# **3.2 Comparison with best practice—why these interventions?**

While these interventions were based on Pratham’s extensive knowledge of the situation on the ground, and on extensive piloting of ways to conduct effective meetings, it is reasonable to ask whether the interventions were actually designed to work well. There is of course no conclusive way to answer this question—there is always the possibility that something else would have worked better in any particular context. On the other hand, the intervention needed to be simple enough to be replicable and the lessons to be generalizable. Recognizing this, the community of practitioners has developed a set of “best practices” for external interventions aimed at inducing greater popular participation in the monitoring and improvement of public services. The fact that the interventions followed these guidelines should go a long way toward assuring that what we evaluate in this paper corresponded _ex-ante_ to what policymakers would consider to be an effective participation intervention. Thus, in this section we summarize the best practice guidelines available from the World Bank’s Participation Sourcebook (and other notes on best practice from this same source)<sup>9</sup> and argue that the intervention that Pratham designed and implemented met most of these criteria. Moreover, we will suggest that Pratham was a natural candidate for being the implementing organization. In this sense, the intervention we study should provide us a “best case” scenario for the effectiveness of these kinds of interventions, at least in a context similar to UP.

The first guideline is that the intervention should be inclusive: there needs to be an attempt to include all sections of the village and make them feel that they are a part of the intervention. Specifically, it is not enough to have one big meeting where the outsiders come and deliver their message and leave. The Pratham volunteers were in the field at least for two days (for four days in the cases of interventions two and three). Facilitating teams went from hamlet to hamlet within a village, making sure to cover “low-caste” hamlets, carrying out conversations about education in small and large groups (which enabled women to participate, for example), and inviting local people to take the lead.

Second, the mobilization should not create unrealistic expectations. Here, the objective was to raise the learning levels of the children, in particular with respect to reading. Pratham’s experience shows that it is indeed possible for a child to considerably improve his or her reading level in a few months, provided that some targeted attention is paid to the child (Banerjee et al., 2006). The tools transferred to the community through the mobilization efforts were appropriate for the direct and indirect controls available to the village community to improve education. They could use these tools for indirect action—such as monitoring children’s learning, complaining about poor performance to higher authorities, and demanding additional resources or training for their teachers. They could use the tools for direct action—for example, giving greater incentives to Shiksha Mitras by threatening to withhold contract renewal unless performance improves, or allocating the resources they receive under SSA or through other village discretionary budget to improve school conditions. In intervention 3, they could use the teaching tool directly to hold classes to teach children.

Third, the intervention should not bypass or undermine existing institutions. Interventions 1, and 2, which build on the role of VECs in facilitating change, clearly satisfy this criterion. Intervention 3 was the only one where an alternative to the existing institutions was proposed, though as a complement to the system, rather than a substitute.

> 9 The Sourcebook can be found at the following web site, with links to other notes on designated best practice: http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/sourcebook/sbhome.htm

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