Citizens participation in budget making process of the State of Odisha (India): Opportunities, Learnings and Challenges
Annual Budget of a government – a public proclamation by the State of its projected and actual expenditures – provides vital evidence of where a State sets its priorities – whether on the poor and marginalised people or not. The state’s current budget processes reveal that citizens have no understan...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institut Veolia Environnement
2014-09-01
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| Series: | Field Actions Science Reports |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/3474 |
| Summary: | Annual Budget of a government – a public proclamation by the State of its projected and actual expenditures – provides vital evidence of where a State sets its priorities – whether on the poor and marginalised people or not. The state’s current budget processes reveal that citizens have no understanding of what the State is committing itself to in its policy declarations and what it actually does in its budgetary allocations. The extremely complicated, technical and esoteric nature of the budget-making process and documents does not allow citizens to participate, to have any say in it or to monitor the process. This paper presents what has been learned of civil society processes that have been undertaken to make the budget participatory and pro-poor. For nearly a decade, leading civil society players in Odisha (India) have made intensive efforts to engage with legislators, media and academics. This article seeks to show how the simplified analysis of public budgeting has helped civil society in Odisha to identify which sectors actually benefit the poor and which end up benefitting the urban rich; and how the citizenry came together to initiate concrete advocacy for pro-poor budgetary reforms; how the Media –could be stimulated to play the role of a conscience keeper on behalf of the poor and marginalized and engagement with the legislators during the budget discussions; how the community-based organisations were involved in sharing the budgetary requirements to the policy makers at the sub-state level. |
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| ISSN: | 1867-139X 1867-8521 |