ANSA-SAR

Affiliated Network for Social Accountability – South Asia Region (ANSA-SAR) was initiated in 2009 with a seed grant from the World Bank Institute. The primary objective of this network is to enhance and scale up social accountability initiatives in the South Asia; and create linkages and synergies between different actors and institutions to synergize and enhance efforts on the demand side of governance. Over the past years, ANSA has provided small grants for experimenting and scaling up micro-level social accountability initiatives by existing and emerging actors, especially civil society organizations that work at the grassroots; has conducted and supported research, development of knowledge products on specific social accountability; and helped build capacities and competencies of civil society as well as public institutions through workshops, conference and peer-learning efforts. These are complemented with deepened initiatives in-country, with a significant knowledge and innovation component – to serve as an "incubator" of new ideas and approaches to social accountability in South Asia.

GOVERNANCE NOW

Governance Now is a multimedia initiative for participatory reportage and analyses related to governance of all institutions and processes that are vital to public life in India. Currently, it is available as a fortnightly magazine and a website. Launched on January 26, 2010, it has established itself as a platform for people-centric and reader-friendly journalism. Taking this new brand of engaged journalism a step further, it started an initiative called Saranda Governance Laboratory to track state efforts to counter Maoism with development – by stationing Sarthak Ray, our reporter, in Jharkhand forests for months. His reportage, often critical of the establishment and the sluggish implementation of the plan, was appreciated by rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, the force behind the plan. At a lecture in New Delhi on grassroots governance, Ramesh especially mentioned how some of Sarthak's inputs enabled the government to change rules that became hurdles in the implementation of the plan. Our own take-away from the initiative was that a journalist living there, moving around, mixing with people, enquiring and reporting on the implementation of welfare schemes did make a difference, minor though it may have been. Towards the fourth month of his stay, Sarthak found that more and more tribals were aware becoming aware of the Saranda Development Plan, were willing to demand their rights and even engage with a government machinery that was known only for its absence from the area and abdication of its duties for a decade and more under Maoist influence. Sarthak will keep visiting Saranda regularly to keep tabs on the implementation of the plan.

THIS INITIATIVE

Buoyed by the few positive signals from Saranda and supported by ANSA-SAR, we are now expanding the project to four new areas across the country. Most of our discourse about rural lives, livelihoods and grassroots governance is shaped by touch-and-go journalism. Journalists and researchers make whirlwind tours of these areas and come away with some assumptions which are then extrapolated to the level of national stereotypes which then become--with repeated use, reuse and overuse--national truths. When two moving objects try to assess each other, it is not unusual for perspectives to get blurred. That is what happens when journalists parachute into rural areas for a few days to record the changing face of the hinterland. Change can be appreciated best by a constant. The "ANSA SAR-GOVERNANCE NOW AT THE GRASSROOTS" project is that constant. Under this project four Governance Now journalists will be stationed at four rural or semi-rural locations not for a week or a fortnight or a month, but a full six months. They will live and work out of there and report regularly for six months from the vantage position of a perspective gained from the stability and stillness of their long stay.

THE OBJECTIVE

These four reporters and their locations are:

Prasanna Mohanty: Sheragada (block), Ganjam (district), Odisha

Brajesh Kumar: Abu Road (block), Sirohi (district), Rajasthan

Pankaj Kumar: Noorserai (block), Nalanda (district), Bihar

Puja Bhattacharya: Salboni (block), West Medinipur (district), West Bengal

Each one of them will identify a few villages in a block(s), stay in a place close to the identified villages and monitor the implementation of four or five priority welfare schemes of that area. Once they identify the important schemes to monitor, they will start reporting about the progress of the schemes on a regular basis to see what kind of impact sustained media oversight has on their implementation. That should give us an idea of the efficacy of delivery of public policy at the last mile of governance. Sorry, make that "the first mile of governance".