Project Lead: Deval Desai, Shalini Randeria
Researchers: Deval Desai, Christine Lutringer
Timeline: 2019-2020
Keywords: Accountability, Regulation, Citizenship, Local governance, Administrative law
Funding Organisation: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), Spark funding instrument
This project focuses on the phenomenon of hundreds of billions of Euros of unspent social special-purpose funds in both India and the EU (and, we suspect, globally). By “social special-purpose”, we mean funds that have been collected by law for a specific social purpose that would otherwise be the domain of discretionary state policy. These funds are held in some vehicle that reflects this social purpose (such as a trust or a fund) rather than simply being absorbed into ordinary administrative budget lines. By “unspent”, we refer to instances where a significant proportion of these funds remains both uncaptured by other interests (e.g. embezzled), and unspent during a discrete timeframe (e.g. the fiscal year) and for the purpose for which they are earmarked.
The project is an initial study to map the extent and nature of this phenomenon and develop methodologies to study it. We study unspent funds in India and Italy, and explore their institutional and regulatory preconditions along with their socio-political effects. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, which understands the state as a vehicle of resource distribution, and thus unspent funds as a symptom of temporary institutional blockage in the state.
Desai, D., Lutringer, C., & Randeria, S. (2020). Emergency Use of Public Funds: Implications for Democratic Governance, Global Challenges, special issue no. 1, June.
Desai, D., Randeria, S., & Lutringer, C. (2020). Redefining Vulnerability and State – Society Relationships during the COVID-19 Crisis: The Politics of Social Welfare Funds in India and Italy. In M. Maduro & P. Kahn (Eds.), Democracy in Times of Pandemic: Different Futures Imagined (pp. 182-195). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108955690.014
Desai, D., & Randeria, S. (2020). Unfreezing unspent social special-purpose funds for the Covid-19 crisis: Critical reflections from India, World Development, Volume 136, December.
Upadhyaya, H. (2020). The Missing National Social Security Funds for India's Unorganised Sector Workers, The Wire, 28 May.
Upadhyaya, H. (2020). Building Discontent: Welfare boards have failed to protect India’s construction workers, The Caravan, 31 July.
Upadhyaya, H. (2020). COVID-19: Are States Justified in Borrowing from Unspent Special Purpose Funds?, The Wire, 10 October.
