Blog Archive - Page 73 of 130 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Effect of Soaring Food Prices on Mid Day Meal Scheme

Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDM) is the world’s largest school-feeding programme aimed at promoting universalisation of elementary education by increasing enrolment, retention, attendance, and simultaneously impacting the nutritional status of students. It is learnt that besides rice and dal, MDM involves use of oil, vegetables, salt and spices and fuel. Keeping in view the rising cost of the commodities, effective from December 1, 2009, for primary schools the fund allocation norm for cooking costs has been increased to Rs. 2.50 per child per day(up from Rs. 1.58). For upper primary the allocation has been increased to Rs. 3.75 per child per day (up from Rs. 2.08).

However, the existing cost norms and the subsequent revision is based on overall inflation figures, not specifically on the costs of commodities used in the meals. Overall inflation statistics can hide the fluctuations in the prices of specific commodities relevant to the meal costs. The point becomes all the relevant as the country is now witnessing rising food prices despite negligible inflation. (Overall inflation is 7.31% in December)

Price rise of some essential food items (52-week period, in %)

Potatoes………………110.11
Vegetables…………….30.97
Pulses……………….. …42.21
Onions………………… 40.07
Milk……………………..12.62
Cereals………………. 13.91
Rice…………………….12.91
Fruits…………………..7.87

Source: (IANS), Week ended on December 26, 2009

The current procedure for revising the costing norms acts as a further roadblock to realistic pricing. Any revision needs to be approved by the EFC and the cabinet each time – after seeking comments from all relevant ministries – in a process that can take up to a year. By the time the cabinet approval is obtained, the revised norms become outdated and the exercise is redundant.

Instead, a mid-day meal pricing index which would consider fluctuations in the prices of five items essential to the scheme seems to be a better idea to tackle this soaring price inflation.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative

AI’s New Working Paper – ‘Enhancing Accountability in Public Service Delivery Through Social Audits: A Case Study of Andhra Pradesh, India’

Accountability Initiative’s new working paper examines the effectiveness of social audit as a tool to enhance accountability.

Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, Ritesh Singh and Vinay Vutukuru measure the impact of social audits on the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the flagship employment guarantee program of of India, in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

The main research questions addressed are: what is the impact of social audits on the size of the program and the payment process? Are social audit results a good indicator of the overall quality of program implementation? How does the performance of Karnataka, a neighbouring state, which has not taken up social audit, compare to that of Andhra Pradesh in the overall implementation of the program? And what are the reasons behind the successful scale up of social audits in Andhra Pradesh?

The results show that there is a statistically significant improvement in the size of the program as measured by the man-days generated. There was no statistically significant improvement in the proportion of timely payments, which can be attributed to technical problems in scaling up the payment process. It was found that the qualitative reports provided useful inputs on the process related aspects (performance of functionaries, maintenance of muster rolls etc) that were missing from the quantitative performance reports. It was found that the program is not in a very stable position in Karnataka, given the fact that there has been a decrease in the size of the program in the current year, and a comparison with Andhra Pradesh would not be a fair. An important insight was that the social audit program generated a great deal of public support in Andhra Pradesh, as manifested by the huge turnouts in the sub-district level meetings, which resulted in political support cutting across party lines. Another critical strategy was co-opting the lower bureaucracy in the entire process, so that there were no major problems during roll-out.

The overall conclusion is that social audits are indeed an important tool in building social awareness which results in a greater demand for work which translates into increased size of the program. The process also exposed corruption in the implementation of the program and a total amount of Rs 20 million of program funds was recovered.

The paper recommends that the Andhra Pradesh experiment with social audit can be replicated elsewhere in the country, provided that the learnings from its example are internalized, the program is launched in an incremental manner, and political issues generated by the process are carefully handled. It is specifically recommended that the Government of India should finance a pilot social audit project in two districts in each state of the country, roughly modeled on the Andhra Pradesh example. The states could then do a comprehensive roll out across all districts based on the state-specific learning from the pilot projects.

The paper can be downloaded by clicking here.

JNNURM – A Work in Progress

As India completes 60 years of being a republic, one can’t help but look around at our towns and cities and wonder where we are heading. And as a resident of Delhi, the first thought that comes to my mind (maybe due to the infinite signs that plague Delhi roads in anticipation of the Commonwealth Games) is that we today are a “work in progress”. Open drains, pot holes, roads dug up, lakhs of homeless people struggling to stay warm in the extreme cold are all constant reminders that urban chaos is becoming a way of life. And as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently noted, “our cities and towns are not an acceptable face of a rapidly modernizing and developing economy”.

This is despite the fact that on December 3rd, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), India’s comprehensive flagship programme for urban development completed four of its intended seven year tenure. This is no small amount of money –a total of Rs. 103,462 crores has been approved of which the centre has committed assistance of Rs. 55,625 crores, provided states and local bodies give their prescribed share of funds. However, the programme is running at a very slow pace, with not even a quarter of the projects completed and less than a third having got off the ground. To give a simple example, 14.59 lakh houses for the poor have been approved under the mission. However, so far only 1.80 lakh houses have been completed and another 4.38 lakh homes are under construction.

As more and more money gets pumped into the scheme (including a $1-billion loan which is currently being approved from the World Bank), serious questions need to be asked about state capacity and the ability of states to effectively utilize the money for urban development.

Even in terms of the enactment of the community participation law, out of the 26 states scheduled to implement it by the fourth year, only 8 have implemented it.

In particular, I would like to highlight three points that need careful attention as we move forward with JNNURM.

• First, Funds.
JNNURM works on a cost sharing model with centre, states and local bodies all having a prescribed share. Till March 2009, while states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu released over 70 percent of their share of funds, Madhya Pradesh and Punjab released just over half and Haryana only released 22 percent. Urban local bodies on their part too, have fallen behind. While Greater Mumbai and Hyderabad released over 80 percent of their funds, Chennai and Kolkata released only 24 and 18 percent respectively. Inability to release funds in time has resulted in significant delays to infrastructural projects. In Kanpur for instance, the repair work in the city, with a Rs 96.23 crore project allocated under JNNURM, is lying incomplete for the last three months due to a lack of funds. Reason: sanctioned funds from the state have already been used elsewhere.

• Second, Citizen Participation.
First principles of public accountability require that expenditures must adequately reflect citizens’ interests and priorities. Interestingly, citizen participation is embedded in the overall design of the JNNURM Mission. One mechanism is the creation of the National Technical Advisory Group, made of members of civil society. In addition, a Community Participation Fund (CPF) was also launched in September 2007 – to catalyze community participation by supporting the building of community assets. Moreover, states are mandated to enact community participation laws. However, while there is provision for about 1000 community projects under CPF, with Rs.90 crores already approved, only 21 projects have been sanctioned under this scheme for the mission cities as on May 2009, with 14 more awaiting approval. Even in terms of the enactment of the community participation law, out of the 26 states scheduled to implement it by the fourth year, only 8 have implemented it.

• And finally, Reforms.
In theory, these reforms ensure that governments at each level have the requisite autonomy, resources and power to carry out the duties assigned to them. In addition, they ensure accountability and efficiency. But in practice, these reforms have progressed very slowly. For instance, up to year 4, while 18 states had committed to implementation of the 74th constitutional Amendment Act (transfer of 12th schedule functions from states to urban local bodies), 8 states are yet to fully implement the reform. Similarly, while 29 states had committed to enact the Public Disclosure Law, only 15 states had successfully implemented the reform.

Another key objective of the JNNURM is to introduce e-governance in the municipalities to provide single-window services to the citizens, to increase efficiency and productivity of the urban local bodies (ULBs), and to provide timely and reliable management information. However, only 13 of 45 cities had enacted the reform.

In the coming years, as the quantum of money allocated for JNNURM increases, the pressure on states and local bodies to deliver will continue to increase. A careful look at the existing inefficiencies is therefore a priority – if our cities are to reflect our growth.

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator of PAISA project at Accountability Initiative.

A house for the homeless

This article was published in One India One People magazine, June 2013 issue, available at: http://www.oneindiaonepeople.com/

After the Right to Education and the Right to Food, a new right is being sought to be tabled in Parliament – the Right to Housing. The Draft Homestead Bill 2013 aims at providing a homestead[1] of not less than 10 cents (0.1 acres or 4,356 sq. ft) to every landless and homeless poor family in rural areas.

Given that India is home to close to 8 million homeless rural families the demand for the right to housing is not surprising. In fact, the Twelfth Plan working group on rural housing estimates the shortage in the Plan period (2012-17) at around 40 million.

However, the main question arises is – how will this “right” differ in its implementation from the existing scheme on rural housing – the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY).

Background

Launched in 1985, IAY is Government of India’s (GOI) flagship programme on rural housing. The objective of the scheme is to provide funds to for the construction of dwelling units for members of Scheduled Castes (SCs)/Scheduled Tribes (STs), free bonded labourers, and non SC/ST rural below poverty line (BPL) households.

With effect from 2013, Rs. 70,000 is provided per dwelling unit for plain areas (up from 45,000 in 2009) and Rs. 75,000 for hilly/difficult areas (up from Rs. 48,500)[2]. IAY funds can also be utilized for up gradation of a kutcha house for which a subsidy of Rs. 15,000 per unit is provided. Further, IAY beneficiaries can also avail of a top-up loan of up to Rs. 20,000.[3] In 2009, to assist those rural BPL households who have neither agricultural land nor a house-site, IAY also launched a scheme for providing homestead sites.

Over the years, allocations for IAY have increased over 2-fold from Rs. 3,885 crores in 2007-08 to Rs. 8,121 crores in 2012-13. The scheme received a significant boost in allocations in 2013-14, when GOI allocated 15,184 crores- nearly doubling the allocations for the previous year.

During the 11th Five Year Plan, against a target of 140 lakh houses, 126.98 lakh houses were constructed at a cost of Rs. 53497 crores. (See Table below for performance in the last 10 years)[4].

Performance of IAY over the last 10 years				in lakhs
Year	GOI Allocation	GOI Release	Utilization	Target (No.of houses)	No.of houses constructed
2002-03	165640	162852.86	279496.46	13.14	15.49
2003-04	187050	187107.78	258009.69	14.84	13.61
2004-05	246067	288310.02	326208.64	15.62	15.21
2005-06	273240	273822.58	365409.05	14.41	15.52
2006-07	290753	290753.06	425342.45	15.33	14.98
2007-08	403270	388237.01	546454.3	21.27	19.92
2008-09	564577	879579.39	834834.33	21.27	21.34
2009-10	849470	863573.99	1329236.4	40.52	33.86
2010-11	1005370	1013945.4	1346572.75	29.08	27.15
2011-12	949120	986477.8	1292632.74	27.26	24.71

Source: Ministry of Rural Development, Annual Report 2012-13

While these numbers suggest a relatively well functioning scheme – most of GOI allocations are released, funds are utilised and houses are being constructed – there are wide state variations in performance and numerous issues with respect to implementation. Some of these are highlighted below:-

Implementation Highlights

1) Delays in Fund Flows and Construction

In 2012-13, till January (more than 3 quarters of the financial year completed), out of the total funds available[5] for IAY, only 63% of the funds were utilised. Moreover, only 46% percent of the annual target for construction was completed. These delays are particularly acute in some states. While Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh had utilised nearly 100 percent of their funds available during this period, Jammu and Kashmir had utilised only 21%, Punjab 36% and Tamil Nadu 45%. Other states such as Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal and Maharashtra had utilised only between 50-60% of funds available.[6] According to reports, part of the problem lies with delayed release of funds. In 2012-13 itself, out of the total allocation of Rs. 10513.20 crores only 54% (Rs. 5655.37 crores) was released by January 2013.

Pace of construction is also slow. Till January 2013, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh had only completed 10% and 13% of their annual target for the year, respectively. Most other states also ranged between 20-50 percent completion rates including Maharashtra (20%), Odisha (32%), Gujarat (33%), Chhattisgarh (36%) and Kerala (46%).[7]

2) Quality of houses

An important concern over the years has been with respect to the quality of houses. According to the IAY guidelines, the construction of an IAY house is the responsibility of the beneficiary. While no specific design type has been stipulated for an IAY house, sanitary latrine and smokeless chullah’s are required to be constructed along with each IAY house.

The Planning Commission’s mid-term review of the XIth Plan noted many instances of “poor quality construction, sagging foundation, use of temporary materials for roofing or leaving the construction incomplete because of inadequate finance”[8]

Four years later, similar findings were reported by the Ministry’s National Level Monitors (NLMs). During their visit to 3083 villages across 478 districts, only 15.2% of the houses were found ‘Excellent’ in terms of quality of construction, 52.2 % were rated ‘Good’, and the remaining 32.6% were ranked poor or average condition. [9]

The NLMs further found that 16% of houses which have been sanctioned for more than 2 years were still incomplete. Moreover only, 8% of the verified houses visited had smokeless chullahs and only 39% had sanitary latrines provided.

3) Beneficiary selection and allotment of houses

Selection of beneficiaries was originally the responsibility of Gram Panchayats (GP). However, due to rampant irregularities and biased selection[10], the revised guidelines stipulate that beneficiaries be identified through a Permanent IAY Waiting lists prepared on the BPL list of 2002. In order to increase transparency these lists are supposed to be displayed in all GPs.

The NLM reports however found that out of 2780 villages where permanent IAY lists were finalised, only 53% villages these were displayed on the walls. Moreover in nearly 10% of the villages the selection of beneficiaries was still not based on these lists.

While guidelines specify that 60% of IAY allocation is meant for SC/ST families and IAY houses are to be allotted (in this order of preference) in the name of the woman or jointly between the husband and the wife, audit reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) have found many instances of houses being allotted to “fake persons” or male members.[11]

5) Land availability

Finally, the biggest constraint faced is often with respect to land availability. Land costs tend to be high and in the absence of land, houses tend to be incomplete or in a worse case not be constructed despite being sanctioned.

These findings suggest that despite nearly 30 year of the scheme in operation, there are a number of hurdles with respect to the implementation of IAY. While GOI has taken some steps in addressing these (particularly with respect to increasing the unit costs of dwelling units. providing additional assistance for construction of toilets and increasing transparency in selection of beneficiaries), there still appears to be genuine constrains with respect to delays, lack of monitoring, technical capacity, lack awareness amongst beneficiaries and even unavailability of land. Until these implementation issues are resolved the “right to housing” is unlikely to go too far.

(The author is grateful to Ms. Saamia Ibrahim for her research assistance)

[1] Homestead is defined as a dwelling with adequate housing facilities including access to basic services (drinking water, electricity, roads and public transport), appropriate location, accessibility and cultural adequacy.

[2] Ministry of Rural Development, Annual Report 2012-13.

[3] This is a part of the Differential Rate of Interest (DRI scheme) wherein beneficiaries can apply for a loan from any Nationalised bank at an interest rate of 4% per annum

[4] Ministry of Rural Development, Annual Report 2012-13.

[5] Funding for IAY is shared between GOI and states in a 75:25 ratio (for UTs it is completely centrally funded)^{^[5]}. Total funds available would include releases by GOI and States as well as opening balances at the start of the year.

[6] Indira Awas Yojana Portal, PRC Meeting 1 and 2

[7] Ibid

[8] Planning Commission, Mid Term Appraisal for Eleventh Five Year Plan. Available online at: http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/mta/11th_mta/MTA.html

[9] Details of the criterias for different categories are available at: http://www.ruralmonitor.in/nlmreport/RM_12-13_Phase-I_All%20India.pdf

[10] The 11^th Five Year Plan document had found that “25 to 50 percent of beneficiaries were not being selected to Gram Sabhas’s. Alloaction among Panchayats were influenced by PRI/MLAs.

[11] For instance, CAG found that in one district in Maharashtra, in 685 out of 2426 cases allotment of houses at a cos of Rs.4.69 crores were to male members in 2010-11. A recent report on Odisha found Rs. 1.15 crore in allotment of houses to 1144 non-BPL families in 4 districts and irregular payments to 321 “fake” BPL beneficiaries

CDF Policy Briefs on Centrally Sponsored Schemes

The Centre for Development Finance has released a series of policy briefs that analyse and evaluate the performance of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS). The first four scheme briefs look at the performance of Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mid Day Meal (MDM) scheme, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). The briefs provide a thematic insight in to the issues of early child care and development, school feeding, sustainable livelihood generation, and universalising primary education, respectively. Click here to download the briefs.

US introduces Public Online Information Act

The US has recently introduced a bill, the Public Online Information Act (POIA) which will make it mandatory for all government departments to publish all publicly available information and data online. This includes information on the personal financial interests of high level government officials; reports of instances when executive branch travel is paid for by third-parties; reports disclosing lobbying activities by government contractors and grantees made in connection with winning a grant. If enacted, the POIA would make it mandatory for executive branch agencies to make all publicly available information online in a time bound and user friendly manner within three years of the bill being enacted. The bill also includes the setting up of a panel to bring together all branches of government create guidelines for information sharing. Click here to read more.

Who Cares About Outcomes?

I had almost forgotten, till I saw a copy at a friend’s office yesterday, that every year in Parliament’s budget session, apart from presenting the annual budget, the Government of India tables an outcomes budget where every ministry reports on its outcomes. Remiss as I was in forgetting, I can’t be blamed, entirely. The outcomes budget was launched amidst much talk of reform in 2005 by then finance minister P Chidambaram. In a promising budget speech, he said ‘I must caution that outlays do not necessarily result in outcomes’. ‘The people of this country,’ he went on to add, ‘are concerned with outcomes’. And to his credit he launched the outcomes budget. In its short five year existence, the budget has been nothing but a damp squib. So valued is the outcomes budget that it never makes even the inside pages of newspapers and if you want to look for them on line – well best of luck to you.

What went wrong? Well, like many things in government, the idea is a good one but its implementation nothing short of poor. There are two critical elements to a successful ‘outcomes budget’. First, it requires the identification of clear, concise and quantifiable outcome indicators. These indicators need to be tangible and realistic. Here the outcomes budget falls short. Indicators are vague – the health ministry describes ‘funding of institutions’ and ‘widening of surveillance mechanisms’ as some of its key outcomes- making measurement impossible and irrelevant.

Second, for an ‘outcomes budget’ to achieve results it must be accompanied by increased information on performance against these indicators. The Finance Minister emphasized this at the launch of the outcomes budget, by pointing out that the objective of the budget is to put critical data on expected outcomes in to the public domain and allow for public scrutiny. On this count too, the outcomes budget has fallen far short of expectations. The budget itself was launched with much media fanfare but over the years it has simply disappeared from the public radar. There is no evidence of any proactive effort by government agencies to generate and disseminate information on progress.

In today’s Mint, Sanjiv Misra, former member of the 13th Finance Commission made some interesting observations about the failure of the outcomes budget. He points out that for reforms like the Outcomes Budget to be successful it requires the “establishment of countrywide performance benchmarks and costing norms for the public goods and services supplied; development of measurable performance indicators for the objectives set out; development of performance monitoring systems to regularly collect data on the actual results achieved; independent third-party evaluation of major programmes; and use of performance contracts to enforce accountability of key actors.” He so argues for the need to link performance on outcomes budgeting with pay.

The interesting thing about India today is that we have all these design instruments in place and we speak the right ‘speak’. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest agree that outcomes matter. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest agree that these need to be monitored and that he failure to do just this is the cause of our persistent poor performance on human development. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest has some interesting ideas on how to address this problem. As we speak the cabinet secretariat is running a seminar on performance oriented monitoring in the civil services. In fact the performance management wing of the cabinet secretariat has signed a significant number of contracts with Government of India departments to performance criterion and goals and there are some whispers about introducing pay for performance measures. At the same time the planning commission seems to be moving towards setting up the Independent Evaluation Office and a few months ago, PMO set up a delivery monitoring unit. There is also much talk of using technology through the UID and other instruments to develop a transparent expenditure information network that will allow for transparency and regular tracking of government funds. All of which have the potential to address the problems reforms like the outcomes budget faces. But for these instruments to take effect, we need political will – and that as we all know is sadly missing. What we need now is not more instruments but a better understanding of how to circumvent this lack of political will and push for change.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director, Accountability Initiative.

Budget 2010 – Great Expectations

It is the Budget season again. Every year, the nation looks forward to the two-hour speech of the Finance Minister where he lays out the government’s housekeeping statement – revenues collected, expenditures incurred and the plan for the next year. The budget means different things to different people. Some focus on the tax rates on income, goods and services, while others look at how much the government is spending and on what. But the bigger question is: what does the budget signify for the nation?

Every budget has a context and a theme. Budget 2009 was in the backdrop of the financial crisis, the general elections and the post-election policy direction. The theme was crisis-management – how to pull the economy out of the downturn trumped the concerns over the fiscal deficit which was pegged at 6.8 percent of GDP, the highest since 2003-04. The bold decisions were put off until later.

It is in this backdrop that Budget 2010 will be presented. The economy has come out of the downturn pretty much unscathed compared to other countries in the developed world. So the theme this year would be about reigning in the deficit, rationalizing expenditure and focusing on priority sectors. This is exactly what any family would do after a year of profligacy to get its finances in order.

So what can we expect from the Finance Minister this year? First of all, it would be a difficult balancing act – the need to raise more resources through higher taxes vis-à-vis derailing the growth rebound. The second is to ensure sustained and increased financing for core sectors – education, health, rural and urban infrastructure. Third, the budget needs to take into account the recommendations of the Thirteenth Finance Commission which will be tabled in this session of the Parliament.

The most significant talking point may be the allocation for education. The operationalization of the Right to Education (RTE) means that substantially more allocation would be needed in the Centre’s budget. At the same time, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) would pick up steam, and allocation for higher education will continue to increase. On the other hand, this budget is expected to maintain the status quo on NRHM, NREGS and Bharat Nirman.

There is one thing that certainly this budget would not do – talk about how to improve the efficiency and accountability of expenditure. Everyone in government loves to spend, nobody likes to be asked “What exactly did you do with the money”? The great expectations of transparency, accountability and independent monitoring outlined in the President’s address last year seems to have been conveniently forgotten, and the government seems to spend the people’s money as it likes. This needs to change – the sooner, the better.

Anit Mukherjee is with the National Institute of Public Finance Policy (NIPFP).

AI Budget Series: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)

In the first of a 4 – part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article – Rural Economics: How taxpayers’ money is (or isn’t) being spent.