Citizens' development toolkit

Following the success of its nationwide citizens' audit of education (ASER, see here and here), the NGO Pratham has now initiated a similar effort to understand the status of human development in several other social sectors. Known as PAHELI (People's Audit of Health, Education and Livelihoods), it is a rapid assessment of the prevailing status of human development in a district, and covers four major sectors: life and livelihoods, water and sanitation, mother and child health, and education and literacy.

The design and execution of PAHELI were carried out by Pratham and its PAHELI district partners. The exercise was supported by the United Nations Development Programme, with participation from UNICEF.

Underlying the PAHELI experiment was the desire to bring the Millennium Development Goals down to the village level. How can one take the MDGs and bring them to the local level so that ordinary citizens can begin to understand how far their locality has come on these goals and how far there is still to go?

The PAHELI exercise was carried out in states that have prepared official state-level Human Development Reports (HDRs). The aim of the official HDRs is to highlight the status of human development across and within states, and ensure adequate planning and resources for basic sectors like adult literacy, children's education, health, livelihoods and poverty reduction.

The district is increasingly becoming an important unit for planning, budgeting, decision-making and implementation for development. Recognising this, some states have also followed up their state-level HDRs with district-level HDRs. These are particularly important for low Human Development Index districts. The district-level HDRs by and large rely on secondary data from different government departments and other sources.

A citizens' assessment effort like PAHELI allows independent development of district report cards using simple tools and processes. , These citizens? observations of development indicators can be an additional input that supplements district level efforts. The advantage of PAHELI is that it uses a participatory approach, as well as simple tools and processes for collecting primary data.

Read more for full report and survey samples.

Source: India Together

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