Assessing Decentralisation Reforms in India

Periodic assessments of the progress of the decentralisation reform ushered in by the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts (CAAs) have thrown up a mixed report card. The present volume titled the Handbook of Decentralised Governance and Development in India, which is the outcome of deliberations of a seminar held at the Ins­titute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) on the 25th anniversary of the ­reform, reiterates several findings of the earlier assessments—the slow progress of administrative and fiscal decentralisation relative to political decentralisation, the need for sustained capacity building of elected representatives, as also the need for overcoming bureaucratic hurdles to the reform. Where the book, edited by D Rajasekhar and comprising 21 chapters, scores is in its scope as well as depth—along with a det­ailed documentation of decentralisation in precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial India—the findings of recent field studies bring the reader up-to-date on how far decentralisation has actually progressed on the ground. The book includes a section on urban decentralised governance which marks a welcome addition to the preponderance of literature on rural decentralisation.

Devolution of Governance