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This article offers a common framework for addressing Asia's varied human-development challenges by observing that, for the most part, they stem from a systematic failure in the delivery of basic services, especially to poor people, caused by a failure of accountability at different points in the service-delivery chain. It describes various efforts by Asian countries to remedy this situation. While there are some encouraging early results, these efforts have also turned up some new challenges to Asia's human-development problems, three of which - politics, decentralisation, and the role of learning from impact evaluation - are highlighted by the study.