Blog Post Year: 2018

UPA First-Year Performance Review: Mixed Results, Promising Future?

As the UPA-II completes its first year, there have been a series of articles in the media assessing its performance on various fronts. Livemint has published a review of the UPA’s reform agena, Good Moves, Bad Press, and posted a podcast discussion with AI’s Yamini Aiyar on the UPA’s successes and failures. Click here to see a slideshow summarizing the major UPA policies. The economy appears to have rebounded well after the global financial meltdown, but according to Rajya Sabha member N.K. Singh, the government is stalling on the economic front and needs fresh initiatives and resolve. Listen to chief statistician of India Pronab Sen speak on the present state of the Indian economy under the UPA and what predictions can be drawn for the future, and view a graphic summary on the ups and downs of the economy over the year.

The UPA intended to focus on infrastructure development as a core interest over the past year, however its achievements on various infrastructure fronts have been mixed. Gokul Chaudhry, a partner at BMR advisors, provides perspective on the UPA’s challenges and successes in developing infrastructure in this audio discussion.

Finally, the Economic Times’ Debate Section includes a series on the UPA’s performance with perspectives from the CPI, the UPA, and the Opposition. Brinda Karat comments on how the diminished presence of the Left this year has led to a more opportunistic government, less focused on policies for the masses and more interested in its own agendas and the desires of powerful special interest groups. Salman Khurshid points toward the transformations in rural India, and the reforms made in education, law, and in areas concerning equality and minority empowerment as powerful indicators of the UPA’s success, and optimistically highlights the potential success of policies on the horizon. Arun Jaitley however, highlights the PM’s lack of control and what he views as a tendency of the government to favour the corrupt.

Accountability News Update – 16 April 2010

A fortnightly round up of accountability news and views from around the world.

UK: Web-inventor calls for government data transparency
The inventor of the World Wide Web talks about the need for countries to open up and make public data accessible to all citizens.

Pakistan: Access to information now a fundamental right
The Right to Information is now a fundamental right in Pakistan following the insertion of Article 19A in the Constitution via the 18th Amendment Bill. Under article 19A, “Every citizen shall have the right to have access to information in all matters of public importance subject to regulation and reasonable restriction imposed by the law.”

US: Calls for ‘YouTube’ of Government data
US Technology Chief, Vivek Kundra has encouraged technology developers to create a ‘YouTube’ of government data in the US. The tool would enable people to “slice and dice” data to create mashups and web applications to reveal new patterns and carry out analysis.

UK: New Anti-bribery legislation comes into force
A new Bribery law in the UK heralds a clampdown on large UK businesses making payments to officials overseas to facilitate business, say experts. The new act has introduced an offence of corporate failure to prevent bribery. It is the first time such a law has existed in the UK. It also requires companies to have “adequate processes” in place to prevent such offences.

Canada: Delays leave access to information rights ‘totally obliterated’
A recent report on the performance of Canada’s Access to Information Act flags chronic delays as a serious impediment to citizens trying to access information. The report, entitled Out of Time, documents the extent of delays and identifies factors contributing to them, based on an assessment of how 24 federal institutions responded to access to information requests in 2008-2009. These institutions account for 88 percent of the requests Canadians submitted that year.

Brazil: Congress passes Right to Information Bill
The Lower House of the Brazilian Congress has approved a draft bill on the Right to Information. The RTI Bill now awaits approval by the Senate and if passed will give effect to the right to information enshrined in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988.

From the right to education to the right to food

From the right to education to the right to food, solving our development problems by clothing India’s citizens with new rights seems to be the flavor of our times. What should we make of this rise of rights? Skeptics have argued (and with some conviction) that this expansion of rights serves merely to raise expectations of delivery from a state that has proved conclusively that its greatest characteristic is its inefficiency. And so these new rights amount to nothing but political rhetoric. In a recent article on the subject the Economist suggests just this: ‘Perhaps its only indisputable achievement is political – as potential vote-winners, rights-based schemes are often attractive to politicians, no matter how effective they are’. And perhaps because of their political salience, another set of criticisms is that they serve as a diversion from the real challenge of creating an accountable and responsive state. While it could be argued that creating rights might in fact do just this, in reality – in a system where grievance redressal mechanisms are barely functional and the courts are no different to other arms of the Indian state (and should judges really be making decisions on areas where they have no competency?) – these new rights can never be made justiciable and thus have little credibility. See these two links on the subject:
http://in.news.yahoo.com/48/20100413/1241/top-i-know-my-rights.html
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/when-the-blueprint-isnt-sound/606392/

 

We need to think long and hard about creating effective grievance redressal; about undertaking much needed administrative reforms and at the very minimum about ensuring that people are made adequately aware of their rights and what this means for accessing services from the state.

So do we dismiss this expansion of rights as nothing but new labels on old bottles that will dilute their own credibility, as mere political rhetoric that will divert from the real challenge at hand? I think not. To understand the potential of these new rights, it is important to think of them in the context of the power dynamics that shape state-citizen relationships in India. It is now a commonplace observation that in much of India citizen- state relationships exist more in the realm of patronage – the paternalistic, mai-baap sarkar that distributes state largess – than in the realm of rights and responsibilities. In this sense Indian democracy has fallen short of its ideal –honoring the standing of citizens and free and equal persons. The invocation of the language of rights in citizen’s everyday dealings with the state offers the opportunity to re –frame modes of citizen engagement from that of being passive recipients to becoming active agents that ‘demand’ services as their right. And this is critical to accountability. In a panel discussion we organized a few months ago, Nikhil Dey made the interesting point that ‘accountability from, the citizen’s point of view, is inextricably tied to basic entitlements. Who can I hold accountable if I don’t have an entitlement?’

Consider the movement for the right to information – arguably the first (and perhaps most successful) effort in India to expand the notion of fundamental rights to the domain of social and economic rights. The movement pushed the frontiers of the notion of access to information to offer a radical interpretation of access to information as a ‘right’ that is fundamental to citizen’s right to participate in government and hold it accountable. This interpretation was premised on the notion that the provision of a ‘right’ fundamentally alters power asymmetries between citizens and the state by giving citizens an entitlement which they have a ‘right’ to demand. Two of Accountability Initiative’s researchers have recently completed a study of the effects of a citizen’s organization in Delhi – the Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) – that has been working with slum dwellers (mostly women) to invoke the right to information as a means to access basic services – ration cards, widow’s pensions from the state. SNS has also been running information campaigns to build resident capacity to engage with the formal government system. A language of rights and entitlements is integral to SNS’s information campaigns. The study finds that making citizens aware of their rights and entitlements and pushing them to invoke these rights to access services has had an empowering influence on slum dwellers who are have increasingly more confidence in making demands directly to officials and politicians. In fact the study finds that awareness of rights and entitlements and the invocation of these rights in dealings with officials– particularly the right to information has had considerable success in enabling citizens to access basic services.

But in all of this one needs to acknowledge that the aspirations of rights approaches will only be met if one addresses the hard challenge of ensuring that entitlements are realized. We need to think long and hard about creating effective grievance redressal; about undertaking much needed administrative reforms and at the very minimum about ensuring that people are made adequately aware of their rights and what this means for accessing services from the state. The rhetoric of rights adopted by the current political dispensation offers an opportunity to do this. But this will require concerted civil society action. Can civil society rise to the challenge? And will civil society pressure be enough?

In sum, rights approaches could be the starting point of re-articulation of citizen state relationships – one that could fundamentally alter the nature of the Indian state. Or they could end up proving critics right and end up as yet another moment in Indian democracy that never took off.

Yamini Aiyar is the Director, Accountability Initiative.

Assam to Guarantee Right to Health

Assam became the first state in the country to introduce a bill guaranteeing the right to health and well-being. The state government tabled the Assam Public Health Bill, 2010, in the assembly on March 12, 2010. The bill, will be put to vote on March 31.

The bill proposes to make it compulsory for both government and private hospitals to provide free healthcare services and maintain appropriate protocol of treatment for the first 24 hours to an emergency patient. Whether the state has the capacity to fulfil these promises may be debatable, it is certainly true that Assam has a long way in achieving this target.

We highlight the positional matrix of Assam related to health sector in the following graphs. (Figures are taken from the Lok Sabha website).





Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Associate with Accountability Initiative

World Press Freedom Day – Special focus on Right to Know

Today (May 3rd) is World Press Freedom day. Ever since it’s proclamation by the UN in 1993, the World Press Freedom Day has aimed at raising awareness about media freedom issues and to promote the right of journalists to collect and disseminate information without risk to life or liberty. The theme for this year’s World Press Day is the “Right to Know” or “Freedom of Information”. Today more than 80 countries around the world have introduced laws that guarantee citizens the right to access information held by public authorities. The Right to know has been recognized as an essential part of the right to freedom of expression under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In the World Press Freedom Day Conference organised by UNESCO, Governments have been called on to enact laws guaranteeing the right to information. Participants of World Press Freedom Day on Monday adopted the Brisbane Declaration. The declaration calls on UNESCO member states “to enact legislation guaranteeing the right to information in accordance with the internationally-recognized principle of maximum disclosure”.It also demands that media companies to raise awareness of freedom of expression and the right to information, and for UNESCO to aid the development and implementation of new laws. (Read more…)

In addition, Access Info Europe and Transparency International, together with members of the Freedom of Information Advocates Network and the UNCAC Coalition, are marking World Press Freedom Day by submitting requests for information in 30 countries around the globe under the Tell Us What You’ve Done Initiative. (Read More…..)

Yes, how many deaths will it take till we know…

…that too many children have died?

I adapt this from Dylan’s famous 1962 lyrics, but it is nowhere more true than for Adivasis or tribal peoples (called Scheduled Tribes) in India.

Come monsoon, the Indian media is rife with stories of child deaths in tribal areas, frequently reported as “malnutrition deaths”. Kalahandi district in Orissa for instance, had been a metaphor for starvation due to press reports dating back to the 1980s. Melghat area in Maharashtra has similarly surfaced in the press especially during the monsoon when migrant Adivasis return to their villages and to empty food stocks in the home. This is followed by public outrage, sometimes by public interest litigation and often a haggling over numbers.

We recently published a working paper that looks at child mortality among India’s adivasis – the starkest manifestation of their deprivation. We find that an average Indian child has a 25 percent lower likelihood of dying under the age of five compared to an adivasi child. In rural areas, where the majority of adivasi children live, they made up about 11 percent of all births but 23 percent of all deaths in the five years preceding the National Family Heath Survey 2005. While there has been progress in child survival over the years, and much greater vigilance, which often leads to these stories surfacing in the media at all, the fact remains that children in tribal areas are at much greater risk of dying than those in other areas.


Our analysis based on national data from the National Family and Health Survey 2005 has three findings. First, a disproportionately high number of child deaths are concentrated among adivasis, especially in the 1-5 age group and in those states and districts where there is a high concentration of adivasis. Any effort to reduce child morality in the aggregate will have to focus more squarely on lowering mortality among the adivasis. Second, the gap in mortality between adivasi children and the rest really appears after the age of one. In fact, before the age of one, tribal children face more or less similar odds of dying as other children. But these odds significantly reverse later. This calls for a shift in attention from infant mortality or in general under-five mortality to factors that cause a wedge between tribal children and the rest between the ages of one and five. Third, the analysis goes contrary to the conventional narrative of poverty being the primary factor driving differences between mortality outcomes.

There are many small and very important initiatives that have lowered child mortality among adivasis, but how do you scale them up?

India is not alone in having such poor outcomes for its adivasis – called “indigenous peoples” in the global context. A recent global report on indigenous peoples edited by Gillette Hall and Harry Patrinos was released yesterday in New York at the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. And it shows remarkable congruence in the processes and outcomes that exclude indigenous peoples the world over.

Very soon, a new report on social exclusion in India that we have been working on will be ready for review – and it also addresses adivasi deprivation using national data. We look at poverty rates and the fact that adivasis in 2004 were where the average Indian was twenty years ago. I will keep you posted through this blog.

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 posts.

If Only Khoslaji Had the RTI

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

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

 

The most important flaws, which courtesy RTI, are out in the public is the tremendous gap between existing policies and their implementation.

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

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

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

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

After the Tsunami: Malaysia’s Transformed Political Landscape in 2004 Continues to Test its Democracy

The documentary Selapas Tsunami (After the Tsunami), assesses the sweeping political changes brought about by the results of the 12th General Election in Malaysia, and discusses the ramifications these changes have had on government accountability and the building of an inclusive democracy. The film raises powerful arguments for decentralization—the benefits of greater regulation at the local level, the friction between federal power and local control–and highlights the inevitable backlash from an old guard that is uncomfortable with the transparent new model of democracy.

Assessing the pension scheme for unorganized sector workers

Social protection programmes have in the past (to a large extent) excluded the most vulnerable section of the Indian workforce; the unorganized sector. On 26th September the government sought to overturn this long-standing tradition by extending pension benefits to 85% of the workers who find employment in this sector. The scheme titled  ‘Swavalamban’(meaning self reliance), covers unorganized sector workers between the ages of 18-55 years. This implies that any worker between the ages of 18-55 years can become a subscriber and is liable for receiving  pension at the age of 60 years.

The Swavalamban scheme is essentially a contributory scheme which provides for a minimum monthly contribution of Rs 100 and a maximum annual contribution of Rs 12,000. The Union government on its part shall contribute Rs 1000 per year. The scheme shall be administered by the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRD), which shall oversee the overall management, while the deposits shall be managed by private fund managers. The private fund managers shall be able to invest only 15% of the total funds in equity markets while the rest shall be invested in high quality fixed income securities such as government bonds. Upon attaining 60 years of age, subscribers will be able to withdraw 60% of their contribution, while the balance 40% will be given as monthly annuity by LIC (Life Insurance Corporation of India).

 Sounds reasonable? Cynics might be tempted to ask—where is the glitch? While it may be too early to point out any glitches, some challenges and issues come to mind.

  • The scheme treats all workers as a homogenous group: It defines unorganized workers as those who are either not currently employed by the central/ state government or by any other autonomous or public sector undertaking of central government and those who are currently not covered by any of the existing social security schemes. This definition while inclusive spans all categories of workers from self employed professionals to Rickshaw Pullers and Construction Workers. The scheme does not appear to be tailored to consider the stratified nature of the conditions of work. Which begs the question of whether the scheme can be appropriate for such a large and heterogeneous group?
  • It assumes that workers will have the ability to save: the emphasis on regular monthly contribution assumes that workers will have the ability to contribute on a regular basis. This represents an important challenge given that one of the distinguishing features of the unorganized sector is irregularity of work which often impairs the ability to save. According to a report by NCEAR, the bottom half of the population by income distribution are responsible for only 2% of the savings in India (2000). Moreover savings by the poor are also mostly of a short term nature and are stored in instruments and assets having high liquidity. It remains to be seen whether the scheme will be able successful in promoting thrift and encouraging a shift from long term to short term savings.
  • Concerns of accessibility: For workers to gain maximum benefit, it is necessary that the scheme be structured in ways such that the cost of participation is low, i.e. the scheme should be accessible to workers both geographically and in terms of simplicity of procedures.  These are issues which are particularly relevant to workers employed in this sector, given their low levels of education and relative isolation from formal institutions and processes (especially financial institutions) (NCEUS Report, 2007). How the government plans to address the gaps in accessibility remains to be seen. 

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative 

CPWD, PWD, NDMC, DJB – Multiple agencies but no accountability!

Every year it’s the same story. The monsoons hit Delhi and life in the city comes to a grinding halt. For a city that so craves the rain every summer we are remarkably unprepared for it. Traffic snarls, blocked drains, flooded roads, power outages and road collapses make for an unpleasant experience. Couple these with the inevitable dengue, malaria and viral fever outbreaks and you’re in for a pretty rotten monsoon. And then there’s the Commonwealth Games…well I think enough’s been said on that front.  I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of the déjà vu. I mean we all know the score. Delhi + Monsoons X Flooding, Road Cave-ins, Disease etc = Chaos. Check. Okay so maybe we had record rainfall this year and the Yamuna is flowing at an all time high, but still, shouldn’t government agencies at various levels be prepared for this?

The problem isn’t so much with the rain as it is with the structure of municipal governance in the city.

  •  Multiple agencies: Mind bogglingly, Delhi has over a 100 civic agencies tasked with overseeing municipal services such as land usage, roads, transport, water, electricity, sewage and flood control etc. These agencies include the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC), the Delhi Cantonment Board (DCB), Delhi Jal Board, Delhi Development Authority, Central Public Works Department (CPWD), Public Works Department (PWD) etc.  What makes things even more complicated is the fact that these agencies report to different ministries and departments.
  • Dual Jurisdiction: Unlike other metropolitan cities in the country, Delhi has the dubious distinction of being the seat of both the Union Government and the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). In practice this makes for a pretty complicated administrative set-up with some parts of the city under the administration of Central Government agencies and others under the Delhi government. So while agencies such as the MCD, DDA, Delhi Police and CPWD are answerable and accountable to the Central Government, the PWD, DJB and Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) report to the Delhi Government.  This makes for confusing and parallel structures of governance where it’s unclear where the jurisdiction of one government starts and the other ends. This duality has for long been exploited by various agencies to pass the buck.
  • Overlapping responsibilities: It’s often said that too many cooks spoil the broth and it couldn’t be truer than in Delhi. From water, public works, sanitation, land, you can be pretty sure there’s more than one civic agency involved.  Here’s a quick snapshot of the extent to which this is true.

 

Civic Agencies providing basic services in Delhi

 

Service

Urban Planning & Development

Roads

Water & Sanitation

Land

(Residential & Industrial)

Departments Responsible

DDA

MCD

NDMC

CPWD

 

CPWD

PWD

MCD

NDMC

Cantt. Board DDA etc.

Delhi Jal Board

MCD

DDA

NDMC

DDA

CPWD

L&DO

DSIDC Govt of Delhi

MCD

NDMC

Cantt Board.

 

 

  • No answerability or accountability: What do you get when you have multiple agencies responsible for the same services and reporting to different departments? No answerability and no accountability. The current CWG fiasco is a prime example where each agency blames the other. So we have PWD faulting the quality of CPWD construction work and the NDMC complaining the MCD isn’t doing what it should to keep the city free of dengue and malaria. As agencies play pass the parcel, Delhi’s residents are left wondering who to hold responsible.

Theory suggests that strengthening accountability relationships between citizens, service providers and policy makers is critical to ensuring the effective delivery of services. But that can be hard to do when there just is not enough information available about who’s supposed to do what. So if you’re not sure who is responsible for road construction and maintenance in your neighbourhood, it’s not going to be easy to pin them down and hold them accountable. Thus, in the context of public service delivery, access to better information is increasingly regarded as a key step towards strengthening citizen claims of accountability on service providers and policymakers (World Development Report 2004, Making Services Work for Poor People).

The RTI Act instrumentalises this approach by requiring all public authorities to proactively disclose 17 categories of basic information on their websites and through other means. This includes information about their organisational structures, budget, directory of officials, projects, annual plans etc.  In practice this means agencies such as the MCD, PWD, NDMC, CPWD etc should be disclosing proactively information about the various public works that they are involved with on a regular basis. Sadly, Section 4 disclosure continues to be poorly implemented by most of these agencies. Scroll through their websites and the information you’re likely to find the information is usually out of date. Ensuring better and more effective information disclosure by municipal agencies is one way of ensuring that agencies perform the functions they are supposed to.  The Central Information Commission has been pushing for stronger implementation of Section 4 of the RTI Act for the last few months with interesting results. It recently issued orders to municipal agencies in Delhi to disclose detailed information on the contracts issued to consultants for projects under the Commonwealth Games. In a rare instance, the NDMC has complied with the CIC’s orders and put up a detailed list of consultants hired to carry out CWG work  (click here to read the information disclosed by the NDMC).

There is clearly a need for broader municipal reforms in Delhi to streamline the provisioning of services and responsibilities of agencies. But as is the case with all major governance reforms – that’s likely to take a while! In the meantime, pushing for better information disclosure by municipal agencies may be one way of bringing in greater accountability and transparency.

Mandakini Devasher is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.