The Hindu : New Delhi News : Sheila releases her report card

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 05, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Sheila releases her report card

Staff Reporter

Education department leads, says report by Public Affairs Foundation

NEW DELHI: Once again the Education Department has saved the day for the Congress-led Government in Delhi while the services provided by the Public Distribution System and the Delhi Jal Board have been shown as a cause for concern requiring immediate attention. These facts have been brought out in the Social Audit Report released by Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday.

The report has been prepared by the Public Affairs Foundation, a sister organisation of the Bangalore-based Public Affairs Centre. Interestingly, the Education Department under the leadership of Education Minister Arvinder Singh Lovely continues to make big strides.

The report was prepared after taking a feedback from citizens through a sample survey. According to the report, access to schools was good with 77 per cent of the respondents reporting the presence of a school within a one-km radius from their homes. Most students (92 per cent) reported going to the nearest school. The few exceptional cases come from students going to Sarvodaya primary schools and Government secondary schools. Quality of education was cited as the key reason for choosing a distant facility in this regard.

The feedback on school infrastructure was positive. So too was the feedback on incentives like mid-day meal and provision of textbooks. Teachers were reported to be attending school regularly and three-fourths of students were happy with the teachers in their schools.

One of the major findings of the audit is that the Government has extended access to most services but has not been able to fully deliver on the quality and reliability of services. The audit clearly highlights that some services have improved more than others over the past two years. While increasing adaptations of technology in operations have clearly streamlined processes, the continuing existence of middlemen and weak monitoring of actual delivery show that more systemic changes are needed to make service delivery more transparent, reliable and responsive to people.

The Social Audit Report also highlights the fact that there are very few instances of effective grievance redress whenever users complained about a problem. As for the Delhi Jal Board, the report states that water tankers met only 32 per cent of the daily household requirements during normal times; during times of scarcity, this proportion came down to just 13 per cent. A large part of the deficit is met through paid private sources, especially private bore wells.

A distressing finding of the survey was that in 75 per cent of the households the girl child was involved in fetching water. On an average four trips were made to fetch water from tankers.

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