2018 Archives - Page 8 of 37 - Accountability Initiative: Responsive Governance

Saturation and Collaborative Construction; a Way Out of the Conundrum

This is the sixth part of the Raghu Bytes series on ‘Avoiding Accountability’.

The example that I gave in my last blog of how a politician attempted to rid the rural housing programme for the poor of its high potential for manipulation, has much more to it than meets the eye. Ridding programmes for the poor of the constraints of annual targets and aiming for hundred percent saturation, can reduce the premium on queue jumping, or wrong prioritisation of beneficiaries. If everybody is going to get houses in a village, then why would anybody bribe new power brokers such as computer operators, to have their names recorded electronically? Would not the problem be solved?

But then, such approaches, to be effective, have to be backed up by other improved processes as well. For example, even if all the poor in a village were to be given houses, construction of homes might become a bottleneck. That would shift the power-broking potential from the computer operators to the contractors. Furthermore, money has to flow regularly to the contractors if their construction activities are not to grind to a halt.

For long, the housing programme has been a leader in decentralised implementation. It was one of the first programmes to involve beneficiaries directly in implementation. Even if they had to pay bribes to get selected in the first place, once selected, beneficiaries were permitted to build homes for themselves and payments were made to them at different stages of house construction. Thus, to a large extent, contractors skimming off bribes from beneficiaries and passing them upwards, was reduced as compared to what happens in other programmes.

However, did that eliminate corruption in implementation? Not by a long shot.

Even though beneficiaries were building homes for themselves, they still had to run the gauntlet of meeting officials to collect their entitled payments. The process was manual and involved many stages; all of which provided ample scope for bribery. Thus, if a beneficiary family’s home had reached the plinth stage – a trigger for the first payment of subsidy – that needed to be certified by an engineer from the Block Development Office (BDO), as also by the Villlage Panchayat Secretary. Then, the bill had to be cleared by the accounts section in the BDO’s office, which meant that beneficiaries had to waste time traveling to the Block Headquarters, and paying speed money to get their payments expedited. The payment was cashless; which meant more visits to bank branches, to encash cheques and withdraw money. All these processes were corruption prone, to say the least.

None of these would undergo the slightest difference, even if well-meaning politicians and bureaucrats were able to ensure 100 percent coverage of all beneficiaries.

The solution could be technology, as a friend of mine who works in the subsidised housing sector suggests. If the process of recording progress in construction is through photographs that accurately captures both time and location, and that automatically triggers payments into the bank account without human intervention, then beneficiaries need not grease the palms of those who sanction payments. However, the first question that arises, is that technology could be hacked and false records created to show progress. My friend says that such possibilities, whilst they will always exist, could be overcome by immediately placing all payment progress in the public domain. Thus, if Panchayat elected representatives, officials and beneficiaries all have access to real-time data on payments made to beneficiaries for construction, based upon photographic records, then a system of public checks and balances might be put in place.

The idea is thought provoking. The best way to check if it is an effective solution to the problem is to implement it. If it raises howls of protest from currently empowered computer operators, block level accountants, BDOs and MLAs, then it can be presumed that it would be an effective measure in reducing corruption in housing programmes.

Rural Housing Wars in Karnataka; the Empire Strikes Back and Gets Shot Down

This is the third part of the Raghu Bytes series on ‘Avoiding Accountability’.

The genesis of the war between the Members of Legislative Assemblies (MLAs) and the local governments (Gram Panchayats) on the issue of selection of beneficiaries for rural housing programmes, goes back to October 2003. The Panchayat Raj Act of Karnataka was amended to strengthen Grama Sabhas – assemblies of the people – and left no room for doubt that the latter had the final word in identification and selection of beneficiaries and prioritization of beneficiary lists. Section 3(3)(b) of the amended Act provided that Ward Sabhas would identify the most eligible persons from its area for beneficiary-oriented schemes on the basis of previously stated out criteria and prepare lists of eligible beneficiaries in order of priority and forward it to the Grama Panchayat. These lists were then to be placed by the Grama Panchayat before the Grama Sabha, which under Section 3A (3) (c) would consider the Ward Sabha lists and prepare the final lists of eligible beneficiaries in order of priority. For good measure, the law also provided that once such detailed beneficiary lists were prepared by the Grama Sabha; they could not be changed by any higher authority. By positioning the Grama Sabha as the sole platform that protects the right of every citizen to participate in decision making, a major step towards realising self-governance was achieved.

It was significant that these amendments were passed unanimously by the State Assembly after detailed scrutiny by an all-party Select Committee. So, the MLAs knew very well what they were doing.

However, through a process of slow cerebration by which MLAs realized they were shortchanged, the Government turned the clock back in April 2007 by amending Sections 3(3) (b) and 3A (3) (c), stating that if the Grama Panchayat fails to discharge its duties in respect of housing schemes or programmes, then a committee headed by the member of the legislative assembly of the constituency shall select the beneficiaries from the list prepared by the Grama Panchayat.

At one stroke, the law made the local legislator the final arbiter over decisions of the Grama Sabha. The proviso to the law was dangerously open ended. Who was to decide that a Grama Panchayat has failed to discharge its duties? Who would constitute the committee? What was the need to specifically mention housing schemes? Would this proviso be expanded to take away all the powers of the Grama Sabha in respect of all Schemes of the Government? What makes the MLAs or government official, who are far removed from village citizens, better able to decide who should benefit from a scheme, that the rural voter who knows intimately every resident of her/his village?

The amendment of the law, piloted hurriedly through the legislature and passed unanimously without discussion, triggered widespread protests across the State, by NGOs and Panchayat elected representatives. The local press front- paged the protests in a big way. That in turn influenced the Governor, to whom the State government had sent the law for final approval. Delegations of aggrieved NGOs and Panchayat representatives petitioned the Governor to return the law to the Government for reconsideration, which he did with alacrity.

By then, other political development escalated in the government. The coalition that ruled in the State broke down, and Presidents rule was imposed. The amendment fell by the wayside.

While those who protested against the amendment gloated at the unlikely victory, some of us who looked ahead were sure that the matter would not end here. Any new government would also push for such amendments. The power of patronage that MLAs would gain by distributing houses to the poor was too precious to be relinquished.

It was a friend running an NGO who came up with a good idea on how to prevent further such incursions into the powers of the Grama Sabha. ‘We must propagate the notion that anybody who dares to diminish the powers of the Grama Sabha is destined to lose power’, he said, in all seriousness. ‘Its bad vaastu in case you touch the Panchayat Raj Act’. He wagged his finger at me threateningly. Vaastu is, loosely put, an Indian system of Feng Shui.

I agreed with him heartily. Government should also have a Tantrik appointed as Deputy Secretary in the Panchayat Raj Department, fully equipped with Voodoo dolls of individual MLAs and stick pins into them in case they cast covetous eyes on the powers of the Grama Sabha, I suggested.

Frontal Assault Turns to Stealth: MLAs Sneak Back

This is the fourth part of the Raghu Bytes series on ‘Avoiding Accountability’.

When a new government took charge in Karnataka in 2013, the ethos of the ruling party remained the same as before. There was an outward commitment to decentralisation and empowering of the Panchayats, but behind the scenes, the compulsion was to give MLAs more powers of decision making locally.

This parallel stream of thought continues till this day. The Panchayat supporters in the ruling party – as is the case with every mainstream party – is considerable. They were able to maintain pressure on the government to announce more reforms to strengthen peoples’ participation and local governments. A Committee to suggest amendments to the Karnataka Panchayati Raj Act was set up by the government, under the Chairpersonship of a senior MLA, Mr. Ramesh Kumar. He was subsequently elevated as the Cabinet Minister for Health, after he completed and submitted the report. This author served as a member of the Committee.

At first, I must admit, I was sceptical about the effectiveness of the committee. Initially, we seemed to be saying the same things over and over again; of how Panchayats were to be strengthened, and they in turn were to be kept in check and monitored by the Grama Sabhas. Nobody seemed to realise, in my opinion that many of these visions had been envisaged earlier, but had fallen by the wayside. However, soon, my cynicism gave way to hope. As the participants in the committee began to get into the details with the chairpersons encouragement, we began to focus on the real implementation issues. One of the key questions that generated a debate was how participation ought to be facilitated for the selection of beneficiaries for various programmes. The Grama Sabhas and Ward Sabhas created in 2003 were not very effective; that was the general consensus. So, the approach of configuring Neighbourhood or Habitation sabhas as the feeder system for decision making in the Gram Sabhas, was suggested. This made eminent sense; the earlier Grama Sabha decisions were usually tilted in favour of the main village in each Panchayat, where the relatively prosperous people lived, leaving the poor who lived on the village fringes untouched by welfare programmes. Neighbourhood sabhas would bring these people into the fold of decision making and enable them to espouse their cause further.

Due to the dedication and political adroitness of the Chairperson, a few other dedicated members with political connects, and the Rural Development Minister’s support, the recommendations of the Committee found expression in the enactment of a new Act altogether, the Gram Swaraj Act of Karnataka. On the issue of beneficiary selection, the act reiterated the finality of the selection process through the Grama Sabhas; with the only change being that the selection process would start even below the wards, in each habitation.

As is always the case, political support for the act was unequivocal. Sometimes it makes me wonder if legislators actually read the fine print in all the laws they pass.

Then, the second thoughts began to emerge. However, the battles for empowerment are a seesaw one; attempts to turn the clock back don’t always result in status quo ante. In this case, with respect to the selection of beneficiaries for housing, the conundrum was addressed in an intelligent way. To wrest away the powers of selection of beneficiaries from the Grama Sabha would have shown up the government in a bad light, and in any case, any instruction of this nature would have been contradictory of the law.

So the government brought in the MLAs through a different route. While MLAs were not involved in the selection of individual beneficiaries, they were empowered by government instruction to decide upon how many houses allotted to the constituency could be allocated to each village and panchayat.

Law, Technology and Tensions

This is the fifth part of the Raghu Bytes series on ‘Avoiding Accountability’.

The decision of the government to give MLAs the power to decide how many houses could be allocated to each village, caused a great deal of gnashing of teeth amongst Panchayat elected representatives. However, by the letter of the law, this allocation of responsibility by the government was not wrong. After all, the MLAs were not going to select beneficiaries, but were only allocating targets. Little did it matter that the MLAs now had powers to favour those villages that voted for them and harass those that did not.

Even as the government were walking the tightrope, other measures to increase the accountability of participatory processes were put in place. One of them – which I thought could be crude and effective – was to mandatorily video graph all meetings of the Grama Sabhas. Thus, if beneficiary selection was being done by the Grama Sabhas, a visual record of these would be available for all of them to see. It seemed to be a measure that would end all irregularities in beneficiary selection.

However, there is no point in video graphing the proceedings of Grama Sabha meetings, if nobody watches these videos afterward.

Once selections of beneficiaries are done by the Grama Sabhas, these lists have to enter the official system. And who does that? A worthy named the data entry operator.

Let me introduce to you the new power broker in the village, the data entry operator. Over the past decade, computerisation of the Grama Panchayat offices has been a buzzword for ambitious and well-meaning bureaucrats. They have launched upon time bound programmes for completing computerisation. Internet connections have been provided to Panchayats, new extensions for buildings constructed, and spanking new computer systems installed. Software has been developed for each of the Panchayats needs and there has been visible change in how Panchayats transact their business.

The computerisation of the Panchayats has also led to new power relations being set up. Suddenly, the power of the Panchayat president, the elected representatives and the Panchayat and the Panchayat secretary, have paled before the presence of the data entry operator; he of the password and the fingerprint.

The data entry operator in a Panchayat is a powerful individual. He operates in dark and mysterious ways. He is a very busy man; much of his power is derived from his overwork. Many schemes and programmes, with their rapid transition to a semi computerised mode of functioning, now vitally depend upon the data entry operator for their smooth implementation. Most data entry operators have been appointed in the wake of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme; a programme that has depended on a computer based system of keeping records, right from its inception a decade back. Quite often, the data entry operator, burdened as he is by the workload of the NREGA, is hard pressed for time to do other data entry operations, including for the housing programmes.

The time lag between the actual meetings of the Grama Sabhas for beneficiary selection and the entry of these lists in the Panchayat computer provides plenty of scope for manipulation. It is at this level that pressures are applied, I am told, by both MLAs and Panchayat elected representatives, to manipulate the beneficiary lists. While this was always suspected, I heard that recently, a sincere officer at the district level decided to check the veracity of the beneficiary lists entered in the computer. He did this the hard way, by watching the videos of the Grama Sabhas. His diligence paid off; beneficiary lists were found to be roughly thirty percent at variance with the decisions of the Grama Sabhas.

I spoke to a senior officer dealing with housing programmes as to how such distortions could be avoided. He proposed to launch an app that would enable data on beneficiary selection to be uploaded in real time, even as the Grama Sabha meetings were held. I thought that would be a good idea overall, though I still had doubts about whether manipulation would end; the ingenuity of the crooked mind is limitless.

However, a politician that I know had a better idea and he went ahead and implemented it. He made a promise in his constituency that all beneficiaries would be covered in all villages, turn by turn. Villages were prioritised on the basis of the intensity of the houselessness problem. Using this method, the politician was able to get far more homes built at a double quick time, by avoiding disputes in beneficiary selection and concentrating money flows and supervision on each village, turn by turn. According to him, others waited for their turn, assured by the fact that when it came, their problem of houselessness would be fully addressed, once and for all.

Run-up to Budget 2017: Social Sector Allocations and the Complexity of Fund-flows

In the run-up to the Union Budget 2017, Accountability Initiative (AI) at CPR, which tracks government budgetary allocation and related expenditure for key social sector schemes annually, both through analysing government data and corroborating it with ground surveys run by their field staff, shares their latest findings.

In a series of articles below, Yamini Aiyar, Avani Kapur and Abhishri Aggarwal break down the bottlenecks in fund-flows, which negatively impact implementation on the ground despite monies having been allocated, as well as provide scheme-specific budgetary (allocation, expenditure, government reported outputs & outcomes) analysis over 2016-17.

Complexity of fund-flows

In Huffington Post, Yamini Aiyar explains why the money allocated by the union government fails to reach the ground, primarily due to the complex mechanism of fiscal transfer or fund-flow, which makes tracking and accountability very difficult.

The complexity of this mechanism of money-flow has been captured in the animated video (above).

In a follow-up and related article, Abhishri Aggarwal analyses the lack of effective implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, as well as the need for a transparent, well-maintained monitoring system.

Social sector allocations

In a second series of articles, in the Wire, Yamini Aiyar draws on AI’s budgetary analysis for 2016-17 to unpack and critique the government’s social policy approach. She explains how despite attempting to shift to an ‘empowerment’ approach in its welfare model, primarily through the mechanism of conditional cash transfers, health and education, in particular, ‘remain invisible in Modi’s social policy’.
Yamini Aiyar and Avani Kapur further provide a detailed sectoral analysis, inlcuding key challenges faced, in a series of articles in Livemint on maternal and child health; Swachh Bharat Mission; Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan; and health-care.

The full series of budget briefs (2016-17) developed by AI on seven social sector schemes can be accessed at their website here.

A Handbook for Passing on the Blame

The essence of what the government does boils down to two things, in a financial sense, it collects taxes and delivers a basket of services. In today’s day and age, these tasks are no longer usurped by despots, but are performed by elected representatives, hired bureaucrats or chosen regulators who are put in their positions and are entrusted with powers to do what people expect of them. Everything else – the actual design of a taxation system, or the positioning of an executive arm of the government to perform the day to day tasks of governance – are just the granules of detail that elaborate upon these two simple precepts.

The idea of accountability remains the same, whether in the public or private realms. A task is entrusted to individuals or teams and if that task is not performed according to pre-determined parameters, then some adverse consequences are to be faced as punishment for the failure. It is the fact that adverse consequences will be faced, that gives teeth to a system of accountability. In such circumstances, both governments and the private sector design elaborate mechanisms for both entrustment of tasks with precision, as also to hold those entrusted to account, for failures to reach the objectives fixed.

Yet, it is normal human nature to attempt to gain powers. These might be absolute or relative in nature; the power to order someone else around might come with the obligation to be subordinate to someone else. It is also normal human nature to attempt to avoid being accountable for failure to achieve entrusted objectives. Again, these tendencies remain the same, whether in the public or the private sector.

When it comes to the public sector, it is necessary for citizens to understand what the various ways are, by which the components of government attempt to avoid accountability for their failures. This is not to say that everybody in the government is attempting to avoid responsibility all the time, but to emphasise that in case they do, they need to be caught and punished appropriately. This is also not to say that everybody who fails in the government ought to be dragged to face a firing squad, but that there must be some form of graded system of punishments in place, ranging from censure to the ultimate punishment of removal from the assigned job, for accountability to have any meaning.

However, rarely do we see anybody in the government actually facing the consequences of their wrong actions. Much as we prefer to revile them, politicians are the ones who face the strongest accountability test in government. They have to go through the ordeal of standing for elections every five years. In the case of the bureaucracy in India, largely recruited for a permanent stay in the government till retirement and eligible for a pension afterward, accountability systems are weak.

Still, one might ask the question; who cares if accountability systems are weak? Considering that only 78 lakh people in the country pay direct taxes to the government, as reckoned by the Union Finance Minister in his budget speech, the angst of watching ones hard earned money being taken away by the government and misspent is restricted to a minuscule sliver of Indian citizenry. Yet, as our society is put under greater surveillance and technology enables more snooping into financial transactions, the tax base for direct taxes is likely to increase exponentially in the next few years. A lot more people will be paying direct taxes in future, and therefore, will need to be worried about how effectively the government is spending these accumulated funds.

We will need to know the actual ways and means by which government systems dilute their accountability to us. These methods will vary, depending upon which arm and category of government that we focus upon. The next few blogs will discuss case studies of how departments create smokescreens behind which they dilute, or wholly dismantle accountability measures that make them responsible to citizens.

The Public Housing Sector – A Case Study of Karnataka

Public Housing is a government service that garners a lot of attention, for several reasons. It is of course, an essential service and hugely important from the perspective of the poor. There are several such pro-poor services provided by the government, covering everything from health care to subsidised food, to crèches, schools and toilets. Housing stands apart from them, for two reasons.

First, Housing offers the largest per-capita subsidy offered to individuals or families as compared to other government programmes. There are other services such as guaranteed employment that might compete with housing in terms of the numbers of beneficiaries covered, but, due to the cap on the number of days of employment that are guaranteed under the present arrangements, the per capita subsidy levels are at best, about half the average subsidy delivered to each housing beneficiary. Other services, such as the provision of drip irrigation facilities, bore wells and farm mechanisation equipment to farmers may offer a larger per-beneficiary subsidy, but the might cover a few hundreds or thousands as compared to the provision of houses, where annual targets for an average State exceeds 2 lakh units.

Second, a house is a tangible, permanent asset. Construction can be visibly started on a particular day, and completion marked by a house warming ceremony. That provides much more opportunity to the person who claims ownership of the privilege for having ‘granted’ the house to the beneficiary, to bask in the gratefulness that the latter may shine on him. That link of the benefit to the large heartedness of the benefactor is not so tangible, say, in a programme for improving of educational outcomes.

For these two reasons, it is no surprise that politicians and officials compete with each other for assuming planning and execution responsibilities for delivering houses to beneficiaries. Whatever may be their actual role in the supply chain of providing houses, politicians and officials of all hues and levels like to be seen as the ones who swung the deal for beneficiaries; so they often fight amongst themselves for that privilege.

Then, there is the temptation of skimming off a good percentage from the expenditure incurred on housing. Since the subsidies on housing are high, most politicians and officials handling their allotment and construction reckon, quite correctly, that grateful beneficiaries will not be averse to generously parting with a share of the subsidy to them. Whilst cost estimates for constructing homes have to meet certain norms and standards, the actual material costs may greatly vary from official estimates, as recycling of old materials can reduce actual investments in housing. That adds to the cushion that might make beneficiaries more sanguine about parting with a share of the subsidies to the people who got them the house.

In short, the deal is simple; government officers and politicians who control the allocating and constructing of homes for people not only gain goodwill, but also stand to make a lot of money on the side.

Before one gets deeper into the dynamics of how subsidised housing is delivered, one must note that the systems and institutions in place for urban and rural housing respectively are different. We propose to focus on rural housing.

The process of delivering houses to the poor comprises essentially of two processes; namely, selection of beneficiaries and the actual construction of the homes. In my next blog, I will explore what are the accountability measures for the processes of selection of beneficiaries, and how they are diluted.

Money for nothing: lessons from PAISA studies

This is an article written in the ASER 2016 Report on the Annual Status on Education.

Back in 2012, Accountability Initiative researchers set out to understand the planning and budgeting process for elementary education. The focus of our analysis was the district education administration. Under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA, the Government of India’s flagship program for elementary education) all districts are required to prepare an annual work plan (building on school level plans made by school management committees). These are in turn consolidated into a state plan which is presented to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). Several interviews and participant observations later we arrived at the following conclusion: there is no such thing as a district annual work plan! Sure these plans documents exist. But there is no real “planning” involved in preparing these documents. As one candid planner put it: “district work plans are made by photocopying old plans and updating costs. The process is taken so lightly that in one district the planners forgot to update the district names and year on the photocopied plan documents”.

To the casual observer, comments like this are yet another illustration of the apathy and lethargy that India’s administration is infamous for. But our investigations into the planning and budgeting process for SSA and indeed for most other social programs, revealed a more complex story

To begin with, although districts are expected to make annual plans, the plans are made without any relevant financial information. Districts are not given any information on budget estimates, nor do they have the mechanisms to track real-time expenditure. Plans are thus made without any evaluation of spending capacity in the district and are no more than a wish-list. This is one reason why final plan approvals are significantly different to plans submitted. For instance, our analysis of district plans in 2012-13 revealed that a mere 59% of the budget proposed by Nalanda district, Bihar was finally approved. Similarly in 2011-12, only 79% of the budget proposed by Kangra district in Himachal Pradesh was approved.²

These gaps in planning are exacerbated by the centralized structure of the SSA. In this system, state and district governments are expected to align themselves to central government priorities. To illustrate, in one instance a state government needed money to restructure its teacher-training model. To access SSA money, it had to seek GoI approvals through the state SSA authorities. GoI, however, refused to provide money because the restructuring wasn’t aligned with the prescribed framework. Consequently, the final approved state budgets are often very different to what states ask for. In some years the gap between proposed and approved state budgets is as much as 50%. Moreover, state and therefore district priorities are often ignored in favor of pursuing norms and priorities set by the Government of India.³

Poor financial management makes matters worse. Our studies reveal that none of the districts analysed receive their entire approved budget in a financial year. And of the money that does reach, significant proportions arrive toward the second half of the financial year.

Faced with such constraints even the most well-intentioned district administrator will find it difficult to make a plan. And in such circumstances inaction and lack of planning may well be the rational thing to do. After all, why make a plan if you cannot finance it and why set goals and targets when you will be expected to respond to priorities set elsewhere!

In the words of one administrator: “Work plans function on the side. After that we receive orders which are very different from the plans noted in the AWP&B. Then we start fulfilling those.”

But perhaps the biggest gap in the planning and budgeting system, to the extent that plans are made at all, is that it is based entirely on inputs. Goals and targets are linked to data collected through DISE (District School Information System for Education) which does not have a single indicator on learning. Thus learning goals are never specified and as a result budgets for specific initiatives aimed at improving learning quality (budgeted under the line-items for innovation and learning enhancement programs) account for less than1% of the SSA budget. It is instructive that the government discussions around annual budgets, recorded in the PAB minutes, reflect no discussion on learning goals and state specific proposals on how to achieve these goals.

All this was set to change in 2015. The acceptance of the 14th Finance Commission report, the creation (and subsequent endorsement) of a sub-committee to review centrally sponsored schemes under the NITI Aayog, and the rhetoric of co-operative federalism adopted by the government together held the promise of a more flexible, outcome oriented financing system for the social sector. But for the moment this promise remains unfulfilled.

Rather than initiate a substantive debate on a new financial architecture, the emphasis has been limited to introducing a few minor tweaks. For instance, all central schemes, including SSA, are expected to free up 25% of their budgets for a “flexible” pool for states to spend in accordance with their needs (although our informal conversations with education administrators indicate than even this isn’t being implemented). At the same time, the promise of change brought with it much confusion on the ground and a significant slowdown in the movement of money. Accountability Initiative’s analysis of the 2015-16 SSA budget suggested that a mere 57% of funds had been released to states in September 2015. Expenditure was even slower. Just 23% of the approved plan had been spent by September.⁴

These delays had a direct impact on fund flows to schools. The 3 school grants tracked by the PAISA questions in the ASER survey reveal that the number of schools that reported receiving the school development grant dropped from 76.76% in 2010-11 to 67.92% in 2015-16. The timings of grant receipt has also been affected. The number of schools receiving the school grant by October-November at the time of the ASER survey (half way through the school year) has dropped from 50.86% in 2011 to 45.17% in 2016. Importantly, money available for specific initiatives under the innovation and learning enhancement programs budget line item took a hit. In 2015-16, a mere 25% of state proposals for quality related activities were approved by MHRD.⁵

Interestingly, while ground level activity may have slowed down due to gaps in financing, the policy space has busied itself with expanding the range of tools available to measure learning in schools. These include the ongoing state level learning assessments, a census assessment being planned by the MHRD, and the NITI Aayog’s efforts to rank states. For the moment the objective and audience for these different assessments are unclear. However, if the government chooses to use these assessments imaginatively, there is room to significantly alter the institutional architecture for elementary education. Here is our proposal: replace the SSA financing model with a three-window financing model that incentivizes states to build long-term, learning focused plans on the one hand and rewards performance on the other.⁶

The first window would be an annual grant for states to meet their basic infrastructure needs. Much of this has been prescribed by the RTE and most states in the country are still struggling to meet these requirements. For the moment, financing for the RTE is based on annual plans made by state line departments and approved by MHRD. Rather than spending energy on the same exercise every year (the entire state education department spends at least 2-3 months a year making, at times photocopying, annual plans and budget estimates) state governments should come up with a three-year budget estimation which can be funded annually by the centre. This will introduce some level of predictability in the current planning system as states will have a ballpark amount of money that they can expect from the centre. Based on Accountability Initiative’s estimations of current expenditure, this window should account for no more than 50% of the current annual SSA budget. This funding window will address commonly expressed concerns of equity in financing among states and ensure that poorer states are compensated.

In keeping with the 14th Finance Commission’s principles of greater state flexibility over planning and budgeting, the second window should be an untied learning grant given to the states for a 3-5 year period, based on a long-term strategy linked to clearly defined learning targets. Since this is an untied grant, the Centre will no longer need to spend time playing headmaster determining line-item wise expenditure for state governments. Rather, it can focus on providing technical support and guidance to states by undertaking assessments and facilitating knowledge sharing across state governments.

Finally, the third window could link the different assessments with state plans and budgets by offering a performance-based financial reward to states against set targets. Not only will this give much needed teeth to the measurement process, it also has the potential of creating competition amongst states, and over time building greater transparency and public debate on learning levels in India’s schools.

Weeks after the launch of the 2016 ASER report the National Democratic Alliance will present its 3rd and penultimate budget to the nation. ASER 2016 is yet another reminder that even as governments change, very little changes for India’s school going children. The 2017-18 budget may be this government’s last chance to give India’s school going students hope for the future. This is the time for radical change.

1. The PAISA studies are a series of expenditure tracking studies undertaken by Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research. One set of PAISA questions are asked during the school visit that is part of the ASER survey. These relate specifically to a set of annual grants that schools are expected to receive. For more details see www.accountabilityindia.in

2. For more details see: Aiyar et al (2015): “Rules Vs Responsiveness: Toward building an outcomes focused approach to governing India’s finances”. http://www.accountabilityindia.in/paisa/study/download/1268

3. ibid

4. For a detailed analysis of the 2015-16 SSA budget see: Kapur, A and Srinivas, V (2016): “Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan” Budget Briefs Volume 8, issue 1. http://www.accountabilityindia.in/budget/briefs/download/1263

5. ibid

6. For details see Aiyar et al (2015) Rules Vs Responsiveness. A version of this proposal on financing structures was published in Ideas for India in November 2015 and Livemint in February 2016

Beneficiary Selection for Housing Programmes

This is the second part of the Raghu Bytes series on ‘Avoiding Accountability’.

As related in last week’s blog, programmes for subsidised housing are politically important, because houses are tangible assets and the subsidies given for benefits at this scale, are the highest per-capita. Predictably, the competition to gain control over the process of beneficiary identification is high.

Years back, an energetic and diligent colleague of mine, then holding the charge of the Deputy Commissioner of a district, observed that he was being put under pressure to slow down the implementation of a government programme. Now, that’s unusual, I remarked. What happened? I asked. He related how he had gone into overdrive for the implementation of the housing programmes for the poor in his district. He linked up with the village level local governments and energised them to send him their lists of beneficiaries who were waitlisted. Then, he streamlined the construction methods, by galvanising the contractors who were supplying prefabricated materials, such as doors windows and toilet pans, to accelerate production. He ensured that beneficiaries – who were expected to construct the houses on their own – were not impeded due to financial bottlenecks. He even went to the extent of carrying the subsidy cheques personally and delivering them to beneficiaries, to spread the message amongst his staff that no delays would be tolerated.

As housing construction speeded up and the district quotas for subsidies exhausted, he persuaded the State Secretary for Housing to reallocate subsidies from other districts where the programme was languishing, to his district. The number of houses built swelled to 2400 plus, which was unprecedented in that district.

One would have imagined that politicians in the area would have been happy with the progress.

Wrong.

My colleague was summoned by the local MLA. She asked him why he had put house construction on the fast track. Did he have any ulterior motive? She asked, a euphemism for alleging that he might be on the take. He explained that his idea was to saturate the demand. Slow down, she told him. If you build houses for everyone so quickly, why would people come to me? Clearly, saturation of the demand did not meet her immediate political priorities. Predictably, she lost the next election.

Selection of beneficiaries for programmes, particularly of housing, is typically to be done by the Gram Sabha, which refers to the General Assembly of all voters residing in the village in question. However, the law in Karnataka has evolved over time, clarifying the powers of the Gram Sabha in this regard. The Karnataka PRI Act of 1993 assigned to the Gram Sabha the function of identification of all beneficiaries for the implementation of developmental schemes pertaining to the village. It also empowered the Gram Sabha to make recommendations and suggestions to the Grama Panchayat on development programmes proposed to be undertaken by the latter. A judicial interpretation of the ambit of these provisions of law confined these powers within a narrow range. The High Court of Karnataka drew a distinction between ‘identification’ of a beneficiary and the ‘selection’ of one, holding that the former responsibility did not include the latter. Given that the Gram Sabha only had recommendatory powers at that point in time, it was amply clear that selection of beneficiaries (from amongst those identified by the Gram Sabha), could be legally done at higher levels of government.

The Gram Sabha was transformed from a recommendatory body to a more powerful decision making authority through amendments to the law undertaken in 2003. In order to remove all doubts, the Gram Sabha was explicitly empowered to identify select and arrange in order of priority, the lists of beneficiaries. In order to make the position crystal clear, the law also declared that once lists of such identified, selected and prioritised beneficiaries were published by the Gram Sabha, no authority above, such as the State Government, could modify these lists.

The stage was set for an epic battle between the local and the State governments over the rights to select beneficiaries.