Institutionalising Panchayati Raj in India e-bog

Institutionalising Panchayati Raj in India is an exceptionally insightful account of the nation-wide attempt at decentralization in India in the early 1950s, known as the Community Development Programme. Tracing the growth and decline of this programme and of other decentralization programmes started since then, the author identifies three forces: political factors, bureaucracy, and international organisations and bilateral donors, responsible for blunting the effectiveness of decentralisation. The decentralisation efforts in Maharashtra and Kerala point to the Practical difficulties in having a district planning programme which does not entrust planning to the Panchayats along with funds. This work has a lot to say about the present district planning arrangements as well as the Centrally Sponsored Schemes and comes to the conclusion that they fall very much short of expectations. According to the author the proliferation of the parallel structures, that is, administrative organizations which are parallel to the constitutional bodies (Panchayati Raj Institutions) are antithetical to decentralisation. The concluding chapter gives an account of the future challenges facing Panchayati Raj Institutions.