Paris

Case Studies in Accountability: The Kerala Ombudsman

The Case Studies in Accountability Series documents innovative accountability experiments being undertaken in the country. The first case study in this series documents the office of the Kerala Ombudsman, the only Ombudsman’s office of its kind in India that considers complaints against local governments. In 2001, Kerala became the first, and only State in India, … Continue reading "Case Studies in Accountability: The Kerala Ombudsman"

Paris

Do information campaigns result in greater collective action? Lessons from experience on the ground.

 This blog post is the first of a series based on experiences my colleagues and I had while implementing an information campaign on school expenditures aimed at mobilizing Parent Teacher Associations in a small cluster of villages in Sehore District, Madhya Pradesh (MP). The experience reinforced some of the fundamental contradictions in current systems of … Continue reading "Do information campaigns result in greater collective action? Lessons from experience on the ground."

Paris

India and the Failed States Index: 12 Counts of Failure

Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace have been publishing the Failed States Index since 2005. The 2010 Index uses 90,000 publicly available sources to assess 177 countries and rate them on 12 metrics of state decay—India ranked 87 and received a score of 77.8. Higher scores on a metric indicate a greater degree of … Continue reading "India and the Failed States Index: 12 Counts of Failure"

Paris

Health Care Spending Rising Faster Than Economic Growth In Industrialized Countries – OECD Health Data 2010

While India is still struggling to live up to the “Nine is Mine” dream (calling for 9% of GDP to be committed to health and education), according to OECD’s Health Data 2010, in leading industrialized countries, the health care spending is rising faster than economic growth. The study reports: Average health spending in the 31 … Continue reading "Health Care Spending Rising Faster Than Economic Growth In Industrialized Countries – OECD Health Data 2010"

Paris

UID: Thoughts from an Erstwhile Skeptic

Last month I attended a Consultation Workshop on the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), now called AADHAR. With the first UID numbers being issued between August 2010 and February 2011, this was a part of UIDAI’s campaign to hold a wide range of consultations with Civil Society Organizations in various parts of the country. … Continue reading "UID: Thoughts from an Erstwhile Skeptic"