Reports

Holding the State to Account: Citizen Monitoring in Action

Many people in the developing world are concerned about the erosion in the accountability and performance of their governments. These citizens, in many countries, are pessimistic about the prospects to improve this desperate situation. It is against this backdrop that this book explores the potential of civil society in using citizen feedback on the government's functions, especially its provision of public services as a means to improve performance and responsiveness. It narrates the actual experience of one city in India, namely, Bangalore, where experiments along these lines were carried out. I believe that these experiments are replicable and can be scaled up. The specific findings and the impact they made in Bangalore may be unique to Bangalore. But the method and approach used are of wider relevance and can be applied in many other settings to deal with similar problems. In fact, this has already happened.