Indian state empowers poor to fight corruption, By Lydia Polgreen, December 2, 2010, New York Times: “The village bureaucrat shifted from foot to foot, hands clasped behind his back, beads of sweat forming on his balding head. The eyes of hundreds of wiry village laborers, clad in dusty lungis, were fixed upon him. A group of auditors, themselves villagers, read their findings. A signature had been forged for the delivery of soil to rehabilitate farmland. The soil had never arrived, and about $4,000 was missing. The bureaucrat, a low-level field assistant who uses the single name Sreekanth, was suspected of stealing it. ‘I am a very rightful person,’ he declared. But the presiding official would have none of it. He ordered that the money be recovered and that Mr. Sreekanth be promptly disciplined. That simple verdict was part of a sweeping experiment in grass-roots democracy in rural India aimed at ensuring that the benefits of government programs for the poor actually go to the poor. It empowers villagers to act as watchdogs and to perform ‘social audits’ like the one that meted out quick justice to Mr. Sreekanth. Their success or failure could have broad implications for India’s quest to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty