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This document answers crucial questions regarding government accountability: Who seeks it? From Whom? Who is accountable for what? What are the parameters? The chapter begins with an introduction as to what is accountability and then divides into the following topics: Chapter 1 introduces the definition of accountability, setting out its multiple dimensions, contrasting it to voice and its implications while highlighting the importance of certain kinds of voices for accountability to take place.

The work of a small and unusual activist group in the north Indian state of Rajasthan has raised a series of practical and theoretical issues concerning the best means for combating specific instances of corruption, and for promoting accountability more generally. The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) has waged a campaign to secure the right of ordinary people to gain access to information held by government officials. This article examines the process by which this campaign emerged and the means by which it pursues its goals. (DSE/DÜI)

The work of a small & unusual activist group in the Indian state of Rajasthan has raised a series of practical & theoretical issues concerning the best means for combating specific instances of corruption, & for promoting accountability more generally. The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan ([Workers' & Farmers' Power Organization] MKSS) has waged a campaign to secure the access of ordinary people to information held by government officials. In the process of experimenting with methods of compiling, sharing, & verifying expenditure data at local levels -- thus far, in the absence of statutory entitlement to such information -- the MKSS has developed a radical interpretation of the notion that citizens have a right both to know how they are governed & to participate actively in the process of auditing their representatives. Focus here is on the process by which this campaign emerged & the means by which it pursues its goals. Analyzed in conclusion are the implications of the MKSS experience -- & the larger movement it has spawned -- for contemporary debate in three areas: human rights, participatory development, & an end to corruption. Adapted from the source document.

'Gender', understood as the social construction of sex, is a key concept for feminists working at the interface of theory and policy. This article examines challenges to the concept which emerged from different groups at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, September 1995, an important arena for struggles over feminist public policies. The first half of the article explores contradictory uses of the concept in the field of gender and development. Viewpoints from some southern activist women at the NGO Forum of the Beijing Conference are presented, Some of them argued that the way 'gender' has been deployed in development institutions has led to a depoliticization of the term, where feminist policy ambitions are sacrificed to the imperative of ease of institutionalization. 'Gender' becomes a synonym for 'women', rather than a form of shorthand for gender difference and conflict and the project of transformation in gender relations. 'Gender sensitivity' can be interpreted by non-feminists as encouragement to use gender-disaggregated statistics for development planning, but without consideration of relational aspects of gender, of power and ideology, and of how patterns of subordination are reproduced. A completely different attack on 'gender' came from right-wing groups and was battled out over the text of the Platform for Action agreed at the official conference. Six months prior to the conference, conservative groups had tried to bracket for possible removal the term 'gender' in this document, out of opposition to the notion of socially constructed, and hence mutable, gender identity. Conservative views on gender as the 'deconstruction of woman' are discussed here. The article points out certain contradictions and inconsistencies in feminist thinking on gender which are raised by the conservative backlash attack on feminism and the term 'gender'.