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Show me the money: new approaches to accountability

How can poor people fight corruption? To do so demands resources that socially marginalised groups often simply do not have: organisational strength to stand up to local elites, access to official information, technical skills to analyse accounts, and legal resources to prosecute violations.

Research on innovative grassroots anti-corruption struggles in India has shown that these are not insurmountable obstacles. This three-year study has identified practical techniques for combating local corruption and enhancing public accountability to the poor.

The range of grassroots anti-corruption initiatives examined in this Institute of Development Studies-based research included a workers’ and peasants’ union in rural Rajasthan protesting at officials pocketing part of workers’ wages on employment-generation schemes, small groups of women slum-dwellers in Mumbai fighting against the diversion of subsidised food for the poor to the open market, and lower-caste and women’s groups in Goa and Kerala struggling to ensure that development resources earmarked for their use were not withheld by officials.

Common to each was a protracted struggle to obtain official information on anti-poverty expenditures, and an effort to compare these against observed mis-spending or non-delivery. Each of these groups sought means of deciphering complex official information that would allow poor people to determine whether corruption had occurred. The Rajasthan group, for instance, read out official accounts and hundreds of receipts and wage-payment registers in dramatic public hearings in villages, inviting local workers and contractors to confirm whether they had indeed received the wages or payments as recorded. Where discrepancies were identified, officials were asked to explain them. If they could not, they were accused of corruption, and in some cases, admitted to it and returned monies to village coffers.

Key findings include:

There are practical and effective means for poor people to expose corruption. These include collective public audits of local accounts, informal vigilance committees to monitor delivery of services, or technical committees relying on qualified volunteers assessing the quality of publicly-funded infrastructure or services.
However, there are limits on the capacity of the poor to hold the state to account. Challenging official malpractice poses high social and time costs on the poor, threatening their relationships with elite benefactors. And in most cases, no matter how compelling the prima facie evidence of corruption, it is nearly impossible to provoke the police or local administration into making an effective formal investigation.

Ideally, citizens’ accountability initiatives need to seek partnership with the state in order to be effective and have an impact beyond the local level. Key conditions for making citizen-state accountability partnerships effective include:

legal standing or formal recognition for non-governmental observers within policy-making arenas or institutions of public sector oversight
a continuous presence for these observers throughout the process of the agency’s work
full rights to official documentary information on accounts and the basis for decision-making
the right of observers to issue dissenting report directly to legislative bodies
the right of service users to demand a formal investigation and/or seek legal redress for poor decision-making, abuse of human rights, or non-delivery of public services.

These conditions go considerably beyond the terms upon which civil society groups are currently invited to ‘dialogue’ or ‘consult’ with policy-makers to improve public-sector responsiveness. They are, however, crucial to establishing accountability: they enable people to obtain answers from officials, and to impose effective sanctions for improper actions.

Source(s):
'Hybrid Forms of Accountability: Citizen Engagement in Institutions of Public-Sector Oversight in India', Public Management Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 by Anne Marie Goetz and Robert Jenkins, 2001
'Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right to Information Movement in India', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 20 (3): 603-622, by Robert Jenkins and Anne Marie Goetz, 1999
'Gender-sensitive local auditing - Initiatives from India to build accountability to women', Development Outreach, World Bank, Washington D.C., Spring 2001, by Anne Marie Goetz and Robert Jenkins

Funded by: Department for International Development-UK (ESCOR), Ford Foundation (Delhi office), ESRC Project No: R000237885

id21 Research Highlight: 27 March 2002

Further Information:
Anne-Marie Goetz
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 606261
Fax: +44 (0)1273 621202
Contact the contributor: amgoetz@beaconsfield.u-net.com

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

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