Contours of decentralisation

By Manabi Majumdar

THE RECENT strengthening of panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) and urban local bodies (ULBs), under the aegis of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts, offers new opportunities for institutionalising people's participation in governance. In principle, the PRIs and ULBs can play an important role in recognising local aspirations, conditions and needs or in on-the- spot monitoring and control. At a more basic level, these democratising initiatives will likely facilitate the empowerment of disadvantaged sections - the people who are eulogistically labelled as `all' in the slogan `development for all'.

But let us concede what has to be conceded. In envisaging the emerging nature of politics under the new dispensation of local democracy, we may recall what Oscar Wilde said: ``The trouble with socialism is that it takes too many evenings.'' The same can be said of participation in local bodies. Town and village meetings take time and some may prefer to do other things and regard attendance as an infringement on their freedom. In other words, citizen participation does not just happen even when the political space and opportunities do emerge for it. Developing effective citizenship and building a democratic organisation take effort. Simply put, any feasible plan of local governance, involving elected leaders, user-groups, community representatives and so on, must design its institutions such that they can be run efficiently by people without supernatural characteristics - people (like us) who spend a great deal of time thinking about themselves and not about the promotion of local democracy.

Moreover, unlike what is often believed, democratic decentralisation does not necessarily dictate finding a `local' solution to a problem, especially when it involves cross-regional issues or has supra-local or even global roots. For example, local communities of Bhopal, Maharashtra and Goa could not possibly have found a strictly local solution to predicaments either created or posed by the multinationals, Union Carbide, Enron or Dupont. Put differently, decentralisation does not entail the disappearance of the supra-local state apparatus or the abdication of its responsibilities in the paramount task of human development. On the contrary, the enabling role of the Central and State Governments is crucial to the successful functioning of local institutions. For instance, the macro- economic policy environment at the national and State levels constitutes the backdrop against which the processes of decentralisation are expected to unfold. Therefore, macro- economic stabilisation policies should provide enabling conditions for decentralisation without, at the least, worsening the conditions and vulnerabilities of the poor. Hence, in no way does decentralisation dilute the importance of synergy in the operations of the Central, State and local institutions of governance.

Admittedly, in highlighting the space this new political reform has opened up, one has also to be aware of the trap it entails. The PR politics may evolve as democratic and competitive; but it may, on the other hand, assume pronounced elitist overtones. A recognition of the interplay of these opposed forces will likely enable us to make a reasonably ambitious yet realistic assessment of what can be achieved under the PRIs. However, the possibility of elite domination impeding participatory democracy need not make us overly anxious about the limits of decentralisation. Because all the three tiers of governments are prone to similar problems. And it cannot be established a priori that the vulnerability of local governments to `capture' by local elites is bound to be high compared with their supra-local counterparts. It is, therefore, premature to pronounce that one level of government is `fitter for democracy' than the other.

It is as well to point out that democracy is still struggling to consolidate itself in a society in which social and economic resources are highly unequal. What is more, the democratic experience has not been the same throughout the country. Discussion of inter-regional variations in political practices and policy outcomes within the same national universe must be incorporated in any assessment of the new democratising initiatives. This will help us understand what propitious forces and institutional arrangements are required to harness local democratic processes for social welfare purposes.

In analysing the promises and perils of decentralisation, we, therefore, have to adopt a disaggregated approach which captures the diversity and complexity of Indian social, political and economic reality. For example, a discussion on decentralisation can be misleading if it ignores regional variations in terms of resources endowment, social stratification, penetration of party politics, degree of land concentration, extent of civic involvement and collective organisation, level of economic growth, demographic characteristics and trends in urbanisation.

In addition, imbalances and disparities in the resource and revenue-base of different regions have to be kept in mind as we vouch for greater local fiscal reliance and an element of competition therein. For instance, encouraging local bodies to tap their tax potentials more fully will hopefully lead to greater fiscal autonomy vis-a-vis States and in the process generate a salutary competition among local bodies themselves. But parallel attention has also to be paid to the relative backwardness of different local bodies and thus to the overarching goal of equity.

Having addressed a few conundrums that surround the debate on devolution of powers and functions, we return to a basic query: decentralisation for what? In the search for a simple and cogent answer, we echo the words of E.M.S. Namboodiripad: the recent political reform toward devolution of power is a corrective to the older practice of having ``democracy at national and State levels but the bureaucracy at all lower levels''; it envisages a process of transformation from a restricted bureaucratic regime to one of extended citizen participation at the level of villages, towns and cities.

But while the participatory process is in itself empowering, reflecting on democratic practices is hard to separate from an interest in the ultimate goal of improving the people's opportunities and expanding their capabilities. In the final analysis, therefore, both at the supra-local and local levels, democratising political reforms have to be assessed with respect to redistributive reforms they get to generate, i.e., the redistribution of opportunities among the poorer segments. Thus, redistribution of land rights, educational reform, restructuring of health care benefits, progressive taxation, labour market reforms - all become focal issues in a discussion on decentralised development.

We are talking about decentralisation in the age of globalisation, at a time when the climate is acutely cost- conscious. But even without prejudices against the current euphoria about `market reforms', one may as well point out that in major parts of rural India an agricultural labourer still functions very much within the framework of an undisturbed and unregulated `free market' where, according to one respected commentator, a labourer is available as easily as a bar of chocolate. What is absent in this case is not a free market but are some minimum regulatory norms to temper market forces for equity goals.

Hence, even without trivialising the importance of efficiency- driven measures, the relationship between democratisation and redistribution should merit our urgent attention. Of course, decentralisation cannot promise inevitable improvement in this respect, as its success is contingent upon initial social and economic conditions; but at the same time it need not be conceived as simply `reactive' to the structural imperatives. It is influenced, but clearly not overdetermined, by the latter. Consequently, democratic decentralisation creates a genuine possibility for enhancement of equity even under adverse circumstances. Because it is the opportunity for democratic practices itself that provides training for citizenship and eventually helps to generate a democratic claim for equitable human development.

(The writer is at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai.)

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