WORLD BANK PROJECT

Transforming Elementary Schools

Textbook Supply in Nagaland

Introduction

April 2018, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, India announced the provision of free textbooks to all children in government, local body and government-aided schools. Since the inception of this scheme, the Nagaland government has been struggling with accurate distribution and delivery of textbooks to schools on time.

Initially, it seemed that the Department of Secondary Education (DSE) Nagaland, is suffering from many ailments. And needs checks and balances in policy as well as distribution. Though in reality, it’s students, who are the mute sufferers in this typical supply chain problem. This distribution obstacle can be looked at from two lenses: DSE and Consumers(Students). Hence we opted to look from a student perspective and began designing a student-centric supply chain.

Objectives

November 2020, in an attempt to understand the present state of the textbook supply chain in the state of Nagaland. We started free-flowing discussions with various stakeholders of DSE Nagaland, ranging from the Principal Director (IAS) to Class Teachers.

All such discussions were a medium to:

• Understand the current textbook supply chain and its key stages, its key actors, the dynamics of their interactions & operations, and their institutional roles and responsibilities
• Identify policies, protocols and methods in place to achieve textbook delivery
• Get a holistic view of the end-to-end journey of textbook delivery in Nagaland through primary and secondary data
• Identify the challenges faced by key stakeholders in demand estimation, storage, distribution and monitoring of textbooks till government school classrooms
• Map information flow, identify information gaps and bottlenecks in management of education-related information system
• To develop a blueprint for a tech solution that aids intake, usage and monitoring of the inventory supply-chain and other processes.

On Paper Vs Reality

December 2020, In a top to the down fashion of supply chain these are the key stakeholders:

1. DSE (Department of Secondary Education), Nagaland
2. Vendors (Publisher)
3. Central Warehouse
4. SDEOs (Sub Divisional Education Officer)
5. School (Principal, Headmaster, Teacher, etc)

As we started to develop our perspective on the objectives stated in the section above. We could see that: On paper, they were stating one thing and inaction they were doing another. For instance:

1. Demand Estimation
   On-Paper
   Enrolment numbers are collated and sent physically from schools to SDEO and eventually DSE. After enrolment numbers are verified and finalized, the required quantity of books is ordered depending on the allocated budget
   Reality
   Instead of reporting actual numbers, schools tend to report exaggerated numbers to prevent a future shortage. SDEOs further increase the demand, where the increment percentage varies from one officer to another with no logic or pattern whatsoever. By the way, don’t act surprised if you come across fake students and dummy schools while verifying government records.
2. Procurement
   On-Paper
   (i) Post, order size finalization procurement process begins with:
   Identification of vendors by SCERT (State Council of Educational Research and Training)
   (ii) Publishers are evaluated by appointed subject experts before finalizing a suitable publisher
   (iii) All shortlisted publishers are informed using DSE’s official channel
   (iv) Publisher prints and dispatches the ordered books to Dimapur central warehouse
   Reality
   For the past 4–5 years there hasn’t been any change in the publisher list. There is no provision for the return/replacement of faulty books. Publishers complain that the official communication reaches them after a minimum delay of one month hence they get less time for printing and dispatching. Neither DSE nor Central warehouse has any record in place on exactly how many books were delivered by a given publisher for a particular subject.
3. Distribution
   On-Paper
   (i) Soon after publishers complete printing a three-tier supply-chain process begins:
   (ii) Tracing consignment from vendor to warehouse
   (iii) Shipping books from Warehouse to SDEO Offices (As schools collect books from SDEOs)
   (iv) Buffer period for managing textbook shortage and reordering (If needed)
   Reality
   Most shipments arrive warehouse, uninformed. A vast majority of ordered books reach Dimapur (warehouse) by December end. A typical Naga academic year starts in January yet the books reach, a significant portion of students, mostly after June. Delivering a shipment to the wrong SDEO is quite common as no track of dispatches is kept. SDEOs distribute books on a first come first serve basis and no account is maintained of books collected by each school. Eventually in case of shortages Teachers and SDEOs personally contact other SDEOs and Schools to check if they have extra copies. If all of this was not enough roughly 30% of the schools have occasional telecom connectivity.

Challenges

January 2021, we kept on accumulating and brewing all micro-challenges that we encountered during our revelation phase. Eventually leading us to segregate these pain points into two macro challenges: Delay and Shortage

1. Delay:
   Receiving books after the start of an academic year is an aggregated outcome of the following:
   (i) Delay in vendor shortlisting and Purchase Order release
   (ii) Delay in textbook content finalization
   (iii) Printing and transportation delay by publishers
   (iv) Limited road and cellular connectivity at last mile
   (v)Unorganized pickup of books by schools
   (vi) No budget for transportation of books from subdivision to schools
   (vii) Delay in balancing excess and shortage across the supply chain
2. Shortage:
   All students never receive all the textbooks, some of the significant factors leading to this scarcity are:
   (i) Demand estimation based on inaccurate enrolment figures
   (ii) No verification of consignment quantity and quality
   (iii) Lack of visibility into inventory issuance and receipt status as well as numbers across various stakeholders of supply chain
   (iv) No accounting for damages and shortages(at time of procurement)
   (v) Poor inventory handling measures because of manpower crunch
   (vi) No provision of stock buffer during demand estimation
   (vii) Senior officers in-person signing for inventory transfer by commuting to the central warehouse

Way Forward

February 2021, roughly 2000 government schools are unevenly placed upon a web of 36,705 kilometres of the road in the state out of which only 1,548 is metalled. Hence the cover image seems pretty apt for portraying the state of textbook supply in Nagaland. The cute toddler represents DSE Nagaland and the autorickshaw being supply chain.

Determined to make significant changes to the present situation we decided to intervene upon two verticals: Policy and Technology. Where policy gets to steer, tech for shifting gears. After scouting sectors for tech engagement, three simple pieces of code were identified for neutralizing the challenges:

1. A mobile app for collecting first-hand student information
2. A mobile app(s) for digitizing the supply chain
3. A web app for DSE to manage, monitor and analyse the inventory distribution

As per the 2011 Census Nagaland has a total population of 1,978,502 and only 3,77,898 internet connections: Telecom Statistics India, 2019. Thereby ensuring offline functional operability became a necessary evil for our mobile applications.