2018 Archives - Page 30 of 37 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

To Improve Policy Effectiveness

Voters elect governments to solve social problems. Governments design and implement a huge array of programs and allocate huge sum of money every year to ensure the public good s. A sizable literature has developed suggesting that problems in program implementation are a major source of poor government performance, ranging from inadequate coordination between agencies and levels of government to front-line workers who disagree with the program and implement it with less than total enthusiasm.

But do you think, the improved policy effectiveness can be brought in by setting-up of an “Independent Evaluation Office to undertake impartial and objective assessments of the various public programmes and improve the effectiveness of the public interventions”. This year’s budget speech mentions, “It has been decided that it would be an independent entity under a Governing board chaired by the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission. The IEO would evaluate the impact of flagship programmes and place the findings in the public domain. It would be funded by the Planning Commission.”
Surprisingly there has been no mention to the final step of the implementation chain: explanations of why the state or block level officials do or do not “comply” with these policy objective – meaning that why don’t they behave in ways that are consistent with the objectives of the policy.

Program “officials” frequently fail to act in the way that program designers intended and wanted, even when it appears to be in their self-interest to do so. Contrary to common perception, the single biggest crisis facing the state officials is not corruption, it is lack of capacity. This is true at virtually all levels of government. The officials do not often even have the full statistical base in some of the most vital areas of our well being, from health to urban economies, to be able to make intelligent interventions.

The regulatory demands of the modern economy and the challenges of governance require substantial planning and expenditure towards capacity building at the state and subsequently at the ULB and Panchayat level. It is critical to listen to both what they say and what they do. Every department should be allocated a stipulated some of money to map the challenges faced by each department and then they should make that shortcomings public. This resource mapping will help the government to learn quickly what mistakes of omission or commission (or both) policymakers have made and help in correcting those mistakes.

For any government interested in thinking seriously about effective implementation should begin the conversion by ensuring state’s capability to do all that is expected of it.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative

Private learning landscape in India: A brief review of the literature and available data

>by Ashish Ranjan

In the month of April and May 2015, there was hardly any academic work happening in schools in Bihar. Thousands of school teachers teaching in primary and secondary government schools (mainly Niyojit or contractual

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

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

Budget 2010 – Great Expectations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding a Voice: Community Television Initiative

Some people used to argue that elections are THE best instruments of accountability. But events have overtaken the idea and now there are many who are focusing on the limitations of election, mainly, if you have an uninformed citizenry.

There is another dimension to it. While in democracies, elections provide an incentive for politicians to perform, governments are not likely to respond as enthusiastically to those who are unlikely or marginalized voters, no matter whether their plight has been well covered or not. So how do you turn uninformed citizenry or marginalized voters into active citizens?…In short, by providing evidence based information.

On the face of it, getting critical news and information out to citizens should be an easier and easier task in today’s digitalized, networked and hand-held world. But most media—across regions and on any platform: print, radio, TV or online—aren’t interested in serving the public good, because there is no finance to that public-good role.

This then presents an opportunity for the development community. To get information out to the public, to educate the public about who to trust and how to evaluate information sources, research organization needs to use newer tools. But, where is the tool?

Community Television initiative can be considered as one such dynamic tool. Access to television in remote Indian villages has changed substantially in the past few years. And, community television will have many advantages over print media. Programmes, nearly always in the local languages would deal with local issues involving ordinary people so that villagers (even illiterate ones) and town people understand what they are about. The volunteer appointed by a civil society can organize a debate once in a week on localize issues, which in turn would become topics for programmes on the community television. For example, Byrraju Foundation in collaboration with UNESCO has set up one such initiative -Ankuram community TV.

This innovation combines a TV studio and the existing wifi network with a local cable TV facility enabling people to access the services and programmes right in their homes. This technological and social innovation is being piloted in three villages (Cherukumilli, Juvvalapalem & I-Bhimavaram) in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh and the local programmes reach about 69 villages across the district through the cable network.

If community TV network gains momentum in India, then rural India should perhaps call the TV the Empowerment Box instead of the Idiot Box.

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative

The Right to Information – Open to Interpretation

Whether it is the debate over access to judges’ assets or individual income tax returns, the Right to Information Act (RTI Act) gets people talking. As a developing area of legislation with few legal precedents, the RTI is open to interpretation. I discovered this first hand a few weeks ago at the Central Information Commission (CIC). Colleagues and I were representing an RTI applicant in a string of second appeal hearings. The applicant had filed an information request with the Delhi Police to get access to statistical information on the number of applications and appeals received by them, as well as copies of RTI applications and appeals from October 2005 – April 2008. The data was being collected as part of the all-India study on the RTI Act being carried out by the Right to Information Assessment and Analysis Group (RaaG). While most of the departments had responded with some statistical information, they were unwilling to part with copies of RTI applications and appeals. The PIOs stated that copies could not be given because i) the information requested would have to be compiled and would divert the resources of the department [Sec 7(9)], and ii) RTI applications and appeals contained sensitive information the disclosure of which would likely to endanger the life and physical safety of a person [Sec 8(1)(g)], impede the process of investigation [8(1)(h)] and invade the privacy of the individual [8(1) (j)].

Early on the hearings, it became evident that none of the PIOs had actually thought about the exemptions they had used. This was particularly evident in the use of privacy and danger to life and physical safety exemptions to deny access to copies of RTI applications and appeals. Bear in mind that RTI applications and appeals only contain the name and addresses of applicants and therefore cannot be considered to contain “personal” information. Moreover copies of these can be downloaded easily from the Delhi Government and the CIC websites. One PIO hilariously argued that providing access to copies of RTIs constituted an infringement of copyright [Sec 8(1) (e)]! A decision on our appeal is still pending, but to my mind the hearings brought to light a lot of interesting questions. For instance, what constitutes a “voluminous” request for information – is it the number of questions or the number of pages? Who decides? Similarly, how do we define a “disproportionate diversion” of resources? Can it be measured? And are RTI applications and appeals personal? What exactly is “personal information?

These are questions that PIOs, Appellate Authorities and Information Commissioners grapple with every day with little guidance. There are broader issues as well – of ensuring that citizens make responsible use of the law, that departments have the human capacity to process and handle information requests and lastly that the pressure for information disclosure is not entirely at the cost of the discretion of officials or vice versa. The balance is a fine one.

Thus, even as CIC issues landmark decisions it also needs to bold decisions on the everyday but often more “tricky” points of the law. Failure to develop clear and concrete guidelines on how to interpret the law or fence sitting on the application of exemptions or on the interpretation of other clauses of the law, will not help. In the absence of clear guidance, the law is likely to become an unholy mess of awry interpretations. The CIC would do well to follow the example of the UK Information Commissioner’s Office which offers detailed guidance on interpreting different clauses of the UK Freedom of Information Act.

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