Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Global Integrity Report 2009 Launched
The Global Integrity Report 2009 has recently been launched. The Report is a tool for understanding governance and anti-corruption mechanisms at the national level.The Global Integrity Report mobilizes a highly qualified network of in-country researchers and journalists to generate quantitative data and qualitative reporting on the health of a country's anti-corruption framework. Each country assessment contained in the Global Integrity Report comprises two core elements: a qualitative Reporter's Notebook and a quantitative Integrity Indicators scorecard, the data from which is aggregated and used to generate the cross-country Global Integrity Index. To know more about the report click here.
Monday, 1 March 2010
To Improve Policy Effectiveness
Sruti Bandyopadhyay
Voters elect governments to solve social problems. Governments design and implement a huge array of programs and allocate huge sum of money every year to ensure the public good s. A sizable literature has developed suggesting that problems in program implementation are a major source of poor government performance, ranging from inadequate coordination between agencies and levels of government to front-line workers who disagree with the program and implement it with less than total enthusiasm.
But do you think, the improved policy effectiveness can be brought in by setting-up of an “Independent Evaluation Office to undertake impartial and objective assessments of the various public programmes and improve the effectiveness of the public interventions”. This year’s budget speech mentions, “It has been decided that it would be an independent entity under a Governing board chaired by the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission. The IEO would evaluate the impact of flagship programmes and place the findings in the public domain. It would be funded by the Planning Commission.”
Surprisingly there has been no mention to the final step of the implementation chain: explanations of why the state or block level officials do or do not “comply” with these policy objective – meaning that why don’t they behave in ways that are consistent with the objectives of the policy.
Program “officials” frequently fail to act in the way that program designers intended and wanted, even when it appears to be in their self-interest to do so. Contrary to common perception, the single biggest crisis facing the state officials is not corruption, it is lack of capacity. This is true at virtually all levels of government. The officials do not often even have the full statistical base in some of the most vital areas of our well being, from health to urban economies, to be able to make intelligent interventions.
The regulatory demands of the modern economy and the challenges of governance require substantial planning and expenditure towards capacity building at the state and subsequently at the ULB and Panchayat level. It is critical to listen to both what they say and what they do. Every department should be allocated a stipulated some of money to map the challenges faced by each department and then they should make that shortcomings public. This resource mapping will help the government to learn quickly what mistakes of omission or commission (or both) policymakers have made and help in correcting those mistakes.
For any government interested in thinking seriously about effective implementation should begin the conversion by ensuring state’s capability to do all that is expected of it.
Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative
Voters elect governments to solve social problems. Governments design and implement a huge array of programs and allocate huge sum of money every year to ensure the public good s. A sizable literature has developed suggesting that problems in program implementation are a major source of poor government performance, ranging from inadequate coordination between agencies and levels of government to front-line workers who disagree with the program and implement it with less than total enthusiasm.
But do you think, the improved policy effectiveness can be brought in by setting-up of an “Independent Evaluation Office to undertake impartial and objective assessments of the various public programmes and improve the effectiveness of the public interventions”. This year’s budget speech mentions, “It has been decided that it would be an independent entity under a Governing board chaired by the Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission. The IEO would evaluate the impact of flagship programmes and place the findings in the public domain. It would be funded by the Planning Commission.”
Surprisingly there has been no mention to the final step of the implementation chain: explanations of why the state or block level officials do or do not “comply” with these policy objective – meaning that why don’t they behave in ways that are consistent with the objectives of the policy.
Program “officials” frequently fail to act in the way that program designers intended and wanted, even when it appears to be in their self-interest to do so. Contrary to common perception, the single biggest crisis facing the state officials is not corruption, it is lack of capacity. This is true at virtually all levels of government. The officials do not often even have the full statistical base in some of the most vital areas of our well being, from health to urban economies, to be able to make intelligent interventions.
The regulatory demands of the modern economy and the challenges of governance require substantial planning and expenditure towards capacity building at the state and subsequently at the ULB and Panchayat level. It is critical to listen to both what they say and what they do. Every department should be allocated a stipulated some of money to map the challenges faced by each department and then they should make that shortcomings public. This resource mapping will help the government to learn quickly what mistakes of omission or commission (or both) policymakers have made and help in correcting those mistakes.
For any government interested in thinking seriously about effective implementation should begin the conversion by ensuring state’s capability to do all that is expected of it.
Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
Financial Inclusion: Please Do Not Forget Our Urban Poor!
Premila Nazareth Satyanand
Respected Pranab da,
While the nation lauds the Government’s single-minded drive to take banking to rural doorsteps, the Finance Ministry and the RBI are sadly neglecting a key constituency: the impoverished millions on the doorsteps of urban banks, denied access for lack of ‘papers’. Despite the Government’s clarion call to financial inclusion, my friends and I continue to find it difficult - if not impossible - to open accounts for our cooks, maids, drivers and gardeners.
Breaking the Gordian knot of identity and address documents
Partly responsible are the Reserve Bank of India’s 2002 ‘Know Your Customer’ rules which require banks to check the background of prospective applicants to guard against money laundering and terrorism financing. Applicants must prove both identity and residence through one of six documents. Passport, PAN card, voter’s card, driving license, identity card, or letter from a recognised public authority/ public servant in the first case; and telephone or electricity bill, ration card, bank account statement, or letter from employer/recognised public authority in the second.
Predominantly rural migrants, most of our urban poor do not have the correct combination of identity and address documents necessary to open accounts. The key sticking point is ‘local address’. This I learnt when I tried to open an account for Mahesh, the young Uttaranchali who lives and works in my house. He has a high-school I.D., a ration card, and a voter’s card (three KYC- approved identity documents), but these were insufficient to prove his bona fide. For, they display an Uttaranchal, not a Delhi address. Sona, our Maharashtrian ayah has no documentation at all, so hers was a ‘shut-before-opening’ case.
Recognising this Gordian knot, the RBI relaxed the documentary requirements for small deposit (or ‘no frills’) accounts with a total balance of Rs 50,000. In its Master ‘Know Your Customer’ Circular of July 2009, it ruled that a written introduction/certification from an account holder was sufficient to open such accounts, provided the account was “over six months old and showed satisfactory transactions.”
Continuing violations by urban banks
Yet, eight months later, in direct contravention of this ruling, banks across the country continue to refuse to honour letters of introduction from account-holders/employers as sufficient evidence of identity and address. Bank branches have either not been properly briefed about the July 2009 relaxations, or they are using the 2002 KYC obligations as a convenient smoke-screen to duck opening un-remunerative accounts for the poor. No surprise then that just 2% of our over 33 million ‘no frills’ accounts are urban, as the Skoch Institute estimates. In real terms, this is just 66,000 accounts. Minuscule in the context of India’s urban poor population of between 80 million to 190 million. We could immediately bring much of this population into the formal banking system, merely by pressuring the banks to adhere to the RBI’s July 2009 relaxations. The national drive to financially empower the poor must thus strategically invest in tracking and pushing inclusion in urban areas.
It is essential we start immediately. UNDP’s ‘Indian Urban Poverty Report 2009’ shows India’s urban population doubling from 286 million to 575 million by 2030. More worryingly, it projects continued growth in our urban poor population, due to expanding rural in-migration and lack of public services. Continuing exclusion from formal banking services will only aggravate this unfortunate trend. Bringing the poor into the banks is also essential to establishing their identity within other formal skills and livelihood systems.
The banks’ need for caution is understandable. But our system’s dogged insistence on ‘local address’ is misplaced, given an expanding ATM network and growing geographic mobility. In any case, most small depositors use their accounts primarily to store and save money. Thus, should they vanish with all their money, it is theirs and nobody else’s. Moreover, small deposits do not easily lend themselves to the kinds of scam seen on stock markets.
Domestic workers: the low-hanging fruit
India’s 95-100 million domestic workers present the lowest-hanging fruit in the urban financial inclusion campaign. For, they all have close, organic links to households already within the banking system, significantly reducing the risk for banks. Since 90% of these workers are women, the implications for social empowerment are significant.
This category of worker is also likely to make larger and more regular deposits than most urban and rural poor counterparts. In bigger cities, average domestic worker salaries range from 3,500 to Rs 5,000 and average monthly savings from Rs 500-Rs 1,000. Employers would be happy to pay salaries via recurring monthly deposits. Account holders are likely to make one or two withdrawals a month. Urban ‘no frills’ accounts are thus likely to be continually active, cutting to the heart of the banks’ complaint that only 11% of the nearly 33 million rural accounts are.
The Government must thus do some quick and clever thinking on how to incentivise our banks to, first, admit and, then, effectively serve our urban poor. To quote S.S.Tarapore, “No individual should be denied the right to open an account.” Some ‘carrot’ and some ‘stick’ might be required. But, judging from India’s telecom experience, energetic attention to enforcing banks’ urban ‘universal service obligation’ is more likely to trigger a low-cost system of ‘mass banking’, than crores of Budget spending on technology platforms and rural banking infrastructure.
Premila Nazareth Satyanand is an independent policy analyst.
Respected Pranab da,
While the nation lauds the Government’s single-minded drive to take banking to rural doorsteps, the Finance Ministry and the RBI are sadly neglecting a key constituency: the impoverished millions on the doorsteps of urban banks, denied access for lack of ‘papers’. Despite the Government’s clarion call to financial inclusion, my friends and I continue to find it difficult - if not impossible - to open accounts for our cooks, maids, drivers and gardeners.
Breaking the Gordian knot of identity and address documents
Partly responsible are the Reserve Bank of India’s 2002 ‘Know Your Customer’ rules which require banks to check the background of prospective applicants to guard against money laundering and terrorism financing. Applicants must prove both identity and residence through one of six documents. Passport, PAN card, voter’s card, driving license, identity card, or letter from a recognised public authority/ public servant in the first case; and telephone or electricity bill, ration card, bank account statement, or letter from employer/recognised public authority in the second.
Predominantly rural migrants, most of our urban poor do not have the correct combination of identity and address documents necessary to open accounts. The key sticking point is ‘local address’. This I learnt when I tried to open an account for Mahesh, the young Uttaranchali who lives and works in my house. He has a high-school I.D., a ration card, and a voter’s card (three KYC- approved identity documents), but these were insufficient to prove his bona fide. For, they display an Uttaranchal, not a Delhi address. Sona, our Maharashtrian ayah has no documentation at all, so hers was a ‘shut-before-opening’ case.
Recognising this Gordian knot, the RBI relaxed the documentary requirements for small deposit (or ‘no frills’) accounts with a total balance of Rs 50,000. In its Master ‘Know Your Customer’ Circular of July 2009, it ruled that a written introduction/certification from an account holder was sufficient to open such accounts, provided the account was “over six months old and showed satisfactory transactions.”
Continuing violations by urban banks
Yet, eight months later, in direct contravention of this ruling, banks across the country continue to refuse to honour letters of introduction from account-holders/employers as sufficient evidence of identity and address. Bank branches have either not been properly briefed about the July 2009 relaxations, or they are using the 2002 KYC obligations as a convenient smoke-screen to duck opening un-remunerative accounts for the poor. No surprise then that just 2% of our over 33 million ‘no frills’ accounts are urban, as the Skoch Institute estimates. In real terms, this is just 66,000 accounts. Minuscule in the context of India’s urban poor population of between 80 million to 190 million. We could immediately bring much of this population into the formal banking system, merely by pressuring the banks to adhere to the RBI’s July 2009 relaxations. The national drive to financially empower the poor must thus strategically invest in tracking and pushing inclusion in urban areas.
It is essential we start immediately. UNDP’s ‘Indian Urban Poverty Report 2009’ shows India’s urban population doubling from 286 million to 575 million by 2030. More worryingly, it projects continued growth in our urban poor population, due to expanding rural in-migration and lack of public services. Continuing exclusion from formal banking services will only aggravate this unfortunate trend. Bringing the poor into the banks is also essential to establishing their identity within other formal skills and livelihood systems.
The banks’ need for caution is understandable. But our system’s dogged insistence on ‘local address’ is misplaced, given an expanding ATM network and growing geographic mobility. In any case, most small depositors use their accounts primarily to store and save money. Thus, should they vanish with all their money, it is theirs and nobody else’s. Moreover, small deposits do not easily lend themselves to the kinds of scam seen on stock markets.
Domestic workers: the low-hanging fruit
India’s 95-100 million domestic workers present the lowest-hanging fruit in the urban financial inclusion campaign. For, they all have close, organic links to households already within the banking system, significantly reducing the risk for banks. Since 90% of these workers are women, the implications for social empowerment are significant.
This category of worker is also likely to make larger and more regular deposits than most urban and rural poor counterparts. In bigger cities, average domestic worker salaries range from 3,500 to Rs 5,000 and average monthly savings from Rs 500-Rs 1,000. Employers would be happy to pay salaries via recurring monthly deposits. Account holders are likely to make one or two withdrawals a month. Urban ‘no frills’ accounts are thus likely to be continually active, cutting to the heart of the banks’ complaint that only 11% of the nearly 33 million rural accounts are.
The Government must thus do some quick and clever thinking on how to incentivise our banks to, first, admit and, then, effectively serve our urban poor. To quote S.S.Tarapore, “No individual should be denied the right to open an account.” Some ‘carrot’ and some ‘stick’ might be required. But, judging from India’s telecom experience, energetic attention to enforcing banks’ urban ‘universal service obligation’ is more likely to trigger a low-cost system of ‘mass banking’, than crores of Budget spending on technology platforms and rural banking infrastructure.
Premila Nazareth Satyanand is an independent policy analyst.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
AI Budget Briefs Series 2010
The Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research is pleased to launch its Budget Briefs Series 2010. The 8 briefs in this series examine trends in social sector allocations and expenditures in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Mid-day Meal Scheme, National Rural Health Mission, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Water and Sanitation, Food Subsidy, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Finding a Voice: Community Television Initiative
Sruti Bandyopadhyay
Some people used to argue that elections are THE best instruments of accountability. But events have overtaken the idea and now there are many who are focusing on the limitations of election, mainly, if you have an uninformed citizenry.
There is another dimension to it. While in democracies, elections provide an incentive for politicians to perform, governments are not likely to respond as enthusiastically to those who are unlikely or marginalized voters, no matter whether their plight has been well covered or not. So how do you turn uninformed citizenry or marginalized voters into active citizens?...In short, by providing evidence based information.
On the face of it, getting critical news and information out to citizens should be an easier and easier task in today’s digitalized, networked and hand-held world. But most media—across regions and on any platform: print, radio, TV or online—aren’t interested in serving the public good, because there is no finance to that public-good role.
This then presents an opportunity for the development community. To get information out to the public, to educate the public about who to trust and how to evaluate information sources, research organization needs to use newer tools. But, where is the tool?
Community Television initiative can be considered as one such dynamic tool. Access to television in remote Indian villages has changed substantially in the past few years. And, community television will have many advantages over print media. Programmes, nearly always in the local languages would deal with local issues involving ordinary people so that villagers (even illiterate ones) and town people understand what they are about. The volunteer appointed by a civil society can organize a debate once in a week on localize issues, which in turn would become topics for programmes on the community television. For example, Byrraju Foundation in collaboration with UNESCO has set up one such initiative -Ankuram community TV.
This innovation combines a TV studio and the existing wifi network with a local cable TV facility enabling people to access the services and programmes right in their homes. This technological and social innovation is being piloted in three villages (Cherukumilli, Juvvalapalem & I-Bhimavaram) in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh and the local programmes reach about 69 villages across the district through the cable network.
If community TV network gains momentum in India, then rural India should perhaps call the TV the Empowerment Box instead of the Idiot Box.
Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative
Some people used to argue that elections are THE best instruments of accountability. But events have overtaken the idea and now there are many who are focusing on the limitations of election, mainly, if you have an uninformed citizenry.
There is another dimension to it. While in democracies, elections provide an incentive for politicians to perform, governments are not likely to respond as enthusiastically to those who are unlikely or marginalized voters, no matter whether their plight has been well covered or not. So how do you turn uninformed citizenry or marginalized voters into active citizens?...In short, by providing evidence based information.
On the face of it, getting critical news and information out to citizens should be an easier and easier task in today’s digitalized, networked and hand-held world. But most media—across regions and on any platform: print, radio, TV or online—aren’t interested in serving the public good, because there is no finance to that public-good role.
This then presents an opportunity for the development community. To get information out to the public, to educate the public about who to trust and how to evaluate information sources, research organization needs to use newer tools. But, where is the tool?
Community Television initiative can be considered as one such dynamic tool. Access to television in remote Indian villages has changed substantially in the past few years. And, community television will have many advantages over print media. Programmes, nearly always in the local languages would deal with local issues involving ordinary people so that villagers (even illiterate ones) and town people understand what they are about. The volunteer appointed by a civil society can organize a debate once in a week on localize issues, which in turn would become topics for programmes on the community television. For example, Byrraju Foundation in collaboration with UNESCO has set up one such initiative -Ankuram community TV.
This innovation combines a TV studio and the existing wifi network with a local cable TV facility enabling people to access the services and programmes right in their homes. This technological and social innovation is being piloted in three villages (Cherukumilli, Juvvalapalem & I-Bhimavaram) in West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh and the local programmes reach about 69 villages across the district through the cable network.
If community TV network gains momentum in India, then rural India should perhaps call the TV the Empowerment Box instead of the Idiot Box.
Sruti Bandyopadhyay is a Researcher at Accountability Initiative
AI Budget Series: Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water
In the last 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 (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article -Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water:Mere Infrastructure Won't Solve Problems
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
AI Budget Series: National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)
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 National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article - Health Economics: Weak Implementation Ailing Health Care Plans
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