Seeing the kind of effort that volunteers from the Ward Accountability Experiment (WAE) had put in, and the kind of interest generated amongst the public, I had floated the idea of a democratic forum that would allow those interested to pursue other similar kinds of interventions, as well as take ownership of the WAE follow up and monitoring. Another interesting possibility with this was that it could also provide a space where people could engage in questions around accountability in more depth.

There was general consensus among volunteers and friends on the benefits of such a forum, and last Sunday (December 4^th 2011) there was a formal meeting where the form and mandate of this was discussed. While the meeting missed some key people that had been very keen to be a part of it, it was nevertheless quite productive and some concrete steps were taken in figuring out just how such a group could work! For example, while the kinks need to be worked out, a couple of functions of the forum were unanimously settled upon; it would focus on collecting and analyzing data for accountability, and more importantly, it would also act as a citizen pressure group to make sure the data creates change. Thus, this forum would try to be the link between good data and better accountability. There were some awesome suggestions for new interventions as well, like creating a stench map of the city!

However, we still haven’t settled on a name! Although there were some suggestions-

- Accountability Experiment

- Accountability Core Team (ACT)

- Forum for Accountability

- All the above, plus an exclamation point.

This conversation will continue on the google group (which I hope to create this week). Exciting times!

If you would like to be a part of this forum and take part in the conversations, email me at Siddharth.hande@gmail.com and I’ll add you to the group!

Siddharth Hande

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