From vote to voice

Across India, civil society has been mobilising and empowering India's aam-aadmi to
question their government. This new accountability agenda marks the beginning of a
process to deepen democracy in India, says Yamini Aiyar

It is a hot summer's day in April 2009. Palaspani, a sleepy village tucked in the far
corner of Sehore district, Madhya Pradesh, has been brought to life by a motley crew
of activists and researchers. They have spent the last three days making report cards
on the learning levels of children at the government-run primary school. The crew
spoke to parents, teachers and others. They gathered information on school
expenditures, the Parent-Teachers Association (PTA), and other school-related
activities. The exercise is about to come to an end with a village meeting to share the
findings.

Less than 50% of the children can identify letters, words and numbers correctly. Most
PTA members rarely meet or interact with the school. People seem to know little about
where and how money has been spent. A discussion ensues. For the first time, people
in the village begin to ask questions: Why don't our children learn? What does the
school spend its money on? As the sun sets and the meeting comes to an end, the
PTA resolves to monitor the school and hold it accountable for teaching the children.

Palaspani's story is not unusual. Across the country, India's civil society has been
actively mobilising and empowering India's aam-aadmi to question their government
and hold it to account. Through these efforts, it has gone beyond its traditional
watchdog or vigilance function to involve itself directly in the everyday functions of the
state. These initiatives have empowered citizens to engage directly in budget-making,
planning, auditing and monitoring the performance of public sector officials. Citizens
are now asking questions and demanding answers directly from their governments. In
the words of political scientist Anne Marie Goetz, this hints at the emergence of a "new
accountability agenda", one that will fundamentally redefine how accountability is
sought.

Civil society's accountability efforts are premised on the recognition that information is

www.infochangeindia.org
power. People have a right to know what their government does and how government
funds are being spent. Information allows people to question government and to
participate in government. Most importantly, it allows people to hold government to
account for its promises.

But public access to information has never been easy. In the early-1990s, the Mazdoor
Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), the now-famous people's organisation in Rajasthan,
led what is undoubtedly civil society's greatest victory in the struggle for accountability:
the movement for the right to information. It took over ten long years of mobilisation,
agitation and activism before the Government of India passed the Right to Information
Act in 2005. The Act is now being used regularly by civil society organisations across
the country to encourage a culture of transparency and expose wrongdoing in
government functioning.

Civil society organisations have drawn upon a number of innovative tools to pursue the
new accountability agenda. One innovation is budget analysis and advocacy. Budget
analysis aims to demystify the budget and present it in a comprehensible manner for
the general public. It also involves finding out how much has been allocated to the
social sector and holding the government to its commitments to the poor. The Delhi-
based Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) is one example.
CBGA organises an annual consultation where civil society organisations come
together to place their demands for the budget, in order to involve them in the budget
process. Another innovative strategy adopted by CBGA is the annual people's debate
on the budget. This debate takes place the day after the budget is presented to
Parliament and is an effort to strengthen the aam-aadmi's voice in budgetary debates.

Social audit is another powerful tool. Pioneered by the MKSS, a social audit is a
process whereby citizens compare state-reported expenditures with actual monies
spent. Evidence is gathered through interactions with participants in development
projects, physical verification of schemes, and interviews with local-level panchayat
members and line department officials. Findings from the audit are then shared with
government officials in a public forum. The public hearing is the most powerful aspect
of the social audit. By bringing people together to directly engage and question
government officials, it immediately challenges entrenched power relations and
empowers the poorest and most marginalised sections of society. Social audits are
now mandatory, by law, under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
(NREGA). Since its launch, civil society organisations have been conducting social
audits all across the country often in partnership with local administrative officials.

The government of Andhra Pradesh has gone a step further by institutionalising social
audits. To do this, it has collaborated with CSOs to build up a 35-member team that

www.infochangeindia.org
facilitates and manages the audit process. The team trains educated village youth who
conduct the actual audit. Andhra Pradesh now holds an average of 64 audits a month.

Apart from tracking expenditures, CSOs are also involved in efforts to engage citizens
in evaluating outcomes of public expenditures. One innovative effort is the Annual
Survey of Education Report (ASER), facilitated by Pratham, a Delhi-based CSO
working to strengthen education in India. ASER is a countrywide survey that collects
data on learning levels among schoolchildren. They have developed a simple tool that
tests the learning levels of schoolchildren in reading, comprehension, and arithmetic.
Started in 2005, ASER involves over 15,000 CSOs and volunteers. As a result, it is
now possible to measure the yearly progress of learning levels across states, draw
inter-state comparisons and, most importantly, make policymakers answerable for the
funds being spent on primary education.

Civil society has also begun to engage with the electoral process to push for greater
political accountability. This involves monitoring elected representatives, publicising
information on their performance, and pushing for public disclosure of a candidate's
assets, as well as criminal and financial records. The run-up to the recent Lok Sabha
elections saw the emergence of a number of new efforts to improve the standard of
candidates contesting the elections and to keep criminals out of the electoral fray. This
work is still in a nascent phase. However, it marks an important transition in civil
society activism, which had stayed away from engaging directly with political parties.

These are just a few examples of the new accountability agenda. Its greatest strength
is that it empowers citizens and deepens democratic action. These initiatives have
challenged the deeply entrenched power relations in which much of India lives, by
opening up spaces for the poorest and most disempowered to participate in
governance and by supporting them in demanding their rights. The new accountability
agenda marks the beginnings of a change in mindset towards the state. It shows a
recognition of the right to participate and the right to have one's voice heard. Most
importantly, it marks the beginning of a process to deepen democracy in India where
people participate in government not just through their vote but also through their
voice.

(Yamini Aiyar is currently a Senior Research Fellow and Director of the

accountability initiative (http://www.accountabilityindia.org
) being set up at the Centre for Policy Research)

Infochange News & Features, November 2009

www.infochangeindia.org