Role of Government as Provider and Protector has Changes, says Bhuvana Anand

KOCHI:
Role of government as provider and protector has changed with the arrival of markets into government functioning says Bhuvana Anand
In the in-house talk by Bhuvana Anand on “Reforms for Public Services Delivery” conducted by CPPR, the main themes discussed were the process of public service delivery discourse, what has happened over the last few years and how to implement the reforms in public service delivery.
Anand suggested that we are able to prioritize government spending in terms of first order functions like law and order followed by second order functions like health and education and then third order functions like social welfare transfers. Many think tanks including CPPR are changing the concept of what the government needs to do, the need for market intervention and are also looking at the unintended consequences of public policy. She also mentioned that “the country has moved more closely towards markets and the role of markets is more clearly identified”
For effective public service delivery, fundamental process re engineering is needed. There exists the need for understanding the complexities involved in the public service delivery process. It takes considerable time and forward planning for implementing reforms in public service delivery. She quoted the example of Odisha’s Public Distribution System(PDS) and how the significant use of technology and digitalization helped significantly the effective functioning of PDS. In her view, more emphasis needs to be given to tackle large scale corruption such as corruption in procurement systems and contracts. She stated that cash transfers to bank accounts are extremely complicated. More importance should be given for fa
cilitating knowledge gap and bringing in expertise for solving the information issues associated with cash transfers.
There exists a case for targeted basic income rather than universal basic income in India , as pointed out by the speaker. Pilot experiments with the targeted basic income on small scale are required and then its impact needs to be found out.