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Public Service Delivery
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publication
Price: Rs. 1495/-
About the Book
India is hailed as the world's largest democracy but there is something curious in the fact that public service delivery continues to be poor, despite country's strong democratic tradition. This paradox is inescapable. The case in point unarguably is, India's highest percentage of under-six underweight and anaemic children in the world.
Much of the public policy discourse holds 'weak accountability' as one of the reasons for service delivery outcomes remaining poor in India. A key driving question of this book is how accountability as an idea and a process, significant in the everyday encounters of key actors at the frontline of public health service delivery, as against its high rhetoric in policy and development discourse.
The book analyses how users, especially the poor, interact and interface with accountability mechanisms esp. the informal ones, when the formal mechanisms of accountability fail or exclude them. Two national public health programmes - National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) are the book's context, using a comparative case study design.
Findings reveal that malnutrition is not only about a well-functioning anganwadi or lack of frontline accountability or even economic prosperity, as perceived, but inherently linked to local institutions that shape information barriers, hierarchy, elite capture and gender bias.
About the Editors
Dr. Jaya Goyal is a social scientist by training, with 17 years of leadership stints with a corporate think tank, a national university, the Government of Maharashtra, and the British Council. Her interdisciplinary research spans early childhood nutrition, outcome budgets & social audits, qualitative & mixed methods, the political economy of health, public-private partnerships, higher education with a decolonial lens, science diplomacy, and women in science. Specializing in the Institutional and Development (IAD) framework methodology, Jaya has an M.Sc in Human Ecology and a Ph.D. in Social Sciences from TISS, with an award of fellowship from the London School of Economics & Political Science, UK.
She has authored reports and publications on critical national issues, that can potentially impact over a billion people in India. She has won research scholarships from the finest universities in India, USA, England, Scotland, Netherlands, Indonesia, Switzerland, and Japan. Dr. Jaya Goyal is the founder-director of Circadian Connect LLP, an interdisciplinary research solutions company, working at the interface of science, society, and policy.
