Infrastructure & resources
We next also investigated which characteristics of a district can predict frontline resources. Overall, we find strong evidence that anganwadis, health (sub-)centers, and schools have fewer resources in districts with a lower literacy rate. Below, we plot the average resources index of all frontline sites in a district (y-axis) and the literacy rate of the district (using the 2011 census rates). We then add a linear regression trend line to allow visualising the direction. A line with an upwards slope indicates that the average resource index increases with the literacy rate of a district. This holds across all services. The finding is highly statistically significant (p<0.01).
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We next take this information to get a better understanding about whether resources are geographically concentrated. For this, we take the office resource index and generate a relative score by department-level. This allows us to compare office infrastructure provision across districts in relative terms.
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The below map reveals some of the districts most lagging in office infrastructure such as Buxar, Nawada, and Madhepura.
To get a better overview about the distribution of office resources across departments and administrative levels, we next consider the first principal component of these binary office resource indicators to generate an office resource index. By looking at the distribution, we can better understand where infrastructure gaps persist.
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Overall, district offices, as expected, are better resourced (a higher index score indicates better infrastructure). There is considerable variation especially for block offices where some block offices have severe deficiencies in basic infrastructure.
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At a glance
Office infrastructure at the block and district level is mixed. Computers and electricity are widely available but across levels, toilets for female staff are lacking and many block offices do not have cars.
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Office resources
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Frontline infrastructure
Frontline infrastructure requires improvement across departments. More than half of anganwadis and health (sub-)centers do not have a working toilet and only one in five has tap water. Only around half of anganwadis have electricity. Schools also lack basic infrastructure violating basic minimum norms.
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Lower literacy districts face an even more severe shortfall of basic infrastructure, risking exacerbation of existing inequities within the state.
Unequal resources
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The Government of Bihar may want to invest in managerial offices, not least as our findings in another part of the survey indicate that responsiveness to citizen demands is constrained by office resources. Urgent capital investments in basic infrastructure for frontline facilities is required. Anganwadis and health (sub-)centers face a worrying shortfall of basic infrastructure. Investing in early years and basic health is smart investment, and not doing so severely undermines the state’s development potential, not least as the brains of Bihar’s youngest children are irreparably damaged through widespread stunting. These capital investments might be phased in prioritizing the most lagging districts and converged with VB — G RAM G to lower costs and generate employment.
Recommendations
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OFFICE RESOURCES
Computers are widely available at block and district offices but toilets for female staff are lacking.
Office infrastructure at the block and district level is mixed. While computers and electricity are widely available, severe deficiencies exist for toilets for female staff and cars at the block level. Block offices within departments show wide variation in the availability of basic infrastructure, and some offices are severely under-resourced. We also find some variation across geographies.
Making sure that basic infrastructure is widely available might improve working environments and the morale of staff. Ensuring that all block and district offices have working toilets for female staff is important for gender equity. As block officials are the most important supervisors for frontline staff, equipping all of them with cars can allow more frequent interactions even with far-flung schools, health centers, anganwadis, and MGNREGS worksites in rural blocks.
FRONTLINE RESOURCES
Frontline facilities are severely underresourced.
We next consider infrastructure at schools, anganwadis, and health (sub-)centers. Statistics that follow are covering those frontline facilities that were open when an enumerator visited them (we will discuss more about the share of open facilities in the next chapter). The below information is based on 966 schools, 896 anganwadis, and 575 health (sub-)centers surveyed across the state.
For schools, we find that around three in four schools have a working toilet but less than one in five have a separate toilet for teachers. Tap water is only available in 23% of the schools surveyed. In nine of ten schools, there were no libraries. More than one in ten schools do not have electricity or fans. Half of schools had a boundary wall.
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Generally, anganwadis have poorer infrastructure than schools. Less than half of anganwadis had a working toilet and only one in five had tap water. Very few anganwadis have separate toilets for staff. In contrast, almost all anganwadis had LPG cylinders for food preparation. Less than half of anganwadis were located in buildings owned by the government and around half had electricity.
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We find that only half of health (sub-)centers have a working toilet and only one in five had tap water. Around 71% were located in government-owned buildings and more than 70% had fans and electricity. Only one in five centers had available all basic medicine which we defined as paracetamol, iron + folic acid, ORS, zinc sulphate, diclofenac sodium, calcium carbonate + vitamin D3, cotton, surgical gloves, bandage, cord clamp, and povidone iodine solution + ointment. All of these were part of the list of essential drugs, medical devices and consumables for health sub-centers published by the Department of Health, Government of Bihar, in 2018.
We also undertook a similar exercise using, instead of the literacy rate, the share of the SC and ST population (based on the 2011 census). We cannot find a statistically significant relationship, i.e., we are not confident to reject the possibility that the share of the SC/ST population has no relationship with how well anganwadis, health (sub-)centers, and schools are resourced.
A word of caution is required here: what we test is a simple linear correlation with one predictor (the share of SC/ST population at district-level). It is possible that there is still systematic allocation of public goods (such as schools) or their resources away from SC/ST neighbourhoods. Recent research by Asher et al (2024) using data from 1.5 million neighbourhoods in India indicates that discrimination against SCs and Muslims in public good provision is often not visible when considering the aggregate (such as at the district level) as discriminatory practices and segregation might manifest at a more localised level. This also has important implications for policymakers interested in improving equity: attempts to improve the equity in resource allocation can be undermined at the local level.
Frontline infrastructure requires improvement across departments. More than half of anganwadis and health centers do not have a working toilet and only around one in five has tap water. Improving this basic infrastructure is essential to improve working conditions for the female workforce providing these essential services to citizens. This needs to be addressed on a priority basis. Anganwadi infrastructure is particularly poor with only around half having electricity. Many anganwadis do not have permanent, government-owned buildings and are generally in a dilapidated condition. Anganwadis are key to the future of Bihar and tasked with providing the most essential services for mothers and Bihar’s youngest children. While LPG cylinders have reached anganwadis on a large scale, basic infrastructure is still lagging. For the future of Bihar, fiscal space should on a priority basis be explored by both the center and the state to invest in Bihar’s anganwadis. Similarly, health centers require investments in toilets, water provision, and medical supplies on a continuous basis. Schools also lack basic infrastructure and require further infrastructure investments to comply with basic minimum norms. Separate teacher toilets and boundary walls are particularly lacking across many schools. Additionally, our analysis reveals a worrying pattern: those districts lagging in literacy also have the lowest resources across anganwadis, health (sub-)centers, and schools. To achieve equity, there is a clear need to prioritise infrastructure provision in the least developed districts across all departments. Importantly, convergence with VB — G RAM G can ensure that infrastructure improvements are not only cost effective but also generate employment.
The World Development Report 2018, the World Bank’s flagship report on education, stresses that investments in high-quality programs for early years pay off. Not doing so puts Bihar’s future at risk. The report also cites a study by Nelson et al (2017) that illustrates, using magnetic resonance images (MRIs) of children’s brains how stunting harms the brains of children with the damage being visible on MRIs of 2-3 months old infants. The implication for Bihar is clear: NFHS-5 data (2019-2021) indicates that 43% of Bihar’s children are stunted. This underlines the urgency for Bihar to invest in its anganwadis mobilising all available resources (fiscal and otherwise) to address this failure of delivering basic necessities to its youngest citizens.