Empowering Village Health and Sanitation Committees in Orissa, India
Devika Biswas (The Humanity is a NGO based in Balangir district in the state of Orissa in India. They have been working with the local communities in 12 villages in Patnagarh block raising awareness in the community about health related entitlements and expenditures and training the local Village Health and Sanitation Committees to make local […]
Monitoring Free Maternal Health Services for institutional delivery in Uttar Pradesh, India
Jashodhara Dasgupta The women leaders of the grassroots organization, Mahila Swasthya Adhikar Manch (MSAM in Uttar Pradesh India) conducted a neighborhood survey in 188 revenue villages of 18 blocks in 10 districts of Uttar Pradesh, to assess women’s experiences of accessing ‘free’ maternal health services in Government hospitals between Sep’11 and March’12. The non-literate women used a […]
Is It Time for a New Paradigm for “Citizen Engagement”? The Role of Context and What the Evidence Tells Us
Almost all development agencies promote some form of citizen engagement and accountability, often framed as ‘voice’, ‘demand-side governance’, ‘demand for good governance’ or ‘social accountability’. The current World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, recently put itthat, “citizen voice can be pivotal in providing the demand-side pressure on government, service providers, and organizations such as the […]
Taxation and Accountability: Experimental Evidence for Taxation’s Effect on Citizen Behavior
A paper by Lucy Martin (Yale) In sub-Saharan Africa, low taxes co-exist with even lower government accountability, seen in high levels of corruption and low public goods provision. While there are existing theories of why taxation might be linked to better governance, many of the microfoundations of this eff ect remain unclear. I argue that taxation impacts governance by […]