The next time you pass a newly paved road, a government school with a fresh building or a drinking-water facility in your neighbourhood, there is a simple question you could ask: Who paid for it?

The answer could be buried in a government file, but it could also be linked to a pot of money that your Member of Parliament gets every year for local development.

Under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme, or MPLADS, every MP has an annual entitlement of Rs 5 crore. The money is meant for development works in constituencies, from roads and school buildings to drinking-water facilities and rainwater harvesting structures.

Yet most citizens know little about what happens to that money once it enters the system. We may know our MP's name, party and election margin, but how often do we check what projects they recommended, how much was sanctioned, how much was actually spent, or whether the work was completed?

Today, citizens can begin finding out for themselves.

A government portal allows anyone to look up MPLADS spending by state and constituency. And when the information available online is not enough, the Right to Information Act can help citizens seek the underlying records.

In other words, you do not have to wait for the next election, a parliamentary question or a political campaign to ask where your constituency's development money went. You can follow the trail yourself.

First, where does the Rs 5 crore go?

MPLADS was launched on 23 December 1993 to allow MPs to recommend development works in their constituencies. Every Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MP has an annual entitlement of Rs 5 crore, released in two installments of Rs 2.5 crore each to the relevant nodal district authority.

But an MP does not receive this money directly.

Instead, the MP recommends a project. The district authority examines whether it is feasible and permitted under MPLADS guidelines, sanctions the work and assigns an implementing agency to execute it.

So there is a chain between an MP's recommendation and a finished public asset.

A project may have been:

Recommended but not sanctioned. 

Recommended but not sanctioned. 

It may have been sanctioned but not started. 

It may have been sanctioned but not started. 

It may be under construction or completed with the expenditure recorded.

It may be under construction or completed with the........

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