Grassroots Anti-Corruption Initiatives and the Right-to-Information Movement in India. Final research report

Abstract

This study documented selected efforts by citizens in India to fight the kind of corruption which most directly afflicts the poor: namely, the appropriation or diversion of anti-poverty resources by officials, or lax enforcement of labour and environmental regulations. Particular attention was paid to the way a right to information could support citizen's efforts to obtain better accountability. Anti-corruption initiatives in five Indian states were observed over three years to enable the researchers to draw conclusions about the conditions for their success, and about the practical innovations that make public institutions of policy oversight more directly accountable to the poor. The research findings have attracted considerable interest from international development policy-makers, and from development activists in India, because the research identifies effective ways in which citizens can improve public accountability. A considerable number of published outputs in local journals and magazines, as well as in academic journals, have ensured the dissemination of the research findings in India and internationally