Accountability Initiative

My name is Yamini Aiyar. I am the Director of Accountability Initiative. The project was set up in 2008 with a startup grant from Google, through a program called Inform and Empower. The original idea was to try and address three main gaps in the accountability space in India.

First, there were different initiatives across the country, but each was done in a small-targeted pocket. There was very little effort to create a network to see how some of these efforts could be taken to a larger scale. Second, there was very little documentation and analytical thinking about it. Different groups and NGOs were experimenting with different tools and methods, and had documented them. But they hadn’t been pooled together in an analytical frame to try and understand what the implications of these new efforts are. Third, we wanted to try and see how to engage policymakers around the issue of accountability. Each individual accountability tool or NGO had its own methods. We thought it would be interesting to try and pool them together on a common platform, to see if there was a way of having sustained engagement at the policy level.

So we started up with some trial and error, and it built into a larger program, which has to some extent gone beyond the initial mandate of the project. Accountability Initiative is based out of the Centre for Policy Research, which is a larger think tank.

To create a network we started having annual/biannual seminars and conferences which bring together activists, academics, practitioners and policy-makers. Our primary interest was also to see if there were ways of disseminating information on how government functions, as a way of promoting accountability on public service delivery, and it was in this sort of quest that we evolved our flagship project, called PAISA (“money”). This essentially is a collaboration with the National Institute of Public Finance Policy (NIPFP) and the Aser Center.

The collaboration to develop scalable practical tools to track government programmes, and the starting point was elementary education. The idea was not to restrict ourselves to simply developing tools and collecting data, but also to experiment with innovative ways of sharing this data back into the planning process, so that the data itself can be used in a manner that strengthens accountability. We are trying to push greater transparency and put that data in the public domain.

Our big vision is to promote an informed and accountable public delivery system. We do this in two ways. For such a system to exist, the government system has to exist in a form that is transparent and responsive to citizens’ needs, and citizens must be empowered with information so they can place their demands and push for greater accountability. All our work is to pull these two threads together. PAISA and Expenditure Track are examples of that. The second aspect of our work is to generate debate on the accountability issue.

We’ve had effect, but I don’t know if we’ve had impact. We are only two years old, and it’s too early to judge, but the media has picked up on us quite a bit, especially around the budget. Last year, for instance, we ran two series — one with a business newspaper called Mint on budgetary documents on public service expenditure. That was new, because usually around budget time there is a lot of talk about allocation or what the budget will mean for big businesses, etc., but there is very little talk about what the budget means for service delivery reforms. Even the talks on allocation are usually about how much the government will be spending, rather than how well the government has spent in the past, and what should be reflected in the new budget. We also did a series with a TV channel. They often used our data to kick start some of their discussions, and invited us on the panel.

We’ve been interacting a lot with the government, to the extent that our reports are being read by government, and to the extent that they, by and large, agree with our findings.

At least the issue is on the table and we have had a little bit of debate around it.
The hits on our website are slowly increasing. We hope this new, more friendly website attracts more users. Our membership on Facebook is rising steadily. We should be able to attract wider public engagement. We are getting better known in the field, and that is a sign of effect.

In terms of a long-term impact, I don’t know if we’ve made too much of a dent there. The vision is contributing to a systemic reform. I don’t know if we can make that happen, but we can at least chip in that direction.

We believe in engaging with the government, and at every level. We see ourselves as collectors of data, which the government should have access to. We are demonstrators of innovations that we hope the government notices and picks up and runs with. We want to create models. In order that the government uses these models, we believe in advocacy.

The idea evolved from what was happening in the accountability space. So yes, we were very influenced by that. We were also influenced by participatory tracking methodologies implemented in India and Africa by the World Bank and by social audit methodologies and the RTI [right to information] movement. We were influenced by the Aser Center. These influences have helped us shape our work.

We work with the Aser Center, NIPFP, the Centre for Development Finance, Social Watch, the Center for Budget and Government Accountability, the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies, India Governs and IDS-Sussex. We engage a lot with civil society organizations.