Indexing constitutional accountability in local governance: the search for the water-power interface

Interfacing water use for power generation and irrigation uses to secure a water future will become increasingly important in developing rural-urban regulatory water mechanisms. This concern is of particular importance for developing countries such as Nepal, where only 5% of the rural population has access to electricity while 80% of the population depends on agriculture. But, bringing the water sector closer to the society at large, in the process of developing such mechanisms of interfaces, punctuates the importance of integrating local community needs in the process of governing structures as well. This interconnectedness indicates that reducing the gap of inclusion and exclusion in the process of transformation is not just a matter of minimizing the differences in statistics to access of services and benefits. The success of the rural-urban water and power interface will also lie in reinforcing the local governance to meet, support, challenge, and critique the water agenda within the overall governing framework of accountability. Then, ‘constitutional accountability’ becomes not just a matter of the state, but also an important matter for and in local governance (Regmi 2004) and for the local community. Constitutional accountability refers to the responsibility of the state, in governance and in the process of governing, whereby those that are governed are directly linked with the structural mechanisms within the local governance systems. Consequently, indexing constitutional accountability in local governance is to enhance and increase the political responsibility of the local water users in the search for water security.