Graam Sabha and Accountability

Using Graam Sabha for evaluating performance of government schemes and field functionaries can serve as an excellent social accountability mechanism which can lead to better service delivery.

Before getting into the topic, I want to inform to readers that this my first blog post. As a person who really hates writing, it is a big ask to write blog posts. But somehow I have rolled up my sleeves want to take up the task of writing and this motivation does not come from within (to speak frankly) but through the encouragement of my colleagues. I want to thank each and every one of them who inspired me, through their writings, and motivated me to write.

When I was thinking what to write lot of topics came over to my mind but I thought I could write about my recent field visit to Chinabonala village in Karimnagar district to attend a Graam Sabha (GS). The objective of this GS is to broadly assess the performance of government schemes in terms of their implementation and also to improve the awareness regarding various village functionaries and their respective functions.

It was a pilot experiment did by Karimnagar district administration as per the instructions of state government and it was named as Prajavedika.

The Process:

1.      A GramSabha was organized with prior intimation about the objective of meeting

2.      All the village level functionaries, who are divided into various groups like welfare, human development etc, will be present.

3.      Each of them should explain their roles and responsibilities and their performance in language understood by the villagers. For example, a Field Assistant in MGNREGA, should explain them no.of job cards in the villages, no.of days of work provided, average wage rate etc

4.      Later people feedback will be taken on the performance indices of each and every official and necessary steps will be taken to improve the performance of the official and delivery.

In short it is a performance audit of various schemes and functionaries by the Graam Sabha.

Accountability is broadly defined as an obligation of those holding power to take responsibility for their behavior and actions with the ultimate objective of improving service delivery to the citizens who have given them their mandate.¹ As accountability is one of the crucial factors for good governance and effective service delivery upholding the same is very important.

The performance of the field functionaries, in fact most of the officials, is evaluated only quantitative basis and the authenticity of the same is also sometimes questionable. But when it comes to some qualitative aspects like behavior of the official, discrimination by official, response time etc are not evaluated in the regular performance metrics or annual appraisal of an officer. But platforms like Graamsabha will not only authenticate the quantitative aspect but also qualitative part of the performance. Even though there is a large scope of improving the accountability, there are some short comings of the above process. People are not opening up against some departments like revenue and police with a fear of later consequences. People are feeling difficult to understand the performance of indices of the officials as the latter are mostly using official language. The whole activity is time taking because of which because of which people are losing interest and started moving out. The major challenge is people participation in the GS which a huge challenge right from its inception. But this can be addressed if this activity offers some value to the people.

Overall the whole exercise proved to be successful in which people get to know about various government schemes and the functions of various officials. This will not only increase awareness but also help in clearing any gaps existing in terms of delivery. By correcting short comings the whole process can serve as an excellent Social accountability mechanism which ultimately results in effective service delivery.