India Undelivered

Nishi Malhotra Delhi

India has come a long way in the 60 years of its independence. Today, it has started playing a significant role in the global, political and economic stage. It is, however, still a matter of grave concern that 400 million of nearly a billion Indians live a life of abject poverty. India has largely failed to adequately and effectively deliver basic services like education, health, drinking water, sanitation, and employment to its poor, particularly its rural poor.

According to a recent World Bank report, education achievements are poor, particularly for girls in rural areas, and absenteeism among teachers is high though they are being relatively (compared to other developing nations) well-paid. Expenditures on preventive health are limited and the private sector accounts for 80 per cent of expenditures on curative health, despite the network of clinics and hospitals. Public health services are often regressive, benefiting the rich more than the poor. Like teachers, health workers are often absent from primary clinics. Drinking water quality is poor and there is little effort at operation and maintenance of facilities. Sanitation outcomes lag far behind what would be desirable. Employment programmes have failed to have an impact commensurate with the volume of expenditures.

Although Panchayat Raj Institutions were given political power by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, in reality they are often lacking in teeth. They do not, for the most part, have the necessary funds, functions and functionaries to help them effectively assess the needs of the locals, operate services, and hold those who do not deliver accountable. Since decentralisation is defined as a state subject, different states have pursued varying strategies to empower rural governments.

According to a recent study by the World Bank, India’s "post-colonial, supply driven, civil service managed, centralised system with its bureaucratic top-down approach to service delivery and upward flow of accountability, still continues to play a dominant role in service delivery. It has not been restructured. Additionally, the overwhelming presence of the states’ sectoral machineries has not opened a space for local governments to emerge and grow".

Other related reasons for failure of service delivery, as pointed out in the World Bank report, include the confused, overlapping and incomplete responsibilities of different tiers of government; lack of accountability to citizens, especially rural ones; weak and/or ineffective systems for the "contracting" of service providers to provide these services; legislation which defines roles in service delivery is spread over a large number of legal instruments that often contradict each other, and centrally sponsored schemes for service delivery are highly distortionary to the institutional and organisational framework adopted by states in support of decentralisation.

The report emphasises that, despite the appearance of failure, decentralisation is still key to empowering and strengthening the voice of disadvantaged rural people. Correct implementation, however, is necessary for success. It broadly recommends that sectors and services be unbundled into mutually exclusive activities — like policy and standards, planning, asset creation, operation, and monitoring and evaluation — which are common across all sectors. These can be assigned to different tiers of government. The central and state governments should set standards, articulate broad policy guidelines, develop skills, and monitor programmes financially. All other operational decisions and processes should rest with the gram panchayats (village councils), with decisions being made in consultation with the gram sabhas (assemblies of voters at the ward level).

It is clear that service delivery in rural areas faces perverse and systematic problems and the outcomes have been pathetic. Ironically, in budget after budget and one Five-year Plan after another, the allocation of resources to some or all of these sectors has been increasing steadily. Where then does the money go? Most of us by now have become cynical enough to believe that the resources go into the coffers of our elected leaders and line the pockets of the contractors with whom they work in league. But there are some other factors that are in play here as well — crores off rupees are lost to wastage and other inefficiencies of gargantuan proportions. The country’s centralised and civil service managed delivery system itself has systemic problems. It has long since been discarded by other post-colonial nations around the world as untenable. In the following pages Hardnews reports reveal what often happens to the taxpayers’ hard-earned money.