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This blog is part of a series on youth activism, and how the youth can contribute to policymaking on the climate crisis. The previous post can be found here.
An important lesson learnt from the climate strikes organised across the globe was the voices it provided a platform for. Youth, who were otherwise involved in daily school activities, were now taking to the streets every Friday to peacefully protest and march as a part of the global Fridays for Future strikes initiated by Greta Thunberg in Sweden. In time, with easy accessibility to the internet and news published online, the movement received attention from policymakers. Formal events such as those hosted by the United Nations provided the youth activists with a platform to share their concerns and put forth their call to action – that governments must act. Select youth leaders were invited for discussions, but their impact on policy negotiations was limited if at all.
While the youth have been able to raise visibility on climate change, climate action will need more. They have recognised that they do not represent the needs of the society at large. In this, they have an untapped ally – the indigenous people – worldover. Some youth activists have realised that the activists from indigenous communities have not yet been heard. This has implied that neither their problems nor their solutions, informed by hyperlocal expertise and an ecological connection unknown to residents of cities, has been brought to the table.
In developing countries like India, the gap between urban policy makers and rural residents has been large with regard to tackling the effects of climate change. Take for instance sinking islands in the Sunderbans that have been documented in detail with emphasis on factors that will lead to many millions migrating in search of stable livelihoods. In another research, conducted by Asem Chanu Manimala who is a part of the Pangsau Collective, insights into the lives of tribes there offers important lessons. The tribes construct floating houses (known as phum) on the Loktak lake in Manipur. Fishing has served as the main source of their livelihoods, and their age-old tradition of constructing floating houses has also benefited certain species of fish. In 2011, The Manipur Loktak Lake (Protection) Act of 2006 enforced burning down many of their houses which forced them to settle on the banks of the river. Coping with irregular fish distribution due to climate change has only made their struggles worse.
Youth activists are using their agency to bring to light the many struggles of various indigenous communities across the globe. Through social media accounts such as ‘Adivasi lives matter‘ and ‘Mongabay India‘ on Instagram, activists are creating dialogue. They are providing context for their followers to understand the issues that India’s tribal communities are facing in the form of pictures, videos and interviews.
An equitable solution to the climate crisis as advocated by the youth activists now need to integrate voices from indigenous tribes (or adivasis) in India. Inclusion of tribal communities in acts of responsive governance may hold the solution to tackling temperature rise and the disasters that will follow for at-risk citizens.
Sidharth is a former intern at the Accountability Initiative. He is currently a postgraduate student at Sciences Po.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
– William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
Language is known to be the medium of knowledge creation and dissemination of ideas. However, it is important to analyse who is the creator of that knowledge, who is consuming it, what is the purpose of that knowledge and most importantly is the language of that knowledge acting as a barrier or a gateway in the process of social change. This leads to answer an important question- how can the language of research become the language of the people? What are some of the challenges in delivering language of research to the language of people, especially when knowledge is produced in a language different from that of the people?
This piece will explore the above mentioned question through Accountability Initiative’s (AI) attempt to take Social Accountability theory, produced in English to change-makers and development professionals in the Indian grassroots, through its vernacular course, called Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar (HHS).
HHS is a learning programme in Hindi (one of India’s widely spoken vernacular languages), to empower grassroots leaders to undertake a critical analysis of how government functions and delivers key public services. The aim is to build community leaders by equipping them with evidence-based research and tools to engage effectively with government, monitor social welfare programmes, and design appropriate interventions to demand accountability and improve public service delivery. The course is delivered by AI’s Field Associates who are uncomfortable speaking in English, supported by the national team, well-versed in English.
One of the key modules taught in the course is on Social Accountability. Social Accountability mechanisms as well as tools are neither new nor foreign to India. India has seen the rise of many accountability tools in action, from the Right to Information to the ASER[1] survey to mention some. However, availability of social science literature, both social science theory and applied social research, in vernacular languages is scarce. The research that has been encouraged in India is in English and dominated by American and European models and frameworks (Sarma and Agrawal 2010)[2].
One of the theories taught in the course also lends from a European model explaining the three elements of Social Accountability as voice, answerability and enforceability (Camarago and Jacobs, 2013)[3]. Voice here is understood as a means through which people express their preferences and opinions and demand accountability from power holders. Answerability is defined as the obligation of the power holder to provide an account and the right to get a response. Answerability is understood to be triggered by Voice. Finally, Enforceability refers to a situation where, when the answers received are not satisfactory, consequences are expected to exist and be executed.
During the first round of content development for HHS, the national team put together the theory on Social Accountability that would enable grassroots change-makers anchor their experiences of claim making. The first hurdle faced was that of conceptual translation. The ideas proposed in highly theoretical papers by Camargo and Jacob (2013)3; Fox (2015)[4]; Newell and Wheeler (2006)[5], Gaventa and Mcgee (2011)[6]; and Aiyar (2009)1 needed to be explained to our Field Associates first, then discuss with them the relevance of the content for our purpose and finally collectively take the decision on what would be taught and how it would be taught. The many attempts to translate the papers failed- as no translator was able to capture the essence of the research. Words such as ‘social accountability’, ‘tools of social accountability’, ‘tactical and strategic approaches’ to promoting citizen voice, and other such words and phrases could not be encapsulated in Hindi without changing the meaning. The communication of ideas was entirely dependent on discussion and explanation sessions that the national team conducted for the Field team.
The research that has been encouraged in India is in English and dominated by American and European models and frameworks.
‘Elements of social accountability’, made it to the final curriculum. The team felt this concept was crucial to explain social accountability, as participants would be able to associate with this construction of the concept most, and once understood would be able to expand on it through their own experiences.
The second hurdle came in the linguistic translation of the ‘elements of social accountability’. Voice became ‘aawaz’, with great difficulty answerability became ‘uttardaayitv’ and with further more difficulty enforceability became ‘parivartaniyata’. The technically accurate translated words for answerability and enforceability were not only strenuous to pronounce, let alone remember, but also far away from colloquial language spoken and understood by our participants. Direct linguistic translation from English to Hindi just did not work.
This led to another round of deliberations. The team began decoding the essence of each word and what it meant. Voice was simplified to mean an aggregation of people’s voices and ‘awaaz’ was retained. Answerability was understood as the government’s ability/obligation to reply or give an account or share information with those voices. The suitable word in Hindi that would capture the meaning of ‘answerability’ accurately was ‘jawaabdehi’. However, this was the word also used describe ‘accountability’- causing confusion between ‘accountability’ and ‘answerability’. Finally, the word chosen to depict ‘answerability’ was kept simple- ‘jawaab’, literally meaning ‘answer’. Enforceability, was understood as the right to have action taken or enforced on the unsatisfactory answers received from the government, however the current translation ‘parivartaniyata’ literally meant the condition, intent or skills to enforce change or action- a word with difficult enunciation and use, not directly linked to ‘jawaab’, and missing the meaning to a certain extent. The simplest way of conveying the meaning of enforceability was ‘an action taken on the answer or jawaab received’, which gave birth to ‘jawaab pe action’- literally translated as ‘action on answer’. The three words began to link with one another- this was important.
These new words stuck with the audience. Our Field Associates claimed that the response to this section improved considerably. Participants started reflecting on their own work, sharing stories of voice, answerability and enforceability and the recall value of the three words in post-course evaluation also increased.
Apart from simplifying the language, we have also found the use of sharing examples extremely useful to convey theoretical concepts to grassroots audiences.
What worked for us in practice, as Fox (2017)[7] proposes in his theory was that we used words that our participants could relate with, the theory taught was grounded within their cultures, allowing the participants an opportunity to add further value to the concepts through their own lived experiences.
While the process has been challenging, we found the language of research can be delivered in the language of the people- especially since many ideas are trans-ideological, with language being the only barrier to taking this knowledge to the public.
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[1] Posani, B. and Aiyar, Y., 2009. State of Accountability: Evolution, Practice and Emerging Questions in. In AI Working Paper (p. 2).
[2] Sarma, S.K. and Agrawal, I., 2010. Social science research in vernacular languages. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.36-40.
[3] Baez Camargo, C. and Jacobs, E., 2013. Social accountability and its conceptual challenges: An analytical framework.
[4] Fox, J.A., 2015. Social accountability: what does the evidence really say?. World Development, 72, pp.346-361.
[5] Newell, P. and Wheeler, J. eds., 2006. Rights, resources and the politics of accountability (Vol. 3). Zed Books.
[6] McGee, R. and Gaventa, J., 2011. Shifting power? Assessing the impact of transparency and accountability initiatives. IDS Working Papers, 2011(383), pp.1-39.
[7] Fox, J., 2017. History and Language: Keywords for Health and Accountability. IDS Opinion.
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Rajika leads Learning and Development at Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research.
Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.
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Rural Development
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Post Budget
Avani Kapur takes stock of Budget announcements for the social sector in this piece published in the Deccan Herald.
Pre Budget
“There is a strong case to be made to strengthen MGNREGS. The demand-driven nature of MGNREGS helps avoid the targeting failures seen in PM-KISAN and other schemes,” write Avani Kapur, Meghna Paul and Vastav Irava in the Hindustan Times. Both schemes will require not only sufficient budgets but also structural improvements to increase coverage and implementation.
In another OpEd in the Hindustan Times, Avani Kapur and Mridusmita Bordoloi focus on early childhood development, and how India’s policies and budget commitments towards “this cohort remain unclear”.
For AI’s complete budget coverage, visit here. You can also download our newly released Budget Briefs that analyse trends on 13 key welfare programmes from here.
Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.
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The Cutting Edge is an exclusive series by the Accountability Initiative featuring insights from world-renowned scholars, and ideas that can spur innovation.
Dr. Jonathan Fox is a scholar of global standing, known for his work on citizen participation, transparency and accountability. He directs the Accountability Research Center, an action-research incubator. He had a wide ranging conversation with team Accountability Initiative, when he spoke of pathways to accountability in governance, and the role of citizens in accountability. Below, you will find excerpts from this invaluable discussion.
Accountability, citizen participation and impact:
We’ve long considered the government’s responsiveness as an outcome of accountability, yet there are many possible drivers of government responsiveness that don’t involve a scriptural definition of accountability. For instance, if the government makes a decision like a fuel subsidy cut that leads to messy protest, and then the government decides to go back on it – is that policy change an example of accountability? It’s certainly a response. But are all responses to pressure necessarily “accountability?” That could be “conceptual stretching.”
As long as accountability relies on social accountability efforts in which citizens have to defend themselves, only a minority in the best case would be able to do that. People would be too busy taking care of the kids, or making a living. One could make the argument that the responsibility to fix the state is on the citizens and that’s a lot much to ask. We’re all doing the best we can, but the ideal system is for the rule of law to function, to have institutional checks and balances, plus mechanisms that actually address grievances, and access to legal advocates in order to navigate the system unbiased.
We’re in this difficult position of normatively valuing participation – yet voice alone can take us just so far (on the importance of institutions that can respond with voice and ‘teeth,’ see). For most people, most of the time, active participation isn’t feasible nor will it produce results that we seek. For example, in terms of schools – in what society do parents fix the schools? Other than the most upper class communities, 95 per cent of the society are completely excluded. One might wonder where the expectation that parents could ever have the power to do this come from? It’s a puzzle. You understand why the impulse [to empower parents in decision making], but we need to be realistic – it’s [also about] centuries of bureaucracy and social exclusion – which official school management committees are not equipped to address.
It [also] comes back to the impact question: how do we [research groups and CSOs] push back against unrealistic donor expectations that we’re going to overcome centuries of repression with a few meetings. It is really a problem! We’ve been socialised to buy into this. It’s ‘our problem’ if we can’t produce measurable results in a short timeframe. It’s their problem! There are limitations of expecting citizens to do all the work. It’s hard to make that sustainable. This is where I’ve been most recently exploring and encouraging a focus on positive outliers.
The Positive Outlier Approach:
We need to seek lessons from “positive outliers.” That’s where we’re going to learn the most, instead of only homogenising measures of impact. As long as we’re relying only on averages of large samples, we will render invisible the breakthroughs, and end up concluding that reform initiatives doesn’t work. The real question is why do accountability reforms ever work [even if it is] 15 per cent of the time, in certain blocks and districts? We need to then see how it worked in these places? What was different? [This approach] is relatively new to this field [accountability studies].
This was the research approach I took in the 1980s without realising and giving it a name. Who decides whether interventions are failures? I studied a top-down government reform supposedly to encourage autonomous oversight, which all academics assumed would never work. Yet there was this long march in this system by post 1968 generation cadre of reformists, who ended up creating a meaningful “opening from above” in food policy by promoting unprecedented, scaled-up freedom of association. In most regions this initiative was blocked or captured, just what one would expect – yet it “worked” in a third of the regions involved. That was a surprise. Only grassroots activists or inside reformers were aware that regional breakthroughs were happening [that time]. By conventional criteria of “what works,” that reform failed because it was blocked in 2/3rd of the country, yet for millions of people it represented a major breakthough for autonomous, scaled-up collective action.
On preventative and reactive approaches to social accountability:
Most social accountability work is exclusively micro, [and is] not [about] power shifting. This relates to one of the big questions – where is the synergy between preventative and reactive approaches? That’s the first big conceptual question that has extremely practical implications. The preventative approach reduces the opportunities and likelihood of accountability failures. Some of the ways in which information is categorised misrepresents or under represents the problem, which makes the problem invisible. It actively renders invisible where the problems are/or what does that mean in terms of an alternate proposal? What needs to change?
The difficulty of development practitioners to contextualise in translations:
When you’re working in other languages, you can seek ways of describing good governance goals that don’t have the baggage of ‘audit’ culture that the term accountability has come to take on. What’s the version and not an awkward literal translation [of a document or piece]. The term ‘whistleblower’ until about 1970-71, did not mean what it does today. Its contemporary meaning, to refer to insiders who put the public interest ahead of their own careers, was politically constructed. Are there existing terms in multiple languages that you can repurpose? Are there new terms that you can invent? [For more on this issue, see.]
I am most struck by the amount of data that both public interest groups and the government collect, that is never used. The billions and billions of hours filling out the 22 registers [by Anganwadi Workers] that they can’t even pay attention to the kids. The amount of data gathering in this machine that uses such a miniscule fraction of it – the labour that is wasted is tragic. This is particularly invisibilised and normalised and taken for granted. It’s considered so normal to fill out forms after forms, and then it gives social audits a bad name when the AWW is caught in front of everyone because there’s a paperwork discrepancy in Register X. Is it really that bad? Do you want to bring them to tears?
I think studying power structures is fundamental, as a broader concept to frame studying how the state actually works.
How do public officials justify to themselves and others what they’re doing? Insider knowledge is the best source for opening up the “black box” of how the system really works, but outsiders can also use research methodologies that involve immersion, like institutional ethnography, or political ethnography, which go beyond interviews. One of the puzzles is that there’s no how to guide, we looked and didn’t find a non-academic manual for applied researchers on how to do political or institutional ethnography.
There’s a dire need in the field for practitioner-oriented researcher to learn how to do this. Much of the academic literature, many of the academics who write about it, end up privileging their own interpretative and ideological agendas, without helping others to figure out how to apply the methods.
Institutional ethnography can be very academic and that’s one of the many reasons why applied researchers don’t use it.
On grievance redress studies:
The level of research on grievance redressal mechanisms – on how they actually work – is pathetic! I’m sure the accumulated experience of everyone in this room is much richer than any of the few academic articles that have been published on it. So, there’s a huge gap. It’s important to lift up this knowledge. My question is – who is going beyond a reactive approach? [For instance] as was recently reported in Rajasthan, community rights defenders reported that they had been cut out of a programme and reported: ‘I didn’t get the money, I used the [information access] system, I found out they thought I was dead, I was able to fix it.’ That’s a brilliant and evocative case of real world use of the system.
There’s so much potential to use public information [on government performance] proactively, not just the usual fishing expedition but to say you, with your [research] experience you could come up with very promising lines on an investigation where you have a very good sense of what the data mines.
Public service delivery through Information, Communication and Technology models:
I was involved for about a year and a half in a comparative study of governmental response to grievance redressal (digital), and we came up with a conceptual paper for the 2016 World Development Report. The book is fully open source, it’s called ‘Civic Tech in the Global South’. For this purpose, we were only looking at dedicated governmental platforms. The study raises the question – what were the incentives from inside the government to respond? What can be learnt from the patterns of complaints and concerns to inform a proactive, preventative strategy? We found that online complaints platforms helped those agencies that were already run by managers who were committed to responding to citizen concerns. We did not find cases where the complaints filed changed the managers’ incentives and turned them around.
One key question to ask about governmental online complaints systems is – do they have the systems for tracking citizen complaints and concerns? If so, who has access to them? Is there a tracking system for the senior officials or hopefully the public can see the flow of a complaint or concern in the system? I say this because there are many systems that do not track, and if you cannot track, you can’t tell whether it [the grievance] was addressed. It seems simple but it’s not often when there are internal governmental tracking systems. There’s no proactive disclosure.
This piece has been edited for clarity.
Edited by Avantika Shrivastava and Avani Kapur.
Transcription by Cearet Sood.
New ideas were at the core of our work in 2019. We invested time and effort in growing our activities and building on ideas with decision makers, scholars and citizens, whose contribution is critical to enabling Responsive Governance. Each project employed rigorous research insights, offered learning opportunities to potential changemakers or sparked dialogues. We invite you to explore some of them.
800+ policymakers reached
Operations in 6 states
Readership of over 15 lakh people through the media
11th year of Budget Briefs
Our flagship Budget Briefs series entered its eleventh year of publication with the preparation of two volumes – one during the Interim Budget and the other after the tabling of the full Budget by the new government in July. The Budget Briefs analyse the progress of key welfare programmes of the Government of India, and can be downloaded from here.
Launch of a new website for Hindi speaking readers
Committed to making research insights and our practical experience accessible to grassroots development professionals, we launched a new website in Hindi which serves as a one-stop resource on governance. The website shares best practices and facilitates community building among state-based practitioners, an opportunity that they seldom have. A newsletter was also launched in November.
Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar’s ‘Open’ courses
The Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar learning programme unpacks India’s administrative structure, and the root causes of implementation failure at the last mile of public service delivery. Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) are critical to addressing this gap in service delivery as they can articulate the demands of the people, and hold the state accountable. In all, we organised four ‘Open’ courses in 2019 by publicly inviting applications. Two ‘Open’ courses have been held in Jaipur, Rajasthan. These were attended by a range of participants including: students, participants from Manthan, Pratham, CECONDECON, the Gujarat Mahila Sansthan (a Self-Help Group in neighbouring Gujarat). Other ‘Open’ courses were held in Udaipur, Rajasthan and Patna, Bihar later in the year.
In this podcast you can hear why we believe it is important to engage local development practitioners.
Focus on the next-gen
Through the year we held a series of workshops focussed on the next generation of development leaders. Among them have been Harvard EPoD Fellows; LAMP Fellows; students of Flame University; Bhopal School of Social Service; and the University of Delhi. Session plans have drawn from AI’s research at the frontline over the last 10 years of our existence, and cutting edge scholarly work.
Expansion of PAISA studies
AI has expanded its flagship Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions Studies in Accountability (PAISA) methodology to include two new areas – nutrition and water. In 2019, an extensive research study tracking processes in implementing publicly funded direct nutrition efforts by the government such as the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) was completed in 6 districts across 3 states. Preliminary findings have been shared with NITI Aayog and also presented to different stakeholders.
Federalism and Social Policy
As part of AI’s continued commitment to understanding the evolving nature of federalism in India, and its impact on social policy financing, we contributed a chapter to a special issue of Seminar Magazine. The paper is an extensive review of Union budgets, planning documents, and 20 state budgets and finance accounts. It thus presents a comprehensive account of some emerging trends in central-state relations. The paper can be downloaded from here.
An analysis entitled ‘Towards ‘Cooperative’ Social Policy Financing in India,’ was published in the following month as part of a Centre for Policy Research special series – Policy Challenges: 2019-2024, for the new government. While the practice of using specific purpose transfers dates to the pre-Independence era, over time, Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSSs) have emerged as the primary vehicle through which the Union government finances and directs state expenditure towards national priorities. However, the centralised nature of CSSs often makes them an inefficient tool to address state-specific needs. You can access the full paper from here.
Research on India’s fiscal architecture
On the request of the 15th Finance Commission (FFC), AI built on its previous work on Rural Local Bodies (RLBs) or panchayats by conducting two studies to understand the impact of increased devolution to Panchayats by the FFC. The first study was submitted to the Commission in March 2019 and focussed on whether the processes and financial flows from the Union government’s Ministry of Finance for the 13th and 14th Finance Commission period complied with recommendations. The second study undertook a sample survey across Gram Panchayats to understand if money reached the Panchayats, the implications of these grants on Gram Panchayat finances, and how they were spent.
Accountability Initiative 2.0
Among our priorities is providing our digital community with a strong online platform to engage on governance matters. In May, we launched a revamped website, fit-for-purpose to a variety of readers. Among the website’s features are: more engagement options to comment on and share exclusive blogs written by our staff, the option to install RSS feeds, and easy site navigation.
The website forms part of our extensive strategic communications efforts, which you can know about from this blog.
Customised learning opportunities
The Hum Aur Humaari Sarkaar learning programme has seen encouraging response from CSOs in 2019. In June, we entered into an institutional partnership with Pratham India to train their state-level staff based on their needs. A version of the learning programme was conducted for staffers of Ibtada, an NGO operational in Rajasthan; and volunteers at Nehru Yuva Kendra in Rajasmand and Hanumangarh, Rajasthan, later in the year.
Our staff also held sessions on the fundamentals of public policy with international NGO World Vision.
Understanding the government’s planning machinery
To unpack planning in the last decade, we engaged with planning secretaries on the changes in the state machinery, specifically looking at the role of the Planning Commission, its dismantling and the subsequent creation of the NITI Aayog.
Deep dive on child budgeting
In June, we participated in workshops on Child Budgeting for development practitioners at UNICEF and Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. Later in the year, we conducted a session for Finance Officers, Government of Odisha on the relevance of earmarking resources for children; Child Budgeting as a policy tool; the methodologies used by Union and other state governments; and global best practices.
Unpacking the progress of welfare schemes
Analyses on 10 welfare programmes run by the Union government was published in July. The Budget Briefs covered sectors such as: health and nutrition, education, sanitation, water supply, health insurance, and rural housing and livelihoods. Opinion published in The Wire and The Print can serve as useful contextualisation of Budget-related announcements.
Curating policy news
A new publication curating important news and decisions by the government on welfare policy has been launched. Published every fortnight on AI’s website, Policy Buzz, is a resource for anybody wanting a quick roundup to keep abreast. You can find the latest edition here.
A fresh perspective on governance
‘The Edit,’ AI’s monthly newsletter was launched in August. Free of subscription cost, it features exclusive research insights, expert analyses and commentary. Become a subscriber for the latest in public finance, health, education, bureaucracy and current affairs by sending a mail at: [email protected].
Policy in-depth
Apart from publishing papers, we explored Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSSs) in the public forum as well. In the fourth session of Policy In-Depth, our flagship discussion series, we focussed on the role that CSSs have come to play in the Indian welfare system. The session detailed financial planning and fund-flow processes; emerging issues in CSS design and implementation; and the way forward. Policy In-Depth aims to connect scholars with aspiring and mid-level public policy professionals seeking to understand the implementation of India’s major welfare programmes.
Open Data as a tool for accountability in education
Publicly available government data can serve as a useful tool to demand accountability in India’s schooling system. However, our research has shown that the uptake of this data among citizens remains weak. As a first step, we shared our findings with NIEPA scholars, and officials leading Statistics and Management Information System of state education departments and the Samagra Shiksha scheme. A policy brief on the study can be accessed from here.
A learning opportunity for aspiring policy practitioners
Our Understanding State Capabilities learning programme was held for students of the University of Chicago Fellowship, and separately for Indian School of Development Management. The course explores the root causes of administrative and fiscal failures, equipping participants to apply a systems approach to on-ground government interventions, and engage with government functioning. The course is conducted in English.
Exploring the potential of emerging technologies in governance
As a panellist, we shared insights on the adoption of technology in governance. The session looked at issues, challenges and proposed solutions to the use of technology in governance and implementation. Organised by the Indian Institute of Public Administration, Delhi the programme included officers of All-India Services, Central Services, Defence Services and the Technical Services.
Another event explored the potential for social accountability in the newly launched Jan Soochna Portal. We contributed to a ‘Digital Dialogue Roundtable’ held by Department of Information Technology, Government of Rajasthan which brought together various departments of the Government of Rajasthan, Soochna Evam Rozgaar Abhiyan (SRA), and Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) among others.
Nuancing accountability
Dr. Jonathan Fox, a scholar of global standing and known for his work on citizen participation, transparency and accountability, visited the AI team in Delhi. He had a wide-ranging discussion on accountability with us, which can be found here.
Understanding school consolidation as a policy tool
The draft National Education Policy (NEP) released in May 2019 has mooted the creation of school complexes for better resourcing of government schools and curbing low student enrollment (see here for our recommendations submitted to the government on the NEP). A school complex will be a single organisational and administrative unit, created by bringing together multiple public schools. Rajasthan is already implementing its version of a school consolidation policy. Our Working Paper was released in 2019, a first-of-its-kind account of this process, and sheds light on the immediate successes and challenges of the policy. We invited research organisations, NGOs, and the media during an event in Jaipur to discuss the policy, and the broader challenges of the public school education system in the state. Details can be found in this blog.
5 years of Swachh Bharat Mission
Over 10 crore toilets or 38 toilets per minute had been built under the Swachh Bharat Mission since its launch in 2014. This unprecedented rise in access to toilets is part of a larger strategy to end open defecation. On SBM’s fifth anniversary, we produced a special podcast where Avani Kapur (Director, AI) and Sanjana Malhotra (Research Associate, AI) discuss whether the goals of the Swachh Bharat Mission have been met. Listen here.
Making citizen participation a part of public policy design
Apart from studying the relevance of social accountability and citizen participation in governance, we also share knowledge with decision makers within the government and CSOs. One such workshop was on weaving social accountability in public policy design. The session was attended by director-level government officials in the Union government at the Indian Institute of Secretariat Training and Management. We also participated in a multi-national event organised by Community of Practitioners on Accountability and Social Action in Health (COPASAH) where we shared ideas on building Responsive Governance.
The role of critically evaluating social policy
We conducted a session with the Comptroller and Auditor General’s Advanced Management Group on the importance of probing deeper and considering the why, what and how of social policy evaluations in audit and accounts.
A new addition to our social media portfolio
If you prefer LinkedIn for information sharing over other platforms, our page is now active. This marks a significant addition to the current suite of social media platforms we are currently using to engage with our readers, and is regularly updated with analysis and news that you can use.
Comprehensively understanding women and child protection
Since August 2018, AI was mapping the government’s efforts towards the protection of women and children, and preventing violence against them in Maharashtra. Supported by Unicef-Maharashtra, the study concluded in late 2019. Recommendations on formulating legislative measures to improve the system have been shared with the Government of Maharashtra.
As part of another project, we analysed the status and fund flow mechanisms in sample districts of three different schemes over two years (FY 2018-19 and FY 2019-20) with the overall objective of understanding implementation mechanisms and room for improvement. The schemes were: Child Protection Services (CPS), the Supplementary Nutrition Programme (SNP) under the ICDS scheme, MAMATA scheme of Odisha, and the Rashtriya Kishore Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) focussing on adolescent health in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh.
Responsive Governance event
We closed the year by hosting the first Responsive Governance Special session with Dr. Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner, an Assistant Professor of Politics and Global Studies at the University of Virginia. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in rural India, she presented invaluable insights into whether, how, and why citizens engage with public officials to secure their entitlements. The findings are published in her book entitled ‘Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India’. The event recording can be accessed from here.
Keep up-to-date with all that is happening in welfare policy with this curated selection of news, published every fortnight.
General:
Union Budget:
Education:
Health and Nutrition:
Infrastructure:
“In the face of increased resistance [on the matter of the Citizenship Amendment Act], it is likely that the BJP will harden its ideological stance and deepen its centralising instincts in the fiscal and administrative arena, leaving states with little room for manoeuvre,” writes Yamini Aiyar, Founder of Accountability Initiative and the President, CEO of the Centre for Policy Research. Read here.
