| Accountability and Governance

Course Summary:

How do people hold the state accountable between elections? What are the democratic interfaces through which people engage with the state every day to claim basic entitlements, ask questions and participate in decisions that affect their well-being? What role can these institutions, procedures and mechanisms of accountability play when democracy in contemporary India itself faces fundamental challenges?

In this course we will seek to answer many such questions and deepen our understanding of the promises and limits of democracy itself through the lens of social accountability. Social accountability is a vast and diverse field of research and action across the world and tackles big questions such as how to govern, who governments should be answerable to and how. At its core therefore, practices and institutions of social accountability seek to redefine the relationship between citizens and the state. Social accountability encompasses a range of practices from very local, community led experiments to constitutionally-backed rights, deploying new technologies, across sectors such as health, education, land governance and resource extraction.

Over the last two decades, India has developed its own conceptual, legal and institutional terrain of social accountability practices through deep contestation and engagement between civil society, peoples’ movements and government, at the national and state levels. This course will trace the evolution of debates and practices of social accountability in India while also bringing these into conversation with comparable cases from others parts of the world. The course will also draw on empirical work from the disciplines of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology. We do want to highlight that the structure and substance of the course is firmly rooted in practice and has been shaped by the articulation and everyday experiences of ordinary people seeking accountability from the state. Through carefully curated sessions, a mix of readings and occasional guest speakers, we will strive to bring a view from the ground into the classroom.