Measuring the effectiveness of social audits: experiences from Sikkim,India

India has devolved development funds totalling US$46 billion to 240,000 village self-governments. Social audits are emerging as the main tool to ensure their accountability. This article reports on research that analysed panel data of social audits from 2013 to 2015, along with the evolving policy framework. The research found that irregularities were only in the material component and had declined from 1.74% to 0.40% of expenditure, and that works were being completed at 80% of the sanctioned cost. The article proposes a results framework to measure the effectiveness of social audits that covers their punitive as well as preventive role.     

Coupling a ladder to the safety net: reinventing MGNREGA for asset creation

India’s rural employment act (MGNREGA), the world’s largest public works programme, is designed to guarantee wage employment as a statutory right. It is viewed by many as a drain on the public exchequer, as wages are paid but durable assets are not created. Can this safety net be restructured to double up as a ladder of opportunity for the poor without altering its entitlement-based framework? This article shows that implementing four sets of interventions – policy for household livelihood assets, convergence approaches, pro-poor participatory planning, and strengthening accountability, can accelerate the creation of livelihood assets in the lands of the poor.     

Remembering the Past While Reaching for the Future

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Tibet＇s democratic reform. In an act with a farreaching effect and great significance, the Second Session of the Ninth People＇s Congress of the Tibet Autonomous Region recently designated March 28 to thereafter become the annual Serf Liberation Day. Over the past more than 50 years, I have not only borne intimate witness to the final chapter and subsequent abolition of a system of feudal serfdom that had subsisted for more than one thousand years,