REINVENTING PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY IN INDIA : SELECTED CASE STUDIES BY VIKRAM K. CHAND [HARDCOVER]

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.