Demand Side of Accountability

By R.S. Murali

In thought-provoking fashion,R. S.Murali contemplates the problems facing the decision makers of India in the twenty first century. Accountability in governance is the key issue today and the world is looking for some approach to understand the same. He examines in detail the demand side of accountability for the first time ever and provides an in-depth analysis, and means, for all the stakeholders, particularly the policy makers and researchers. The ATA model (the accountability- ansparencyactionability trio) arising out of this research is bound to be a useful tool for those involved in conceptualization, implementation or evaluation of accountability/transparency. This book, the result of his research based on hard urban data, makes compelling reading, and is a must-read for both policy-makers and those affected by such policies.


This book is being released at a time when the national debate is dominated by the elections to the 16th Lok Sabha.The UPA which has been ruling the country for nearly a decade after the 2004 elections has left a very poor track record of governance marked by a series of high profile scams and brazen corruption. The three recent agitations led by three charismatic leaders Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev and Arvind Kejriwal have made accountability and good governance especially with the focus on eradicating corruption from public life the key issue. In this context, well conceived ideas for good governance become vital to add depth to the contents of the debates. More importantly they may have an impact in the framing of the public policies of the incoming government.
N VITTAL
Retd. Chief Vigilance Commissioner

This book is an important contribution to the literature on public accountability and transparency, offering valuable conceptual models, grounded in the reality of urban life through a case study of Chennai.
Samuel Paul
Founder, Public Affairs Centre and former Director, IIMA

A must-read for anyone interested in the challenges of fixing our cities, and the role played by systemic reforms related to information, accountability and participation in improving urban services. The book Demand side of Accountability brings much-needed rigour to the critical element in a city-systems
framework, and holds much value for practitioners as well as policy makers. It deserves wide dissemination and discussion.
Ramesh Ramanathan
Convener, Janaagraha

A major effort in understanding the theoretical underpinnings of governance in civic bodies.
M.R.Sivaraman
Retd. Expenditure Secretary, Government of India

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Apr 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9789383416127

Book preview

Demand Side of Accountability

A Policy and Research Perspective

R.S. Murali

Notion Press

5 Muthu Kalathy Street, Triplicane,

Chennai - 600 005

First Published by Notion Press 2015

Copyright © R.S. Murali 2015

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-93-83416-12-7

This book has been published in good faith that the work of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to make the material error-free. However, the author and the publisher disclaim the responsibility.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

Abbreviations

Prologue

1. Genesis of Accountability

2. Demand Side of Accountability

3. The Case of the Urban Sector

4. Examining the Demand Side of Accountability in the Urban Sector – the Case of Chennai City

5. The Stakeholders’ Role – the Role of Citizens in Demanding Accountability

6. Statistical Validity of the Research Findings

7. ATA© Model – Robustness and its Applicability for Good Governance

Epilogue

Appendix A: Research Methodology, Survey, Validity, Reliability

Appendix B: Tables relating to Chapter 4

Appendix C: Demography Based Tables relating to Chapter 6

Appendix D: Bibliography& References

Preface

Abdul Kalam’s dream is every Indian’s dream! By 2020 India has to be a developed country in every respect. While India seems to definitely grow in various fields, there are several issues that are cropping up very fast - inflation, corruption, division between the rich and the poor, unemployment, so on and so forth.

As a professional, as a researcher and above all as a practicing consultant working in the urban sector, I attribute this anomaly to the lack of accountability in the system. The decision makers who decide the fate of the citizens and other stakeholders in the sector, in most cases, do not seem to be aware of the ground realities. Also many of the acts, rules, practices and systems followed in the sector are generally archaic and need total revamping. There are actually amazing activities that are taking place in the name of reforms across almost all the states in India. Unfortunately, these initiatives are caught in between the nexus of politics and bureaucracy.

This work that is empirical in nature is based on a study carried out in Corporation of Chennai area. However, the learnings arising from the study are equally applicable to any of the ULB in India.

One of the major aspects of governance that has been fascinating me is the democratic role of the organizations that are supposed to work for the citizens. Local bodies (termed correctly local government) do not act as citizens’ organizations. The representative democracy is overpowering participatory democracy. Unless participatory democracy is practiced there is no real freedom.

The decision makers and stakeholders in the urban sector suffer basically from two drawbacks: lack of required information and lack of analytical tools. Even for day to day decision-making the stakeholders refer to some studies or published statistics, but fail to look into their own internal information systems.

This book is a byproduct of my passion and research. Is there a way we can assess the extent of accountability prevalent in our local bodies? Can accountability be measured? Has accountability been defined properly? Are only the service providers accountable? Is not every stakeholder accountable? What should be the proper design of an accountability programme? Lingering questions such as these made me undertake this research and look at some of these things in my own city – Chennai.

My experience in the field plus the research outputs enabled me come up with TAF – Total Accountability Framework – based on which the demand and supply side of accountability can be conceptualized. Studies until now have examined accountability only from the providers’ side (which I call as supply side), that is the government or the local body.

The study undertaken here can be termed an exploratory one, being a first of its kind on two accounts. One, the demand side of accountability is examined in this book – the people who demand the accountability i.e. the citizens, take a centre stage in this book. Earlier studies have focused on the supply side, i.e., from the side of the service providers – the government. Secondly, the ATA© Model - Accountability-Transparency-Actionability Model - developed out of this research, is purely a product of this research. It has been developed out of ground realities (bottom-up approach – citizens upwards) and can thus be expected to provide guidance to the various stakeholders in the future (particularly to the policy makers to devise a balanced programme, and researchers/analysts to examine and evaluate various elements of programmes) to study, design, and implement accountability in a holistic fashion.

I suspect that the book has an overdose of tables and quantitative analyses. The intention has been to support every aspect of analyses based on real data. I have tried my best to make the interpretation simple and useful.

Value to this work is added by Hirschmann’s Voice-Exit model. The extension of the same – EVLN model – has been used to study the behaviour of the citizens to various issues and concerns arising out of the service and infrastructure provided in the urban sector. The options available to the citizens are also examined based on real life data.

The role of the citizens is very crucial for a participatory democracy. The extent of participation is decided by the knowledge and their willingness to be part of the systems. These elements are also examined in this book. There are also a set of people who are what I call ‘indifferent’ to the entire process of urban governance.

This book is presented in a different form being between a research book and a generic book. Yes, the book can be classified as technical in the sense that it deals with various technical concepts with regard to urban governance. But every such concept discussed has been supported by hard data. Readers not much interested in the data can skip the tables provided but kindly go through the findings – many of them are really interesting! I have supported the findings in this book with as much scientific approach as possible. Being the first of its kind, there is not much precedence to refer to and the analyses have necessarily been data driven and not based on earlier studies. The Appendix provided in this regard would help researchers to understand efforts undertaken to establish the validity and reliability of the instruments used for the study.

I am sure that this book will be useful for policy makers in the government, executives working in various stakeholder organizations in the urban sector, the executives of the ULB, researchers, consultants, and students.

I thank the publishers Notion Press who have accepted this work as worthy of publication.

This book would not have been possible without the support of my wife Dr.Nithya Murali who helped me with inputs on my outputs!

The deficiencies, if any, in this book are solely due to me.

This book is dedicated to all my Gurus who have made me what I am!

R.S.Murali

Chennai, February, 2014

Abbreviations

Prologue

When I got down at the Central Station I could not believe my eyes. The station was extremely clean, there was no noise apart from the movement of passengers (the luggage trolleys had rubber wheels and wouldn’t screech!). The striking point was that the porters did not jump into the compartment before the train stopped. There was an order in the way the passengers moved slowly out of the platform in a few minutes without any rush or push.

The scene outside was much more pleasing. The multilingual boards kept in the exit gates showed us the path to the bus, auto-rickshaw, and taxi stands, and the directions to suburban railway station and car park were also quite visible. More important, there was no tout or driver falling on you asking you to board his vehicle. I could identify each of these drivers (standing far away from the passengers and restricted to their allocated area) by their uniforms, and their ID cards were visible for inspection. There were also uniformed guides (seemed to be homeguards on training) who were guiding passengers to their chosen means of transport and exit. In no time I could get into an auto rickshaw. This was great – the auto rickshaw line was well organised with clear markings on the ground as to where one had to stand with luggage and get in. Arrangements were made in such a way that passengers with luggage and the aged passengers could get in without disturbing others or delaying others in line. I was surprised to note that the auto had a different type of meter – it had a distance meter and not a fare meter. The rates for various distances and the minimum charges were displayed prominently in the auto, and I could calculate exactly what it would cost me and also the time it would take to reach my destination. This was great!

During the drive to my destination I was in for a lot of pleasant surprises! I could have never believed that the previous night the city had had an historical downpour. There was absolutely no sign of any water stagnation except that some portions of the road were still wet. The auto could turn out of the station easily into the main road as there were no intercepting pedestrians and hawkers. The roads were extremely clean with all the platforms well made for pedestrians to walk. I told the auto driver that I needed to buy a water bottle as I was thirsty. He politely said that he would stop in the next service lane where he could park the vehicle for a while and I could finish my purchase. We actually did it without any hassles to the traffic or to the pedestrians. I also saw that the auto had a small garbage bin, and the driver said that if I had to dispose off the PET water bottle I had in my hand, I could use the bin.

The traffic was heavy but orderly. When my auto was about to reach the end of the lane in which we were going, the traffic lamp turned amber and immediately the auto stopped. There was no screeching of the brakes being applied in other vehicles as all the vehicles stopped in a row in an orderly fashion without breaking lane discipline. I did not find any flutter or impatience in my auto driver or any other vehicle on the road. The pedestrians who were allowed to cross at that time did so without any panic.

The auto started again when I saw a huge blue colored vehicle with the city Corporation emblem. I asked the driver what this vehicle was. He said that it was the garbage recycle vehicle which collected the garbage from the allocated areas of the city as and when required (not just once or twice a day) and would, while moving, process some portion of the sorted garbage. The citizens sort the garbage at source and place them in the respective colored garbage cans across the city. The vehicle would do the rounds many times a day and would see to it that the garbage was kept as per standard levels. The garbage recycle vehicle was very clean and shining!

I recognised a familiar landmark in the city to my right where the Corporation used to run its school. It seemed to have got replaced by a private company. The building looked renewed and well maintained. I saw a set of students going into the building in neat and tidy uniforms. The students looked well groomed and healthy. There were other students at the traffic signal waiting for their turn to cross the road. The road had several overhead pathways and subways for the pedestrians to cross without hurting the traffic or without getting hurt by the traffic. Even at the morning school/office rush time there seemed to be order and discipline on the road which eased the atmosphere.

I was also surprised at the greenery along the way. All the roads seemed well planned using every piece of land available to raise plants and creepers, which seemed to be maintained by a set of trained and creative gardeners. The lush green look of the city was so pleasing to my eyes and heart.

One striking feature on the streets was that they did not look crowded, not only due to pedestrian crossings but also due to the excellent network of bus, metro rail and monorail transportation system the city had adopted and implemented well. I got to know from the auto driver that senior citizens, physically challenged, and students have been given passes that could be interchangeably used in all these modes of transport. Even the daily tickets could be interchangeably used. I was feeling so nice.

When I was about to get down at my destination, I saw a demonstration rally taking place for some public cause. The demonstration was peaceful with the participants having large printed placards and staging their protest in the place provided in the prominent park abutting the main road. There was a platform in which the demonstrators could express their opinion, but I understood there were restrictions on the number of participants and also the decibel level that the demonstrators could reach. There was also a team of police officials standing there to handle any law and order problem.

As I entered the locality I had to reach, and entered the community, the community office asked me for some basic information about where I was going to stay and with whom, etc. They also noted down the auto rickshaw details. I wished they had better technology to record these data.

I got down at my destination; saw the meter that showed the running kilometers and based on the fare card I paid the auto driver. The fare was about the same as displayed on the auto stand board in the station. The auto driver gave me his card and said I could call him in case I wanted to use him for other trips. He also said that in case he was already engaged, he would send someone else from a nearby location. He also said I could give feedback about his services to the city Corporation through sms or a call or email, or even log into the city website and give my opinion and suggestions.

I comfortably went to the flat I had to go with the kind help of the auto driver who moved my luggage inside the premises and I rang the doorbell.

The doorbell woke me ... and I got up … from my DREAM!

1

Genesis of Accountability

This chapter is presented in four parts: Part I discusses the preliminaries, and provides an introduction to concept of accountability; Part II discusses what is urban sector, and why urban sector and urban governance have been taken up for discussion in this book. Part III provides the basis for the ‘demand side of accountability’. The chapter concludes with an introduction to Total Accountability Framework (TAF) in Part IV.

Part I: Why Accountability?

To a large extent the environment we live in influences our day to day living. Are we breathing clean air? Are the roads without potholes and without traffic jams? Is the garbage removed properly and are the roads clean? Are the drains clear and not clogged? Are the flyovers and walkways comfortable and safe?

These are some of the questions pertaining to daily life in any part of a country. But these are more relevant to the cities in a developing country like India, as such countries are moving to become predominantly urban.

An urban area¹ is characterized by higher population density and vast human features in comparison to areas surrounding it. Urban areas may be cities, towns or conurbations, but the term is not commonly extended to rural settlements such as villages and hamlets. Urban accountability, or accountability in the urban areas, is the focus of this book.

When questions as those above are asked in a country like India the most common answer would be a big NO for sure. Even after several decades of Independence these conditions have not improved, and who is responsible for this? The politicians? The bureaucrats? The citizens? – in reality all of them share the responsibility. When such a responsibility is shunned what is to be done? Do they know they are accountable? Do they know to what extent they are accountable? – are some of the questions that need to be answered.

This book looks at the urban governance from the perspective of the demand side i.e. from the side of ‘people’ or citizens. Do the people demand what they want? Are they aware that they need to demand? Are they prepared to play their role in order to demand accountability? There is enough literature about how the supply side – in this specific case the urban government – does not deliver the services. But there is also accountability from the demand side not only in demanding the services but also in taking an active part in the entire process of accountability.

In a democratic society governance needs to move from representative mode to participatory mode. Unless the stakeholders participate true developments do not take place. The most important stakeholder – the citizen – seems to be the least participant in the whole picture. This book looks at various aspects relating to ‘demand side of accountability’ in the case of the urban sector right from governance to participation.

This research, on which this book is based, has developed the ATA© Model in order to conceptualize a total accountability. This model is used to assess the demand side of accountability. The model has used hard data from the city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu in order to test the conceptualization, for further use by various stakeholders. The book has used the EVLN model to assess the attitude of the citizens towards urban services in order to get better insight about the demand side of accountability.

The research findings in this book and the methodology that is discussed in various chapters can be used by policy makers/researchers to assess the status of accountability in their country, state, district or locality.

Governance: The Importance of Accountability and Transparency

A country performs as well as it is governed. Governance relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It is a specific part of the overall management or leadership processes that takes decision for the benefit of the citizens or