2018 Archives - Page 19 of 37 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Who Cares About Outcomes?

I had almost forgotten, till I saw a copy at a friend’s office yesterday, that every year in Parliament’s budget session, apart from presenting the annual budget, the Government of India tables an outcomes budget where every ministry reports on its outcomes. Remiss as I was in forgetting, I can’t be blamed, entirely. The outcomes budget was launched amidst much talk of reform in 2005 by then finance minister P Chidambaram. In a promising budget speech, he said ‘I must caution that outlays do not necessarily result in outcomes’. ‘The people of this country,’ he went on to add, ‘are concerned with outcomes’. And to his credit he launched the outcomes budget. In its short five year existence, the budget has been nothing but a damp squib. So valued is the outcomes budget that it never makes even the inside pages of newspapers and if you want to look for them on line – well best of luck to you.

What went wrong? Well, like many things in government, the idea is a good one but its implementation nothing short of poor. There are two critical elements to a successful ‘outcomes budget’. First, it requires the identification of clear, concise and quantifiable outcome indicators. These indicators need to be tangible and realistic. Here the outcomes budget falls short. Indicators are vague – the health ministry describes ‘funding of institutions’ and ‘widening of surveillance mechanisms’ as some of its key outcomes- making measurement impossible and irrelevant.

Second, for an ‘outcomes budget’ to achieve results it must be accompanied by increased information on performance against these indicators. The Finance Minister emphasized this at the launch of the outcomes budget, by pointing out that the objective of the budget is to put critical data on expected outcomes in to the public domain and allow for public scrutiny. On this count too, the outcomes budget has fallen far short of expectations. The budget itself was launched with much media fanfare but over the years it has simply disappeared from the public radar. There is no evidence of any proactive effort by government agencies to generate and disseminate information on progress.

In today’s Mint, Sanjiv Misra, former member of the 13th Finance Commission made some interesting observations about the failure of the outcomes budget. He points out that for reforms like the Outcomes Budget to be successful it requires the “establishment of countrywide performance benchmarks and costing norms for the public goods and services supplied; development of measurable performance indicators for the objectives set out; development of performance monitoring systems to regularly collect data on the actual results achieved; independent third-party evaluation of major programmes; and use of performance contracts to enforce accountability of key actors.” He so argues for the need to link performance on outcomes budgeting with pay.

The interesting thing about India today is that we have all these design instruments in place and we speak the right ‘speak’. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest agree that outcomes matter. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest agree that these need to be monitored and that he failure to do just this is the cause of our persistent poor performance on human development. Everyone in Government from the highest to the lowest has some interesting ideas on how to address this problem. As we speak the cabinet secretariat is running a seminar on performance oriented monitoring in the civil services. In fact the performance management wing of the cabinet secretariat has signed a significant number of contracts with Government of India departments to performance criterion and goals and there are some whispers about introducing pay for performance measures. At the same time the planning commission seems to be moving towards setting up the Independent Evaluation Office and a few months ago, PMO set up a delivery monitoring unit. There is also much talk of using technology through the UID and other instruments to develop a transparent expenditure information network that will allow for transparency and regular tracking of government funds. All of which have the potential to address the problems reforms like the outcomes budget faces. But for these instruments to take effect, we need political will – and that as we all know is sadly missing. What we need now is not more instruments but a better understanding of how to circumvent this lack of political will and push for change.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director, Accountability Initiative.

AI Budget Series: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)

In the first of a 4 – part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article – Rural Economics: How taxpayers’ money is (or isn’t) being spent.

Budget 2010 – Great Expectations

It is the Budget season again. Every year, the nation looks forward to the two-hour speech of the Finance Minister where he lays out the government’s housekeeping statement – revenues collected, expenditures incurred and the plan for the next year. The budget means different things to different people. Some focus on the tax rates on income, goods and services, while others look at how much the government is spending and on what. But the bigger question is: what does the budget signify for the nation?

Every budget has a context and a theme. Budget 2009 was in the backdrop of the financial crisis, the general elections and the post-election policy direction. The theme was crisis-management – how to pull the economy out of the downturn trumped the concerns over the fiscal deficit which was pegged at 6.8 percent of GDP, the highest since 2003-04. The bold decisions were put off until later.

It is in this backdrop that Budget 2010 will be presented. The economy has come out of the downturn pretty much unscathed compared to other countries in the developed world. So the theme this year would be about reigning in the deficit, rationalizing expenditure and focusing on priority sectors. This is exactly what any family would do after a year of profligacy to get its finances in order.

So what can we expect from the Finance Minister this year? First of all, it would be a difficult balancing act – the need to raise more resources through higher taxes vis-à-vis derailing the growth rebound. The second is to ensure sustained and increased financing for core sectors – education, health, rural and urban infrastructure. Third, the budget needs to take into account the recommendations of the Thirteenth Finance Commission which will be tabled in this session of the Parliament.

The most significant talking point may be the allocation for education. The operationalization of the Right to Education (RTE) means that substantially more allocation would be needed in the Centre’s budget. At the same time, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) would pick up steam, and allocation for higher education will continue to increase. On the other hand, this budget is expected to maintain the status quo on NRHM, NREGS and Bharat Nirman.

There is one thing that certainly this budget would not do – talk about how to improve the efficiency and accountability of expenditure. Everyone in government loves to spend, nobody likes to be asked “What exactly did you do with the money”? The great expectations of transparency, accountability and independent monitoring outlined in the President’s address last year seems to have been conveniently forgotten, and the government seems to spend the people’s money as it likes. This needs to change – the sooner, the better.

Anit Mukherjee is with the National Institute of Public Finance Policy (NIPFP).

UID and Service Delivery

Responding to a Parliamentary Question in December 2009, the Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution revealed a worrying truth -since 2006, 5,300,000 bogus ration cards had been identified in West Bengal. Andhra Pradesh wasn’t far behind at 1,046,000 and Orissa was amongst the lowest at 250,000! It’s not just ration cards. The Janani Suraksha Yojna (JSY), a program that entitles pregnant women with a cash transfer if they undergo an institutional delivery, is another example. According to the rules, the entitlement is to be given at the time of delivery. A recent study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that a mere 8% of beneficiaries in Bihar received their money when discharged while Orissa topped the list at 20%. Given these inefficiencies, it’s no surprise that although social sector expenditures have increased by over 15 times in the last 15 years, India continues to perform poorly on every conceivable human development indicator.

An incentive structure that significantly compromises accountability to citizens lies at the heart of the problem, allowing inefficiency and corruption to proliferate. Take the instance of targeted subsidies. In 2009, the Government of India’s subsidy bill amounted to Rs. 1,11,000 crore. Yet, as the case of the bogus ration card shows, these subsidies rarely reach their target – India’s poorest. Inefficient targeting is, partly, a consequence of lack of transparency. Currently, there are no incentives to make information on beneficiaries public. This makes it impossible for citizens to cross-verify names and identify cases of duplicates and fraud, allowing corruption to foster. After all, in the absence of information, there are no questions. Where then are the incentives for government to be accountable?

Inefficient targeting is also a consequence of lack of voice. India’s poor have very few avenues to articulate their needs and hold the government to account. Moreover, when they face difficulties and harassment – be it submitting application forms or receiving payments on time – they have no means of redress. In such a scenario, the poor often find themselves excluded from systems and processes for accessing services.

Accountability requires that delivery processes are monitored to ensure that entitlements not just reach but reach on time. Currently, there are no incentives for monitoring processes and ensuring transparency in delivery. The government simply doesn’t have information on how money flows through the system, when and if it reaches the intended beneficiary. So, even if there are simple administrative bottlenecks that cause delays in processes, there simply is no way of identifying or fixing it. How then, can such a system be expected to deliver?

The Unique Identification Number (UID), by virtue of its ability to inject transparency in the system, has the potential to address some of these accountability failures. First, the fool-proof identification system can significantly reduce targeting inefficiencies. If the UID were to be linked with processes for distributing ration cards, for instance, it could weed out instances of fraud. More important, the UID has the potential to create a data platform which could link multiple data sets together making it feasible to cross-verify data and monitor progress. If the data set on ration cards, for instance, were linked to the data set of BPL beneficiaries, it would be feasible to cross-verify ration card applications and identify fake and duplicate names at the click of a button. This data, if placed in the public domain can significantly enhance transparency and empower citizens with a tool to hold government accountable.

But we must remember that the UID is merely an enabler. There are many things the UID can’t do. It can’t ensure that government departments work together to utilize the potential of a common data platform, it can’t ensure that departments monitor and track progress and can’t ensure that data is places in the public domain. Ultimately, effective service delivery requires effective implementers. And this means significantly altering the incentives they face so that implementers are accountable to citizens. It is only if administrative reforms go hand in hand with the UID, that there will be a chance that all the money spent in social sectors will result in improving India’s human development indicators.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director of the Accountability Initiative.

ADB Report: Ensure Transparency and Enforce Accountability

“Implement priorities , monitor results, ensure transparency and enforce accountability” – that is the message of the Asia Development Bank’s 2009 report entitled “India 2039: An Affluent Society in One Generation”. The report talks about the need to rethink what the government does and how it does it. It specifically highlights seven facets of governance which are critical to the transformation of the Indian economy and society:

Create a smarter, more focused, agile and more credible government.
Retool the civil service to meet the needs of today and tommorrow.
Focus on the long term and open the public-private dialogue.
Support competitive markets and prevent capture of state organs.
Inculcate a code of self-discipline and ethical behaviour within the business community.
Implement priorities, monitor results, ensure transparency and enforce accountability.
Reverse the deterioration in political governance.

Accountability Initiative Summer Internships 2010

The Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi invites applications for a summer internship programme offering internship positions to interested MA and M.PHIL students. The internship programme affords an opportunity to students interested in undertaking policy research on the mechanisms of accountability in India’s governance institutions.

Case Studies on Accountability Internship: Recent years have seen significant changes in the design of social sector schemes and programmes. Flagship schemes such as the National Rural Health Mission, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme have inbuilt institutional mechanisms for accountability. But how are these mechanisms working on the ground? And are they effective? The Accountability Initiative wants to document the implementation of these new mechanisms through a series of case studies. Interns would be assigned a particular case study and required to undertake desk and field based research over a five to six week period.

Duration: The internship will be for five to six weeks from mid May – end June 2010.

Qualifications:

MA and M.PHIL students with a preference for those studying sociology, political science, history, economics, development studies, law and journalism;
Strong research and analytical skills;
Strong writing skills;
Interns must be willing to travel for up to two weeks of the internship;
Knowledge of vernacular languages (please specify in your application);

Compensation: Interns will be paid a stipend to cover their expenses.

Working at AI: The AI staff comprises a decided team of professionals with different areas of expertise including, economics, political science and development studies. The intern will be working out of the AI office. The case studies internship will provide interns with exposure to key issues in the debate on governance and accountability in India. The internship will also give interns the opportunity to develop their policy and field research skills.

Application Requirements: Please submit a resume and cover letter along with a writing sample and one reference to Mandakini Devasher at [email protected]. Please specify “Case Studies Internship” in the subject line of the email.

Applications Deadline: Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. The last date for submitting applications is 1 April 2010. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. For more information on the Accountability Initiative log on to our website: www.accountabilityindia.org.

Employment Programmes By Any Other Name

Is it an employment program? Is it an anti-poverty program? Is it a safety net? Is it a disaster management program, is it…..? Actually, it’s all of these. Public works programs are both good development and good politics. India’s National Employment Guarantee Scheme (now called the Mahatma Gandhi EGS) , despite its implementation challenges, is fast becoming the stuff international lore is made of.

Demographers talk of the diffusion effects of ideas of low fertility and other behaviors. And while South Asian countries have a history of public works programs as safety nets – a history that actually goes back to the Maurya Empire in circa 3rd century BC – the diffusion effect of NREGS across South Asia is apparent. This is as much due to the urgent employment needs in all countries in the region, as due to the fact that the Congress victory in India was purported to have hinged significantly on NREGS.

Consider some South Asian countries. Nepal has several public works programs based on both cash and food. In the remote and intractable hill districts (known by the omnibus category of the “Karnali Zone”) the government implements a food for work program, for which the World Food Program delivers food. There are similar programs in southern Nepal. Last summer I was in Sunsari – the part of the Tarai that was ravaged by the Kosi floods – and it was quite clear that the demand of public works programs far outweighs the supply.

Bangladesh’s 100 Day Employment Program was evaluated independently by BRAC and the World Bank. The results have been very encouraging, showing reasonably good targeting of the poorest and efficient delivery of the program.

Bangladesh similarly has a long history of both food and cash based public works programs. Its success in dealing with the chronic floods and cyclones is well known, but lesser known is the fact that public works programs have come to the rescue of households who have been hit by these disasters. Sri Lanka is considering similar interventions for its internally displaced persons.

In response to the food and fuel crisis about eighteen or so months ago, both Nepal and Bangladesh stepped up their coverage of employment generation programs. Bangladesh’s 100 Day Employment Program was evaluated independently by BRAC and the World Bank. The results have been very encouraging, showing reasonably good targeting of the poorest and efficient delivery of the program. Building on the experience of the 100 Day Employment Generation Program the Government of Bangladesh is now implementing the Employment Generation Program for the Poorest (EGPP), a cash-based workfare program.

But Bangladesh’s EGPP is very different from India’s NREGS. While both are based on a long history of implementing public works, yet the India program has a guarantee that entitles individuals to receive compensation if the work they seek is not provided within a certain period. The state has accepted and in fact co-opted an “entitlement approach” that was initially pushed hard by a formidable civil society movement. Citizen monitoring is built into the NREGS design and social audits are mandated twice a year even implementation uneven across states.

Moreover, NREGS is linked to a larger grassroots movement that questions the manner in which in India’s growth has affected the poorest and the high levels of malnutrition that persist despite overall reduction of poverty. A movement that is aided by judicial activism, citizen vigilance and an activist intelligentsia. Bangladesh, despite its renowned NGO movement does not have similar movements that demand accountability from the state.

Why is this?

Maitreyi Bordia Das is Senior Social Protection Specialist in the South Asia Human Development Department at the World Bank in Washington DC. This piece was cross posted from Maitreyi’s Blog. Log on to read more of her blog posts.

SC Moves Appeal to Itself on RTI

In an unprecedented move the Supreme Court of India has moved an appeal before itself. The appeal has been filed against the landmark decision of the Delhi High Court in January which brought the office of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) under the purview of the Right to Information Act 2005. The appeal is set against the backdrop of debates within government about amending the Right to Information Act 2005 to exclude frivolous requests for information, discussions on policy matters and also the office of the Chief Justice.