At the Centre for Development Finance, some of our work (including mine) includes researching Centrally Sponsored Schemes. In the course of deciphering government policy papers, I have come across this very interesting document from the Union Minister of the Panchayati Raj, "Inclusive Growth through Governance" (April 2008).
The recommendations in the document span a wide range, including:
Training for panchayat representatives
The creation of rural non-farm business hubs (something I believe IFMR Trust examines)
Incentives for Panchayat perfomance
The section on financial recommendations, I found very interesting, and from my work on centre-state transfers, a recommendation I very much agree with.
4.7. The proposed Central Scheme and Programme Monitoring System should enable the tracking of both release of funds and submission of progress reports and utilization certificates by each Panchayat. It should also function as a financial information system, so that all Panchayats are aware of when funds are released by Central and State governments. All notifications regarding funds released to the States should be communicated to all levels of Panchayats to facilitate planning.
Tuesday 22 April 2008
Whats new with Panchayats ??
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This reminds of a 'story' from 'The Bottom Billion':
from 'The Bottom Billion' on page 150.
" The story begins with Ritva Reinikka devising a survey to survey public expenditure. She initially devised it for Uganda, where it came up with rather depressing results: only around 20 percent of the money that the Ministry of Finance released for primary schools, other than teachers' salaries, actually reached the schools. In some socities the government would have tried to suppress information like this, but in Uganda, far from suppressing it, Tumusiime-Mutebile used it as a springboard for action. Obviously, one way would have been to tighten the top-down system of audit and scrutiny, but they already been trying that and it evidently wasn't working well. So Tumusiime-Mutebile decided to try a comletely different approach: scrutiny from the bottom up. Each time the Ministry of Finance released money it informed the local media,and it also sent a poster to each school setting out what it should be getting.
... three years later he repeated the the tracking survey. Now instead of only 20 percent getting to schools, 90 percent was getting through."
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