Author: T M Thomas Isaac
Publisher: LeftWord
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 290
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8187496185
Description
Expertly combining theoretical analysis with empirical research, this book will be of interest to all those fighting for the creation of a truly democratic India.
The People’s planning campaign in Kerala is a mass movement to empower local bodies, to prepare plans for comprehensive local development, and to create an environment for radical institutional reforms. ‘Local Democracy and Development’ gives the inside story of this unique experiment in democratic decentralization that has attracted attention all over the world.
Local bodies in Kerala have prepared and implemented three annual plans whose outlay constitutes 35-40 per cent of the state’s plan. This book present the rationale for initiating a mass movement for decentralization, chronicles the progress of the decentralized planning process during its first three years, and attempts an assessment of the outcome.
Expertly combining theoretical analysis with empirical research, the book will be of interest to planners, economists, administrators, social activists, and all those fighting for the creation of a truly democratic India.
REVIEWS:
The People’s Campaign is a grand experiment in radical decentralization…This book, rich with actual observation, is instructive. Every chapter deals with some facet or the other of decentralized democracy in action….(Isaac’s) great advantage is his knowledge, of the intimate workings of the plan, its difficulties and drawback, the unfounded hostilities and the frailties, of the future ahead’.
— Indian Review of Books
The book….contains important lessons even for those states in which cadre-based and party-directed mass mobilization is not a component in the renewal of local self-governing institutions.
— Biblio
Contents
List of Tables
Preface
Introduction: Significance of the Kerala Experiment
Why a Campaign?: The Political Vision
Behind the Political Vision: Civil society, the Kerala Model, and Local Experiments in the Making of the Campaign
The First Phase: Grama Sabhas: Identifying Local Needs
The Second Phase: Development Seminars : What is to be Done?
The Third Phase: Task forces: Preparing the Projects
The Fourth Phase: Elected Bodies Formulate the Local Plans
The Fifth Phase: Planning Up Instead of Down: Roles of the Blocks and Districts
Taking Stock: The First Year’s Local Plans: 1997-98
From People’s Planning to plan Implementation
From Experiment to Institution: The Plans and the Campaign, 1998-2001
The Long March Ahead
The Kerala Experiment in International Perspective
Bibliography
Index