Multi-Dimensional Issues of Public Policy & Governance in India: Representation, Participation & Justice

Multi-dimensional issues of Public
Policy & Governance in India:

Representation, Participation &
Justice
Prof. Madhushree Sekher
Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policies,
Dean, School of Vocational Education &
Chairperson, Office for International Affairs
17 January 2023
Introduction
• Institutional and organisational capacities are critical to carrying out reforms to make structural
changes.
• Such capacities can create the necessary policy environment to bring development and
governance regimes that improve the welfare with the view of social justice.
• These capacities can be in public, private and civil society, which continue to face governance
challenges, as existing institutional and organisational capacities are insufficient or ineffective.
• Such structural changes (market-oriented) are accompanied by mass-scale technological
adoption and economic planning, leading governments to intervene and offer social security
benefits.
• This is extremely complex in its planning and navigation of societal needs, technology and
economic planning all at the same time.
Introduction
Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) worked in the areas of philosophy of science, political philosophy, the
free will problem, and epistemology. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for their work on money and economic fluctuations and the
interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.
• Hayek says explicitly that when governments try to control a free market in a free economy, what
they are actually doing is simply responding to demands for special treatment.
• The way those demands are expressed is in the language of justice.
• But Hayek says that, as soon as a government tries to deliver on justice in the name of democratic
responsibility, what will happen is repeated attempts to buy people off. This group wants this, that
group wants that, the trade unionists are demanding more jobs, the workers are demanding lower
prices and all governments can do is keep trying to offer people the things they demand.
• Each demand will create another demand, and each attempt to buy off one group will just inflate the
price that will have to be paid to buy off the next one.
Runciman, D. (2021). Confronting Leviathan: A History of Ideas. United Kingdom: Profile.

Introduction
• For Hayek, planning is a bit like trying to nail down a carpet that doesn’t fit. You don’t know exactly
why it doesn’t fit and you don’t know exactly where the overlap is going to be so you bang it down
and you bang it down and then it pops up somewhere in the corner. So you have to bang down that
corner with more nails, but by doing that you force the nails out somewhere else and it pops up in a
different place.
• The carpet doesn’t fit – the plan doesn’t fit the economy – but all you can keep doing is hammering
in more nails, and the only way to get the carpet to finally stay in place is to replace the carpet with
a bed of nails, just to hammer away at everything. That, for Hayek, was the ultimate fear of what
planning might produce: a bed-of-nails society.
• What is critical to understand here is the practice of planning itself – and who has the authority to
plan. This understanding of planning and control brings context to knowing what we are creating a
capacity for or what will be the use of these skills and knowledge.
Runciman, D. (2021). Confronting Leviathan: A History of Ideas. United Kingdom: Profile.

Capacity-building: various levels, across domains
• Government Officials (elected representatives)

• State Officials, Institutions and Organisations (bureaucracy)
• Private Sector and NGOs
• Capacity-building is not independent of knowledge-sharing in a
hierarchical administrative and management system and across domains
• Different development and governance regimes necessitate capacity-
building and knowledge-sharing initiatives
The Concept of a “Governance Challenge”
• The term governance, which comes from the Latin word gubernare (i.e., “to steer”), has different
meanings in academic literature.
• Political scientists have used it to analyse the management of common pool resources,
institutional economists to study vertical integration in the industrial sector, and business
administration and legal scholars to assess organisations that have boards of governors.
• In the 1990s, the concept appeared on the international development agenda. “Good governance”
became increasingly recognised as a precondition for the effective implementation of development
projects and programs
• Drawing on the New Institutional Economics literature, governance can be defined as the formal
and informal institutions influencing human behaviour.
• In line with the literature on good governance, governance challenges are then defined as
characteristics of formal and informal institutions that that jeopardize positive development
outcomes.
Birner, R., & Sekher, M. (2018). The Devil is in the Detail: Understanding the Governance Challenges of Implementing Nutrition-
Specific Programs on a Large Scale. Hidden Hunger: Strategies to Improve Nutrition Quality, 17–44. doi:10.1159/000484341
Governance Challenges Faced by the Private Sector
In implementing nutrition-specific programs:

• Major governance challenges in large-scale nutrition programs arise due to the
inefficiencies of large bureaucracies.
• Therefore, the question arises as to why market institutions, which may be more effective,
do not play a larger role in addressing the problems of maternal and child malnutrition.
• Recognising the different types of market failures that make large-scale government
involvement necessary is essential.
• For the case of agricultural advisory services, these market failures have been analysed
and similar arguments apply to nutritional advisory services.
Nutrition Advice as a Merit Good:

• In economic terms, advice on maternal and child nutrition has the character of a “merit good,” that is, a good that
people undervalue because they are not aware of its benefits, especially not its long-term benefits.
• Therefore, there is no demand for such a good and without demand, private service providers do not emerge. If
people are poor, they may not demand such services even if they were aware of the benefits, because they cannot
afford them.
• Moreover, poor people typically have a high time discount rate, which means that they are not willing to pay for
services today if the benefits arise only in the long run.
• Some of the benefits of improved fetal and child nutrition indeed arise in the long run (i.e., during adulthood or even
in the next generation).
• Considering the nature of nutritional advisory services as a merit good, governments have to at least finance the
provision of such services to address this market failure. This does not, however, imply that government employees
need to provide nutrition advisory services because the government can contract NGOs or private service providers
to deliver such advisory services.
Information Asymmetry:
• The food items to be delivered by nutrition-specific programs, such as dietary supplements, can partly be considered as
merit goods, as well. Hence, they are affected by the same problem of market failure as advisory services.
• Yet, one can observe that there is some willingness to pay for commercial baby foods, including infant formula, even among
poor households. Therefore, there are private sector providers of such food items that operate not only in only in
industrialized but also in developing countries – even in remote rural areas where poverty levels are high.
• An important market failure that arises with regard to commercial baby food is due to information asymmetry. The customers
of infant formula are often unaware that breast feeding is better for nutritional outcomes, especially under problematic
hygienic conditions.
• Moreover, it is difficult for customers to verify the health claims that companies often use to market commercial baby foods.
This market failure can be addressed by government regulation, and to some extent also by information campaigns and by
self-regulation of the industry.
• While there is global progress in the establishment of a regulatory framework, this type of market failure still remains
widespread.
• One challenge inherent in global regulations related to commercial baby food is the fact that, at country level, they need to
be implemented by the national public administration, which faces the governance challenges.
Governance Challenges Faced by Government Agencies
• Transaction-Intensity and the Need for Discretion:

• Such programs are inherently “transaction-intensive” in terms of time and space.
• They have to be implemented daily (transaction-intensive in terms of time) and in different regions of
the country, often even in the remotest rural areas (hence, transaction-intensive in terms of space).
• To meet these requirements, large-scale nutrition programs require large numbers of frontline staff
distributed all over the country.
• The supervision problem is aggravated if the services to be provided require discretion, as is typically
the case in nutrition-specific programs.
• A nutrition advisor needs to identify the specific problems a household or village faces and provide
advice tailored to the situation. Programs that require such discretion cannot be easily standardised
(unlike, for example, a primary school curriculum).
• It is the combination of transaction intensity and the need for discretion that causes inherent problems
of implementing large-scale development programs. This challenge is inherently pronounced in large-
scale nutrition programs.
• Low Government Capacity:

• Even for an agency with high capacity, transaction-intensive programs that require discretion are
challenging to implement.
• In developing countries, government agencies do not typically have strong capacity, especially not
those that are in charge of implementing programs in rural areas.
• The typical capacity problems of such public administration institutions are well known: low salary
levels; patronage-based rather than merit-based recruitment and promotion; low share of
operational funds; bureaucratic procedures; and deficient management systems for human and
financial resources. The public agencies in charge of implementing nutrition-sensitive programs
are typically affected by these problems because they are part of the general public administration.
• Hence, it is difficult to address these problems if no general public sector reform is taking place.
Yet, even where such general public sector reforms have been pursued, the results have generally
been disappointing.
• Government agencies with limited capacity, which are in charge of implementing transaction-
intensive nutrition programs that require discretion, can be expected to be confronted with:
Absenteeism of Service Staff:
• One governance challenge of large-scale nutritionspecific programs is the problem that the
front-level service providers do not show up for work, a problem referred to as “absenteeism.”
• This problem results from the combination of low incentives and limited possibility of
supervision discussed above. One can expect this problem to affect in particular the advisory
component of nutrition programs, since provision of advisory services requires more staff time,
effort, and discretion than distributing food items.
• An empirical research method to assess the level of absenteeism are surprise visits in a
random sample of field offices. This method has mostly been used in the fields of health and
education.
Leakage and Sub-Standard Quality of Food Items:

• A problem that can be expected to affect in particular the distribution of food items in nutrition-specific programs is
“leakage,” a term used to describe the fact that funds and food items “disappear” in the implementation process
and do not reach the intended beneficiaries.
• Empirical evidence suggests that leakage can be substantial. For example, an analysis of food subsidy programs
in India and the Philippines showed that in both countries, illegal diversion accounted for more than 40 per cent of
the funds spent on the subsidy programs.
• This problem, essentially a form of corruption, is also well known in the health sector, where it affects the
distribution of drugs.
• One underlying reason for the leakage problem is the fact that food items are, in economic terms, “private goods,”
which can be appropriated by individuals. (Projects that provide “public goods” do not face this challenge).
• Moreover, food items need to be procured in a public procurement process, which is well known for its own
governance challenges, such as susceptibility to bribery and political interference.
• Procurement problems for food items may not only lead to reduced levels of food that is ultimately available to the
beneficiaries, but also to sub-standard quality of the food delivered, which may even result in health hazards.
Governance Challenges Faced by Third Sector Organisations
• In view of both market and state failure, there have been intensive efforts in past decades to involve
third-sector organizations in large-scale nutrition interventions. To assess the governance challenges
involved in different such approaches, it appears useful to distinguish between NGOs that act as
service providers and CBOs, such as mothers’ groups, that are designed to facilitate service provision
and hold service providers accountable.
Governance Challenges Faced by NGOs
• Limited Scale: Since NGOs require donor funding, they typically do not operate on a large scale. Quite
often, they chose to operate in areas where logistic problems are limited, because they are better able
to achieve results in those areas, which they need to be able to raise funds. An exception are NGOs
that specialize in disaster relief operations. There are also some NGOs that do operate on a very large
scale. One of them is BRAC, an NGO based in Bangladesh that operates on a large scale and also
implements programs in other developing countries. Yet, if NGOs operate on a large scale, their
management becomes more challenging and they are likely to face the same problems of supervising
their field staff as do public sector agencies (see above).
Procurement Challenges:
• In view of the governance problems of public sector agencies, the large-scale contracting of NGOs for program
implementation is often seen as an alternative solution. Yet, the contracting of such NGOs involves public
procurement, which involves the typical governance problems of procurement, such as political interference and
provision of sub-standard services.
• Moreover, the largescale contracting of NGOs may give rise to the establishment of NGOs that are nonprofit in
theory, but for profit in practice.
• Such NGOs can, for example, “hide” their profits in the salary rates and benefits that they pay to their staff. So
far, there are few systematic comparisons of the relative efficiency of NGOs versus government organisations in
implementing large-scale nutrition-specific programs, which have applied rigorous methodological approaches,
such as randomised controlled trials.
• Existing case study evidence suggests that NGOs are not necessarily more effective than government agencies
in implementing large-scale nutrition programs.
• One would assume that they are more effective than government agencies in addressing culture- and gender-
related problems of access to nutritious food, but this is not necessarily the case either.
Governance Challenges Faced by CBOs

• CBOs, such as mothers’ groups, can facilitate the implementation of large-scale nutrition-specific programs in several
ways.
• The costs of providing nutrition advice can be reduced considerably if advisory services are provided to groups rather
than individuals. The costs of distributing food items may also decline if food is delivered to mothers who are organised in
groups.
• Moreover, the group members can support and coach each other, which can increase the effectiveness of nutrition
interventions.
• Women’s groups can also play a role for empowering women, especially if gender transformative approaches are used.
• Importantly, CBOs can hold service providers accountable, for example, through social audits, which can help to
overcome the governance challenges faced by public agencies as well as NGOs in implementing large-scale nutrition
programs.
• For example, a randomised field experiment on community-based monitoring of health programs in Uganda found
improved nutritional outcomes. However, CBOs face their own governance challenges, such as Free-Rider Problem and
Social Exclusion and Local Elite Capture.
Governance Challenges Faced within Households
• Households can be considered as another type of organization of the third sector. Nutrition-specific interventions typically
target specific household members, such as pregnant and lactating women and children below a certain age, who live
together with other household members who are not among the target groups.
• In the development literature, households are often defined as the group of people who live in the same place and share
a common source of food, even though this definition does not take cultural differences into account.
• Still, it is the sharing of the food within the household that also leads to governance challenges for nutrition programs.
There is a substantial literature on the intra-household dimension of nutrition, which documents the governance
challenges involved in reaching the intended target groups within the household.
• At the heart of these challenges are socially and culturally determined norms and perceptions, including food taboos that
determine how food is distributed within the household and result in restricted access of women and children to sufficient
amounts of nutritious food.
• Overcoming these challenges may require “whole-of-family” approaches rather than focusing on female household
members only.
• Such approaches may also help to address the problem that interventions that aim to empower women often meet with
negative reactions from male household members because they have a “zero-sum” perception of power and therefore
consider efforts to empower women as negatively affecting their own position within the household.
Elected Representatives in Maharashtra
• “It will be necessary for training institutes of that relevant level to

conduct training for representatives of Panchayat Raj Institutions,
members of the legislatures and ministers. Detailed instructions will
be issued from time to time.” (State Training Policy, GoM, 2011)
• Lack of information about their role in the system on election to public
office is the major challenge.
• Understanding their role through personal experiences instead of a
structured learning system makes elected representatives dependent
or ‘on their own’ in performing their governance duties.
Urban and Rural Populations: World and India
Source: https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#number-of-people-living-in-urban-areas
Governance in India’s Small Towns: Rajasthan
• Understanding profiles of candidates contesting elections and those elected;

small town bureaucracy; small town finances.
• The interaction between candidates, bureaucracy and finances.
• Decentralised ‘governance’ and ‘planning.’ (in the context of Hayek)
• How do you see decentralisation, then, in the context of governance and
planning by the governments?
• Critical challenge – local governments struggle to execute the few duties that are
given to them. Corruption is a major issue too alongside underspending towards
infrastructure. Why? (we will have a separate class on corruption, too).
• So, do elected representatives know what to do when in office?
Source: CSAS | Tariq Thachil | Who Governs in India's Small Towns? Notes from Rajasthan's Nagar Palikas
Only 2.5 per cent know the date their council must finalise their annual budget
Almost no town has functional committees of any kind. Most officials do not know they are
supposed to exist.
Knowledge gaps by social groups.
Knowledge gaps by status of education.
Knowledge gaps by runners-up and winners.
• Currently, inadequate training for officials: only 5 per cent report receiving any training. What about
the willingness to participate in training? 94 per cent expressed their desire to participate
• Measuring capacity and performance is crucial
• Even modest training efforts may provide a boost to governance capabilities, especially for
vulnerable groups who have lower levels of information
• Such training can improve the efficacy and quality of representatives in urban areas.
Support for Training and Capacity… [urban]
• Capacity constraints and inadequate institutional framework

• Lack of capacity and the institutional knowledge for implementing reforms
Action points -
• Develop a graded and certified program for the capacity development of key stakeholders involved in the planning
and implementation of the economic vision – e.g., district collectors and development authority officers
• Mainstreaming capacity-building activities and rejuvenation of capacity-building centres: Concerted efforts are
required by the States/UTs to ensure regular capacity-building of their town planning staff. Also, the existing centres
of excellence established by MoHUA and State-level training institutions need to be further strengthened to
regularly build the skills and expertise of urban functionaries.
• Building local leadership: It is important to enlighten the city leadership about the significance of urban planning and
public policy to achieve integrated development, mobilise finances, ensure affordable housing, and make cities
more economically productive, liveable as well as inclusive. Therefore, the Advisory Committee recommends a
‘short-term training programme for city-level elected officials on the economic and social benefits of urban planning’.
(2022) Strengthening the States for broad-based urban development; (2021) Reforms in urban planning capacity in India.
In rural areas…
• RSCD or Resource and Support Centre for Development, was established in the year 1994, works with Elected Women
Representatives in Maharashtra.
• Development of training modules based on a tracking needs assessment survey.
• The organisation began the Budget, Orders, Schemes and Services (BOSS) Course to aid the PWL’s – Panchayat
Women leaders.
• The course consists of a set of skill handbooks on the basics of administering a Panchayat covering topics such as
Panchayat rules and regulations, budgetary analysis, welfare schemes and services. The curriculum in the Boss Course
is written specifically for women, taking into account the, TNA – tracking need assessment.
• The course is aimed to equip women with information about the Gram Panchayat and its budget heads in a simple and
relatable way.
• Since most PWL’s are homemakers with domestic responsibilities, it was decided that this course should be door-step
learning program, where the participants are sent the course materials and are given training by our District mentors.
• This gives the PWL’s the freedom to go through the curriculum at their own pace, along with Panchayat field Practicals
within the village. The Five Course Books are on:
Source: https://rscdgovernance.org/index.php/boss-course/
In rural areas…
• Basic Information on Panchayatiraj: Which teaches the PWL’s of the basic regulations in a panchayat and her
duties as a PWL’s as well as introduction of village level platforms i.e. Gramsabha, Mahila Sabha, Ward Sabha,
Sub Committee Meetings & Monthly meeting of Gram panchayat.
• B – Budgetary Provision: The panchayat today receives adequate funds for its functioning; PWL’s however are
kept away from its provisioning. This module ensures that they can track the budget and do internal audits.
• O – Government orders: This module informs them of the latest government regulations and orders, so that they
aren’t dependent only on the Gramsevak for the same.
• S – Schemes for Marginalized: The government has a number of schemes for all the sections of the society; this
module is aimed at informing them of these.
• S – Services Mechanics: This informs PWL’s of the technical aspects of structures & services.
• The modules are written in simple Marathi with easy governance exercise, assume no prior administrative
experience, and avoid typical jargons that require personal expenses or extensive physical mobility. These and
other factors ensure that the materials are relevant to women representatives, especially those without prior
administrative experience.
Mahila Rajsatta Andolan (MRA) – Women in Governance Campaign
• A Campaign with women in decision-making process evolved

in March 2000 with a view of empowering women and
strengthening their participation in political processes through
Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), with the initial support of 500
elected women representatives, 5 regional networks and 150
organisations and CBOs in 30 districts of Maharashtra.
• It has played an effective role in network building, capacity
building, and creating support systems to ensure women’s
active, efficient, and effective participation in decision-making
process of village development.

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Multi-dimensional issues of Public

Policy & Governance in India:

Runciman, D. (2021). Confronting Leviathan: A History of Ideas. United Kingdom: Profile.

Runciman, D. (2021). Confronting Leviathan: A History of Ideas. United Kingdom: Profile.

• Government Officials (elected representatives)

In implementing nutrition-specific programs:

Nutrition Advice as a Merit Good:

• Transaction-Intensity and the Need for Discretion:

• Low Government Capacity:

Leakage and Sub-Standard Quality of Food Items:

Governance Challenges Faced by CBOs

• “It will be necessary for training institutes of that relevant level to

• Understanding profiles of candidates contesting elections and those elected;

Knowledge gaps by social groups.

Knowledge gaps by status of education.

Knowledge gaps by runners-up and winners.

• Capacity constraints and inadequate institutional framework

• A Campaign with women in decision-making process evolved

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