2018 Archives - Page 26 of 37 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Exploring the Links Between Mother’s Literacy and Child Achievement

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

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

Parents perception of education: Most of the parents I spoke to had enrolled their children in school – some in government schools and others in private schools. However, the dropout rate amongst girls in the village was quite high particularly amongst adolescent girls. On probing this issue further it came to light that the continued practice of child marriage in the community has had a major impact on how long girls stay in school. Most girls are married in their infancy and then sent to their marital home when they reach puberty around 14-15. This practice seems to work as a disincentive for parents to invest in their daughter’s education. When we spoke to women about the need for educating girls further, many expressed the fear that education would lead their daughters to marry outside the community.

Mother’s Literacy: There appeared to be a very clear link between mother’s literacy levels and the amount of time spent with the child on the child’s learning levels. Children who scored well on the reading tests I administered usually had at least one parent taking a keen interest in their studies and spending time with them after school. In most cases it was the mother. Within the Gujjar households, literacy levels amongst mothers and fathers were quite low. Most mothers were illiterate with little to no formal schooling. This seems to have a considerable impact on the degree of interaction that mothers had with their children when it came to education.

The mothers I spoke to expressed a lack of confidence when it came to supervising their children’s school work. However, when it came to playing number games, many mothers were able to rattle off the solutions to maths sums quite easily. This raises interesting questions about what we understand by ‘adult literacy’.

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

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

Transparency and Access to Information key to realising the MDGs

With only five years to go to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, 2010 is a critical year for countries around the world. While many countries have made significant progress towards reducing extreme poverty and hunger, providing access to clean water, improving maternal and child health, combating HIV/AIDs etc, such successes have been uneven across regions and countries. If countries are to achieve the 8 MDG targets by 2015, much more needs to be done. According to the UN MDG Goals Report 2010 “unmet commitments, inadequate resources, lack of focus and accountability…” are responsible for the shortfalls in the progress of many countries.

Prioritising and promoting transparency and the free flow of information may just be one way of fast tracking countries efforts to achieve the MDGs. This was the theme at a recent conference on “Transparency, Free Flow of Information and the MDGs” organised in London from 24-25 August 2010. Organised by Article 19 (an international human rights organisation promoting the freedom of expression and information), the conference brought together leading experts on the MDGs, development, access to information and transparency to brainstorm about how countries, donors, civil society organisations and activists can integrate transparency and access to information into global debates and efforts on the MDGs.

“The UN does not require countries to say how much they are spending on reaching the MDGs. Without budget transparency, recharged efforts to win the MDG race will fall short. We must recognise that there are two problems: not enough money is being spent on achieving the MDGs, and resources that are allocated are being spent in an ineffective or inefficient way”.

But, in what ways can encouraging the free flow of information really help?

Today there is a substantive body of literature which recognises the critical importance of access to information in enhancing citizen voice and people’s participation in government. Think about it: people need information in order to make informed decisions – whether it’s deciding who to vote for during an election or determining which government policies to support or resist. Access to information is also critical for strengthening accountability relationships between citizens, service providers and policy makers. The World Development Report (WDR) 2004 highlighted the importance of access to information in accountability relationships stating that:”….Better information – that makes citizens more aware of the money allocated to their services, the actual condition of services, and the behaviour of policymakers and providers – can be a powerful force in overcoming clientelist politics”. Put simply, if you know what your local MP is up to – how much money he received as part of his MP local area development fund and how he did (or did not) spent that money – you are better placed to decide whether or not to vote for him in the next election. Recognising the importance of access to information, countries around the world have enacted laws guaranteeing their citizens the right to access information held by the government.

So access to information is important. But how is it relevant to the MDGs?

For one thing there are a lot of people out there who simply don’t know about the MDGs or the fact that their countries have signed up to them. For instance, how many of us know about India’s progress on the MDGs? Setting in place systems at the country level to ensure that there is greater access to information about the MDGs is key to ensuring that there is public interest and oversight of a country’s efforts. Speaking at the London conference, NAC member and MKSS activist, Aruna Roy said: “My neighbours do not know what the MDGs mean. If they don’t know what the MDGs are, how can there be a demand for accountability? So the first demand is communication and information.”

Furthermore, there is not only a lack of awareness in many countries about the MDGs but a paucity of information about how countries are investing and spending to achieve these goals. This has been underscored by the preliminary results of the 6 Question Campaign. Launched in 2009, the 6 Questions Campaign is a first ever effort to test public access to budget information in different countries. From February – June 2010, civil society organisations in 86 countries asked governments a series of 6 questions on their budgets for the MDGs.

The results are quite astonishing: out of 79 countries, 20-40% ignored the requests and refused to provide information; 10-20% said they did not have any information; 40% gave some information and less than 30% gave a proper answer. These results highlight the urgent need for budget transparency to determine how MDG funds are being utilized. According to Helena Hofbauer of the International Budget Project: “The UN does not require countries to say how much they are spending on reaching the MDGs. Without budget transparency, recharged efforts to win the MDG race will fall short. We must recognise that there are two problems: not enough money is being spent on achieving the MDGs, and resources that are allocated are being spent in an ineffective or inefficient way”.

Till date, discussions on transparency, access to information and accountability have been fairly peripheral to the debate on the MDGs. However, given the scale of challenges that need to be overcome by 2015, it seems clear that transparency and access to information are likely to be high on the agenda of the UN Millennium Summit next month.

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

Coming soon – A privacy law in India?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government releases the first ever Civil Services Survey

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

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

Secrecy over the draft Whistleblower’s Bill

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

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

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

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

“4. (1) Every public authority shall—

X X X

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

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

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

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

The Process of Lawmaking in India

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

Who makes laws?

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

How is a law made?

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

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

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

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

During the First Reading the Bill is introduced in Parliament. The introduction of a Bill may be opposed and the matter may be put to a vote in the House. In August 2009, the Law Minister withdrew the motion to introduce the Judges (Disclosure of Assets and Liabilities) Bill as many MPs were opposed to the Bill, on grounds that it violated the Constitution.

After a Bill has been introduced, the Presiding Officer of the concerned House (Speaker in case of the Lok Sabha, Chairman in case of Rajya Sabha) may refer the Bill to the concerned Department Related Standing Committee for examination.

The Standing Committee considers the broad objectives and the specific clauses of the Bill referred to it and may invite public comments on a Bill. For example, the Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests has invited suggestions on the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, 2010.

Bills which come under the ambit of a number of different ministries, may be referred to a Joint Comittee.

The Committee then submits its recommendations in the form of a report to Parliament.

In the Second Reading (Consideration), the Bill is scrutinized thoroughly. Each clause of the Bill is discussed on the floor of the House and may be accepted, amended or rejected.

During the Third Reading (Passing), the House votes on the redrafted Bill.

If the Bill is passed in one House, it is then sent to the other House, where it goes through second and third readings.

During the second reading, the Government, or any MP, may introduce amendments to the Bill, some of which may be based on recommendations of the Standing Committee. However, the Government is not bound to accept the Committee’s recommendations.

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

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

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

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

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

Number of Working Days in Legislative Assembly

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

* Source: PRS Legislative Research

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Analyst with the Accountability Initiative.

One World Trust: Accountability tools

The One World Trust and the International Research Centre of Canada have created a new online accountability database. At present, the database has an inventory of around 200 tools, standards and processes. The dynamic interface and varied search functions allow users to focus on accountability issues that interest them and the system generates ideas (supported by sources and further reading) to improve accountability in this area. The database is continually growing and evolving as users comment on existing tools, add new tools, and provide further links and analysis.

Click here to access the database!

What prompts collective action for accountability?

What prompts collective action for accountability? Information campaigns are premised on the assumption that information can act as a catalyst for mobilizing collective action. Yet, experience suggests that these links are neither implicit nor automatic. For instance, a recent evaluation by J-PAL MIT, of an information based education intervention to mobilize village education committees in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh explored this question to find that information campaigns had no visible impact on community involvement in public schools and no impact on learning outcomes in those schools. The study proposes several reasons for this failure including the challenges of coordinating and sustaining collective action in a large group, the expectations people had about the efficacy of the Village Education Committee (VEC) and the possibility that people do not care enough about education.

Our Sehore experience offers some interesting insights in to why people do not come together (although we learnt very little about why people do come together). First, we found that there is a widespread perception amongst parents that monitoring the school and demanding accountability for teaching is simply not their responsibility and it is this which creates the first barrier to effective collective action. Interestingly, the villages we worked in had never had a community discussion about education till we parachuted in. This is not to say that parents do not care about the education. The very fact that they send their children to school is evidence that they care. But parents seem to feel that sending their children to school is the extent of their responsibility and what happens inside the school is not something they are in a position to assess or influence owing largely to a sense of disempowerment and lack of confidence owing to their own illiteracy. In the many meetings and informal interactions we tried to instill a sense of ownership for the school by drawing attention to the fact that parents pay for the school directly through the education cess. On other occasions we drew analogies with parental behavior when children are sick arguing that in dysfunctional schools result in ‘sick’ children and just as parents ‘act’ by taking their sick children to the doctor, they ought to act when the school does not function. It is unclear whether any of these ‘mobilization’ tricks had an impact but what the experience did teach us is that there is a need for greater investment in creating parental ownership towards the school and its everyday activities.

Second, and perhaps more important, we found that the greatest barrier to collective action is that parents simply do not believe in the efficacy of the Parent Teacher Associations (PTA’s) or other community based forms of participation. And this is probably a consequence of bitter experience. I have mentioned in a previous blog the story of Dhaba where the PTA came together and took a decision to fix a leaky roof with their school grants. But the school grant arrived much after the monsoon and the PTA found that it had very few avenues to go to in order to resolve this problem. So where’s the incentive to participate?

And it is not just about money. Parent Teacher Associations (and Village Education Committees and other similar organizations) simply have no teeth. For instance, it is widely acknowledged that the largest problem face by India’s elementary education system is teacher absenteeism and poor teaching quality. Yet, critical powers related to enforcing teacher accountability whether its appointment of teachers, distribution of salaries, imposition of penalties on errant teachers and so on are vested in the state administrative machinery. And as we know, the state administrative machinery is too far removed and has almost no incentive to regularly monitor teachers and hold them accountable for performance. So even if a PTA wanted to do engage with the school and demand accountability, in the current system they have no powers to do so. So why should they bother? Would you?

In this context, Geeta Kingdon makes another interesting observation. She argues that the large socio-economic distance between teachers and the general population can also make it difficult for mobilizing collective action through the PTA’s. Kingdon estimates that in a state like Uttar Pradesh, post the implementation of the 6^th pay commission, the ratio between teacher’s salaries and state per capita income is 17:1! Since rural per capita GDP is even lower than average state per capita GDP, the distance between teachers and parents in rural areas is probably even higher. In such a situation is collective action for teacher accountability even feasible?

What the Sehore experience taught us is that the mere creation of local participatory institutions and provisioning of them with information does not in itself result in effective participation. Micro level participatory spaces like PTA’s need to be nurtured, resourced and empowered in order for them to mobilize collective action. More importantly they need to be embedded in a larger institutional structure where the entire delivery mechanism is geared to be responsive to PTA’s so that PTA’s have incentives to participate and engage with the government.

Yamini Aiyar is Director of the Accountability Initiative.