Project Type: Current Projects

The ‘Theory and Practice of Social Accountability’ project seeks to build an evidence base and public archive of transparency, accountability and participatory governance practices in India.

Project Overview

Civil society organisations in India and the government have been pioneers in collaboratively designing and institutionalising practical interventions that are aimed at deepening democratic governance such as proactive disclosure of government information, social audits and citizen oversight, transparency in decision making, facilitation support in accessing basic entitlements, and grievance redress. While these initiatives have demonstrated the possibilities of scaling social accountability at scale for the rest of the world, serious challenges remain.

Resistance to reform, social exclusion, resource constraints, weak feedback mechanisms and considerable variation across states opens up many avenues for new research. Empirical research which unpacks the functioning and challenges of grounding social accountability platforms in India is thin and has not kept pace with legal, institutional, and technological developments.

Objective

This project, situated at the intersection of policy research and practice, will focus on bridging this gap and creating a network of institutions and individuals — within government, civil society and academic institutions — to conceptualise, build, and assess the implementation of social accountability reforms in India and beyond.

The two year-project project started in September 2024 and is funded by the International Budget Partnership, USA.

The project has two main components:

(I) Research

The project will produce three types of research based outputs. First, review of laws, policies and data on accountability and transparency in public service delivery and governance in India. This will include a comparative study of central and state grievance redress portals, the functioning of independent citizen oversight bodies, implementation of social impact assessment rules amongst others. Second, a multi-state, field-based study that examines the social and political life of accountability platforms will be conducted in the second year of the project. Third, resources and toolkits for strengthening public accountability systems.

(II) Dialogue

The project will bring together various stakeholders from government and civil society who are at the forefront of research and practice on transparency and accountability in India. Workshops and seminars held over the course of this project will focus on developing a shared agenda and strategies for improving public accountability. These dialogues will also provide critical inputs into the research design that will be undertaken by the project.

Starting July 2024, NLSIU has embarked on an ambitious research project on promoting women’s leadership in court-centred legal practice in India.

Project Overview

Women formally entered the profession in the country through the Legal Practitioners (Women) Act, 1923. Up until then, women could not practice law. The change in law was prompted by the experience of Ragina Guha. After completing her law degree from Calcutta University, Regina Guha applied to be admitted to practice in the Alipore district court. However, her application was rejected on the ground that women were not “persons” who could be licensed to practice under the Legal Practitioners Act, 1879.  Though the Act did not expressly exclude women from practicing law, the Calcutta High Court held that the Act did not intend “such a radical change in the constitution of the profession … as would be caused by the admission of women.”  This was in 1916. It would take until 1923 for the legislature to pass the Legal Practitioners (Women) Act, allowing women to practice law in India. By then Regina Guha had passed away and did not get to practice law only because she was a woman.

A century later, the profession still lacks adequate representation of women at all levels. While women in India today enrol for law degrees and court-centred legal practice in large numbers, their representation in practice remains small: as of 2022, women make up only around 15% of the nearly 1.8 million lawyers admitted to practice in the country. Women’s representation falls even further in leadership and decision-making positions within the profession: just 3.4% of designated Senior Advocates are women. The Bar Council of India does not have a single woman while only 9 out of 441 (2.04 %) elected posts across the state bar councils are women.

Objective

Through evidence-based research, the project seeks to highlight structural barriers hindering women’s participation and growth at different levels. Drawing from the research, the project will design and implement suitable collectivising and empowerment initiatives and engage with stakeholders to foreground systemic reform. These elements, we believe, will generate conditions for change-making efforts by women lawyers and galvanize a radical change in legal practice, interpretation, and justice delivery, especially for marginal communities.

Expected Outputs

As a first step, the project will develop a strategy and vision document that will explain main problems with the legal profession as it impacts women’s participation and growth; articulate a reform vision; and identify change strategies based on consultations with the key stakeholders. The strategy document will be ready by March 2025 and will shape the University’s research and intervention activities on this subject.

The project is supported by DASRA, US.