Although the number of democratic regimes, and thus the use of proper constitutional mechanisms to make politicians accountable to citizens, have expanded substantially in the last decades, corruption among public officials and, more generally, malfunctioning governments remain widespread phenomena across the globe. Unfortunately, this failure to create good governing institutions has dramatic economic and political consequences.

The three branches of Indian government like the legislature, executive and judiciary play important roles in this context. Among the three, the third organ has most of the public interface. This character is however a drawback of the parliamentary democracy. This is because after the general elections there is no mechanism to test the accountability of the legislators. In many cases passing of an act might represent less of public interest and more of private interest. The example could be the single window clearance of the SEZ Act, 2005.

Role of Legislators

Legislators have a greater role in building an environment for social accountability. Legislature is the law making organ. Laws are in general the fundamentals of any nation state. However there is hardly a scope to bring forth the legislators’ accountability into question. The electorate’s right to recall legislators is one means of ensuring the latter’s accountability towards the people. It is the citizens’ prerogative to determine whether an errant or non-performing representative should continue in office for a full term or not, since their poor performance is at the cost of the public exchequer. The right to recall legislators is a direct democratic method for removing an elected representative from office for his/her non-performance or misuse of the position.

Role of Executive

The Executive organ is effectively in place for law execution. The accountability checks pertaining to Executive are the Grievance Redressal Mechanisms, Ombudsmen (Parliamentary Ombudsmen of UK could be a good example here) and other such authorities. Simultaneously Parliament has enhanced its capacity for holding ministers and officials to account through the development of select committee structures, in some cases linked to new oversight bodies such as the Parliamentary ombudsman and the National Audit Office.

Role of Judiciary

The accountability of the judiciary was earlier only through impeachment. But now in India   National Judicial Council to inquire into complaints against errant judges is being perceived as a long awaited initiative to introduce some accountability for judges of the higher judiciary. In Canada, the Judicial Council was established in 1971. About 66 per cent of the complaints are concluded within three months, and over 94 per cent within six months. Similar is the position in Australia which has a Parliamentary (Judicial Misbehaviour or Incapacity Commission) Bill 2005. The Commission consists of 3 members, 2 of them to be appointed by the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the recommendations of the Prime Minister and one to be appointed jointly by the President of the Senate, Speaker of the House on recommendation of the Leader of the Opposition and at least one of the members is to be a Judge or a retired Judge of the Supreme Court.