State Capacity for Pro-Poor Delivery: Constructing Ownership, Forging Accountability

Severe chronic poverty persists in India, partly because of the poor capacity of the state in India to provide for its poor. An action research project, underway in five poorest districts in the country, led by a national policy think tank, seeks to build state capacity for delivery to the poorest and most marginalised, by getting local state agencies to collaborate with poor people’s organisations to better focus on results for the poor, at the same time strengthen delivery capability. Given the specific context of local elites’ entrenched interests and their ‘capture’ of the agencies and institutions of the state, this pro-poor focus, is throwing up various research and policy challenges. These are about the nature of state-society collaborations for the poorest, the buy-in to those collaborations by all sides, how civil society actors link up to the larger civil society for this, and the very sustainability of the state-society effort. An equally important question that the action research team is having to address is about accountability, and the implications of the forced marriage of state agencies and pro-poor organisations, on how accountability to the poor is and can be built. This paper, based on participatory action research methods – largely participant observation - presents the preliminary findings from the first phase of the work, in an attempt to draw out lessons. Looking forward, it is planned, to feed these first learnings into the project design, to enable institutional change for pro-poor results in poorest parts of India, while drawing general policy lessons from those.