Developing an evalutaion cultureThere has been a significant and healthy improvement in the intensity and content of public discussions in India over the past two years. Several issues such as the right to information, employment guarantee and reservations in higher education have been fiercely debated. There has also been a refreshing shift in focus away from hindutva, communalism and saffronisation of society, towards poverty alleviation and public well-being. Such discussions should become the stuff and essence of every democracy. And, if some people experience degrees of discomfort, it is mainly because such discussions are not always guided by rigorous policy analyses and evaluation. This weakness in our evaluation skill-sets needs to be urgently and collectively addressed. Conventional development evaluation suffers from three major drawbacks. First, such evaluation is typically confined to projects and programmes. Consequently, they neglect the larger impact and outcomes of interventions. Therefore project evaluation tends to be reduced to an accounting exercise where the assessment focuses upon the use of funds rather than on impact or effectiveness. If for instance, funds are granted to train 5,000 primary school teachers, the evaluation will typically describe the nature of activities, the resources deployed, the number of teachers trained, and so on. Little attempt will be made to assess the effectiveness of the training or the impact it has in the classroom and on children‚s learning achievements.Second, most evaluations lack a quantitative basis for assessing progress. Indeed many projects don‚t provide baseline data that can be used to assess progress of a project following a new intervention. As a result, evaluations by default tend to be qualitative in nature. Comments and opinions need to be adequately justified and this is possible only when opinions are backed by meaningful data. Therefore it‚s important to introduce an element of quantification into the evaluation process itself. Third, most evaluations are commissioned by the government or funding agencies which finance projects. This considerably reduces the independence of evaluators and clouds objectivity. Evaluation reports by the government, of the government and for the government are seldom acted upon as they tend to be compromised on honesty and objectivity. Ditto evaluation reports commissioned by donors. Commissioners of evaluation must ensure broad ownership and independence. This can only happen if evaluators are given a fair degree of autonomy and evaluation reports are communicated openly and widely to potential users. Yet as the content of public discourse improves so must its quality.And this can happen only with significant improvements in evaluating develop-ment. For becoming more relevant, development evaluation needs to incorporate three features. First, it must be guided by a normative framework for enhancing human development, reducing human insecurity and advancing human rights. Evaluative questions have to focus on people whose lives the intervention is intended to improve.In other words, interventions must be evaluated for their outcomes, and assessments must comment on whether or not the intervention has contributed to enhancing human capabilities or preventing poor people from facing downside risks. Second, a big push towards democratisation of development evaluation in every sense of the term is needed.We need to involve all stakeholders and commission multiple evaluations. We need to encourage rigour, multiple perspectives and use of mixed methodologies.Also to look for multiple ways of disseminating findings so that evaluations can contribute to informed debate. And it is only when evaluation reports can generate public discussion that we can expect greater clarity in public decision making.Better information and systematic assessments ought to guide programme and policy formulation, not mere opinions and beliefs. Finally, greater honesty and higher ethical standards need to guide development evaluation for it to become more effective.In the development arena, it is not the lack of wisdom that is often the problem; it is lack of honesty. It is important for evaluators to be truthful and to honestly communicate what they find. It should be equally incumbent on them to communicate their findings more broadly through media that reach people easily and effectively. A culture of studied evaluation has to permeate every sector of society.In other words, we need to ask critical questions and demand responses from stakeholders responsible for a given intervention. Unfortunately as a society, we haven‚t quite adopted the culture of critical questioning and reasoning in everyday life.This is the first major challenge of our education system at all levels. Only if a culture of questioning and critical thinking becomes part of the education reform process can we expect significant improvements in the practice of democracy in India. It is high time for this change to occur.(A. K. Shiva Kumar is a Delhi-based advisor to Unicef and visiting professor at Harvard University)