Development interventions do not merely implement predefined accountability frameworks; rather, they actively generate and shape accountability through their practices and processes. We studied how such development interventions produce accountability through everyday practices, material infrastructures, and institutional arrangements, with a particular focus on the World Bank’s Climate-Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project in Sri Lanka, especially its interventions in the Nabadawewa Cascade in Horowpothana, Anuradhapura. Specifically, we discuss how accountability emerges on the ground through three interconnected sites: Cascade Management Committees (CMCs), Social Audit Committees (SACs), and Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Practices.
To explore
how accountability unfolds at the ground level across these three sites, I had
the valuable opportunity to engage with a diverse range of individuals and
settings during several months of ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka—primarily
within the Nabadawewa cascade. I had the opportunity to interview and listen to
the experiences of a wide range of individuals, including beneficiary farmers,
farmer organization leaders, community members, elders, project staff,
government officers, World Bank officials and consultants, as well as members
of the CMCs and SACs. My observations extended across the cascade
system—covering lakes, agricultural lands, and village communities—as well as
government offices and the Farmer Training School in Thirappane. I also
participated in various institutional activities such as CMC and SAC meetings,
SAC trainings, a transect walk, and meetings involving community members,
government officials, and World Bank representatives. In addition, I followed
the project’s social media platforms and reviewed a range of documents sourced
from the project website, the World Bank website, and materials shared by
officials, farmers, community members, farmer organization leaders, and CMC and
SAC members. With this rich, triangulated data, we now
examine how some of the practices of these three sites of CMCs, SACs, and CSA interconnect
with broader processes of development and accountability.
Cascade
Management Committees (CMCs)
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| CMC Meeting at Nabadawewa, Horowpathana, Anuradhapura |
The production of accountability at the ground level unfolded through specific practices of CMCs. Project teams held awareness sessions that went beyond simply informing stakeholders about the CMC; these sessions didn't merely inform stakeholders about the CMC but actively shaped them as accountable actors. Moreover, the very process of forming committees further reinforced it. Farmers learned they were now stakeholders with responsibilities for cascade conservation; government officials discovered new obligations for collaborative management.
The transect walks through the cascades, involving both officials and local farmers, serve as a powerful example of how accountability is produced through practical, on-the-ground engagement. Walking the landscape, they documented social, economic, hydrological, and environmental challenges—not as passive observers but as actors being constituted as capable of rendering the cascade legible and governable. The farmers proudly shared with me that they had participated in the transect walk and felt happy that their input was genuinely valued.
The Cascade Management Profile and Plan being developed are not merely planning documents but accountability technologies. Each recorded problem, pinpointed location, and proposed solution produced accountability by establishing what must be answered for, by whom, and how. Attending CMC meetings, reviewing their minutes, and listening to farmers, I witnessed accountability unfolding in real time. The discussions between farmers and officials about challenges in the cascade were not just acts of oversight—they were expressions of accountability in action. Through collaborative dialogue, they co-produced a sense of shared responsibility. Every question raised, concern voiced, and solution proposed embodied the accountability relationships fostered by the project.
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| Meeting with Ataurulewa Wewa SAC and World Bank Officials |
Social
Audit Committees (SACs)
SACs
include beneficiary farmers of the rehabilitation projects, and they monitor
the rehabilitation process on the ground through daily, hands-on engagement
with construction sites. Their very formation illustrates how development
initiatives generate accountability, rather than merely responding to
pre-existing oversight structures. Each infrastructure project becomes an
occasion for generating fresh monitoring subjects, new documentation practices,
and additional accountability relations. The project doesn't implement a static
accountability framework but continuously reproduces accountability through
repeated cycles of committee formation, training, and monitoring practice.
Ground-level accountability production occurred through training sessions where project officials taught beneficiaries how to monitor. Their involvement reflected genuine interest and ownership of the process. These meetings weren't knowledge transfer events but constitutive practices that produced "accountable citizens." Beneficiaries learned to observe, document, and evaluate—capacities not inherent but actively created through development intervention. The training transformed farmers from passive recipients into monitoring subjects capable of demanding accounts. During the SAC training, I witnessed how actively the members engaged in the sessions—asking questions, participating in discussions, and even taking photos of key information from the training slides on their phones.
Accountability is also produced through practices such as committee members physically walking to rehabilitating lakes, observing and measuring progress against specifications, comparing materials to standards, and recording their observations in logbooks. The logbooks they carried—material objects that mediate accountability relations between beneficiaries, contractors, and officials. These logbooks are not neutral recording devices but accountability technologies that transform everyday construction activities into documented, verifiable, and contestable evidence. The logbook itself became an accountability device, accumulating evidence that could later substantiate claims or demands. Each entry recorded not only constituted the SAC as an accountable observer and the observed work as subject to scrutiny, but also materialized accountability linking beneficiaries, contractors, and project officials in relations of mutual answerability.
During my visit, I witnessed this accountability production in action as project officials trained committee members on monitoring protocols, teaching them not just what to observe but how to become accountable observers. The committees don't simply watch development happen; through their embodied practices of walking, observing, measuring, and documenting, they actively produce the accountability relations that make development answerable to its intended beneficiaries.
Climate-Smart
Agriculture (CSA) Practice
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| CSA Practices at Nabadawewa, Horowpathana, Anuradhapura |
Producer societies operate as accountability nodes that bridge individual farmers and the project, materializing answerability through financial contributions, equipment distribution, facility management, training participation, and market coordination—transforming organizational membership itself into an accountability relation where farmers must answer to their societies, societies to their members and the project, and associations to their constituent societies and external market partners. Trainings in accounting, leadership, teamwork, and entrepreneurship in these societies don’t merely build capacity but produces accountable subjects capable of organizational governance, financial management, and collective decision-making.
Training programs on these CSA practices, along with the Farmer Training School at Thirappane, produce accountability by constituting farmers as knowledgeable subjects responsible for applying learned techniques and demonstrating outcomes. These training sessions are not passive information transfers but constitutive practices that transform farmers into accountable actors who must answer for their adoption and implementation of climate-smart practices. When farmers attend training, they enter into implicit accountability relations: they become obligated to apply learned methods, demonstrate responsiveness to project knowledge, and report results back to officials and their communities. I witnessed enthusiastic farmers who, after just a single meeting, were eager to implement the group village concept and proudly showcased their progress to officials. Their actions exemplified accountability in practice—not merely by adopting new ideas, but by actively demonstrating their ability to understand, internalize, and carry out the concepts introduced during training, thereby fulfilling the responsibilities it set in motion.
Across the three sites—CMCs, SACs, and CSA practices—accountability takes shape at the ground level through everyday development practices, giving rise to new relationships, accountable subjects, and supporting infrastructures.
Special Gratitude: To my supervisor, Prof. Danture Wickramasinghe of the University of Glasgow, UK, and Mr. Sarath Wickramaratne, Senior IDCB Consultant at the World Bank, all the officials who supported and facilitated my fieldwork, and to every participant who contributed to its success.
By Ms. Madushani Gunathilake, PhD Researcher at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Danture Wickramasinghe, University of Glasgow, UK.
