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If Only Khoslaji Had the RTI………..

One of the most difficult things to get in Delhi is land for your house. Even more difficult is figuring out whether the land is legal or illegal, whether the land deal is genuine or if someone is trying to trick you and make you a victim of a land fraud scam. Considering all the hassles, you might just choose to buy a flat, more so a flat which is built and allocated through the government, only to find out that there is no water in the taps, an electric current is running freely all over the place and the whole area just across the street is some kind of a hub for household industries and it just wont let you sleep. Even worse is that you open a shop on what you consider perfectly legal land only to discover after a few years that a huge crane is standing in front of your house, ready to tear apart the shop on the ‘now encroached’ land. For all of this and more, there is now a one pill cure for all the ailments in the form of the Right to Information Act.

A closer look at the RTI applications submitted to the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) reflects the power of information to bring about a more transparent and accountable system of governance. The RTI also helps citizens to overcome bureaucratic hurdles and the associated corruption which have harassed the ‘common man’ for ages. Many of these applications are inquiries about a piece of land and its use, or a flat which a person is either currently using or plans to acquire in the future. There are some which are concerned with general queries about the maintenance of colonies, parks and the associated area in a particular locality. While these cater to the interests of an individual or a group of citizens, there are others which are relevant to the general public as a whole and question the DDA on planning, implementation and malfunctioning of public works. Besides this, there are also questions on corporate houses, various government departments who seek to benefit from the information gained about any kind of prevailing contract, prospective work or just a suspected case of corruption which negatively affects their interests.

The most surprising thing about applications to the DDA is that its pretty evident that a lot of DDA officials are using the RTI to settle intra/inter-departmental issues and raising questions about the general functioning of the DDA. These musings within the DDA often take the shape of settling personal vendettas using RTI. But these cases are an exception, rather than the norm.

The role of RTI in raising awareness and generating public opinion can’t be denied. From the welfare of the poor and the homeless to the banning of sale of narcotic substance, citizens have tried to question the government on many important issues. They have tried to direct government’s attention towards forgotten matters and bring out the flaws in our system of governance. The most important flaws, which courtesy RTI, are out in the public is the tremendous gap between existing policies and their implementation. By focusing on it citizens have certainly helped in improving their lives, the lives of the people around them and most importantly the state of governance. With the increasing awareness amongst citizens about the the value of RTI as a tool, one can picture a more accountable, transparent government in the future.

Alas, only if the fictitious Khoslas of “Khosla Ka Ghosla” fame had been able to use the RTI, they would not have fallen victim to a land extortion racket.

Abhishek is an intern with the Accountability Initiative. He is a graduate from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Lok Adalats: Justice or Judicial Efficiency?

I recently had the chance to travel to Ahmedabad on a reconnaissance trip to explore the possibility of a certain research project. We wanted to know if Lok Adalat (People’s Court) could be extended in its present scope to serve as a possible recourse for grievance redressal in service delivery cases. In recent years there appears to be a shift towards a rights based framework for service provision, with citizens being able to access state services through an argument of rights and entitlements – the right to food, the right to education, right to employment, and so forth. In this context of rights and entitlements, judiciary would seem a logical forum for citizens to seek redressal for their grievances in accessing these services.

 

The main idea behind having them was to improve access to justice at local levels, and ease the burden on the regular courts due to millions of petty cases that clog up their scarce resources, awaiting settlement.

The choice of Gujarat was because it afforded us the possibility of partnering with Research Foundation for Governance in India in Ahmedabad, who have considerable expertise in legal research and advocacy. Gujarat also happens to be a state where Lok Adalats are conducted actively. This is an ongoing exploration, and I managed to get some inputs from Senior Judges in Gujarat on what they felt on  the matter. Going forward, we hope to present the case more formally. At this point, from my own witnessing of the processings at the Lok Adalat, and reading around the issues, there are some initial questions that cropped up about merits and constraints of Lok Adalats themselves, which is what this blog post is about. This is also perhaps apt, given the current focus on judicial reforms in India.

Lok Adalats were introduced in India in the early 80s. The main idea behind having them was to improve access to justice at local levels, and ease the burden on the regular courts due to millions of petty cases that clog up their scarce resources, awaiting settlement.  Lok Adalats were to provide a speedy, fair and deliberative form of alternative dispute settlement mechanism, drawing on traditional methods of conciliation where the presiding judge – who is an experienced adjudicator with legal acumen and a record of public service – effects an understanding between the claimants, and settles the cases as compromise between the two sides. In most cases claims are for small amounts of money, and relatively minor issues related to traffic accidents, marital disputes, land disputes and so forth. Ordinary courts refer cases to Lok Adalats if they feel the case can be settled through compromise. There is no appeal against the decision reached at Lok Adalat, although if no compromise is reached, the claimants can go back to the courts that referred them there.

I had the opportunity to sit and observe the cases being disposed. While I was sat there, about 15 cases came up – mostly related to Prohibition offences and minor crimes and accidents, and on an average they took about 3-5 minutes each – something that in the normal procedure of regular courts would take much longer, and in worst cases, take years to even come up for hearing. Fines were imposed, compensations were awarded, and compromises reached. They had a target to cover 2000 cases within the day, and seemed well set to reach the target. I was impressed by the speed and efficiency with which the cases were being dealt. However, there were some larger questions that came up in my mind from my research and from observing it all happening.

 

One can think of other important ways of ‘disciplining’ our regular courts, which can have substantial results in speeding up the delivery of cases as well.

Foremost, I was struck by the ‘paternalism’ of the proceedings. Given the general air of obsequiousness in many bureaucratic spaces in India where citizens engage the bureaucrats as supplicants more than as rights-bearing citizens, some amount of paternalism from the officials was expected in the proceedings. But given the absence of advocates in most cases, and absence of appeal against the conclusions reached, it would appear that the discretion given to the judges can be overbearing and coercive, especially if the claimant in question is poor and otherwise disempowered. A compromise is no doubt willingly reached by all parties concerned, but due to the subjective nature of the judge’s discretion, and the general notions of justice on which Lok Adalat is based – rather than juristic legality – unequal power equation between the claimants, or between the claimant and the judge, can raise questions about the ‘fairness’ of the compromise arrived at. This is made more serious by the fact that a case can be transferred to the Lok Adalat if a court judge feels that a compromise can be reached, even if the claimants themselves do not feel so.

To be sure, these are not questions unique to Lok Adalats. Some of the regular courts also suffer from these and other problems. And even if in theory there are problems that can be identified, Lok Adalats have in practice disposed of cases with an efficiency that regular courts will have difficulty matching. But judicial efficiency is not the same thing as justice. And there are studies that show that this is not entirely a theoretical concern (For instance see here and here). Also, one can think of other important ways of ‘disciplining’ our regular courts, which can have substantial results in speeding up the delivery of cases as well. At which point one needs to wonder if availability of alternative dispute settlement avenues like the Lok Adalats could actually be diluting the constituency for these important reforms within our judiciary.

Bala Posani is Senior Research Analyst at Accountability Initiative

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

The tabling and subsequent withdrawal of the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Act, 2009 by the Law Minister Veerappa Moily has raised several key questions pertaining to the power of the RTI Act 2005 and judicial accountability. The subsequent hue-and-cry among the opposition & civil society organizations and the media interest generated on what seems to be a double standard adopted in the implementation of the RTI act by shielding of judges from scrutiny has confined the bill in its current form to the dustbin. Reforming and making the judiciary more accountable indeed is the need of the hour, however, successive governments have failed in taking any meaningful steps in this direction, under pressure from both the judiciary itself and political considerations.

 

By excluding judges from declaring their assets, the big fear is that it will indicate that they are a separate class of citizenry, an argument which would take on a different dimension if extended to our politicians and other public servants.

A CMS-TI study threw light upon the reasons for corruption in the judiciary. From misuse of power by judges without fear of any action being taken, a tedious impeachment process (no judge has ever been impeached by Parliament since Independence) and above all, the inefficient pace at which cases move through the courts all make it possible for people wanting to pay to speed up the system and get favourable judgements, to be able to do so.

Arguments for the Bill in its current form come from well-regarded members of the legal fraternity. It usually boils down to the possibility of harassment of judges handling controversial cases. Though this may be true, the question remains whether a blanket law allowing non-disclosure of assets will do more harm than good. Public perception of the independence and incorruptibility of the Judiciary will definitely take a hit. By excluding judges from declaring their assets, the big fear is that it will indicate that they are a separate class of citizenry, an argument which would take on a different dimension if extended to our politicians and other public servants. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchers?) seems appropriate here.

Abhijit Patnaik is Senior Researcher at the Accountability Initiative.

Opening up or Ushering in: The Panchayati Raj amendments, Activists, and Public participation

Over the 25th and the 26th of July I was in Pondicherry, to participate in a workshop around the theme of public consultation and citizen participation in urban governance. ‘Opening Up or Ushering In’ was the rather enigmatic name for the workshop that mystified most of the participants. It was only later that we got an inkling into this framing of the workshop. Given that public consultation and citizen participation that have become rather fashionable catchwords; are these processes being used to open up spaces for citizens to participate in the articulation of plans and projects in their cities and neighbourhoods, or usher in technocrats and their consultancies under the guise of public consultation and participation? You have to admit with me that the organizers were more than clever in their framing of the workshop title, as well as placing on the agenda, an interesting issue for debate.

 

The question that needs to be seriously posed is if this association with the State executive, right from the time the GBA joined the Task Force, an association entirely outside of a legal process, was useful or not.

 

I would like to reflect on this idea within the Goan context, returning in the process, to a theme that I have not taken up for some time, that of the frustrated moment of the Goan revolution. What has not ceased to amaze is the manner in which, despite constantly brandishing the issue of public participation and decentralization, most of the groups in the fray have been singularly unable to actually realize the objective. All of this despite the fact that the GBA, at that time the more powerful among these groups, held the trumps at a crucial moment in the struggle.

Trying to understand why they failed to seize the moment, two options emerged. One, because of the conviction by some of the more prominent Margao activists that decentralization was a bad thing, the average citizen would make a mess of the powers they were given. The second, because for the architects and urban planners involved in the movement, participation and consultation began and ended when they were ushered into the planning process. In their well-intentioned estimation, this was also participation and consultation, so at least they were taking the process somewhere. As the recent ‘stepping down’ of Edgar Rebeiro has shown us, this assumption was not just terribly naïve, but eventually impotent as well. Participation is not achieved until the entire body of citizenry is enabled to participate in planning. The question that needs to be seriously posed is if this association with the State executive, right from the time the GBA joined the Task Force, an association entirely outside of a legal process, was useful or not.

The reason for distinguishing between the two reasons stated above, is because I would like to distinguish between a conscious option to prevent genuine and large-scale participation (in the first case), and a misunderstanding as to what participation and consultation actually means. In the second case, the error is possibly unconscious, the result of a blinkered vision engendered by one’s professional training. It is a different matter that this professional training is rooted in the same fear of the ‘ignorant masses’ held by our Margao activists. When imbibed through education however, it gets internalized unconsciously. That these professionals belong to a class that in any case has a tendency against mass participation and towards a surprisingly firm belief in its own capacities does not help them in thinking out these biases that are educated into them.

To be sure, these biases have a longer history, as displayed in the history of the anti-colonial struggle in British-India. The early forms of the ‘national struggle’, in particular the demands of the liberals and Swarajists, was not for ‘freedom’. Whenever this potentially explosive term was used, it was in fact rather ambivalently articulated. Their aspiration was in fact for a greater ‘share’ in the governance of the country, as reflected in the demands for greater opportunities in participation in central and provincial legislatures and executive councils. There was no contemplation of universal participation for all Indians, the attempt was to only share the pie of governance with the white man. It was only later, in the event of the failed expectations of the Indian National Congress on most offers of constitutional ‘reforms’ that the discourse and practice got radicalized to lead to the situation of a robust non-cooperation against the British Raj. Popular support was garnered through the eventually unrealized promise to the unwashed masses of their having a say in the future, in matters of governance.

 

Any action (radical or otherwise) has to necessarily acknowledge that the goal of the movement is nothing less than a legally recognized system of meaningful consultation with the citizens in their wards, and an effective system of participation in village-level and city-level meetings.

What we must not forget is that there existed right from the very beginning a tension between the freedom struggle led by Gandhi, to whom we can trace this liberative notion of local self governance, and the representative ‘consultative’ democracy that eventually triumphed. This latter form took for its inspiration the structures of the colonial State, and this is why today, we experience nothing less than a colonial violence, as demonstrated by the recent changes effected to the Goa Panchayati Raj Act by the representatives in the legislative house. The fight in Goa, for greater transparency and more participation in governance is in fact a continuation of this unresolved fight against colonialism, and one can see uncanny resemblances. The State apparatus in Goa is that inherited from the Raj, the GBA-mobilization was led by elites for whom sharing of power is sufficient.

It now looks as if this earlier history from British-India is repeating itself. The failed expectations of the leadership of the GBA are prompting queries if we should not now push forward into more radical measures against the Government. As suggested on numerous occasions, that may not be such a bad idea. However, this radical action CANNOT be the goal of the movement. Any action (radical or otherwise) has to necessarily acknowledge that the goal of the movement is nothing less than a legally recognized system of meaningful consultation with the citizens in their wards, and an effective system of participation in village-level and city-level meetings. It is because of our longer history, where colonial institutions and logics have prevailed over the genuinely participatory logics that we have to make sure that in the next mobilization that seems to be imminent, we ensure that the lessons from the history of both the Indian anti-colonial struggle (popularly called the freedom struggle) and the ‘Save Goa’ campaign are not forgotten.

What we need is an opening up, not an ushering in.

Jason Keith Fernandes is a columnist for the Gomantak Times. Click here for his blog.

Effect information campaigns have on political behaviour

What effect do information campaigns have on the political behaviour of citizens and their representatives?

In a democracy, having cast their votes and investing their elected representative with the power to govern them, citizens have a right to know how they are being governed, and to demand detailed scrutiny of the process. In this sense, information about their government is something that citizens have a reason to value intrinsically. But access to information is also seen as being instrumental in improving the quality of democracy in many different ways.

For instance, one hypothesis that was at the heart of information campaigns preceding the recent parliamentary elections in India was that access to information about elected representatives enables citizens to make informed voting decisions, which in turn would mean better quality of representatives. An informed electorate would also mean that it is in the incentive of the representative to perform better in order to win back the votes. The media and the civil society organizations enthusiastically carried out many campaigns leading up to the elections, informing electorates about their representative’s performance, assets, criminal backgrounds, and so forth, in the hope that their voting decisions be based on information on substantive indicators rather than caste, religion or region.

 

Admittedly, changes in political behaviour of both citizens and elected representatives, happen over sustained periods of time, and are very difficult to measure.

Satark Nagarik Sanghathan (SNS) is one such organization. SNS works at the grassroots with the residents in some of the South Delhi slums, assisting them in their use of the RTI Act to improve access to public services.  Also, like they had done for the MLA elections in late 2008, SNS ran an information campaign leading up to the recent MP elections. Employing the RTI Act, and other means, they accessed information about the performance of MPs along important indicators like the level and quality of participation in the Parliament and standing committees, and the manner in which they spent the discretionary constituency development funds that each MP is allocated. Using this information, they brought out MP Report Cards, which were publicized widely in collaboration with the mainstream newspapers. Focus Group Discussions and door-to-door campaigns were conducted in selected slums to disseminate this information to the citizens. This was in addition to the more sustained campaign and discussions in which SNS educates the citizens about the roles and responsibilities of Councillors, MLAs and MPs, so that citizens know what they are entitled to, what to expect of their elected representatives, and who to approach for what kind of grievance.

I was part of a team from Accountability Initiative, which had the opportunity to qualitatively study the effect of SNS’s information campaign on the citizens in the slums. We were interested in the effect on their ‘political behaviour’, which we defined in a broader sense than merely voting decisions. We were also interested in other forms of demand-making on political representatives that take place between elections, and perhaps more ambitiously on how the residents in the slums defined themselves in relation to their representative.

Over a period of one month, we spoke to the residents of five selected slums where SNS works. The study is still ongoing, and we are hoping to get some inputs from the elected representatives themselves, for a comparative perspective. Admittedly, changes in political behaviour of both citizens and elected representatives, happen over sustained periods of time, and are very difficult to measure. As we progress with the study, we will have more postings about it. But at this stage, there are a couple of interesting preliminary observations about collective action and leadership, which we can talk about.

 

Women who had higher than average levels of education that their neighbours, and who came from less patriarchal family backgrounds are more likely to become resident activists of the organization.

First is observations related to ‘collective action’ for accountability. Who participates in the SNS meetings, and why? We found that the attendance in SNS meetings is predominantly by women, but this could be because the men are away at work during the day. Not all the women seem to retain what is discussed in the meetings, but they still turn up, some of them avidly. In many cases their motivation behind going to the meetings is the hope that SNS will help them access what they are personally entitled to, especially in cases where these entitlements are well defined – for example, ration cards, and SC cards and so forth. It would appear then, that collective action is more forthcoming when there is expectation of entitlements that are selective, tangible, and well defined.

A second observation is about leaders and change agents. We found that in most of the camps there were one or two women who were more engaged in SNS meetings than others. Women who had higher than average levels of education that their neighbours, and who came from less patriarchal family backgrounds are more likely to become resident activists of the organization. They also had significant spill-over effects on their immediate community, and were approached by others for discussing their grievances. Identifying and working with such change agents at the interface might be critical to any successful intervention of this sort.

Although it is early days, we observed that there is an incipient shift in the way these residents demanded services from the state. While traditionally, they worked through their pradhans, through strategies like appeasement or corruption, the information campaigns, and the Right to Information Act appear to have allowed people to start asserting their demands through the argument of rights and entitlements.

In our future posts we will have done more research to be able to talk about what effect the information campaigns had on the kind of demands made on the elected representatives, and if this has had any effect on how the representatives perceive the citizens.

Bala Posani is a Senior Research Analyst at Accountability Initiative.

Making good on promises: Union Budget 2009

On July 6th 2009, the new United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government will conduct its first major business activity since coming in to power: present the annual budget. Much hope resides on this budget.  The President’s address before the first session of Parliament laid out the UPA’s governance agenda  for the next five years. Many promises of action are made in solemn speeches, but in most cases they are also quickly forgotten. The question to be asked of the budget is this: Will it live up to the promises made? The President laid out 10 broad areas which the present government will focus on. Among the usual issues of security, social welfare, fiscal management, and infrastructure, the speech specifically mentioned the “consolidation of the existing flagship programmes for employment, education, health, rural infrastructure, urban renewal and introduction of new flagship programmes for food security and skill development” and “governance reform”.

The two issues are interlinked. A lot of the problems that the flagship programmes suffered from during the tenure of the last UPA government had to do with failures in governance – basically the lack of a culture of accountability. For instance, the curious case of unutilized funds. According to estimates, more than Rs.50,000 crores that were committed to these flagship programs in the previous government are lying unutilized. This amounts to a loss of 1% of GDP. How do we make sense of this? And do we know enough about how the money is being spent, and by who? Who do we hold accountable for this?

For one, it is virtually impossible to track many of the government expenditures in real time. In the present system, a large part of social sector expenditures are incurred through a mechanism known as Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS). Within CSS, funds from the central government are ‘off-budget’ i.e. they by-pass the state government treasury and go straight from the central government coffers to bank accounts of the specially created state implementation societies.  Ironically, this procedure was put in place to get away from the red-tapism of the bureaucracy but it has created more problems than it has solved. Legally, state level societies cannot be audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). Instead, audits are undertaken by private auditors. These are neither regular nor uniform in their methodology and process. Worse, these reports are not easily available in the public domain making it impossible to track social sector funds.

In addition, one of the primary reasons why funds might be lying unutilized is that the implementation societies in the States can carry forward the allocated funds from one year to the next.

Governance reforms that address these aspects in strengthening transparency and accountability in public planning and expenditure processes are critical to making sure the desired outcomes from the flagship programs are attained. Of course the budget cannot do everything at the same time. After all it is only a statement of revenue and expenditure of the government. But seeing as the flagship programs will undoubtedly get more allocation in this year’s budget, it does present us with an opportunity to bring in new initiatives that would go a long way in improving accountability within the system. A revamped outcomes budget, and extending the mechanism of mandatory social audits in these schemes are some thoughts. The budget can also announce the setting up of  an Independent Evaluation Office, and adequately fund this important body. These would be the first few steps towards “re-energizing government and improving governance”. The President’s speech promised that this will be the case. But will it happen?

Dr. Anit Mukherjee is a Fellow at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi.

Whose Right to Education?: Building Schools and Rewarding Voters in Tamil Nadu

How do politicians in democratic settings influence the allocation of public goods?  This is a question that gets right to the heart of the accountability debate. Bureaucracies often set up geographic or need-based norms for basic services such as education, health, and sanitation.  Yet it is perhaps India’s worst-kept secret that the de facto and de jure allocation of services can diverge significantly on account of influential politicians seeking patronage or “pork barrel” for their constituencies. Despite a large number of qualitative studies that examine this influence, there are few quantitative studies in India that try to measure the extent to which India’s elected representatives skew the overall allocation of public goods in a given sector.

It was in this spirit that my colleague Neelanjan Sircar and I went about trying to estimate the influence politics has on the construction of new public primary (and upper primary schools) in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.  As political scientists, we were motivated by two questions. First, is the construction of public schools linked to the political process so that the building of new schools operates on a political budget cycle?  If such electioneering exists, it begs a second question of how public investments are targeted. That is, can we detect political motivations in the targeting and placement of new public schools?

In our analysis, we focused on the influential role of Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs).   MLAs are one of the most important, yet among the least understood, cogs in India’s patronage machine.  Over forty years ago, Bailey’s (1963) study of the Orissa assembly perhaps best sums up the enduring conventional wisdom about MLAs:

“[Their] MLA is not the representative of a party with a policy which commends itself to them, not even a representative who will watch over their interests when policies are being framed, but rather a man who will intervene in the implementation of policy, and in the ordinary day-to-day administration. He is there to divert the benefits in the direction of his constituents.”

Understanding state-level dynamics is crucial because most education and other large public goods initiatives emerge from centrally sponsored schemes and projects (and are often bolstered by state-level matching funds or complementary programs) where the states have broad discretionary authority. For example, this is the framework for India’s most recent flagship primary education program, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Furthermore, as far as the construction of schools (or other local public works projects) is concerned, the MLA is able to simultaneously please two constituencies: his friends, local contractors and suppliers; as well as the broader population of citizens he or she represents.<br /><br />For our analysis, we consider all public school construction between the years 1977 and 2007 in Tamil Nadu.  In terms of timing, we find that there is a significant spike in school construction immediately following the inauguration of a new state government.  This post-election jump makes intuitive sense since all governments want to appear as if they are doing “something” — especially if that something will help distinguish them from their predecessors.  Furthermore, in the case of Tamil Nadu, post-election investments in public works (as opposed to pre-election works) are even more sensible given the state’s exceedingly high rates of electoral volatility and unpredictable voter behavior.

To examine the issue of geographic targeting, we map assembly constituencies to administrative blocks using GIS (in Tamil Nadu, they make a relatively neat match).  We do find evidence of the political targeting of new school construction.  In most years, areas in which voters elect MLAs affiliated with the future ruling coalition benefit disproportionately in terms of the number of new public schools the government decides to build in those areas.  For instance, when AIADMK re-captured control of the state in 2001, it was AIADMK constituencies that received the bulk of the largesse when it came to building and establishing new public schools.

But politicians are a crafty bunch.  The ruling party does not always blindingly shower its supporters with new public works; they also take into consideration the nuances of electoral dynamics.  For instance, there are deviations from rewarding one’s “core” supporters in those years with exceptionally high levels of electoral competition within constituencies. When more than half the ruling coalition’s victories come in closely-fought (“swing”) constituencies (as they did in the elections of 1980 and 2006), we find that the ruling party alters its post-election targeting strategy to reward pivotal “swing” areas.

We interpret this as the constraining effect of electoral competition: while there may be a bias of rewarding their most ardent supporters, politicians must abide by electoral realities. In swing constituencies where the margin of victory is slim, politicians must make desperate promises to sweeten the pot. In the elections of 1980 and 2006, there were a disproportionate number of such constituencies; hence, benefits flowed to those areas disproportionately.

This research is still in its preliminary stages but it provides initial evidence of the kinds of influence many suspect MLAs of having on public works, even in the era of decentralization.  In the coming months, we hope to update this work and expand it to other states as well.  For instance, it might be interesting to ask how the Left Front government of West Bengal allocates public works to those areas under opposition control.  Does Mayawati privilege Dalit areas in UP where community infrastructure is desperately needed?  In the coming months, I will post some of these initial drafts on my website: http://www.columbia.edu/~mv2191

Milan Vaishnav is a PhD student in political science at Columbia University.  He is visiting the Accountability Initiative in August.

Teachers: Overpaid or Overburdened?

I recently had the opportunity to interview 16 teachers from 7 schools across 2 districts in Uttarakhand as part of a study being conducted by J-PAL, MIT aimed at understanding the institutional dynamics of the Read India programme – an accelerated learning programme launched by the NGO Pratham. We wanted to know what teachers thought of Pratham’s training, materials and monitoring, the difficulties they faced as well as the changes (positive and negative) brought about within the classroom dynamics by using this new teaching method.

While the report itself is still in its draft stages, there were a few points that came out of the teacher interviews, which raise some questions regarding the current system of education and teacher accountability – which is what the blog post is about.

 

Teachers felt that the training they received were disconnected from many of the real problems afflicting the school– i.e., lack of teachers, disinterested parents, lack of discipline amongst students, and a general disinterest in education.

Broadly, there were four things that came up consistently in the teacher interviews. First was the lack of teachers and high pupil-teacher ratios, which according to the teachers, caused difficulties in implementing programmes including Read India. Teachers testified to feeling over-burdened with administrative and other duties such as supervision of the Mid-Day Meal and were thus unable to devote time to new teaching methods like using the Pratham materials.  As a teacher said, “In a school that has over 150 students and only 2 teachers, if we were to divide the students up and pay individual attention to the weak students , what would the other students do?”.

This shortage of teachers was reaffirmed by the government block and district officials. In Haridwar for instance, they revealed that of the 117 schools, 42 schools had only one teacher, and 3 schools had no teachers at all!

Second was the constant pressure to finish coursework and curriculum. Pratham spends a lot of time and effort designing materials that will be relevant to the students. Even the teachers testified that the innovativeness of the material increased student enthusiasm, and was a useful learning tool as compared to the rote-learning often used in finishing the curriculum. There did however appear to be a disconnect between the Pratham goals of improving basic learning levels and the government’s emphasis on finishing the school curriculum. The teachers appeared stuck in the middle between these two divergent demands.

Moreover, teachers felt that the training they received were disconnected from many of the real problems afflicting the school– i.e., lack of teachers, disinterested parents, lack of discipline amongst students, and a general disinterest in education.

And finally, all teachers indicated that monitoring was weak and said increased monitoring would be encouraging, when it was of the supportive kind, assisting them in learning new techniques and helping them in their teaching process rather than just requiring them to fill government forms.

While these testimonies from the teachers are by no means unique observations, they do raise some hard questions on our current educational system.  Teacher salaries in 2007-08 according to DISE corresponded to 31.48% of the total expenditure done by the SSA. These teachers are costly and we are all contributing to it through the education cess. Estimates indicate that private school teachers earn close to 40% of their government colleagues’ income. Yet, the fact remains that the quality of education remains abysmally low for a vast majority of Indian children, and not much effort is being made to find out the causes.

 

The current Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill is a great first step, a closer look at the Bill indicates that many of these endemic problems have still not been addressed.

Through the 1980s and the 1990s, the government focussed all its energies on getting children into schools, and enrolment data became the principle tool for monitoring progress, including of teacher performance. It’s only in the last three to four years that government officials have begun to openly admit that motivation and accountability among teachers is also a big problem.  Yet, the tendency has been to regard the lack of learning as being solely due to lack of teacher motivation, and place blame squarely on the teachers, without looking at underlying structure of the educational system which might also be contributing to the problem.

As early as 1999, the PROBE Report (Public Report on Basic Education in India) had found that despite a major increase in the number of teachers appointed, the pupil-teacher ratio in the survey areas has shown little improvement over the years. Today too, according to ASER, 2007 the median pupil-teacher ratios in primary schools remain as high as 39.

Further, in the current structure, monitoring is weak and teacher incentives are skewed. Salaries are not performance-based and there is a constant pressure to finish the curriculum rather than concentrate on helping children to actually learn.

While the current Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill is a great first step, a closer look at the Bill indicates that many of these endemic problems have still not been addressed. According to the Bill, Government schools do not need to meet any norms except the pupil-teacher ratio, and unlike in private schools, there are no consequences for failing to meet this basic norm. Moreover, the Bill legitimises the practice of multi-grade teaching, where more than one grade is being handled by the same teacher, simultaneously. The number of teachers is based on the number of students rather than on grade. So, for instance, a primary school having less than 60 students gets only 2 teachers, regardless of the number of grades in the school.

This commentary is by no means meant to absolve teachers of their shortcomings. Teacher absenteeism is indeed very high in rural areas. The PROBE Report, 1999, showed how 1/3rd of Head Teachers were absent during the study, and even of those present, teachers hardly taught. In another study conducted in 3 states, classroom observations showed, shockingly, that each group of children was taught for only around 25 minutes in a day (Ramchandran et al, 2004)! Teacher ability is also another big problem. A forthcoming study in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar reports that teachers lack even the most basic skills – less than 50% could summarize a class 5 text.

However, as I pointed out above, the problems faced by teachers are also real, and do need to be dealt with. Instead of always thinking about teachers as being overpaid and underperforming workers, maybe it is time for us to start looking into the underlying reasons for their lack of motivation, and think about increasing relevant training and support, and improve their incentives to perform through a more rational accountability structure. Our current educational structure needs a serious revisiting.

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

Responsive governments need responsible citizens: Bringing citizen accountability into the debate

The Mid-Day Meal (MDM) scheme aims to deliver daily cooked meals to every child in every Indian government primary school, and is currently the largest school-feeding programme in the world, covering 120 million children in government and government-assisted schools.  However, although the MDM’s overall effects are positive, implementation remains varied.  For example, within Delhi, children in some schools receive regular meals of a good quality, while others receive meals irregularly, if at all, and quality varies widely.

In Delhi, as elsewhere, there are problems in both delivery and distribution, which may or may not be alleviated by increasing the MDM scheme’s budget. Why do these problems exist?  Caterers, unsurprisingly, often argue that the government is not paying them enough. The suggestion is that if the government increased spending and provided adequate funds for better kitchens, extra ingredients, transport facilities, and staff, delivery problems could be eliminated.  Doubtless, more resources for caterers would improve meal delivery.  However, this alone will not ensure perfect implementation everywhere. First, deliveries may still be late, inadequate, poor quality, or absent, as at present. Second, once food has been delivered to schools, not all the food is always distributed to children.

 

The Right to Food Campaign (RTFC) seeks to improve MDM implementation primarily by holding the government accountable for the scheme and by pressurising the government to further improve MDM delivery.

Accountability in the MDM scheme can be considered at two levels.  At the first level, caterers need to be accountable to the government for delivering meals, and the government needs to be accountable to citizens for managing the caterers.  ‘Accountable’ in the MDM scheme means that if caterers do not deliver adequate quantities and qualities of food on time, the government and the people will be aware of this and can punish the caterers in some way, or seek compensation.  As client, the government should impose sanctions on caterers.  But as the government is ultimately responsible to its citizens for the scheme, the government is accountable to citizens for imposing sanctions and managing the caterers.  Most approaches to accountability have focused on this three-way relationship.  No exception, the Right to Food Campaign (RTFC) seeks to improve MDM implementation primarily by holding the government accountable for the scheme and by pressurising the government to further improve MDM delivery.

My field research indicates, however, that focusing on these ‘macro-level’ accountability relationships is necessary but not sufficient to ensure that each child receives his/her entitlement.  Accountability at the macro-level needs to be reinforced by accountability at the local, or ‘micro-level’, where providers are held accountable by individual citizens/recipients and where citizens (school parents) engage positively with the scheme. Parents must participate actively in the monitoring committees, composed of teachers, parents, community members and a local government official, that were set up by a 2006 Government Order to monitor the delivery and distribution of the food, and register complaints to the government and caterers when food is below standard.

Based on fieldwork in two schools in Delhi, my research shows that the parent participation necessary to generate ‘micro-level’ accountability does not occur everywhere.  Where such parent participation occurs, the MDM scheme functions well, and where it does not, the scheme delivers poorer results.  The paper therefore argues that scholars and practitioners should pay more attention to these micro-level actions, and seek to explain why parents engage actively in holding caterers accountable only in some schools. My research indicates that the level of accountability among citizens determines the extent of their participation and, to a large degree, the success of the scheme.  A notion of ‘citizen-citizen accountability’ could therefore usefully be incorporated into current approaches to state-and-provider accountability.  Building on the idea of social cohesion (referring to reciprocity, trusteeship, obligation, solidarity and inter-dependence), citizen-citizen accountability implies parents’ mutual answerability in fulfilling obligations, and the imposition of (informal) sanctions in case of non-participation or participation for private gain.

 

The RTFC has drawn significant attention to short-comings in government efforts to implement the MDM scheme effectively, little attention has been paid to the importance of local level accountability relationships in ensuring the success of the scheme.

In one of the two schools studied, the MDM scheme worked well (i.e. children typically received food on a daily basis, either directly from the MDM scheme or from replacement sources organised by parents and teachers).  In the other, the MDM scheme worked very poorly (i.e. delivery was erratic and there were no replacement sources).  Based on focus group discussions and interviews with teachers, students and parents, the effectiveness of the MDM scheme seems not to depend solely on the accountability relationships between the government and citizens.  Rather, good implementation depends very significantly on the level of (historically generated) social cohesion (such as notions of trust and reciprocity) between parents, and between parents and teachers.  Just as citizens can be considered to have an obligation (in law and morality) not to destroy public property, they can be considered to have an obligation to engage positively with the MDM scheme.  The implication of this analysis is that increasing MDM scheme funds and focusing solely on government accountability will not fully eliminate implementation problems.  Activists (including the RTFC) and scholars should also focus on citizens’ accountability to each other, and to the government.

Assessments of the MDM scheme have consistently focused on the lack of government accountability, and by extension wholly ignored the critical role of citizen accountability in the success of such schemes.  While the RTFC has drawn significant attention to short-comings in government efforts to implement the MDM scheme effectively, little attention has been paid to the importance of local level accountability relationships in ensuring the success of the scheme. These local level relationships, which constitute parent-monitoring committees responsible for oversight of the delivery of the MDM, are an essential factor in determining whether the scheme is successful on a school-to-school basis.

Araddhya Mehtta is a Consultant with the Accountability Initiative. Her research has been published as part of our Engaging Accountability: Working Paper Series and can be downloaded here.

Dissent Economics: Thoughts on an inclusive future

Accept it. Deep down, perhaps even precariously near the surface, in your heart you love the fact that being well-off is slowly returning to vogue. You heap scorn at the fashion weeks (no, you couldn’t have missed them because India had four, or maybe five this year) but you are enormously glad that someone, somewhere had enough money in India to celebrate leggy models and largely unwearable clothes so many times.

Chances are you love the fact that the downturn is coming to an end – unless you belong to India’s Communist parties and were trashed in the polls – and are delighted to know that you will not lose your job after all.

But, as Jeffery Sachs says, most likely the lessons of the downturn are fast being forgotten and no matter which way you read the alphabet soup of recovery (‘L’, maybe ‘V’, why not ‘W’?), there is little doubt that bubbles are forming once again even as the first champagne bottles, in a year and a half in some cases, are being uncorked.

So what lessons are being forgotten post the downturn?

In July, in a special issue, The Economist pointed out that how the bubble burst is fundamentally altering economic theory, arguing that macroeconomists, especially central bankers, “were too fixated on taming inflation and too cavalier about asset bubbles”.

 

Is capitalism now on an irretrievable collision course with the greater common good and has it now been irretrievably proved that left to itself, un-shepherded capitalism is apocalyptic?

Now, as the US economy reports growth for the first time in about a year, officially, as some newspapers have reported, ending the “longest since World War II” recession, the question to ask is what forms asset bubbles, why are they ignored and is it possible, somewhere, even at this moment, more asset bubbles are forming but there is little chance that we will know what they are until they burst spectacularly?

The downturn has brought several theories of melting pedestals of finance and macroeconomics and rethinking, more dramatically, the basis of neo-liberal capitalism. The question – many have asked – is, is capitalism now on an irretrievable collision course with the greater common good and has it now been irretrievably proved that left to itself, un-shepherded capitalism is apocalyptic?

The answer of course is yes, and yes.

In our terror-ridden world, economic and political apocalypse is, assuredly, intertwined.

If you peer closely at the debate that surrounds analysis of Wall Street greed to Maoist violence in India’s infamous Red Corridor, from terror recruits in dysfunctional, and one is being kind here, North Africa, to the new great game for oil, friction and finance are constant bedfellows.

Look closely at what India’s considers the biggest threat to the nation state these days – Maoist violence. With an estimated one-third of the country controlled continuously or intermittently by Maoists and ever increasing instances of violence, including the heavily politicised train-jacking, there is reason for real concern.

But at the heart of the battle is a deep service delivery failure. Decades of poor delivery of resources and opportunities in India’s large tribal swathes have turned them into a battlefield where argument for a different, inclusive model of development have reached bullet-point.

For evidence, listen to the latest statements of Kishenji, the ever-elusive but omnipresent Maoist chief, always shot with his back to the camera and a gun strategically slung on the shoulders (so that the gun faces the camera even if he does not) who has challenged the West Bengal government to finish development faster than the Maoists.

Among the Maoist brag: they would sink 100 tube-wells in the next month and also set up 15 temporary hospitals. All this barely 200 kilometers from Calcutta.

Rebels are doing what the government has not in 60 years.

In Peshawar, widely known as Pakistan’s (Asia’s?) Wild West, Pakistani diplomats have often told me why there is so much support for the Taliban. They bring security and a sense of the fair rule of law which the corrupt administration has always failed to deliver.

So while asset bubbles are created in one part of the world, another breeds violence devoid of basic guarantees of the nation state and the two are in constant path of collision.

There is a big common ground between conservative politics and neo-liberal economics – an almost fascist disdain for dissenting views. In India, this has meant that as the country squeezes 20 years of Western growth in two or three years, there is little space of questioning this development model.

In this arrogance of development, dissent is not merely derided, it is treachery.

The big lesson of the post-downturn debate is whether in the world of Maoist violence and terror attacks, in a world of the debris of once-great banks, can there be space for Dissent Economics?

 

Dissent Economics, formalised as part of mainstream debate, will ease radical pressures on the system and would aid cooperative negotiation that are more effective in bringing change.

In his prophetic essay ‘The Future of Dissent’ on the ‘Futures’ edition of India’s leading thought journal Seminar in December 1997, historian Ashis Nandy wrote:

“It is the responsibility of the citizen-futurist… to defy and subvert the ‘inevitable’ in the future, only another name for a tomorrow which dare not be anything other than a linear projection of yesterday. Students of the future owe it to themselves to create a gap between those whose idea of the future is modelled on the Wall Street share market or on nineteenth century Europe and those ideas of the future that could be called contemporary versions or reincarnations of the prophetic.”

As Wall Street alchemists now know, the future might often not be the linear projection of the histories of the past.

Through the idea of Dissent Economics, I want to argue that our collective future can be far better prophesied if space is made for dissent. Dissent Economics, formalised as part of mainstream debate, will ease radical pressures on the system and would aid cooperative negotiation that are more effective in bringing change.

How can Dissent Economic Theory be statistically integrated to mainstream analysis?

The beginning must be far away from the data charts, on the field, by allowing and indeed enabling processes bring together dissenting viewpoints into mainstream debate. Provisions such as these already exist in government programs in education, health, employment guarantee schemes etc, but need to be implemented better.

Dissent Economics seeks to understand and extract from what initially might seem to be fringe criticism of popular notions but through micro-analysis is able to extract clues and forecast scenarios that takes a more holistic picture of the future, not so much as a linear projection of the past, but the sum of total of collective experience and opinions where even a breakaway radical critique centre might be explosive enough to derail the ‘inevitable’.

Dissent Economics at its core of course is about democracy.

Hindol Sengupta is Associate Editor, Bloomberg UTV.