[Answerwd] Crafting credible public systems for quality and timely outcomes needs the adoption of public management that addresses the challenges of the last mile. Discuss.

Public management is a part of the public administration system in which the management activities are conducted in public interest.  For inclusive growth, India needs public systems that can ensure last mile deliveries in education and health care.

However, the public management systems in India have not been completely successful in ensuring last mile delivery of public services. Last mile challenges are those challenges that are hurdle in reaching the benefits of program and policies to the last person or the intended beneficiary.

Challenges of the last mile:

·         Most of the poor are not able to participate in the emerging employment opportunities in different sectors of the economy as they do not have the necessary knowledge and skills to do so.

·         The deprived household can also not fully leverage the benefit of technology. E.g., poorer communities and those living in remote regions could not access high quality online education during the Covid pandemic, also the Direct benefit transfer (DBT) and Aadhaar-linked payments required sincere local-level effort.

·         Deficiency in the public goods and asset base compromises the ability of deprived households to exercise freedom of choice.

·         Most of the implementations are done in a centralized way which does not address the needs of the vulnerable and deprived households.

·         Public goods and pro-poor assets are not available in a sufficient manner. E.g., market failures in the healthcare system, on account of information asymmetry.

What can be done?

• The government should develop credible public systems to provide quality public goods in the field of healthcare, education sector etc. For example, Singapore’s education system.
• The governments should ensure that last-mile facilitation and public information is available to the deprived households.
• More priority should be given to human resource challenges in India. The government needs to harness the best skills and capacity to make a real difference. For example, Tamil Nadu has developed a robust public health cadre.
• The government should facilitate more than doing regulation to build trust. For this, there should be transparent reasons for approval or rejection, simplified compliance parameters etc.
• The government needs to focus on decentralization within the framework of the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedule of the Indian Constitution. Thereon, the power of elected panchayats can be harnessed.
• In addition to this, the mobilization of women can be done through self-help groups movements, etc.

People should be at the center of all policy making. Government should treat people as participants and not mere beneficiaries or worse as liabilities. Involving NGOs and SHGs in planning, monitoring, evaluation, feedback stages can also be helpful.