Ethics & Social Accountability in Urban Governance

Urban administration is at the cutting edge of administration in the country. The administration-citizen interface is maximum at this grass-roots level of administration. In real sense, life of citizenry is closely linked form ‘cradle to grave’. Besides making provision for basic civic services to citizen at large, urban government acts as a nursery to politicians. The nearness to common people makes local government more vulnerable and susceptible to unethical behaviour. There may be numerous instances which dent the image of grassroots level government, which is the basic unit of democracy, more so in a federal government.

Ethics and social accountability are the attributes of good and responsive governance.  Individual values like loyalty, diligence, dedication and integrity act as instrument to the organizational values. An organization is an ethical system having its own beliefs, convictions, mores and culture. The Constitution ( seventy fourth) Amendment Act, 1992 and other successive initiatives have taken  urban governance nearer to people, assured citizen participation in local decision making and making the local government more accountable to people. Urban local government lacking ethics and accountability may be a bane to the democracy.

The country for the last few months has been experiencing civil society movements focusing on ethics and social accountability at the upper tiers of government. In this backdrop, the papers collected in this volume highlight various extensive interventions initiated from time to time for improving the image of urban administration; inculcating ethical behaviour in the grassroots governance, and ensuring accountability towards citizenry. This is a modest attempt for opening a new vista in the life of urban governance in the country.