It’s always a student who asks the fundamental question that you never bothered to ask.
I gave a guest lecture in Arvind Subramanian’s class at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies recently on “Service delivery in India.” As I was going through the usual spiel about how service delivery in India is worse than in other low-income countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam (both of which have lower child mortality rates) and Kenya (which has higher immunization rates), a student asked, “What is distinctive about India that leads to such poor service delivery?”
I offered a few answers off the top of my head. First, especially compared with Bangladesh, India is an extremely heterogeneous society, with many castes, ethnic groups, languages and religions. There is some evidence that polarized societies find it more difficult to build political support for public goods. Second, to the extent that these services are transactions-intensive (a teacher has to spend time with students, doctors with patients), caste or other differences may stand in the way of publicly-provided services working for some people. Low-caste people, for instance, have been excluded from some public schools and public clinics. They are able to obtain services in the private sector—because they pay for these services. Paradoxically, therefore, the fact that the Indian government mandated free and universal public education and health, and decided to finance and provide it from the public sector, may be the reason poor people are largely obtaining these services in the private sector.
I’d be interested in any other reasons for the poor state of public services in India, as well as your thoughts about the reasons offered here.
Mariam Claeson
Sat, 04/12/2008 - 03:43 One cannot overlook the fact that the quality service delivery in India is equally poor in urban regions, where the bias of caste and religion have largely been overcome. [Although religious riots do break out in cities sometimes but those are exceptional circumstances and incidents owed largely to self-centred leaders, which Indians have been naive enough to elect.] A larger contribution seems to be of a poorly-thought incentive structure. In any grand scheme of Indian Government, the incentive structure is never based on performance. For ex: People automatically get promoted and given higher salaries if they've spent a particular amount of time in the service. People can keep getting the same salaries even if they don't turn up in the office, till the time their boss es keep marking their presence, which is easy as neither is boss turning up. There is very less, if at all, importance attached to the office to "do" something and deliver "results". Deadlines missed are hardly penalized in a monetary way. If one was to suggest such an incentive structure to a businessman, this would be termed ridiculous. To me, this lack of thought seems to the prime reason why quality of services in India is not what it could be. --- Pooja.
Fri, 03/07/2008 - 18:42 In short there are following reasons: 1. No value of human life, than how for public goods? 2. No value towards commitment 3. No respect towards public rule 4. No fear of law 5. No monitoring of law & order 6. Tendency and possibility to find Short cuts while by-passing rules 7. Corrupt leadership 8. No awareness or consciousness of loss due to poor service delivery at grassroots level and at top level.
Fri, 03/07/2008 - 16:20 centralised administration;the teacher,the health worker and others in the village are recruited at state or district HQ; the local people have ,leave alone control,no say or role in monitoring their work;secondly they are not from the same village or area and with the generally low salaries,absence of quarters and other facilities, find it difficult to stay at the work place;thirdly for those willing to stay the facilities are far short of the needs;no building or badly maintained by another department in charge of maintenance;no benches,black-board,medicines and so on;giving the panchayat the administrative powers and funds is essential;none is turned away from school or hospital because of caste.
Tue, 03/04/2008 - 03:09 Seems to be classic way out of a serious question. A teacher doesn't go to class because of children's caste? No wonder all we hear about India is about caste, cows, and curry (and poverty) when ever there is any article on Indian development. One would think you guys would be smarter than this. You could have always said you didn't know the answer instead of pedaling nonsense. Teachers don't go to class because they don't have to - they have no incentive to spend time with children without classrooms (at least some schools) because regardless they get paid. Ditto with healthcare service (apparent your favorite reasoning - that wicket caste barrier- disappears when a little money changes hands to treat a disease or give a child birth) or providing sanitation or drinking water. Things don't happen because there are no repercussion for not providing a service! Not castes...(and the other perennial nonsense is population)
Wed, 02/27/2008 - 18:23 "Low-caste people, for instance, have been excluded from some public schools and public clinics." I thought that this was illegal. Do you mean 'in practice'?
Wed, 02/27/2008 - 09:51 This is an interesting hypothesis. Of course, a heterogeneous society is not necessarily a polarized society. There are clearly cities in India which have rich traditions of inter-communal and inter-ethnic civic associations (e.g. Calicut or Surat) as Ashutosh Varshney (2002) has argued. Thus, it should be possible to test this hypothesis within Indian cities that have (or had) the capacity to build support for public goods.
Wed, 02/27/2008 - 09:04 I totally agree with you. Though there are other political reasons for the poor delivery, the main obstacle facing the nation is the differences mainly in cast and religion. To be more precise, I would say cultural differences and the background is the biggest problem.
Mon, 07/07/2008 - 05:25 As far education is concern i would like to draw your attention towards the difference between private schools and public schools.Private school and public schools both are made to provide education. But private schools are far more better than public schools as they can provide advanced facility and a very professional learning environment. But all can't afford learning in the private school, but i think public schools should be equipped with latest technologies and skills so that they could also match up to the private schools. Today in every field whether it is IT,health, teaching, defense we need self confident and talented professionals. But we first need to improve the quality of education and lay emphasizes on interpersonal, communication and skills that can be utilized globally in today's fast contracting world.