Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Successful Governance Reforms in Two Indian States: Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 45; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14662040701659860

1743-9094

James Manor,

Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

Abstract No systematic, overall agenda for governance reform has ever been developed by national leaders in India. Each recent government in New Delhi has experimented with certain initiatives, but these have never added up to a fully elaborated strategy. To a great extent, this is explained by national leaders' awareness that most of the actual governing in India occurs at and below the state level in this federal system, and that the Constitution gives state governments control over several key areas in which governance reform might be attempted. They have also recognised that several state governments, led by a diversity of parties, have developed promising governance reforms – so national leaders' reforms have often consisted substantially of ideas borrowed from the state level. There are important exceptions to this – not least the recent passage of a Right to Information Act by the Congress-led government in New Delhi. But a great many promising governance reforms in India have emerged at the state level. Notes 1. These are again drawn from the Public Affairs Centre survey. See Development Outreach (March 2004), p. 12. 2. Nandan Nilekani, who chaired the BATF, provided more than US$1 million of his own money. Others also gave funds generously. Still others gave their time on a pro bono basis. 3. Interviews with four of these civil servants, Bangalore, 10–14 May 2004. 4. For example, BATF members tried to persuade the city's transport authority to abandon a destination-oriented approach to its bus lines, in favour of a direction-oriented approach. This would have meant that passengers had to change buses more often than before, but it would have ensured that buses arrived every five minutes or so. This proposal was rejected, but BATF members were able to assist the transport authority in putting many more buses on the roads – hence the approval in public approval ratings in a sector that mightily affects poor people. 5. Nearly all of the state was covered during the 1990s, and full computerisation had occurred by 2002. This meant that government computers contained – for all 20 million plots of land – information on water rates, revenue assessment, classification of soil, the number of trees, the nature of the possession of the land, partitions of land, mortgages, liabilities, tenancies, crops grown, land utilization, etc. Public Affairs Centre Citation(2004), p. 5. The discussion in this study draws heavily upon this document, which our investigation has shown to be an accurate assessment of the project. The preparation of the Report Card was funded by the Governance Knowledge Sharing Program of the World Bank. 6. In the run-up to the state election of April–May 2004, the fee was slashed to Rs 7, in order to win support from villagers. This fee will mean that the state government will have provided a relatively modest subsidy to sustain the system. 7. Jos Mooij found that estimates of numbers were rather approximate, since it was not always clear whether all self-help groups, or only DWCRA groups, were being counted. 8. Commissioner of Women's Empowerment and Self-Employment (n.d.), p. 1. 9. This comment is based on discussions with APMAS representatives, and more crucially with Benjamin Powis, a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. 10. This view was quite plainly confirmed by two senior strategists from the Telugu Desam Party – interview, Hyderabad, 5 May 2004. 11. For example, DWCRA specialists at APMAS – the organisation that has worked most closely with DWCRA groups – estimates that only 25,000 to 30,000 groups out of a total of around 470,000 have been able to access loans from the government's low-interest revolving fund. The rest are left to seek loans from banks where rates are higher. 12. Commissioner for Women's Empowerment, p. 4, and interview with analysts at APMAS, Hyderabad, 4 May 2004. 13. Interview with analysts at APMAS, Hyderabad, 4 May 2004. 14. The precise figures are, at this writing, disputed. But the fact that a greater proportion of women than men opposed the TDP is clear from the post-poll survey conducted by the most serious analysis of this election. This is the National Election Study, organised out of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi – to whom I am grateful for this information. 15. This was reported on an NDTV election telecast, 11 May 2004. 16. Interview with analysts at APMAS, Hyderabad, 4 May 2004. 17. Some readers may wonder why this analysis did not focus on those other governance ‘successes’ by Naidu's government in Andhra Pradesh. There are two answers to this question. First, an extremely detailed analysis of most of these alleged successes in 2001 by this writer (an enquiry that was guided by three of the state's most learned and objective analysts) led him to the conclusion that most of the claims concerning these ‘successes’ were substantially false. (That study resulted in a confidential report to DFID, which was shared with other donor agencies.) Second, in 2004, several of the state's best informed observers of governance programmes (including several civil servants working close to the Chief Minister) advised him (1) that on close examination, other ‘successes’ would turn out to be major disappointments, and (2) that the DWCRA initiative – despite the ambiguities noted in this text – had accomplished more than those other candidates for inclusion here. 18. Strictly speaking, the metropolitan area served included the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad, but for simplicity only the former is mentioned in this text. 19. Caseley Citation(2003), pp. 65–67. This entire section on Metro Water draws very heavily from Caseley's study. Field research in the state in May 2004 corroborated his findings in almost every detail. 20. Caseley, pp. 68–75; and interviews with three former executives of Metro Water, Hyderabad, 3 and 5 May 2004. 21. Caseley, pp. 75–77. Interviews with two former employees indicated that, over time, increased customer approval reinforced the head's arguments by yielding greater job satisfaction to members of staff. Interviews, Hyderabad, 6 and 7 May 2004. 22. Caseley, pp. 77–78. 23. Interviews with two former employees, Hyderabad, 4 and 7 May 2004. 24. Caseley Citation(2003), pp. 78–80. 25. Caseley, pp. 80–84. The quotations come from p. 83. 26. Caseley, pp. 85–90. The quotations come from p. 85. Former employees of Metro Water attest to the potent psychological impact of this and other similar changes – interviews, Hyderabad, 4 and 6 May 2004. 27. Caseley, pp. 92–105; and interviews with former managers and employees of Metro Water, Hyderabad, 4, 6 and 7 May 2004. 28. Interview, Bangalore, 7 December 2000. 29. I am grateful to R. Venkitaramanan, one of those advisers (and the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India) for this information. 30. I am grateful to Vikram Menon of the World Bank for this formulation. 31. See in this connection, Reddy and Haragopal (1988). 32. This is vividly apparent from a forthcoming Machiavellian study of these three countries. See Manor et al. (forthcoming Citation2007) 33. The Bhoomi scheme in Karnataka required a sufficiently modest change – from human beings to machines – and the registrars who were displaced were so widely scattered at the village level that this change was simply forced through. In Andhra Pradesh, the Chief Minister tended – far more strongly than his counterparts in Karnataka over the last three decades – to proceed by assertion rather than by negotiation, and that is how the immense, rapid expansion of DWCRA occurred. But the complexity of the changes in administrative practice that were needed within Metro Water forced the government into negotiations.