I took a break last week from all the productivity and highly recommend doing so once ever so often. This week’s links are on the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings, what makes bureaucracies effective, how Indian cities are coping with climate change, why parents aren’t always right, and a podcast recommendation.
Der Aaye, Durust Aaye: The World Bank have paused the publication of their Doing Business Report and initiated an audit of its data and methodology. Given the many concerns over the report's rigour, usefulness, and allegations of influence by country governments – this was a long time coming. Two Chief Economists of the Bank have recently resigned in quick succession, including Paul Romer who quit soon after calling out Chile’s rankings for methodological issues and political influences.
Read this excellent 2018 piece by Justine Sandefur of the Centre for Global Development on how it was the changes in World Bank methodology, and not reform that made India “jump” the ranks. For instance, when you add more countries to an index, the rank of others will change. The DB rankings also do not consider the fact that regulations have benefits, not just costs. See chart below for how a change in World Bank methodology changed India's score.
Nepal’s experience shows that on-ground reform is not necessary to move up the DB ranks.
If you enjoy gossip, see this for a spat between World Bank colleagues and researchers questioning their methodology. The founder of the Doing Business Index called critics “Marxists” on a public platform and you can watch it here.
For more on doing business: Contract enforcements and a functioning judicial system are at the heart of business reforms. Read this for stories that underline the urgency of how Indian courts need to up their game – including one on how it took them 38 years to resolve a turmeric forgery scandal. There are nearly 40 million cases pending across the country’s courts, many for over 20-30 years.
This is the sort of thing that makes investors nervous - land acquisitions take forever, labour disputes go nowhere, non-disclosure agreements mean squat, and signing a contract is at best an act of good faith.
A market isn’t going to solve this one: See this for the many complex factors that drive how parents choose schools for their children in India. A survey of 1,210 families and 121 schools across 4 Indian states (Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Uttarakhand) found that perceptions of teaching-learning, discipline and safety are important determinants of school choice in India.
But is it really a choice if you're basing it on false information and half-truths?
The survey found that not everyone who thinks they’re going to an English medium school is really going to one.
Only 25% of parent’s perception of English as the medium of instruction in their children’s schools matched with reality.
More than half of the children who were supposed to be attending English-medium schools were studying in a dominant regional language. Around 18% were going to a school that had books in English, but with teachers translating those into the dominant regional language while teaching. There was also a mismatch between parents’ perception of teacher quality and the reality.
These are textbook information asymmetries, a case of individuals unable to make informed choices, a case against indiscriminate market-based schooling solutions, and the need for state interventions. Repeat after me: Vouchers are not a substitute for a functioning public school system.
See also a comprehensive piece here in the context of India’s New Education Policy (NEP) on why learning in the mother tongue is effective, but difficult to implement.
Representation Matters: Guo Xu of the Haas School of Business at Berkley has a working paper that uses evidence from colonial India to underline the importance of bureaucratic representation. Using data from 1910 to 1925, he finds that Indian towns that were headed by Indian district officers (as opposed to British) had 15% lower deaths during the 1918 Influenza pandemic. The effect coincided with greater responsiveness in relief provision – through closer cooperation with local institutions and individuals.
History Matters: Another study by Guo Xu here on how patronage in civil service appointments during the British Raj had effects that persist even today. Based on data from 70 colonial territories, he finds that colonial governors who were appointed because they were “connected” or enjoyed patronage, were poorer performers.
And it isn’t all history yet.
Modern countries exposed longer to connected governors during the period of patronage exhibit lower fiscal capacity even now (2010).
Policies persist, pressure groups guard interests zealously, and behaviours are hard to change. Think about how easy it is to grant a tax exemption, but taking one away will have the most determined administrator weeping in frustration.
Your Word of the Day: Since we’re talking about bureaucracies, how do you think Indian cities are responding to the challenges of climate change? Radhika Khosla and Ankit Bhardwaj of CPR study the approach in 2 Indian cities and call it ‘Superimposition’.
Given that city governments already manage a range of existing priorities such as housing, water and waste management, with established bureaucratic practices and systems – they essentially superimpose climate objectives onto those.
Limited capacity, time and resources, institutional inertia and other dominating agendas mean that there is little time, incentive or bandwidth to design and use customised solutions.
The linked article argues that while Superimposition has led to creative and politically tenable climate projects, these remain limited by existing governance arrangements with trade-offs for long-term planning, urban justice and public ownership of infrastructure.
If you’ve managed a programme with fast changing priorities, you know how superimposition works. Add an indicator to the logframe, draft some case studies and think creatively about how your project can tick a box – are some of the things I've been told people do.
Finally, a Podcast recommendation: From the appropriately titled “No Stupid Questions” series on Freakonomics, here’s an episode on how much of your life do you really control and how to stop procrastinating. Less than 40 minutes, and lots of insights from behavioural science and psychology!