Venugopal Kalakota (PAISA associate), Accountability Initiative

While on the field, our PAISA associates come across various bewildering situations. This one about the cycling of funds through the system, without leading to any output, is one of the funnier ones. 

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In the final part of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. Read more »

In the third 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, click here. Read more »

In the second of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. Read more »

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 on rural drinking water and sanitation . For a ready reckoner click here. Read more »

This EPW article, of which our advisor Mr Raghunandan is a co-author, examines various issues concerning the accounting mechanism for Centrally-Sponsored Schemes and attempts to develop a comprehensive systemic solution to the problems. It requires an EPW login id and password. Read more »

Adarsh Namala, Accountability Initiative

In a previous blog post, Yamini talked about the study on social audits[i]. It was for this study that I was in Andhra Pradesh from 5^th Feb to 18^th Feb. The study aims to analyse the efficacy of the social audits as a platform to capture the universe of complaints and whether it leads to effective grievance redressal.

We were a team of 12; 10 enumerators and 2 supervisors. We had to interview 4 categories of wage seekers from 8 villages.  The four categories were Read more »

The New York City Charter Schools Evaluation project analyzes the achievement of 93 percent of the New York City Charter school students who were enrolled in test-taking grades (grades 3 through 12) in 2000-01 through 2007-08. The technical report, accessible here, which describes the methodology of assessment is what has interested our researchers

The Justice Select Committee in the United Kingdom has scheduled its first “evidence session” on possible revision of the Freedom of Information law. This Guardian article talks about the Information Commisioner, Christopher Graham’s response to requests for repealing the law.

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Avani Kapur, Accountability Initiative

For the past few months, my colleague and I had been holed up at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), trying to “uncover” the wonderful world of state budgets. Our task appeared to be simple – we wanted to categorise the elementary education budget for various states into more accessible and functional categories, thereby enabling us to estimate the “cost” of various inputs in delivering elementary education. This would further allow us to compare differing state priorities on the basis of the “type” of allocations/ expenditures. So for instance, since we were working on education, the categories consisted of:-

• School Infrastructure
• Teacher salaries,
• Teacher inputs (such as training, materials etc),
• Entitlements for children such as uniforms, textbooks etc,
• Mainstreaming of children (out of school etc),
• “Quality” related inputs and,
• Administration.  

Did I say simple? Umm… not so much. Let me explain.

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Here is this week's reading list. Hope you enjoy reading the articles and watching the videos!

• Improving governance through Budget Transparency: Twenty years ago hardly any organizations focused on budget transparency as a key to improving democratic accountability and improving outcomes for poor. Now, over 200 groups in at least 119 countries engage in such work. An interesting Huffington post which talks about improving governance through budget transparency.
• A report on State Budgets Transparency by CBGA. As the report says, the total expenditure incurred from the State Budgets accounts for more than half of the Total Public Expenditure in the country. That's quite a strong case for State Budget Transparency!
• School autonomy and accountability go together - A very interesting World Bank blog which makes the case for school autonomy