We must recognise that there are two problems: not enough money is being spent on achieving the MDGs, and resources that are allocated are being spent in an ineffective or inefficient way”.

Till date, discussions on transparency, access to information and accountability have been fairly peripheral to the debate on the MDGs. However, given the scale of challenges that need to be overcome by 2015, it seems clear that transparency and access to information are likely to be high on the agenda of the UN Millennium Summit next month.

Mandakini Devasher Surie is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

Have you ever had to pay a bribe?

Have you ever had to pay a bribe to get a passport, ration card, driver’s license or another government service? Are you fed up with the corruption in your city but are not sure how to tackle it? Janaagraha, a Bangalore based NGO might just have an answer.

IpaidABribe.com is a unique website launched by Janaagraha to help citizens tackle corruption. The website invites citizens across the country to log on and report the nature, pattern and types of corruption that they face on a day to day basis. Janaagraha will try and use the data to argue for improving governance systems and procedures, tightening law enforcement and regulation and thereby reduce the scope for corruption in obtaining services from the government.The website allows citizens to report bribes, generate bribe reports, find out the market rate for bribes in different sectors/services. For more information log on to: http://www.ipaidabribe.com/

Coming soon – A privacy law in India?

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Government of India, has become the nodal agency for drafting laws on privacy and data protection in India.

Recently suggestions were invited from people on what such a law should contain. It appears that very few civil society organisations and even fewer RTI users and activists responded to this advertisement. Perhaps this is why the recent Workshop on Legal Framework for Privacy, Data Protection and Security hosted by the DoPT had barely two or three civil society representatives, with a large majority of participants from government departments and agencies. Senior officers of the RTI Unit of the DoPT constituted the remainder of the delegation.

The summary of the proceedings and the power point presentations from the Workshop make for an interesting read. The absence of a clear and comprehensive legal framework for data protection and safeguarding privacy of individuals is a major theme. In the era of growing digital databases containing information about individuals and their transactions in both private and public sectors, this lack of clear regulation on data protection and privacy is an obstacle.

Two of the Workshop participants, the Registrar General, Census of India and the Chief Legal Advisor Indian Banks Association (IBA) called for amendments to the RTI Act to protect the data that was gathered while conducting sample surveys or banking operations. The Registrar General noted that the Central Information Commission did not allow access to information about private individuals that was collected during the census. Nevertheless he was in favour of amending the RTI Act to immunise such data from disclosure. The IBA representative held that the existing laws governing secrecy of bank transactions were adequate and no separate law on privacy and data protection was necessary. However he demanded an amendment of the RTI Act to protect banking secrecy.

The proceedings show that one participant asked the big question: “Is the right to privacy a fundamental right?” (Someone has to ask such a question at some point, especially if nobody does it at the beginning!). There is however, nothing in the proceeding to indicate if this question was satisfactorily answered. Neither is there any reference to the jurisprudence developed in India on the subject of the fundamental right to privacy. One may perhaps assume that this issue was not discussed at all and this is ample reason for concern.

There are several cases where the Indian Courts have stated the scope of the right to privacy. The kind of information for which disclosure may be denied on grounds of privacy, instances when the claims for privacy do not apply (i.e. when the personal information is contained in public records), the status of medical records and data regarding financial transactions have been discussed several times by the Supreme and High Courts.

Some High Courts have even stated when the right to privacy must yield to the people’s right to know in the era of the RTI Act. There at least two cases that spring to mind, one of them being the celebrated as the “Supreme Court Judges Assets case”. Perhaps the DoPT may elect to consult other experts on this important subject in future!

It is high time that all RTI users and activists start to engage with the DoPT to ensure that a sound law for protecting privacy and data is drafted without curtailing the RTI Act.

Government releases the first ever Civil Services Survey

The Government of India has released the findings of the first ever survey of the Indian Civil Services. The report titled “Civil Services Survey – A Report” surveyed officers from all 3 India Services (The Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian Forest Service (IFoS)) as well as officers of 7 Central Services. In total, the Survey covered 18432 officers belonging to the ten selected services. Out of the total questionnaires sent, 4808 officers responded to the survey which is 26% of the total universe.

The survey was conducted to assess the perceptions of civil servants on 11 major thematic areas including work environment, transfers, postings, integrity to harassment and discrimination. Click here to read the full report online or scroll down to download the pdf version of the report.

When the mirror has 2 faces: the story of governments own datasets not matching!

A few months back I was searching for release and expenditure data for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Since the financial management section of the SSA portal hasn’t been updated in 2 years (the latest available information is August 2008!), I was left struggling to find places to look. Luckily, I remembered that we now we have a tool – the Right to Information Act – an easy method to get information. So I decided to file my first RTI !

At the outset, let me just say that I got an amazing response. The PIO officer in-charge was prompt in his response, transferred some of my queries to the relevant departments and even sent them reminder letters to send me the information on time. So for those sceptical about filing RTI’s – go ahead, give it a shot, you might be surprised! But this post isn’t about filing RTI’s. It’s about what the RTI revealed.

The RTI showed the complete chaos and confusion that exists within government databases. Information on state-wise expenditures and releases for SSA in 2008-09 from the Joint Review Mission( available on the SSA website here) put the All India total GOI release for SSA in 2008-09 at Rs. 1,270,533 lakh and the total expenditure for SSA, during the same period at Rs. 1933231 lakh. However, the same data in the RTI gave the figures of Rs. 1,261,120 lakh and Rs. 1,905,652 lakh respectively.

For more details, please see that table below giving the state-wise variations.

State	GOI release according to Joint Review Mission ( in Rs. Lakh)	GOI Release according to the RTI ( in Rs. Lakh)	Difference ( in Rs. Lakh)
Tamil Nadu	45,414	53,241	7,827
Himachal Pradesh	8,553	10,513	1,960
Arunachal Pradesh	13,684	15,568	1,884
Mizoram	5,113	3,873	1,240
Delhi	1,529	1,029	500
Nagaland	2,868	2,368	500
Dadra & N. Haveli	105	85	20
Madhya Pradesh	85,569	85,570	1

State	Total expenditure according to Joint Review Mission ( in Rs. Lakh)	Total expenditure according to the RTI ( in Rs. Lakh)	Difference ( in Rs. Lakh)
Bihar	209,431	226,382	16,951
Chhattisgarh	75,101	82,246	7,145
Mizoram	2,127	5,244	3,117

Such vast differences – (for Bihar amounting to Rs. 16,951 lakhs of rupees!) can’t be blamed on “reporting errors”. Instead, they raise some important questions.

How do we know which is the “correct” data? How are schemes and programmes expected to function efficiently and be successful when no one is sure how much money is being released or spent? And most importantly, how can we expect to have transparency and accountability when our government databases are in shambles?

While organisations like the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) do their part in highlighting some of the discrepancies or errors in government data, they can’t overhaul the entire system. But it’s obvious – it’s time we get back to the basics- get our data clean. And whether the UID can assist in this process – I guess we’ll have to wait and watch!

Avani Kapur is Senior Research and Program Analyst, Accountability Initiative.

Secrecy over the draft Whistleblower’s Bill

Efforts to bring in legislation to protect whistleblowers in India have been on-going for some years now. In 2001, the Law Commission of India studied the laws that protect whistleblowers in the UK, USA and other developed countries and had submitted a report to the Government. Along with the report the Law Commission submitted a weak draft bill to protect whistleblowers. Meanwhile in the absense of a specific law on the subject, the Government of India created a mechanism for its employees and those employed in central public sector enterprises to blow the whistle on wrongdoings.

The Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Informers Resolution was notified by the Government of India in 2004 to enable public sector employees to make disclosures of wrongdoing to the Central Vigilance Commission in confidence. This mechanism only covers employees working in the Government of India or any of its agencies. It does not cover the employees of State Governments. However, a law to protect all whistleblowers may be a reality in India very soon following the Cabinet’s approval of the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosure Bill, 2010 on 9th August. The draft Bill aimed at protecting whistleblowers is a welcomed move. However the lack of public debate and consultation on the Bill is not.

Secrecy over the draft whistleblower Bill and lack of public consultation:

In recent months the media has published reports about major disagreement within Government over the contents of this Bill. However the Government of India has not made any attempt to place the draft Bill in the public domain and consult with the people. Instead people will have to wait for the Bill to reach Parliament before they can comment on it. This secrecy is in clear violation of Section 4(1)(c) of the Right to Information Act, 2005. According to Section 4(1)(c) of the RTI Act

“4. (1) Every public authority shall—

X X X

c) publish all relevant facts while formulating important policies or announcing the decisions which affect public;”

The draft whistleblower Bill is an important legislative policy whose contents the Government ought to have disclosed while formulating it. However the age-old practices of undue secrecy observed by the bureaucracy, while drafting legislation, continues to hamper the effective implementation of the RTI Act. Even here there is no consistency of practice. While other Ministries go through elaborate processes of public consultation on draft legislations such as the Draft Direct Taxes Code Bill and amendments to the Companies Act, the whistleblower Bill does not get the same treatment.

Given the tremendous importance of this legislation it is essential that the public have the opportunity to scrutinise and comment on its provisions – else there is a very real danger of it becoming another “paper tiger”.

Venkatesh Nayak is the RTI Programme Coordinator, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (www.humanrightsinitiative.org)

Do information campaigns result in greater collective action? Lessons from experience on the ground.

This blog post is the first of a series based on experiences my colleagues and I had while implementing an information campaign on school expenditures aimed at mobilizing Parent Teacher Associations in a small cluster of villages in Sehore District, Madhya Pradesh (MP). The experience reinforced some of the fundamental contradictions in current systems of delivery and why accountability is near impossible. It also brought home the importance of giving greater discretion to communities to identify needs, direct expenditures and monitor implementation.

First some background. Our work in MP is part of a project called PAISA. PAISA tracks expenditures and implementation processes of social sector programs with a view to improving accountability for public expenditure.

Our work in MP began with a survey where we collected data on school expenditures. The focus was on school development grants – about 10 percent of the total SSA budget. Small as they are, these grants are the only portion of SSA monies that actually reach the school. According to the SSA implementation guidelines for MP, these grants are meant to be spent by the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) – a body comprising of parents and the school headmaster tasked with making plans for expenditures and monitoring school functioning. In practice PTA’s are dysfunctional. They rarely meet, have very little information on their roles and responsibilities and almost never make plans. Our plan was to use information on expenditures to catalyze the PTA to participate in planning and monitoring and demand accountability at the school level.

Eight months on, we discovered that meaningful participation and real accountability is near impossible in the current institutional environment. A short anecdote illustrates the case. Dhaba is a small village with a primary school and a relatively enthusiastic PTA. In July last year, the PTA members decided that they would spend their school grant on repairing a leaky roof so that classes could be held during the monsoon.

So far so good. But the monsoon came and went and money never arrived. To fix the problem, the Gram Panchayat was our first port of call. But we were quick to discover that under SSA, the Gram Panchayat has almost no power and no authority and so the Panchayat president washed his hands off the issue. Next we went to the block office and spoke with the Block Resource Centre Coordinator. But he too didn’t take responsibility. Monies come directly from the state office in to the PTA account he told us and it was not his responsibility nor was he empowered to ensure it arrived. The story at the district was almost the same. And what was worse, no one was able to clearly tell us when the PTA could expect the money. Money did arrive but only in December by which time the monsoon had come and gone and a disillusioned PTA stopped holding meetings.

The fundamental problem this experience highlights is that powers and responsibilities are never clearly assigned in the delivery chain and as a result, officials at every level can quite legitimately pass the buck leaving a bewildered citizenry wondering where to affix accountability.

We did eventually find the reason for the delays and in fact we even saw action but only when we made it to the State Government office. And here lies the second problem. That authority and powers for implementation are so centralized that ground level problems are rarely identified and therefore rarely addressed. Think about it, given the average size of our states, it is impossible even for the most efficient bureaucracy to regularly monitor implementation and resolve bottlenecks. A little bit of discretion at the local level and more powers to address local problems could go a long way in resolving the problems that Dhaba encountered.

But discretion cannot be at the district or even the block. It ought to lie with the Gram Panchayat which is the closest government authority to the people and therefore the best placed to identify problems and find solutions.

When we made this argument to officials across the chain we got the same response: Panchayats are corrupt. And in fact, they said, even the current system which devolves money to PTA’s has resulted in poor expenditures and political capture. There may well be some truth to this argument. The solution lies in institutionalizing checks and balances and creating systems that reward performance and not curbing discretion. Moreover, greater powers at the local level may also encourage innovations which are near impossible in the current system where jurisdictions are so large that the system is bogged down by challenges of day to day management.

In sum, accountability in a system which does not clearly affix responsibility is impossible. But responsibility needs to be fixed at the point of government closest to people so that problems are identified and resolved swiftly. In the next post, we examine constraints to effective planning at the grassroots. Watch this space!

Yamini Aiyar is Director of the Accountability Initiative.