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PETS and Absenteeism: The Indian Perspective. Anit Mukherjee Fellow, NIPFP Results For Development Workshop July 21, 2009. What are the issues?. Over the last decade, significant changes have taken place in social sector expenditure in India
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PETS and Absenteeism: The Indian Perspective Anit Mukherjee Fellow, NIPFP Results For Development Workshop July 21, 2009
What are the issues? • Over the last decade, significant changes have taken place in social sector expenditure in India • These changes have been systemic, structural, and strategic • A large part of these changes have taken place due to the accepted wisdom that increased expenditure was not translating into better outputs • The main reasons were: (a) money not reaching the target service provider or beneficiary; (b) the lack of accountability of the service providers themselves
Fund Flows and Accountability • PETS and Absenteeism studies are the appropriate research methodologies to address these systemic failures • Examples: • Public Report On Basic Education (PROBE), 1999 • Missing in Action: Teacher and Medical Provider Absence in Developing Countries (World Bank), 2004 • Outcome: Increased awareness of lack of accountability in public service delivery • Action: Increase in social sector expenditure; structural changes in delivery systems
The Broader Picture • South Asia is considered to be one of the regions lagging behind in human development – especially education and health • Governments are being increasingly held accountable for failure to provide universal schooling or healthcare • Within countries like India, different states/regions are competing amongst themselves – which is a healthy sign and helpful for advocacy • Donor focus has shifted from project-based funding to budgetary support – increasing importance of PETS type studies
The current drawbacks • After a spurt in PETS and Absenteeism in the late nineties and early part of this decade, there seems to be a dearth of research of late • Cross-country studies have almost dried up – so this initiative is very welcome • Most academics and policy-makers still quote the figures from the World Bank study • Situation on the ground is far more complex than it was in the beginning of the decade when the earlier PETS/Absenteeism studies were conducted
Changing Nature of Fiscal Transfers Nearly $10 billion (1% of GDP) goes directly to sub-national entities outside the budgetary grants system
Federal Government Allocations • Allocations have increased in subjects that were under the domain of the States
Structural Change - Decentralized Framework Pre- Universal Education Program
Structural Change – Decentralized Framework Post – Universal Education Program
Planning and Implementation Still not harmonized across states – plan sizes big, implementation capacity is weak. Need to be careful about selection bias in choosing location of the study
In summary – Future of PETS Future PETS studies need to factor in changes that have happened over the last decade or so. These can be classified into three basic problems: Planning Capacity Fund Flows Absorptive Capacity The ultimate objective is to increase efficiency of public expenditure and better quality of public service delivery