Blog Archive - Page 83 of 130 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

There’s no such thing as a local Plan

Recently, in a move that has been rightly acknowledged as the first tangible step toward radically overhauling the Five-Year Plan process, the Planning Commission unveiled a new approach to the Twelfth Plan, aimed at making it an inclusive and participative process. To start, the commission has put together a strategy matrix for the approach paper and invited comments through its website. Efforts are also underway to “listen to and consult with citizens’” through civil society-led consultations across the country.

Participatory planning is not a new phenomenon, and through its varied schemes, the Indian state regularly sends out invitations to citizens to participate in planning, monitoring and even auditing its activities. Moreover, the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution institutionalised participation by devolving powers to prepare plans to local governments and enabling direct people’s participation through gram and ward sabhas. Despite these invitations, meaningful participation is rare. A look at existing schemes shows us just where the problems are.

First, information is scarce and awareness is low. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), for instance, calls for village education committees to make annual plans for implementing SSA. But study after study has highlighted that members remain unaware of their membership — and even those in the know, know little of their powers, responsibilities and financial entitlements. This despite the fact that SSA allocates funds in its budget for community training and awareness generation.

Unpredictable and delayed funding is a common problem and monies usually reach their destination well after they are needed. So even if a plan is made, chances are it will not be implemented.

Awareness-raising and providing meaningful, relevant information is not easy. It requires sustained, continuous local engagement, something that implementing officials — who are usually bogged down by oceans of paperwork — have neither the time nor the inclination to do. So committees are formed, because the guidelines require it; but that’s where it stops. More importantly, implementers don’t necessarily value participation. In a recent conversation with a block official in charge of SSA in Madhya Pradesh, he, while acknowledging the mandate for peoples’ plans, said plans are actually made at the block level because (to paraphrase) “we know the status of schools.” “I have’, he added, “up-to-date data.” Sharing this data with people and soliciting their participation was not on his agenda.

Information scarcity apart, the greatest hurdle to participation lies in the very design of the implementation architecture. Every time a scheme calls for participation, it also puts in guidelines that ironically create disincentives for meaningful participation. Funds arrive at the implementation level tied to very clear expenditure items and rigid norms. In SSA, for instance, although the village education committee is expected to plan, if it decides to spend more on teaching materials by using money given for painting walls, the rules won’t allow it. Why bother making a plan that takes into account local needs when there is no flexibility to make budget allocations accordingly?

If it’s not the rigidity of the funding norms, it’s conflicting rules that make planning impossible. In a recent case in Karnataka, a village plan — made under a World Bank-funded programme that provides untied grants to panchayats — for building dry latrines with covered pits suited for the water-scarce area was rejected. Instead, a concrete septic tank latrine was chosen, which required water that the village did not have, because the rules demanded it!

Tardy implementation adds to the problem. Unpredictable and delayed funding is a common problem and monies usually reach their destination well after they are needed. So even if a plan is made, chances are it will not be implemented. As part of an effort to mobilise village education committees under the SSA in rural Madhya Pradesh, for example, a committee made a plan to fix a leaky roof before the monsoon — but this couldn’t be implemented because funds didn’t arrive on time. The roof leaked through the monsoon and the parents stopped coming to meetings. Worse still, parents have no real means of redress, and local officials claimed no responsibility. Meaningful participation, at minimum, requires that the state fulfils some basic functions to deliver on plans. Lack of participation, in this case, is a symptom of state dysfunction.

The current architecture for planning complicates matters further. Participation can only be truly effective in a decentralised system; precisely for this reason, constitutionally, powers to make local plans have been devolved to panchayats and municipalities. But resources flow through sector-specific centrally-sponsored schemes (CSS) with their own parallel planning processes, resulting in multiple planning bodies and endless confusion on the ground. CSS also limits state discretion because a large pool of state resources goes toward contributing to their share of the CSS. State plans are thus tailored to central funding streams. De facto then, planning remains a centralised activity, one that by its very nature creates limited space for meaningful participation.

In soliciting participation through the website and consultations with citizens groups, the Planning Commission has taken an important step towards putting people back on the agenda. This could also be an opportunity to resolve critical institutional failures that have made meaningful participation so difficult. Perhaps what we need is a plan to strengthen people’s plans!

Yamini Aiyar is Director of the Accountability Initiative.

This article appeared on 01-11-2010 in the Indian Express.

IMGSY: CCT or not to CCT

In a surprising turn of events, on October 22^nd, 2010, the Government of India in departure from its usual torpidity approved the introduction of Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY), demonstrating the commitment of the government to arrest problems of poor health and nutritional deficiency, captured most recently in the Global Hunger Index, which ranked India 67^th out of a total of 84 countries. The scheme which is to be implemented on a Pilot basis in 52 district of the country offers cash incentives to all pregnant and lactating women above the age of 19 years for the first two live births. The only exceptions are central and state public sector employees who have been excluded from the purview of the scheme as they are entitled to paid maternity leave.

Under this scheme each pregnant and lactating woman is to receive Rs 4,000 in three instalments between the second trimester of pregnancy until the child is six years old. Each beneficiary is required to open an individual bank account (if she already does not have one) to be liable for receiving benefits. Cash transfers are designed as incentives which are to be conditional upon the fulfilment of specific conditions relating to mother and child health care. The scheme is to be implemented through the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) system and will be supported by additional contractual staff. Anganwadi workers and helpers will receive an incentive of Rs 200 and Rs 100 respectively after all the due cash transfers are made.

In the case of IMGSY which is based on self selection, equity concerns may be offset if the benefits of the programme are accrued by richer households as opposed to poorer ones.

While the potency of such measures as the GHI highlights is indisputable, the particular method adopted for improving maternal and child health through cash based incentives is representative of a wider trend, which needs to be evaluated in some detail. The arguments in favour of cash transfer programmes have generally been based on three main conceptual premises.

In the context of underlying market failures in the economy, CCTs have been touted as being useful in improving efficiency. According to proponents, CCTs can play an important role in ensuring that individual decisions reflect both societal and individual preferences. Market failures arise when private information about the nature of certain investments and their expected returns may be imperfect or when human capital investments made by the poor may be privately optimal but socially sub optimal. The first type of market failure can be related to situations involving the adoption of new technology (such as institutional deliveries), benefits are accrued once the attributes of a new technology are known to the community; learning about the new technology involves costly experimentation. Initially communities may be unwilling to invest their time and resources in the technology, leading to a free rider problem. Introducing a CCT then in this context such that conditionalaties on cash transfer are linked to the use of the particular technology, such as institutional deliveries can encourage the communities to invest in the technology which they were otherwise would not have been tempted to invest in. Market imperfections of the second type relate to instances when pregnant women are dissuaded from seeking professional health services because the cost of seeking such assistance is higher than relying on non institutional care. By lowering the opportunity costs of professional heath services, CCTs like the IMGSY’s offered to pregnant women who seek professional care and fulfil certain specific conditions, encourage those who under invest in health to increase their investment and thereby augment social welfare more than an unconditional cash grant.
A second rationale for CCTs relates to equity and redistribution. CCTs can be used as screening devices to target populations when individual characteristics are not easily observable. In cases where poor are hard to identify and budgets are small it is necessary to screen beneficiaries. Conditionalities, in such cases when appropriately chosen can act as screening mechanisms which induce targeted groups to participate in the programme while discouraging the participation of non targeted individual. The idea behind successful screening is straight forward; the benefits of the cash received exceed the cost induced by the conditionality for one group but not for another. In the context of the IMGSY, the cash incentives of Rs 12,000 appear to be relevant for targeting the benefits to select beneficiaries particularly the economically weaker sections for whom the benefits of the cash incentives exceed the costs incurred.
The third justification of CCT relates to political economy of funding redistribution. Conditioning cash transfers on compliance with certain socially accepted behavioural practices may increase the political support for them making them feasible or better endowed. This is based on the rationale that elites are not entirely self regarding. It is possible for instance that tax payers are more prepared to pay transfers to those who are seen to be helping themselves than for recipients of unconditional transfers who are viewed as being lazy and careless. Alternatively, unlike Unconditional Transfers, CCTs can be seen not as plain social assistance but rather a form of social contract whereby society supports those poor households that are ready to make the effort to improve their lives-‘the deserving poor’.
From the above arguments it appears that CCTs represent an important mechanism for improving health and nutritional indicators. Critics of CCTs however warn on the limitations within the approach and similarly point out three conceptual limitations with the approach which impinge on the effectiveness of CCTs as instruments for reducing poverty and improving human development indicators.
Ideologically, CCTs by their very nature induce a distortion on the consumption choices of individuals by forcing them to take certain actions rather than letting them decide on their own. It is assumed that if people are left to their own devices then they will somehow not be capable of choosing what is in their best interest. Such measures erode the agency of individuals and compel them to behave in ways that are ‘good for them’. This is especially relevant for programmes such as IMGSY which encourage women to seek institutional care as opposed to more traditional forms of heath care such as the Dai system. Traditional systems of delivery according to many feminists tends to be less evasive than institutional care which tends to disempower women treating their bodies as mere vessels ‘churning out life’.
A second problem with CCT schemes relates to fungibility of the conditioned commodity/service. The fundamental premise of conditionality is the distortion of choice from the individual optimal. However this very logic creates an automatic incentive for individuals to try and offset the loss of individual utility that the conditionality imposes. The ability of individuals to offset this distortion is the problem of fungibility. In cases where there is a close substitute individuals can offset the distortion imposed by the conditionality if she appropriately decreases consumption of or investment in the substitute, so that overall amounts are unchanged. In extreme cases this can mean decreasing the consumption of a close substitute (eating less spinach when given iron tablets), changing patterns of consumption (pregnant women from poor households covered by the IMGSY may seek to reduce their food consumption if they are assured of getting medical services), or even relocating investments in human capital within the household (sending fewer boys to school when girls are given a stipend).
Further using CCTs for increasing human capital investments could adversely affect equity while distortions required for self selection may impose an efficiency cost. For example the female stipend programme in Bangladesh led to an increase in the secondary school enrolment rate of girls. In the absence of any means testing, the programme had an adverse distributional impacts, the untargeted stipend disproportionately favoured the enrolment of girls from households with larger land wealth than land poor households. In the case of IMGSY which is based on self selection, equity concerns may be offset if the benefits of the programme are accrued by richer households as opposed to poorer ones. Using a CCT as a screening device for targeting also comes at a cost. Such cost can be either due to distortion in consumption and investment choices induced by the conditionality or as a result of under coverage.

Thus the debates rage on, but whether or not the CCTs represent the ideal mechanism at the end of the day, it’s issues of implementation and accountability which determine the success of the programme, and those are the issues which need to be ultimately confronted and addressed.

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst at the Accountability Initiative.

Aid Transparency Assessment

Publish What You Fund has developed an Aid Transparency Assessment. This is the first global assessment for aid transparency and the organisation plans to produce more in the future.

The assessment compares the transparency of 30 major donors using eight data sources across seven weighted indicators that fall into three categories – high level commitment to transparency; transparency to recipient government; and transparency to civil society.

“Aid transparency matters for many reasons– from improving governance and accountability and increasing the effectiveness of aid to lifting as many people out of poverty as possible. While some aid is helping address some of the most difficult problems in the most challenging places in the world, we also know that aid is not always delivering the maximum impact possible.

The understanding emerged that aid transparency is fundamental to delivering on donors’ aspirations and the promise of aid. The commitments donors made to improve their aid effectiveness in the 2005 Paris Declaration are important and welcome. The recognition that donors were struggling to deliver on those commitments1 resulted in a new focus on aid transparency in 2008 within the Accra Agenda for Action and with the launch of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

The methodological approach taken is fundamentally driven by a lack of primary data availability.”

The Aid Transparency Assessment is available for download by clicking on the attachment below. You can also click here to experiment with the weighting and see how it affects the overall score.

The organisation would appreciate feedback, suggestions and thoughts on how to take this work forward.

The YP Foundation: Call for positions

The YP Foundation is hiring!

The YP Foundation (TYPF) is a youth run and led organization that supports and enables young people to create programmes and influence policies in the areas of gender, sexuality, health, education, the arts & governance. The organization promotes, protects and advances young people’s human rights by building leadership, and strengthening youth led initiatives and movements. Founded in 2002, TYPF has worked directly with 5,000 young people to set up over 200 projects in India over the last 8 years, reaching out to 300,000 adolescents and young people between 3-28 years of age.

What does it mean to be ‘youth led and run’?

It means getting young people to design, execute, lead and implement all the processes and systems that involve creating social change. Our staff is a team of 21 young people (largely between 18 – 26) who work both part time and full time, with an active volunteer base of over 200 young people a year, across 6 programme divisions that work on the issues of Human Rights, Mental Health & Peer Pressure, Healthcare and Education for Street Children, Film and Literature, promoting Independent Music in India, Sexuality, Gender, HIV/AIDS, Governance and the Right to Information Act in India. We work both in English and Hindi.

TYPF works primarily in the National Capital Region (NCR) and works with youth led groups with partnerships at national, regional and international levels. We have collaborated with youth groups and young activists from 13 states across India, including Punjab, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Kashmir, Nagaland, Gujarat and Bihar. TYPF has supported 250 slum and street children across two locations in New Delhi.

We believe in empowering young people’s access to information, services and rights such that they can build collective platforms to challenge and develop their leadership potential.

Vacancies

Full Time Positions

Management Positions:

1. Projects Manager

2. Volunteer Management Head

3. Trainer’s Cell Coordinator

Part Time Positions

Management Positions:

1. Administrative Coordinator

Blending Spectrum (Working with Child Rights, Human Rights & Life Skills Based Education)

1. Life Skills Curriculum Head

2. Location Head (Nizamuddin)

3. Location Head (Mehrauli)

Silhouette (Working with Music Education and the Arts)

1. Project Head

Right to Information Branch (Working with the Right to Information Act, Governance and Active Citizenship)

1. Coordinator

The deadline for submission is October 20th, 2010; please note that applications beyond this date will be entertained only if positions have not been filled.

Please find attached our Staff Applications Form and a list of Staff Vacancies.

For further details, please contact [email protected] or 46792243/44.

Local-Level Accountability: Lessons from Latin America

Suvojit Chattopadhyay

Expectations of gains from citizen participation in governments is a strong motivator for proponents of democratic decentralisation. These expectations need to be realistic, as experiences with local governments in various contexts have shown. One of the measures of local-level accountability is the level of corruption in local government. A 2009 NBER paper by Ferraz and Finan asks whether electoral accountability can reduce corruption in Brazil. They find that local government officials facing re-election are significantly less corrupt than those who are not, with the former witnessing corruption levels that are, on average, 27% lower than the latter.

Overall, the ﬁndings suggest that electoral rules that enhance political accountability play a crucial role in constraining politician’s corrupt behavior even in an institutional context where corruption is pervasive and elites dominate local politics.

The importance of electoral accountability is also brought out in a recent paper by Merilee Grindle, which discusses local-level accountability in Mexico. In order to determine the chances of popular participation translating into accountable governments, Grindle suggests we ask the three following questions –

1. Can citizens use the vote effectively to reward and punish the general or specific performance of local public officials and/or the parties they represent?

2. Can citizens generate response to their collective needs from local governments?

3. Can citizens be ensured of fair and equitable treatment from public agencies at local levels?

In other words, to what extent do citizens have recourse to sanctions, benefits, and rights when local governments assume more responsibilities and political systems become more competitive?

Grindle points out that the ability of communities to reward and sanction through elections; employ strategies to secure benefits from public institutions/officials; and to demand rights is dependent on their specific experiences of participation in governance over the years. Of course, electoral accountability is not all that straightforward. Limits on terms of elected local government members is a constraint to people’s power to sanction. Emergence of a perverse culture of patronage politics is another hindrance to effective electoral accountability. On the other hand, the potential gains from elections are also significant –

…the increased importance of competitive elections in Mexico’s municipalities also provided opportunities for new leadership groups to reach public office, some of whom had strong commitments to introducing more participatory and responsive forms of governance. As experience with more democratic local elections increases, it may well be that ideas about the right to good performance will become more prominent. Additionally, the accountability mechanisms introduced in a number of municipalities from the top down may become more institutionalized over time and thus provide more focus on good performance as an everyday expectation.

Suvojit Chattopadhyay works for Innovations for Poverty Action, Ghana. This piece has been cross-posted from his blog“On My Way”.

First Global Conference on Transparency Research: Call for papers

The First Global Conference on Transparency Research. takes place at Rutgers University-Newark on May 19-20, 2011. The deadline for proposals is November 30, 2010. Information on the conference and the Call for Papers is provided here: http://tinyurl.com/2uoq44v

The advisory committee for the First Global Conference on Transparency Research is pleased to announce Professor Christopher Hood as the keynote speaker. Dr. Hood is the Gladstone Professor of Government and Fellow of All Souls College Oxford. He has written extensively on the topics of transparency and accountability, and co-editedTransparency: The Key to Better Governance (Oxford University Press, 2006). The keynote speech is sponsored by Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions.

Travel assistance

Conference organizers will provide hotel accommodations and on-site meals for all individuals presenting papers. A limited number of travel bursaries are available and supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, the Open Society Institute’s Right To Information Fund, and the World Bank Institute. Information on travel funding is available on the conference webpage.

For more details contact:

Professor Suzanne J. Piotrowski

Conference Chairperson

School of Public Affairs and Administration

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

111 Washington Street, Newark, NJ 07102-3026

Ph. 973.353.5199, Fax 973.353.5907

[email protected]

New RTI Act Rules Top Secret?

It appears that the Government of India is attempting to draft a new set of Rules under the Right to Information Act, 2005. The minutes of a meeting held at the Central Information Commission (CIC) on 16th November 2010 indicate that it has been asked to comment on a set of draft RTI Rules prepared by the Government of India. Specifically, the minute’s state:

“Agenda 1: Draft RTI rules- for discussions

Commission discussed the draft rules and suggested some modifications. The changes as suggested by the Commission shall be incorporated and sent to the Government at the earliest. (Action: Secretary/JS (law)) “

In the 21st century where the RTI Act seeks to establish a regime of transparency, rules governing the processes of seeking and obtaining information are being discussed by only a handful of people behind closed doors. There is no official word on what the draft RTI Rules contain. Till date neither the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) the administrative department for the RTI Act, nor the CIC, have taken any steps to consult with the people of India on these draft Rules. The people of India are the primary stakeholders in India’s democracy and have a deeply vested interest in ensuring that there is transparency in the administration, especially in policy making and implementation. The secrecy surrounding the draft RTI Rules is in clear violation of two decisions of the CIC emphasising the duty of public consultation while drafting laws and policies. Whether the CIC has reminded the DoPT about the imperative of public consultation on these Draft RTI Rules in not publicly known.

Public Consultation is necessary while drafting legislation or policy: CIC directs the Delhi Government

In July 2010 a single member bench of the CIC directed the Government of the Delhi to fully comply with Section 4 of the RTI Act while formulating draft laws and policies. In this decision the CIC observed as follows:

“A plain reading of Section 4(1) (c) of the RTI Act suggests that every public authority is required to publish or disclose all facts and circumstances which are relevant and taken into account while formulating policies and taking decisions that would affect the public. Section 4(1)(c) of the RTI Act requires proactive disclosure of proposed laws/ policies and amendments thereto or to existing laws/ policies to enable citizens to debate in an informed manner and provide useful feedback to the government, which may be taken into account before finalizing such laws/ policies. Given that the DP Bill” (Delhi Police Amendment Bill) “is a significant legislative change, the relevant public authorities involved in drafting of the said bill had a duty to proactively disclose its contents under Section 4(1)(c) of the RTI Act… The public authority should have disclosed the contents of the DP Bill suo motu and by omitting to do so, the very purpose of Section 4(1) of the RTI Act stands defeated.

Public Consultation is necessary while drafting legislation or policy: CIC full bench directs the Central Government

In September 2010 a full bench of the CIC reiterated this stand and directed the Cabinet Secretariat under the Government of India and the DoPT to take steps to create a mechanism for public consultation on draft laws before they are tabled in Parliament. In this decision the CIC observed as follows:

“The Commission further recommends u/s 25 (5) that Cabinet Secretariat considers amending Part V of Circular No. 1/16/1/2000-Cab of 15.4.2002 to allow for public consultation in appropriate form.”

What does Part V of Circular No. 1/16/1/2000-Cab of 15.4.2002 contain?

The Cabinet Secretariat issued a circular in April 2002 instructing all departments and ministries under the Government of India on the methodology of preparation of Cabinet notes. Drafts of proposed laws or amendments to existing laws are attached to draft Cabinet notes and circulated to the relevant ministries and departments for consultation. Part V refers to the procedure for conducting such inter-ministerial consultations. During such consultations with various ministries the draft Cabinet note is circulated with the classificatory label – “TOP SECRET“. So save a handful of senior officers, all other citizens of India are excluded from this consultation process. The full bench of the CIC directed the Cabinet Secretariat to amend this portion of the circular and create appropriate spaces for public consultation.

Despite the principle of mandatory public consultation having been laid down by the CIC, the DoPT has not yet begun consultation with the people of India on the draft RTI Rules. If the draft is ready for consultation with the CIC which is a body outside of Government, surely it can be opened up for a more widespread consultation with the people of India who are using this law every day. Surely no harm would be done if people’s views are elicited on so important a subject. The Rules lay down the detailing of the framework for accessing information under the RTI Act. The people of India have a right to be consulted on the draft Rules as they are the primary users of the RTI Act. THE PEOPLE OF INDIA HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE CONSULTED NOW.

Venkatesh Nayak is the Programme Coordinator of the Right to Information Programme at the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi. For CHRI’s alerts on the RTI and related issues click here.

Explore AI’s Document Library

Our website www.accountabilityindia.org is designed as a comprehensive source on the state of accountability in India with information on civil society experiments, accountability tool kits, and relevant research and analytical work.

An important component of the website is the Document Library. This is a collection of conceptual, analytical and empirical literature on the broad subject of governance and accountability from India and around the world. It is designed as a one-stop source of information for students, researchers, academics, practitioners and policymakers interested in these issues.

The documents are organized into different categories including Decentralization, Democracy and Citizenship, Service Delivery Reforms (Education, Health), International Case Studies, Corruption, Right to Information, Budgets, Media, and so on. Most of the documents can be downloaded from the website. Where this is not permitted/ possible, a link is provided to the website hosting the document or information is provided about how to access it.

Selection criteria: We monitor a wide range of publication sources regularly, including Universities, Research and Policy Institutes, NGOs and Donors. Materials are carefully selected by our research team to ensure that they are relevant to the topic areas, demonstrate good practice or significant insight and represent a range of perspectives. Only the most credible and policy-relevant research, toolkits, analyses and case studies are included.

We believe that a collection of documents such as in our library can be a valuable resource for student researchers working on governance issues. We invite you to explore the library and make use of it.

The Accountability Initiative Team

We regularly update the collection in the library. If you would like to recommend any new publications for inclusion, please email us at [email protected]. Please supply a link to the full text online if possible so that we can review the document and link to it. Alternatively, if you are the copyright holder you can send us an electronic copy of the document if you would like us to review it and possibly host it on our web site.