Process Deficits in the Provision of Social Protection in Rural Maharashtra

Abstract

In response to donor concerns that funds reach the neediest, evaluations of anti-poverty programmes are increasingly focused on identifying targeting failures: ‘F-mistakes’, where some of the target group (for example, the ‘poor’) are excluded from benefits, and ‘E-mistakes’, where benefits are provided to the non-poor as well as the poor (Cornia and Stewart, 1995). Yet the identification of F- and E-mistakes in itself does little to help us understand why targeting failures occur — and what can be done to address the problem. There is a dearth of studies of this kind, including in the context of social protection² interventions, an emerging set of targeted programmes in developing countries.

This chapter is based on data collected by the author in October 2003 and June 2004 as part of his D.Phil. at Oxford University. It is drawn from a longer paper presented to the Social Protection for Chronic Poverty Conference, and subsequently published as a CPRC Working Paper (Pellissery, 2005). The author is grateful to the participants of this conference for their useful comments, and offers special thanks to George Smith and Barbara Harriss-White for suggestions during the design of the study. Karen Moore and David Hulme provided insightful thoughts and revision of the final manuscripts. Any errors remain the author’s.