2018 Archives - Page 28 of 37 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Right To Know Day, 2010: 5 Billion Now Have Right To Information

Over 90 countries representing nearly five billion people have now adopted laws or national regulations on RTI. However, over half the countries of the world have not yet adopted RTI laws and many that have done so have failed to implement them adequately. There have also been efforts in several countries to weaken laws.

ARTICLE 19 offices and staff are participating in events in eight countries including Bangladesh, Kenya and Mexico to celebrate Right to Know Day 2010 , and have issued a statement of some of the RTI advances and setbacks over the year:

RTI Advances
– New Laws and Recognition. The number of jurisdictions with RTI laws continued to grow. Over the past year, new laws were adopted in Liberia and Bermuda. Many others have improved their laws. In Australia, the archaic Freedom of Information Act, 1982 was substantially amended and improved. The Organization of American States adopted a model RTI bill for adoption across the Americas and the Caribbean. The adoption of related laws also continued to expand – in Uganda for example, a comprehensive whistleblowing law was adopted.

– Constitutional Rights. Increasingly, countries are including RTI in new constitutions. In the past year, the recently approved Kenyan constitution includes substantial RTI provisions while Article 19 of the Pakistani constitution was amended to include RTI. A decision in the Canadian Supreme Court fell short of fully endorsing RTI as a constitutional right. Now, over 80 countries recognised right to information as a constitutional right.

– New Bills. There are more efforts in countries around the world to consider RTI laws. In total, over 50 countries have proposals to adopt laws pending. Some of the more recent efforts include Argentina, Bhutan, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierre Leone, Spain, Ukraine, and the Malaysian state of Selangor.

– Environmental Information. The right to environmental information was strongly advanced as a global right during the last year. The UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) released new global guidelines for the development of national legislation on access to information, public participation and access to justice in environmental matters in June 2010. World leaders in December agreed to The Earth Summit 2012, which may lead to a new global treaty on access to environmental information.

– Open Data. Both the US and the UK governments launched new open data sites to make raw datasets of public information available for the first time. This allows for the public to do its own analysis of policies and expenditures. In the UK, this included detailed spending information.

– World Bank. The World Bank transparency policy released in December 2009 substantially improves the transparency of the Bank. While it is not perfect, there is hope that the policy will set the standard for other international financial institutions.

RTI Setbacks
– Stalled Campaigns. Legislation in Brazil and the Philippines reached the final steps but due to lack of political leadership, both failed at the last hurtle and will have to be reintroduced next year. Efforts in Yemen, Cambodia and Vietnam have also faltered due to lack of political will. There has been no repeal of the infamous Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act in Zimbabwe following the change in government there.

– National Security. New secrecy legislation proposed in South Africa in the last year would seriously undermine RTI. Anti-terrorism laws are repeatedly used to justify hiding public information and harassing the media.

– Failure to Implement. Many countries have adopted RTI laws over the last few years but have not seriously implemented them. The laws in Angola and Uganda have not been substantially implemented. There are continued efforts by government officials in India to amend the excellent Right to Information Act in order to weaken it.

– Development. The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) summit recognised the importance of transparency and the free flow of information as a central tool in promoting development and achieving the MDGs but failed to substantially include requirements for it in the action plan.

– Climate Change. Freedom of expression and access to information was severely limited at the failed Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. The resulting Copenhagen Accord failed to include substantial transparency rights essential to ensuing adequate public participation.

Debate on the UID: Share your views!

Accountability Intitative invites your views on the UID, on the brink of its first roll out in rural Maharashtra. We welcome comments on any aspect of the UID– its’ implementation, design, flaws, potential, constitutionality; as well as any relevant links or media you may wish to share.

The launch of the UID has led to a flurry of debate amongst policy-makers, legal experts and civil society at large; often surfacing in polarizing editorials and sometimes in press conferences calling for its’ halt. Today’s conference at the Press Club in Delhi was held by a coalition of civil society groups opposed to the UID, organized under the banner Campaign for No UID. The coalition asserts the project has been initiated without any prelude: “there is no project document; there is no feasibility study; there has been no cost-benefit analysis; there are serious concerns about data and identity theft… [the project] has proceeded so far without any legal authorization, on the basis of an executive order, that could change the status of the people in this country.”

Aadhaar will go beyond just providing “a 16-digit identification number for every Indian”. and is pitched to handle projects as diverse as a national-highway toll-collection system, a technology backbone for the forthcoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) and reform of the vast public distribution system(PDS) for subsidised food.

Nandan Nilekani, chief of Aadhaar, says the UID will “provide an identity to those who need it most”, and answers comprehensive questions in this interview on the benefits of the UID. However, others such as Jean Dreze, economist and NAC member, have claimed Aadhaar is “a national security project in the garb of a social policy initiative”. Inevitably there are concerns over privacy and data protection, with calls for a privacy Bill to counter the supposed legal and constitutional vacuum in which Aadhaar is currently placed, and predictably at least one writer has evoked Orwell. However, others claim the security provided to 600 million poor outweighs the philosophical and intellectual concerns over privacy that are limited to sections of liberal civil society. Critics also allege that the reason why Aadhaar is selling itself to millions of poor in the country is to create a foundation of legitimacy to deflect concerns over it being misused, technologically unproven and costly, as well as to piggyback on schemes like the NREGA and the PDS. The debate extends across citizen-State relations, privacy, finances, and operations.

Also, Aadhaar will go beyond just providing “a 16-digit identification number for every Indian”. and is pitched to handle projects as diverse as a national-highway toll-collection system, a technology backbone for the forthcoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) and reform of the vast public distribution system(PDS) for subsidised food. Nilekani runs a team of 120 people with the task of assigning unique identities to 1.2 billion people. These people form a small-smart-fast-flat team that runs Aadhaar. Is this model effective, and as some say an organisation that is a precursor to tomorrow’s government?

All comments will be moderated.

There’s no such thing as a local Plan

Recently, in a move that has been rightly acknowledged as the first tangible step toward radically overhauling the Five-Year Plan process, the Planning Commission unveiled a new approach to the Twelfth Plan, aimed at making it an inclusive and participative process. To start, the commission has put together a strategy matrix for the approach paper and invited comments through its website. Efforts are also underway to “listen to and consult with citizens’” through civil society-led consultations across the country.

Participatory planning is not a new phenomenon, and through its varied schemes, the Indian state regularly sends out invitations to citizens to participate in planning, monitoring and even auditing its activities. Moreover, the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution institutionalised participation by devolving powers to prepare plans to local governments and enabling direct people’s participation through gram and ward sabhas. Despite these invitations, meaningful participation is rare. A look at existing schemes shows us just where the problems are.

First, information is scarce and awareness is low. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), for instance, calls for village education committees to make annual plans for implementing SSA. But study after study has highlighted that members remain unaware of their membership — and even those in the know, know little of their powers, responsibilities and financial entitlements. This despite the fact that SSA allocates funds in its budget for community training and awareness generation.

Unpredictable and delayed funding is a common problem and monies usually reach their destination well after they are needed. So even if a plan is made, chances are it will not be implemented.

Awareness-raising and providing meaningful, relevant information is not easy. It requires sustained, continuous local engagement, something that implementing officials — who are usually bogged down by oceans of paperwork — have neither the time nor the inclination to do. So committees are formed, because the guidelines require it; but that’s where it stops. More importantly, implementers don’t necessarily value participation. In a recent conversation with a block official in charge of SSA in Madhya Pradesh, he, while acknowledging the mandate for peoples’ plans, said plans are actually made at the block level because (to paraphrase) “we know the status of schools.” “I have’, he added, “up-to-date data.” Sharing this data with people and soliciting their participation was not on his agenda.

Information scarcity apart, the greatest hurdle to participation lies in the very design of the implementation architecture. Every time a scheme calls for participation, it also puts in guidelines that ironically create disincentives for meaningful participation. Funds arrive at the implementation level tied to very clear expenditure items and rigid norms. In SSA, for instance, although the village education committee is expected to plan, if it decides to spend more on teaching materials by using money given for painting walls, the rules won’t allow it. Why bother making a plan that takes into account local needs when there is no flexibility to make budget allocations accordingly?

If it’s not the rigidity of the funding norms, it’s conflicting rules that make planning impossible. In a recent case in Karnataka, a village plan — made under a World Bank-funded programme that provides untied grants to panchayats — for building dry latrines with covered pits suited for the water-scarce area was rejected. Instead, a concrete septic tank latrine was chosen, which required water that the village did not have, because the rules demanded it!

Tardy implementation adds to the problem. Unpredictable and delayed funding is a common problem and monies usually reach their destination well after they are needed. So even if a plan is made, chances are it will not be implemented. As part of an effort to mobilise village education committees under the SSA in rural Madhya Pradesh, for example, a committee made a plan to fix a leaky roof before the monsoon — but this couldn’t be implemented because funds didn’t arrive on time. The roof leaked through the monsoon and the parents stopped coming to meetings. Worse still, parents have no real means of redress, and local officials claimed no responsibility. Meaningful participation, at minimum, requires that the state fulfils some basic functions to deliver on plans. Lack of participation, in this case, is a symptom of state dysfunction.

The current architecture for planning complicates matters further. Participation can only be truly effective in a decentralised system; precisely for this reason, constitutionally, powers to make local plans have been devolved to panchayats and municipalities. But resources flow through sector-specific centrally-sponsored schemes (CSS) with their own parallel planning processes, resulting in multiple planning bodies and endless confusion on the ground. CSS also limits state discretion because a large pool of state resources goes toward contributing to their share of the CSS. State plans are thus tailored to central funding streams. De facto then, planning remains a centralised activity, one that by its very nature creates limited space for meaningful participation.

In soliciting participation through the website and consultations with citizens groups, the Planning Commission has taken an important step towards putting people back on the agenda. This could also be an opportunity to resolve critical institutional failures that have made meaningful participation so difficult. Perhaps what we need is a plan to strengthen people’s plans!

Yamini Aiyar is Director of the Accountability Initiative.

This article appeared on 01-11-2010 in the Indian Express.

IMGSY: CCT or not to CCT

In a surprising turn of events, on October 22^nd, 2010, the Government of India in departure from its usual torpidity approved the introduction of Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY), demonstrating the commitment of the government to arrest problems of poor health and nutritional deficiency, captured most recently in the Global Hunger Index, which ranked India 67^th out of a total of 84 countries. The scheme which is to be implemented on a Pilot basis in 52 district of the country offers cash incentives to all pregnant and lactating women above the age of 19 years for the first two live births. The only exceptions are central and state public sector employees who have been excluded from the purview of the scheme as they are entitled to paid maternity leave.

Under this scheme each pregnant and lactating woman is to receive Rs 4,000 in three instalments between the second trimester of pregnancy until the child is six years old. Each beneficiary is required to open an individual bank account (if she already does not have one) to be liable for receiving benefits. Cash transfers are designed as incentives which are to be conditional upon the fulfilment of specific conditions relating to mother and child health care. The scheme is to be implemented through the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) system and will be supported by additional contractual staff. Anganwadi workers and helpers will receive an incentive of Rs 200 and Rs 100 respectively after all the due cash transfers are made.

In the case of IMGSY which is based on self selection, equity concerns may be offset if the benefits of the programme are accrued by richer households as opposed to poorer ones.

While the potency of such measures as the GHI highlights is indisputable, the particular method adopted for improving maternal and child health through cash based incentives is representative of a wider trend, which needs to be evaluated in some detail. The arguments in favour of cash transfer programmes have generally been based on three main conceptual premises.

In the context of underlying market failures in the economy, CCTs have been touted as being useful in improving efficiency. According to proponents, CCTs can play an important role in ensuring that individual decisions reflect both societal and individual preferences. Market failures arise when private information about the nature of certain investments and their expected returns may be imperfect or when human capital investments made by the poor may be privately optimal but socially sub optimal. The first type of market failure can be related to situations involving the adoption of new technology (such as institutional deliveries), benefits are accrued once the attributes of a new technology are known to the community; learning about the new technology involves costly experimentation. Initially communities may be unwilling to invest their time and resources in the technology, leading to a free rider problem. Introducing a CCT then in this context such that conditionalaties on cash transfer are linked to the use of the particular technology, such as institutional deliveries can encourage the communities to invest in the technology which they were otherwise would not have been tempted to invest in. Market imperfections of the second type relate to instances when pregnant women are dissuaded from seeking professional health services because the cost of seeking such assistance is higher than relying on non institutional care. By lowering the opportunity costs of professional heath services, CCTs like the IMGSY’s offered to pregnant women who seek professional care and fulfil certain specific conditions, encourage those who under invest in health to increase their investment and thereby augment social welfare more than an unconditional cash grant.
A second rationale for CCTs relates to equity and redistribution. CCTs can be used as screening devices to target populations when individual characteristics are not easily observable. In cases where poor are hard to identify and budgets are small it is necessary to screen beneficiaries. Conditionalities, in such cases when appropriately chosen can act as screening mechanisms which induce targeted groups to participate in the programme while discouraging the participation of non targeted individual. The idea behind successful screening is straight forward; the benefits of the cash received exceed the cost induced by the conditionality for one group but not for another. In the context of the IMGSY, the cash incentives of Rs 12,000 appear to be relevant for targeting the benefits to select beneficiaries particularly the economically weaker sections for whom the benefits of the cash incentives exceed the costs incurred.
The third justification of CCT relates to political economy of funding redistribution. Conditioning cash transfers on compliance with certain socially accepted behavioural practices may increase the political support for them making them feasible or better endowed. This is based on the rationale that elites are not entirely self regarding. It is possible for instance that tax payers are more prepared to pay transfers to those who are seen to be helping themselves than for recipients of unconditional transfers who are viewed as being lazy and careless. Alternatively, unlike Unconditional Transfers, CCTs can be seen not as plain social assistance but rather a form of social contract whereby society supports those poor households that are ready to make the effort to improve their lives-‘the deserving poor’.
From the above arguments it appears that CCTs represent an important mechanism for improving health and nutritional indicators. Critics of CCTs however warn on the limitations within the approach and similarly point out three conceptual limitations with the approach which impinge on the effectiveness of CCTs as instruments for reducing poverty and improving human development indicators.
Ideologically, CCTs by their very nature induce a distortion on the consumption choices of individuals by forcing them to take certain actions rather than letting them decide on their own. It is assumed that if people are left to their own devices then they will somehow not be capable of choosing what is in their best interest. Such measures erode the agency of individuals and compel them to behave in ways that are ‘good for them’. This is especially relevant for programmes such as IMGSY which encourage women to seek institutional care as opposed to more traditional forms of heath care such as the Dai system. Traditional systems of delivery according to many feminists tends to be less evasive than institutional care which tends to disempower women treating their bodies as mere vessels ‘churning out life’.
A second problem with CCT schemes relates to fungibility of the conditioned commodity/service. The fundamental premise of conditionality is the distortion of choice from the individual optimal. However this very logic creates an automatic incentive for individuals to try and offset the loss of individual utility that the conditionality imposes. The ability of individuals to offset this distortion is the problem of fungibility. In cases where there is a close substitute individuals can offset the distortion imposed by the conditionality if she appropriately decreases consumption of or investment in the substitute, so that overall amounts are unchanged. In extreme cases this can mean decreasing the consumption of a close substitute (eating less spinach when given iron tablets), changing patterns of consumption (pregnant women from poor households covered by the IMGSY may seek to reduce their food consumption if they are assured of getting medical services), or even relocating investments in human capital within the household (sending fewer boys to school when girls are given a stipend).
Further using CCTs for increasing human capital investments could adversely affect equity while distortions required for self selection may impose an efficiency cost. For example the female stipend programme in Bangladesh led to an increase in the secondary school enrolment rate of girls. In the absence of any means testing, the programme had an adverse distributional impacts, the untargeted stipend disproportionately favoured the enrolment of girls from households with larger land wealth than land poor households. In the case of IMGSY which is based on self selection, equity concerns may be offset if the benefits of the programme are accrued by richer households as opposed to poorer ones. Using a CCT as a screening device for targeting also comes at a cost. Such cost can be either due to distortion in consumption and investment choices induced by the conditionality or as a result of under coverage.

Thus the debates rage on, but whether or not the CCTs represent the ideal mechanism at the end of the day, it’s issues of implementation and accountability which determine the success of the programme, and those are the issues which need to be ultimately confronted and addressed.

Gayatri Sahgal is a Research Analyst at the Accountability Initiative.

Aid Transparency Assessment

Publish What You Fund has developed an Aid Transparency Assessment. This is the first global assessment for aid transparency and the organisation plans to produce more in the future.

The assessment compares the transparency of 30 major donors using eight data sources across seven weighted indicators that fall into three categories – high level commitment to transparency; transparency to recipient government; and transparency to civil society.

“Aid transparency matters for many reasons– from improving governance and accountability and increasing the effectiveness of aid to lifting as many people out of poverty as possible. While some aid is helping address some of the most difficult problems in the most challenging places in the world, we also know that aid is not always delivering the maximum impact possible.

The understanding emerged that aid transparency is fundamental to delivering on donors’ aspirations and the promise of aid. The commitments donors made to improve their aid effectiveness in the 2005 Paris Declaration are important and welcome. The recognition that donors were struggling to deliver on those commitments1 resulted in a new focus on aid transparency in 2008 within the Accra Agenda for Action and with the launch of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

The methodological approach taken is fundamentally driven by a lack of primary data availability.”

The Aid Transparency Assessment is available for download by clicking on the attachment below. You can also click here to experiment with the weighting and see how it affects the overall score.

The organisation would appreciate feedback, suggestions and thoughts on how to take this work forward.

The YP Foundation: Call for positions

The YP Foundation is hiring!

The YP Foundation (TYPF) is a youth run and led organization that supports and enables young people to create programmes and influence policies in the areas of gender, sexuality, health, education, the arts & governance. The organization promotes, protects and advances young people’s human rights by building leadership, and strengthening youth led initiatives and movements. Founded in 2002, TYPF has worked directly with 5,000 young people to set up over 200 projects in India over the last 8 years, reaching out to 300,000 adolescents and young people between 3-28 years of age.

What does it mean to be ‘youth led and run’?

It means getting young people to design, execute, lead and implement all the processes and systems that involve creating social change. Our staff is a team of 21 young people (largely between 18 – 26) who work both part time and full time, with an active volunteer base of over 200 young people a year, across 6 programme divisions that work on the issues of Human Rights, Mental Health & Peer Pressure, Healthcare and Education for Street Children, Film and Literature, promoting Independent Music in India, Sexuality, Gender, HIV/AIDS, Governance and the Right to Information Act in India. We work both in English and Hindi.

TYPF works primarily in the National Capital Region (NCR) and works with youth led groups with partnerships at national, regional and international levels. We have collaborated with youth groups and young activists from 13 states across India, including Punjab, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Kashmir, Nagaland, Gujarat and Bihar. TYPF has supported 250 slum and street children across two locations in New Delhi.

We believe in empowering young people’s access to information, services and rights such that they can build collective platforms to challenge and develop their leadership potential.

Vacancies

Full Time Positions

Management Positions:

1. Projects Manager

2. Volunteer Management Head

3. Trainer’s Cell Coordinator

Part Time Positions

Management Positions:

1. Administrative Coordinator

Blending Spectrum (Working with Child Rights, Human Rights & Life Skills Based Education)

1. Life Skills Curriculum Head

2. Location Head (Nizamuddin)

3. Location Head (Mehrauli)

Silhouette (Working with Music Education and the Arts)

1. Project Head

Right to Information Branch (Working with the Right to Information Act, Governance and Active Citizenship)

1. Coordinator

The deadline for submission is October 20th, 2010; please note that applications beyond this date will be entertained only if positions have not been filled.

Please find attached our Staff Applications Form and a list of Staff Vacancies.

For further details, please contact [email protected] or 46792243/44.

Budget 2010 – A Preliminary Assessment

Anit Mukherjee

The much-anticipated budget for the financial year 2010-11 can be termed as a consolidation budget. It needs to be looked upon in the context of a rebounding economy and relatively stable political environment but with high inflationary pressures and the need to significantly alter the structure of government’s income and expenditure. The budget also has to be seen in the context of the recommendations of the Thirteenth Finance Commission (FC-XIII). Being a statutory commission, the recommendations are in a large part binding upon the government.

The road map for fiscal consolidation as enunciated by both the budget and the FC-XIII report are very clear. The fiscal deficit has to be reduced progressively, and the revenue deficit has to be eliminated altogether. Moreover, accounting tricks of previous years such as oil bonds and fertilizer subsidies being kept outside the deficit calculation has to be done away with. In both these areas, Budget 2010 makes a good beginning by projecting a fiscal deficit of 5.5 percent for FY 2010-11. Reduction in the fiscal deficit essentially means that the government would be borrowing less from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), therefore leaving a greater share of credit for private sector. This also means that the pressure on interest rates is reduced, since the government has first charge on the available credit from RBI. Monetary policy can be calibrated to tackle inflation, now that the government has signaled its intent on a rollback of the stimulus measures.

This brings us to the most important policy direction contained in Budget 2010 – a structural change in the way government earns its income and spends the money especially in infrastructure and social sectors such as education, health and rural development. On the income side, the next year promises to be the ‘Big-bang’ year if both the Direct Tax Code (DTC) and the Goods and Service Tax (GST) are introduced from April 1, 2011. The Finance Minister is clear about the former, but the latter depends whether the States can agree to a unified GST rate and the consequent compensation for the tax revenues foregone. Given the fact that the GST deliberations have progressed substantially, the remaining issues may be more technical – constitutional amendments, GST database and the mode of revenue sharing. If both the DTC and GST come into force from 2011 as expected, the revenue position of the Central government is expected to improve significantly over the second half of the government’s mandate. The high-point of Budget 2010 – the cut in personal income tax – is to lay the groundwork for the implementation of DTC from next year. This was also made possible by the fact that all the pay arrears on account of the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission was already factored into the previous budget.

On the indirect taxes, the increase in central excise duties from 8 to 10 percent reflects a calibrated exit from the stimulus package announced over the last 18 months. The re-imposition of customs duties on petroleum may signify that price decontrol of petrol and diesel may come later rather than sooner. However, silence on kerosene and LPG is a hint towards a change of the pattern of subsidies that may come later in the year as per the recommendations on this topic presented to the government, the latest being the Kirit Parikh Committee Report.
As noted earlier, the government expects the GST to be rolled out from April 2011. To that effect, for the first time the central excise and service tax rates have been aligned at the same rate of 10 percent. If the compensation to the states on account of their revenue loss has to be kept at reasonable limits, then a 16-18 percent GST rate could be the consensus. In that sense, this budget consolidates the fiscal position of the Central government and puts a Central GST rate of 10 percent as an acceptable proposition. It is now up to the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers to hammer out an agreement before the next budget.

The Economic Survey which was released the day before the budget is a welcome departure from the uninspiring document that it usually is. The major policy guidelines are enunciated in Chapter 2 of the Survey where the most interesting discussion is about subsidies. It has been acknowledged in many fora that subsidies are a huge burden on the government exchequer, and limit the flexibility of the ruling dispensation to reduce them mainly due to populist political pressures. The total subsidy bill on three major items – food, fuel and fertilizer – is estimated to be nearly 1.5 lakh crore, or nearly 3 percent of GDP. On the other hand, parties on the Left argue that this is necessary to protect the interests of the poor, which makes them vulnerable to price shocks and leaves them without a social safety net.

There is a point to both the arguments, but until now the middle ground has been elusive. The budget has signaled that the answer to this dilemma lies in better targeting of subsidies for the poor, and in the larger national interest. The decontrol of nutrient based fertilizer prices (and the increase in urea) is the first step – already the government projects significant savings from this measure in this year’s budget. Against the backdrop of the Food Security Bill to be tabled later this year, the budget hints that food subsidy and buffer stock management will undergo systemic changes by leveraging new IT initiatives such as the Unique ID Number (UID) and the conversion of the food subsidy into a cash transfer after identification of the beneficiaries. The kerosene and LPG subsidies may actually be the first ones to be converted into this system. Over the next two years, therefore, a lot of emphasis would be on prudent management of government expenditure (especially on the subsidies front) and in improving targeting of the beneficiaries. If duplicate ration cards are weeded out from the system, everybody will gain. If kerosene is not used to adulterate diesel, fuel consumption and fuel emissions will both go down. The challenge is to change the incentives, enforce the rules and track the outcome.

This year’s budget does not break new ground. Rather, it is an effort to level the playing field in many areas. The question is how far the intent will be translated into action. The government’s record on inflation management has been ineffective until now, the disinvestment process is running into rough weather and monetary tightening is on the cards. The year ahead will be both challenging and exciting in different ways. We can then look forward to a ‘Big Bang’ 2011 budget.

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