Accountability is both a legal obligation and a moral imperative. It reflects Kautilya's principle of responsible stewardship, Max Weber's bureaucratic efficiency, and Gandhian trusteeship, ensuring public funds are treated as a trust for citizens’ welfare.

Ethical and Practical Measures to Ensure Accountability

• Inner Responsibility

  • Public servants must internalise duty as trustees of public money. This ethical compass ensures they act with sincerity even when external oversight is absent. Like a teacher accountable for every child’s progress, officers must treat public funds as a sacred trust.
  • Global best practice: Singapore’s ethos bans even small gifts to officials, directly preventing conflicts of interest and curbing leakages at source.

• Probity & Integrity

  • Integrity requires asset disclosures, conflict-of-interest checks, and rewarding officers who display moral courage (e.g., Ashok Khemka). This reduces discretionary misuse of power.
  • Global best practice: Scandinavian countries enforce strict public disclosures of ministers’ assets and ensure immediate resignation on impropriety, creating a deterrent culture against corruption.

• Transparency as a Value

  • Transparency demands open access to information through RTI, citizen charters, and social audits. It builds citizen trust by making every rupee traceable. The MKSS model in Rajasthan exemplifies community-driven vigilance.
  • Global best practice: Estonia’s e-governance and South Korea’s OPEN system digitally track funds, eliminating room for inflated claims or ghost beneficiaries.

• Answerability & Justice

  • True accountability also requires grievance redressal and enforceable consequences for negligence. Public officials must be answerable for both action and omission, ensuring justice for citizens.
  • Global best practice: UK’s National Audit Office places expenditure reports before Parliament, while Scandinavian Ombudsman systems allow citizens to directly challenge administrative injustice.

• Performance-Linked Budgeting & Technology

  • Funds should be tied to measurable outcomes, aligning allocations with impact — following New Zealand’s results-based budgeting model. This links ethical responsibility with efficiency.
  • Global best practice: Use of AI and blockchain for predictive analysis ensures leakages are flagged in advance and fund flow remains transparent in real time.

Accountability ensures that resources serve the people with probity, transparency, and justice. By combining global best practices with India’s ethical traditions, leakages can be curbed, trust strengthened, and fiscal efficiency improved — paving the way for India’s ethical and sustainable rise as the world’s third-largest economy.