The Centre for Policy Research turns fifty this year. Fifty years in the service of Indian policymaking, of keeping a robust conversation between the government, policymakers and the Indian populace alive – this is indeed a moment of pride and reflection for us. As we celebrate this special milestone, we present some snippets of our impact on the Indian policy sphere over the years in various areas of research.

This edition of Policy in Action is dedicated to our work on Public Finance. CPR has been working in the area of governance and public finance since the last fifteen years, through its Accountability Initiative, which was established in 2008. The Accountability Initiative has been working on strengthening transparency and accountability in governance by conducting research on state capabilities and factors affecting efficient public services delivery in India with a focus on public finance, public administration and governance, and state capacity. The initiative is operational in six states — Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, and Rajasthan with multi-sectoral research studies on budgets, governance processes, and public administration across social sectors like education, health and nutrition, sanitation, and even local governments.

Here’s a snapshot of our key work and impact in the area of Public Finance over the years:

• In 2010, we developed a methodology to get citizens to identify how welfare programmes are delivered on the ground. Planning, Allocations and Expenditures, Institutions Studies in Accountability (PAISA) became the largest citizen-led expenditure tracking methodology in the country that sheds light on the extent to which funds reach the last mile. PAISA studies have been regularly conducted for government, including tracking Mid-Day Meal scheme for the Ministry of Education (formerly MHRD) in 2012, tracking education, health and nutrition schemes in Chhattisgarh supported by the Government of Chhattisgarh and UNICEF in 2015, tracking sanitation for the district administration in Udaipur in 2017, and PAISA for Panchayats in Karnataka (2016).
• The Budget Briefs have established themselves as the go-to source for information about the funding status and outcome progress of India’s major welfare schemes. The Accountability Initiative has 15 volumes of briefs and these are shared annually with all members of parliament, standing committee members, ministries and other government stakeholders.
• CPR was invited by both the 14th and 15th Finance Commission to conduct studies on local bodies. The 14th Finance Commission tasked us to examine the structure of devolution of powers, responsibilities and finances by states to rural local bodies (RLBs) across all decentralisation models including the 5th Scheduled Areas and Sixth Schedule. Our report (also available on the Commission’s website) contributed to the recommendations of the Finance Commission to recommend increasing the amounts allocated to local governments from the divisible pool of taxes. Similarly, we worked closely with the 15th Finance Commission on two study reports looking at the impact of the 14th Finance Commission recommendations on devolution to panchayats and fund flows (revenues and expenditures) at the gram panchayat level.
• CPR supported the Technical Support Unit (TSU) set up under the National Health Mission (NHM) in Uttar Pradesh, in diagnosing reasons for low utilisation of health expenditure and bottlenecks. The recommendations led to fine tuning of systems and processes and the analysis became an important tool for preparation of next year’s Project Implementation Plan (PIP).
• Since January 2020, the Accountability Initiative has been working closely with the Planning and Finance Department of the Government of Meghalaya supporting them in streamlining their budget process, making real-time dashboards on allocations and expenditures and the production of the states first Gender and Youth Budget in 2022.
• Along with the Institute of Economic Growth, we developed and reported preliminary findings on the application of a new method for “tracking and acting” to improve planning and allocations for the Anemia Mukt Bharat (AMB), covering 12 states. The study found that these methods helped in informing national and state governments regarding yearly trends.
• In 2008, Dr. Partha Mukhopadhyay (Senior Fellow) along with Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian, who later went on to become our Chief Economic Adviser, advanced the idea of direct cash transfers to people. Today, as digital payments technologies and identity programs have evolved, this is gaining widespread traction.

To know more about CPR’s work on Public Finance, you can visit our website at https://cprindia.org/researcharea/governance-accountability-public-finance/ or see the work of the Accountability Initiative at https://cprindia.org/research/accountability-initiative/

Stay tuned for our next pop-up edition of Policy in Action, coming soon!