Blog Post Year: 2018

Grama Swaraj in Karnataka: How is it going?

Jeffrey Hammer

Checking in on the ongoing Gram Swaraj project in northern Karnataka recently raised a few interesting questions, re-enforced some prejudices of mine and pointed out some trouble spots of which we should all be aware.

The Grama Swaraj Project (GSP) is simple: it gives each Grama Panchayat 5-7 lakhs rupees to do with as it sees fit. The main requirement for spending the money is to make sure a Grama Sabha takes place ahead of the Grama Panchayat meeting that decides what to do with the money. 5-7 lakhs doesn’t sound like much in comparison to, say, NREGA funds (whose use was intended to be decided the same way but, in Karnataka, usually isn’t) but these are often the only untied, fully discretionary funds a GP has. Lots of money flows through a bank account with the GP’s name on it but almost all of that is earmarked for specific uses (they have to pay the teacher, they have to fund the digging of borewells). GSP money can be used for anything except a very short list of forbidden items like religious buildings, guns, drugs and other obvious restrictions.

How’s it going? Well, formal evaluations are currently in progress but I can tell you what I saw and heard while visiting.

First off, there were no complaints about misuse of these funds. Mention NREGA and you’ll get an earful of complaints but mention Grama Swaraj and you’ll hear “oh, that’s working much better”. Now, it is fully possible that GSP involves such small sums that it’s not even worth the trouble for the usual suspects to go after them. A perfectly good question to ask is what would happen if local autonomy were granted for spending substantial chunks of money. The sharks could certainly rise to that bait. But, so far, that hasn’t been an issue.

Second, people seem genuinely pleased to be able to fund items that would be too small for the relevant line ministry to even think about but which make a big difference in the lives of villages. In northern Karnataka, water and sanitation are perennial issues (even before this year’s disappointing monsoon) and these were common areas for the use of these funds.

Third, the technical quality of the work appears to be much higher under GSP than NREGA. Roads that look several years old and are an inch or two thick (checked scientifically by kicking at the edges of the road and seeing what pops up – literally) built within the past few months under NREGA auspices were noticeably worse than those built with the GP’s own money. NREGA funds are supposed to be their own money, too, but no one seemed to feel responsible for how that money was spent. In contrast, money that was perfectly transparent in the amount spent and the purpose to which it was put in GSP yielded solidly built and usable infrastructure.

So, is everything going just fine? Does this devolution of purchasing autonomy solve everything? Well, no – some problems are clearly worth worrying about.

The first is the interference of higher levels of government and bureaucratic processes that, actually, were not allowed under the design of the project. So, for example, one village wanted more public toilets. They figured, given that water was in very short supply, that covered pits were the most appropriate. There are plenty of designs for safe covered pit toilets. However, the Junior Engineer, with support from district health authorities, said they had to have a water-intensive septic tank system. This made the village change their minds (they knew they couldn’t spare the water for this) but they were not allowed to change projects though there is nothing in the program that should have prevented them changing their minds. So there is a lakh’s worth of well constructed but useless sanitation infrastructure sitting in the village. Local decisions were fully accountable. District and state decisions were not. Local discretion could have saved lives from water borne illness. State rules stopped it from happening.

So that I don’t sound too much like an advocate for local autonomy: the second problem is one of “too much” local discretion. Those good GSP roads with proper drainage ditches along the side we saw in a village in Gulbarga district stopped right in front of a little settlement of Scheduled Caste residents. Even with only the light early monsoon rains, the hamlet required stepping carefully to avoid puddles caused by those good-looking roads. The standing water is a health hazard for the SC residents of the village. Local autonomy doesn’t solve the problem of caste. That’s going to require checks and balances between governments than mere devolution of investment decisions won’t be able to handle.

But at least there will be roads in the village for a few years to come.

I’ll get back to you to report whether these observations are supported by systematic research or not. For the time being, it’s food for thought.

Jeffrey Hammer is Visiting Professor in Economic Development at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

Observations from the field: Sehore, Madhya Pradesh

As an intern at the Accountability Initiative one of my assignments was mapping, with the help of GPS technology, the public services at the six villages that were being covered under the PAISA project. These villages are located in the Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh, approximately 60 kms from Bhopal, the state capital, and have been chosen due in part to Madhya Pradeshs’ history with decentralisation (of public function) as well as language and accessibility.

 

 

 

 

 

Amirganj, Sehore, MP: View from the highest point

The objective of the visit to Sehore was the mapping of all public services delivered to these villages, and the development of new templates to relay data on the status of primary schools in these areas. The work that was done can be accessed from the Accountability Initiative website shortly.The following are a few notes on the observations I made during my trip to these villages.

The villages of Dhaba, Palaspani, Amajhir, Amirganj, Sirali and Bhilai are located in the Narsullaganj block in Sehore. The public services made available to them are provided by Central Government Schemes, the Village Panchayat or the Van Vibhag. Basic services include the provision of hand-pumps, wells, roads, work under NREGA, schooling and access to toilets built under the Total Sanitation Campaign. While large amounts of funds have been released for each of these, the success of some of these campaigns is questionable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Van Vibagh – Forest Department Office, Sirali

Take for example, the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) – the objective of which is to “to ensure sanitation facilities in rural areas with broader goal to eradicate the practice of open defecation.” One of the facilities to be built is the Individual Household Latrine where toilets are built for every Below Poverty Line (BPL) family. The government has released Rs 2200 per family while beneficiaries are to contribute Rs. 300 for the project. The project aims at building a basic low cost unit with a superstructure for these households. While most of these facilities have been cited as completed by the local worker at Dhaba and the sarpanch at Bhilai, none of these units have doors and most of the residents consider them to be unusable. The worker maintains that to provide doors additional funds of approximately Rs. 700 are needed. Though superstructures can be seen at most households the ultimate aim of providing villagers with sanitation facilities is not being met.

Schools in these villages are run admirably under the Sarva Shiksha Abhyan (SSA) but teachers have a gargantuan task of educating students who need special attention and handling their administrative work at the same time. Student attendance in some of these villages is very low while many students in Grades 6 and above have problem with elementary Math. This leads to a class where student needs vary greatly, and teachers cannot standardise their teaching assignments and finish school text-books within the academic year. More importantly, they fail to deliver quality education to children.

Rural connectivity has improved drastically under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) while work under the rural employment guarantee scheme is not very visible as most workers are engaged in agriculture during this period. The village of Palaspani is easily one of the most neglected villages in this area. With only one 100m road in the whole village and no connectivity to other villages, Palaspani is bereft of even proper sanitation and drinking water facilities. There are only two working handpumps located in one corner of the village.

Due to some of the many problems listed here, villagers are often disillusioned and disheartened. They understand that community involvement is necessary to improve the status of these villages but have little information on how to do so. Problems like not having proper knowledge on grievance redressal mechanisms irk them and render them helpless and, later, apathetic. The government is investing a lot in rural development but they also need to see the work through to the end. Better accountability measures need to be implemented as a means to achieve this end and village residents need to be provided with easier means to access information and redress grievances.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Satellite Dish on the house

Despite all these problems, a sight that strikes you immediately is the pervasive satellite dishes mounted over most households that provides villagers access to satellite television! It makes you wonder whether the provisioning of more basic services that need to be provided through the government will improve, or whether private players will find solutions in the near future. I do believe that villagers are more than ready to pay for these “better” facilities as shown by their propensity to subscribe to satellite TV. The important thing here is how we find means to provide them access to these.

Peeyush Agarwal is a student at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He interned at Accountability Initiative in December 2009.

 

The Right to Education Act: Getting the Design Right for Right Implementation

How do we deliver elementary education effectively and accountably to India’s children? This question is becoming increasingly more relevant as India begins work to implement the recently passed Right to Education Act (RTE). See here for an interesting review by Rukmini Banerji of James Tooley’s latest book, The Beautiful Tree. The book is an effort to address one critical question:  “If public education is so dismal and time-consuming to reform to make it better for poor people…could private schools be a quicker, easier, more effective solution?” The review raises the issue of local ownership as holding the key to effective and accountable delivery. Can better decentralization improve education outcomes? And if so, what is the best design through which this should be done?

 

Local institutions need to be nurtured and resourced. They need to be provided with information and capacity, and perhaps most importantly, the system needs to create incentives that make local participation meaningful.

The RTE has many provisions for ensuring accountability through decentralization, including the creation of school management committees (SMC) empowered to make plans and monitor school-level expenditures. But as is well known in India, the devil lies in the implementation.  How effectively these accountability provisions will work on the ground depends on getting the ‘right’ design that will ensure accountability and transparency in implementation process. How can this be achieved?

If there is one lesson to take home from India’s past experience, particularly with the implementation of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, it is that simply creating decentralized institutions such as the Village Education Committees (VEC) that ‘invite’ local participation in planning does not itself result in effective decentralized delivery – it is now widely accepted that VECs for the most part are defunct. Local institutions need to be nurtured and resourced. They need to be provided with information and capacity, and perhaps most importantly, the system needs to create incentives that make local participation meaningful. How do we ensure this in the RTE? Now as bureaucrats are at the drawing board developing the rules and guidelines for the implementation of the RTE, this issue needs to be seriously debated so that for once we get the ‘implementation design’ right.

Yamini Aiyar is Director of Accountability Initiative.

On why we don’t govern ourselves better

Why do some societies govern themselves better than others? While this is a key question that animates much debate in the political economy of development, in my everyday musings I have considered variants on the theme. And invariably, with the cynicism and frustration that often characterizes my own experience of living in India, I find myself looking for answers to the question “what would it take for Indians to govern themselves better?”

At an everyday level, take our traffic sense, for instance. Presumably a pet peeve of everyone that is reading this post now. And each one of us has probably at some point wondered why we behave the way we do on our roads? Why do we honk so savagely? Why is the right of way always “MINE”, and our roundabouts veritable Russian roulette? Why do we violate the rules with such impunity? And complain that the traffic policemen don’t do their jobs, and join in as accomplices anyway by bribing them when they try to fine us for our faults? Why do we chuckle and shrug all these questions off 5 seconds later? Why the casual tolerance of the ordeal that driving on our roads is?

But this is not a rant on our collective traffic sense – or even the lack of it.

 

Our little and not-so-little everyday corruptions and collusions that give expression to our ‘mistaken view of the state as a vehicle for personal aggrandizement’?

One of our colleagues, who participated in the recent NREGA social audits in Rajasthan, recounted to us how spectacular the event was and how successful it was in uncovering large amounts of fraud. But there were also instances he recounted where the Sarpanches had co-opted some of the villagers and gave them wages for 40 days without needing them to work at all, and kept the remaining 60-days worth of wages, and declared those villagers as having worked the whole 100 days. In this web of co-option, everyone stood to gain – the workers got money for doing nothing (and presumably could use those 100 days to work some more elsewhere and earn further) – the Sarpanch got to keep the money that was never his. It is highly unlikely that a fraud such as this would come up in a social audit, as the co-opted villager has little incentive to speak against the Sarpanch because he himself is accomplice in the crime. The only room for suspicion is the asset that needs to be created at the end of the day as part of the NREGA – a well, a road etc. But with a bit of discretion and ingenuity, anybody can see that there is much scope for the Sarpanch to continue exploiting the goose, one golden egg at a time.

But this is not a post about social audits either.

There are dozens of other instances, ranging from the quotidian to the profound. What is it with our casual fly-tipping? Our defacing of our heritage monuments? Our men peeing on the roads with impunity? Our dismal sense of queuing? Our bakshish to the guy who comes to take the electricity and water meter readings? Our politics? Our almost inhuman acceptance of social discrimination as one’s lot? Our little and not-so-little everyday corruptions and collusions that give expression to our ‘mistaken view of the state as a vehicle for personal aggrandizement’?

Looking for an all-encompassing diagnosis of what ails us through all of these symptoms is a complex academic exercise. At some level of abstraction, theories that have tried to answer questions like why some societies govern themselves better than others, or why some countries develop while others remain trapped in low-growth high-poverty equilibria, have done related things. In the literature on these questions, the possible answers like Geography, Trade, Culture and Colonization, have been found either to be instrumental or to not stand rigorous analysis. The current status of the argument proposes institutions as an explanatory variable to account for differences between societies. Institutions defined simply as rules of the game – the norms of behaviour that structure how people in a society interact with each other. In our public lives, there are formal public institutions like the Constitution, the Law, the Civil Services and so forth, and then there are the everyday informal institutions – the norms and traditions that govern our interactions with one another. Our system of beliefs, our faith, and our caste system in practice being some examples. The theory says progressive institutions are those that create incentives in a way that maximizes the collective benefit for the society as a whole. Regressive ones are those that make it possible for a select few to exploit others.

While that is a plausible explanation, there is something to be said also about the reverse direction of the causality. That is, not only do institutions influence how a society works, but a society and its people – you and I – also influence how our institutions develop over time.  Some institutions that suit the more powerful among us are kept that way even if they hurt most others. The caste system is one enduring example of a bad institution that continues to be with us in myriad ways.  In other words, institutions – formal and informal – are not always a given. They are a living breathing animal, shaped and reshaped by its people, and by how they affect their incentives. So in a society where bad institutions give scope for economic, social and political discriminations, its people should also at some level be held culpable. Perhaps every society gets the institutions it deserves? This is not unlike saying that every society gets the politicians it deserves, or the journalism it deserves, and the criminals it deserves, perhaps even the traffic it deserves. “We must be crap people”, then, is arguably a fair diagnosis in itself of why we bribe and collude and discriminate and drive badly.

 

Any approach to accountability (better governance) can only be partial unless it aims eventually to internalize accountable behaviour. As if it were a norm. And for such an approach it is perhaps not enough to look at accountability as making a rule, and making people follow it, “if not…”.

If that seems plausible, what can we do about it? Can we legislate against it? But then we have. And we always find ways to work around the laws and ‘outsmart’ the system. Can we legislate some more? Implement better? Enforce better? Perhaps. But is this merely about legislation? The government? Is this an instrumental matter for policy? Or do we need to dig deeper? Should we go into in the realm of ethics and morals where laws by themselves have limited impact? Go on a collective soul-searching mission? Why are we the way we are, and why can’t we all be better people? Perhaps.

But the point is, any approach to accountability (better governance) can only be partial unless it aims eventually to internalize accountable behaviour. As if it were a norm. And for such an approach it is perhaps not enough to look at accountability as making a rule, and making people follow it, “if not…”.

Perhaps what we also need is a discourse on accountability that invokes it positively – as a responsibility. A moral and ethical responsibility of each and every one of us, as much as it is a legal obligation. A duty as much as a right.

If this is idealism, perhaps we need a bit of idealism in our pragmatics?

Bala Posani is Senior Research Analyst at Accountability Initiative

 

 

The Judges’ Assets Bill – A window for reforms

As the India transitions towards a more accountable and transparent democracy, the society gets confronted with issues that sometimes raise fundamental questions.

One such issue is being raised with the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill (hereafter ‘the Bill’), being introduced as part of the ambitious reformist agenda of the current government. The Bill tries to further judicial accountability by making disclosure of the assets and liabilities of the judges mandatory.

In Indian society, role of the judiciary has been pivotal. Decisions of the Courts in India have always had a tremendous impact on the way the country is governed. Society, which sometimes gets disillusioned by the executive and the legislature, gets left with only the judiciary to look to for fairness in governance. However, with the growing instances of corruption in the judiciary across the country, it was necessary that some regulation get introduced to make the functioning of the judiciary more transparent. In a system where, traditionally, public scrutiny of the functioning of the judges has been very minimal (especially on the matters concerning disclosure of assets and liabilities), the Bill comes as a big leap forward.

But fearing that the Indian public might misuse the disclosure to mudsling against the judges, and that the judges may not be able to defend themselves like politicians, the Bill created an in-built system by which the disclosure will have to be made only to the respective Chief Justices, and not to the public at large. In fact, the Bill makes it a penal offence in case the disclosure of the assets of the judges is made to any citizen. In effect, the Bill exempts the judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court from any real public scrutiny of their assets – a privilege even the President and Prime Minister do not enjoy. Expectedly, the Bill faced stiff opposition in the Parliament, and its introduction had to be deferred.

Clearly, judges should be put at par with the elected representatives, and any provision that exempts them from such parity in probing may go against the Right to Equality built in the Article 14 of the Constitution, as well as the Right to Information Act. Elsewhere in the world, many countries including the USA require public and annual declaration of assets as a norm by all federal judges including judges of the Supreme Court. Surely there is no reason to think that such a requirement would be any differently problematic in India to warrant any exemption?

While in spirit, the Bill does signifies a positive start towards a much needed process of reforms in the justice delivery mechanism of the country, and to that extent it should be welcomed, exemptions such as one in question dissipate the very objectives of transparency and equality that the Bill purportedly stands for. It remains to be seen if the Government takes steps to address the problems in the Bill, and reintroduce it in the earnest.

It is crucial that the momentum in judicial reforms be maintained. The Judicial Inquiries Bill, the reconsideration of procedure for appointment and removal of judges, as well as instituting an appraisal mechanism to evaluate their performances are all long due reforms within the judicial system, and let us hope that productive discussions around the Judges Assets Bill bring into light the need for these changes as well, to ensure adequate checks and balances within the Judicial system.

Finally, there is a hope that the issues that were so far hidden below the surface will be put on the reform agenda of the government. As far as the reforms in the legal arena are concerned, it is high time that we demand even stricter and more rigorous regulations for those who uphold the law itself.

Kanan Dhru is Managing Director of Research Foundation for Governance in India.

What’s so smart about SMART Cards?

India is undergoing a smart revolution – make that a smart card revolution. Smart cards have been in the news lately with the Government’s decision to set up a Unique Identification Authority (UIDA) to develop multi-purpose identity cards for every Indian. The smart card UIDs are expected to improve national security, enable easy access to government services and help eliminate fraud and corruption in the management of large-scale social welfare schemes as the NREGA and PDS. But, UIDs are just the tip of the iceberg – there is a vast and untapped market for smart cards in India. Growing annually at the rate of 45% the Indian smart card industry is predicted to reach $6 billion by 2010.

Basically, smart cards are pocket sized electronic devices that can store a variety of data safely and securely. We are all too are familiar with the many avatars of these nifty devices which include credit cards, ATM cards, fuel and phone cards. Smart cards are commonly used in Europe and other developed countries as they offer governments and service providers and citizens with a number of benefits. First of all, they are portable, easy to use and offer cashless and paperless transactions. They can be used to as a one-stop shop for citizens to access multiple services. Smart cards improve service delivery by connecting clients directly with service providers thereby reducing the discretion of public authorities. If implemented well smart cards can improve service delivery systems to cut out middlemen, corruption and bring services to closer to end users and beneficiaries. From a service delivery and accountability perspective, smart cards can help plug leakages and curb corruption in the implementation of large-scale social welfare schemes. Capable of storing a range of beneficiary data such as name, address, photographs as well as biometric information, smart cards can help in beneficiary selection, identification and targeting under anti-poverty programmes and schemes.

The Indian government is experimenting with smart cards in sectors such as health care, transport, social security and defence. Smart cards are increasingly being used to deliver wages, pensions, rations and even health benefits under programmes such as the NREGA and RSBY. A number of States including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Tamil Nadu amongst others have already begun integrating smart cards in the implementation of government schemes and programmes with interesting results. In Andhra Pradesh, the State Government has tied up with Mumbai based company – Financial Information Network and Operations (FINO) – to provide biometric smart cards to disburse social security pensions and NREGS wages in 5 districts. Following a successful pilot of the smart card initiative in Warangal and Karimnagar districts, smart cards are now being used for disbursement of pensions and NREGS wages in 259 villages in Andhra Pradesh. In Delhi, the State Government has launched “Samajik Suvidha Sangam” (Mission Convergence) to streamline the delivery of basic services in the NCR by converging citizen services provided by various departments into a single window for easier beneficiary access. Key components of the programme include the setting up of a computerised data bank, computer systems at each delivery point and the provision of e-benefit cards to citizens. The e-benefit card is a biometric smart card issued to individuals to provide them with easy access to a number of government services. At a national level, smart cards are being used to deliver health insurance benefits to BPL families under the Rashtriya Swasthiya Bima Yojana (RSBY). Under the scheme, all beneficiaries are issued biometric smart cards that contain the fingerprints and photographs of family members. As of 6 August 2009, 53,77,708 smart cards are active and operational in the country. Increasingly, a number of States are considering using the RSBY smart cards to piggy back other welfare schemes, as the cards now provide a dependable means of beneficiary identification.

While there is certainly limitless potential for the use of smart cards in India, there is also need for caution. For one thing, there is a huge gap in our knowledge base about how smart cards actually work on the ground. There is not a lot of data or research that documents the use and impact of smart cards on large-scale social sector programmes like the NREGA or RSBY. There is also little information publicly available about the actual details of how these schemes are being managed. With contracts being awarded to private companies there are growing concerns about the transparency and accountability of these companies to beneficiaries and ultimately taxpayers. However, by far the biggest challenge is surely in the execution and implementation of smart card technologies. Smart cards clearly have the potential to revolutionise the way we think about service delivery – but the success of this technology depends greatly on how well they are implemented. The old adage “well begun but half done” come to mind here. The perennial Achilles heel of India’s many welfare programmes has always been weak implementation. The Government of India has been issuing voter ID cards, ration cards and PAN cards for a number of years, yet, discrepancies such as ghost entries, missing beneficiaries, multiple cards continue to exist. These are issues which must be addressed as smart cards become the new mantra in service delivery. As Swaminathan A Aiyar recently observed, there is a real danger of smart cards becoming “just one more scheme, with its own leakages and omissions”. Ironically, it appears we need to be smart about smart cards!

Mandakini Devasher is a Consultant with the Accountability Initiative.

Money for Nothing

Yamini Aiyar and Anit Mukherjee

Elementary education policy in India is, as economist Lant Pritchett characterizes it, in a ‘Big Stuck’.  Stuck because despite money being poured in to the system – funding for elementary education has had a five-fold increase since the launch of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) in 2001 –  outcomes remain poor. As the Annual Survey of Education Report reminds us year after year, about half of India’s children in standard five cannot read a standard two level text book and far fewer can do basic mathematics. Getting out of this morass requires a system overhaul that creates a performance based, accountable delivery system.

 

How can this be achieved? A crucial step towards creating an accountable system is to ensure accountability in financing. With the imminent implementation of the Right to Education Act (RTE) which is set to significantly expand education finance –the RTE will cost the exchequer Rs. 43600 crores –  ensuring accountability is critical.

First principles of public accountability require that expenditures must adequately reflect citizens’ interests and priorities. When it comes to basic services, citizens’ interests are best captured locally at the point where services are delivered. This means greater local autonomy and discretion, particularly in resource allocation.

 

The current system of education financing allows little room for autonomy. Schools have no discretion over funds that arrive tied to rigid norms determined by the center and states. These norms also determine the quantum of funds schools receive resulting in a mismatch between school needs and funds received. For example, a school with 1000 students receives just about two and a half times more money than a school that has 100 students. And if a school wants to spend more on teacher materials than painting walls –  the norms simply won’t allow it.

 

Autonomy apart, accountability also requires transparency and predictability in fund flows.  After all, you need to know how much money is due and when it willarrive in order to make plans and hold the system to account. This is one of SSA’s greatest weaknesses. Between October and December 2009, an army of 25,000 Indian citizens joined the Annual Survey of Education Report to ask over 12,000 schools how much money arrived, when it arrived and how much was spent. The survey found that by October – half way through the financial year –  more than 50 percent of the schools surveyed reported not receiving SSA funds. These findings are also reflected in macro level data- 63 percent of SSA funds in 2008-09 were spent in the second half of the financial year.

 

Delays are  due to many reasons – delays in releases from the state governments, delays in process as the funds travel through the different administrative layers. And often they are a result of administrative lethargy.  Here’s an interesting story – in some schools in Sehore, Madhya Pradesh, funds had not reached till mid-November. The reason, the State government was converting to an electronic system so that funds could be transferred at the click of a button and delays avoided. A noble cause that took an inadvertent amount of time to implement because local banks had capacity for 4 digit electronic transfers and this particular transfer required 10 digits. No interim measures were put in place to ensure money reached while these kinks were being sorted out and the schools suffered.

 

Whatever the cause, delays proliferate because of the lack of transparency in the system. ASER data indicates that in many schools even the head master is not aware of the different grant components, when they should arrive and what they ought to be spent on. In the absence of information, schools, parents and children are disempowered as they lack the tools to make plans and demand accountability for delayed and unpredictable fund flows.

 

Resolving these problems and ensuring accountability in educational finance requires systemic reforms in the way educational delivery systems are designed. Crucially, the system will need to ensure genuine local autonomy. One way of doing this is to move away from ‘tied’, norm based funding to the provision of block grants calculated on the basis of the number of children enrolled and attending schools. Local autonomy must be accompanied with a process for collection and dissemination of real time information on fund flows and expenditures. This will ensure greater transparency and enable citizens to monitor processes and demand accountability.

Education policy in India today is at a crossroads. There is a clear consensus that improved education holds the key to India’s future and the passage of the RTE stands testimony to this. Now as bureaucrats take to their drawing boards to develop rules and guidelines for the implementation of the RTE, the focus must shift to getting the design right. Only then can we begin to unstuck the ‘Big Stuck’.

(Yamini Aiyar is with Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research. Anit Mukherjee is with National Institute of Public Finance Policy. Both institutes work in partnership with ASER to strengthen accountability in education finance through a project called PAISA)

 

Effect of Soaring Food Prices on Mid Day Meal Scheme

Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDM) is the world’s largest school-feeding programme aimed at promoting universalisation of elementary education by increasing enrolment, retention, attendance, and simultaneously impacting the nutritional status of students. It is learnt that besides rice and dal, MDM involves use of oil, vegetables, salt and spices and fuel. Keeping in view the rising cost of the commodities, effective from December 1, 2009, for primary schools the fund allocation norm for cooking costs has been increased to Rs. 2.50 per child per day(up from Rs. 1.58). For upper primary the allocation has been increased to Rs. 3.75 per child per day (up from Rs. 2.08).

 

Any revision needs to be approved by the EFC and the cabinet each time – after seeking comments from all relevant ministries – in a process that can take up to a year.

However, the existing cost norms and the subsequent revision is based on overall inflation figures, not specifically on the costs of commodities used in the meals. Overall inflation statistics can hide the fluctuations in the prices of specific commodities relevant to the meal costs. The point becomes all the relevant as the country is now witnessing rising food prices despite negligible inflation. (Overall inflation is 7.31% in December)

Price rise of some essential food items (52-week period, in %)

Potatoes………………110.11
Vegetables…………….30.97
Pulses……………….. …42.21
Onions………………… 40.07
Milk……………………..12.62
Cereals………………. 13.91
Rice…………………….12.91
Fruits…………………..7.87

Source: (IANS), Week ended on December 26, 2009

The current procedure for revising the costing norms acts as a further roadblock to realistic pricing. Any revision needs to be approved by the EFC and the cabinet each time – after seeking comments from all relevant ministries – in a process that can take up to a year. By the time the cabinet approval is obtained, the revised norms become outdated and the exercise is redundant.

Instead, a mid-day meal pricing index which would consider fluctuations in the prices of five items essential to the scheme seems to be a better idea to tackle this soaring price inflation.

 

Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Research Associate with the Accountability Initiative.

The Hungry Tide: Billions Spent and Millions Still Malnourished


The 16th of October was World Food Day– a day to take the pledge to “unite against hunger” (as this year’s theme goes). And this couldn’t have come at a more pertinent time. Just last week, the Global Hunger Index (GHI) Report 2010 – a joint initiative of the International Food and Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Welthungerhilfe, and Concern Worldwide ranked India as 67 out of a total of 84 developing countries and countries in transition, with a value of 24.1 points from its earlier 31.7 points in 1990 – thereby placing India in the “alarming” range of hunger.

This is well below all other South Asian countries except Bangladesh ( China in the 9th position, Pakistan in the 52nd spot and Nepal with 56th rank) and even below several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, and war-torn countries of Laos, Cambodia, Congo and Sudan.

A multidimensional index for measuring global hunger and malnutrition, the GHI combines three equally-weighted indicators, namely the proportion of undernourished population reflected in calorific deficiency, the prevalence of underweight children under the age of five, and finally the mortality rate of children under the age of five. The index thereby takes into account the nutritional status of not just the population as a whole, but also focuses on a particularly vulnerable group –children.

While the report itself acknowledges this, the picture should be taken as indicative of the situation – rather than a current assessment as up-to-date data on global hunger is just not available. However, in a country that spends crores of rupees every year for improving health and nutrition of children as well as on food security, the report does give a damning picture.

Let’s put this in perspective. Table 1 outlines some of the main schemes dealing improving health and hunger and the amount of money being allocated for them.

Table 1.

Scheme Funding
National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)

Includes components of immunization for children, reproductive and child health project.

 NRHM budget as a whole has more than doubled since FY 2005-06.

Rs. 250 crores was allocated for routine immunization in FY 2009-10, up from Rs. 177 crores in 2005-06.

 
Janani Surakha Yojana (JSY)

Aims at reducing maternal and neo-maternal mortality by giving cash incentives to expecting mothers to undertake institutional delivery.

The number of JSY beneficiaries has increased from 7.39 lakhs to almost 9.2 million in 2009-10.

 

 Rs. 1,241 crores was spent on JSY in FY 2008-09.
Food Subsidy

There are a number of schemes that exist to distribute food grains to vulnerable sections of the population, including the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS)-which provides 35 kgs per month of subsidised food grains to all families identified as living below the poverty line through fair price shops), the Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) for the poorest of poor families etc.

 

 Rs. 55,578 was allocated for food subsidy in FY 2010-11.

 

The total stock of food grains –lying in the central pool (including those in storage and transit) is Rs. 428 lakh metric tonnes.
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)

One of the world’s largest programmes for early childhood development, designed to provide young children with an integrated package of services including supplementary nutrition, healthcare and pre-school education.

 Between 2000 and 2010, Rs. 35,000 crores have been allocated for Integrated Child Development Services ( ICDS)- In FY 2009-10 itself, Rs. 4,022 crores was spent by states ICDS in general and Rs.7,867 crores on the supplementary nutrition component.

 

Moreover, in an order dated November 28th 2001, the Supreme Court converted the benefits of nine food-related schemes (including TPDS, AAY, and ICDS) into “legal entitlements” and directed the State governments to fully implement these schemes as per official guidelines.

Yet despite this:-

  • India has over 230 million undernourished people. (FAO, State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2008). In 2005-06, 44 percent of Indian children under the age of five were underweight and 48 percent were stunted. In fact, the figures would be higher if we were to take India’s norms for hunger – defined as a minimum of 2400 kilocalories per day as opposed to FAO’s 1800 kilocalories per day.
  • Every year 2.5 million children die in India, accounting for one in five deaths in the world.
  • To put it in a global perspective, India is home to 27 percent of the world’s undernourished population and a staggering 42 percent of the world’s malnourished children and 35 percent of the developing world’s low-birth weight infants.

Clearly, the social security net and delivery functions just don’t seem to be working in the right manner. So where does the problem lie? There are broadly 4 main factors.

  • Firstly, there seems to be a lack of prioritization of nutrition in political and policy processes. Take for example the TPDS. Its focus has always been on rice and wheat. As a senior fellow at IFPRI noted, the public distribution system (PDS) is more of a grain policy than a nutrition policy. The same seems to be true of the upcoming Food Security Bill. In fact, the minutes of the meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers, responsible for drafting the National Food Security Bill explicitly (and shockingly) stated in Section 2.1(a) “The definition of Food Security should be limited to the specific issue of foodgrains (wheat and rice) and be delinked from the larger issue of nutritional security.” !!! How do we think we can reduce global hunger if our policies towards hunger categorically don’t want to deal with nutrition?
  • Second, is the problem of targeting.  According to the report, recent evidence suggests that there is a thousand day window of opportunity (spanning from -9 to +24 months) for improving child nutrition. This is the period when children are in greatest need of adequate amounts of nutritious food, preventive and curative health care, and age-appropriate care practices. However, even the ICDS programme, meant to deal with under-nutrition targets children mostly after the age of three, when the effects of under-nutrition are largely irreversible.
  • Third is the lack of a holistic approach for solving malnutrition.To achieve sustainable improvements in child nutrition, decision-makers must tackle the underlying causes of under-nutrition: food insecurity, insufficient care for women and children, and limited access to healthcare and a healthy environment through a convergent package of interventions. In India however, while we have a number of schemes, each scheme is running, somewhat disconnected from the rest. While immunization scheme is run by the Ministry of health and family welfare, the ICDS scheme is run by the Women and Child Welfare Department.  It has also been ascertained that gender inequality and malnutrition are highly correlated. Societies with higher levels of empowerment, tend to provide better care of children. With India ranking 112 out of 134 nations in the Global Gender Gap Report 2010, it is essential to tackle the problem of gender inequality along with programmes to improve child nutrition.
  • And finally, even within the existing schemes, accountability mechanisms are essential to ensure that the monies being pumped into the system, get spent properly and reach the targeted beneficiaries.

On the 2nd of October, ICDS celebrated its 35th anniversary. As the world approaches the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – it’s time for India to rethink some of its policies so that the fight to remove global hunger can be adequately achieved.

Avani Kapur is Senior Research and Program Analyst at the Accountability Initiative.