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Citizens’ Voice and Accountability Evaluation – Bangladesh Country Case Study • To what extent are donor supported interventions directly contributing to changes in relation to (i) state responsiveness and improved accountability; (ii) actions taken on citizens’ claims; (iii) equal access to basic services; (iv) budget allocations, public revenues and expenditures; (v) power structures and relations? • To what extent are donor funded interventions producing unexpected or unanticipated CVA outcomes? What are the reasons behind such unexpected outcomes? Direct citizen participation in state institutions at the local level has enhanced state responsiveness, or at least demonstrated in pockets of donor activity that this is possible. In the case of Rupantar, for instance, field visits elicited the impression amongst government officials and citizens that the responsiveness of the local administrations has been transformed as they become motivated by an engaged citizenry. Citizen engagement by Samata as a social movement, backed by social and legal support from Samata as an NGO body, using entitlement to government khas land and water bodies has created a more responsive state, with property rights realized and land and water body redistribution resulting. Monitoring and watchdog activities, illustrated by the activities of TIB CCCs, have anecdotally changed the performance and accountability of service providers, while state responsiveness in macro-level policy design and delivery is illustrated through the influence of Education Watch on the NPRS and PEDP II content and subsequent policy statements. There is less compelling evidence from the case study interventions studies that CVA activity has influenced budget allocations and public finances. This is in large part because a lot of CVA interventions have been at the lowest end of the budget food chain where budgetary discretion and maneuverability is minimal. As the FMRP moves in its next phase more purposefully from technical support to institutional realignment there will be an opportunity to see whether civil society engagement leads to, for example, a more progressive reallocation of budget towards social sector spending. There is plenty of evidence from the evaluation that donor interventions have challenged and in some cases transformed institutions through addressing power relations and inequalities in entitlements. An emphasis in donor interventions on information and awareness raising has been instrumental in empowering the poor. BSSF, for instance, has made specific efforts to include those working in the informal sector as well as rickshaw drivers, farm labourers and weavers. These occupations are all synonymous with those living in poverty. Both Rupantar and Samata are active in raising awareness of rights and provision of political education for the poor and marginalised. They both use public meetings, cultural events, rallies and small courtyard discussion sessions to highlight peoples’ rights to resources and services. Both make efforts to reach those who are least politically empowered (landless farmers and poor women). Rupantar, however, puts more emphasis on the use of cultural forms of communication (The Rupantar Approach) which are proven to be a very popular means to affect social transformation. Samata, as a social movement, places more emphasis on public rallies and protest. MMC is also concerned with awareness raising at local village level, arguably in less radical ways by providing Information Centres and promoting reading and discussion around local issues. The Information Centres carry a range of information including names and contact details of people in the administration and service providers, job 28
Citizens’ Voice and Accountability Evaluation – Bangladesh Country Case Study vacancies, booklets/leaflets/posters explaining laws and entitlements as well as daily newspapers. The adoption of rights based approaches among many NGOs in Bangladesh means that huge numbers of NGOs are active in awareness raising around rights. Whilst the awareness raising activities of Rupantar and Samata are in no way unique, both have successful models to achieve this. Despite all this activity in the area of rights and entitlements, there is no comprehensive document which provides a compilation of entitlements for the poor and much duplication of effort here. This points to a need for donors to invest in one off commissions which can be of use to all those agencies involved in awareness raising. The recent impact assessment (2007) of the social movement Samata suggests that it has had remarkable success. While many other NGOs were entrapped in the provision of micro-credit, Samata managed to maintain the ideology of a people’s movement (and therefore no service provision) with a dynamic that requires little external support. In fact there is growing criticism that this intrinsic dynamic may have been damaged by the infusion of very large sums of donor money, notably by DFID. That said, it is important to note that the reported rapid increase in land redistribution happened after DFID started supporting the project. Rupantar seeks to achieve somewhat similar ends to Samata but has a higher staff to beneficiary ratio and, although not specifically investigated in this study, appears to be less efficient in achieving the scale of change attributed to Samata primarily because it is driven from outside rather than internally, even though issues confronted are local ones. Changes in government institutions have been most evident at the level of local government, with donor-supported NGO activity redressing power imbalances by increasing the level of participation of marginalized social groups, including women and occupational “castes”, in government administrative and justice institutions. Box 4.9. Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC): Empowerment through participation The SDC/World Bank-funded ROSC project is specifically targeted to out-of-school children and their parents. It thus tends to target the poor who have found supporting their children in continuous primary education particularly hard. It is their voices which are supposed to be most influential in designing locally appropriate solutions for the education of their children. The ROSC project establishes local management and oversight of the schools through Community Management Committees (CMCs), comprised of 5 parents, a female ward member, an Upazila education officer (Ministry EDU), an educationist expert, a headmaster of a nearby government primary school and a teacher who acts as secretary. Amongst other impacts, this institutional innovation has had an empowering effect on the women involved. The parents had grown more confident and used a variety of social and administrative skills through their activities at the CMC. The CMC activities were a positive learning experience for parents, who could better express themselves, communicate and hold meetings, use bank accounts and save money. Source: Authors’ analysis Institutions beyond the state have also been influenced by CVA interventions. These include informal social institutions in communities and households, with a particular focus on gender empowerment. 23 The involvement of poor women in marginalized 23 There are several programmes in Bangladesh specifically targeted to assist ethnic minorities to raise their voice but restrictions on the number of case studies to be include in this study prevented an example from being included. 29
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IV Relevant Primary and Secondary d
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II: Overall Assessment of Intervent
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Impact According to the 2007 Impact
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Model of change Assumptions Activit
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D.8. Bangladesh Sanjukta Sramic Fed
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Effectiveness BSSF provides 22 trai
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. Model of change Assumptions Activ
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D.9. Rupantar Grassroots Women’s
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Impact Phase 1 resulted in a cadre
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Figure 1. Rupantar CVA Model of Cha
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Table 2. Most significant change an
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D.10. Samata - Empowerment Through
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Lessons Learned Important lessons l
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Table 2. Most significant change an
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D.11. GTZ brokered dialogue within
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Sustainability GTZ feels that the f
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Project (Donor) Partners/ PIUs Inte
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Project (Donor) Partners/ PIUs Inte
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Annex F. Summary of Stakeholder Deb
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