Blog Post Year: 2018

Not The Straight & The Narrow

With a new government coming to power in the capital and National Elections round the corner; there have been a lot of discussion over issues of government. The question of why governments do not take some obvious steps to improve governance and implementation of public policy is central to this debate. This blog aims to provide an overview on the role cast out for the government in economic theory and how this can be extended and modified to understand government behaviour. In part, it also seeks to answer why social sector schemes and activities in the economic realm do not function the way they ought to.

One extends the meaning of the term government to incorporate the political class, bureaucracy and public sector enterprise. Classic public economic theory adopts the Paul Samuelson formulation where the government is seen as a socially benevolent planner,who attempts to achieve the best result for all parties involved. Intervention by the government in case of negative externalities like pollution, missing markets and for the provision of public goods justifies this perception. Given a socially benevolent government that derives its utility from working in the interest of the public and is only concerned with social welfare, intervention would perhaps lead to socially optimal outcomes. A government that maximizes welfare will intervene on issues based on poverty alleviation, access to healthcare and education. India like most governments around the world has introduced social sector schemes such as SSA, ICDS, MGNREGA and NRHM to name a few. These schemes however are riddled with systemic inefficiencies and misappropriation of funds.

Nature of the Government: An alternative view

According to Hindriks and Myles (2006), the assumption that the government has our best interests at heart providesa misleading picture of both reality and the benefits of public policy. In addition to the systemic realities that need to be understood, looking at levels of efficiency goes a long way towards analyzing government functioning. Intervention may not be efficient, especially when information is incomplete or restricted even between the different government agencies/ officials. Public choice economists are of the opinion that there is something known as government failure. There are endogenous reasons why government intervention does not achieve the desired effect.

This theory makes room for the possibility that the government is not a social welfare-maximizing, agency. Each member of the government, be it the politician, bureaucrat or mid level official, could be governed by self-interest. It may not be in their best interest to see that a scheme is implemented efficiently. The opportunity cost of being efficient may be too high. This theory purports that individuals in the government system are constrained by political and monetary considerations and there is an inherent conflict between the duties of the government and their individual personal interest.

Unlike the government, the private sector exploits the market directly to raise income and serve their self-interest. Individuals in the government mayalso want to raise their income from the market, but for them the process is not as straightforward. In fact, Niskanen (1968) suggests that individuals in the government derive their utility from non-pecuniary goods such as power, patronage and reputation. Possibly most government officials raise their incomes through patronage of some form.

Given this hypothesis, if the government has the same information set available as the unregulated economy and is managed by at least some non-benevolent officials, subject to their own set of constraints, it may fail to correct the market failure and may also introduce a new set of costs. Socially ideal interventions or outcomes may not be achieved as a result.

A non-benevolent government and corruption

This gains greater significance given the fact that corruption exists. In India alone, over the past five years we have seen scams coming to the fore; the CWG 2010, the 2G Spectrum Allocations, Coal Gate to name a few. Corruption in the system then emerges as a consequence of government officials using their power for personal gain and some players in the market endorsing it. In some ways a non-benevolent government has the potential to cause far more welfare loss than a monopolist. A government once formed has a monopoly over the force of coercion, which underlies every intervention, and such power, plausibly can be abused. With utility defined by non-pecuniary goods, their actions can impact societal outcomes negatively. The argument in consumer theory against tax collection has always been that it creates distortions (a deadweight loss) for society. Nevertheless one pays taxes in the belief that the government will use the collected revenue to provide necessary public goods and redistribute in the form of social sector schemes to reduce inequity. Welfare loss is exacerbated when the non- benevolent planner is the recipient of the taxpayers’ money. The scope for misuse is tremendous. The allocated resources move away from productive or equity based to rent seeking occupation. It adversely affects decisions in policy, which may no longer be governed by principles of equity, justice or efficiency. It is likely to be influenced by an interest group, who the officials may favour based on political considerations. 

One of the most damaging forms of corruption is predatory regulation. In layman terms predatory regulation can be described as a method in which the government deliberately lays down very cumbersome regulatory rules that entrepreneurs/ the private sector have to pay bribes to wheedle out of. This of course raises the cost of productive activity and reduces efficiency and pushes some players out of the market. Cronyism as a phenomenon is not unheard of and predatory regulation favours its rise. The problem is more acute when several government officials autonomously create obstacles at every level so that each individual can collect a separate bribe. This has the effect of stunting economic growth and development. In the realm of public policy, corruptionleads to situations where beneficiaries of schemes are handpicked and the officials handing out the benefits receive some kickbacks. Public policy thereby suffers from several lacunae and fails to provide support on a need basis for alleviation.

Laffont (2000) offers any reader of development economic theory solace by stating that corruption is an endogenous phenomenon of society and zero corruption is observed nowhere. He suggests rather ironically that since it is observed nowhere, zero corruption is perhaps not optimal. He argues that as an economy continues to develop, new and complex systems and institutions are added, which open up more avenues for corruption. His inverted U shape hypothesis is: As an economy develops, opportunities for corruption increase, peak at a point and then begin to decline as an economy continues to develop further. He acknowledges that this relationship between corruption and development is only feasible if the government is benevolent. 

One can extend this argument to include a government, which is primarily governed by self-interest. Presumably one of the goals of the political class is to get re-elected. As a country develops and more people are educated: there is a possibility that democracy will function the way it was visualized. Potentially, the people could direct the government towards making socially optimal decisions by holding them accountable for the policy decisions they take. Irrespective of the nature of the government (benevolent or governed by self interest), one could alter the constraints a government functions within to include consequences for not moving towards socially optimal schemes or results. It would be in their best interest that they put in place better deterrents for corruption even for the non-elected officials. An optimistic view hopes that then the opportunity cost of fighting corruption will decrease, given this new set of considerations.

References:

Hindriks, Jean, and Gareth D Myles. Intermediate Public Economics.The MIT Press, 2006

Niskanen, William. “The Peculiar Economics of Bureaucracy.” The American Economic Review, 1968

Laffont, J.J. ,Incentives and Political Economy, Oxford University Press,  2000

Seventeen Signatures

At first sight, this looks like a digression from my continuing tale of the tortuous way in which public expenditure happens in India, but read on.

 

Last week, a good friend of mine and I caught up to exchange notes. He had had a torrid time for a few days, he said. His son, a brilliant student in a top-notch university abroad, had suddenly taken ill and was admitted to hospital. My friend was worried sick and decided to make a dash to the US, to be with his son. Being a government officer, he had to obtain prior permission to travel abroad. When he checked up with his department, he found to his consternation that the process would take upward of three weeks.

 

 

That was when a Good Samaritan appeared on the scene; a Government Fixer. He undertook to carry the file from table to table to obtain the requisite permissions and did that is a space of three hours.

 

 

My friend told me that securing the permission to travel abroad took seventeen signatures.

 

 

Now my friend works as the head of vigilance in a large government department. He himself is in a position where he has to ensure that people follow the rules and take instant action in case they don’t. He was well aware of the fact that any slippage in obtaining the required number of signatures would lead to fingers being pointed at him.

 

 

‘But how many signatures are actually material to the decision to let you go abroad?’ I asked my friend.

 

 

‘Three’, he said, after a pause. ‘One from the Human Resources section to check whether there are any pending cases of disciplinary action, one from the Vigilance Section, to ensure that I am not involved in any enquiry and then the third, by my boss, who finally approves my travel.’

 

 

Three signatures would suffice, but seventeen are required.

 

 

The layering of decision making is a persistent reality of the government. It is something that everybody speaks of eliminating, but which is rarely eliminated. There are two reasons why such arrangements tenaciously persist. First, it enables people to avoid responsibility. In my friend’s case, it feels much nicer for his boss to have seventeen people to blame, in case something goes wrong, rather than three people. Second, it enables the continuing usefulness of government Fixers.

 

 

Nobody knows what motivates an individual to become a Government Fixer. What such an individual does is to study processes intimately, and then become an expert in how to negotiate the system. Every department has a Government Fixer, adept at chasing papers within the department. I have met many Government Fixers and as a rule, they are honest brokers, with altruistic motives and generally combine a philosophical air with extreme practicality. They provide gratuitous help and often, their only reward is the deep appreciation for the benefaction they dispense. They are unfailingly polite and non-discriminatory. They help everybody, regardless of their ethical foundation. They maintain excellent relations with people who really matter in each department; those who prepare the files and deal with their movement. They are particularly friendly with the Private Secretaries of senior officers, those, who can in the twinkling of an eye, move a file from the bottom of the pile to the top, and get a signature just as the officer heads out to his car at the end of a tough day.

 

 

Come to think of it, I owe my career progression to the good deeds of a few Government Fixers. More of that next time.

 

 

Post script: My friend’s son got better in double quick time and my friend did not have to go abroad after all. The Government Fixer’s efforts though effective, were thankfully redundant.

 

Do Private Tuitions Improve Learning Outcomes?

Despite increased attention to school based learning over the past decade by policy makers, the ASER reports have shown that the learning levels of children in the Indian education system have remained consistently low and have, in fact, declined over the past 8 years. The latest ASER report shows that only 41% of children in the age group of 6-14 can read a standard 2 text (ASER 2013). Consequently, critical and rigorous analysis of policies surrounding provision of school-based education has received much-deserved attention[1]. In the process, the role of additional educational inputs provided by households, such as private tutoring, has remained neglected.

Private tutoring is defined as fee-based tutoring that provides supplementary instruction to children in academic subjects that they study in the mainstream education system. This phenomenon is widespread across many developing countries, including India[2]. As per the latest ASER (ASER 2013), approximately one-fourth of children enrolled at elementary level (Std. 1 to 8) in rural India attend private tuitions. They pay on average, Rs. 170 per month, amounting to slightly above Rs. 2000 per annum to attend these tuitions[3].

An important question that arises in this context is: do learning outcomes of children improve if they attend tuition? Finding a difference in learning outcomes of those who attend tuition and those who don’t, and attributing it to private tuitions is misleading. Part or all of the difference in learning outcomes might be due to different characteristics of children who attend tuition. There are observable and unobservable differences between the two groups of children, which make it difficult to figure out the effect of tuition, if any[4].  To give an example, ASER data indicates that children belonging to richer households are more likely to attend tuitions. Richer households are also likely to provide more support to a child in the form of other material inputs. Data also shows that children of more educated parents are more likely to attend private tuition, but more educated parents are also in a position to help the child with studies. This makes it difficult to disentangle the effect of tuition from the effect of other material inputs, or the effect of having educated parents.

There are many techniques available to overcome this problem. Interested readers can refer to the relevant literature[5]. Choice of technique ultimately depends on availability (or not) of appropriate dataset, time and money at hand, and feasibility of data collection. We use household fixed effects (FE) technique to estimate effect of tuition on learning outcomes[6]. Household FE utilizes variation in status of children on private tuition within a household. To give an example, suppose there are two children in a household. One attends private tuition, and other doesn’t. Then, the difference in the learning outcomes of these two children would be attributed to private tuition. Note that all other observable and unobservable factors at the household or village level affecting learning outcomes are controlled for in this technique. Hence, household FE approach reduces self-selection problem substantially. But one must remember that it doesn’t eliminate the problem completely since it can’t control unobservable child-specific differences such as motivation, intelligence, dedication etc.

We use this technique due to the availability of ASER dataset for 2011, whose underlying sampling strategy is such that pre-determined number of villages from each district and pre-determined number of households from each selected village are surveyed[7]. A unique characteristic of ASER dataset is availability of learning outcomes for reading and math[8].

In order to estimate learning levels, we developed a standardized aggregate score. For this, we sum up reading and math scores for each child, and then standardize it by subtracting a child’s aggregate score from the mean aggregate score of all students, and then dividing by the standard deviation of aggregate score for that year. This standardized aggregate score has been used as the dependent variable in our empirical analysis. The key independent variable is whether the child attends tuition. Other independent variables are whether the child attends government or private school, age and gender of the child, class in which the child is studying, and finally both parents’ age and education. We have other controls at the household and village level, but they are not relevant in a household FE model.              

What do the results show? Household FE estimation results indicate that attending private tuition has 0.14σ effect on learning levels. How large is this effect? Comparing the coefficient on private tuition with that of standard/class in which child is studying or that of type of school reveal that the effect of attending tuition is as large as an additional year of education or attending a private school instead of a government school[9].  Interestingly, results also show that the effect of tuition is almost twice as high for children enrolled in government schools, compared to those who are enrolled in private schools. Further, children who attend tuition and whose parents are less educated, benefit more from these tuitions. Effect of tuition is also higher for children who stay in non-pucca households compared to those who stay in pucca households. Given that children attending government schools or having less educated parents or less well-off have lower learning levels, private tuitions clearly are benefitting disadvantaged students.   

There is significant variation in prevalence of private tuition across states. States like West Bengal, Tripura have 67-69% children at elementary level attending private tuition, while Bihar and Orissa have 40-50% children at elementary level attending private tuition. And we find that the effect of tuition is higher in these states. In Bihar and West Bengal, attending private tuition has 0.22σ effect on learning levels, while in Odisha, attending private tuition has 0.18σ effect on learning levels.     

Why do private tuitions have a positive effect on learning outcomes? One straightforward explanation is that those who attend tuition spend more time studying. Though ASER doesn’t capture time spent at tuitions, analysis of IHDS data indicates that those who attend tuition spend, on average, 9 hours in tuitions[10]. That would mean 1.5 extra school days per week. Another explanation could be remedial teaching in the sense that tutors might be making some efforts to identify the child’s weakness, and teach accordingly. And finally, as Dr. Wadhwa points out in the ASER report, the link between incentives and accountability – if someone is paying for a service, the onus is on the service provider to deliver, because the consumer can always ‘vote with her feet’.

References

Bray, Mark. 2007. The Shadow Education System: Private Tutoring and Its Implication for Planners. UNESCO: International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris

Duflo, Esther, Glennerster, Rachel, & Kremer, Michael. 2007. Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit. Handbook of Development Economics, edited by T. Paul Schultz and John A. Strauss, Vol. 4

French, Rob & Gandhi-Kingdon, Geeta. 2010. The Relative Effectiveness of Private and Government Schools in Rural India: Evidence from ASER Data. DOQSS Working Paper No. 10-03, Institute of Education, University of London

Muralidharan, Karthik. 2013. Priorities for Primary Education Policy in India’s 12th Five Year Plan. India Policy Forum 2012-13. Vol. 9, pp1-46

Wadhwa, Wilma. 2014. Private Inputs into Schooling: Bang for the Buck?, ASER 2014. Available at http://www.asercentre.org/Keywords/p/205.html.

[1] See Muralidharan (2013).

[2] See Bray (2007).

[3] There are Statewise variations. For details, see Wadhwa (2014).

[4] This is referred to as ‘self-selection’ problem in empirical economics.

[5] Duflo et al. (2007).      

[6] Approach is similar to French & Gandhi-Kingdon (2010)

[7] We perform same analysis using ASER 2012 data as well. Since results are fairly similar, we report findings obtained from using ASER 2011 only.

[8] Details can be found in any ASER report available on ASER website.

[9] Baseline is a child in government school not attending private tuition.

[10] IHDS stands for India Human Development Survey. Details can be found here: http://ihds.umd.edu/

Highlights from the Interim Budget 2014-15

This document highlights the key features of the interim budget 2014-15 that was released on 17th February, 2014.

The final budget will be released post elections in July 2014. Please keep track of the analysis of the final budget on the AI website. Last year’s briefs are available here.

  • Overview
  • In 2013-14 there has been lower than expected growth which has consequently led to lower than estimated revenues. The country will not be able to spend the budgeted plan expenditure. The non plan expenditure will exceed the budget by a marginal amount. Thus, no significant change in the plan and non-plan expenditures for 2014-15. Total plan expenditure of the government for 2014-15 is  5,55,322 cores; Non-plan expenditure 12,07,892 crores.
  • The overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth is estimated at 4.9 percent for the year 2013-14 The Fiscal deficit is 4.6 percent of the GDP.
  • The Revenue deficit is at 3.3 percent.
  • Core inflation is 3 percent and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) inflation is 5.05 percent.
  • Food inflation though still high has reduced from 13.6 percent  to 6.2 percent in the last one year
  • Report Card: 10 years ago and now

The table below highlights some of the main changes in the past 10 years.

10 years ago 2013-14 BE
Food grain production 213 million tonnes 263 million tonnes
Rural roads under PMGSY (in km) 51,511 kms 389,578 kms
Education spending  10145 crores  79451 crores
Health spending  7248 crores  36322 crores

 

  • Social Sector Initiatives

The plan allocation for some key ministries, schemes and sub-plans is as follows:

Name of Ministry / Sub-plan Allocation in   crores
Ministry of Minority Affairs 3,711
Ministry of Tribal Affairs 4,379
Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment 6,000
Ministry of Panchayati Raj 7,000
Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation 15,260
Ministry of Women and Child Development 21,000
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 33,725
Ministry of Human Resource Development 67,398
Ministry of Rural Development 82,202
Scheduled Caste Sub-plan 48,638
Scheduled Tribe Sub-plan 30,726
Gender Budget 97,533
Child Budget 81,024
Food Subsidy 115,000
  • The North East states, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have been provided with an additional central assistance of  1200 crores.
  • New initiatives
  • An allocation of   444.59 crores has been made towards marketing minor forest produce.
  • A scheme to promote community radio stations has been allocated  100 crores.
  •   200 crores have been allocated to promote entrepreneurship and provide concessional finance among the scheduled caste (SCs). This will be done through Industrial Finance Corporation of India (IFCI) who will set up a Venture Capital fund for SCs.
  • For Skill Development, the National Skill Certification and Monetary Reward Scheme has been launched in August 2013. 168,043 youth have been enrolled and 46 percent of them have completed their training
  • Finance Sector
  • Proposal to provide  11,200 crores for capital infusion in public sector banks.
  • The Bhartiya Mahila bank has been inaugurated. A corpus of 8000 crores has been provided for housing ( 2000 crores for Urban Housing Fund and  6000 crores for Rural Housing fund).
  • Banks are expected to exceed the target of  700000 crores of agricultural credit.
  • The SHG network has grown from 9,71,182 women being linked to banks to 41,16,000 women in the last decade.
  • Important Legislations passed
  • 12.8 lakhs land titles covering 18.80 lakh hectare were distributed under the Scheduled Tribes and Other traditional Forest Dwellers Act
  • New companies Act passed to replace a law of 1956.
  • The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act passed in 2009.
  • National Food Security Act was passed.
  • The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Act (PFRDA) was passed which establishes a new pension system

A Night in the Life of a Delhi Government Hospital

Male, mid-thirties, native of Uttarakhand. Upper left arm disfigured due to incorrect vaccination received in childhood. No alcohol or narcotic intake. Working in Delhi since mid-1990s: first as a cycle-rickshaw driver, then construction labour, and finally, since he is growing weaker due to untreated tuberculosis (TB), as a domestic help. Picked up at approximately 8:00pm in a park in Roshan Pura, Old Delhi.

Male, late-thirties, native of Bihar. No visible distinguishing marks. No alcohol or narcotic intake. Working in Delhi since late-1980s as a sewer cleaner. Picked up at approximately 8:15pm as he walked from Old Delhi to Karol Bagh.

The men described above were two homeless men, or “vagabonds” in the Delhi Police’s terminology, whom I encountered on a late Friday night in the Casualty (Emergency Room) of a large government hospital in Delhi. I was there out of curiosity to see what happens during a regular night shift in the Casualty ward of a government hospital. They were part of a group of approximately fifteen men rounded up by the police, as Delhi streets were being swept clean of these vagabonds in an effort to reduce security threats ahead of Republic Day.

I had arrived shortly after the night shift had started. I didn’t have a set agenda, and had arrived with a vague purpose of trying to understand who exactly availed the health services provided at a government hospital, of observing the quality of care, and contextualizing the infrastructural, human resource, and budgetary constraints one hears of in such hospitals.

The Casualty ward was a hub of activity at that hour. Patients ranged from a young man with a rat bite, to a group of teenagers who had got into a street fight; from a young girl with a deep knife wound on her arm, inflicted by her raging adopted brother, to a small baby who was dead on arrival. To take care of all of these patients, there were two resident doctors, two interns, three nurses and a couple of ward boys. A policeman was also present to facilitate with the medico-legal cases (MLC), such as the group of vagabonds and the girl hurt by her brother.

A feisty young resident doctor was in charge, and was mostly busy with the vast amount of paperwork involved for each MLC.  However, to the extent that she could, she also took time to oversee how the interns were examining the patients, asking the interns questions about symptoms and mentoring them through the procedures. She had a great bedside manner: kind and empathetic to all patients she examined, but completely assertive with the rougher patients when she needed to show who was in charge. Through it all, she kept up a friendly banter with her fellow doctors.

As the night wore on, the commitment and leadership from this handful of doctors became apparent. However, there was a clear lack of human resources and it was not enough to deal with other systemic issues that led to the ill health of the homeless and poor migrants in the city. As the migrant from Uttarakhand recounted his tale, he mentioned that he was suffering from TB but had been unable to complete his treatment. Upon hearing this, the accompanying policeman’s expression visibly changed from a “been-there, heard-it-all-before” look, to one that was partly sheepish and partly showed concern. To be denied from taking a full 8-month treatment for TB just because one doesn’t have a “witness” or a caretaker to help deal with the side-effects of the medicine, was news not only to me, but also to the policeman. The police were just following through on orders from above and he tried to reassure me that all the men would be given a comfortable place to stay with a warm blanket. However, there is no way to determine the veracity of that statement or the true nature of their treatment in whatever facility they would have been taken to from the hospital.

As Delhi’s population multiplies and puts pressure on its resources, the need for streamlining and strengthening social protection and welfare schemes for the most vulnerable grows more acute. My experience at the Casualty ward highlighted for me the need to improve on three key aspects: a) a separate administrative wing in Casualty for MLCs; b) shelters for the homeless, and c) access to better health services for poor and mobile populations.

Concerning the first, it was apparent that the Casualty doctors were making the best of the facilities and staff at hand to provide medical care. The doctors shared that certain medicines allotted to the ward did not reach in them in the required numbers and, despite their complaints, no action had ever been taken. More than anything, however, the sheer amount of time spent by the resident doctors in filling out the paperwork associated with MLCs was staggering. One policeman to assist in this process was not enough, and resulted in several patients requiring critical care having to wait for the paperwork to finish. To ease the pressures on the resident doctors, it could be useful to have a separate team of junior doctors or administrative staff that take care of MLCs specifically.

Second, the development and maintenance of night shelters around the city is one of the mandates of the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB). According to DUISB’s web site, at present there are 231 night shelters of various kinds in Delhi (see Table 1 below). There are no concrete figures for number of homeless people in Delhi (it ranges anywhere from 55,000 to 100,000 as a lower estimate) and the High Court has recently reprimanded and asked the DUISB to submit its long- and short-term policies for the homeless in March. If the DUISB puts more energy into providing an adequate number of shelters, perhaps the the susceptibility of these vagabonds to be out in the streets posing a threat could reduce.

Table 1: Night Shelters in Delhi

Type of Night Shelter Number
Permanent 84
Porta Cabin 98
Tent 22
Voluntary 27
Total 231

Source: DSUIB (2014). http://delhishelterboard.in/main/?page_id=3346

Finally, schemes such as the Rashtriya Swasthya Beema Yojana (RBSY), or the National Health Insurance Programme, which target Below Poverty Line (BPL) households across the country, need to take into account that individuals and families on the move may not always have the required documentary proofs of identity and residence to avail of such basic entitlements. As the examples cited above show, BPL migrants are more vulnerable to occupational health hazards, poor living conditions, and poor access to quality medical services. Thus, it becomes imperative to reflect upon how to include such populations while drafting social protection policies and programmes. The RSBY provides Rs 30,000 annual insurance coverage per BPL household. Provided with smartcards, beneficiaries can avail of cashless treatment upon presentation of the cards at public and private hospitals. However, several studies show that this innovation has yet to take off on the ground and that utilisation rates among the enrolled are actually quite low (see here, here, and here).

There are a number of organisations around the country, such as the Aajeevika Bureau, which have opened resource centres for migrants. These centres provide information on skill development, employment, health and housing services, as well as on legal aspects related to their rights and entitlements. At present, health services for migrants at these centres are not prioritised. Establishing more resource centres along these lines, with a greater focus on health, would go a long way in minimising “security threats” posed by the vagabonds I encountered that night.

Notes from the field: School Management Committees – Somebody Else’s Problem Field

“The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler, more effective (in making something properly invisible) … This is because it relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Three years ago, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act[1] placed significant responsibilities on elected parents of students, representatives from the school staff (including the headmaster) and the community when they created School Management Committees[2] (SMCs) in every government school.

These committees were and continue to be created with the intention of devolving school-level planning, management, and expenditure of grants to the community level. As part of their responsibilities, each year SMCs create a School Development Plan (SDP) to guide school level expenditure. This plan also becomes the basis on which district and state administrations plan for elementary education that year.

However, anecdotes from the field suggest that SMCs are not functioning according to the ideals met in the RTE Act. Conversations with headmasters and the SSA administration have revealed that one of the biggest problems is that parents are not willing to participate in school level planning. SMC members do not attend trainings held by the SSA administration, are often absent from meetings in the school and are unwilling to participate in creating SDPs. This post is an attempt to understand some of the problems that make SMCs unwilling to participate in the school level planning process, based on recent field-visits to Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Few incentives to plan

During our last visit to Rajasthan, with a journalist who wanted to learn more about the PAISA study, a headmaster told us that the SDP had not helped them get the facilities they needed for the school. The headmaster had been repeatedly recording requests in the SDP to raise the level of the school’s playground to match that of the road that ran outside. For the last two years, the requests were ignored; and, like clockwork, the rains came and flooded the school’s premises every year, making it hard for students and teachers to get to their classrooms. When asked what he could do about it, the headmaster said that he would put the request in their Plan again the next year, but try first to ask the Panchayat for help.

Few incentives to provide feedback

Minutes later, the SMC President who was seated in the same room, and had been intently listening to our conversation, was asked what he thought of the SMCs ability to make a difference. At that moment, he looked nervously at the headmaster and assured us that things were going rather well; that the SMC members met regularly and worked towards  a sound SDP, based on which the school’s requests were met. Considering the school’s playground was a mud track several inches lower than the concrete road that ran outside, it became apparent that the headmaster was telling us the truth about SDP. The SMC president on the other hand, gave us a version of reality that was easier to digest – that the ideals enshrined in the Act have been met. However, in a situation like this one, unless there is an incentive to evaluate and verify conflicting stories on the ground, it is hard to assess what the truth really is.

Few incentives to evaluate

In Himachal Pradesh, a State-level education official told to us that SDPs were neither evaluated nor collated at the State-level. Moreover, a district-level official admitted that SMCs’ plans rarely find their way past the block office to the district office. The reason was that the State and district administration did not have the capacity or the need to take into consideration the nuances in the SDP. To meet the needs of a centralised planning system, which allocated resources based on aggregated reports, the State needed to use DISE[3] data, which neither prioritises the urgent needs of the schools, nor offers the granularity that SDPs promise. The official was aware that if the Plans continued to be overlooked, it would eventually dissuade community members from planning for the school altogether, but did not know what he could do about it at present.

Perhaps the first step to incentivise SMCs to participate in school-level planning is to admit that not all SMCs have been able to make plans, and that not all of these plans have been able to reflect the needs of the schools. Moreover, even when plans have reflected the needs of the school, it has been difficult for local-level administrations to incorporate the school’s plans into a rigid planning system. However, recording feedback from all the levels in the administration and the community is harder to do than tracking the lacunae in infrastructure or teaching staff at the school level.

When presented with the challenge of reporting progress on meeting policy directives, SMCs should be able to report to Block Officials on the extent to which they are prepared or willing to work with a school. Blocks should be able to report to Districts which of their schools need more support or training.  Districts should be able to tell the State which blocks require greater financial and physical assistance, and finally, the State can decide with the Centre if they truly are closer to the ideals enshrined in the RTE Act.

Unless there is an incentive to report on the nuances of community participation (or lack thereof) SMCs will soon slip under, what Douglas Adams effectively called, ‘The Somebody Else’s Problem field.’

 

[1] This link leads to the RTE Act http://mhrd.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/rte.pdf

[2] This leads to a blog post that provides more information about SMCs, their functions and powers: http://www.accountabilityindia.in/accountabilityblog/2510-empowering-schools-and-school-management and this leads to State specific rules on SMCs: http://mhrd.gov.in/smc

[3] District Information System for Education (DISE) is a computerised management information system, with the school as the unit of data collection. Every year, headmasters fill in a standardised format that feeds into the DISE database available here: http://dise.in/index.htm

Strengthening SMC to make SDP– Should be an Empowering Process

I had recently attended two training programmes on Strengthening the School Management Committee[1] (SMC) to make an effective School Development Plan. One of it was at the state level, wherein all the District Education Officers of the state attended and the other was at block level, where in block level extension officers for education including some head masters and cluster coordinators were present.  The major objective of this program was to train the officers to support SMC members with respect to access, equity, quality and community participation, while SMCs develop the School Development Plan (SDP). All of them are directed towards empowering individuals in the management of school related activities.

The aim of this blog is to unravel whether state mechanisms are serious in moving towards empowering SMC members, or whether it is merely a box-checking endeavor to gather numbers, using experiences and reflections from this training programme.

At the outset, I was really impressed with the detailed module[2]  on how to prepare School Development Plan (SDP)[3] the state has prepared. The module for the training programme had a detailed schedule, with the exact time the trainer required for each topic. In both the training programme that I attended, I found that the trainers have followed the module fully. However, while they were instructing the officers on what they need to do, they failed to share or explain, how to do it – the process/methodology of doing it. In other words, the trainer did not focus on the information which could potentially be the vehicle to empower and conscientize the SMC members and the community at large. This is the concern that I want to raise among the policy makers for critical debate on the process of strengthening SMC at the community level.

The process of training, that I witnessed, was like the “banking” approach to education — a metaphor used by Paulo Freire[4] that suggests trainees are considered empty bank accounts that should remain open to deposits made by the trainers. This “banking” approach will result in the dehumanization of both the trainees and the trainers. In addition, it will stimulate oppressive attitudes and practices in society. Hence the SMC members will never take the role as envisaged in RTE Act.

As per the module, the SMC members need to map down the history of the school, make a social and resource mapping, as well as draw out different types of Venn diagram for mapping out the distance of different villages from where the children come to that particular school, etc. I feel that this process, is actually a Participatory Learning and Action (PLA)[5] methodology. These tools allow parents to know more about the school and can be an empowering process for the community members. They can really own the school and feel for it. It can be the vehicle that helps the SMC members by allowing them to be aware of the strengths as well as the areas of improvements in their school while also mapping out different ways to make it more resourceful.

For example, if during SMC meetings, while documenting the history of the school, the people will come to know that actually this school was made due to someone’s contribution. This could motivate someone else in the village or the whole village to ponder over these things and also follow the same benevolent act in another way for the school. Thus, this method of collecting information through stories can lead to a domino effect of motivating other community members to not just start a thought-process on how to improve the schooling system in their community, but also try to emulate others who have made an impact.

The whole process of training the SMC members should be a means of consciously shaping them and the society for making a SMART[6] SDP. This particular philosophy, I feel, is missing from the whole process of training of the officers and thus, is not seen in the training of the SMC members.. I am really skeptical of the ability of such a training process to empower the community and SMC members.

The above reflection also helps us to look into two key areas for critical discussion:  

a)      The process of making the SDP using participatory techniques will ‘break the silence’ of the poor and disadvantaged sections, recognize the value of popular collective knowledge and wisdom as well as legitimize the production of knowledge by the people themselves.

b)      The process of strengthening SMC training might  fail to highlight the key techniques in adult training for learning such as linking learning to problems, linking learning to people’s goals and visions, and giving SMC members  control over decisions on training.

The government officials need to understand that the School Management Committee (SMC) is another community based institutions (CBO) which, if strengthened and empowered well, with conscious effort, can really make many of their interventions effective at the grassroots level. The whole initiative of decentralization of power at the school level can be really strengthened. Above all the SMCs have a legal validity through the RTE Act 2009. It can be another marvelous initiative to move a step forward in terms of delegation of power and resources from the upper level to the lowest level.

The government officials are currently looking at the process of formation and strengthening of SMC as a task, like any other task, and leaving a trail of data, without really looking at the human aspect of it. 

The envisaged dream of the RTE Act with regard to SMC’s functioning can only be achieved, if and only if the “Community” is conscientised. The active participation of its members in planning of SDP formation and quality monitoring is a great challenge which can be treated as an opportunity also. The RTE Act in a specific way wants to make the parents an important stakeholder in the decision-making process with an objective to make teachers and the principal more accountable for education delivery. This is envisaged for better learning outcomes of students. Thus the effort of integrating teacher and community through SMC can lead to better education system with decentralized planning and management.

The PAISA report has shown us that planning and allocation of funds as well as the timing of releasing funds and their actual receipts in schools are so problematic that whether the SDP will get the required funds at the right time is a big question. This is a persistent problem which needs a lot of bureaucratic support along with legislative advocacy for mending this problem. This process is continuous and taking place slowly but steadily. If the SDP does not get implemented due to delay of funds, then people could get de-motivated and slowly withdraw from the whole process. It is very important that SMC members are empowered to understand the constraints and take steps accordingly. Thus the whole training process should be liberating process to view things critically for better Redressal. Otherwise, I fear that with the existing training process, the SDP formation and implementation will be rhetoric bureaucratic exercise of just filling data and fulfilling the required norms without bringing any change in the community managed decision making process in education.

Through this blog, I would like my readers think about the following questions and initiate a discussion, “Whether the present Government policy and administrative structure/s provide a favorable environment for SMC to be conscientious and function effectively to achieve the goal as penned down in RTE Act?”

At the end, I feel that the soft component (Capacity Building) of the implementation of RTE cannot be ignored or taken for granted if we really want to see RTE Act moving out from the framework of implementation of schemes to enforcement of rights.

 

[1] To make the education system more effective and to encourage participation of parents in the decision process, a School Management Committee (SMC) will be formed in every school under the Right to Education (RTE) Act. As per the RTE Act, School Management Committee (SMC) should perform the following functions like, Monitor the working of the school; prepare and recommend school development plan, monitor the utilization of the grants received from the appropriate government or local authority or any other source, perform such functions as may be prescribed.

[2] http://www.mpsp.maharashtra.gov.in/site/Pdf/Forms/SDPform.pdf).

[3] http://righttoeducation.in/what-school-development-plan-smcs-will-prepare

[4] http://www.pedagogyoftheoppressed.com/author/

[5] https://faculty.washington.edu/markh/TC498/Readings/PRA_Manual.pdf

[6] SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound

Through the Looking Glass

In all the debates about rights, social sector schemes and pushing towards ensuring quality services to citizens, there is but mere passing mention about the importance of performance management and administrative reforms over and above the implementation failure of public services[1].  This blog looks at the growing emphasis on the features of the social sector schemes, and overlooking the other side of the (administrative) coin which looks at the management style and employer-employee relations in a public sector context. This has been discussed by Lant Pritchett[2]  in the context of ‘State Capability Trap’ in reference to governance & public sector reform.

This view is definitely not new, and some efforts have been made towards inching closer to more output-based large scale performance management tools. While there are presently vertical lines of appraisal systems in place across departments and ministries, and supervisory checks are present on paper for those implementing schemes at a local level (see blogs on the process in the education sector by my colleagues), as well as citizen-led monitoring through social audits for large schemes like the MGNREGA, there are serious gaps when it comes to understanding performance at a macro level. From the World Development Report 1997, “The State in a Changing World”[3] we see a growing interest in the significant role that formal and informal institutions played, and the need for an overarching Public Sector Reform agenda that focused on ‘managerial capacities, developing positive organisational cultures, and providing incentives for performance both at individual and organisational level’. India added this to their agenda with the UPA government setting up the 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) in 2005, which brought out 15 key recommendation reports over a period of 5 years. This was followed by the Public Services Bill in 2007 which reviewed and set up a Management System for Public Service.

A colleague at AI a few years ago had written a blog about the introduction of the PMES or the ‘Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System’ in 2009 (see here). Since then, quite a few evaluation reports have been published . So what is the PMES? According to the Administrative Reforms Commissions 10th Report in 2011, “Performance management is the systematic process by which the organization involves its employees, as individuals and members of a group, in improving organizational effectiveness in the accomplishment of organizational mission and goals”[4]. A subset of performance measurement, which looks at the inputs, goals, impact and effectiveness defined by the departments themselves  of a particular service/scheme, performance management looks at the planning, reviewing and evaluating the performance of individuals and departments, looking towards developing capacity (skill building) and promoting innovation for a result-oriented work process. A visual of what this looks like is given below

 

(Source: Adapted from Second Administrative Reforms Commission’s Tenth Report, 2008)

 

This is preceded by the processes that Ministries and Departments engage in, when structuring projects. According to the Guidelines for the Results Based Document (RFD), each Department (with consultations with their officers) sends in the RFD to the Ministry by February end, specifying their goals and success indicators for the year. After being reviewed by an Ad- Hoc Task Force (ATF) (which consists of domain experts, former Secretaries to the Government of India and retired Corporate Heads) this document, and the Budget, is approved/edited by March every year by the Cabinet Secretariat. This is followed by a review of the document by the High Power Committee- HPC (which consists of the Cabinet Secretary, Finance Secretary and other senior officials)- and submission of the report to the Prime Minister. The Departments/Ministries have to send in the year-end evaluation by May of the following year- with reviews again by the ATF and the HPC.

The strength of forming such a system is the recognition that there is a need for assessing performance of individuals in a system, done so in relation to the targets prepared at the beginning and in sync with goals of the department and not limited to the individual’s capacity. This type of review existed previously only for IAS officers (by the Department of Personnel & Training), but was not done for state level officials until recently. Taking a few pointers from the Appraisal format that currently exists by the Ministry of Personnel, the PMES allows for a concrete and systematic assessment of officials and their work in a standardized way and makes each Department review (and hopefully revise) their own specific structure of appraisals. A performance system, then, aims to removes any vague criteria of ‘good or bad’ for promotion, and moves towards improving motivation and creating an incentive based rating system that places the individual in a larger context of the organisation. This is backed by creating avenues for developing interests and aligning potential of an officer to what they will be doing in the future.

While these all are a welcome change, there are, as with every new system, challenges they need to overcome. At a broader level, most reforms that take an administrative avatar, have quite frankly, failed to take off, or be implemented. Even the recommendations that were offered by the ARC have only been taken up by a handful of States (though almost all of them were accepted by the Cabinet committee)- and it is unclear whether this was done with intentions for actual implementation or as a box-checking task. Problems such as pre-decided budgetary allocation, inflexible program structure or even the lack of a conducive work environment can hamper a government official’s performance.  

This, in addition to blurred reporting structures (as is seen in most projects that have an inter-department characteristic or being handled by multiple agencies) can create hurdles for those who are finally held accountable for inaction. The website, where a few reports are available, does not showcase any documents on action taken if an official has fared poorly in the performance rating, or what incentive-schemes were developed, or the type of innovations that may have led to promotions. Putting this out in the public domain could be the start of increasing transparency in this area.

Recent debates emphasise the challenges that are seen with outputs (or lack thereof) of particular schemes, plagued with officials that do not implement well, usurp public resources and are inefficient. What has not gained much traction in these debates is the point of internal public sector reforms that has tried to go hand in hand with more schemes and more public services offered. If we look at the sheer number of schemes that exist in this country, and the number of officials on the ground and the incentives that currently exist, we can assess the gargantuan task that lies ahead. While steps have been taken to bring attention to this, the lack of enthusiasm in terms of the uptake of previous recommendations is telling of the future course of action.

[1] Performance of social sector schemes, 2014. http://finmin.nic.in/WorkingPaper/Performance_MSSSchemes.pdf

[2] ‘Capability Trap: The Mechanisms of Persistant Implementation Failure’ http://www.cgdev.org/publication/capability-traps-mechanisms-persistent-implementation-failure-working-paper-234

[3] World Bank. World Development Report 1997. http://wdronline.worldbank.org/worldbank/a/c.html/world_development_report_1997/abstract/WB.0-1952-1114-6.abstract

[4] Government of India. Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances. ‘Performance Management in Government’ http://indiagovernance.gov.in/files/performance-management.pdf

Highlights from the CAG Performance Audit of MGNREGA

Launched in 2005-06, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is Government of India’s most expensive flagship scheme costing Rs. 192322.33 crores since its launch[1].However, despite 7 years of operation, the latest performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)[2] – points to the same implementation inefficiencies consistent with most social sector programmes[3].

Some of the findings of the CAG are highlighted below:

Inefficient Planning

According to the MGNREGA guidelines, the responsibility for the implementation of the scheme and the primary unit of planning is the Gram Panchayat (GP). Annual plans made by the GP, are consolidated first at the block and then at the district level to prepare the district plan/labour budgets. These labour budgets are an important basis for estimating employment to be generated and also form the basis of fund allocation to states/UTs. The CAG audit however found a number of inefficiencies with this planning process. These included:

  • In 1201 GPs (31% of the sampled GPs) across 11 states, annual plans at the GP level were either not prepared or prepared in an incomplete manner. Interestingly, in 3 states, including Andhra Pradesh – none of the sampled GPs had made annual plans.
  • District Labour budgets were not prepared in 49 districts (26% of sampled districts).
  • Even when plans were made – they did not always have the requisite information. In 58 districts (31%) – the projected employment generation wasn’t included. Many plans also did not include the shelf of works or list of assets to be built.
  • The CAG also noted significant delays at every level in the submission of the annual plans. Delays were highest at the GP level –difference between the target date of submission to the block and actual submission ranged from 1 month to as high as 21 months!

Shortfall and Delays in Execution of Works

The effectiveness of the planning has to be measured against the actual execution.

  • The audit report observed large variations in some states between planned employment generations (as per the labour budget) and actual employment generated. ( See Table 1 for more details)

Table 1: Shortfall between actual employment generated and projections in the labour budget

S. No.

State/UT

Range of shortfall
1. 

Bihar

27% – 98%
2. 

Gujarat

2% – 62%
3. 

Jharkhand

40%-59%
4. 

Madhya Pradesh

27%-94%
5. 

Maharashtra

30%-100%
6. 

Rajasthan

13%-50%
7. 

Tamil Nadu

17%-59%

Source: Table 5 of the report

  • Moreover, in 14 states and 1 UT , 129.22 lakh works amounting to Rs. 126,961.11 crore were approved in the annual plans but only 38.65 lakh works ( 30% of planned works) amounting to Rs. 27,792.13 crore were completed during the audit period indicating significant inefficiencies in implementation of annual plans. In fact, in 25 sampled districts, across 9 states – 4,907 works amounting to Rs. 158.83 crores was executed outside the annual plans

Human Resource Shortfall and Capacity

The MGNREGA guidelines envisage Gram Rozgar Sahayaks (GRS) appointed at the village level to assist the GP in the implementation of the scheme. These GRS are responsible for maintaining all documents, overseeing the process of registration, distribution of job cards, allocation of works, payment of wages and ensuring monitoring of the scheme through social audits.

  • The audit report found widespread shortages in GRS posts across 9 states ranging from 20% in Uttar Pradesh to as high as 93% in Punjab. In 4 states including Tamil Nadu and Kerala no dedicated GRS had been appointed.
  • Further, funds for training personnel were highly underutilised in many states. In Uttar Pradesh for instance, 74% of funds for training in 2010-11 had not been utilised.

Delays, shortfall in release of funds

As with other schemes[4], the last few years has seen an increasing gap between allocations made for MGNREGA and the actual release of funds. (See table 2 for more details)

Table 2: Difference between Allocations (BE) and Actual Release of Funds

 

Allocation (Budget Estimates (BE))

Actual Release

2007-08

12000

12661.22

2008-09

16000

30000.19

2009-10

39100

39539.38

2010-11

40100

35841.49

2011-12

40000

29215.05

Source: Chart 8 of the report

Funds for MGNREGA are to be released in two instalments by GOI. The first tranche is based on the percentage of persondays projected for the first six months of the year in the labour budget (not exceeding 50% of the total approved budget). The second instalment is released only after utilising 60% of the previous funds released and, submission of Utilization Certificates (UCs) of the previous years. The audit however observed instances of:-

  • Release of an additional 10% of approved allocations by GOI in some states. Further, excess funds of Rs. 2374.86 crores were released to six states either due to wrong calculations or without taking into account balances available in these states. Further, in 2010-11, GOI released Rs. 6,733.25 crores to states without taking into account the unspent balances of Rs. 10,104.71 crores as on 31st March 2010. Similarly, in 2011-12, GOI released Rs. 2,440 crores to four states without taking into account unspent balances amounting to Rs. 3758.91 crores.
  • Funds (amounting to Rs. 4072.99 crores) were also released by GOI for the next financial year in March of the previous year.
  • With respect to state shares, the audit found instances of shortfall in release of state share amounting to Rs. 456.55 crores between 2007 and 2012. In a number of instances, delays in the release of state share ranged from only 3 days to as high as 354 days.  (See annex 5E of the report for more details).

 

Specific problems related to wages and MGNREGA works

Below are some of the problems specific to the implementation of MGNREGA.

  • Job cards were not issued to 12,455 households in six states. Photographs on 4.33 lakh job cards (an important identifier against fraud and misrepresentation) were missing in 7 states. Non-payment or under payment of wages of Rs. 36.97 crores was noticed in 14 states. In 55 GPs, payment was made in cash violating the guidelines which prescribes payment through banks or post offices. Other issues included, suspected misappropriation of wages through engagement of ghost works, incomplete or improperly filled “muster rolls” non-payment of unemployment allowance, delays in receipt of wages, amongst others
  • While the guidelines prescribe that the material cost should not exceed 40% of the total work cost, in 12 states and 1 UT, the material cost was seen to be exceeding the prescribed level by Rs. 1,594.37 crores.
  • Moreover, 1,02,100 inadmissible works amounting to Rs. 2,252,43 crores were undertaken. A significant number of works (amounting to Rs. 4070.76 crores) have also remained incomplete for a long time.

Record Keeping and Monitoring

  • The audit found poor record maintenance at not just the GP level but also at the block and district levels. Deficiencies relating to both non-maintenance and/or incorrect maintenance of prescribed basic records were noticed in 18%-54% of all tested GPs.
  • While rules require state governments to identify or establish independent social audit units to facilitate the process of conducting regular social audits – in 10 states and 4 UTs, these units had not been constituted. Moreover, in 11 states, significantly fewer social audits had been conducted than as prescribed by the norms.
  • Further, monitoring at all levels (including central level) was found to be unsatisfactory.

Beneficiary Analysis

Finally, the audit report also analysed the correlation between rural poverty and the average number of households provided employment during 2009-10 till 2011-12. While at an aggregate level, the report found that there appears to be a correlation between poverty and employment given under MGNREGS, there were some notable exceptions. Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh which together accounted for 46% of the rural poor[5] utilised only 20% of GOI funds.  In contrast, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal utilised more funds as compared to their poverty levels.

The report further sampled 38,376 beneficiaries across 27 states to assess their perception, awareness and experiences with the scheme. The main highlights from this survey are given below:-

  • While at an all India level the total women beneficiaries is 33% (as per the norm), this ratio was less than 1/5th in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir and Mizoram.
  • On average about 72% of beneficiaries were aware of the number of days of employment to which they were entitled. Awareness levels were highest in some of the smaller states/UTs – Kerala, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura and Pondicherry. In contrast, it was 28% in Gujarat, 43% in Odisha, 52% in Bihar and 57% in Maharashtra.
  • Around 70% of respondents were aware of the timeliness within which wages are to be paid.
  • Only half of the interviewed beneficiaries were aware of the prescribed quantum of work which entitled them to full wage payment. Similarly only around 56% were aware of the manner of wage calculations.
  • A positive finding was that on average work was provided after 9 days of the job request (the guidelines say within 15 days of job application). However 99% of beneficiaries who were not provided work within 15 days were not paid the unemployment allowance.
  • 78% of beneficiaries reported that muster rolls were maintained at the work site and attendance was marked on it.
  • 65% reported that they received wages within 15 days, 16% within 1 month, 11 % between 1-2 months, 4% within 2-3 months and 2% reported delays of more than 2 months.
  • A significant number of cash payments were reported in Tamil Nadu (98%), Arunachal Pradesh (73%) and Meghalaya (70%).

 

For more details please see:

http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/Our_Products/Audit_Report/Government_Wise/union_audit/recent_reports/union_performance/2013/Civil/Report_6/Report_6.html

[1] The figure is the actual expenditure from 2006-07 till 31/12/2012. Calculated from: Ministry of Rural Development, MGNREGA, Report to the People, February 2013. Available online at: http://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/WriteReaddata/circulars/Report_to_the_people_English2013.pdf

[2] The audit covers the period from April 2007 to April 2013 and across 182 districts, 458 blocks and 3848 Gram Panchayats across 28 states and 4 Union Territories. The audit is available online at:http://saiindia.gov.in/english/home/Our_Products/Audit_Report/Government_Wise/union_audit/recent_reports/union_performance/2013/Civil/Report_6/Report_6.html

[3] For more details on performance of social sector schemes, please see Budget Briefs. Available at: http://www.accountabilityindia.in/expenditure_track

[4] For instance, in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, out of the total approved plans (GOI and state) of Rs. 61.722 crores, only 69% was released.

[5] Based on poverty estimates by the Planning Commission

How is Janani Suraksha Yojana performing in backward districts of India? – Part 2

As mentioned previously, this blog post discusses the findings from the PAHELI survey with respect to the JSY.

1. Institutional and home deliveries

Out of 3178 deliveries, 48% deliveries took place in government facilities, 9.5% in private facilities, and 42.5% deliveries took place at home (table 1A)[1]. The proportion of deliveries in government facilities is highest in Sundargarh and Rajgarh, followed by Udaipur. Korba, Gumla and Hardoi perform the worst.

There has been a substantial decline in the proportion of home deliveries as compared to District Level Household Survey (DLHS) III, which is the latest available household-level data on maternal health[2]. Yet, the proportion remains quite high.

2. Receipt of cash benefits

As per the scheme guidelines, all women delivering in government medical facilities are entitled to the monetary incentives. However, only women from BPL families can avail of the benefits in case of deliveries in accredited private facilities or at home in the presence of skilled personnel.

The data indicates that 94.5% of women delivering in government facilities receive monetary compensation. In fact, this proportion is above 90% in all eight districts, with Udaipur (98%) and Sundargarh (97.5%) performing the best (table 1A). But only 11% of women on average delivering at home report receiving money. Rajgarh (31%) and Sundargarh (25%) have the highest proportion of women getting benefits after a home delivery.

3. Location of receipt of benefit in case of deliveries in government facilities

Payment to JSY beneficiaries should be paid at the institution itself. As per our data, 95% of the beneficiaries report that payment was indeed made at the institution (table 1B). With the exception of Sundargarh, the proportion is more than 91% in rest of the districts.

4. Mode of Payment

As per the JSY guidelines, payment is to be given through account payee cheques. 86% of the beneficiaries delivering in government facilities report receiving payment through cheques (table 1B). The proportion was highest in Hardoi (97%) and lowest in Bhilwara (76%). The proportion of beneficiaries receiving payment through cheques was lower in the case of private facilities (72%) and even lower (35%) in the case of home deliveries.

5. Payment in Installments

JSY guidelines explicitly say that the payment to the beneficiary should be made in one installment. The data indicates that in the case of deliveries in government facilities, 89% of the JSY beneficiaries received payment in one installment (table 1B). This proportion varies from 96% of beneficiaries in Sundargarh to 79% in Gumla.

6. Amount Received

Women delivering in government medical facilities receive payments as per the norm, an average of Rs. 1451, while the median amount is Rs. 1400 (table 1B). Average payment amounts are above Rs. 1500 in Gumla, Korba and Udaipur, and below Rs. 1400 in Sundargarh, Hardoi and Rajgarh.

Women delivering at home receive Rs. 859.47 on an average, while women delivering in private facilities receive Rs. 1504.39[3].

7. Delays in receiving compensation

60% of beneficiaries who deliver in government facilities report receipt of benefits within seven days, while 71% report receiving benefits within two weeks (table 1A). Udaipur performs the best, with 93% of the beneficiaries reporting receipt of benefits within two weeks. Gumla performs the worst on this indicator, with only 24% beneficiaries receiving benefits within two weeks.

Overall, the median days to receive benefits in case of delivery in government facilities is four, while the mean number of days is ten[4]. On an average, beneficiaries in Udaipur, Sundargarh and Rajgarh can expect to receive their benefits within a week, while those in Gumla might have to wait up to a month.

In case of delivery in private facilities, beneficiaries reported receiving money, on an average, ten days after delivery. The delays seem to be even higher for payment in case of home deliveries: on average, 23 days after the delivery (table 1B)[5].

8. Payment of bribes to receive JSY benefits

Only 6% of the beneficiaries who delivered in government facilities reported that they had had to pay bribes to receive the money (table 1B). Bhilwara (1%), Gumla (2%) and Sundargarh (4%) are the best performers, while Rajgarh is the worst performer with 13% of the beneficiaries reporting that they had to pay a bribe.

9. Other problems

But having to pay a bribe is not the only problem beneficiaries might have to face. When one takes into account other problems (such as, distance to the health facility, paper work, inconvenient timings, behaviour of health workers), the proportion rises. Data indicates that 18% of the beneficiaries in case of deliveries in government facilities reported facing one or more of these problems (table 1B). The proportion was lowest in Sundargarh (8%) and Bhilwara (9%), and highest in Hardoi (31%) and Gumla (28%).

The corresponding fractions are 27% in case of delivery in private health facilities and 29% in case of home deliveries.

The above discussion suggests that JSY is working reasonably well as far as some of the important process-related indicators are concerned. But there is scope for improvement, especially when it comes to delays in transferring benefits, payment of bribes and other problems faced in receiving the benefits.

In Part III, we’ll look at indicators related to the performance of ASHAs.

TABLE 1A: JSY-related indicators

Location of delivering the baby RJ JH UP CH BH MP OR Overall
Udai-  pur Bhil-wara Gumla Hardoi Korba Nal-anda Raj-garh Sundar-garh
Sample size (households)  1120 1334 1190 1180 1176 1065 1178 1162 9405
% of women delivering the baby Home 33.33 46.05 58.37 55.38 65.81 28.37 21.91 24.31 42.54
Government Facility 61.35 43.05 35.90 37.00 22.88 51.06 69.77 70.49 47.99
Private Facility 5.31 10.90 5.73 7.62 11.31 20.57 8.31 5.21 9.47
No. of Respondents 414 367 454 446 389 423 397 288 3178
Home
(DLHS III)		 67.30 66.10 90.80 90.00 90.80 65.40 54.10 66.00
% of home deliveries in the presence of skilled personnel (dai/ doctor)  82.26 60.78 82.19 64.56 65.22 74.75 38.89 58.33 68.78
% of Women receiving money Home 5.69 5.07 13.30 2.83 13.81 14.00 30.77 25.00 11.34
Government Facility 98.02 92.41 90.12 93.33 92.05 93.02 95.62 97.50 94.52
Private Facility 14.29 27.78 50.00 13.79 47.73 9.46 38.46 21.43 25.94
No. of Respondents 397 332 402 406 371 389 365 274 2936
% of JSY beneficiaries receiving incentives after delivery in government facility 7 days post-delivery 89.36 78.17 19.12 35.33 37.97 43.01 67.78 78.57 60.42
 

14 days post-
delivery

 

 92.77 84.51 24.26 51.33 50.63 55.38 84.94 89.01 70.87

 

Variable Government Institutions Govt. Private Home
RJ  JH  UP  CH  BH  MP  OR  Overall (sample average)
Udai-pur Bhil-wara Gumla Hardoi Korba Nalanda Raj-garh Sundar-garh
% of beneficiaries receiving money at the institution 99.19 93.06 91.85 96.1 93.59 96.48 98.05 85.8 94.89 90.16 55.34
% of beneficiaries receiving money through cheque 88.07 76.22 81.43 96.71 85 80.51 90.7 85.08 85.99 71.67 35.35
% of beneficiaries receiving money in one installment 93.06 93.01 78.87 93.51 82.5 92.93 82.31 95.56 89.37 90.16 55.34
Mean amount of benefits received (Rs.) 1532.22 1458.86 1571.43 1388.82 1553.12 1403.52 1399.61 1381.28 1451.25 1504.39 859.47
Mean & (Median) no. of days post-delivery to receive money 4.25
(3)		 7.13
(3)		 29.07
(25)		 14.61
(10)		 14.09
(11)		 14.67 (10) 6.10
(3)		 4.79
(2)		 10.43
(4)		 10.1
(5)		 23.42

(15)
% of beneficiaries reporting payment of bribe to receive money 4.56 1.49 2.19 7.95 5.19 8.63 12.6 3.57 6.4 0.0 5.56

 

[1] Proportion of home deliveries that we find is substantially higher than 19% as reported by the MIS of NRHM.

[2] Respondents in DLHS III are woman who had given birth to a child after January 1, 2004 onward (IIPS, 2010).

[3] We don’t discuss here the possible reasons for average amount received being higher than the norm.

[4] Median numbers of days are indicated in brackets.

[5] The number of respondents in case of delivery in private facilities and home deliveries are relatively less and hence, these numbers should not be treated as representative.