Have you ever had to pay a bribe?

Have you ever had to pay a bribe to get a passport, ration card, driver’s license or another government service? Are you fed up with the corruption in your city but are not sure how to tackle it? Janaagraha, a Bangalore based NGO might just have an answer.

IpaidABribe.com is a unique website launched by Janaagraha to help citizens tackle corruption. The website invites citizens across the country to log on and report the nature, pattern and types of corruption that they face on a day to day basis. Janaagraha will try and use the data to argue for improving governance systems and procedures, tightening law enforcement and regulation and thereby reduce the scope for corruption in obtaining services from the government.The website allows citizens to report bribes, generate bribe reports, find out the market rate for bribes in different sectors/services. For more information log on to: http://www.ipaidabribe.com/

Coming soon – A privacy law in India?

The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Government of India, has become the nodal agency for drafting laws on privacy and data protection in India.

Recently suggestions were invited from people on what such a law should contain. It appears that very few civil society organisations and even fewer RTI users and activists responded to this advertisement. Perhaps this is why the recent Workshop on Legal Framework for Privacy, Data Protection and Security  hosted by the DoPT had barely two or three civil society representatives, with a large majority of participants from government departments and agencies. Senior officers of the RTI Unit of the DoPT constituted the remainder of the delegation.

The summary of the proceedings and the power point presentations from the Workshop make for an interesting read. The absence of a clear and comprehensive legal framework for data protection and safeguarding privacy of individuals is a major theme. In the era of growing digital databases containing information about individuals and their transactions in both private and public sectors, this lack of clear regulation on data protection and privacy is an obstacle.

Two of the Workshop participants, the Registrar General, Census of India and the Chief Legal Advisor Indian Banks Association (IBA) called for amendments to the RTI Act to protect the data that was gathered while conducting sample surveys or banking operations. The Registrar General noted that the Central Information Commission did not allow access to information about private individuals that was collected during the census. Nevertheless he was in favour of amending the RTI Act to immunise such data from disclosure. The IBA representative held that the existing laws governing secrecy of bank transactions were adequate and no separate law on privacy and data protection was necessary. However he demanded an amendment of the RTI Act to protect banking secrecy.

The proceedings show that one participant asked the big question: “Is the right to privacy a fundamental right?” (Someone has to ask such a question at some point, especially if nobody does it at the beginning!). There is however, nothing in the proceeding to indicate if this question was satisfactorily answered. Neither is there any reference to the jurisprudence developed in India on the subject of the fundamental right to privacy. One may perhaps assume that this issue was not discussed at all and this is ample reason for concern.

There are several cases where the Indian Courts have stated the scope of the right to privacy. The kind of information for which disclosure may be denied on grounds of privacy, instances when the claims for privacy do not apply (i.e. when the personal information is contained in public records), the status of medical records and data regarding financial transactions have been discussed several times by the Supreme and High Courts.

Some High Courts have even stated when the right to privacy must yield to the people’s right to know in the era of the RTI Act. There at least two cases that spring to mind, one of them being the celebrated as the “Supreme Court Judges Assets case”. Perhaps the DoPT may elect to consult other experts on this important subject in future!

It is high time that all RTI users and activists start to engage with the DoPT to ensure that a sound law for protecting privacy and data is drafted without curtailing the RTI Act.

Government releases the first ever Civil Services Survey

The Government of India has released the findings of the first ever survey of the Indian Civil Services. The report titled “Civil Services Survey – A Report” surveyed officers from all 3 India Services (The Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian Forest Service (IFoS)) as well as officers of 7 Central Services. In total, the Survey covered 18432 officers belonging to the ten selected services. Out of the total questionnaires sent, 4808 officers responded to the survey which is 26% of the total universe.

The survey was conducted to assess the perceptions of civil servants on 11 major thematic areas including work environment, transfers, postings, integrity to harassment and discrimination. Click here to read the full report online or scroll down to download the pdf version of the report.

When the mirror has 2 faces: the story of governments own datasets not matching!

A few months back I was searching for release and expenditure data for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Since the financial management section of the SSA portal hasn’t been updated in 2 years (the latest available information is August 2008!), I was left struggling to find places to look. Luckily, I remembered that we now we have a tool – the Right to Information Act – an easy method to get information.  So I decided to file my first RTI !

At the outset, let me just say that I got an amazing response. The PIO officer in-charge was prompt in his response, transferred some of my queries to the relevant departments and even sent them reminder letters to send me the information on time. So for those sceptical about filing RTI’s – go ahead, give it a shot, you might be surprised! But this post isn’t about filing RTI’s. It’s about what the RTI revealed.

The RTI showed the complete chaos and confusion that exists within government databases. Information on state-wise expenditures and releases for SSA  in 2008-09 from the Joint Review Mission( available on the SSA website here) put the All India total GOI release for SSA in 2008-09 at Rs. 1,270,533 lakh and the total expenditure for SSA, during the same period at Rs. 1933231 lakh.  However, the same data in the RTI gave the figures of Rs. 1,261,120 lakh and Rs. 1,905,652 lakh respectively.

For more details, please see that table below giving the state-wise variations.

State GOI release according to Joint Review Mission

( in Rs. Lakh)

GOI Release according to the RTI

( in Rs. Lakh)

Difference

( in Rs. Lakh)

Tamil Nadu 45,414 53,241 7,827
Himachal Pradesh 8,553 10,513 1,960
Arunachal Pradesh 13,684 15,568 1,884
Mizoram 5,113 3,873 1,240
Delhi 1,529 1,029 500
Nagaland 2,868 2,368 500
Dadra & N. Haveli 105 85 20
Madhya Pradesh 85,569 85,570 1

 

State Total expenditure according to Joint Review Mission

( in Rs. Lakh)

Total expenditure according to the RTI

( in Rs. Lakh)

  Difference

 

( in Rs. Lakh)

Bihar 209,431 226,382 16,951
Chhattisgarh 75,101 82,246 7,145
Mizoram 2,127 5,244 3,117

Such vast differences – (for Bihar amounting to Rs. 16,951 lakhs of rupees!) can’t be blamed on “reporting errors”. Instead, they raise some important questions.

How do we know which is the “correct” data? How are schemes and programmes expected to function efficiently and be successful when no one is sure how much money is being released or spent? And most importantly, how can we expect to have transparency and accountability when our government databases are in shambles?

While organisations like the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) do their part in highlighting some of the discrepancies or errors in government data, they can’t overhaul the entire system. But it’s obvious – it’s time we get back to the basics- get our data clean. And whether the UID can assist in this process – I guess we’ll have to wait and watch!

Avani Kapur is Senior Research and Program Analyst, Accountability Initiative.

Secrecy over the draft Whistleblower’s Bill

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

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

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

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

“4. (1) Every public authority shall—

        X          X          X

        X          X          X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yamini Aiyar is Director of the Accountability Initiative.

The Process of Lawmaking in India

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

Who makes laws?

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

How is a law made?

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

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

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

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

  • During the First Reading the Bill is introduced in Parliament. The introduction of a Bill may be opposed and the matter may be put to a vote in the House. In August 2009, the Law Minister withdrew the motion to introduce the Judges (Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities) Bill as many MPs were opposed to the Bill, on grounds that it violated the Constitution.
  • After a Bill has been introduced, the Presiding Officer of the concerned House (Speaker in case of the Lok Sabha, Chairman in case of Rajya Sabha) may refer the Bill to the concerned Department Related Standing Committee for examination.
  • The Standing Committee considers the broad objectives and the specific clauses of the Bill referred to it and may invite public comments on a Bill. For example, the Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests has invited suggestions on the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010.
  • Bills which come under the ambit of a number of different ministries, may be referred to a Joint Comittee.
  • The Committee then submits its recommendations in the form of a report to Parliament.
  • In the Second Reading (Consideration), the Bill is scrutinized thoroughly. Each clause of the Bill is discussed on the floor of the House and may be accepted, amended or rejected.
  • During the Third Reading (Passing), the House votes on the redrafted Bill.
  • If the Bill is passed in one House, it is then sent to the other House, where it goes through  second and third readings.
  • During the second reading, the Government, or any MP, may introduce amendments to the Bill, some of which may be based on recommendations of the Standing Committee. However, the Government is not bound to accept the Committee’s recommendations.

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

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

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

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

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

Number of Working Days in Legislative Assembly

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

* Source: PRS Legislative Research

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Access to Information and Accountability: The Story of Vijaipura Panchayat

Unlike its predecessor the Sampooran Grameen Rozgar Yojna (SGRY), the National Rural Employment Guarantee  Act (NREGA), 2005 outlines an impressive list of transparency and accountability mechanisms to ensure that administrators are answerable and responsible to people for their behaviour and actions. Such measures include the institution of grievance redressal mechanisms, proactive disclosure of information, and community monitoring mechanisms such as Social Audits.  In June this year a team of us visited Vijaipura Panchayat in Rajasthan to understand the extent to which these measures were being implemented.

Vijaipura is a seemingly innocuous Panchayat set in a dusty drought ridden landscape, with little to boast apart from a view of the petering Aravalis. The fecundity of the land being all but despoiled has little to offer to its four thousand odd residents who survive largely as subsistence farmers or livestock rears. In such a hostile environ, NREGA emerges as the sole guy, railing in the several desperate souls from experiencing another more trenchant aspect of poverty.

The distinguishing feature of Vijaipura is the long standing relationship that the people of the region share with the Mazdoor Kisan Shaki Sangathan (MKSS). Since the 1980’s residents of Vijaipura have supported and been part of the movement’s activities. In recent history with the launching of the NREGA in 2008[1], the movement has played a critical role in spreading awareness on the rights and entitlements guaranteed in the Act.

Given the important role played by the MKSS, it was assumed that at least in Vijaipura, workers would be suitably empowered to demand accountability, if their rights were violated. Contrary to such assumptions our findings from interviews with workers and officials revealed that even in Vijaipura, significantly higher awareness levels of workers did not translate into greater exercise of voice. As per the official records only two formal complaints have been registered in Vijaipura. Out of these, one complaint relating to delays in payment of wages turned out to be bogus. Other complaints were informally registered, mostly orally. Surprisingly, 88.8% of the complaints were not formally registered with the recipient authorities. In only 44% of the cases complainants were given assurances that their complaints would be resolved within the designated period.  In 55% of the cases the respondents claimed that the complaints had not been investigated. Further, only 60% of respondents asserted that their complaint had resulted in a satisfactory outcome. However even in their case, the formal complaint was as such not properly investigated, it was only after pressure was applied that the officials finally acceded to the demands of the labourers[2].

According to our preliminary analysis, it appears that reasons for low rates of complaints in Vijaipura are attributable to the nature of the systems of grievance redressal. Such a system obliged individuals to take action in legally literate ways (Goetz and Gaventa 2001: 13). Workers who were illiterate or were unaware of the procedures involved in lodging complaints were unable to access such a system. To a certain extent then, learnings from the experiences of Vijaipura prompt an assessment of the ways in which accountability and transparency measures are designed, under the Act as well as more generally in other government programmes, and whether they are structurally defined to be participatory.

 Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

 


[1] NREGA was instituted in Vijaipura during the second phase in 2008.

 

[2] These findings are based on a quantitative survey conducted with a sample size of nine respondents. The sample size was partly based on official records and partly on the basis of snow balling technique through which other complainants were identified.

Exploring the Links Between Mother’s Literacy and Child Achievement

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

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

  • Parents perception of education: Most of the parents I spoke to had enrolled their children in school – some in government schools and others in private schools. However, the dropout rate amongst girls in the village was quite high particularly amongst adolescent girls. On probing this issue further it came to light that the continued practice of child marriage in the community has had a major impact on how long girls stay in school. Most girls are married in their infancy and then sent to their marital home when they reach puberty around 14-15. This practice seems to work as a disincentive for parents to invest in their daughter’s education. When we spoke to women about the need for educating girls further, many expressed the fear that education would lead their daughters to marry outside the community.
  • Mother’s Literacy: There appeared to be a very clear link between mother’s literacy levels and the amount of time spent with the child on the child’s learning levels. Children who scored well on the reading tests I administered usually had at least one parent taking a keen interest in their studies and spending time with them after school. In most cases it was the mother. Within the Gujjar households, literacy levels amongst mothers and fathers were quite low. Most mothers were illiterate with little to no formal schooling. This seems to have a considerable impact on the degree of interaction that mothers had with their children when it came to education.
  • The mothers I spoke to expressed a lack of confidence when it came to supervising their children’s school work. However, when it came to playing number games, many mothers were able to rattle off the solutions to maths sums  quite easily. This raises interesting questions about what we understand by ‘adult literacy’.

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

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