Economist’s Column STATISTICAL SYSTEM FOR DECENTRALISED PLANNING

By Indian Statistical Institute

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In developing countries a large number of governments have attempted to decentralise development planning and management responsibilities during the past decades. While there is a crucial and necessary role for macro policy for creating a favourable environment for development, macro policy by itself is not sufficient to deliver the expected results. In a country like India which is subject to enormous variations in terms of agro-climatic conditions, location-specific plans informed by local characteristics and details are necessary. For decentralisation to deliver its expected benefits, there has to be a local decentralised institutional platform available in all the lakhs of villages. The 73rd and 74th Amendment of the Indian Constitution emphasised on creating a representative local institution for "area planning for economic development and social justice" on a universal basis across the length and breadth of the country. The Constitution expects the state "to endow the Panchayats with such functions and authority as to enable them to function as institutions of self-government".

In West Bengal, long before the amendment of the Constitution has been made, decentralised planning has started through Panchayati Raj System. The West Bengal Panchayat Act was passed in 1957and since then a number of other acts were passed to enhance decentralised planning.

Success of decentralisation depends heavily on careful planning and its implementation. So a new statistical information system has to be developed for planning and efficient decision making by local bodies. As a starting point, we are now concentrating on rural areas only because most of the population will be covered and the local bodies in rural areas have a hierarchical structure like following :

District/Zilla Parishads

Janpad Panchayats/Panchayat Samiti

Gram Panchayats

and it is easier to implement a new system through a hierarchical structure. In urban areas, urban local bodies consist of municipalities, municipal corporations and in some states nagar panchayats. But there is no hierarchical structure like rural local bodies in urban areas.

The proposed statistical information system consists of the following four components: (a) Information content, (b) Procedure for collection, (c) Validation and cross checks of information collected and (d) Data storage and retrieval.

Data will be stored into the computers to be installed at the office of District Statistical officer in each district. Some districts are already linked up by NICNET. Data will be available for each village, each block, each district and higher levels.

To simplify the data entry process and reduce the data entry errors the forms on the screen should resemble the printed data entry forms closely.

To access the data easily and ask for specific information a menu driven system is to be introduced. The system will have the flexibility to incorporate new data items. New forms and reports may also be included for providing information subjects to various constraints and conditionalities.

Based on certain pre-decided cut-off values of some relevant variable indicators, the system would automatically indicate the poorest and neediest local bodies.

Initially, computerisation of the whole system will involve huge cost. At present data will be kept in the form of schedules at village and a copy of it will be sent to the block level. Aggregation will be done at block level and a summary of it will be sent to the district level.

The success of the decentralised planning will depend on a thoroughly prepared and carefully implemented statistical system. Initially, the cost of collection of data would be high but afterwards only updating the data will be necessary which will involve much less cost. It is to be ensured that if any other external sources other than local bodies would collect any data in a village a copy of that data should be kept with the village authority for cross verification, updating the existing data and additional information.

A similar statistical information system is required for urban local bodies. But if due to the absence of hierarchical structure, census is not possible, sample survey may be introduced.