Volume 20, Number 1 Article by Punit Arora March, 2008
Reinventing Public Service Delivery in India: Selected Case Studies : Edited by Vikram K Chand, World Bank and Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2006, pp 404, Price: Rs 750. :
This book presents an excellent collection of case studies of successful innovations in the public service delivery mechanism in India, from a study initiated by the World Bank. The overarching goal for this report was to identify common factors across cases that explained why these innovations worked. It was hoped that a study of these successful interventions would assist in transplanting them elsewhere. Of the 31 cases covered in the full report, this book presents ten in which these strategies seem to have worked out.
At the outset, Chand identifies the systemic problems in service delivery: growing salary burden, weak accountability mechanisms, corruption, unregulated election spending and associated rent seeking. He highlights the problem of delivering services when a significant portion of the organisation’s funds (60-90% in health and education) goes into paying the salaries. Chand offers an interesting fact – despite the top management in the public sector being paid a small fraction of their market price, an average public sector employee receives 2.3 times what a private sector employee receives; showing that employees have effectively captured control over state spending. He highlights the problem of the weak accountability mechanism, ascribing it to bureaucratic complexity, lack of transparency, short tenures for senior officers, and the low capacity for demand-making among citizens, as reflected in low civic association involvement.
Against the backdrop of these problems, various authors present their case studies in successful innovations. The common themes that run through these cases, as identified by Chand, roughly parallel those identified by Osborne and Gaebler in their book Reinventing the Government1. These include promoting competition, simplifying transactions, restructuring agency processes, reinforcing provider autonomy, fostering community participation and decentralisation, building political support and strengthening accountability mechanisms. It is heartening to note that the reforms that are being advocated in the developed world seem also to work in the developing world, even if it is in certain specific contexts.
Telecom sector reform has been at the heart of India’s recent economic success. Political will was best showcased in the opening up of the telecom sector to sustained competition. Two instructive cases on this sector are one by Mukherjee that captures the role of the Prime Minister’s Office in driving this reform, and another by Bhatnagar on electronic service delivery in Andhra Pradesh. Both these drive home the fact that when reforms are driven from the top by leaders who command comfortable electoral majorities, they have a better chance of succeeding. Similarly, Caseley’s case study on Maharashtra’s Registration Department demonstrates that reforms can be successful even in the bastion of a change-resistant, ‘lucrative’ department. It highlights the importance of taking the staff into confidence, and restructuring the process and use of public-private partnerships to create better accountability structures.
Balakrishnan’s case on service delivery in Bangalore ostensibly illustrates that ‘citizen pressures for change combined with an openness to reform on the part of agency heads can make a significant difference without much political support’. This appears to be slightly off the mark. First, if there is significant citizen pressure, one would expect politicians to support or at least acquiesce in supporting the change. Second and more important, the administration does not operate in a vacuum. As Redford2 notes, ‘they are part of the political system and operate with directions, restraints, and influences of various kinds from the many components of the political system’. Applied to this case, it is more likely that citizen pressures generated political will, which in turn generated an administrative necessity.
The case studies on hospital reforms in Madhya Pradesh and education reforms in Rajasthan are among the best in the book. They clearly demonstrate that reforms are possible even at low income levels. Although Chand’s claim that capacity for civic action is correlated with income levels is generally true, the Rajasthan case clearly shows that a high income is not a necessary precondition and that civic action and reforms are possible even at low income levels. Last, Sridharan in his case study highlights the issues emerging out of unregulated campaign financing.
Three important lessons emerge from the various case studies. First, when reforms are introduced simultaneously across various programmes, they have a better chance of success because of the synergies that are generated in the process. This is clearly demonstrated in the case of Tamil Nadu where the state government introduced several human development programmes simultaneously. Second, the media can play a very useful role in mobilising and sustaining citizen pressure. The Right to Information Acts in Rajasthan and Delhi are cases in point. Third, when properly empowered by politicians, the administrative service can be transformed into an effective instrument for innovation in service delivery.
Are these cases transplantable to other contexts or are they cases of one-off success? As Chand points out from a micro-perspective, and this reviewer has shown from a macro perspective3, these reforms can be introduced and transplanted successfully only if there is a significant intervention in the system or if there are several smaller interventions that combine together to generate significant pressure. Chand and Sridharan highlight the importance of campaign finance reforms, but fail to develop this idea fully. As long as rent-seeking from administration is necessary to recoup election expenses, it is difficult to introduce reforms on a large scale. This reviewer’s contention is that politicians spend huge amounts to get elected because they know they can extract rents and if this opportunity is taken away, they would have no incentive to spend; and this is precisely what happens in high-profile situations where industry, media or any other powerful constituency is involved in pushing for more reforms. But there are other weak constituencies that end up suffering even more – for example, the development of Bangalore at the expense of smaller towns and rural areas. Thus, to be replicable at a macro-level, much more needs to be done than the lessons presented in this book.
However, within the scope of the objectives set forth by the authors, they present an excellent analysis of the cases that are studied. The lessons drawn by them will be helpful to those who are interested in reforms. Overall, the book is a must read for anyone interested in public sector reforms in India and other developing countries.
References and Notes
- Osborne, David, and Ted Gaebler, 1992, Reinventing the Government, Addison-Wesley.
- Redford, Emmette, 1969, Democracy in the Administrative State, New York: Oxford University Press.
- Arora, Punit, 2006, ‘Administrative Reforms in India: Need for a Systems Approach’, International Public Management Review, Vol 7, No 2.
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