Post the announcement of Union Budget 2018, Accountability Initiative (AI) at CPR, which tracks government budgetary allocation and related expenditure for key social sector schemes annually shares their full series of budget briefs (2018-19) on nine social sector schemes:

• Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)
• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)
• Swachh Bharat Mission- Gramin (SBM-G)
• Swachh Bharat Mission- Urban (SBM-U)
• Self-Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS)
• National Health Mission (NHM)
• Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)
• Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Gramin)
• Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)

In a series of visualisations and articles below, AI experts nuance the challenges of flagship Government of India schemes in the education, sanitation and health sectors.

In Where has the social sector money gone? Avani Kapur reviews Budget 2018 and critical questions on social sector allocations. Even as schemes have received minimal allocations, the Budget signals an important shift in the political narrative. Here’s why.

Learning in India’s public schools

Can India realise its demographic potential in the absence of a far-sighted policy for education? In India’s secondary education challenge, Avani Kapur makes a case for why there is a need to urgently reform the secondary education system. Accountability Initiative also analyses the allocations and expenditures of two flagship education schemes – the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – and the quality of education provided.

Swachh Bharat Mission: A reality check

The Swachh Bharat Mission is racing towards its target of achieving an Open Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2019, constructing more than 2,000 toilets every hour, but will the gains from such increased coverage be sustainable? Read this Accountability Initiative analysis for more.

In Stumbling towards Sustainable Sanitation, Avani Kapur and Devashish Deshpande write on the challenge of ensuring that open defecation-free villages and cities are truly ODF, and more crucially that they remain so.

Healing the Public Health System

There is pressing need to focus on health systems strengthening, and on reforming two critical arms of the National Health Mission – human resources, planning and budgeting – writes Avani Kapur in ‘Patient’ approach to better health. Yet even as the new National Health Policy of 2017 urges a widening of the service net, can outcomes improve without reform of underlying institutional shortcomings? Explore a series of visualisations on the issue here.

In addition, AI produced the following data visualisations:

In his Budget 2018 speech, the Finance Minister emphasised how Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) have reduced corruption, and delivered services at people’s doorsteps. Take a look at the scale of DBT.