Review of Union Budget - "Achhe Din, Aney Wala Hain" .... Achhe Din Aagye Hain????

The new government is done with the Union Budget. The whole country was waiting for this document. People's expectation was at high pitch. All - from common man to Dalal street wanted some significant announcements which would bring about dazzling change. After the budget lot of columnist wrote intersting columns in the esteemed newspapers to ventilate their critical thoughts. I read some of them and was happy that India as democracy is quite vibrant.

Last 10 years we have seen some significant improvements in governance at the state level. This I say from my own experience through field visit in many states of our country. In Chhattisgarh, this is visible in rampant restructuring of PDS system. In Bihar the government strong intent to enhance the learning outcomes through government programmes called Mission Gunwatta. In Rajasthan and UP the different schemes to enhance the girl's education. Most of the states have also disciplined their fiscal balances except few states. So thora thora achhe din to hain... 

But the progress in social sector is much slower in India. India's 2013 rank in HDI is low at 136 out of 187 countries. In this context, Indian budget and especially the new government should have done something significantly more. Then only Achhe Din Ayenge. 

When I see budget, I feel that nothing much is provided for social sector.

• For SSA, in education, an amount of Rs. 28,563 crores has been allocated. The budget makes the provision for safe drinking water and toilets but nothing is specified for enhancing learning outcomes. Since a decade ASER reports says very categorically that inspite of spending such a large amount of tax payers' money for SSA but the learning outcome is very low. What is the vision of new government for this is not at all clear in new budget. 
• In health, there is no mention of universal health care, including health insurance for all. NRHM is totally neglected. 
• The budget does not talk about Panchayati Raj at all. 
• The budget does not talk about the administrative reform in the process of implementing MGNREGA. One of the major issue of this scheme was very late payment of wages. It is not addressed. 
• Regarding Malnutrition the budget says within six month a comprehensive strategy will be in place... hope it may come..

According the National Economic Survey the challenge is the efficiency in delivery system. The delivery system is very very poor in our country. No steps are to revamp the schemes or converge the schemes is mentioned in the budget. 

The new government, I think have missed the chance to give a hope for Achhe Din. 

Let see what gets unfold in near future which would change the country for better. At present the government main agenda is more on improving the relationship with the neighbouring countries. Above that making of big statue of Sardar Patel. Using huge amount of tax payer money in making a statue of Unity when our children are dying in bengal due to severe malnutrition and our women are unsafe as they need to go out for toilets. I don't understand why we are good at lip service during election and not close to it when we need to be doer. 

  

Telengana Visit

Can decentralization reforms meant to enhance school governance in primary and upper primary schools in India achieve the goal of universal elementary education that the RTE Act envisages?

By decentralization, I mean providing access to relevant information (e.g. the amount of money  being pumped into the schools) and giving full authority &power to make decisions for the utilization of resources in the schools  in order to enhance the level of education.  

This blog highlights my own experience of interacting with two School Management Committees (SMCs) in Sagar District of Madhya Pradesh during the dissemination camp in light of above question

The dissemination camp with a tag line, “Humara Paisa, Humara Vidyalay” was initiated during the first two weeks of July 2014 in 30 sample schools across four states (Rajasthan, Telengana, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh), where Accountability Initiative (AI) had previously collected data during the PAISA 2013 District Report Card survey. The dissemination camp was conducted with the aim of being an interactive session for two hours with the SMC members.  It primarily focused on sharing school specific information from PAISA DRC2013 with them.

Sagar Experience:

1. State information: State expenditure on Elementary Education (EE) and per student allocation – public vs. private.
2. District information: District expenditure on EE.
3. General  school information in the specific district vs. school specific information:

• Total funds received by schools in the district and the target schools.
• School grants and entitlements: District scenario vs. target  school scenario (Information such as  the release of funds from the district to the schools, information on whether funds have been received by the schools , school grants expenditure, fulfillment of RTE indicators , information about uniforms and text books, status of the provision of toilets, etc.)
• School characteristics: Students’ enrolment (average) vs. attendance, teachers’ attendance and pupil-teacher ratio

 In the first part of the session, we shared information regarding the average amount of funds received by a school in the district in 2012-13.  In addition to this, information regarding the funds that the target school had received in the same financial year was also compared. The second section of the discussion, however, was slightly tricky to conduct. Initially we asked the SMC members to list out what they believed were the different requirements of the schools in the present scenario. Having done that, we asked the members present to prioritize their spending, assuming that the total funds allocated to their schools in 2012-2013 were directly given to them with full authority and power to spend for the betterment of their schools.

The second section was very vital to help us understand the thought process of the SMC members if given the decision making power to manage financial resources coming to their school. The hypothesis of this exercise is whether  the planning process for school development is really decentralized then we may get more contextualized planning which will look into the optimal utilization of resources and enhance school governance. By the end of the dissemination camp, we would like to see if we receive data to support this hypothesis. 

The two schools in Sagar district where we kick started the camp brought in some interesting observations. The first section of the two hours exercise left the SMC members awestruck. They were overwhelmed to know that such huge amounts of funds were coming in for their schools. Many of the SMC members were even more surprised  to know that these funds were actually their own money paid indirectly as taxes on purchasing different commodities. Examples were given that taxes from everyday purchases,  from salt to seeds to their mobile re-charges, play a big role. I saw in the school the people are really  interested  to know the where the money that comes from, how is it spent and when is it spent. Some of the SMC members, who did not want to be seen by the school headmaster, came to us and asked for the details regarding the funds coming into their schools in writing so that they could look into it afterwards. We told them that we would leave behind the IEC (Information, Communication and Education) materials that we had made to disseminate information to them. We shared that they could use it for further discussion in SMC in future. This shows the implication of hierarchical barriers at the school level among the teachers and parents, which blocks the smooth flow of information about funds to SMC members.  

The second section of the dissemination camp gave us a good insight. In one of the schools an SMC member said, “We do not need any boundaries and toilets for our schools. We require teachers for our children.”  For them, it was for education that people were sending their children to the schools.  So if there were no teachers (as the school had only one permanent teacher) the whole objective of sending their children to schools was a failure for them. One of the parents stated, “To hell with boundaries and toilets, we need good teachers to teach our children so that our children may not be illiterate like us.”

In another school the SMC members shared, “If we were given the money we would have installed a hand pump in the school for our children to have clean and safe drinking water”. At present, the school does not have any drinking water facilities. Besides this, the school has till now failed to fulfill many of the criteria set under the RTE Act, the most important of them being the availability of toilets. When a school does not have basic amenities like the availability of water and toilets facilities, the students often do not come to school or go home in between the classes, thus hampering their attendance in schools.  The funds that come into the schools are like tied funds which are given with certain guidelines. The schools have to spend according to these  guidelines, even if they do not require something or if some other need is more pertinent than the one for which the funds have been allocated. SMC members are important stakeholders to decide  the needs of their school and using their collective thought process could be the good intervention strategy altogether. This would not only define the SMC members’ responsibilities but also hold them accountable. 

The schools are situated within the communities while the students and the SMC members are from the village. The SMC members and teachers, therefore, know much better about their own requirements than the people based far away from the school who are made responsible for the determination and management of the financial resources.  This is not a new revelation since it is has previously been highlighted in various reports by different scholars. 

This exercise, besides disseminating findings based on the information that we had collected from the schools, is to strengthen the belief that if people are given the power and authority to decide for themselves, more transparency and accountability can be demanded for an improved system of governance in the schools. 

In the next few weeks, along with more stories from the field from the dissemination camps, I am hoping for our hypothesis, that if the planning process for school development is really decentralized then we may get more contextualized planning which will look into the optimal utilization of resources and enhance school governance, to be proved correct.