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पॉलिसी बझ

कल्याणकारी धोरणात जे घडत आहे त्या प्रत्येक पंधरवड्यात प्रकाशित झालेल्या बातम्यांच्या निवडीसह अद्ययावत रहा.

शिक्षण 

  1. कोविड-19 प्रकरणांमध्ये वाढ झाल्यामुळे दिल्लीसह अनेक राज्ये आणि केंद्रशासित प्रदेशांनी शाळा बंद केल्या आहेत.
  2. केंद्र सरकारने राष्ट्रीय शैक्षणिक धोरण (NEP) 2020 चा भाग म्हणून सर्व मान्यताप्राप्त उच्च शिक्षण संस्थांना शैक्षणिक बँक ऑफ क्रेडिट (ABC) च्या कक्षेत आणले आहे.
  3. विद्यापीठ अनुदान आयोगाने एका पत्राद्वारे केंद्रीय विद्यापीठांना विद्यार्थ्यांची मागणी आणि विशिष्ट अभ्यासक्रमांमधील प्रवेशांच्या संख्येवर आधारित अभ्यासक्रम शिकवण्याचा सल्ला दिला आहे.
  4. गुजरात सरकारने स्टुडंट स्टार्टअप आणि इनोव्हेशन पॉलिसी (SSIP) 2.0 लाँच केले आहे, ज्याचा उद्देश शालेय स्तरावर नवोपक्रमाला आर्थिक सहाय्य करणे आहे.

आरोग्य 

  1. आसाम, चंदीगड, गुजरात, हरियाणा आणि पंजाबने वाढत्या COVID-19 प्रकरणांमध्ये लसीकरण न केलेल्या लोकांना सार्वजनिक ठिकाणी जाण्यावर बंदी घालण्याची घोषणा केली आहे.
  2. आरोग्य आणि कुटुंब कल्याण मंत्रालयाने (MoHFW) वैद्यकीय सुविधांच्या कोविड आणि नॉन-कोविड क्षेत्रात काम करणाऱ्या आरोग्यसेवा कर्मचार्‍यांचे व्यवस्थापन, भारतात आंतरराष्ट्रीय आगमन, होम आयसोलेशन आणि कोविड-19 ची लागण झालेल्या रुग्णांसाठी सुधारित डिस्चार्ज धोरण यासाठी सुधारित मार्गदर्शक तत्त्वे जारी केली आहेत.
  3. केंद्र सरकारने स्वच्छता आणि कोविड तयारीसाठी शाळांना बक्षीस देण्यासाठी स्वच्छ विद्यालय पुरस्कार 2021-22 जाहीर केला आहे.

धोरणा संबंधित बातम्या

  1. तमिळनाडूच्या समाजकल्याण आणि महिला विकास विभागाने महिलांसाठी राज्य धोरण, 2021 चा मसुदा प्रसिद्ध केला आहे ज्याचा उद्देश राज्यातील महिलांना सक्षम करणे आहे. संपूर्ण मसुदा येथे उपलब्ध आहे.
  2. तेलंगणा सरकारने 22,533 सार्वजनिक आरोग्य कर्मचारी आणि 7,271 गैर-सार्वजनिक आरोग्य कर्मचार्‍यांसह 29,804 स्वच्छता कर्मचाऱ्यांच्या सध्याच्या पगारात 4,107 रुपयांची वाढ केली आहे.
  3. हरियाणाच्या राज्य विधानसभेने हरियाणा राज्य स्थानिक उमेदवारांचे रोजगार विधेयक मंजूर केले आहे जे खाजगी क्षेत्रातील नोकऱ्यांमध्ये स्थानिक तरुणांना 75% आरक्षण प्रदान करते ज्यांचे वेतन महिन्याला ₹30,000 पेक्षा कमी आहे.
  4. झारखंड राज्य विधानसभेने राज्यातील जमाव हिंसा आणि लिंचिंग रोखण्यासाठी एक विधेयक मंजूर केले, पश्चिम बंगाल आणि राजस्थान नंतर लिंचिंग विरोधी कायदे असलेले देशातील तिसरे राज्य बनले.

इतर

  1. राष्ट्रपती कार्यालयाने विनियोग (क्रमांक 5) कायदा, 2021 ला आपली संमती दिली आहे, जो केंद्र सरकारला चालू आर्थिक वर्षात अतिरिक्त 3.73 लाख कोटी रुपये खर्च करण्याचा अधिकार देतो.
  2. येत्या काही वर्षांत देशाच्या आर्थिक विकासात स्टार्टअपचे महत्त्व पटवून देण्यासाठी पंतप्रधानांनी १६ जानेवारी हा राष्ट्रीय स्टार्टअप दिवस म्हणून साजरा करण्याची घोषणा केली आहे.
  3. बृहन्मुंबई महानगरपालिकेने (BMC) मुंबईकरांना प्रशासनापर्यंत पोहोचणे आणि संसाधनांच्या श्रेणीत प्रवेश करणे सोपे करण्यासाठी WhatsApp चॅटबॉट, MyBMC असिस्ट सुरू केले आहे.

 

हा लेख पॉलिसी बझच्या इंग्रजी आवृत्तीवर आधारित आहे जो 17 जानेवारी 2022 रोजी प्रकाशित झाला.

The Small Significant Steps Toward Fiscal Transparency in Kerala and Karnataka

In my previous blog, I had rued that even when the government makes changes that are ostensibly beneficial by opening information portals, making processes online and so forth, citizen behaviour by and large remains the same. People still are mystified by the government, intimidated by it, and therefore prefer to transact with it through agents and others perceived to be more influential.

For instance, a well-meaning transport department official can work hard to bring most of the processes transacted in an RTO’s office online, but people still recommend that one goes through an agent to get one’s work done. Why court ‘trouble’, whatever that means, they say.

In such circumstances, when people by and large are enslaved by past patterns of submissive behaviour, supply side transparency initiatives are bound to fail.

Not really. 

There is cause for optimism.

I often take pot shots, for good reason, at finance departments. They are the ones who suggest that everybody else ought to be transparent, except themselves. So one would imagine that initiatives to make fiscal information on government transactions transparent would all come to naught. While that may generally be the case, it is not so, all the time.

 

It was possible, for every panchayat and municipality to know how much money it could expect to receive every fiscal year.

 

Take the case of Karnataka, where the state took a landmark decision in the mid-1980s to strengthen its panchayats. Prior to the 73rd and 74th amendments that mandated elected local governments in all states, Karnataka was a pioneer in democratic decentralisation.

One of the special arrangements that were made at that time was to have a special annexe to the budget document, named the Link Book, which detailed out the financial allocations carved out by each department for the schemes and programmes they transferred for implementation to the Panchayat system.

This was not achieved without stiff resistance. Departments were reluctant to give up their programmes to the panchayats as they suspected a loss of control. However, this was overcome by patient negotiation with each department by a ‘brains trust’ of civil servants committed to democratic decentralisation, driven by politicians who led this political reform.

Once each department conceded to transferring programmes to the panchayats, the budgets that pertained to these programmes were moved into the Link Book. A full 24 per cent of the budget of the state government moved into the Link Book through this process.

Kerala went one step further in its ‘big-bang’ decentralisation efforts in the mid-1990s. It clubbed together a largely untied budget allocation to the panchayats, and put that information onto a separate budget annexure. Going beyond Karnataka’s system – which only allocated funds up to the district level – the Link Book did not further break up the allocated funds to the intermediate and village Panchayat levels. The Kerala annexure allocated funds to each of its nearly 1,000 local governments. It was possible, for every panchayat and municipality to know how much money it could expect to receive every fiscal year.

While the Kerala system could need more reforms, mostly by way of greater flexibility in how to operate the allocated funds, it remains the gold standard for India on how to allocate funds to local governments from the state budget. Clear transparency, right down to the level of each panchayat with clear directions on how and how not to use the funds, is the credo followed.

In the meantime, while the Link Book system has endured the ravages of time, much needs to be done to update the system. Overall, departments crept back to their old ways of centralisation, as political commitment to the idea of strong panchayats waned. Schemes and programmes that entailed discretionary expenditure were reallocated to the state budgets, and Link books began to contain only salary payments that passed through the local governments on the way to the accounts of departmental staff who stood nominally transferred to the latter.

Through a research study conducted by the Accountability Initiative in 2014-15, the Link Book system was critically analysed. We discovered that Link Book allocations had diminished as a proportion of the state budget and stood at about 17 per cent of the budget. We also discovered that much of these funds, particularly those going to the district and intermediate panchayats, were salary payments.

More than Rs. 22,000 crore (about 15 per cent of the state budget) ought to have been put in the Link Book if the state were to strictly follow its commitment on functional assignments to the panchayats. Yet, these funds were being directly operated by the departments concerned, bypassing the panchayats. 

 

A full 24 per cent of the budget of the state government in Karnataka moved into the Link Book through this process.

 

Amongst our key recommendations was that the Link Book system needed to go further down. It was not enough to allocate the funds to the district level and stop there. These allocations needed to be further broken down and allocated to the intermediate and village panchayats, so that those elected bodies too, could plan and implement their responsibilities effectively. 

The state administration was positive. They accepted our recommendations. That was a good beginning, we felt. 

I shall continue this optimistic story in my next blog.

 

T.R. Raghunandan is an Advisor at Accountability Initiative.

 

Also Read: A Perspective: The Demise of the Line Department?

Also Read: The Importance of Information Portals for Accountability from a Transparency Campaigner’s Perspective

The Importance of Information Portals for Accountability from a Transparency Campaigner’s Perspective

Having been an intrinsic part of collective efforts to conceive, build and monitor information portals in Rajasthan and Karnataka, not responding to T.R. Raghunandan’s blog post about the issue would be a disservice to the process I have had the privilege of being a part of. The success of the Jan Soochna portal and Mahiti Kanaja I have worked on are not measured by the glitzy portals themselves. It is measured by the institutionalised process of dialogue between civil society and government that preceded it, and has established the minimum norms of such portals. 

The portals we see today are the outcome of a four-year-long (and continuing) process of dialogues between the users (the citizens) and the custodians of information (the government). These dialogues – known as “Digital Dialogues”- are platforms where representatives of civil society organisations, unions, campaigns and networks articulate what information is needed, and hear the government’s response on whether the requested information can be provided. They debate the response and arrive at a legally sound justification backing the final decision of whether the information would or would not be disclosed. 

These dialogues were not initiated at the request of the government, and civil society was not invited to “validate” the portals. They were claimed by civil society and began with all the odds stacked against them. They were characterised by disinterested government officials who could not fathom why they even had to explain their decision on whether the requested information would or would not be disclosed. 

It took dogged effort and assertion to bring the dialogues to a point where they are now. They are organised on a monthly basis under an administrative mandate, and where participation of officials is mandatory. Any denial of requests to make information public are required to be legally justified (particularly under what exemption clause of the Right to Information Act is the disclosure of this information being denied). 

The process of these dialogues taught all those of us involved with it, that advocacy is not just about giving advice, and later complaining about the government not following it. It is about holding the government accountable for taking inputs, and demanding reasons behind what inputs were accepted, not accepted, partially accepted and why. 

In these dialogues, progress is not linear. Four years since the dialogue process began in Rajasthan, and two years since the launch of the Jan Soochna portal, information of 280 government schemes are disclosed on the portal and has been accessed by more than 10 crore citizens. These figures, however, do not allow civil society collectives involved with the process to rest in satisfaction.

 

It is important to bear in mind that those of us who believe are campaigners of transparency and accountability cannot rest with the knowledge that citizens asked for information, but did not get it.

 

The dialogues continue to be held, and standards of expectations have not been allowed to be diluted. In fact, the dialogues were held virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Critical information such as disclosures on ex-gratia relief payments; the availability of essential medicines and hospital beds; insurance claims coverage, were disclosed on the Jan Soochna portal upon the pursuits of civil society representatives. 

Also, these dialogues are not anchored by and limited to an individual. It is a collective effort, where representatives of groups and associations are involved  to ensure peoples’ dignified access to social, economic and political rights. This is contrary to the belief that only an “urban civil society” is engaged in the process of giving inputs. For instance, to the nature of information disclosed on Mahiti Kanaja, the forum includes representatives of NREGA unions, pan-state right to health campaigners, an alliance fighting for farmers’ rights to sustainable farming, amongst others. 

It is thus disturbing to read the blog state that civil society “doesn’t know how to use information to hold the government to account”. Using information to hold power to account is not the exclusive domain of subject experts. It is an act pursued by millions of ordinary citizens on a daily basis, who tirelessly question vested interests on issues ranging from mining operations; licenses given to education institutions; tracking delivery of basic services such as ration pension; NREGA and housing entitlements, at dire costs to their own life. This is evidenced by the murder of more than 80 RTI activists in the country. 

There are many cases of how citizens have used information disclosed on the portals to demand accountability. For example, by exposing discrepancies between ration offtake on the portal and in reality, ration card holders have received the balance foodgrains delivered to their home. Patients who were overcharged over the counter at hospitals have demanded their money back on realising from the portal that the hospital also claimed insurance from the government in their name, and so many more other instances. 

This is exactly why so many civil society organisations engage with the process on a completely voluntary basis, as they see how relevant the information would be to the communities they work with. The collective that leads the Digital Dialogues process is also a collective that routinely exercises its right to access all democratic forums available for pursuing their advocacy — whether it involves filing RTIs, petitioning the court, writing opinion pieces, or holding protests. Independence of the civil society collective is paramount 

It is important to bear in mind that those of us who believe are campaigners of transparency and accountability cannot rest with the knowledge that citizens asked for information, but did not get it. Information collected, organised and maintained by the government is data owned by the public, and the government is a custodian of it. The government is legally bound to disclose it. And if there has been limited success of ensuring that in the past, it does not mean the pursuit can be given up. 

However, this is a point that can be accepted only when there is a realisation that civil society advocacy in a democratic framework does not operate in a binary. One where activists either confront the State, or are co-opted by it. Demanding for information portals through institutionalised platforms open to all requires hard work, and calls for persistence. It also requires civil society to reimagine advocacy in creative and effective ways. Engaging with the government is our democratic right. It is in fact an obligation to the causes and communities we seek to represent. 

 

Rakshita Swamy is with the Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research (SAFAR), and has been a participant in the Digital Dialogues processes of Rajasthan and Karnataka. 

Policy Buzz

Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.

Education 

  1. Multiple states and union territories including Delhi have closed down schools because of the rise in COVID-19 cases. Read more about the status of education in the country through the experiences of government-school teachers, education officials and parents here. 
  2.  The Union government has brought all recognised higher education institutions under the ambit of the Academic Bank of Credit (ABC), as part of  National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. 
  3. The University Grants Commission has advised central universities in a letter to teach courses based on student demand and the number of admissions in the particular courses.
  4. The Government of Gujarat has launched the Student Startup and Innovation Policy (SSIP) 2.0, which aims to financially support innovation at school level. 

Health 

  1. Assam, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Haryana and Punjab have announced a ban on unvaccinated people from accessing public places amidst rising COVID-19 cases.
  2. The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) has released the revised guidelines for managing healthcare workers working in COVID and non-COVID areas of medical facilities, international arrivals into India, home isolation and the revised discharge policy for patients infected with COVID-19. 
  3. The Union government has announced Swachh Vidyalaya Puraskar 2021-22 to award schools for cleanliness and COVID-19 preparedness.

State Policy News

  1. The Department of Social Welfare and Women Development, Tamil Nadu has released the draft for State Policy for Women, 2021 which aims to empower the women population in the state. The complete draft is available here.
  2. The Government of Telangana has increased the existing wages of 29,804 sanitation workers comprising 22,533 public health workers and 7,271 non-public health workers by ₹4,107. 
  3. The State Assembly of Haryana has passed the Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Bill which provides 75% reservation for local youth in private sector jobs whose salary is less than ₹30,000 a month.
  4. The State Assembly of Jharkhand has passed a bill to prevent mob violence and lynching in the state, becoming the third state in the country to have anti-lynching laws after West Bengal and Rajasthan. 

Other News

  1. The President’s office has given assent to the Appropriation (No. 5) Act, 2021 which authorises the Union government to spend an additional ₹3.73 lakh crore during the current fiscal.
  2. The Prime Minister has announced 16 January to be celebrated as National Startup Day to emphasise the importance of startups in the nation’s economic growth in coming years. 
  3. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has launched a WhatsApp chatbot, MyBMC Assist to make it easier for Mumbai citizens to reach out to the administration and access a range of resources.

Forward Together in spite of Pandemic Uncertainty

As the disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic deepened in 2021, we doubled down on our efforts towards Responsive Governance or the creation of a public system that is responsive to citizen’s needs. For this, we studied India’s post-pandemic welfare structures, brought these insights to decision-takers and the public, and reworked the way we taught the next generation of development leaders so that they remain in touch with ground realities. 

 

Reaching new milestones

‣ The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) celebrated its 48th Anniversary in 2021. A curated discussion on The Role of Ideas in Shaping 21st-Century India was held on the occasion, and featured CPR scholars across generations. 

‣ A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed with the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India as part of which we will study the ministry’s existing management information systems and conduct data analysis on local-level data collected by the ministry to bolster data-led development of rural areas. Another MoU was signed with the Government of Andhra Pradesh on strengthening fiscal processes, expenditure optimisation and revenue augmentation. 

‣ Our year opened with the publication of the 13th volume of our flagship publication — the Budget Briefs. These contained the status and progress of 10 major Centrally Sponsored Schemes, and prominently featured the pandemic’s impact on financing for social welfare programmes and the Union government’s mitigation measures. 

    • Opinion pieces analysing the Budget announcement were also published by major media houses.

 

What the budget means for India’s social sector | Hindustan Times 

Covid needed special attention to health but Modi govt Budget doesn’t give a clear roadmap | The Print 

Rural job scheme sidelined; no push for nutrition, health | Deccan Herald

 

    • A pre-budget workshop with state-based vernacular journalists was held to enhance their understanding of the Union budget document. 

 

‣ Launched in response to pandemic restrictions in 2020, the online version of our Understanding State Capabilities learning programme (previously available only offline) saw 100 participants enrolled for the course in less than a year. The course is crafted for early-career development practitioners and students. 

‣ The PULSE (Platform to Understand, Learn, Share and Exchange) for Development marked its 14th Coffee Chat in November. Coffee Chats are semi-formal discussions on a range of welfare-oriented challenges, and bring together government officials and civil society organisations to learn from each other and exchange best practices. 

‣ Our flagship research methodology PAISA (Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions Studies in Accountability) was selected by WaterAid as a best practice case study on accountability for sanitation. 

 

Documenting pandemic experiences 

‣ Our report on the Experiences of Frontline Workers in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh during the COVID-19 Pandemic examined the evolving role and experiences of Frontline Workers (FLWs) during and after the countrywide lockdown in 2020. The findings provide insight into how FLWs shouldered additional responsibilities, how they have adapted to the disruption of routine health and nutrition-related services, and how they have initiated creative responses to help the public system adapt to the ‘new normal’. 

    • Additionally, findings were shared in panel discussions. Avani Kapur was a panelist in a discussion on Community Health Workers hosted by Oxford Policy Management and Women in Global Health India. Udit Ranjan was a panelist in a discussion organised by the Azim Premji University. Ritwik Shukla spoke in a ‘live’ instagram session by Jhatkaa, as part of which touched upon the emerging challenges of ASHA workers in this period.

‣ As the second wave swept through India, we continued to track the unfolding pandemic response in districts of Bihar, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Interviews of frontline officials and workers were published as part of the Inside Districts series — which was launched in 2020 to document the pandemic response by the lower bureaucracy, their challenges and triumphs.

‣ A journal article co-authored by Avani Kapur and published in the Economic and Political Weekly, drew from grassroots accounts of actors embedded within local communities. The article is a methodical inquiry into the potential “synergy” between these local government officials and societal actors. It included the experiences of government frontline workers from the Inside Districts series, and separate interviews of citizen journalists conducted by Video Volunteers. 

‣ A workshop was conducted for the Australian High Commission on experiences and learnings from working remotely and managing teams during the pandemic. Thirty senior staff members of civil society organisations in India and Australia participated in the session. 

 

Engaging the government and policymakers 

‣ Officials at the Meghalaya Administrative Training Institute (MATI) were trained by Mridusmita Bordoloi and Neeha Jacob on Management and Analysis of Administrative Data; and Avani Kapur and Rajika Seth in a session entitled on Accounting for Accountability or Accountability for Accounting. Mridusmita Bordoloi led another session on Fund-flows to North-Eastern States through Central Schemes as part of a policy workshop organised by PRS Legislative Research for MLAs from the North-Eastern states.

‣ In addition, we are working closely with the Government of Meghalaya. Besides being involved with the finance and planning departments in the budgeting exercise for financial years 2021-22 and 2022-23, we have supported the government on gender, child, and youth budgeting. 

 

Shining a light on the changing nature of governmental accountability in India

‣ There are four lessons from the pandemic, wrote Avani Kapur in an opinion piece published by the Southern Voice. Among them has been the need to reconsider how citizens interact with, contribute, and demand accountability from the state. Another piece by Avani Kapur and Avantika Shrivastava published by the Transparency and Accountability Initiative, discussed accountability, and how the Accountability Initiative is driving evidence-based research on state capabilities and public service delivery.

‣ The Accountability Keywords project was launched by the Accountability Research Centre in August. Among 30 posts that cover the usage of accountability-relevant keywords in local contexts the worldover, was Rajika Seth’s piece entitled A Novel Attempt at Breaking the Language Barrier. The project features authors from countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. 

 

Augmenting knowledge on financing for nutrition 

‣ Funding is key to addressing malnutrition and undernutrition. To improve understanding of the nutrition finance landscape in India, a research paper by Avani Kapur and Ritwik Shukla was published in the British Medical Journal. The paper sought to determine whether the current Public Finance Management System (PFMS) allows for capturing required nutrition data. This was done by mapping the availability and comparability of data for a set of key nutrition-specific interventions across the budget cycle: from budget formulation, to execution, and finally, evaluation. The study found significant gaps in data availability, including the absence of granular financial data by level of governance, geography, and intervention components. 

‣ Avani Kapur was a panelist in a webinar that dived into the practical challenges on child nutrition during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The panel was held by Child Rights & You and the Centre for Budget & Governance Accountability. 

‣ Meanwhile, the development of an online course on nutrition financing for district and block-level government officials gathered pace. In the upcoming course, participants will be able to understand, assess, and review the processes of nutrition planning, costing, budgeting, and expenditure. Further, participants will be able to identify and recognise the larger ecosystem within which nutrition financing in India functions, such as government processes, efforts on convergence, and social accountability.

 

Refocusing on offline activities

‣ As the pandemic situation eased for a short period before India’s second wave, our staff returned to conduct fieldwork. They wanted to understand convergence across government departments tasked with malnutrition reduction or simply put — how have government departments been working together? The study (findings of which are contained in a soon-to-be published report) captures the barriers and facilitators for convergence at the village and block levels in three districts of three states. 

‣ Customised, hybrid sessions forming part of the Understanding State Capabilities course were held throughout the year. Among the topics were engaging effectively with government stakeholders, and social accountability.

    • A version of the course was organised for the International Innovation Corps (IIC) Fellows, University of Chicago. A separate session was held for Mantra4Change. Our team was also invited to teach the course at the Indian School of Development Management for the fifth consecutive year. 
    • In another avatar (virtually) two 10 hour capsules on Decentralisation and Understanding the Indian Bureaucracy were taught to students of FLAME University. 

 

“Before going through the Understanding State Capabilities course, I did not know that understanding the state could be so expansive! The distinctive feature of the course is that the modules are designed in a manner that contextualise the Indian state with reference to/within different theories. 

This course has certainly empowered me in understanding the state, decentralisation, budget and accountability in a holistic sense.”

— Advaita Parashar, SOS Children Villages

 

Amplifying local leadership

‣ The HumaariSarkaar.in website soared to new heights during June and July, as it touched 8,000 users. The website is primarily an online learning resource on governance in Hindi, is predominantly about the Indian grassroots, and is for grassroots leaders and students. 

‣ A learning course meant for Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) was piloted with Ajeevika Bureau, Rajasthan, and Centre for Catalysing Change, Bihar. The course aims to strengthen the knowledge of PRI members on local governance systems. 

 

A big win for us on training students outside of India’s major cities 

‣ Our learning course meant for students and community-based leaders – Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar – got a boost when we partnered with three state-based universities. These were: the Udaipur School of Social Work; Department of Sociology, University of Rajasthan; and Magadh University in Bihar. 

 

“From this course, I learned that our work as citizens does not end by just choosing the government, and it is also very important to participate, cooperate, and be publicly conscious at every level.”

— Parjeet Yadav, Student 

 

Supporting key national and international milestones 

‣ Findings from a research study to understand the regulation and monitoring of non-state actors in school education will feed into the Global Education Monitoring Report (due to be released in 2022). The study’s focus is on regulatory frameworks for non-state actors (such as NGOs, private-public partnerships, private schools) on school provisioning and supplementary service providers, and the need for making the public system stronger for monitoring education delivery in line with national education goals. 

‣ Every year, the first week of September is observed in India as National Nutrition Week, and the month is celebrated as Rashtriya POSHAN Maah. To mark the occasion, we released six nutrition-related knowledge products focusing on women and children. These can be accessed from here. 

 

Key Highlights of 2021

पॉलिसी बझ

कल्याणकारी धोरणात जे घडत आहे त्या प्रत्येक पंधरवड्यात प्रकाशित झालेल्या बातम्यांच्या निवडीसह अद्ययावत रहा.

 

धोरणा संबंधित बातम्या:

  • केंद्र सरकारने निवडणूक कायदा (दुरुस्ती) बिल, 2021 पास केला आहे, जो मतदार यादीला बेस डेटाबेसशी जोडण्याचा  प्रयत्न करेल.
  • जया जेटली कमिटीच्या शिफारशींच्या आधारे केंद्रीय कॅबिनेटने मुलींच्या लग्नाचे किमान वय 18 वरुण 21 वर्षे वाढवले आहे.
  • केंद्र सरकारने सहाय्यक प्रजनन तंत्रज्ञान (नियमन) बिल, 2021 आणि सरोगेसी (नियमन) बिल, 2021 पास केले आहे. सरोगेट मातांच्या शोषण आणि लैंगिक निवडीच्या संबंधात अनैतिक पद्धती टाळण्यासाठी बिलांचा हेतू आहे.
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडळाने प्रधान मंत्री आवास योजना (ग्रामीण) 2024 पर्यंत तीन वर्षांपर्यंत सुरु ठेवण्यास मंजूरी दिली आहे .

 

कोव्हीड -19 बद्दल राज्यांचे उपाय:

  • केंद्राने घोषणा केली की 15 ते 18 वयोगटातील किशोर 3 जानेवारी, 2022 पासून कॉव्हिड -19 लसीकरणासाठी पात्र असतील. 10 जानेवारी 2022 पासून डॉक्टरांच्या सल्ल्यांसह 60 वर्षावरील ज्येष्ठ नागरिक त्याच बरोबर फ्रंटलाइन आणि आरोग्य कर्मचारी तिसऱ्या डोससाठी पात्र असतील.
  • सात राज्ये आसाम, गुजरात, हरियाणा, कर्नाटक, मध्य प्रदेश, महाराष्ट्र, उत्तर प्रदेश आणि राष्ट्रीय राजधानी दिल्ली यांनी रात्री कर्फ्यू लागू केले आहेत.
  • केंद्रीय आरोग्य मंत्रालयाच्या कार्यालयाद्वारे जारी केलेल्या ज्ञापनच्या म्हणण्यानुसार, 10 राज्यांमध्ये बहु-विषयी मध्यवर्ती संघ तैनात केले गेले आहेत जे एकतर ओमिक्रॉन आणि कॉव्हिड -1 9 प्रकरणे किंवा मंद लसीकरण वेग नोंदवत आहेत.

 

इतर बातम्या:

  • सर्वोच्च न्यायालयाने सेक्स कर्मचार्यांच्या व्यवसायाकडे दुर्लक्ष करून मूलभूत अधिकारांची हमी पुनरावृत्ती झाल्यानंतर मतदार ओळखपत्र, आधार आणि रेशन कार्ड्स जारी करण्याच्या प्रक्रियेस ताबडतोब दिशानिर्देश दिले आहेत.
  • पंजाब सरकार,‘उडान योजना’ अंतर्गत राज्यात 27,314 अंगणवाडी केंद्रांवर दर महिन्याला विनामूल्य सैनिटरी पॅड प्रदान करणार आहे.
  • संसदेच्या संयुक्त समितीने डेटा सुरक्षा विधेयकावर आपला अहवाल सादर केला आहे.

 

हा लेख पॉलिसी बझच्या इंग्रजी आवृत्तीवर आधारित आहे जो 29 दिसंबर 2021 रोजी प्रकाशित झाला.

पॉलिसी बज़्ज़

विभिन्न कल्याणकारी योजनाओं में क्या घटित हो रहा है, यह पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ आपको हर 15 दिन के अंदर ख़ास ख़बरों के साथ अपडेट करता है |

 

नीतियों से संबंधित समाचार :

  • केंद्र सरकार ने चुनाव कानून (संशोधन) विधेयक, 2021 पारित किया  है, जोकि मतदाता सूची को आधार डेटाबेस से जोड़ने का प्रयास करेगा। 
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने जया जेटली समिति की सिफारिशों के आधार पर लड़कियों की शादी की न्यूनतम उम्र 18 से बढ़ाकर 21 कर दी है।
  • केंद्र सरकार ने सहायक प्रजनन तकनीक (विनियमन) विधेयक, 2021 और सरोगेसी (विनियमन) विधेयक, 2021 पारित किये हैं। बिलों का उद्देश्य सरोगेट माताओं के शोषण और लिंग चयन के संबंध में अनैतिक प्रथाओं को रोकना है।
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडल ने प्रधानमंत्री आवास योजना (ग्रामीण) को तीन और वर्षों  यानी मार्च 2024 तक जारी रखने की मंजूरी दी  है।

 

कोविड –19  को लेकर राज्यों की प्रतिक्रिया:

  • केंद्र ने घोषणा के अनुसार 15 से 18 वर्ष की आयु के किशोर 3 जनवरी 2022 से कोविड-19 टीकाकरण के लिए पात्र होंगे। डॉक्टरों के परामर्श पर 10 जनवरी 2022 से एहतियात के तौर पर तीसरी खुराक के लिए फ्रंटलाइन और स्वास्थ्य कार्यकर्ता और सह-रुग्णता वाले 60 वर्ष से अधिक आयु के वरिष्ठ नागरिक पात्र होंगे।
  • सात राज्य; असम, गुजरात, हरियाणा, कर्नाटक, मध्य प्रदेश, महाराष्ट्र, उत्तर प्रदेश, और राष्ट्रीय राजधानी दिल्ली ने रात्रि कर्फ्यू लागू किया है।
  • केंद्रीय स्वास्थ्य मंत्रालय कार्यालय द्वारा जारी एक ज्ञापन के अनुसार, 10 राज्यों में बहु-विषयक केंद्रीय टीमों को तैनात किया गया है जो की ओमीक्रॉन और कोविड-19 मामलों की बढ़ती संख्या एवं धीमी टीकाकरण की गति रिपोर्ट कर रहे हैं।

 

अन्य समाचार :

  • सर्वोच्च न्यायालय ने व्यवसाय की परवाह किए बिना मौलिक अधिकारों की गारंटी को दोहराते हुए सेक्स वर्कर्स को मतदाता पहचान पत्र, आधार और राशन कार्ड जारी करने की प्रक्रिया तुरंत शुरू करने के निर्देश दिए है।
  • पंजाब सरकार, ‘उड़ान योजना‘ के तहत, राज्य के सभी 27,314 आंगनवाड़ी केंद्रों पर हर महीने मुफ्त सैनिटरी पैड उपलब्ध करवायेगी।
  • संसद की संयुक्त समिति ने डेटा सुरक्षा बिल पर अपनी रिपोर्ट पेश की है।

 

यह लेख पॉलिसी बज़्ज़ के अंग्रेजी संस्करण पर आधारित है जो 29 दिसंबर 2021 को प्रकाशित हुआ था।

Policy Buzz

Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.

Policy News

 

Covid-19 State Measures 

  • The Centre announced that teenagers between the ages of 15 and 18 would be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination from 3 January 2022. Frontline and health workers and senior citizens above the age of 60 with co-morbidities on the advice of doctors will be eligible for a precaution or third dose from 10 January 2022.
  • Seven states i.e. Assam, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and the national capital, Delhi have implemented night curfews.
  • According to a memorandum issued by the Union Health Ministry office, multidisciplinary central teams have been deployed in 10 states which are are reporting either an increase in number of Omicron and COVID-19 cases or a slow vaccination pace.

 

Other News

  • The Supreme Court, reiterating the guarantee of fundamental rights irrespective of vocation, gave directions to immediately start the process of issuing voter ID cards, Aadhaar and ration cards to sex workers.
  • The Punjab government, under the ‘Udaan Scheme’, will be providing free sanitary pads every month at all 27,314 Anganwadi centres across the state.
  • The Joint Committee of Parliament tabled its report on the Data Protection Bill. 

The False Dawn of IT-enabled Governance Services

Every now and then, across India’s currently dormant urban civil society, there is a buzz that something good is about to happen soon. I was part of one such awakening, where the government – one need not mention which one; a state or the Union government – sought the help of civil society groups in creating an information portal on the internet.

The idea of an information portal is one that rises like a phoenix from the ashes of previous efforts, with unfailing regularity. It is typically born from the efforts of one or two good bureaucrats in the system – sometimes the same bureaucrat over and over again – to fulfill the promise that the government will henceforth be transparent.

These efforts also follow a predictable pattern. Civil society is asked what they need, meetings are held, portals are inaugurated with great fanfare. 

And then they fail. 

The information portal, I mean.

Why does this happen? There are several reasons.

First, while some individuals in the government sincerely want change and want real transparency, the government, by and large, doesn’t want it. Furthermore, there is a delightful hypocrisy – delightful because it is based on transparent double standards – in how different wings of the government interpret the idea of transparency. Primarily, it is for others to follow, but not for themselves.

So, for instance, the finance secretary holds meetings and delivers homilies to other departments to make available all information, while it will hold all its information — where the money comes from, where it goes, when, to whom and why, close to its chest. 

Second, those who drive information transparency in the government have never used information all their lives. So they have no clue what information is important and how it needs to be provided.

Third, civil society itself is often clueless as to what it needs to do with information. The principle that information ought to be transparently provided is one they hold dear to their hearts. But they often don’t know how to use information to hold the government to account. 

Fourth, government knows that it can never be held accountable. There are many ways available to the government now to divert attention from its failures. There are short-lived sensational news, jingoism, social media wars, cricket matches that can be used profitably to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes. 

There is also the problem that once the event of opening a government information portal is over, or when a certain process is IT-enabled, the government declares a premature victory and moves on. This happens time and time again in departments known to be corrupt.

Conversations with a friend of mine are informative. He is a cynic with whom I constantly have wrangles because I argue that the government can improve and he responds with cheerful stories of how he was forced to pay bribes for this and that. We spoke recently about his experiences in dealing with the registration department to obtain a certain certification.

I had told him with some happiness and relief that the registration department, considered to be chronically and incurably corrupt, had introduced some far-reaching reforms that had the potential to considerably reduce corruption. I mentioned to him that an honest officer had introduced online payment of the registration fee for documents. Online formats had been introduced for the usual transactions such as sale deeds, which could be downloaded and used by customers of the service. Once equipped with the document required and having paid the registration charges online, getting one’s transactions registered would be a piece of cake, I assured him.

To my surprise, he shed his cynicism and tried to undertake his transactions that way. He came across the typical, usually successful hindrance that reduces every online effort to naught. 

The password and captcha challenge.

It turned out that the website where one could begin the process of registering one’s transactions required each customer to create a password. The system first assigns the customer a password, which has to be used to enter the site. Then, a new password has to be created by the customer. 

In the password assigned by the system to my friend, there were both zeros and ‘O’s. That led to my friend trying every possible permutation and combination of entering the assigned password before he was able to pass through the pearly gates of the site into electronic paradise.

Then, while creating his own password, he was tersely informed that his password needed to meet a complex range of conditionalities. It needed a capital letter, a numerical, a symbol, and so on. Needless to say that when his password, resembling a corner of an obscure mathematical theorem, was entered, the system crashed. 

After the twenty-third try, when my friend’s password was accepted, he needed to tackle the captcha challenge. The captcha was obscured by a psychedelic grid of shimmering lines and had the ‘zero’ and ‘O’ problem to solve, for good measure. It took him an hour of struggling to cross the captcha hurdle. 

After that, happily, the site gave in without a fight and my friend got what he wanted.

That made me feel good, but I reflected. How many people actually use the website to obtain their services? How many of them prefer to listen to their agent; or the builder’s agent, whilst registering their properties and paying ‘transaction charges’, which are nothing but a euphemism for corruption? 

Things will not change merely by civil society being co-opted by the government to hastily sign off approval on shoddily put together portals. As long as citizens remain naïve and submissive, information portals will remain a sham. Websites can change as much as they want, they have little effect if human behavior does not change.

T.R. Raghunandan is an Advisor at Accountability Initiative.

Also Read: The 2 Big and Emerging Ideas on Accountability

पॉलिसी बझ

कल्याणकारी धोरणात जे घडत आहे त्या प्रत्येक पंधरवड्यात प्रकाशित झालेल्या बातम्यांच्या निवडीसह अद्ययावत रहा.

 

धोरणा संबंधित बातम्या:

  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडळाने सप्टेंबर 2020 मध्ये संसदेने पारित केलेले तीन कृषी कायदे रद्द करण्यासाठी शेत कायदे निरसन कायदा, 2021 मंजूर केला आहे.
  • राष्ट्रीय अभ्यासक्रम आराखडा तयार करण्यासाठी शिक्षण, महिला, मुले, युवक आणि क्रीडा या विषयावरील संसदीय स्थायी समितीने ‘शालेय पाठ्यपुस्तकांची सामग्री आणि डिझाइन सुधारणे’ या विषयावर आपला अहवाल सादर केला आहे. राष्ट्रीय अभ्यासक्रम आराखडा देशातील अध्यापन आणि शिकण्याच्या पद्धती तसेच अभ्यासक्रम आणि पाठ्यपुस्तकांसाठी मार्गदर्शक तत्त्वे म्हणून काम करते.
  • केंद्रीय मंत्रिमंडळाने प्रधानमंत्री ग्राम सडक योजना (PMGSY) अंतर्गत आदिवासी भागात 33,822 कोटी रुपये खर्चून 32,152 किलोमीटरचे रस्ते बांधण्यास मंजुरी दिली आहे.

इतर:

  • नीती आयोगाने राष्ट्रीय बहुआयामी गरीबी निर्देशांक आधारभूत अहवाल प्रकाशित केला आहे. बिहार या निर्देशांकात सर्वात गरीब राज्य म्हणून उदयास आले, त्यानंतर झारखंड, उत्तर प्रदेश, मध्य प्रदेश आणि मेघालय यांचा क्रमांक लागतो.
  • राष्ट्रीय कुटुंब आरोग्य सर्वेक्षण (NHFS-5) आपल्या नवीनतम चरणाचे प्रमुख निष्कर्ष प्रसिद्ध केले आहेत.
  • कोविड-19-संबंधित कर्तव्यांमुळे मरण पावलेल्या 1,509 आरोग्य कर्मचाऱ्यांच्या कुटुंबांना प्रधानमंत्री गरीब कल्याण पॅकेज (PMGKP) अंतर्गत प्रत्येकी ₹50 लाखांचा विमा देण्यात आला आहे: कोविड-19 सी लढणाऱ्या आरोग्य सेवा कर्मचार्‍यांसाठी विमा योजना.

 

हा लेख पॉलिसी बझच्या इंग्रजी आवृत्तीवर आधारित आहे जो 5 दिसंबर 2021 रोजी प्रकाशित झाला.