Friends,
An interesting article from Times of India of 31.3.2011 is reproduced below. There is an urgent need to force greater accountability in public spending. But, HOW ?
Answer lies in effective Social Audit by Citizens and mandatory institutional reforms that that force public authorities at all levels to disclose and disseminate information, that enables citizens to see whether the massive expenditure on development schemes is being wasted OR is it resulting in desired outcomes?
Recent scams have shaken public confidence in governance. Confidence can be restored only by pro-active measures. Unfortunately, we do not see demonstrated will and sincerity to combat corruption. On the other hand, there is tolerance towards corruption and overall cynicism towards inability of Government to deliver desired outcome.
Dhirendra Krishna IA&AS (Retired)
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( TIMES OF INDIA; 31.3.2011; PAGE 16.)
Following The Money Trail
There is an urgent need to force greater accountability in public spending
Sudipto Mundle
This financial year, starting April 1, 2011, the central government will spend Rs 12.6 lakh crore on various public services and development projects. Adding to that the expenditure of the state governments, total government spending in the country will be in the order of a massive Rs 36 lakh crore, though the final consolidated numbers are yet to come in. How much of that will be wasted, and how much will translate into actual delivery of development projects or public services, and what quality of services? Nobody really knows.
There is a general impression, reinforced by daily headlines about new mega-scams and our individual experiences of poor performing government agencies, that the waste of public resources is colossal. The CAG's heroic efforts notwithstanding, nobody has any estimate about the scale of such waste or, conversely, the quantum and quality of public services that citizens are getting in return for the taxes they pay. Is there some way of tracking where our tax money is going and what it is delivering?
Recently, i had the privilege of moderating a discussion on this question by a remarkable panel of individuals: Nandan Nilekani, one of the iconic founders of Infosys who is now leading the government's UID initiative in e-governance; Jay Panda, one of the best informed and most professional among our young parliamentarians; T R Raghunandan, an authority on panchayati raj who gave up a career in the IAS to work with NGOs and is best known as coordinator of the ipaidabribe.com initiative; and Madhav Chavan, who gave up his career as a chemistry professor at Houston to establish Pratham, India's leading education NGO. The panel was convened to discuss the PAISA 2010 report. PAISA is a pioneering effort to track the flow of public spending on education, especially spending under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the central government's flagship programme in education. However, the discussion expanded beyond education to public spending in
general, and the challenges of monitoring and assessing it.
Turning first to education, PAISA reports that of the 13,000 rural schools surveyed, over 80% received their SSA grants and, according to Jay Panda, many parliamentarians cutting across all parties are in favour of doubling public spending on education from around 3% of GDP to over 6%. That's the good news. The bad news is that a large share of grants is disbursed so late that schools are unable to use the funds effectively within the financial year. Furthermore, Madhav Chavan pointed out that SSA is crowding out state funding for other education programmes in many states, resulting in large inequalities in per capita education funding across states. Combined with the increase in teacher salaries, which has spawned a thriving market in jobs for bribes, this is playing havoc with education goals. This probably accounts for the very poor learning outcomes that the Annual State Of Rural Education (ASER) has been reporting.
Building on the education story, Raghunandan lamented how power-hungry bureaucrats at the Centre use their discretionary powers to allocate resources under centrally-sponsored schemes to undermine the decisionmaking autonomy of the states. This makes a mockery of fiscal federalism as many researchers, committees and finance commissions have pointed out. State governments in turn do the same with zilla parishads, the third tier of government, in many cases. Calling for a replication of the PAISA expenditure tracking initiative in all sectors, Raghunandan suggested that transparent public information about the flow of government funds at different levels would enable public scrutiny of government decisions. This could curb the Leviathan-like tendencies of politicians and bureaucrats alike that undermine democratic decision-making processes.
Nilekani picked up that thread, describing the electronic Expenditure Information Network (EIN), one of the e-governance systems his Technology Advisory Group has proposed. It is a brilliant scheme to embed a totally democratic, non-hierarchical hub-and-spokes architecture of information flow within a decision-making structure which is and will remain hierarchical. Emphasising that political economic reforms to align the incentives of politicians and bureaucrats with the democratic aspirations of civil society are essential, Nilekani suggested that technological fixes like EIN could help catalyse such reforms. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
A friend of mine recently complained at an MTNL office that her internet had been down for days because MTNL was not replacing a damaged router. A wag in the office responded, "Madam, we have no money left to replace routers because Raja has taken it all." What else can junior staff do but joke about the bigwigs as they watch the latter loot the country?
From alleged mega-loot by the Rajas of our times to `Loot for Work' programmes at the grassroots; from rising crimes against women to increasing reports of judicial impropriety; from deaths by negligence in hospitals to missing teachers in schools; from merciless police bashing of cricket fans in Bangalore and Mohali to missing cops at gridlocked traffic jams, the list of multiple governance failures grows longer by the day. But in the midst of this gloomy landscape of a malfunctioning state, perhaps there is a small glimmer of hope. Perhaps the collective effort of the thousands of unknown Raghunandans, Nilekanis, Madhavs and Jays will one day manage to contain the worst excesses of a Leviathan state.
The writer is emeritus professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi.
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