Examination of Witnesses (Questions 29-57)
Q29 Chair: Thank
you both, also, for coming in to give evidence. I'd just make
the point that we have three times as many questions, and the
same amount of time, so perhaps we need to be brisk, both in our
questions and answers, but I really appreciate the fact of your
coming in. You have obviously been in for the previous session,
but just for the record, could you introduce yourselves?
Geeta Kingdon:
I am Geeta Kingdon. I am Professor of Economics for Education
and International Development at the Institute of Education, University
of London. My research interests are mainly in school education,
particularly in developing countries, specifically South Asia,
and more recently the work has been mostly on India.
James Manor: I
am James Manor. I am Professor of Commonwealth Studies in the
School of Advanced Study, University of London. I specialise
in India, especially politics and development, with a lot of attention
to the state level as well as the national level, and most recently
made a major study of the National Rural Employment Guarantee
scheme, India's biggest poverty programme.
Q30 Chair: Thank
you. You obviously will have heard some of the exchanges in the
previous evidence session. Perhaps if I may, Professor Manor,
start with that particular point about the relationship between
DFID and the states. What does that constitute? If I'm not mistaken,
to some extent the Government of India determines, rather than
DFID. What is the balance between who decides what in relation
to the states, specifically Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal?
When we push the issue of India versus China, for example, DFID's
response tends to be that we're engaging in the poorest states,
but in reality they're also engaging with the Government of India.
What's the balance between central Government and the states,
and what should it be?
James Manor: DFID
is certainly engaging with some of the poorest states, and the
Government of India and DFID, I think, don't have much difficulty
agreeing on the importance of these states. The Government of
India wants lots of Indian states covered by various donors, so
there's a division of labour, and DFID's four states are partly
a result of DFID's previous patterns, over decades in some cases.
I don't think there's a serious difficulty here about who decides.
I think there's a general agreement and spirit of partnership
on that particular issue. I should just say that these states
are controlled by, I think, four different political parties—four
different states—and there is no partisan political consideration
in either DFID's or the Government of India's mind when donors
are encouraged to go into particular states. Nor indeed is there
much partisan consideration in the Government of India's mind
when resources are distributed amongst Indian states. That came
up a bit earlier.
Q31 Chair: But
that being the case, what is the split between the states and
the central Government in terms of DFID's relationship?
James Manor: The
central Government probably looms larger in dialogues with DFID
and in DFID's mind as it engages with Indians. This is partly
because one of DFID's purposes is to try out experiments in various
states, and then to extend them, if possible, beyond those states
more widely. The Government of India regards the federal system
as a laboratory in which different state governments generate
constructive ideas. It can then take those ideas and apply them
more widely. It is of a similar outlook. Everything significant
that DFID does needs the agreement of the Government of India—quite
rightly; it's a sovereign Government—but I don't think there's
a tension in the relationship. State governments in India change
a lot; about every five years. They have changed, 70% of the
time, every five years since 1980. The exact state government
you'll be interacting with will differ from one time to the next,
and state governments are sometimes quite imaginative and responsive,
and sometimes very difficult to deal with. The variations at
the state level also make DFID more inclined to focus mainly in
dialogue at the national level.
Q32 Chair: Do
you have anything to add to that, Professor Kingdon?
Geeta Kingdon:
If I may, I'd just add that roughly 40% of UK aid to India goes
through the central Government, and 42% through the state government,
the remainder being through multilaterals and through NGOs. It's
roughly half and half, state and centre. There is no evidence,
as far as I'm aware, of the relative effectiveness of channelling
aid via the centre versus via the state government. There are
clearly advantages and disadvantages in both of these approaches.
Sometimes it's perceived that giving aid through
the state government is going to enable DFID to achieve more propoor
targeting, but I don't think that is inevitably the case. For
example, the education programme—the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,
the Government of India's flagship primary education programme,
a centrally funded programme, which DFID is assisting through
the central Government—already has quite a lot of inbuilt
redistributive or propoor mechanisms. Working through the
states has certain advantages: in particular, you can have a more
intimate relationship, you can have more contact time with the
officials in the government, but it comes at the cost of more
transaction costs, a greater degree of coordination, and a greater
need for staff—staffing and resourcing implications.
There are these advantages and disadvantages, but
I think for certain types of policy influence it is better to
work with the central Government. For instance, education policy
is made predominantly at the level of the central Government.
Although education is both a centre and a state subject, nevertheless
important policy decisions, for example about the assessment system
or the curriculum framework, are decided at the level of the nation.
If DFID wishes to have influence at that level, which then percolates
through to practice in all the states, it is good for DFID to
be working also at the centre, which it is doing at the moment.
I think it's a very good and balanced portfolio.
Chair: About right.
Q33 Richard Burden:
Could we look a little bit at issues of governance and accountability,
because in a sense you said that balance seems to work. If a
particular programme or a particular area of work is centrally
funded, you can still build in propoor mechanisms when it
gets down to local level. In terms of improving capacity and
accountability in government at the state level, or even below
that, how effective has DFID's work been there? Are there any
pointers that you can give on what works in that area, or whether,
paradoxically even, a more central approach promotes that at local
level, and whether that undermines doing it at state level. What
would your views be on that?
Geeta Kingdon:
I have to admit that my experience with DFID's work has been
mainly in the education field, and that part of DFID's aid is
delivered through central Government. I'm not able to give you
a clear example of instances where this helps governance in a
better way, or less good way, than it would through the state
government. But certainly, within the centrally funded programme,
DFID has been able to bring considerations of accountability and
governance into policy discourse, and ensuring its implementation
in practice in some respects as well.
I can discuss examples of that. For instance, the
Government of India itself acknowledges—and in fact I will
cite what they say about it—their own perception about DFID's
contributions in terms of central negotiations focuses exactly
on these technical issues, and issues of accountability, probity,
improved management and so forth. A Government of India document,
which is cited in a paper by Professor Christopher Colclough and
Dr De in the International Journal of Educational Development
in 2009, cites the following: "It is important to note that,
as well as Development Partner money, the external agencies are
also providing advice and guidance on pro-poor targeting, greater
accountability for outcomes, attention to quality and improved
financial management. In addition, the Development Partners have
also helped to increase the level of discipline in programme supervision
and monitoring and to also raise the quality of technical analysis
by bringing in to the policy dialogue international experiences
from the developed and developing world … Development Partners
are adding most value by bringing more rigour into the monitoring
and review process, particularly the Joint Review Missions. The
Development Partner contribution is also helping to focus Government
efforts on sustainability issues through a dialogue on planning,
financial management and community involvement." By its
own admission the aspect of donor aid that the Government of India
appears to value most is precisely in the area of improving probity,
financial management systems, and monitoring of the use of aid
monies.
Q34 Richard Burden:
If I have understood you correctly, the examples you've given
and the focus of that paper was on central programmes delivered
locally. It's establishing, or promoting, a more robust relationship
and accountability with the central funders and the responsiveness
of central funders to what works on the ground.
Geeta Kingdon:
Yes.
Q35 Richard Burden:
What about at state level? Have you got any sense about where
the relationship is at state level, either directly or through
experts, funded by DFID or other donors but working at state level,
and how that has worked in terms of improving accountability and
governance issues?
James Manor: I
would just second what Geeta just said, by the way. I was seven
weeks in India recently and working with the Ministry of Rural
Development, Planning Permission and the Prime Minister's office.
I asked them, since I knew I was coming to see you, "What
do you think of DFID?" They stressed that they valued DFID's
capacity to assist in promoting transparency, accountability and
responsiveness of government. This is partly because DFID is
quite effective at acting as a conduit of ideas from enlightened
Indian civil society organisations into the higher reaches of
the Government of India. DFID has a lot of former civil society
people on its own staff in Delhi, and it's in contact with a lot
of others. This trend of listening to progressive forces in civil
society has been very strong since 2004, when Sonia Gandhi, the
Congress President, started this herself, systematically.
At the state level, the welcome for DFID's efforts
to promote, say, accountability, transparency, responsiveness,
bottomup participation, depends on the outlook of the state
government. That changes with changes of government, so that
in Madhya Pradesh, for example, one of DFID's states, the governments
of both Congress and BJP have been reasonably open, especially
the Congress government, to this kind of facility that DFID can
offer. But in some other states there's more of a topdown
approach to things; control freakery from the apex of the system
in some cases. That certainly is predominant in Orissa today,
for example. There's a different kind of control freakery under
the Left Front government in West Bengal, which is about to be
defeated at a state election for the first time since 1977. It's
a situational issue when you get to the state level, and there
isn't a straightforward answer.
Q36 Mr Clappison:
Can I ask you a very broad question about the attitude of India's
Government towards poverty? We've been briefed that, notwithstanding
the very high growth rates that we've seen in India, the Millennium
Development Goal to eradicate hunger will not be reached until
2043. India is apparently home to onethird of the world's
malnourished children. If I can ask you a very broad question,
what's your view on what the Indian Government is doing itself
to tackle these issues?
James Manor: Geeta
has quite specific ideas on malnutrition, but let me give you
a seatofthepants response before she becomes
more specific. I differ from John Toye's comments earlier about
political will and the Indian Government's commitment to tackle
poverty. The Government of India, between 2004 and 2009, spent
in excess of $57 billion on poverty programmes; probably well
in excess of that. It's difficult to measure some of this. This
is serious money. This is vastly more money than any previous
Indian Government has spent on these issues. They did it partly
because they think it's good politics. They think it pays to
be progressive and redistributive in this way. The Government's
attitudes are actually more agreeable than John, with whom I've
worked for a long time, was suggesting.
The cultural impediments to this kind of programme,
and to antipoverty activity, are diminishing, and have diminished
quite substantially. This is because again, in contrast to what
John says, since about 199495, we've had very solid evidence
from good anthropologists and sociologists working in different
parts of India to indicate that the power of caste hierarchy has
declined markedly in rural areas, which was its traditional bastion.
Caste is increasingly coming to denote not hierarchy but difference,
like the difference between ethnic groups. This creates tension
and some conflict, but it removes some of the cultural impediments
that long stood in the way of serious efforts at redistribution
and social justice.
Geeta Kingdon:
Yes, I would agree with that, and I would also add that the antipoverty
programmes of the Government of India have existed for a very
long time, for example the Integrated Rural Development Project,
the Jawahar
Rozgar Yojana, which was an employment programme, and so forth.
There has been a change—perhaps one could somewhat optimistically
call it a sea change—I perceive, in the last five or six
or seven years, particularly since the enactment of the National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which guarantees any citizen of
India who wishes to selfselect into the programme 100 days
of employment under this programme in any given year. That has
really made a lot of difference to those people who are landless,
who, during the lean agricultural season, do not have access to
any source of income. These are public works programmes that
the Government of India is getting these people to work on, and
it's a selfselection programme. That has really helped
in the reduction of poverty, and we are beginning to see that
reflected in the data.
Q37 Mr Clappison:
Against this background, can I ask you both briefly what you
see as the remaining obstacles to alleviating poverty?
Geeta Kingdon:
On the NREGA, it's not the panacea that we would hope for, because
we know that there are certain obstacles to its effectiveness.
One of the obstacles is the leakages and the corruption in the
system. However, the Government of India has got smarter on these
issues. For one thing, the Supreme Court has seen to it that
there is better implementation of this programme through its Commissioners.
There's an Office of the Commissioners of the Supreme Court that
ensures that its directives in this area are being followed.
Secondly, the social order of the scheme, unlike in previous schemes,
like the IRDP and others. There is greater reason to be optimistic
that this antipoverty programme is going to be more effective,
and the obstacles will be tackled. I know that James has some
points about some of the ways in which NREGA has been implemented
that reduce the scope for corruption, for instance through paying
the monies to the people who work in these programmes through
bank accounts, so you can't shortchange them. One of the
problems in the past, with all antipoverty programmes, has
been huge leakages; the fact that people are given less than what
they're entitled to under the programme.
Q38 Mr Clappison:
When you say leakages, where is the leakage going to?
James Manor: I've
been living with this one for a while. The leakages, until two
years ago, were going to the elected chairpersons of village councils
and to bureaucrats at higher levels, and, to some extent, elected
politicians at higher levels, stealing money in different ways.
We identified 18 different ways to steal money from the programme.
I should say, before I go any further, that it's harder to steal
money from this programme than from any other programme that the
Government of India has ever run, because of transparency mechanisms
that are built into it, but leakage was still there. Twelve of
the 18 devices used to steal money from the programme were more
or less stopped as a result of the requirement that workers be
paid through bank accounts and not through cash handouts. Now,
the elected chairpersons at the village level find it almost impossible
to steal significant money from this programme, because of the
bank account. Therefore, the squeezing that's going on, the stealing,
takes place at higher levels, the subdistrict and district
levels, with sometimes money going at the state level. But you
can't steal money from workers' wages from this programme, which
is 60% of the programme. You can only steal money from the 40%
that is committed to the purchase and transport of materials—cement,
sand, whatever. That kind of theft is difficult under this programme.
The leakages are there, but there's far less leakage in a proportional
sense than in any significant programme of this kind in the past.
If a man or a woman today, in Madhya Pradesh—and almost
half the workers are women—goes to work for one day on this
programme, they're paid 88 rupees. That is enough to buy subsidised
food, from the Chief Minister's subsidised rice and other programmes,
to sustain a family for about two weeks, with two solid meals
a day, which is a huge difference from the past. The potential
impact of this kind of programme on things like malnutrition is
very substantial.
Q39 Mr McCann:
Could I move on to education? We know that many more primary
schoolaged children are attending school in India. To whom
do you attribute that success?
Geeta Kingdon:
One strong driver has been the increase in demand for education.
That is driven by the fact that the economic rewards of education
have increased in India, particularly at the higher levels of
education. There is a stronger economic incentive to acquire
education, but I think that's not the only factor, because if
it was frustrated demand, we would not see greater levels of children.
The fact that the demand could be satisfied was because the Government
supply response has also been good. Part of the reason for increased
or improved education can be attributed to Governmentfunded
programmes including the donorassisted Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
programme.
Q40 Mr McCann:
In terms of DFID and other donors' input to both federal and state
education, what is the significance of those funds? What proportion
are they in terms of the direct Government input and the aid?
Geeta Kingdon:
If we look at the Government of India's flagship education programme,
the SSA programme, donor assistance is 10% of total expenditure
under this programme, and DFID's contribution within that is of
the order of 3%. So, in other words, 3% of the total expenditure
by the central Government on this programme is from DFID. On
the impact of this aid on the education sector outcomes, my colleague
Paul Atherton and I have done a study, in fact commissioned by
DFID, looking at the value for money that the British taxpayer
has got through its investment in this programme. As part of
this study we did a rate of return calculation of the investment
that has been made by DFID. We came up with the estimate that
the rate of return on this investment has been in the order of
12% to 14.4%, depending on some adjustments for data issues.
That is a fairly good rate of return compared with most alternative
potential uses that that money could have been put to. There
has been a positive and robust return on DFID's investment in
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
Q41 Mr McCann:
You've just secondguessed my second question, which was:
how effective is DFID's contribution? So thank you for that as
well.
Geeta Kingdon:
No, that's okay.
Q42 Jeremy Lefroy:
Thank you very much. Inequalities based on wealth and other
matters are continuing to keep children out of school. What effort
is the Government making at the moment to address these inequalities,
and how successful do you think they are?
Geeta Kingdon:
It is absolutely correct to say that there are inequalities in
education. They are smaller today than they were, let's say,
15 years ago, when the District Primary Education Project started—again,
a donorfunded project, including DFID assistance—but
nevertheless they are enduring, and some of them are rather difficult
to do away with. The aspects of the education programme of the
Government of India, with which DFID is assisting, that seek to
address those inequalities are, as I mentioned earlier, the propoor
elements of it.
In particular, there are several subcomponents
of this massive education project that are specifically aimed
at encouraging girls' education. For example, there is the Kasturba
Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya programme, whereby every district in India
has been provided with a school for girls that come from scheduled
caste and scheduled tribe families. These are secondary schools,
addressing both gender inequalities and castebased inequalities,
in one dimension. Another component of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan
that addresses gender inequalities in education is the Mahila
Samakhya programme. This is a wider programme that has to do
with women's empowerment, gender sensitisation, assertiveness
training, and so forth, but it has a strong component of girls'
education, as well. There is another programme, MPEGEL, which
I can't remember the full name of, but it is another component.
In addition to that, there are certain propoor
subsidies, for instance, conditional cash transfers that are given,
within this programme, specifically to children from scheduled
caste and scheduled tribe backgrounds. There are also certain
other incentives such as free uniforms and free textbooks given
to girl children and children from these lowcaste backgrounds.
Q43 Jeremy Lefroy:
Thanks very much. Following on from that, does the Government
of India, or indeed state governments, encounter obstacles to
implementation at the local level? How do they go around this?
Do they use the courts? What can they do?
Geeta Kingdon:
I think you're right; they do face problems in these. For example,
one of the programmes under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is the provision
of the midday meal to children, but historically, for reasons
that have been mentioned in the earlier session as well, there
are sensitivities around caste. Inequalities in caste are a very
powerful reason, a lingeringly important reason, particularly
in rural areas. Sometimes we hear of cases where the parents
of highcaste children refuse to allow their children to
sit together and eat a meal with the lowcaste children,
or sometimes, where the cook is of a low caste, children of highcaste
parents refuse to eat that meal. So yes, there are obstacles
of that nature, and there is legislation in place against such
discriminatory behaviour. I'm not aware of particular instances
of how they have sought to deal with this kind of behaviour, but
most of the time it is dealt with through administrators coming
and saying that this is not going to be acceptable. I've seen
it dealt with in that way, but I am not aware of any cases that
have reached court level and been dealt with in a legal manner.
Q44 Jeremy Lefroy:
Finally, on that, there's been quite a lot of concern about bonded
labour and particularly child labour. What's your perspective
on that, and whether the initiatives that state governments and
the Government of India are taking are having an effect on that?
That's quite a major concern in this country.
Geeta Kingdon:
It is certainly a very concerning issue. The Government of India
does have some policies against child labour, with a view to encouraging
the children who are child labourers to enter school instead.
What you hear of—through the popular press, for instance,
but also this is consistent with Government policy—is that
the police will often find, for example, children from rural Bihar
doing that kind of work in Maharashtra, in Mumbai in particular.
You will hear of instances where the police have escorted children
back to their home, their native state, and put them back in schools,
but often this is unsuccessful because the children are found
a few months later back in Mumbai, working. I think that the
reason for the inefficacy of this policy is partly that the schooling
system is not functioning at a level of quality that really attracts
these children to stay on. The economic returns perceived to
be gained from such lowquality schooling are not seen to
be worth the while to spend their time in school, quite apart
from the opportunity cost of spending time in school if you are
near destitution levels of poverty. There are some complex issues
there that are not directly addressed through the education programme,
except in so far as it tries to improve the quality of education.
James Manor: Could
I just add, on that front, that I think economic growth is making
a significant difference in reducing the incidence of bonded labour
and child labour. Some of the poverty programmes that the Government
of India and state governments have developed have reduced the
migration of families. Many families used to migrate from Orissa,
one of the poor states where DFID has worked, to the brick kilns
of Andhra Pradesh, a kind of hellish, Dickensian place to work.
The entire family would work there, and then migrate back again,
and the kids didn't get any education. The kids were basically
working. They weren't bonded labour, in this case, but they were
working. The earnings from the National Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme, and other things, have substantially reduced the outmigration,
what's sometimes called distress migration, from states like Bihar
and Orissa, to places for this kind of work. I think they were
also having an impact.
Q45 Jeremy Lefroy:
Just finally on this, what do you both believe are the most helpful
approaches from donors to address these entrenched inequalities?
Clearly they're very sensitive issues, cultural differences and
so on, but clearly they also have to be addressed if we are going
to see progress.
Geeta Kingdon:
A better, more nuanced Government policy can go a long way in
redressing these issues. For that, donors like DFID can actually
assist the Government of India most through research and analysis.
For example, a recent research paper by Dr Anjini Kochar of Stanford
University pointed out something that nobody else had noticed,
but with hindsight is pretty obvious. There is the wellintentioned
Government of India policy of providing guaranteed education in
small habitations, so that those children who are stuck in remote
areas in small habitations, the poorest areas, will have access
to schooling. It was a very wellintentioned policy, but
spatial patterns of settlement are such that lowcaste people
are usually marginalised in habitations a little bit outside the
village, half a kilometre outside the village. So they're a small
habitation, and they get a school of their own, as part of the
education guarantee scheme, but it ends up segregating children
on the basis of caste, and these schools are often lowresourced,
and so on and so forth. Wellintentioned policies can have
unintended negative consequences. This research study alerted
the Government of India to this fact. This is the kind of thing
that donors can do.
This probably goes back to some issues that were
raised in the morning session: it's quite right to say that DFID's
assistance is such a small part of the totality of social sector
expenditures in India that one might say: "What difference
does it make?" From my point of view, the difference that
I think it makes is not in the quantum of aid that is given, but
more in the catalytic nature of it. This tiny amount can nevertheless
provide the research and analysis base, put evidence on the table,
sponsor surveys, sponsor research studies, and have conferences
to inform Indian policymakers about international findings on
these issues. It can do the analysis for India itself, and put
that before the Indian Government so that policy on these issues
is not based on hunch or opinion or ideology or political expediency,
but based on evidence. That, I think, will be the value added.
Jeremy Lefroy: Thank you.
James Manor: My
response echoes this. DFID's role as a catalyst amongst the donors—because
DFID has a much more sophisticated understanding of poverty and
development issues in India than most of the donor agencies in
New Delhi have got—is very important. It plays that role,
and it is also a source of constructive, fresh ideas, perhaps
for experimentation, with the Government of India and state governments
itself. It is able to do that because it works with enlightened
civil society organisations, which are immensely formidable in
India; much more formidable than almost all other lessdeveloped
countries. It draws them into the policy process. The Government
of India is now happy to have that happen. It used not to be,
but it is now. These are constructive things.
The other thing that DFID does is that it focuses
on poverty not just in economistic terms, as a severe shortage
of assets, incomes, etc, but in a broader sense, of poverty as
a severe shortage of opportunities, of political capacity. Poor
people tend to have very little political capacity, very little
confidence, very little skill, very little in the way of political
connections, very little political awareness. Participatory policies,
that give people a chance to participate and enhance their political
capacity, so that they can operate appropriately in the public
sphere, are a way of tackling another dimension of their poverty,
which reinforces the economic shortages. DFID is very good on
these fronts, and it should be encouraged.
Q46 Hugh Bayley:
DFID has been increasing the amount it spends on health over
the last few years, working on some national programmes and strengthening
health systems in the target priority states. Does that make
sense, and should health remain a priority for DFID in years to
come?
Geeta Kingdon:
I don't feel very qualified to answer that question, because
I'm not really an analyst of health sector issues at all. But
in common-sense terms, health is an extremely important aspect
of human capital. It affects people's productivity, it affects
their wellbeing in a fundamental way. There are a range of efficiencybased
reasons as well as equity or moral reasons why one should want
to invest in health, particularly in a country where we know malnutrition
levels are absolutely abysmal. According to the Global Hunger
Index, which is produced, I think, by IFPRI, in Washington, DC,
there are 22 subSaharan African countries where malnutrition
levels are lower than they are in India. On those bases it is
critical to invest in health. I am not really able to say much
more than that; that there is this developmental case for this
investment.
James Manor: Like
Geeta, I'm not an authority on health, but I do know that state
governments, and the central Government, have generated some extremely
promising ideas for improvements in the health sector in recent
times. These are very popular politically, which encourages politicians
to stay committed. This is an area in which DFID could make a
contribution, but a vast amount of health service delivery, in
rural areas especially, is produced by the private sector, and
not the public sector. This makes health a rather different kind
of sector in which to work from some of the others. The health
professionals, and especially bureaucrats who specialise in health
ministries, tend, to my certain knowledge, to be more openminded
towards constructive ideas for change than bureaucrats in other
Indian Government ministries, for complicated reasons.
Geeta Kingdon:
Might I just add a sentence?
Hugh Bayley: Please.
Geeta Kingdon:
We know that, in India, user fees for health care have not been
done away with, which is an absolutely critical reason why half
the women in India do not have access to even the most basic health
care at the time of childbirth. What DFID could be doing in that
area is, again, providing technical assistance to do an analysis
of how this kind of health care provision, which is free of user
charges, can be provided, using international practice, perhaps
in partnership with the WHO, but bringing that kind of evidence
to bear to produce some policy options to consider. That is what
is needed.
Q47 Hugh Bayley:
I sense that India is reluctant to look at the aid relationship
as a gift relationship, and wants to develop the idea of partnership
with other countries. Where in the field of health care is there
a basis for partnership? We've relied, obviously, for many years
in this country on doctors being trained in India and practising
medicine here. India is an aid donor to countries in Africa.
Maybe we should be working with them to deliver our aid programmes
in Africa? They've got a big pharmaceutical supply industry,
if not a pharmaceutical research industry. Where are the areas,
using health as an example, where we ought to be looking at twoway
technical co-operation?
James Manor: If
the examples you want are from the health sector, the two of us
are probably not equipped to provide them.
Hugh Bayley: Okay.
Chair: That's a fair and
honest answer.
Q48 Chris White:
It depends on what you've just said, really, but it was just that
you clearly recognise that health is such a fundamental matter
to development. I was just wondering whether you think—as
clean water and sanitation is one of the most important things
to support health—that the 1% of aid going into sanitation
and water from DFID was sufficient?
Geeta Kingdon:
Did you say 1% of DFID aid is going into that area?
Chris White: Yes, 1%.
Geeta Kingdon:
Again, not really being an expert in that area, I'd prefer not
to comment on that.
Chris White: My apologies.
Q49 Richard Harrington:
I just wanted to ask a couple of questions on malnutrition, particularly
amongst children, but I suppose it's to do with the whole aid
system in India, because it seems to me everyone says that child
nutrition is a priority. There are a lot of programmes, and yet
I read in the press—not even things from people doing proper
research like yourself—about red tape and bureaucracy stopping
aid to young children getting through. There was that issue with
the nut, the Plumpy'Nuts, which I'm sure you've heard about, where
it was just deemed, for no logical reason, as far as anyone could
tell, by the Indian Government to be unsuitable. I'm not talking
about middleincome stuff at all, I'm just talking about
children and malnutrition. Could you comment on why, after all
this, hunger and malnutrition still endures so much in the subcontinent,
and to what extent is this lack of progress the fault of the Indian
Government, as far as you can say?
Geeta Kingdon:
Again, not too much expertise in this area, but just one or two
quick comments. One is that it's absolutely true that malnutrition
is at an alarming level. If you look at a survey such as the
National Family Health Survey, of which we have three—we
have a survey for 1993, 1998, and 20052006—there has
been hardly any change in malnutrition over time. Roughly 46%
to 47% of children under the age of five are wasting, i.e. are
underweight, in both these years. It seems somewhat of a puzzle
as to why it is that despite this apparent rapid economic growth,
malnutrition levels have been so high.
Jean Drèze and Professor Angus Deaton of Princeton
University, in their study, say that one of the reasons, though
certainly not the only reason, why this may be the case is that
growth in consumption perhaps is not as high as we think it is.
There are two ways of calculating consumption increases. One
is the National Accounts System, which is quoted in the FT
and in the Indian press and so on. That shapes our perceptions
about India's economic growth rate and consumption increases.
However, there is an alternative source of data on this, which
is the National Sample Survey data. According to the National
Sample Survey data, growth in consumption has not been nearly
as high. There's quite a lot of discrepancy between the National
Accounts Data and the National Sample Survey data.
Outside that, because it seemed like an important
thing, Drèze and Deaton say that one reason, although certainly
not the only reason, that other things are not improving at the
rate one might expect, things like malnutrition and so on, in
such a rapidly growing economy is that the economy is not growing
quite as rapidly as the data show. I think that that really has
to be taken into account as a potential explanation. I'm not
an expert on these data, or an expert on poverty, but to the extent
that consumption has not been growing as fast as we hear in the
press, that could be one reason why malnutrition has not been
addressed. Other than that, I am not sufficiently an expert and
knowledgeable.
James Manor: Another
important element in the explanation of this kind of problem is
appalling inertia in sections of the bureaucracy, both in the
central Government bureaucracy and in state government bureaucracies,
especially in the middle and uppermiddle reaches of the
bureaucracy. There is a kind of breathtaking complacency and
occasionally a tendency for bungling. One then has to ask, how
does this ever change? How do we get to grips with this? What
we've seen in India since 1989, when it became impossible for
any party to win a majority in Parliament, is a massive redistribution
of power away from the Prime Minister's office to a lot of other
institutions at the national level, and to state governments.
Some of those institutions at the national level, the Supreme
Court—and the High Courts at the state level follow suit—but
also investigative institutions, like the Comptroller and Auditor
General's office, certain Parliamentary Committees in New Delhi,
etc, have begun to probe into the horror stories, but also into
the basic problem of complacency and inertia in the bureaucracy.
The word gets to the media. The media, as you will see when
you turn on your television, are constantly shouting about outrages
of one kind or another. This builds a fire under some of these
bureaucrats. I think the redistribution of power has made the
system work better, even though it looks worse, because you hear
more about the bad things that are going on, because the media
is now more assertive. That's changing things, but we have a
long way to go.
Q50 Richard Harrington:
Do you think there's anything DFID should be doing on the malnutrition
front that it's not?
James Manor: Not
that I know of.
Geeta Kingdon:
Can I just add a sentence to what James has just said? I would
agree with that, and also say that, drawing a parallel, the functioning
of the public sector, whether in health or education, is not hugely
different—
James Manor : Yes.
Geeta Kingdon:
—in the sense of efficiency and complacency and so on.
Certainly in the education sector, if we look at surveys such
as the absence rates among public servants, a survey done by the
World Bank in nine countries, in India absence rates among health
sector workers was extremely high, probably the highest among
the nine developing countries on which the survey was done. That
just substantiates James's point about the complacency and the
lack of accountability, and this is true in the education sector
as well. The reasons for this are really to do with the political
economy of the country. These are endemic, longstanding
problems: high teacher absence rates, high public health sector
worker absence rates. The reasons appear to be that, although
there are some accountability structures and procedures that can
be brought to bear, public servants are never actually hauled
up if they are frequently absent or chronically lax in their work.
It seems that unions are a strong part of it—labour unions,
teachers' unions, health sector worker unions—and these
are seen as lobbies that one must satisfy. They act as an obstacle
to being able to successfully bring to book lax work on the account
of public workers.
James Manor: DFID
have supported programmes, and they have people who know how to
support programmes, which undercut absenteeism in the health and
education sectors in mainly rural areas, for complicated reasons.
They have supported schemes, for example in Madhya Pradesh, to
give elected local councils at the village level the control over
releasing the pay of school teachers and health workers in the
locality. When local councillors can withhold pay when the workers
don't show up for work, then absenteeism declines radically.
Just on your question of malnutrition and what DFID
can do, I should caution you. This issue of nutrition is a very
hot political potato at the moment, because the Supreme Court
of India, which is very powerful, has challenged the Executive
of India over its failure to release sufficient food grains in
a time when malnutrition is a serious problem and the food grains
are plentiful. This is very embarrassing for the Government of
India, and a very difficult one politically. The kinds of issues
DFID needs to avoid are those which are inflamed politically,
because then the Government of India will be even less likely
to listen to DFID or anybody else from outside if it's a touchy
issue.
Geeta Kingdon:
I have to slightly disagree, James, with your statement about
how local government can now withhold pay from public servants
if they're not deemed to be performing properly.
James Manor: They
should be able to. I'm not saying they can.
Geeta Kingdon:
Yes, because, for example, the original draft of the Right to
Education Act, which was enacted a year ago and implemented as
from April 2010, contained a provision, which was taken out before
it was enacted, that would have given school development management
committees and village education committees the right to do precisely
that—to withhold payments from teachers if they were chronically
absent, and so forth. That provision was taken out from the Act
before it was enacted. What political pulls and pressures led
to the taking out of that particular provision, we shall not know,
although we know there was lots of union lobbying and so forth
that went on. This really is a political economy constraint that
affects not only the health sector, but also the education sector.
Q51 Jeremy Lefroy:
As far as I'm aware, the evidence is quite clear that malnourishment
or being underweight has considerable impact on personal development,
education and health. Given that, do you feel that malnourishment
or nutrition is being treated too much in a silo and not as something
that should be dealt with directly together with education and,
to a lesser extent, health? Following on from that, I noticed
that almost the major cause of death among underfiveyearolds
from WHO statistics from 2008 is pneumonia. A couple of us were
in Uganda last week, and it was very clear to us that pneumonia
is a major problem there. Pneumonia, when treated early, should
not be a cause of death, at all. I just wondered if you had any
particular comments on that.
Geeta Kingdon:
Not on pneumonia as such, but on your previous point about whether
malnutrition, or nutrition, as an issue has been treated as a
silo, I think it's a very correct perception. The synergies that
exist between, for example, health, nutrition and education have
not been exploited. These responsibilities sit in different Government
Departments and the overlaps and the benefits are not being sufficiently
realised. That is being addressed, to some extent, by the fact
that school is now being used as a site for delivery of the school
midday meal programme. That has certainly been a very positive
step, but school as a site for vaccination, for instance, is not
something that is being done at the moment, but could be.
Q52 Jeremy Lefroy:
Sorry to interrupt, but is that something where DFID could make
a specific contribution through research on that? You think about,
say, the Progreso programme in Brazil, which I think has elements
of that in it.
Geeta Kingdon:
Indeed.
Jeremy Lefroy: Would it
be possible for them to have a look at that and advise in relation
to the Indian context?
Geeta Kingdon:
Absolutely. That is precisely the sort of thing in which DFID
can bring value added and make its mark and its contribution.
Other than that—of course, the Progreso programme was a
conditional cash transfer programme—
Jeremy Lefroy: Yes.
Geeta Kingdon:
—which is not the same as the Government of India's Sharva
Shiksha Abhiyan programme, but there are certain elements of conditional
cash transfers even in the SSA programme. There are lots of other
examples in addition to the Progreso programme that can also be
brought to bear on this issue. I agree that there is not sufficient
research in this area. For example, there is very little research
in India; in fact, I believe that my study, together with my coauthor
Courtney Monk, is the only paper that looks at the impact of nutrition
on children's learning achievement levels. We need more research
as well.
James Manor: One
reason why pneumonia is a real threat is that poor village people—especially
poor village women, because women are the gatekeepers between
the household and the wider world on issues of health and to some
extent education—are extremely reluctant to take their children
to health centres. In health centres, doctors wear strange white
garments, and carry things like needles, which look very intimidating.
DFID has done work with state governments that supports strengthening
elected local government in ways that make an impact on this.
The state health bureaucrats in states where local councils are
strong, which is not every state, indicate that when local councils
are strong, the uptake on health services increases. Elected
village councils contain women representatives, who learn about
the things that go on in health centres, and realise that ante
and postnatal care reduces mortality, that vaccinations
are a good idea, etc, etc. These elected village councillors,
who are just local women, are much better able to explain the
utility of health services to ordinary poor people in the villages,
their neighbours, than are the health professionals. The health
professionals speak a different kind of language and are middleclass
people for the most part. The uptake increases quite substantially
when democratic decentralisation is allowed to flourish. DFID
has assisted in enabling it to flourish. This has made a significant
impact on infant mortality and no doubt on pneumonia.
Q53 Chair: We
have just two or three more questions; we have to hold a quorum,
so if we can be brisk. You, Professor Manor, have praised DFID
and the quality of their staff, and several times pointed out
their connections with civil society, civic society. In a sense,
I think you also, Professor Kingdon, quoted the Indian Government
as saying that DFID's value to them is openness, transparency,
accountability and so forth. This gives the impression that,
effectively, DFID is almost like a resource for the Indian Government.
Indeed if a high proportion of its staffing is recruited locally,
you could almost get to the point of wondering, is DFID a British
Government agency, supporting the Indian Government, or is it
an Indian Government agency financed by the British Government?
I'm not saying it is there, but it's somewhere in between the
two. Do they have the balance right? Can they move further down
the Indianisation of DFID, or would that be confusing?
James Manor: They
do have the balance reasonably close to right. DFID Delhi is
a British Government institution, manned substantially, or populated
substantially, to be politically correct, by extremely gifted,
knowledgeable, constructive Indians. DFID is hugely shrewd in
taking this line, because the truth is that the Indian staff members
in New Delhi tend to make a more constructive contribution than
the British staff members. The bungling that occasionally one
encounters with DFID, in the cases I know about, is the result
of action by the British staff members. It's certainly not an
Indian Government agency. It's an agency of the British Government,
consisting predominantly of Indians, which is, for that reason,
immensely constructive. I wouldn't say they need to go much further
down the road, but if they're going to tip the balance, they should
tip it further in favour of Indians.
Geeta Kingdon:
I would just add that I do not see it as Indianisation of DFID.
I'm not aware of the proportion of the staff at DFID who are
local staff, versus the ones who go from the UK, but whenever
I've been there as a consultant and sat in the offices, it doesn't
seem that there is such an imbalance or a preponderance of one
group or the other. A more substantive point is that DFID maintains
its independence, and indeed the Indian Government makes sure
that it maintains its distance from DFID. Access to Indian officials
is very, very precious. It's very difficult, because of the number
of obligations and duties that they perform. It is necessary
therefore that that distance is maintained. It is not the case
that they have access to, and that it is a cosy cabal with, the
Indian administrators. It's not like that at all. That distance
is maintained, and I think that DFID is not Indianised in the
sense that, from what I have seen of DFID's work, it is bringing
new ideas. It is bringing ideas from the whole of the international
community to the notice of the Indian Government, rather than
having become—I don't know what the word is for it—somebody
that sees the local situations and responds to them locally.
It is looking at the situation in India and the problems of India,
not only with the local context in mind, but always keeping an
eye on what the rest of the world is doing, and how that can inform
what India does.
Q54 Chris White:
What is DFID's role with the wider donor community? Supplementary
to that, what is the Government of India's approach to the donor
community in a wider scope?
Geeta Kingdon:
The Government of India's approach to the donor community seems
quite positive to me, despite the occasional grandstanding, which
may be consistent with national selfpride, statements in
front of the media and so on, occasionally, or before an international
audience. Despite the occasional grandstanding of that nature,
it is clear that the Government of India values DFID aid. There
are several instances that prove this. We know that it has recently
asked for DFID assistance of at least £90 million for the
secondary education programme, the RMSA. We know that it has
put on record its appreciation of the donors, which I read out
earlier. The Government of India welcomes DFID aid through NGOs
as well, by permitting civil society organisations to receive
this aid. I think it wants that aid. It has a very positive
attitude towards the donors. There was a previous Indian Government,
the BJP Government, which had a different stance, but that, historically,
has been a very unusual stance. Historically, India has always
welcomed assistance.
In relation to DFID's relationship with the other
donors, from what I have seen in the education sector work, that
relationship is extremely collaborative. It's bringing people,
and the different agencies, on to a common platform, and providing
a service to the Government of India that is a unified approach.
It reduces transaction costs. I'm not saying that they're providing
exactly the same kinds of inputs, or the same kinds of resources;
the quantum of resources is different from the EU, the World Bank
and DFID. The areas of focus are also sometimes different, but
by and large they are co-operating very well. I'll give you an
example. DFID has jointly funded a survey of 1,400 schools—aided
schools and private schools—which the World Bank carried
out. DFID is funding the PISA study, with the encouragement and
support of the other donors, as well. There are quite a few areas
in which there is joint funding of projects, and when you sit
in the Joint Review Mission of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan project,
it seems a collegial and smoothly functioning relationship. When
you go and present papers at these forums you get good feedback.
There are always people present there doing joint conferences
and sponsoring events together. It's a very positive dynamic
between the donors.
James Manor: I
tend to agree, but I would just stress that DFID is a significant
source of sophistication about India and about development to
other donor agencies, some of whom know they lack sophistication
and some of whom don't. Much of the sophistication that DFID
brings to that relationship is sophistication that it gleans from
ideas within India. India is immensely productive of constructive
ideas for development in general. Because DFID is in India, gleaning
those ideas, DFID Delhi is a resource of significance for DFID
globally. Most other countries don't generate the kinds of constructive
ideas that India does.
Chair: That brings us
on to our final questions, relating to the UK's developing role
in India across the whole piece.
Q55 Richard Harrington:
Very much so. We need to expand it across the whole geopolitical
relationship between India and the United Kingdom. Obviously
the Prime Minister went to India, and we hear a lot about increasing
the ties, commercial and otherwise, between ourselves and India.
It would seem to me that DFID is the lead agency in doing this.
I wondered if you'd like to comment on the role that aid plays
in the overall relationship. We know it's of no financial significance,
compared with the total, but is it of real political significance?
Also, would you mind commenting on how you think DFID works with
other Government Departments such as the Foreign Office and UKTI,
and whether the aid gives the UK much influence in India, compared
with the other commercial efforts and everything like that.
James Manor: I
don't know much about how DFID interacts with other UK agency
representatives in India. I really wouldn't know where to start
on that.
Richard Harrington: Fair
enough.
James Manor: DFID
earns the UK huge respect and warmth amongst the political establishment
in India, because of the work that it does. If you begin to appear
to connect DFID's activities to some of these wider concerns,
you may undermine the trust that DFID generates in the Indian
establishment. You may put at risk the wider benefits that DFID's
relationship yields for Britain. I would be quite scrupulous
about separating.
Q56 Richard Harrington:
It's almost because it's nonpolitical and noncommercial
that it has the influence and effectiveness that it does?
James Manor: Yes.
It's also sophisticated, and there are all of these very bright
Indians working for DFID who are respected by the Government of
India. Some of them are former Government servants, Government
servants on secondment. There's a level of trust, and if you
begin to give the appearance that aid to India, or DFID in India,
are instrumental to another, ulterior purpose—
Richard Harrington: Part
of another agenda. I understand.
James Manor: —you
might undermine both DFID and the ulterior motive. Brits are
very good at being subtle and sophisticated, and handling these
things. I think you'll be all right.
Geeta Kingdon:
DFID is really part of this bigger picture of this relationship
that goes from cricket to the Commonwealth to the British Council
to trade and all of these things. DFID's presence there confirms
the notion that Britain is an ally, a friend, and a wellwisher.
I would agree with the wider comments that James has made in
this regard.
Q57 Chair: Just
a final point on that. I had the advantage of being in India
in September, and met with our High Commissioner and also the
Deputy Foreign Minister. I take your point entirely about the
importance of keeping the separation, but equally I think Professor
Kingdon is right in saying that it is a very inclusive relationship.
When you're engaging with interlocutors, all of these other things
will come into play. It's important to have that backdrop. In
the context of DFID, what should we be looking to achieve five
years from now? By that time India will firmly have graduated
out of IDA. It will be in a different space, if its growth continues,
and the aid relationship will clearly therefore move into a different
space. What should we be hoping to achieve over the next five
years?
Geeta Kingdon:
In the next five years, DFID should firstly continue the very
good work that it has been doing so far. I think it has been
outstanding; certainly in the education sector the work has been
very, very good. The area where DFID can make most contribution
is in this catalytic role, in sponsoring research, funding the
production of new information and the generation of data, bringing
that data to the table of discussion and dialogue, and thereby
helping to improve policy-making. I think that is the major route
for influencing policy in India. It's best done at the national
level, without reducing the scope of work that DFID is already
doing at the state level. That is where DFID can really make
its contribution.
As well as saying that it should do what it's done,
there are certain things that it should do better. For example,
in the generation of new evidence, it is important to engage new,
robust methodologies that are capable of establishing causal impacts
from policies on to outcomes. DFID's research portfolio needs
to be modernised a little bit and made more relevant, and utilise
more modern techniques; for example, doing studies of what works
and what does not work, using methods that are now known to produce
good results.
James Manor: I
broadly agree with what has just been said. DFID should continue
to emphasise poverty reduction as an exceedingly important goal,
and to attempt to do new things, based on new ideas it's getting
from Indian civil society and academia in that vein. A couple
of minor points: one, it contracts Indian organisations to do
studies or to do projects, civil society organisations in particular,
but also Government agencies, to some extent. DFID, I think,
should be a little more restrained. It occasionally seems rather
intrusive, seeking to investigate and micromanage all the time.
This seems insensitive and counterproductive to the very good
people that DFID locates to conduct these projects. I would probably
hope that DFID did a little less of that, and that DFID was a
little less inclined to be enchanted by technocracy in India.
The principal person in DFID's recent history who was utterly
enchanted by someone purporting to be a genius at technocracy
was Clare Short, and she made some very serious mistakes in Andhra
Pradesh by going in whole hog. She was hoodwinked by a charlatan.
That sort of problem is not so severe as it used to be, but there
is a tendency for DFID representatives to be taken in by people
who purport to be extraordinary technocrats, and they should beware.
Chair: Very salutary advice,
now all our Labour colleagues have left.
Geeta Kingdon:
Can I just add one more point? Another area of strong value added
by DFID is in technical capacity development. I've seen this
work very well in the education sector, or at least I've seen
the need for it; the desperate need for India to join modern international
practices of assessments, impact evaluations and so forth. This
is an area in which DFID has started recently to provide technical
assistance, and these are slightly longer term projects. Technical
assistance projects and capacity development projects have somewhat
longer gestation periods for showing results, but I think they're
very important.
Chair: Thank you for that.
That's consistent with some of our own recommendations about
the role of DFID's research and its wider accessibility. Thank
you both very much. You've been very well informed and very insightful
from our point of view. It's slightly unfortunate that we're
not now going to India in two weeks' time, but more like six or
eight weeks' time, but this is all on the record and will still
be extremely helpful to us. Thank you.
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