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A survey by the Public Affairs Centre, committed to improving the quality of governance in India, found that Maharashtra, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh score the highest in terms of governance parameters such as efficiency/effectiveness of public services, transparency, responsiveness and equity
The Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre (PAC), an independent non-profit think-tank, is one of the foremost institutions working on governance issues in India. In 2002, PAC conceived a major study entitled The State of India's Public Services: Benchmarks for the New Millennium. The study was carried out by ORG-MARG. It quizzed 36,542 households (70% rural, 30% urban and across income/social groups) in 115 districts covering 24 states on their access, use, reliability and satisfaction with five key services -- drinking water, school education and child care, health and sanitation, the Public Distribution System (PDS) and public transport. Access to services was found highest in the case of the Public Distribution System, where 87% had access to a ration shop. But only 8% said they were fully satisfied with the availability of supplies, quality of supplies and fairness of the shopkeeper. Similarly, while 78% said they sent their children to government schools, only 10% reported full satisfaction with the quality of school buildings and toilets. The study showed that punctuality was a major problem with government road transport buses. Fees and bribes were demanded by government hospitals even when services were free, and a breakdown in drinking water supplies often affected large sections of users. Although more than half the surveyed population had access to a protected source of drinking water within 100 metres of their house, levels of satisfaction varied dramatically across states, from only 25% in Kerala to 53% in Tripura. In the five public services studied, while the availability and accessibility of services at the national level were found to be reasonable, there were pockets of poor access in different parts of the country, mostly in remote rural areas. One of the most significant findings was that satisfaction scores of the services were more closely related to the service's reliability than physical access or usage. Across the states surveyed, reliability/quality scores were high for the southern states and low for states in the north and northeast. While Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu ranked first, second and third respectively in terms of rural infrastructure, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh scored the highest in terms of governance parameters like efficiency/effectiveness of public services, transparency, responsiveness and equity. State-wise surveys, which brought out inter-regional disparities within the country and compared the performance of individual states vis--vis the nation as a whole, have also been published and released by PAC. The State of Orissa's Public Services revealed that while access to drinking water within 100 metres and to PDS outlets were both around the national average figures, access to medical facilities and the availability of public buses were below the national average. Dependence on government primary education facilities is greater in Orissa than in many other states in the country. Over 90% of Oriyas use government medical facilities for major and minor ailments, which is more than the national average. As far as reliability of public services goes, Orissa is behind many states in providing regular availability of foodgrain. Reliability of public water sources and the presence of doctors at health centres were higher than the national average. Orissa fares poorly in terms of reliability of education, with satisfaction levels with the behaviour of teachers at primary schools well below the national average. On the positive side, awareness of mid-day meal schemes is much higher when compared to the nation as a whole. Among the 10 districts surveyed, Mayurbhanj was one of the poorest performers in terms of access to public protected drinking water, PDS outlets and government health care facilities. Earlier PAC had also produced a report card, along with a number of NGOs working in the slums of Bangalore, on user perceptions of services provided by maternity centres run by the city corporation. They then met the corporation officials not just with the findings but with specific ideas on what could be done. Their ideas were readily accepted by the officials. Contact: Public Affairs Centre
422, 80 Feet Road
VI Block, Koramangala
Bangalore 560 095
Telefax: 5520246/5525452/5525453/5533467/5537260
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InfoChange News and Features, September 2003
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