Blog Archive - Page 80 of 130 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

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

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

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

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

Panchayats are corrupt. And in fact, they said, even the current system which devolves money to PTA’s has resulted in poor expenditures and political capture. There may well be some truth to this argument.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yamini Aiyar is Director of the Accountability Initiative.

M.P. Public Services Guarantee Bill – A Path-breaking Law

It has been recognised the world over that good governance is essential for sustainable development, both economic and social. The three essential aspects emphasised in good governance are transparency, accountability and responsiveness of the administration. Citizens’ Charters are an effort to address these issues by focusing on solving the problems which citizens encounter while dealing with the organisations providing public services.

The concept of a Citizens’ Charters was first articulated and implemented in the UK in 1991 as a national programme with a simple aim: to continuously improve the quality of public services for the people of the country so that these services respond to the needs and wishes of the users. The basic objective of a Citizens’ Charter is to strengthen the relationship between citizens and service providers. In India, the decision to formulate Citizens Charters was taken at the Conference of Chief Ministers held on 24 May, 1997 in New Delhi. At the conference an “Action Plan for Effective and Responsive Government” at the Centre and State levels was adopted and it was decided that Central and State Governments would formulate Citizens’ Charters, starting with those sectors that have a large public interface. These Charters were required to include standards of service, reasonable time limits for service delivery, avenues of grievance redress and a provision for independent scrutiny with the involvement of citizen and consumer groups. However, while the concept of Citizen’s Charters has been quite popular, in practice, they have failed to improve the relationship between frontline users and service providers. In this scenario, the Madhya Pradesh Public Services Guarantee Bill 2010 comes as the first-of-its-kind law in the country guaranteeing the delivery of public services to common people in a stipulated time frame.

The Shivraj Singh Government has described the Bill as “historic” and a reflection of the state’s commitment to achieving good governance. The Madhya Pradesh Public Services Guarantee Bill 2010 guarantees the delivery of basic public services to citizens within a stipulated time frame and sets in place accountability mechanisms for non-delivery of services. Under the Bill, key public services like issuing caste, birth, marriage and domicile certificates, drinking water connections, ration cards, copies of land records will be notified. A time period will be fixed for the delivery of each service. If officials fail to perform their duties and provide these services on time, they will have to pay a fine starting from Rs. 250 per day to a maximum of Rs. 5000. This will check delays in the provisioning of services and remove inordinate pendency. The Bill provides for a two stage appeals process: In the event that citizens do not receive notified services in time, they can make an appeal to the first appellate authority. If the first appellate authority is negligent or if citizens are dissatisfied with the ruling, they can file an appeal with the second appellate authority, which can direct the subordinate authorities to deliver services. The second appellate authority also has the power to impose fines and order disciplinary action against officials. The new legislation also stipulates the number of days a particular file related to the delivery of a service can be kept with the officer concerned. The fine received from delinquent officers will go to the applicants to compensate them for the inconvenience caused to them. It is envisaged that the offices of the Chief Minister and other Ministers will also be brought under the purview of the law in the future.

The path-breaking law seeks to operationalise the system of Citizen Charters that have been in place for some time but have been quite ineffective. While previous governments in Madhya Pradesh have implemented the citizen charter arrangement, their efforts have largely been ineffective. This can be attributed to the parochial set-up of the bureaucracy, the absence of a consultative process in the formulation of the Citizens Charter and the lack of training and capacity building of officers and service seekers about the Charter and its potential.

The new law provides an effective instrument for realizing the concept of citizen’s charter while ensuring services to people in an assured manner. It will also prove an effective check on corruption.

Mr Awanish Somkuwar is the Assistant Director, Communications, Government of Madhya Pradesh.

Who are the Poor in India?

Over the years various indices and poverty measures have been developed to try and estimate the number of people living below the poverty line. The latest in this long line of poverty measures is the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI). Developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) UNDP, the MPI aims to provide a more detailed assessment of poverty at the individual level. In India, the MPI estimates that 55% of the country’s population is poor.But as experience has shown, measuring and defining poverty is a complex task anywhere, more so in India where large sections country’s 1.2 billion population are unaccounted or misrepresented in official data. A closer look at the great Indian poverty debate gives us a good idea of just how complicated things really are.

The Indian Government defines poverty with the help of a BPL survey that it conducts from time to time (three have been conducted so far, in 1992, 1997 and 2002). The last survey defined the percentage of the BPL population at 27.5%. On the recommendations of the Suresh Tendulkar Committee however, the figure was recently changed to 37.2%. However, there has been some debate within policy circles about the accuracy of the BPL survey estimates. According to noted economist, Jean Dreze, the government’s identification system is “divisive and open to manipulation”. On the flipside, Manjula Krishnan, Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry for Rural Development the government is “still crystallizing [it’s] ideas on how to identify poor households.”

The BPL Census employs a scoring scheme where households are judged based on 13 indicators and then eliminated by how high they score. The indicators cover characteristics of households ranging from ownership of items (pressure cookers, motor transport) to features of their house (concrete foundations and covered bathrooms). Many economists and policymakers find these exclusion criteria to be arbitrary and unfair and are pushing to reform them before the 2011 BPL census. To give a sense of the unfair picture these indicators might paint consider the following: a fourth of the BPL population owns a two-wheeler, a third own a color TV, and two-thirds own a pressure-cooker. A casual observer might wonder whether a household with ownership of these items deserves to be classified as “poor” (a recent Financial Express headline, less thoughtfully, proclaimed that the statistics indicate sections of the BPL population “live it up”). When dealing with this data, it’s important to remember the nuances of poverty and the different forms it might take: should a family with a TV and concrete foundation in their home, but no access to healthcare or running water be excluded from the BPL population? In past surveys, families with a ceiling fan, flush toilet, or more than ten articles of clothing were excluded from the BPL population. On the flip-side, according to N.N. Paul, a spokesman for the Planning Commission, well off families often use their political connections to get classified as poor and use government welfare schemes to for free perks. And while the BPL census is focused heavily on rural India, the rapidly expanding numbers of urban poor need to be accounted for as well.

The real problem with defining the BPL population in India however is not the metrics but the politics surrounding the delivery of welfare schemes. The government, it seems, can only afford to classify as poor the numbers it can afford to pay for in welfare schemes. The indicators used to determine poverty in India have so far been limited to food, fuel and clothing- something the Planning Commission has now changed to include education and healthcare, resulting in BPL numbers surging to over 400 million. This means that tens of millions will suddenly be added to the welfare rolls, and the PDS needs to be geared to accommodate them. Knee-jerk spending on welfare schemes can be explained by the obvious political dividends: the poor are a powerful voting block and the rapid approval of welfare schemes often overlooks functional service delivery. Spending on social services and development has increased 10.5%- 20% during 5 years of the Congress party in power. B.K. Sinha, an official in the Ministry for Rural Development, stresses that ration cards will continue to remain scarce despite the increased poverty numbers as long as they remain the sole ticket to the basket of welfare services and in the grip of arbitrary state control. States currently have a ‘poverty quota’ which only allows for new cards to be issued when old cards are canceled. To ensure that the BPL population is appropriately defined and therefore eligible for welfare schemes, it is imperative that the Planning Commission reassesses the methodology used to classify this population ahead of the next BPL Census slated for April 2011.

Concrete positive steps are thankfully underway. The Government’s decision to revamp the Rashtriya Swasthiya Bima Yojana by absorbing large sections of the unorganized workforce such as above poverty line NREGA workers, street vendors, taxi and rickshaw drivers into the scheme where they receive the same health benefits as BPL households reveals a more nuanced understanding of where welfare schemes need to be diverted. The India Protection Index developed by the NCAER uses 78 indicators on the basis of availability and strength in a manner where they are dynamically engaged with one another and contextualized. This index provides a more accurate mirror of both financial and social wellbeing of Indian families and is unique in that it seeks to quantify psychological factors. In doing so, it becomes one of the strongest efforts to measure poverty in India as more than a number, and instead a state of life—and consequentially welfare as a process toward happiness and national wellbeing.

Last but not least there is need for greater transparency in the process of enumerating and counting India’s poor. With various poverty estimates and statistics doing the rounds and crores of rupees in welfare benefits at stake, it is imperative that there is some answerability and accountability from the government on how estimates are arrived.

Click here to view a video from the Wall Street Journal on measuring poverty in India.

Rishiv Khattar was working as an intern with the Accountability Initiative.

Pakistan considers Right to Information Bill 2010

Pakistan may soon have a law guaranteeing citizens the right to access information held by the government, following the introduction of a new Right to Information Bill in the National Assembly of Pakistan. Moved as as private member’s bill, the draft law aims to improve upon and replace the existing Freedom of Information Ordinance 2001.

Grievance Redressal Mechanisms – The Ombudsman in Kerala

An elderly man, standing beside his daughter, is yelling and waving his arms. “A tree is overhanging his property and polluting his pond” whispers my Malayalam translator. “He wants it removed, but the panchayat has done nothing”. The man pauses briefly before resuming his offensive. His embattled target is another elderly man, a retired high court judge – the Ombudsman of Kerala. He is here in the northern city of Kannur in Kerala for two days to hold sittings and hear grievances – though they are not all as colourful as this one.

The Ombudsman – literally, the people’s protector – is originally a Swedish institution which has since been adopted widely across the world. At its core, the Ombudsman is an office which dedicates itself to receiving, investigating and resolving citizen’s complaints against government. The intent is to create an independent and powerful check on government bodies – state bureaucracies, service providers, and other state institutions. To do this, the Swedish Ombudsman for instance most often issues simple requests to state institutions. The Swedish Ombudsman also has the power to act as a public prosecutor – he or she has the power to bring a case to the courts on behalf of those who submit complaints. However, this has rarely been necessary.

Other Ombudsmen have had a more turbulent relationship with the state. In the early 1990s, many Ombudsmen offices were created in Latin America. In many cases, simple requests were not enough to resolve grievances. Faced with indifference and occasionally outright hostility, the Latin American Ombudsmen more often used their “moral power” as public protectors of the people to force change. In Guatemala the Ombudsman denounced prominent politicians, and in Honduras the Ombudsman defended the right of the opposition to run for President. In some cases, the state responded with more hostility. Some Ombudsmen had their budgets slashed, or were simply replaced.

The Kerala Ombudsman represents a particularly Indian approach to the institution. It functions effectively like a court, albeit one where some rules of procedure are simplified. A citizen files a complaint and is given a date for a hearing at one of the Ombudsman’s sittings around the state. Once both parties are present at the hearing, they present their cases. The Ombudsman can then resolve the case if there appears to be a solution. Or, if he believes more information is necessary, he may order an investigation. In the case above, he might order the Deputy Director of panchayats to produce a report containing photos and measurements of the offending tree along with copies of the relevant building or pollution codes. At the next available sitting – which might be one month away, or much longer – the report will be presented and the Ombudsman will make a further decision.

Many of the complaints submitted to the Ombudsman are more serious than some dead branches in a pond. At the hearings I attended I saw cases regarding access to drinking water, non-payment of wages, construction of public toilets, land encroachment, unlawful construction, false entry in muster rolls for NREGA works, the allocation of houses designated for the poor, pollution from various industries, and the behaviour of commissions under control of a panchayat.

Unfortunately the Kerala Ombudsman has not received the support it needs from the state government. Since 2001 the Ombudsman has requested funds for an independent investigative team, and the government has consistently ignored this and other requests. As it stands, the Ombudsman must rely on local officials – usually the Deputy Director of panchayats – for all investigations. Despite the usual apathy, the state government has not been overtly hostile to the Ombudsman. This may be due to one of the Kerala Ombudsman’s unique features – it is only given purview over local self government institutions, rather than any government action whatsoever. The state government – which decides the Ombudsman’s budget and effectively appoints him – is beyond the reach of the Ombudsman. While this means that corruption, incompetence and indifference at the state level is left untouched, perhaps it does enable the Ombudsman to effectively deal with complaints at the local level. While having an elderly man yell at him about a tree is bearable, it is not clear whether the Ombudsman could withstand such an assault from the Chief Minister.

Joshua Stark is an intern with Research Foundation for Governance in India, Ahmedabad. He has been researching grievance redressal mechanisms in India with a special focus on the institution of the Ombudsman.

Potential Concerns with the Proposed Food Security Bill

On Friday, relevant ministries in the Government of India and the National Advisory council are going to start a round of negotiations to finalize the much awaited food security bill. The key issue up for debate is the question of universalization of the entitlement. The initial draft bill restricted the entitlement to the country’s poorest. The current negotiations are an effort to push for universal coverage as well as for a wider grain basket. The second and perhaps more critical issue for debate is the steps that need to be considered to deal with the widespread corruption and leakage in the current Public Distribution system. The new draft bill prepared by the planning commission has proposed that the disbursement process be linked to the UID which could deal help with the elimination of bogus cards ( to give a sense of the scale of the problem- since 2006, 5,300,000 bogus ration cards had been identified in West Bengal. Andhra Pradesh wasn’t far behind at 1,046,000 and Orissa was amongst the lowest at 250,000!). Linking with the UID is one important way of dealing with the corruption menace. But, corruption and leakage in the PDS is not just about bogus cards. At every step of the delivery chain, the system is plagues with perverse incentives that make accountability and efficient delivery impossible. To give you a sense of the problem, the Accountability Initiatives’ Gayatri Sahgal analyses the different levels of corruption in the PDS system. If the new bill is to ensure that entitlements reach the poorest, problems at every level of the system need to be addressed. This requires the political will to address systemic failures and undertake radical administrative reforms. Let’s hope the new bill provides for that!

Diversion and Leakages in the PDS System

Key Facts

There are significant leakages in the functioning of the PDS system. Only about 42% of subsidized grains issued from the Central Pool reach the target group. Over 36% of the budgetary subsidies on food is siphoned off the supply chain and another 21% reaches the APL households. (Performance Evaluation of Targeted Public Distribution System Planning commission, 2005).
Data regarding the leakages in terms of type of food grain revealed 36% diversion of wheat, 31% diversion of rice and 23% diversion of sugar. Diversion appears to be more of a feature of northern, eastern and north Eastern states (Saxena, 2009).
Share of food subsidy received by Below Poverty Line (BPL) families and Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) scheme has been decreasing. In FY 2008-09, BPL and AAY received 84% of total food subsidy released, down from 80 % in FY 2006-07 (Accountability Initiative, 2010).
Amongst the States, Bihar and Punjab have the highest rates of leakages; more than 75% of the grain allotted from the central pool fails to reach the intended beneficiaries. States such as AP, Kerala, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal, record leakages below 25% and are considered to be low leakage states (Planning Commission, 2005).
At the level of the Fair Price Shops FPS, states such as Haryana, Bihar and Punjab record the highest levels of leakages (above 50%), while states such as HP, Assam, MP, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal record rates of leakages less than 10% (Planning Commission, 2005).
The FPSs are generally not viable because of low annual turnover and they remain in business through leakages and diversions of subsidised grains (Planning Commission, 2005).
Though the off-take per household has shown some improvement under TPDS, yet only about 57% of the BPL households are covered by the TPDS (Planning Commission, 2005).
The cost of income transfer to the poor through PDS is much higher than that through other modes. According to the study, for one rupee worth of income transfer to the poor, the GoI spends Rs 3.65, indicating that one rupee of budgetary consumer subsidy is worth only 27 paise to the poor (Saxena, 2009).
Leakages due to improper storage and transportation facilities are also significant. In FY 2008-09, Rs. 101 crore and Rs. 133 crore was lost due to poor storage and transportation respectively (Food Subsidy Budget Brief, Accountability Initiative, 2010).
Leakages in the form of ghost cards are also widely prevalent. In West Bengal, 53 lakh fake ration cards were cancelled from July 2006 till December 2009 (Accountability Initiative, 2010).

Exploring the Links Between Mother’s Literacy and Child Achievement

It is a well known fact that children of more educated parents are likely to perform better in school. It is also well known that the amount of time parents dedicate to their children, either playing with them or helping them with their homework, also influences and shapes a child’s cognitive ability. Over and above this, theory also suggests that parents investment and consumption choices, the home environment, presence or absence of positive role models etc also plays an important role. I recently had the opportunity to field test some of these theoretical assumptions about the linkages between parents education and child achievement in a village in Ajmer, Rajasthan.

Located quite close to the Ajmer city centre, Ghughra is a medium sized village in Rajasthan where most residents derive their livelihoods from agriculture or rearing livestock. Many women in the village particularly those from the Gujjar community are employed on the NREGA worksites. Talking to mothers and fathers in the village, I got a unique insight into the different factors that can influence a child’s learning ability in a scenario where parents face different kinds of social and economic constraints.

Parents perception of education: Most of the parents I spoke to had enrolled their children in school – some in government schools and others in private schools. However, the dropout rate amongst girls in the village was quite high particularly amongst adolescent girls. On probing this issue further it came to light that the continued practice of child marriage in the community has had a major impact on how long girls stay in school. Most girls are married in their infancy and then sent to their marital home when they reach puberty around 14-15. This practice seems to work as a disincentive for parents to invest in their daughter’s education. When we spoke to women about the need for educating girls further, many expressed the fear that education would lead their daughters to marry outside the community.

Mother’s Literacy: There appeared to be a very clear link between mother’s literacy levels and the amount of time spent with the child on the child’s learning levels. Children who scored well on the reading tests I administered usually had at least one parent taking a keen interest in their studies and spending time with them after school. In most cases it was the mother. Within the Gujjar households, literacy levels amongst mothers and fathers were quite low. Most mothers were illiterate with little to no formal schooling. This seems to have a considerable impact on the degree of interaction that mothers had with their children when it came to education.

The mothers I spoke to expressed a lack of confidence when it came to supervising their children’s school work. However, when it came to playing number games, many mothers were able to rattle off the solutions to maths sums quite easily. This raises interesting questions about what we understand by ‘adult literacy’.

So what did I learn? First, it seems quite clear that over and above the formal education system, the amount of time and interest parents take in their children and their education has a positive impact on their learning ability. This is the case even where both parents were illiterate and children were first time learners in the family. So time spent with children matters irrespective of whether parents are educated or not. Secondly, a creating a desire for education amongst parents and children is important – parents need to recognise the value of investing in their child’s education. Thirdly, adult literacy is important – parents with even a few years of schooling are better placed to monitor and supervise their children than those with little to no formal education. Fourth, building the confidence of children and parents is important particularly in households where the child is a first time learner. Here creativity is key – encouraging parents to tell stories to their children, play games with them etc can be a fun way to make learning an interactive activity for parents and children.

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

The Process of Lawmaking in India

This post is an attempt to explain the process of law making in India. It also explains how citizen groups can participate in the process of lawmaking.

Who makes laws?

In India, at the central level, laws are formulated by the Parliament and at the state level by Legislative Assemblies and Councils.

How is a law made?

The process of enacting a new law can be broadly divided into four steps:

Step 1: The need for a new law, or an amendment to an existing piece of legislation, is identified. This may be done either by the government or by citizen groups who can raise public awareness regarding the need for the law.

Step 2: The concerned ministry drafts a text of the proposed law, which is called a ‘Bill’. The Bill is circulated to other relevant ministries for inputs. Comments from the public on the proposed draft may also be invited. For example recently, the UIDAI has invited public feedback on the Draft National Identification Authority Bill. Following this, the draft is revised to incorporate such inputs and is then whetted by the Law Ministry. It is then presented to the Cabinet for approval.

Step 3: After the Cabinet approves the Bill, it is introduced in Parliament. Under the Indian political system, the Parliament is the central legislative (or law making) body. Every Bill goes through three Readings in both Houses before it becomes an Act.

During the First Reading the Bill is introduced in Parliament. The introduction of a Bill may be opposed and the matter may be put to a vote in the House. In August 2009, the Law Minister withdrew the motion to introduce the Judges (Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities) Bill as many MPs were opposed to the Bill, on grounds that it violated the Constitution.

After a Bill has been introduced, the Presiding Officer of the concerned House (Speaker in case of the Lok Sabha, Chairman in case of Rajya Sabha) may refer the Bill to the concerned Department Related Standing Committee for examination.

The Standing Committee considers the broad objectives and the specific clauses of the Bill referred to it and may invite public comments on a Bill. For example, the Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests has invited suggestions on the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010.

Bills which come under the ambit of a number of different ministries, may be referred to a Joint Comittee.

The Committee then submits its recommendations in the form of a report to Parliament.

In the Second Reading (Consideration), the Bill is scrutinized thoroughly. Each clause of the Bill is discussed on the floor of the House and may be accepted, amended or rejected.

During the Third Reading (Passing), the House votes on the redrafted Bill.

If the Bill is passed in one House, it is then sent to the other House, where it goes through second and third readings.

During the second reading, the Government, or any MP, may introduce amendments to the Bill, some of which may be based on recommendations of the Standing Committee. However, the Government is not bound to accept the Committee’s recommendations.

Step 4: After both Houses of Parliament pass a Bill, it is presented to the President for assent. She has the right to seek information and clarification about the Bill, and may return it to Parliament for reconsideration. (This may be done only once. If both Houses pass the Bill again, the President has to assent.)

Step 5: After the President gives assent, the Bill is notified as an Act. Subsequently, the Bill is brought into force and rules and regulations to implement the Act are framed by the concerned ministry, and tabled in Parliament.

Do bills get passed even without any discussion in the parliament*?

Parliament passes about 60 Bills every year. It devotes 20-25% of its time on legislative business. The time spent on debating each Bill varies widely.

In total, the Lok Sabha passed 30 non-financial Bills in 2009.
In 2009, 8 Bills were passed in less than 5 minutes (27% of the Bills passed by Lok Sabha in 2009). These included, The Legal Metrology Bill, The Commercial Division of High Courts Bill, and the Trade Marks Amendment Bill.
Only 5 Bills were debated for more than 3 hours.
In 2008, 16 out of 36 Bills (excluding finance and appropriation bills) were passed by Lok Sabha in less than 20 minutes, most of these without any debate.
In 2008, Lok sabha worked for 46 days, the lowest ever in a calendar year.
Things are worse, for Legislative Assemblies. Delhi assembly worked for 20 days in 2007.

Number of Working Days in Legislative Assembly

Year	2006	2007
Delhi	23	20
Mizoram	19	18
Rajasthan	30	25
Chhattisgarh	41	35
Madhya Pradesh	43	29
Kerala	51	56
Karnataka	56	34

* Source: PRS Legislative Research

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

Secrecy over the draft Whistleblower’s Bill

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

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

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

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

“4. (1) Every public authority shall—

X X X

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

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

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

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