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.
Archives: Blog
Food Subsidy and the Budget: Where did your money go?
Is the food subsidy helping the poor in India? How much money has been allocated, how much is being spent? and are these allocations efficient? Accountability Initiative’s data on food subsidy shows where your money is going.
Hindol Sengupta, Bloomberg UTV news discusses food subsidy and the budget with with Dr Swaminathan and others on “Everybody’s Business: Where Did Your Money Go?”.
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).
Finding a Voice: Community Television Initiative
Some people used to argue that elections are THE best instruments of accountability. But events have overtaken the idea and now there are many who are focusing on the limitations of election, mainly, if you have an uninformed citizenry.
There is another dimension to it. While in democracies, elections provide an incentive for politicians to perform, governments are not likely to respond as enthusiastically to those who are unlikely or marginalized voters, no matter whether their plight has been well covered or not. So how do you turn uninformed citizenry or marginalized voters into active citizens?…In short, by providing evidence based information.
On the face of it, getting critical news and information out to citizens should be an easier and easier task in today’s digitalized, networked and hand-held world. But most media—across regions and on any platform: print, radio, TV or online—aren’t interested in serving the public good, because there is no finance to that public-good role.
This then presents an opportunity for the development community. To get information out to the public, to educate the public about who to trust and how to evaluate information sources, research organization needs to use newer tools. But, where is the tool?
Community Television initiative can be considered as one such dynamic tool. Access to television in remote Indian villages has changed substantially in the past few years. And, community television will have many advantages over print media. Programmes, nearly always in the local languages would deal with local issues involving ordinary people so that villagers (even illiterate ones) and town people understand what they are about. The volunteer appointed by a civil society can organize a debate once in a week on localize issues, which in turn would become topics for programmes on the community television. For example, Byrraju Foundation in collaboration with UNESCO has set up one such initiative -Ankuram community TV.
This innovation combines a TV studio and the existing wifi network with a local cable TV facility enabling people to access the services and programmes right in their homes. This technological and social innovation is being piloted in three villages (Cherukumilli, Juvvalapalem & I-Bhimavaram) in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh and the local programmes reach about 69 villages across the district through the cable network.
If community TV network gains momentum in India, then rural India should perhaps call the TV the Empowerment Box instead of the Idiot Box.
Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative
AI Budget Series: National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)
In the third of a 4 – part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article – Health Economics: Weak Implementation Ailing Health Care Plans
AI Budget Series: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)
In the second of a 4 – part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article – Education Economics:Need to relearn lessons on SSA fund flows.
AI Budget Series: Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water
In the last of a 4 – part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure on rural drinking water and sanitation. For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article –Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water: Mere Infrastructure Won’t Solve Problems
Malnutrition: A response to the Gujarat Chief Minister Based on the Data
Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research is delighted to launch its Budget Brief Series, 2015 based on the Government of India’s budget presented on February 28, 2015.
Budget briefs are an annual publication that report on the efficacy of Government of India spending on flagship social sector programmes using government reported data. The briefs undertake basic analysis of allocation and expenditure trends and where possible, given limitations of government data, on outputs and outcomes.
Our Budget Briefs, 2015 as well as the pre-budget analysis has been widelycovered by media. Please read our opinion pieces and where we have been quoted by various media houses.
AI Opinion pieces published in media
The Daily Pioneer, March 13, 2015
Down to Earth, March 9, 2015
Deconstructing Union Budget 2015-16: what has changed?
Live Mint, March 1, 2015
Unpacking cooperative federalism and social policy
Live Mint, February 28, 2015
Accounting for toilets, but no accountability for sanitation
Live Mint, February 25, 2015
Live Mint, February 23, 2015
Pull, not push, to open up spending
—————————————————————-
AI quoted in media
Rajasthan Patrika, March 30, 2015
दो तिहाई पैसा कंस्ट्रक्शन पर, गुणवत्ता पर सिर्फ 1 फीसदी पैसा
The Times of India, March 16, 2015
Rajasthan fails to spend a single penny from Centre’s education fund
The Times of India, March 4, 2015
Budget cuts may retard TN’s learning curve
The Hindu, March 1, 2015
New money-sharing regime is in
The Hindu, February 24, 2015
Social spending needs Budget boost
Dainik Jagran, February 22, 2015
Dainik Jagran, February 21, 2015
First Post, February 19, 2015
As swine flu swirls out of control, government funds to health ministry remain unspent
The Right to Information – Open to Interpretation
Whether it is the debate over access to judges’ assets or individual income tax returns, the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) gets people talking. As a developing area of legislation with few legal precedents, the RTI is open to interpretation. I discovered this first hand a few weeks ago at the Central Information Commission (CIC). Colleagues and I were representing an RTI applicant in a string of second appeal hearings. The applicant had filed an information request with the Delhi Police to get access to statistical information on the number of applications and appeals received by them, as well as copies of RTI applications and appeals from October 2005 – April 2008. The data was being collected as part of the all-India study on the RTI Act being carried out by the Right to Information Assessment and Analysis Group (RaaG). While most of the departments had responded with some statistical information, they were unwilling to part with copies of RTI applications and appeals. The PIOs stated that copies could not be given because i) the information requested would have to be compiled and would divert the resources of the department [Sec 7(9)], and ii) RTI applications and appeals contained sensitive information the disclosure of which would likely to endanger the life and physical safety of a person [Sec 8(1)(g)], impede the process of investigation [8(1)(h)] and invade the privacy of the individual [8(1) (j)].
Early on the hearings, it became evident that none of the PIOs had actually thought about the exemptions they had used. This was particularly evident in the use of privacy and danger to life and physical safety exemptions to deny access to copies of RTI applications and appeals. Bear in mind that RTI applications and appeals only contain the name and addresses of applicants and therefore cannot be considered to contain “personal” information. Moreover copies of these can be downloaded easily from the Delhi Government and the CIC websites. One PIO hilariously argued that providing access to copies of RTIs constituted an infringement of copyright [Sec 8(1) (e)]! A decision on our appeal is still pending, but to my mind the hearings brought to light a lot of interesting questions. For instance, what constitutes a “voluminous” request for information – is it the number of questions or the number of pages? Who decides? Similarly, how do we define a “disproportionate diversion” of resources? Can it be measured? And are RTI applications and appeals personal? What exactly is “personal information?
These are questions that PIOs, Appellate Authorities and Information Commissioners grapple with every day with little guidance. There are broader issues as well – of ensuring that citizens make responsible use of the law, that departments have the human capacity to process and handle information requests and lastly that the pressure for information disclosure is not entirely at the cost of the discretion of officials or vice versa. The balance is a fine one.
Thus, even as CIC issues landmark decisions it also needs to bold decisions on the everyday but often more “tricky” points of the law. Failure to develop clear and concrete guidelines on how to interpret the law or fence sitting on the application of exemptions or on the interpretation of other clauses of the law, will not help. In the absence of clear guidance, the law is likely to become an unholy mess of awry interpretations. The CIC would do well to follow the example of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office which offers detailed guidance on interpreting different clauses of the UK Freedom of Information Act.
Mandakini Devasher Surie is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.
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.