Kerala 2005 - of Planning Commission

CHAPTER 9
Decentralised Governance
and Human Development
THE KERALA EXPERIENCE
1. Introduction
Local bodies in Kerala, 1 though extant for a long period, had very limited powers
as self-governing local development institutions and were primarily conduits for
schemes designed and funded by State/Central ministries. With the 73rd and 74th
Constitutional Amendments in 1993, Kerala embarked on the task of inducting
the Panchayati Raj institutions into the governance structures in the state. True
to the history of public action in Kerala, the agenda of decentralisation has been
so integrated into the public discourse on development that it too, appears to
have become institutionalised. And this has ensured continuous commitment to
decentralisation by successive Governments.
It is generally recognised that decentralisation, as implemented in Kerala, has not
only enhanced her capability vector but also had considerable impact on quality,
efficacy and inclusiveness of that development. 2 The local bodies are charged
with a number of developmental functions and taken together they represent
the ingredients for enhancing basic human development. These are individual/
household benefit programmes such as housing, distribution of income earning
assets as well as those that enhance the supply of public and collective goods
such as roads, schools and public health care centres. However, that problems
of transparency and accountability, poor vertical integration of local level plans,
under-utilisation of funds and capacity enhancement of functionaries remain,
cannot also be denied. For instance, while on the one hand it has opened the
public sphere for the hitherto socially marginalised groups such as the Scheduled
Castes/Scheduled Tribes and the politically excluded women in proportions
never seen before, transformatory outcomes for such groups is still elusive.
1 The State has at present 991 Grama Panchayats, 152 Block Panchayats, 14 District Panchayats, 53 Municipalities and 5
Corporations (situation at the time of the 2000 elections to local bodies). In order to make the administration of the panchayats
efficient, large sized panchayats having large populations were divided and 20 new grama panchayats were formed. These
panchayats came into existence from October 2000 and 11 grama panchayats were delinked.
2 See for details Chaudhuri et al, 2004.