15 Jan 2006

I should not have trusted my ethnography professor.  She convinced me today that good academic writing should make the researcher visible.  By subscribing to this, I have created an existential crisis for myself: Who am I?

I would like to write about my fondness for butter scotch ice cream and denim kurta, or that my grandmother asks me to get married every time I speak to her.  Unfortunately, in academic writing these are interesting but irrelevant details.  I asked myself what could be relevant and one thumb rule comes to mind: I should write only about those things that will influence the reader in how they understand my understanding.  It has to have the potential of giving them some “Ah ha moments” of discovering for themselves new information on the information I share with them.  They should be able to say things like, “Ah ha, he could have missed seeing this being a Brahmin boy”; “it is unlikely that an official discussed these things with an ex-activist”, etc.  A good introduction will make my reader, a co-investigator in my project.

PS: I now have the rule, but the question remains: who am I?

Weighty matters

21 June 2007

I climbed the weighing machine today after two years. I pushed the scales to a familiar position and it remained upright.  I nudged it gently to no avail.  After considerable amount pushing around the scale tilted indicating I was somewhere there – and I had grown a full 20 KGs.  If have been Americanised in any way, it is this, and I seem to have put my deposits just where men in hurry always do – a pot belly.

31 July 2007

Strange things are happening to me.  I reached India 15 days ago and went to a women’s college in Chennai on some work.  I met the head of X department and she immediately called me “sir”.  I am unused to this, that too by a senior person in a hierarchical institution like a college in India.  I begged her to call me Vivek.  “Oh OK Professor Vivek”, she said very sincerely.  Earlier when I moved from place to place even a (low cost) rickshaw wala would not solicit me unless I asked for one.  This time around taxi drivers (the high cost end) rush to me to know where sar wants to go.  I have also had an easy time in getting things done in government offices.  Something seems to have changed.  My friends tell me that I am just the same but for some extra weight. I have been wondering what is happening to me.

I think I got a clue today.  A Panchayat president I interviewed told me sweetly that people listen to her because she’s plump.  Two years and twenty KGs earlier, I would have missed the import of the statement, but now I don’t.  I used to be so thin that I was called a skeleton, stick of a coconut leaf and other colourful adjectives.  Now these adjectives are gone, and I am convinced that my new status is due to my pot belly. I am ok with the status, but I am not sure if I should write about this in my dissertation.  Perhaps I should consult my ethnography professor.

Rose, black & brown

30 Sept 2007

Amma asked me not to spend too much time out in the sun during fieldwork.  She’s worried that I might become darker.  In the darkest person in the family already; after all, Tamil Brahmins tend to be fair complexioned.

I reached the village for fieldwork and had a conversation with a passerby.  He asked me to go and meet his friend who knows a lot on my topic, and telephoned his friend generously to say that I am coming.  Not knowing how to introduce me he thought for a while and then said, “a rose complexioned young man will come to meet you”.  I have now come a full circle.  I am rose complexioned where I do my fieldwork, black for my parents and brown for the American government.  Who indeed am I?

Ps. I think I told you this before, I should not have trusted my ethnography professor.

Disciplinary approach

Feb 2009

I went to a dissertation defence this afternoon.  My friend was candid and bold.  To many questions he answered candidly that he wanted to try a few things, but did not do so because it is not the norm in political science.  He said, “My hands are tied”.  I do not want to bind my hands, but academic culture may require me to write things in a particular way.  I am glad to be in the social science programme, unattached to any discipline so that I do not have to tie my hands.

Making the researcher visible

20 Oct 2009

A lot of people I met talked about communist, Dalit and other village level movements again and again. I also find reflections of these types of movements in many villages.  I guess these must have had a lot of impact. I am not too sure what other movements might have had an impact in the state…I guess I will never know all of them.

My fieldwork reflected five forms of collection action repeatedly giving me a reason to believe that these are among the major forms that had an impact on collective action in Tamil Nadu.

The following five forms of collective action had a significant impact in shaping institutional changes in Tamil Nadu.

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Unlike a lot of people, writing does not come to me naturally.  It has been a slow and difficult learning process, and I had to contend with massive writing project as I started the dissertation.  As it turned out, writing the dissertation was fun, but not always.  It took me an year and a half to write the dissertation after the fieldwork, and in the process, it helped me to know what other writers had gone through.  A lot of that advice came from the committee and from my peers at the University, and some of it came from webcasts on the art of writing.

These talks helped me reflect on writing: why I write, how to write, and what one goes through as a writer.  It helped me anticipate that I will have to re-write again and again, and that there will be days when I will get stuck staring at a blank page or a half-written paragraph.  It is not that these talks ensured that I did not get stuck, but it helped to know that it happens.  More  than anything else, they helped me remember that writing can be fun; something that a lot of us in the run to finish a long project forget.

Click on the list icon that looks like a stack of cards in the bottom to see the entire list of videos, or you can always visit my YouTube channel here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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One challenge that I faced while writing my dissertation was that every time I started a new chapter, I had to deal with multiple ways of organising it. For example, there were times when I could have narrated my story village by village. Alternatively, I could have organized the layout based on themes or chronology of events that would cut across each village. There was merit in organising the chapter in each of these methods. This is a challenge that a writer would face no matter what one writes: be it a story, a journal article, a movie script, a dissertation or any book for that matter.

If organising a chapter or a journal article is challenging, planning an entire book or a dissertation can be absolutely daunting. Sometimes, the author is forced to stick to some broad outlines that are enforced by the publisher or by the University that forces the decision on us. Most dissertations have an introduction wherein we are asked to describe the issue we’re working on, provide literature review, argue that this work is distinguished, discuss the research methods, et cetera. Such guidelines are certainly helpful in expediting our work, by making the decision of organising on our behalf. But even these broad outlines will never leave us without a choice of different ways of organising that which we are writing, at least in the two or three chapters that are left to us.

While the challenge of organising the layout cannot be wished away or mechanically solved, I found it useful to try out different possible layouts by putting each on a mind map. To continue with the previous example, I would start a mind map with three nodes: chronological, thematic and village-by-village. Under each of these nodes, I would attempt to narrate the story by putting the basic arguments together as a tree.

This process forces us to think about how exactly we would narrate the story, and in the process we would be able to identify the merits and pitfalls of each of these layouts. In the process of doing it, we also create a detailed outline that can be extremely helpful during the process of writing. Visualising arguments in different ways can also help us discover a new form of organising that is more logical and effective.

One unanticipated way in this process helped me was that the mind map presented me with a broken down set of topics that I had to write on, and I could focus on one little task at a time when I wrote, instead of trying to relate to the entire book or dissertation or a chapter at any given point of time. Thinking of the dissertation on the whole can be daunting, and the demotivation that comes with it makes us postpone the writing work. Tools like these can help us by putting us back on the track by breaking the daunting giant into manageable little parts.

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During my last visit to India, I participated in a few meetings on questions such as strengthening the right information act, the role of the PDS, and other social issues. In all these meetings there was a vigorous debate on how mobile phones could be used on each of these issues given the rapid spread of mobiles in rural India. Despite periodic discussion about the use of technology, I did not hear viable ideas among my activist friends. I believe that this is in part because most of them are not advanced users of technology, and they have definitely not indulged in creating any application based on mobile phones. Consequently, they do not have the technical imagination on what could be done and what the limitations of technology are, even when there is a feeling that technology could be put to good use for the causes that they pursue.

While that remains the case with seasoned activists, many new initiatives have come from those who are savvier with technology. These interesting initiatives including an online bulletin board that could be accessed via mobile phones, mobile phone interface between underserved groups and medical professionals, monitoring of elections, platforms for civic complaints, et cetera.

While the applications per se are simple, the process of creating and deploying these applications is made a lot more complex by the fact that they have to deal with telephone operators to get short codes and other infrastructure, negotiate better deals with these operators for getting good rates, get servers (the location of the servers is sensitive since calls/SMS I typically initiated from these locations, and thus they have implications for cost), and deal with a lot of other technical issues that are in some sense peripheral to the project.

In addition to these technical issues, there will now be legal issues including a recent law that permits a maximum of 100 SMSes per SIM card per day. Dealing with all these issues, along with the cost of commercial providers makes mobile based social projects a costly one to undertake, that can be demotivating for most people who wish to take it up.

Given the context where a number of activists are thinking about the use of mobile phones for social causes, and the context in which a number of young people are taking imaginative initiatives, it would be useful to have a foundation that could offer basic mobile-based services on the cloud for public services applications. Such a foundation could accelerate innovations in mobile based applications by reducing the costs of creating such systems.

I imagine that such a service will offer servers that could be used to send and receive SMS messages and voice messages, a set of phone numbers that could be used around India, built in modules for surveys, mass messaging and other common uses. Finally, it should also offer an API for those who wish to build applications based on their need. The foundation can also negotiate good rates with telephone companies and train users on the legal issues.

Services such as Twillio in the US offer many of these capacities on ready-made basis, and services such as SMS-Gupshup have started providing some of these in the Indian context. These are mainly commercial providers, and so they costs are substantial. Public service websites like Kiirti.org provide some services for free, but they do not offer a facility for others to create applications using the website. Google’s SMS channel is a good resource, but it does not allow for customized messages. Thanks to these limitations, there remains the need for a platform with broad based capabilities; I believe that it will go a long way in fostering innovation in using mobile phones for social causes.

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In April 2001 People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) approached the Supreme Court of India arguing that the government has a duty to provide greater relief in the context of mass hunger. The litigation has now become the best known precedent on the right to food internationally. This paper reviews the litigation with a view to understand various strategies used by the litigants to create and enforce far-reaching entitlements in a near legal vacuum on the right to food. This is followed by a discussion on the lessons from this case for rights based approach to development at large.

Citation:  S. Vivek and Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis, “Rights Based Approach To Development: Lessons From The Right To Food Movement,” in Food Insecurity, Vulnerability and Human Rights Failure, Studies in Development Economics and Policy (Basingstoke: UK: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007).

Click here to download the article.

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During the 1980s, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), an NGO working in rural Rajasthan in India began to campaign for access to government records related to wage employment programs for the rural poor. In the course of their work, MKSS discovered that accessing official records and information was critical to exposing corrupt practices by officials at a local level. This soon became the central strategy in their fight against acts of corruption. MKSS rallied the support of other NGOs in Rajasthan, and started protests to make access to official records a legal right. The success of this movement in Rajasthan encouraged organizations in other parts of India to join hands with MKSS in lobbying for a powerful right to information law for the whole of India, which was passed in 2005.

MKSS and other NGOs involved in India’s right to information movement realized that merely having access to government records was not enough given the sheer complexity of the records and peoples’ ability to understand them. Over the last 20 years, they have developed a system for collecting, processing, and verifying government records and information on the ground. This process, known as a social audit, has now become one of the most popular tools to combat corruption in India.

Social auditing evolved in a rural setting in response to corruption that happens on a regular basis at the village level. This form of corruption is often referred to as corruption in the “last mile,” and it manifests in forms such as siphoning of pensions from the elderly, appropriating the wages of daily labourers, or diverting subsidized food grains from beneficiaries. The social audit approach allows India’s poor to play an active role in reducing corruption in their communities.

Social audits are typically organized by NGOs that work closely with the community, though some state governments in India have institutionalized this method with official patronage. The process of an audit involves gathering official records about a particular government project or development work (for example, cash books, muster rolls, measurement books, supply lists) and verifying if the activities and projects on paper, actually exist in reality. For example, let’s say that a ration shop that distributes subsidized food grains has recorded that Ram came to the shop every month and received 10 KG of wheat each month for the last six months. A social audit cross verifies this information through a door-to-door survey, where Ram is asked if he actually received his entitlement. If the audit finds that Ram did not receive his fair share, the community has proof that the ration shop siphoned rations and thus the act of act of corruption is exposed. The power of this process is evident by the fact that even though very few convictions happen on the basis of the findings of a social audit, data shows that the levels of corruption have reduced appreciably in places where audits have been organized regularly. After the data has been compiled, a large public gathering is organised where the data and findings from the audit are presented to the public. Typically, government officials, administrators, and citizens are invited to participate in these gatherings. .

The fundamental method of a social audit seems rather simple at first glance: access the official record and cross verify it with the person receiving the services or goods, such as the case with Ram. But, when you dig more deeply into the actual details of how the process takes place, there are many complexities and challenges. For example, one needs a lot of experience and expertise in order to understand which records to access, and whether they are complete and accurate. Once official records are obtained, it takes considerable skill and time to process the records before the door-to-door survey for verification of records can take place. These and other complexities make a social audit a costly affair requiring considerable human resources, skills, time, and organizational effort. As a result, social auditing has not been adopted on a wide scale throughout India, despite its promise. My hope is that with the right technology, the process can become more streamlined and efficient, and thus adopted more broadly.

I am working on an initiative at Stanford University’s Program on Liberation Technology to explore ways that technology, and particularly mobile phones, can be used to combat corruption at the grassroots level, and enhance the existing social audit approach. Through basic mobile phone SMS technology, official records on basic individual entitlements such as pensions, subsidized food grain, and maternity entitlements could be delivered to individuals via monthly text messages. Individuals, such as Ram in the scenario mentioned above, would be able to compare the count provided in the text message with the amount of rice he actually received. This would help him identify if he received what is legally due to him, or if a part of his entitlement was swindled without his knowledge.

We hope that this knowledge in itself would empower people who have been victims of corruption and would enable them to use this information to approach various grievance redressal mechanisms that they have access to. This might involve approaching senior officials, confronting the corrupt, or even taking up protests against the corrupt. At a later stage of the project, it may be possible to add other features that will enable the victims of corruption to take action using mobile phones. For example, the SMS could include the phone number of responsible officials, or an NGO could collect the complaints and initiate action on their behalf. While possibilities abound, we believe that the best initiative will come from the people themselves.

The main benefit of using SMS technology is that it requires very limited skill, knowledge, or effort from the user. And, it eliminates costly, time-consuming in-person surveys and audits. By using this technology, official information can be disseminated on a regular basis, unlike in the current model where social audits are done sporadically.

Like any technology tool, this of course has its limitations. One of the critical functions of social auditing in India has been its role in mobilizing the general public. The process of gathering people together face-to-face in a public meeting creates a collective energy, which can motivate people to fight corruption. By digitizing this system, these public gatherings will no longer be needed. That said, we believe that mobile technology brings the ability to more widely and regularly expose corruption that directly affects individuals, and as a result, has the power to ultimately lead to even greater collective anger that is often a precursor to mobilization. Further, it arms individuals with precise information – something they never had before — that officials cannot argue or ignore.

The project has now received the commitment of officials in the states of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh in India and a team that we helped organize is just starting to build the basic technology to store and disseminate public records. We will start with select programs such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India and expand the coverage over the next few years. Once the technology is ready, it will be implemented for two years in randomly selected villages, so that we can test if it has an impact on corruption compared to other villages where the system has not been introduced

In the last 15 years, the number of countries with right to information laws has increased dramatically. Along with this, there is increasing digitization of public records, which will make this kind of exercise relatively cheap. This means that we now have the legal and technical infrastructure to enable millions, rather than a small number of well organized groups, to combat corruption.

I would like to thank Alma Freema’s support in editing the article.

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This is a response to a critique of wathiqah.com (a platform to discuss the future of Egypt’s constitution) in Meta-Activism Project. The article entitled “the revolution is not a branding opportunity” points out that the name of the commercial platform is visible prominently and takes an objection to it. She also discusses the limitations of such platforms to which I would like to respond.

The author points out that online discussions reach a very small proportion of the population, that they are not representative, and that they are easy to manipulate by well organised groups. I agree with the critique whole-heartedly, and I guess most people will do so as well. The question I wish to ask here is, given the problems, do such platforms have a democratic role at all?

If one were to examine any single dialogue process, I am sure we can find a thousand reasons to call it unrepresentative. Most active dialogues tend to involve small numbers of people. This can be said not just of a process, but also of any organisation, political party, social movement, or any forum. For that matter established electoral processes in the most advanced democracies too suffer from some of these limitations, in the strict sense of the word. For example, despite its formal representation of all US citizens, one could say that elected bodies could be hijacked by organized groups, and that the number of people who participate in electoral process is low, not to talk of effective participation.

To take a different example, social movements that have radically deepened democracy have been criticised for leaving out significant social groups. For example, the civil rights movement in the USA has been justly criticized for ignoring the voices of women; prominent women’s movements have been criticised for being unrepresentative of the voices of lower class women. The examples can go on and on.

My argument is that no single process, forum or organisation can perfectly satisfy all democratic principles. Democracy is an endless conversation that necessarily has to happen in multiple spaces. Wathiqah is one such forum that is mediating a few conversations. Its democratic role lies in the fact that it is engaging thousands of citizens in thinking about the constitution.

It enables a lot of individuals to voice their opinion about political issues. I believe that forming and articulating political positions is not an easy task, and that by making that process simple, the platform assists a lot of people to develop their political persona, which is critical for good citizenship.

Further, when a large group engages in a conversation, new ideas tend to emerge. The design of online discussion platforms help us identify some widely shared ideas. Such identification in itself is an important democratic act.

Enabling large numbers of people to engage with political issues, providing a space for people to voice their opinions, providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and the possibility of identifying a few widely shared ideas are the critical democratic functions that such a platform performs.

While these are democratic functions, we should acknowledge that online discussions are accessible only by a limited population, and that they remain vulnerable to hijacking by organized groups. Given these limitations, it would be a grievous mistake to interpret the “outcome” of the conversation as THE voice of a society.

If we understand the process with its limitations, and if online platforms are one among many other forums of conversation, then one could say that they serve an important democratic purpose. The critique at Meta Activism and others will ensure that we remember the partial nature of the conversation, and such reminders play an important democratic role as well. That said, we should not forget that partiality is the nature of any democratic conversation. Online platforms provide an avenue for large scale engagement and are especially good at reaching a lot of young people who are otherwise left out of political dialogue. I guess that is a goal that those of us committed to democracy can cherish.

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The level of corruption in the public distribution system has been one of the rallying points in the cry for change.  The following are some of the corruption related arguments for change:

There is large scale corruption in the system

It is undeniable that there is a lot of corruption in the PDS, and something needs to be done about it.  In arguing that we should shift from PDS to coupons or cash transfers, we have to ask if the chances of corruption will be lower in the proposed systems compared to what we have.  There is little evidence to make that argument.  India has a number of cash transfer programs such as old-age pensions, maternity benefits, family benefit, etc.  P. Chidambaram introduced a well-publicised coupon system in one of his budgets, and there are other benchmarks for the suggestions being made today.  If one wishes to do so seriously, they could examine the level of corruption in such programs and compare it with the PDS.

The proponents of PDS reform have not offered any evidence as to whether these alternatives work.  There are scattered references to a cash transfer program in Mexico, and in other parts of the world completely ignoring the reality at home.  I suspect that there are two reasons why we see no evidence that cash transfers work better: nobody has chosen to carefully evaluate the alternatives for the lack of interest in such an exercise, and in part because the unpublicized official evaluations of coupon experiments are not flattering making it difficult for proponents to use them for their purposes.  The proposed reform is thus not evidence-based in the Indian context; it is a purely ideological project based on the mainstream economics today.

The fact that the proposed reform is mainly an ideological project should not deter us from the possible merits of the reform proposals.  If a well considered idea has a promise, it is well worth giving a shot.  Is the reform proposal a well-considered idea?

Corruption is entrenched in the PDS

One serious argument is that moving to channels that we know to be less corrupt than the PDS could be a strategic way of reducing corruption.  This is certainly a serious argument to consider, especially given the deeply entrenched culture of corruption in the PDS.  While I do believe that corruption is deeply entrenched in the PDS, I do not believe that the system is irredeemably lost.  Many State governments have demonstrated that they could make the system work if it becomes a political priority, Chhattisgarh being an important example.  Beyond the PDS, one can take the example of Bihar that was considered a hopeless government, but a determined CM has shown how things can turn around dramatically with some political will.  Where the political incentive is to make money off such programs, the odds are that a proposed alternative would suffer equally.

Proponents have also argued that the banking system is less corrupt, and so using that channel would help in reducing corruption.  It may well work in areas where there is a good banking network.  It would be a move worth considering in urban areas, but then the use of banks does not eliminate every scope for corruption.  Ghost beneficiaries could continue to exist, those who issue periodic identification documents to beneficiaries could charge them, shortages in overall allocation could be created (as it gets created in PDS), which could then be used for arbitrage.  Other possibilities abound.

It does not work since the subsidy is not given directly

One curious argument that found its way to the economic survey 2009-10, and has been repeated by some prominent economists is that the PDS does not work since the subsidy is not given directly to the citizen, but is instead routed through intermediaries.  The idea that cash transfers or coupons will eliminate intermediaries is silly.  We don’t expect beneficiaries to have the direct access to the coffers of the Ministry of Rural Development from where beneficiaries will directly take their allocation of cash without the interference of any official whatsoever.  Cash transfer will have its own set of intermediaries.

If intermediaries are the problem, then replacing the PDS with coupons is the silliest idea possible.  First of all, there will have to be a system of distributing the coupons periodically to the beneficiaries.  This will necessarily involve multiple layers of the government.  Beneficiaries will then have to collect their entitlements from a grocery store or other shops, which are nothing but intermediaries.  Private shopkeepers will not have the same kind of accounting formalities, or any other measure of accountability that ration shop dealer will have to maintain.  In essence, the grocery store is an intermediary with little accountability.  The grocery store owner will in turn have to submit the coupons to a government agency which will reimburse her.  This additional channel will create its own set of opportunities for corruption.  In all, the coupon system only represents more intermediaries and less accountability.

The system is too large to monitor

There have been reports in the media that the Chief Minister of Delhi, Ms. Shiela Dixit, advocated cash transfers since the PDS is too large to be monitored effectively.  This is curious in a lot of ways.  Delhi is one of the smaller states, and the size argument should be the least problem there.  It should be even less of a problem compared to other states, considering the fact that the state has fantastic transport and communication infrastructure that makes monitoring easier.  Curiously, the argument of size has not been offered on Public Works Department or other departments that are much larger in the state.  Will we even consider eliminating them?  Delhi also has a well established right to information movement that has focussed on the PDS from the beginning that would assist a well-meaning Chief Minister in the quest to monitor.

Delhi’s RTI activists have met the Chief Minister time and again with well-documented information about corruption in specific ration shops, only to find the CM stonewalling.  If monitoring is THE problem, we would expect the Chief Minister to act on the information she was given.  Alas, that is not the problem.  How do we know that cash transfers will work better in her government? Do we know that existing cash transfers in Delhi work a lot better?  Sheila Dixit has been a wonderful Chief Minister for Delhi in many ways, but in this case her arguments cannot be less convincing.

The promise of right to information

Given that the PDS involves straightforward entitlements to specified beneficiaries, the right to information movement offers a terrific tool to contain corruption in the system.  Using the right to information, it is possible to identify precisely whether there is corruption in the system, who is corrupt and by what magnitude.  There is much that could be done to strengthen the RTI regime including proactive provision of information via notice boards, the Internet, mobile phones and other means.  If control of corruption is a goal, then we have to focus on means that we know to work, and means that have a promise instead of focusing our attentions on ideological projects with no demonstrated or theoretical reasons for the alternatives to work better.

The bottom line is that there is no doubt that there is a lot of corruption in the PDS and that something has to be done about it, and there is scant reason to believe that the proposal to change to coupons or cash transfers will reduce the level of corruption.  The government of Chhattisgarh offers to send a text message to anyone who wishes to monitor ration shop, whenever grains are delivered to such shops.  In addition, they have introduced stricter norms of documentation including the requirement that delivery trucks have to take a picture of the truck in front of the ration shop and send an MMS to the State government.  Such measures, along with the fact that the State government has responded more actively to complaints about the PDS have contributed to a major improvement in the system.  The power of right information can be extended even further using digital technologies more effectively.

A lot could be done to redress grievances about the PDS, which will automatically have an impact on how the system functions.  For example, setting up independent ombudsman, imposing penalties to officials who do not comply with PDS regulations, initiating independent call centres that could receive and officially lodge complaints, training the judiciary to respond to at least large-scale complains on the PDS, et cetera could be done.

Those calling for reforms have paid scant attention to other alternatives for better accountability.  It is particularly surprising when Chief Ministers and other powerful officials call for the reform, especially when we know that they could do a lot to change how the system works without radically reforming the system, if only it were their priority.

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Some scholars have pointed out that the motivation to dissolve the PDS comes from the ideological belief that the government should not be engaged in providing public services, and of course the material appeal this has for the rich.  The quest for PDS reform started in the context of India’s liberalization and globalization.  Pushed by multilateral agencies, the PDS was converted into a targeted system in 1997.  The motivation of these reforms was not one of protecting people from hunger – but the zeal to eliminate most public services.  Some of the loudest support for PDS reform today has come from people who have generally shown little concern otherwise for policies to protect people from hunger.  The sudden zeal shown by these enthusiasts for cash transfers and other alternatives to PDS is only bound to give the politically conscious observer the belief that such calls to reform are mainly to undermine the PDS, and not to create a system that works for the poor.

The offer of an alternative can thus be a smokescreen to dismantle what is well established.  I do believe that there are well meaning people who are proposing such reforms.  I guess that they would be well advised to think of creating a strong framework of rights within which coupons or cash transfers can be but one alternative that could be introduced slowly.

Similarly, a lot of push for so-called public-private partnerships comes from large consultancies, and associations of large corporations.  Dismantling the PDS and creating alternate forms of delivery can be a source of profits for many organisations.  One cannot ignore the fact that a lot of political support for reforms is ultimately garnered by such groups whose main motivation is not one of making the system work for the poor.

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Paying cash instead of grains will give people a choice

Another strong argument for coupons or cash is that the recipients will have the choice to spend it on what matters most to them.  Proponents of reform have argued that the Indian policymakers tend to be paternalistic, and often argue that if the government gives cash instead of grains, poor people may misuse it, including by drinking it away.  They have argued that it’s important to trust poor people to make choices that matter most to them.  I fully subscribe to that argument.  Even if there is a condition that beneficiaries should only buy food using the cash transfer, having the option of buying cheaper grains instead of rice or wheat offered in the PDS could be attractive to many a poor family.   Ashok Gulati argued that such choice could also bring about diversity in diet, which is a desirable goal.

If choice is something that we really care about, it is possible to introduce it in a limited extent in the ration shop itself.  Beneficiaries often have the choice of getting rice or wheat, choosing kerosene over other alternatives, et cetera.  The range of goods that are sold through the PDS could be increased, and a limited set of choice could be easily introduced within that system.  PDS reformers of a different brand have argued for a long time that the range of goods available through the PDS should be expanded, some of which should be sold commercially, in order to make the ration shop the more viable.  Such a system exists in Kerala.  While the range of choices may be increased at the ration shop, cash transfers are clearly superior alternative from the perspective of choice.

Poor people will use the cash transfer for the intended purpose

In response to the argument that men in poor families may use the cash for alcohol instead of food some have pointed out that 92% of the people who received cash to buy bicycles bought them in Bihar.  This was given as an incentive to send girl children to higher secondary school.  The assessment that money was used to buy-cycles as intended seems to be correct.  That said, it is a poor analogy to how cash transfers for food will be used.  In the example, girl children were expected to buy bicycles and provide proof of the purchase to the school teachers.  Such a mechanism would be totally infeasible in the case of monthly quota of food grains.

Kaushik Basu among others have argued that cash transfers should be made to adult women in the household, and this has proved around the world to result in higher spending by the families on food, education, health and other desirable ends.  I feel that this is a much more serious basis of arguing for cash transfers than the bicycle example.  Similarly, I am sympathetic to the argument that we have to trust the beneficiaries to use it for what they consider are the best reasons, even though it will result in some cases of what the society can judge reasonably to be a misuse of such benefits.

Coupons give a choice of shops

Another choice argument made by the proponents of reform is that cash transfers and coupons make it possible for the beneficiaries to go to an alternative shop in case the one that they’re dealing with is corrupt.  Today people are tied to a particular ration shop, and if the shop does not deliver they cannot do much about it.  The idea that people should be allowed to take their entitlements to a different place is powerful, and that can actually put a lot of pressure on corruption.  While that idea is powerful, it has strong limitations in a lot of rural areas that are serviced by very few shops.

The coupon system in particular will be vulnerable because of the fact that a private shopkeeper will have to recover her money from the government by providing the coupons, which could involve delays, corruption, et cetera.  This may prevent most shopkeepers from taking coupons, while the rest can merrily charge what they want without any accountability to the holders of the coupons.  Shopkeepers can cite this as an excuse and charge what they want from the coupon holders.  Since there will be no obligation for the shopkeepers to sell the goods at a particular price, they can hold the coupon holders to ransom without any legal accountability .  In other words, they can do exactly what a ration shop dealer would do in terms of charging excess price but the act will be totally legal.  It would be a case of eliminating a crime by eliminating the law.

The coupon system makes corruption a very attractive proposition since legal accountability is considerably reduced in public-private partnerships.  The argument of choice of shops hinges on the idea that there will be unrestrained competition between shops.  In most areas the choice of shops will be limited and the possibility of collusion is large.  Further, officials can easily ensure that honest shopkeepers do not get reimbursed on time and thus keep them away from the system.  If the profit motive of a shopkeeper will drive competition, it can also drive collusion and corruption to the last penny that can be extracted.  The removal of legal accountability, accounting norms and other features that now govern ration shops will only increase the attractiveness of corruption with the coupon arrangement.

Such a risk will be lower in the case of cash transfers, though it is possible that beneficiaries will be tied to either a bank or some intermediary from where they will have to collect the benefits; instead of paying a bribe at the ration shop, they will pay this at a different place.

The idea of giving a choice of shops could be done in a limited fashion within the PDS without compromising on accountability mechanisms.  In urban areas, users can be given the choice of going to any ration shop, and this can be made possible easily with the use of smart cards.  An official in Tamil Nadu told me that they consider such a proposal within the current PDS with respect to Kerosene, where the subsidy is high.  They proposed to open kerosene bunks that can provide an alternative to ration shops, and under measurement could be controlled more easily in mechanised kerosene bunks.  Running ration shop involves overheads, and the possibility that people may go to some other ration shop to collect their entitlements will threaten excessively corrupt ration dealers, and create a similar kind of pressure that coupons and cash transfers will accomplish.

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