Building Local Democracy: Evaluating the Impact of Decentralization in Kerala, India

SummaryHistorically, local rural governments in India have enjoyed very limited powers and citizens have been afforded very few opportunities to shape local development. In 1996, the state government of Kerala initiated the “People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning” devolving new authority and resources to panchayats and mandating structures and processes designed to maximize the direct involvement of citizens in planning and budgeting. In both its scope and design, these reforms represent the most ambitious effort to build local institutions of participatory democratic governance ever undertaken in the subcontinent. This paper provides a detailed evaluation and analysis of the formative period of the reforms based on extensive survey data collected in 2002 from a sample of 72 randomly selected panchayats.