12 PLAN ON GOVERNANCE

 Governance

 The problem of governance that has to be tackled surfaces in three different ways.

The first relates to systemic improvements, which increase the effectiveness of government plan expenditure on new programmes.

The second relates to improvements in customer satisfaction on the delivery of services by government agencies.

 The third relates to the perception of corruption and what we can do to tackle it.

IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PLAN PROGRAMMES

Nearly `7 lakh crore have been spent on the 15 major Flagship programmes during the Eleventh Plan period. This sharp rate of increase is unprecedented.

A number of legislative steps have also been taken at securing rights to the people, like the Right to Information Act, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Forest Rights and the Right to Education Act. Nevertheless, questions remain on whether these programmes which involve a large volume of resources are actually delivering benefits as expected. In other words, the funds

are in place, the rights constitutionally guaranteed, and many achievements have also been recorded but much more work needs to be done to translate the immense promise of these initiatives into reality.

There is a need for an in-depth review of administrative processes at various levels to ensure expeditious decisions that can advance development priorities of the nation.

 A key lacuna is that implementation continues to be in a business-as-usual mode, while these new programmes demand a new architecture based on innovative breaks with the past in significant respects. A number of changes are being instituted in the architecture of  implementation of Plan programmes in the Twelfth Plan to overcome the universalization without quality (‘U without Q’) syndrome.

1.Strengthening Local Institutions

2.Social Mobilisation

 In this background, specific provisions are being made during the Twelfth Plan in each flagship programme for dedicated time and human and financial resources for social mobilisation, awareness generation and social audit. The new Operational Guidelines for MGNREGA, for example, provide that those blocks of the country where either scheduled castes plus scheduled tribes form ≥30 per cent of the population or the annual MGNREGA expenditure was more than `12 crore in any year since the programme started, will mandatorily have at least three Cluster Facilitation Teams (CFT). Each CFT will service a cluster of Gram Panchayats (CGP), being accountable to each GP within their Cluster.

Each CGP will cover around 15000 job cards or an area of about 15000 ha, broadly corresponding to the boundaries of a mini-watershed and local aquifer.

The CFT will comprise a fully dedicated, threemember professional support team for MGNREGA.

The CFT will be a multidisciplinary team led by an Assistant Programme Officer and will comprise specialists in earthen engineering, community mobilization, hydrogeology, agriculture/allied livelihoods.

 Civil Society has a crucial role to play in social mobilisation and capacity building to help PRIs to take up the tasks assigned to them. Government must strongly encourage partnerships with civil society including not only NGOs but also academic institutions, local colleges and universities.

Students and teachers play a significant role in supporting development programmes by providing vital inputs that are scarce, particularly in the remote areas. The precise institutional arrangements within which these are embodied could vary, depending on the requirement and context but these spaces do need to be mandated.

 The Twelfth Plan proposes setting up of a dedicated institution meant to foster state-civil society partnerships. The Bharat Rural Livelihoods

Foundation (BRLF) is proposed to be set up to foster and facilitate civil society action in partnership with government for transforming the livelihoods and lives of people in areas such as the Central Indian Adivasi belt.

Initial BRLF support will be provided to civil society partners as ‘trigger funding’, that is, to develop proposals that reflect this partnership with State Governments/PRIs/banks. BRLF will assist its civil society partners in ensuring that the design of their proposals incorporates a collaborative mode of functioning with governments/PRIs/banks. The aim is to support grassroots level action towards empowerment of people, particularly the Adivasis and scaling up of approaches that are innovative both in terms of programme content and strategy.

Innovation can be in many directions—technology, social mobilisational approaches, local institution building, architecture of partnerships, management techniques and so on. Each project supported by BRLF will attempt to leverage the vast resources being made available by both banks and government for a large number of programmes, such as MGNREGA, NRLM, IWMP, BRGF, IAP, RKVY, RADP, NHM,

IAY, NRDWP, TSC and so on. The aim is to provide support through the BRLF to projects that largely seek to leverage government programmes and funding already available on the ground.

3.Voluntary Sector

To strengthen governance at the panchayat, block, district, State and Central levels with special focus at the critical level of the district planning board, it is essential to build mechanisms that institutionalize consultative planning to enable greater representation of the stakeholders. One way of achieving the same is through institutionalised consultations with the voluntary sector.

Voluntary Sector thus contributes to:

1. strengthening democracy and governance through improved participatory representation. awareness of rights and capacity building of local institutions;

2. advancing rural and urban development through grass-roots–level innovation and human resource and talent management;

3. transforming inter-personal, familial and community spaces through awareness generation and sensitisation;

4. providing platforms for dialogue and dissent for appreciation of and respect for differences in opinions and affiliations; and

5. promoting art, culture, environment protection and other forms of public enquiry; alternatively, it may be said that the sector should cover the spaces of social defence, social security, social service and social change.

The Twelfth Plan should institutionalize the Joint Consultative Groups/Forums/Joint Machineries recommended by the National Policy on the Voluntary Sector in all forms of planning, right from the grass-roots levels up to the level of Central Government Ministries. Within the Joint Consultative Groups/Forums/Joint Machineries structure, members of civil society, including the voluntary sector would be made partners in the debates that precede designing and development of policies/schemes/programmes, and also be involved in mid-course corrective measures to create a window for improvements as well as incorporation of regional/cultural specificities. Further, mechanisms would be set up to identify and up-scale innovations that have made visible changes in the lives of beneficiary communities. Experiments in health, women’s empowerment and watershed management have yielded particularly impressive returns. This approach should now be extended to other domains of governance.

 States would be encouraged to formulate state voluntary sector policies on the lines of the national policy on the voluntary sector to enable and empower an independent, creative and effective voluntary sector in each state, which can contribute to the social, cultural and economic advancement of its people.

Financing the Sector

Strengthening Data Collection and Management Systems

With increase of voluntary organisations in India, there is an urgent need to identify and list organisations based on their registration, expertise, size, activities and so on. A national data bank that lists VOs on the basis of the registration (trust/society/ non-profit company), thematic area of expertise (women’s empowerment/health/environment and so on) and nature of work (research/implementation/

evaluation/designing and so on) would be developed to make the present system of engagement more rewarding and efficient.

Accreditation and Certification

Accreditation and certification of voluntary agencies to enhance their credibility, transparency and accountability, and also ensure their capability in performing certain activities will help improve standards. A system that is acceptable to all VOs and other stakeholders would be set up to bring in certain minimum standards for the VOs. A national accreditation authority and its mechanisms would be designed.

Partnership between Public, Private and Voluntary Sectors

CSR initiatives and Corporate–VO Partnerships should also include affirmative action to ensure equity, reduce ethnic and social conflicts and make public/private spaces more sensitive to diversity and social justice. There is also a need to create a cadre of professionals who can deal with governance issues within the voluntary sector. Capacity building of people involved in voluntary action is necessary to improve governance at all levels.

4.Restructuring of Centrally Sponsored Schemes

The Planning Commission had appointed a Committee under Shri B.K. Chaturvedi, Member, Planning Commission to suggest measures and identify changes required in the restructuring of the CSSs. The Committee has suggested:

1. The number of CSS should be limited and only those schemes which are required as a part of the convergence process as a broader scheme have large outlays so as to make impact across the states to be implemented, the rest to be weeded out and to be converged with other schemes.

2. The existing CSS should be categorised into Flagship schemes that have large outlays and address major national issues; major sub-sectoral schemes to address developmental problems of major sectors like agriculture, education and health and Sector-umbrella schemes which deal with the range of problems of concerned sector.

3. Distribution of CSS funds among States should be based on transparent notified guidelines which should be put on the website of the concerned Ministries. The State may be incentivized to provide larger outlay in certain sectors like health, education, skill development and rural infrastructure. The incentives could be by provisions of additional funds based on the State’s own efforts to increase outlays for the sector. 

4. The physical and financial norms for the Schemes may be varied depending on the requirement of the State. A mechanism for developing flexibility in such norms as against the normal CSS prescription has been suggested. This should take care of large variation often requested by North East States or States like Kerala, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh which have special needs.

5. All CSS must have 20 per cent flexi funds (10 per cent for Flagship schemes). These should be utilised by the States to prepare schemes which are especially suited for the requirement of that State.

6. Each flagship programme will provide a flexible pool of financial resources to be used to facilitate and incentivise innovative practices that blaze a trail for others to follow during the Twelfth Plan period.

7. There should be a concurrent monitoring and evaluation of the CSS. This should be done by independent monitors and put on the website of the concerned Ministry and the Planning Commission. This assessment could be done by professional institutions, visit of experts to major project-implementing States or assessment by individual experts by visits to the field.

 The Twelfth Plan will restructure the CSSs and provide flexibility in the light of the recommendations of the BKC Committee.

5.Convergence

 A key deficiency of Plan programmes is that they continue to function within the confines of departmental silos without requisite convergence and with a high degree of duplication of effort. The Twelfth Plan visualises a convergence of implementation across programmes to pool financial and physical resources across sectors to attain synergy to benefit the target group. For example, rural drinking water and sanitation programmes should be converged so that the two objectives are attained in a mutually consistent manner. Similarly, it is proposed that under the JNNURM, every water supply project will necessarily also be a sewage treatment project and green buildings will require linkages with the energy sector.

Creating common sanctioning authorities within districts for the IWMP and RKVY programmes so that the IWMP has a livelihoods focus and the RKVY based on watershed principles is another step in this direction.

6.Effective Design and Implementation

 While formulating schemes, it is important to ensure that they are well-designed for the objective at hand and also that the guidelines and procedures help in effective implementation. Some of the areas which will need focus in ensuring good architecture of the schemes will be:

1. While preparing the schemes, the central ministries role would be to act as a knowledge partner and enabler to the project implementation, which will be typically in the states. For this ministries will prepare capabilities in preparing for scheme design and creation of learning systems and networks from which the states and local implementers can learn. 

2. These schemes would have specific strategic outcomes. For example, it could result in improved number of patents, employment generation, providing learning support to the disabled or improved energy efficiency. 

3. While, capabilities are prepared in the ministries, time should be devoted to preparation of good scheme, as mentioned earlier. The Ministry would use funds to design schemes which might require higher Consultation experts/expertise or reaching out to numerous stake holders. There has been so far very little investment made in this area. Often, not enough time and energy is devoted to this. The schemes after a proposed design have a good chance of delivering the desired outcomes.

 4. The consultation with the stakeholders is one of the key requirements for ensuing that the architecture of these schemes meet the objectives. Often, the consultation process is not mandatory. The schemes which may require formulation of laws or guidelines would need to have extensive consultative machinery. Resources would need to be provided to improve the quality of consultations.

5. The architecture of this scheme must have evaluation and feedback mechanisms. It is important to evaluate the schemes against the strategic outcomes to ensure effective use of money being spent. Not enough attention is devoted to this aspect. Often this is left to the audit function. It is not a good use of public money and resources. An effective evaluation can lead to improved versions of these schemes, leading to better outcomes and more efficient use of public resources.

 Some of the areas which will need to be kept in mind for effective implementation are:

1. Developing flexibility and its effective use during the implementation of these schemes for improving their outcomes would need collective action. It is important to have learning and feedback mechanisms in place to ensure that implementation effectiveness improves. This would help in diagnosis of issues during implementation and rectifying problems identified, using flexibility components of the scheme.

2. It is important to prioritise, sequence and create momentum through results. Often it takes time for results of policy recommendation to become visible. To ensure that the implementation process does not lose momentum, it is important to have some early wins. These would help build confidence and commitment to the policy.

3. Public programmes must have clear outcomes. It is imperative that time is spent upfront to find outcomes in consultation with stakeholders. Failure to do this causes the system to adopt simplistic measures of performance against the targets.

Capacity Building for Implementation

The Twelfth Plan must address capacity building at the local level as a key instrument for improving outcomes. Some of the specific measures required are: 

1. While, functions have been devolved to PRIs/ ULBs, there has not been a commensurable devolution of functionaries and funds or effort to build human capacity at the lower level. Unless PRIs/ULBs get good quality personnel, they cannot perform the functions devolved upon them. A pooled fund across programmes should be created from which resources could be drawn for capacity building. Given the  considerable overlap in both the people to be trained and the issues their capacities need to be built for across programmes. 

2. Government institutions charged with capacity building have, by and large, under-performed and are in urgent need of reform. They need to be thoroughly professionalised and also need to develop powerful partnerships with carefully selected civil society organisations which have a commendable track-record in this sphere. A number of institutes of the government, which have otherwise limited staff can be upgraded by entering into public–private partnership (PPP) and thus, strengthen the excellence of the faculty as well as, the quality of training imparted. This will improve the capacity building capability across the States. 

3. To meet shortage of personnel in the short to medium term, recruitment from the private sector and hiring of external consultants through a fast track process needs to be enabled by an appropriate hiring policy. A list of empanelled professional institutions to streamline the recruitment process and enable PRIs/ULBs to access external talent in a timely manner.

7. Independent Evaluation Office

Government programmes can benefit enormously from independent evaluation. At present concurrent evaluation is done by the Ministry concerned on a on-going parallel process. Expert evaluation of programmes that have been in operation is done by the Programme Evaluation Organisation (PEO) of the Planning Commission.

This evaluation function is being strengthened by setting up an Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), under the aegis of Planning Commission.

8.IMPROVING PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY

9.Combating Corruption

  The best way to prevent corruption is to have procedures, which provide minimum scope for such malpractices. This would require large use of e-governance and other technologies. It will also simultaneously need an extensive review of procedures so that the rules are simple, and do not provide scope for interpretations.

Simultaneously, if the delivery of a public service is through an e-mode and automaticity is brought in decision-taking based on facts furnished, the scope for illegal gratification reduces substantially. During the Plan, it is proposed to further expand e-governance. Already a scheme for expanding connectivity up to the village panchayat level is being implemented. Earlier, common service centres had been opened to provide e-services. These efforts will have to continue. 

The other aspect of corruption is development of transparent procedures in award of government contracts, government procurement and award of licences for permitting various activities including mining or the use of other natural resources 

 The economic reforms successfully eliminated discretionary decision making in areas such as industrial licences and import licences. With the lowering of tariffs and abolition of license and permits, the transaction costs went down dramatically and this led to an enormous reduction in corruption. With the growth of the economy at a rapid rate, new areas have emerged. It is important that the corruption

is controlled by ensuring that services, which are to be given by the government are also available from a number of other competing suppliers. 

 While steps to reduce the likelihood of corruption are extremely important, it is necessary to put in place a system that will investigate allegations of corruption and also punish the guilty expeditiously. The existing methods of enquiry have often been long drawn and delays in the delivery of justice only encourage corruption further. Special courts may need to be set up to expeditiously try such cases.

10.Civil Services’ Reforms

11.Accountability

In other words, private organisations are characterised by ‘intensive accountability’, that is, being answerable to a narrower set of masters in a far more focused way; governments require ‘extensive accountability’.

 In a recent reform initiative, a number of central ministries have adopted a Results Framework Document, which provides a summary of the most important results that the concerned departments and ministries expect to achieve in the year. The main purpose of this is to move the focus of the department from the current resourceallocation mode to result orientation, and to provide an objective and fair basis to evaluate the departments’ or ministries’ overall performance.

 In the first round, the RFD targets had emphasised financial and physical targets. It was observed that ‘outcomes’ from the citizens’ and stakeholders’ perspectives were generally missing. Therefore in the later round, stakeholder consultation and feedback has been built into the RFD framework. By ensuring a broad range of well-managed consultations to determine goals, ‘extensive accountability’ can be brought about. 

 While the above system of accountability under RFDs has led to some very interesting results and has been an important development for improving accountability, the physical targets often tend to be kept at a very moderate level by the concerned ministries while framing the annual plans.

This defeats the very purpose of developing a document which can ensure physical progress consistent with the needs of the economy. Unless, the targets are kept at a challenging level, the document is likely to give a wrong picture of departments, and its accountability.

There is a clear need to guard against this while RFDs are prepared. 

 Many, and often the most important outcomes that citizens and the economy need are not within the ambit of any single ministry. Collaboration is required among several departments and ministries.

The roles of departments and ministries to achieve these outcomes requires a systemic analysis of the issues from which the actions required of the various departments/ministries can be determined and their goals developed. This critical “system’s input” to the RFD process can be provided by the Planning Commission.

12.Regulatory Structures

Although regulators have proliferated, there is no clear assessment of the functioning of individual regulators. It is also not very clear as to what extent they are answerable and accountable and to whom.

Regulatory authorities without any accountability would in the long run lead to functioning of government arms not responsible to any one and, therefore, may not meet the overall objective of government policy. It is necessary that these regulatory authorities are made accountable and assessed for their performance. Necessary legislation in this regard needs to be finalised quickly.

13.GETTING THINGS DONE

Research on success of countries that built effective systems for improving the quality and timelines of implementation of policies and projects in multiple sectors provides some principles for a robust implementation process.

• Build an implementation system, don’t just do the task: Explicit attention to the process of policy development and implementation has been lacking to a large extent in the Indian context. An effective implementation system is not limited to the success of a single initiative. It builds broadbased capabilities across several industries.

• Systemic experimentation and learning help to progressively, and rapidly improve implementation:

Even carefully designed programmes are likely to face challenges from unforeseen changes in the environment. Therefore, it is important

to have learning and feedback mechanisms in place to ensure that implementation effectiveness improves through successive cycles. Good

policy development (and implementation) should follow the PDCA cycle (Plan—develop strategy; Do—implement strategy; Check—diagnose issues in strategy and its implementation; Act—rectify issues identified).

• Prioritize, sequence and create momentum through results:

Often it takes time for results of policy recommendations to become visible. When results are not visible, the implementation process may lose momentum. Therefore, to build momentum, some early wins must be targeted. They build confidence and commitment to the process.

• Performance measures for government programmes have to be defined consultatively:

 The old management adage—‘you can’t manage what you don’t measure’—is especially true with regards to complex government programmes. The need for performance measures is well accepted. However, it is also very important to define these measures appropriately. A key difference between public sector and private sector programmes is that the value required to be produced by public programmes is generally more intangible than in private programmes where shareholder value and profit may be good measures. Outcomes of public programmes must deliver against expectations of diverse public stakeholders. Therefore, it is imperative that time is spent, up front, to define outcomes in consultation with key stakeholders. Failure to do this causes the system to adopt simplistic measures of performance against expenditure targets, which are not good indicators of the outcomes that were desired.

• Co-ordination between government departments is critical:

• Stakeholder consultations are key to improve the quality of policy development and implementation:

Rather than seeking to a priori design a detailed plan in an unpredictable environment, it is better to create effective forums to identify problems, and for joint teams to be formed to tackle them. These forums should be broad-based and inclusive to ensure that all stakeholders can contribute to the process.

14.Collaboration and Implementation

Poor implementation has been the root cause for India’s poor performance in building its infrastructure and growing its manufacturing sector too. In China, Japan and Germany—countries that have developed very competitive manufacturing sectors and good infrastructures—things get done. In contrast, things do not get done as seamlessly in India.

Two root causes identified for poor implementation are: inadequate consensus amongst stakeholders for policy changes, and very poor co-ordination amongst agencies in execution. These challenges are not restricted only to the infrastructure and manufacturing sectors in India.  

They exist in almost all sectors. Therefore solutions to these root cause problems, can improve outcomes in many sectors.

The traditional approach to address coordination and implementation failures is to

(i) appoint committees to co-ordinate, and (ii) set up monitoring agencies.

Thus, the system has become cluttered with committees for co-ordination, and coordination amongst them has become another problem! Monit oring can point out that things are not happening—which is useful information. But more useful is the ability to get things done.

Broad based consensus-building processes, therefore, need to be institutionalised to ensure successful implementation of plans. 

There are examples internationally of successful implementation of similarly ambitious and complex transformation plans in a democratic context— and these illustrate processes created with deliberate intent to improve multi-stakeholder collaboration and implementation. In economies as diverse as Malaysia and Brazil, this role has been played by often small organisations that: facilitate a common vision; act as a disinterested party in finding solutions to common problems; maintain momentum through transparent monitoring and evaluation; store and distribute learning and induce effective stakeholder consultation. Such a role is often modest and unobtrusive, but can be the key to implementation and growth.

15.A ‘Movement’ of Learning and Improvement

The distinction between creating yet another ‘organisation’ and stimulating a ‘movement’ is crucial. For widespread acquisition of capabilities, across a large, diverse, and democratic system, a movement of learning and change is required.  

 The improvement of quality across Japan in the 1970s provides a good example of a successful national movement that transformed a nation’s economy. Japan, in the 1950s and 1960s had the reputation of being a producer of low quality, cheap, goods. By the 1980s, Japan had become the hall-mark of quality across many industries, and its infrastructure of rail and road transportation had become a benchmark for efficiency and punctuality. The widespread improvement of quality was brought about through Total Quality Management (TQM), whereby seven simple tools of quality and other techniques were widely disseminated throughout Japan. The dissemination was done by multiple agencies. The Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers was one of the leaders, and several business associations, government agencies and voluntary organizations came together to promote quality across the country. A variety of channels including public radio, daily newspapers and professional journals were used to infect the country with the challenge to improve quality everywhere and to disseminate useful techniques. 

The need for democratic management of multi-stakeholder collaboration processes has been felt in many countries. In response to this,

many initiatives have been taken over the past three decades, in several countries, to facilitate such processes. Experience has been gained from these interventions, and a body of practice, with established principles, and tools has emerged. These principles and tools, with case studies, have been recorded by several organisations. A ‘movement’ to disseminate and use such tools and processes will accelerate

implementation and growth.