Co-Creating Value under a Rights Based Approach

Rights based policies, with human rights as their foundation have come to constitute a significant component of development policy in many countries. India’s legislative efforts are often pointed to as stand out examples, in... [ view full abstract ]

Rights based policies, with human rights as their foundation have come to constitute a significant component of development policy in many countries. India’s legislative efforts are often pointed to as stand out examples, in these efforts. In this paper, we argue and illustrate how Rights Based Approaches (RBA) to service delivery present rich and fertile spaces to expand thinking on ideas of co-production, co-design and co-creation of value. We draw on our experience in working on the “Right to Education” (RTE) as part of an action research project located in an academic institution, to serve as an empirical basis for our engagement with these ideas.

By definition, rights based policies not only identify “rights holders” -- the potential beneficiaries -- they also confer obligations on “duty holders”, many of whom are located outside the state. For a right to be achieved, the right holder has to be informed of her rights and modalities of accessing them. Only then can she demand and hope to achieve them. However, in polities with a poor history of service delivery, the mere granting and demanding of a right does not necessarily translate to the delivery of service and value creation. The granting of rights often reflect the recognition of historical marginalization of groups or failure of the state to delivery the concerned services. While the policy legislation often represents a victory, rarely does it signal the end of contestations. The legislation and formulation of rights is only a first, albeit significant step in both empowering the citizen as well as strengthening service delivery.

Enacted in 2009, a controversial clause of the RTE mandated that all unaided private schools admit at least 25 percent of children in their entry level classes from “economically weaker” and “disadvantaged sections” of the society. Schools mandated to do so are promised to be reimbursed the lower of the school fee or the expenditure per child incurred by the government in its own schools.  The best available estimates suggest that implementation rates are less than 20 percent. Our “field work” led to engaging with this policy at the city and national level, helping move the number of children benefiting from the policy from 32 to more than 15,000 in the most recent round of admissions. The work involved working intensively with the government, traditional civil society organisations, private schools, political actors and citizens.   

Co-creating value overcoming challenges and exploiting opportunities that a RBA provides , requires new forms of co-production and co-design that we argue require new forms of institutional arrangements. We argue that the institutional logic of organisations or networks working within existing frameworks may not be necessarily aligned with using RBA to enhance service delivery. In particular, the need to contest while working with and cooperating with the state necessitates new forms of co-production and co-design. We offer the example of higher education institutions, such as ours, as being catalysts for such new forms of co-creation and describe the value of doing so.