DECENTRALISATION – THE SECOND WAVE

DECENTRALISATION – THE SECOND WAVE 

Around the time of Independence, Gandhi said, “India lives in her villages”, and asked that they become centres of self-government. Close to sixty years on, the argument is still valid – with one change: India no longer lives only in her villages. Already, we are close to 30% urban, and within the next 20 years, there will be more Indians living in cities and towns than in our villages. Responding to this challenge is all about strengthening local governments, but with some nuances. 

With the 73^rd and 74^th Constitutional Amendments in 1992, we completed the federal puzzle in our country, creating units of local self-government at the rural and urban levels. George Mathews says, “The Panchayats–Districts and below are now treated as third stratum of governance. Today in India if there is a strong Centre it is not by virtue of its powers over other units but because the lower units – States, Districts, Blocks, Villages–are powerful. This is exactly opposite of what India started with. Thus, one can say that strong regional and state level political parties have strengthened India's democracy and federal character.” 

In this journey towards a more healthy federalistic governmental arrangement, the patient incrementalism of policy-makers seems to be working fairly well. Yes, there are still enormous challenges, but there is a great deal of energy emanating from within many state governments to solidify the process of rural decentralisation. Issues such as untying of funds, streamlining of programmes, capacity building and training of Gram Panchayat members are among the hottest potatoes being tossed around in state legislatures. 

Unfortunately, these statistics hide an uncomfortable truth: the base of the pyramid is expanding only for rural local government. Such leadership is sorely lacking in urban decentralisation. Caught in the penumbra of the spotlight on their rural brethren, the urban dwellers are finding themselves in a governance vacuum, with all signs of the situation worsening. Consider the following statistics for Karnataka 

The representation ratio between citizens and their elected representatives is almost ten times larger for urban areas. In a city like Bangalore, the ratio is 42,000 citizens for one Elected Representative. One possible interpretation of this could be that government is more than 100 times further away for the resident of Bangalore than the average rural dweller.

In addition to this, the concept of the Gram Sabha in the rural areas has got legitimacy, if not actual on-the-ground usage. The idea that every registered voter is a member of a Gram Sabha, and should participate in decision-making through this vehicle is one that at least has sanction, if not much track record. 

So, while it may seem reasonable to believe that decentralisation is now only an implementation challenge in India, the reality is that we have an extremely skewed federalist structure at the third tier. This failure to have a coherent rural-urban approach to decentralisation is a big lacuna in Indian federalism. Indeed it is astonishing that – despite the general rigour that has characterised India’s approach to democratic institutionalisation - often correctly placing due process at a premium to short-term outcomes – there has been such an intellectual vacuum with respect to urbanisation, with very few champions of the cause. 

As a result, our urban centres do not have an essential “rooting”, an organic connection between the urban citizen and the government. Examples abound: there is no opportunity to participate in decisions on local development, no mechanism to stop the illegal violation of the local park, no system to prevent the neighbour’s residence from being converted into a hospital that could soon dump toxic waste in the storm water drains, no grassroot answer to manage the voter roll errors which are upwards of 40% in urban areas, no space to even vent one’s frustrations. While the urban resident can see herself as a producer of urban goods and services, or as a consumer of urban comforts, she cannot so easily see herself as a citizen. 

These gaps exist for everyone, be it a Supreme Court judge, a Cabinet Secretar, the industrialists, the writers, the media, the film-makers, the intellectuals, even the activitists. No one can survive in the city without the coping mechanisms that their particular position offers them: their networks, their identities. Strip away these identities, and the empty edifice of citizenry will provide cold comfort. Imagine if this is true for the “empowered” urban Indian, what it could be doing to the 35% and more of the urban dwellers who are the urban poor. They are twice forsaken, once because of their state, and once by the State. 

We therefore have an unusual situation facing decentralisation in India: rural governance structures that are not fuelled by economic energy, and urban economic engines that are not supported by robust governance structures. In some senses, this is the opportunity to grasp. With 4,000-odd urban local bodies in the country, spread across the 500-odd districts, rural-urban linkages could let the urban economic engine become the flywheel of rural growth, and allow rural governance structures to permeate urban management. 

India is ripe for a second wave of decentralisation, one that recognises the role of local governments – across the urban-rural divide. Strengthening local governments is no longer sufficient. Strengthening local governments to manage the increasingly inter-linked rural-urban space will be the political and policy challenge over the next decade. Here, the Centre will need to play a strategic role using its fiscal and regulatory powers to provide incentives for the States. Crafting a central strategy to support local governments must be the political agenda of India’s ‘second wave’ of decentralisation.
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The author is founder of Janaagraha. He can be reached at ramesh@janaagraha.org