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Plan of Action  

 INTRODUCTION

Background 

Objective 

Goals 

Risk Management

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Networking

Project partners/networkers

Arrangements at CUTS

Project advice

DATA COLLECTION, OUTREACH & EVENTS

Data Collection

Newsletters

Meetings and Workshops

Preparation of the Reports

OPINION SURVEYS
WEBSITE
PUBLICITY
BEYOND PROJECT

INTRODUCTION

Background:

The annual budget by any government is an exercise undertaken to make a declaration in quantitative terms of the resources to be mobilised by the government in pursuit of the whole policy regime including those which, cut across the fiscal and macro-economic management of the economy. Annual budget is also a concurrent exercise of allocating in concrete terms the resources mobilised to various development priorities. It reflects a government’s social, economic policy priorities and political commitments. 

It provides guidelines vis-à-vis the rules that the custodians of public money should abide by while discharging their duties, for the best interest of the public at large. A government’s budget directly or indirectly affects the life of virtually all its citizens with modest means and little political influence who are the most affected by budget decisions. 

The general lack of information and analysis in widely usable, non-technical forms has hindered people’s participation in the discussion and debate on resources. Moreover a commonly noticed fact is that the analysis of the budget made by economists, businessman and media is too technical for the layperson to understand. Hence one can imagine the awareness level of the budget amongst the disadvantaged and the neglected masses. It is although interesting to note that the rationale behind making particular allocations to various priorities never get detailed scrutiny. More so, the level of public awareness regarding the extent to which allocations made in the budget have been utilised in a full range of basic proprietary considerations is very low. 

Therefore strengthening budget analysis and improving budget process is an inevitable and integral part of enhancing good governance policies and participatory democracy. 

Continuing the thrust on good governance, Jaipur based Consumer Unity & Trust Society has taken up the initiative to promote state accountability. The organisation has undertaken a project entitled "Promoting State Accountability and Citizens’ Empowerment through Budget Analysis."

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Objectives:

To bring into focus the shortcomings in the government mechanism, i.e. variations between the union and state government budget;

To move away from the conventional analysis of budget by:

Considering the qualitative dimension while ensuring the transparency and propriety of disbursements/revenue mobilisation;

providing easily palatable information about the budget at the state and district level;

To create greater awareness amongst the neglected target groups about their right to know the budget allocations directed towards their welfare; and 

To empower the concerned constituencies to become a questioning society

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Goal

The present endeavour of CUTS is to inform and educate people, especially women, labourers and marginal farmers, about the manner in which funds allocated for their benefit are mis/not-used at various levels of the government hierarchy and empowering the concerned constituencies to become a questioning society. Thus to provoke action to make the government more open and accountable.

Expected Outcomes

The outcomes include:

Dissemination of budgetary information on allocations and expenditures identified during the exercise of the project. 

Identification and highlighting of issues that would provide a better understanding towards promoting state accountability. 

Adequate information to the governments and other stakeholders on the processes of the project thereby offering an accountable government. 

Empowering the society to become questionable.

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Risk management

The risks or bumps that could arise, and how they would be managed:
Non-adherence of the agreed time frames. The project entails the involvement of the vast network of CUTS at the village, blocks and districts of Rajasthan. More specifically, the networking organisations who would act as field organisations of CUTS in the identified 7 nodal districts and 64 blocks. In order to minimise this risk, CUTS staff would organise a number of meetings with the Division and District Administration officials along with the networkers to ensure that they are recognised as CUTS staff and the necessary data/information is provided to them. In addition to this, our staff would do systematic and regular follow up. Also the release of payments to our networkers would be pegged to timely deliveries.

Unsatisfactory quality of the output by some project partners. If the output is found to be unsatisfactory by CUTS, a two pronged approach would be followed. One, our networkers would be asked to verify the information once again from the source/s and two, senior CUTS staff would undertake a visit to village/block/district to check the veracity of the information.

Lack of performance by the networkers. For this purpose a list of standby organisation, social activists has been prepared. Throughout the project duration, they would be kept updated about the progress of the project and every output which is brought out, in the form of news letters, fact sheets or otherwise, would be sent to them and their comments and suggestions would also be sought. 

Sudden change of government policies, political disturbance etc. The solution would depend upon the situation prevailing at that moment of time arisen due to such risks.

Turn over of employees. To meet with this exigency, staff planning is being done as a regular exercise, with division of tasks as primary and secondary responsibilities. Secondly, a strong system of filing and reporting is maintained, which does not create reliance on a particular person. Furthermore, institutional memory is maintained in a systematic manner through mandatory minuting and reporting of all the meetings (internal as well external), preparation of operational strategy note, events calendar etc.

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PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Networking

One of the strengths of CUTS has been its networking capacity and outreach. This strength is going to be tested again, as the project involves a combination of research and data collection and information dissemination from the very grassroots to the district and the state. 

For efficiency in data collection in the first phase and information dissemination in the second phase, 7 districts have been selected as Nodal Districts. A networking social and rights activist group of CUTS has been selected in each of the Nodal Districts as the Nodal Organisation, and the representative of the organisation has been appointed as Nodal District Co-ordinator. The idea behind Nodal Districts is that, they would take care of information collection and dissemination of certain select neighbouring districts, in a manner in which the 7 Nodal Districts collectively would be in charge of all the 32 districts of Rajasthan. 

Similarly some blocks would be selected under the nodal districts. The individuals responsible to co-ordinate the activities of the project at the block level would be appointed as the Block Co-ordinators. 

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Project partners/networkers

For the purpose of the project management, in each of the selected seven nodal districts, seven nodal District Co-ordinators would be identified. The primary responsibility of the project management in each nodal district shall lie with the district co-ordinator. 

Similarly, in the selected blocks, the Block Co-ordinators would be responsible for the smooth running of the project at the Block level. Out of the total 237 Blocks in Rajasthan, 64 blocks have been identified.

The persons selected at the district and block levels shall be responsible for the project activities in their respective areas. 

The project co-ordinators would be identified from the lists gathered from various suggestions, internal files, networking etc. However, the partners shall be finalised only after first hand assessment of their capacity, inclination and dedication. 

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Arrangements at CUTS

A team comprising of junior and senior staff of CUTS Centre for Consumer Action, Research & Training (CART), Jaipur and from CUTS Centre for Human Development (CHD), Chittorgarh would be formed. The Senior Staff would be entrusted with the responsibility of Liaisoning and building a network with Division and District Administrative officials, assemble project inputs and analyse data and information collected from all sources – the state, district and blocks. They would also be responsible for collecting inputs for the newsletters, fact sheets, write them and put them out periodically. 

The Senior staff would also be responsible for regular reporting and the final reporting.

The Junior staff would be entrusted with the responsibility of data collection from all sources, follow up activities with our networking organisations, helping out wiith deliverables and publications, organising seminars and meetings. 

The junior staff would assist the senior staff in management, research, website, newsletters, database and providing assistance for travel etc.

In addition to this, one or two retired personnel from the State Audits and Accounts services would be appointed on a part-time or full-time basis to assist the project team in data analyses, CAG report analyses, financial review analyses and other documents, which would need to be scrutinised for an indepth and meaningful study.

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Project advice

A advisory body comprising of past bureaucrats and administrators, academicians, reporters and other experts working in the field of budget analyses would be formed during the second phase of the project. The advisory committee would be formed at a time when the project team takes up active analyses, post information collection. 

The Advisory Committee will serve in an honorary capacity offering their advice and comments on the written materials that would be generated and sent to them for comments.

As mentioned above the members of the Advisory Committee have to be identified, and an invitation letter would be sent to each for formal acceptance. This would be done during the second half of the project duration.

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DATA COLLECTION, OUTREACH & EVENTS

Data Collection

For the purpose of collecting data, as the first step, the project team would identify the various departments, which have been and are running schemes for the benefit of the target constituencies. On identification of the departments, the authority/s which would monitor the various schemes at the district and block levels would be identified.

A detailed questionnaire would then be prepared which would form the basis on which the networkers would collect the information of various schemes from the varying levels of government hierarchy.

The questionnaire would include the list of such schemes and departments, format for data collection, (expenditure and Allocation made under the schemes from the year 1991 to 2000) and a detailed list of person/s and organisation/s who should be contacted at various levels for information and data. The list would be updated at regular intervals, since transfer of government officials is dynamic.

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Newsletters

As the first output, the quarterly newsletter "The Fifth Estate" would be published. It would be a bilingual publication. It would cover the issues related to the project under various heads such as good governance, corruption, gram panchayat, government announcements, etc. 

The Electronic Bulletin of the ‘The Fifth Estate would be sent to the members of the list-serve of the International Project on Budget Study. It would give information on the progress made under the project. 

The Fact Sheets would be published during the advocacy phase of the project to expose the issues of corruption as well as the lacunae in the resource mobilisation at the various levels of government hierarchy. 

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Meetings and Workshops

A launch meeting would be held in the May, 2000. It would aim at briefing about the project’s concept. The seven nodal level workshops would aim at discussions on the progress and strategy of the project. 

These workshops would endeavour to train the co-ordinators in order to carry out their responsibility effectively. It would further: 

• mark the adoption of the project plan of action; 

• settlement of terms of reference with partners; 

• finalisation of questionnaire for data collection ;

• methodology for the data collection ;

• adoption of the programme schedule and methodology thereof for the whole project;

• other relevant procedural matters like inputs for the publications etc. 

A mock session on data collection etc. will also be conducted during the workshop (Masooda)

More importantly, the launch meeting would give an opportunity for the partners to know each other and other team members associated with the project.

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Preparation of the Reports

After the finalisation of each phase of the project, interim Reports would prepared and sent to The Ford Foundation. 

The First Draft FINAL REPORT would then be sent to the Advisory Committee members for their comments and suggestions, which shall be incorporated in the same to make it the Second Draft FINAL REPORT. 

The FINAL REPORT shall be widely circulated.

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OPINION SURVEYS

Regular and periodic opinion surveys on various burning topics related to governance would be carried out in regular intervals. The reports of these surveys would be widely circulated. 

In addition to these opinion surveys, a research document on corruption would be prepared. This document would carry reported cases of corruption, which affects the common man. It would also carry a section which would draw outlines as to how corruption could be combated. 

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WEBSITE

A separate page on the CUTS’ website would be designed for the purpose of the project to carry all the related information and announcements.

The page would be linked with main search engines and other relevant sites.

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PUBLICITY

The learning and interesting outputs from various data/information collected, lessons learnt and actions taken would be documented and would be carried out in various newsletters, journals, e-circulations etc.

Posters, brochures, leaflets in bilingual would be published and distributed widely, with the target audience being women, landless labourers and small and marginal farmers. Every efforts would be made to ensure widest outreach, to the smallest of villages and smallest of bastis.

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BEYOND PROJECT

The results of the budgetary analyses is expected to throw up a number of follow up activities, which could be in the form of further research, advocacy, capacity building programmes for the deprived sections of society, training workshops to sensitise government officials to ensure transparency in the system and better conduct toward the citizens etc. Hence, a suitable mechanism would be developed with the help of the project advisory committee and with the blessings of the funding agency to further take up the follow up activities.

 

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