Phone Monitoring to Improve Service Delivery : A SIEF-Supported Nimble Evaluation in India
In many low-income countries, improving service delivery can be challenging, whether it's making sure that teachers are in the classroom ready to teach or that cash transfers reach intended beneficiaries. One reason is that it's often di...
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| Format: | Brief |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2019
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/527061548447261186/Phone-Monitoring-to-Improve-Service-Delivery http://hdl.handle.net/10986/31194 |
| Summary: | In many low-income countries, improving
service delivery can be challenging, whether it's
making sure that teachers are in the classroom ready to
teach or that cash transfers reach intended beneficiaries.
One reason is that it's often difficult to
cost-effectively monitor programs, especially when they
cover thousands of communities and include very remote
areas. This was the challenge faced by the Indian state of
Telangana when it introduced a new program to make payments
to farmers to help them buy seeds and fertilizer before each
of the two major planting seasons. The government wanted to
ensure that people received their money in the expected time
frame and that farmers were not asked to make any payments
for receiving their money. Intervention. Under the
state's new Rythu Bandhu (Friend of the Farmer)
program, landholding farmers are supposed to receive the
equivalent of about 55 US Dollars per acre before the summer
and winter planting seasons. About 5.7 million farmers
qualified and close to 90 percent of them owned less than
three acres. The first distribution was made before the 2018
summer planting season. Beneficiaries were given checks that
could be exchanged for cash at a local bank, regardless of
whether a person had a bank account. The checks were
distributed during village meetings organized by the
state's agricultural officer in each subdistrict, known
as a mandal, who supervised agricultural workers sent to
villages to deliver checks. |
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