1. Introduction
The Government of India has constituted an Advisory Committee to formulate a roadmap for the governance sector for its 'Vision lndia@2047' document, with Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister of State, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, as the Chairman.
I believe what the Committee needs to focus on is to (a) develop clarity on what is included in public goods; (b) assess how much of each of these public goods India will need in, say, 2027, 2032, 2037, 2042 and 2047; (c) estimate the fiscal resources that will be needed to provide these goods in each of these years and to create the requisite fiscal capacity; and (d) articulate how these fiscal resources should be utilized so that they deliver the intended outcomes.
2. Outcome Budget
Recognising the urgency to measure its performance by the delivery of the intended outcomes of its various programmes, rather than by the amount of money spent on them, the Government of India launched, on February 28, 2005, an excellent initiative to change the culture of its officials from one of measuring their performance in terms of the amount of money spent against the budgeted allocations, to one of measuring their performance in terms of the delivery of the outcomes the people in India are concerned with. The statement of the Finance Minister in his budget speech that day was that:
together with the Planning Commission, we shall put in place a mechanism to measure the development outcomes of all major programmes. We shall also ensure that programmes and schemes are not allowed to continue indefinitely from one Plan period to the next without an independent and in-depth evaluation. Civil society should also engage Government in a healthy debate on the efficiency of the delivery mechanism.
The Government of India’s first Outcome Budget (OB), for 2005-06, was presented on August 25, 2005, with the latest OB, for 2022-23, presented on February 1, 2022.
I have taken a careful look at the OB for 2022-23. It doesn’t impress me. Take, for example, the OB for the Ministry of Power’s Reform-Linked Distribution Scheme. It lists three outcomes: operational efficiency of DISCOMS, financial sustainability of DISCOMS, and reliability of power supply in DISCOMS.
Let me focus on the first outcome, with the indicator for this outcome being AT&C loss level in DISCOMS. The target for 2022-23 for this outcome is 19.5%. This appears to be too high, given the fact that the target for AT&C loss reduction under UDAY (Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana) was 15% by 2018-19, and the fact that according to the data on the UDAY website, this loss averaged 19.95% for 22 States as on December 31, 2016.
Secondly, the OB doesn’t say anything about the outcome of AT&C loss reduction in 2021-22. What was the target for 2021-22?; was it achieved?; if not, why?
And thirdly, the OB doesn’t say anything as to how the 2022-23 target of AT&C loss reduction to 19.5% is to be achieved. The Ministry of Power has budgeted an outlay of Rs. 7,565.59 crore for this and other outcomes. The Ministry doesn’t say how much is budgeted for the outcome of reducing the AT&C losses to 19.5%.
Does the Ministry have a theory of change underlying its outcome of reducing the AT&C losses to 19.5%? Has the Ministry assumed that the equipments (e.g., meters) that are installed under its Reform-Linked Distribution Scheme will work the way they are supposed to work, and that in case they are tempered with, the systems that are put in place will alert the concerned DISCOM’s employees, so that appropriate action(s) may be taken?
Has the Ministry assumed that the training that a DISCOM’s employees receive under its Reform-Linked Distribution Scheme to check power theft, will equip them with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to properly use the DISCOM’s equipment, and that, as a result of this training, their behaviour will change in such a manner that they will identify the people stealing electricity under their jurisdiction and report such theft to the concerned authorities, so that appropriate action(s) against the people found stealing electricity may be taken?
One doesn’t find any answers to such questions.
The Ministry could do better; indeed, much better.
- Anand P Gupta, Former Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad