I was in a discussion with my close friend Sara, when I was in India this summer. Sara is an extremely smart, witty and insightful guy who I love having conversations with. He was mentioning how the problem with public services in India(like education and infrastructure) is not just delivery, but also the lack of funding.
I’m taking a class with Prof. Paul Smoke which is titled Public Finance in Developing Countries. Over the course of my master's program, my focus last year has primarily been understanding the need for public services (focusing on market failure), closer examination of these services (like healthcare, education, economic development) and understanding the institutions involved in design and delivery (which in most cases is the state).
Now I feel I’m gaining a deeper understanding of issues like funding these services (and the role of public finance), design and implementation as well as evaluation of public programs. In some sense, this gives me a holistic feeling about my Public Administration degree, which (like an MBA) creates generalists.
Coming back to public finance, I was watching a recent NY Times video on using lotteries to fund public education in the state of North Carolina. Most of our discussion so far in the above mentioned class has focused on decentralization of fiscal responsibilities, in both the revenue and expenditure dimensions. In a fairly decentralized structure like the US, the states are primarily responsible for funding public education. On the revenue side, the biggest source of income for states tends to be usually property taxes. For instance, I was talking to my friend Vincent yesterday, who is from New Hampshire, which is also struggling with the problem of lack of funds for education. In such an instance, having federal control of revenues can lead to redistribution, where underfunded states can receive help from wealthier ones. This can also happen at the state level, where the state can be a redistribute resources to poorer counties (or districts).
I have very little clue on what are the fiscal structures in India. I’m eager to learn more and may be will write a paper for class, focusing on India. I also believe school funding is an dimension that is far less explored in India as compared to institutional problems with administration, teachers etc. It takes US $ 21 million to build a primary school for 600 hundred children in North Carolina! By the way, don’t even get me started on privatization of primary education.
