There is something to the way the government functions. It might not always be clear and transparent, or accountable for that matter, but it seems that there is the proverbial ‘order to the madness’. Emblematic of these order-inducing impulses, are documents known as Manuals. Manuals are essentially guidelines which are issued to constrain and determine government action (or inaction). In my quest to understand the inner workings of the government, I have perused through several of these guiding documents. My current favourite is the Financial Management and Procurement Manual[1] for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Specifically, I’ve been focussing on the section on procurement.

According to the Manual, the procurement of goods and works for the implementation of SSA is supposed to take place at five levels: 1) School/community; b) BRC/CRC; c) District-level; d) State-level; and e) National-level. School-level procurement relates to the purchase of material for the repair and maintenance of the school, school equipment (e.g. drinking water facilities, blackboard), and teaching learning material (e.g. Charts, globes). Block-level procurement includes the procurement of items for the functioning of the Block Office. Items required at the school level are typically not purchased at this level, as procurement is done from the grants disbursed to the Block Office for their own expenditure. In contrast, District and State-level procurement includes items which are required by schools. Such items include textbooks, specialized kits for pre-school children, teaching aids for improving the quality of education, and other requirements for disabled children. Given that many of these items have design specifications and need to be purchased in bulk, procurement of these items has been assigned to the District and the State.

Items are procured either through tenders[2] or with the help of communities. In addition, under SSA, it is mandatory for all civil works relating to school construction to be conducted through community participation, that is, with the involvement of School Management Committees (SMCs)/ Gram Panchayat-level bodies etc. In carrying out this responsibility, SMCs can either carry out the work directly or by organizing workers from their community. Thus, SMCs have been not only been given the responsibility for procuring goods for schools, but provisions have also been made to ensure their involvement in carrying out the construction of civil works.

In a sense then, by restoring such responsibility to the community, the Manual asserts the importance of ensuring that procurement of goods is conducted through a decentralized process. However, while the manual places such an emphasis, it is interesting to see that at the ground level the autonomy enjoyed by the community to procure goods is not as extensive. During an intervention exercise that was conducted by Accountability Initiative and Pratham-Andhra Pradesh in partnership with the District Administration of Hyderabad, to assist schools in the making of their School Development Plans[3], we found that while in theory the SMC may have the responsibility for determining school-level expenditure, SMC resolution is often insufficient to procure material required for meeting school level needs. For instance, for the permission of desks and chairs, school’s reported that they were required to take permission from the State Implementing Society (body responsible for implementing SSA in the State). Further, even for conducting roof repair work, the SMC is required to take permission from the Junior Engineer, who typically needs to inspect the work and approve the plans before the work can begin.

Thus, while the guidelines may imply one thing, the ground level realities seem to paint a different picture. The picture, however, may not be as skewed. Permissions are often necessary for checking against inefficiencies in spending. Nevertheless, the fact that the SMC resolution is often not enough to determine procurement has an effect on the Committee’s capacity to both plan and meet school needs in a timely manner.

So where does this leave us? Probably in the unenviable position of having more questions than answers. In our future work, we intend to investigate precisely these issues by mapping the de-jure and de-facto procurement policies and investigating their implication for school level planning.

[1] For Details see: http://ssa.nic.in/financial-management/manual-on-financial-management-and-procurement

[2] The manual prescribes three types of tenders, 1) open tender, 2) limited tender and 3) single tender. For more details see-

[3] Under Section 22(1) of the RTE, schools are required to prepare a School development plan. The school development plans  contain the list of prioritized activities to be undertaken at the school level.