Intervention Summary
Title: Bihar Governance and Administrative Reform Programme (BGARP)
What support will the UK provide?
DFID will provide £13 million in financial aid to the Government of Bihar to design and
implement governance and administrative reforms in two phases of three years each (20082014), and £5 million in technical cooperation to procure Technical Assistance to support
reforms prioritised by the Government of Bihar.
Why is UK support required?
What are we trying to address ?
Bihar is one of the poorest states in India, accounting for over 13% of the country’s poor. In
2005, it ranked at the bottom of Indian States for a range of governance indicators including
law and order, corruption, legal structure and security of property rights, revenue collection,
and investment climate. The quality of governance in Bihar experienced decades of decline.
There are systemic weaknesses such as outdated administrative functions, poorly managed,
demotivated and low skilled workforce with large number of unfilled posts; and weak
accountability at all levels. Since 2006, the government of Bihar has demonstrated a real
intent to improve governance and there have been significant improvement in law and order,
financial management, accountability of public institutions, and delivery of public services.
However, impact has been hampered by limited capacity. Through this programme, DFID will
support the Bihar Government to undertake governance reforms for improving its capability to
deliver better quality services to all its citizens, particularly the poorest and most excluded
What will DFID do
DFID will provide financial assistance to the Government of Bihar through a dedicated Mission
set up for undertaking administrative reforms in the state in order to:
o Improve human resource management by streamlining the recruitment process, training
of personnel and their performance appraisal
o Enhance the quality of public service delivery by selected departments such as
commercial taxes, registration, education, home etc.
o Improve service delivery at the frontline level by leveraging information technology and
streamlining systems and processes (Right to Public Services, Citizen Helplines etc.)
The technical cooperation funds will be used to contract a technical support team that will
provide technical assistance to the Government of Bihar on prioritised reform areas.
Who will implement
The Government of Bihar and its agencies (Mission and selected departments) will be
responsible for implementation of the programme. Reform Support Units will be established in
partner departments to oversee reforms. The technical support team will provide necessary
technical support to the Mission and partner departments in order to achieve outputs and
goals.
What are the expected results?
Impact and Outcome of the Programme
As a result of the programme interventions, the quality of governance will improve in Bihar.
This will be reflected in the improved capacity of the government to deliver public services, as
a result of which quality of service delivery will improve by at least 20% over the baseline. This
assessment will be based on independent citizen feedback.
Outputs
The main programme outputs are:
o Improved human resource capacity - reduction in vacancies of key cadres from 50% to
less than 10% and development & implementation of comprehensive training plan
o Improved processes for delivery of public services across selected departments
including Registration, Commercial Taxes, Education, Social Welfare, Home
o Implementation of citizen-centric reforms for effective service delivery at the frontline
level including Right to Public Services Act, Citizen Helplines, grievance redressal
mechanisms etc.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Project progress will be monitored regularly by the Government of Bihar against agreed work
plans. DFID will undertake regular monitoring meetings and annual output to purpose reviews,
in line with standard DFID requirements and based on the programme logframe. We will
monitor results through the assessment reports of Government of India / Government of
Bihar, as well as monitor governance indicators drawn from key national datasets (e.g.
Reserve Bank of India) and non Government assessments (e.g. India Today State of Indian
States etc.)