AAP Delhi Manifesto 2015: Big Change without Big Spending- Part-2

This is the third post in a series on “AAP Delhi Manifesto 2015”

Yes! We have won the election! And I will write about the victory and the final few days soon 🙂 But in the meantime, let’s continue talking about my labour of love, the AAP Delhi Manifesto, which will soon be operationalised! In our last post on the theme, we talked about the underlying theme of “Big Change Without Big Spending” and proposed our innovative ideas on affordable housing and office space for professionals. In this post, I’d like to propose a few ideas that we couldn’t make concrete to put in our manifesto, since even our expert groups were discussing and divided over these issues. We would love to hear your views!

Increasing Seat Capacity for Schools 

Delhi currently spends only 1.6% of its GSDP and 15% of its state budget on education, which shows its misaligned priorities. From 2003-2011, only 211 new government schools were opened with virtually no increase in secondary or senior secondary schools. This has caused a huge dropout rate after middle school.

Thus, there is a severe shortage of schools in Delhi. While we will construct 500 schools in the long run, we will look at innovative ways to increase seat capacity in the short run. We will:

1. Consider common usage of playgrounds amongst different schools and school buildings. Schools currently need to have their own park or playground, which prevents low-cost private schools and a few government schools from being operationalized as per law. If usage of parts can be optimized or shared, it will be a game-changing opportunity to increase number of seats in schools.
2. Increase the number of storeys/floors on many MCD/DoE schools, which are currently single-storeyed, and thus have a self-imposed cap on the number of children they can admit. Verticalization of schools may be a necessity of the future.
3. Adoption of schools by non-profits, which can provide model administration and teaching methods and act as a mentor for government schools nearby.

Centralized Drug Procurement

While the vision of the Aam Aadmi Party is one of decentralized participatory government with honest and accountable governance, we realize that there’s an upside of centralization in some ways. Drug and equipment procurement in the healthcare sector is one of the most corrupt components of Delhi’s public health setup. And this is because of the number of intermediaries and middlemen who take their “commission” and make sub-optimal choices for public good.

We have found the centralized, transparent and online drug and equipment procurement would corruption in Delhi by at least 200 crores, a sum that can be reinvested into the healthcare sector to strengthen our primary health centers.

2 Lakh Toilets with Innovative Revenue Sharing and Biodigester Toilets

AAP will build 2 lakh toilets across Delhi: about 1.5 lakh toilets in slums and JJ clusters while 50,000 toilets will be built in public spaces.

WHO says that there should be one toilet seat for every 50 people. However, we propose to give 4 times better standing than this WHO minimal standard, which is about one toilet seat per 12.5 people. Providing women toilets in Delhi’s public places will come as a big relief. People living in slums, unauthorized colonies and JJ clusters don’t have any toilets. Overall, thirty percent of the people of Delhi, i.e. about 50 lakh people and roughly 25 lakh girls and women, do not have access to a toilet. AAP is committed to providing a toilet for all, especially for women and people living in slums.

We are exploring different options for revenue generation and technologies for different areas of Delhi. For example, we could have a public-private partnerships like Sulabh toilets in the NDMC area where advertisers build and operate toilets and gives a proportion of the revenue to the Delhi government. Similarly, on the technology front, bio-digesters will be used in JJ clusters and slums where there are no sewer lines and solid waste disposal is difficult. We will explore different permutations and incentive structures to stimulate toilet building.

At a cost of about 55,000 Rupees per toilet seat, this means an investment of 1100 crores in 5 years, which is about 220 crores per year. For context, Delhi’s budget is about 37,000 crores. Talks with NDMC and MCD revealed that we should be able to cover the expenditure of about half the toilets through revenue sources of advertising and PPP. So, we are looking at an actual budget of 110 crores a year for five years. We already allot 35 crores per year in the budget to build toilets and each municipal corporation has a lot of money from before to build toilets.

Thus, AAP has a feasible, concrete and sustainable plan for overhauling and revamping Delhi’s sanitation crisis.

Premium Quality Water Treatment Plant

AAP wants to give the citizens of Delhi the right to water. We believe that water like air is one of the most basic requirements for every human being. AAP also believe that the right to food should include the right to water. To provide safe drinking water to people is the first and foremost duty of an elected government. However, AAP will also take provision of water to the next level and begin the provision of premium quality drinking water supply. The quality of water will be better than bottled mineral water, and water supply network and quality standards will meet or exceed US EPA and WHO standards. The proposal will be benefited as under:

1. Save water (roughly saving minimum 5 Cr liters per day*)
2. Electricity (roughly 250 W per family per day total saving roughly 250 MW/day**) This is considering the fact that number of domestic RO units in Delhi 1 million and water wastage per RO is 50 liters per day and electric consumption 250W/day/RO
3. Reduces chronic water born diseases^ that will further reduce the health budget. Contaminated water is responsible for around 70% diseases known to human being. Contaminated water may cause cancer, cardiac disorders, flurosis, loss of memory, hepatitis etc.
4. Sharing of profit with respective RWA and that earning can be used for environmental development like Water harvesting, park development or tree plantation, improvement in water supply and sanitation system of society or on Solar based systems by respective RWA.
5. Beneficiary to citizens and will save minimum Rs. 250 to 900^{^^} per month to a family using RO system or buying bottled water for their drinking needs.

Line Item	Savings (in Rs.)
Savings in Electrical Bills	Rs. 50-200
Savings in Water Bills	Rs. 5-20
RO Maintenance per year	Rs. 100-Rs. 250 per month (1000-2500 per year)
Water bottles	Rs. 500-900 per month

Financial Viability: Yes, Plant having capacity 100,000 liters feeding roughly 750 families can be installed in 2 Cr to 2.5 Cr.

Revenue Generation per plant per year: Rs 24 Lakh minimum

Share of RWA per year @25%: Rs. 6 lakhs^#

Technical Viability: Yes

Operation and Maintenance cost: Roughly Rs. 10,000 or less for the society having 750-1000 house holds

More posts on the manifesto will flow 🙂 We’re listening! Keep sharing your views! 🙂