The Hindu Business Line : Good policy plus service delivery

This book is from PAC. Not the Public Accounts Committee, but Pubic Affairs Centre (www.pacindia.org), "a think-tank cum citizen action support group dedicated to the cause of improving the quality of governance in India." It has brought out the findings of `a people's audit of five basic services' in the form of a publication titled Who Benefits from India's Public Services? The book, written by Samuel Paul, Suresh Balakrishnan, Gopakumar K. Thampi, Sita Sekhar, and M. Vivekananda, and published by Academic Foundation (www.academicfoundation.com), is based on "user feedback gathered through a stratified random sample survey of nearly 37,000 households," in 24 States.

But why do we need an audit? Doesn't the government monitor the public services? Yes, the government does, but the monitoring is of public expenditure, without much emphasis on issues such as quality, effectiveness and productivity of services, argues the book.

"A common practice is to assess the performance of a government and its development strategy by tracking outcome measures such as poverty reduction, infant mortality, longevity, and literacy levels." Rarely does it judge its effectiveness in providing services. As a result, "planning new projects and spending public funds are often higher priority for governments than monitoring performance and outcomes."

On this front, there have been developments. "Budget 2005-06 introduced a methodology to measure the development outcomes of all major programmes and the `Outcome Budget 2005-06' was presented to Parliament on August 25, 2005," informs http://finmin.nic.in.

The second such document, `Outcome Budget 2006-2007', running to 85 pages, covers all Plan schemes of each Ministry and "selected non-Plan schemes where outlays can be related to functional objectives, to ascertain the use of resources, the ends for which they are used and the expected results."

PAC's audit has studied the effectiveness of five public services, viz. drinking water, healthcare, road transport, public distribution system, and primary education and childcare. Four aspects have been studied, and these are: access, usage, reliability, and satisfaction.

The outcome of PAC's study is an engaging account, with snapshots of village realities captured in small boxes throughout the book. Among these are stories, of how women in Jalalpur, Gujarat, have to trudge 3 km to access water "because the installed borewell hand-pump in the village broke down years back"; of how the doctor who visits the PHC (Primary Health Centre) in Edira village "hardly attends to the patients," during the weekly-twice visits, and "refrains from even touching the patients at the time of examination"; and of how the government schools in Kalliyoor are popular, despite a wide network of private schools.

"Every public service needs to be assessed from both points of view, namely, the extent to which policy constraints are at work and the degree to which flaws in the delivery system are major hurdles," conclude the authors. They opine that drinking water is an example of a policy that seems to be working, while PDS isn't.

A study of immense value.

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