Recently, I attended the release of an interesting report, ‘Quality Education Study’, put together by Educational Initiatives and Wipro-Applying Thoughts to Schools. The study tries to assess learning levels of students in Standards 4, 6 and 8 by developing specific tests for English, Maths, Science and Social Studies. Read more »

Ambrish Dongre, Accountability Initiative

It was exactly nineteen years ago, on April 24, 1993, that the Constitution (73rd Amendment Act), 1992, came into force. Two decades have passed since then but efforts to devolve real powers to the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) have been limited. Various reports have indicated that fiscal devolution has lagged behind functional devolution, making the latter meaningless. Fiscal devolution is further hampered by severe delays and unpredictability in fund flows to PRIs, implying that PRIs do not receive their allocated budgetary provisions. Further, they have little autonomy over their finances as the bulk of the funds received are tied to clearly-specified expenditure guidelines. The inefficiencies are exacerbated by the lack of regular and reliable data on Panchayat finances. The 13th Finance Commission notes that data provided to the Commission from state governments was sparse and inconsistent with data furnished to previous Commissions. Read more »

 Ask anyone where the Anganwadi Centre (AWC) is in Paschimi Gaon (name changed for privacy) in Lucknow and you are directed to an Anganwadi worker’s house. Its courtyard has a large mat where 15 children aged 3-6 years are sitting, playing with broken toys. The walls are covered with posters of alphabets so faded that they look more than a decade old, and the nearby hand-pump no longer works. This is Mamta Didi’s house, an Anganwadi Worker (AWW) for the past 19 years.

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Rishiv Khattar

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. Read more »

In August 2009, AI and the Centre for Development Finance, Institute for Financial Management and Research organised a conference entitled “From Outlays to Outcomes - Getting Development from Development Expenditures” in New Delhi. The papers presented at the conference have been featured in a special issue of India Review (Volume 9 Issue 2 2010). Read more »

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: Read more »

Avani Kapur

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.

An essential aspect of ensuring that benefits reach the desired beneficiaries includes the ability of beneficiaries to hold the power holders to account; to make them responsible for their behaviour and actions. In the context of the debate on right to food, the first draft bill formulated by the government, titled ‘The National Food Security Bill’, failed to comprehensively address such core concerns. Accountability issues were largely glossed over with only respite involving a commitment to ensure the monitoring of finances by the Gram Sabha, through the medium of social audits. Read more »

Yamini Aiyar and Gayatri Sahgal

On Friday, relevant ministries in the Government of India and the National Advisory council are going to start a round of negotiations to finalize the much awaited food security bill. The key issue up for debate is the question of universalization of the entitlement. The initial draft bill restricted the entitlement to the country’s poorest. The current negotiations are an effort to push for universal coverage as well as for a wider grain basket. Read more »