Ever growing failures of centralized governance and the increasing concerns on good governance prompted the policy makers to pay increasing attention on decentralization and deeper democratic governance the world over for the past few decades resulting in more concerns on local governance. Most of those attempts in decentralization were characterized by “half-hearted reforms, blatant reversals and partial successes”. The state of Kerala, lying in the south west part of the federal polity of India, has been witnessing an initiative and experimentation in order to make the democratic process deeper through decentralization as part of this global phenomenon. The basic problems in decentralisation in the state are described below:-
Introduction
Decentralisation is a very complex activity of devolution of political, administrative and fiscal responsibilities to the local elected governments. Decentralisation aims at establishing accountable, efficient, accessible and transparent local governance. Consolidation of major problems arising out during those changes is the main theme of this paper.
Kerala, the tiny state in the southernmost part of India, has the fertile preconditions such as traditional community life, land reforms, high literacy & education, qualitative health indicators, powerful grassroots institutions, vibrating civil society and sharp political affinities among people, for creating vibrant local government institutions. In decentralisation, the State had a long history of half-hearted reforms characterised by partial successes and blatant reversals right from its creation in 1957. Kerala, with appreciative development indicators comparable to developed countries, has been experimenting with decentralisation and participatory local democracy, ultimately aimed at realization of the constitutional goal of establishing genuine "institutions of local self government" since the enactment of Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & The Kerala Municipality Act in the year 1994.
Decentralisation process necessitates a large number of changes to be made in the political process, administrative structure, distribution of powers and responsibilities, allocation of resources, management of human resources and in the degree of autonomy in each tier of government.
Brief history
The enactment of Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & The Kerala Municipality Act in the year 1994, in tune with the constitutional changes made in 1993, was the first step in the recent history of decentralisation in Kerala and the acts incorporated the bare minimum mandatory constitutional requirement. The act enlisted both mandatory and sectoral responsibilities and institutional structures of the local government system in Kerala.
The functional areas of local governments are made distinctly clearer by transferring a number of institutions and staff positions to the local governments, in September 1995, following the principle ‘work and worker going together’. With this transfer, local governments in Kerala got the services of fairly senior professional officers on Health, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Rural Development, Social Welfare, Scheduled Caste Development, Education etc. They are designated ex-officio secretaries with all powers and responsibilities of the secretary, in their sector.
The State budget of Government of Kerala, presented in February 1996 was the next milestone in the history of decentralisation in the state, which set apart a small amount of untied funds to draw local plan projects by the local governments. This paved way for legislative approval of resource allocation to local governments through a very unique budgetary process.
The process of decentralisation was pushed further forward in 1996 by introducing the participatory bottom-up planning process in a campaign mode namely People’s Plan Campaign (PPC). The Campaign initiated by the transfer of one-third plan resources of the State to the local governments in the ninth five-year plan, really infused life into decentralisation in the State. "The campaign had succeeded in deepening the process of decentralisation, bringing about qualitative changes in planning and implementation and altering of the mindset about participatory development." (Government of Kerala: 1999) The availability of enormous resources entitled the local governments to realise their functional responsibilities assigned by the new legislation. As well, the transfer of a lot of responsibilities and funds to local governments mounted pressure on the State Government to ensure that the responsibilities are carried out effectively and funds are utilized properly. Because of the heavy transfer of funds, it has become the responsibility of the State Government to ensure that decentralisation works well.
Kerala adopted a ‘bing bang‘ approach towards decentralisation, in ‘reversal’1 of the traditional approaches to transfer funds, functions and functionaries to local governments in one go and later made attempts to build up the capacity of the local governments to undertake the transferred tasks.
The Peoples Plan Campaign, consisted of a series of phases, 2 had been taken as an entry point in achieving a high degree of decentralisation in the State. The campaign could establish adhoc systems and procedures, which were later, corrected or were attempted to correct on trial and error basis. The campaign could succeed in setting the agenda of decentralisation and push its pace to a great extent.
The decentralisation efforts were expected to move from an experimentation, corrective and consolidation phase to an institutional phase. But the campaign could not go much ahead in transforming the existing administrative operating systems of local governments to the needs of decentralisation, with local political process, good local financial management, excellent procurement system and meaningful relation between elected and appointed functionaries. The interim systems strenuously made during the campaign could not be institutionalised or made sustainable. The expectation of the campaign was that it would accelerate economic growth and create new model of growth with equity in Kerala. (Thomas Isaac T M and Richard W Franke 2000)
The amendment made to the Kerala Panchayat Raj & Municipality Acts in 1999, consequent to the recommendation of the Committee on Decentralisation of Powers (Sen Committee), had transformed the acts proactive to the needs of decentralisation to a very great extend. The recent initiative to institutionalise the good features of learning from peoples plan campaign, in the ongoing tenth five-year planning process was a good beginning, but the institutionalization process had left much to be desired.
Decentralisation in Kerala, as in other countries is proven to be a very difficult process for three obvious reasons. The most obvious reason is that many powerful forces influencing the State have little interest in decentralisation. The second is that there is much institutional inertia to overcome. The third is that even when state’s elites commit themselves to decentralistion, the task of institutional building such as enacting new laws and regulations, redeploying personnel, rechanneling personnel, building up local administrative capacities etc. is herculean. But Kerala has a long and celebrated history of social mobilization and a dense and vibrant civil society, which make the task slightly easier than everywhere else. (Heller, Patrick 2000:7)
In spite of many debilitating factors, the decentralisation process in Kerala has become almost irreversible and concrete steps are being made to institutionalise the decentralised governance in the State. (Government of Kerala 2003)
But weather decentralisation will deliver good or bad is still a debating question. On the one hand, there has been a growing criticism that in the name of decentralisation, democratically elected governments are urged to abandon social welfare responsibilities and local communities are urged to take up more responsibilities, forcibly dictated by undemocratic international lending agencies. On the other hand, decentralisation can be a way to achieve more quality in the content of democracy.
Kerala shows that democratic decentralisation strongly buttressed by state support can be an effective strategy for reducing inequality in living standards. (Franke, Richard W and Barbara H Chasin 2000)
Major problems
Refining legislative framework.
Decentralisation in Kerala is a process launched by legislative enactments and framing of Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & The Kerala Municipality Act and associated rules in accordance with the constitutional amendment and not by any political or social movement. Continuous refinement of legislative framework, in tune with the discernible political reality, is essential for promoting decentralisation. The contradictions, lack of clarity, possibility of multiple interpretations, critical grey areas of silence etc. in the provisions of the statutes, rules and orders, make the decentralisation initiatives very slow, cumbersome or difficult.
The issuance of numerous government orders to address ever emerging problems without considering the holistic perspective, the delay in or absence of communicating the Government orders to the field level functionaries and the difficulty in ascertaining the correct interpretation of defective statutes or orders, create a lot of confusion in the minds of practitioners of decentralisation process in Kerala. Unless efforts are made to communicate the government decisions in time, to the field functionaries, with absolute clarity, decentralisation in Kerala cannot march ahead.
An advisory legal cell for continuous examination of statutes, rules and orders and for submitting the possible policy options to the Government, should be established as part of academic institutions like Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), to make a refined and meaningful legislative framework for decentralisation. Instantaneous communication of statutes, rules and orders to the field functionaries could be possible by uploading them in a website regularly and the documents thus uploaded can be made accessible to the functionaries through the commercial internet kiosks without lapse of time.
Problem of departmental integration
The decentralisation expected to bring about all developmental programms earlier run by Rural Development Department (Government of Kerala) to the local government institutions. The existence of Rural Development Department in addition to the Local Self Government department with almost similar functions, the existence of District Rural Developmental Agency (DRDA) separate from District Panchayat with same functions, emergence of MP/MLA Local Area Development as a separate programme outside local government system, the separation of a part of Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) from the local government realm, the existence of many state level Corporation or Boards in areas devolved to local governments and existence of many agencies like Urban Development Authorities and the difficulty in integrating all activities of sectoral departments horizontally at local body level, results in duplication of activities, programmes and projects and thereby weakening the decentralisation process through absolute lack of integration.
The existence of parallel organisations such as DRDA which were originally set up to enhance peoples participation and flexibility in implementation of projects, weakens the domain of local governments and empowers the beaurocracy in handling the local affairs.
The existence of Urban Development Authorities, which were created when local governments were weak, to plan and implement the provisions in the Town Planning Act, have failed in their original intention and majority of them are now taking up road construction and shopping complex construction etc. They are also conflicting with the local governments.
The existence of such parallel structures, surviving as creator of burocratic powers, lead to unhealthy competition for space and even pose challenge to legitimate activity of elected local governments. They need to be disbanded or harmonized with local governments.
Absence of horizontal and vertical integration is another problem. All the functions of the departments and agencies coming under the 29 items of functions constitutionally earmarked to local government institutions as per the eleventh schedule of the Constitution should have been horizontally integrated at the District and below level with the local government institutions, without retaining the department or agency identity as far as possible. As well, the vertical integration of plans of all tiers of local governments under the multi-level planning is another requirement. The existence of many Corporations / Boards, as centralized structures, established for professional attention and operational efficiency should not have been allowed to continue. The District Planning Committee (DPC), working in the manner of a Standing Committee of a district panchayat, at present, should be strengthened to enable them to integrate the rural and urban local body plans at the District level more rigorously. The MP&MLA Local Area Development funds, which should have been gone to local governments otherwise, should be wound up/merged with local development plans, so as to avoid the ineffective and wasteful utilization of resources earmarked for the purpose.
Absence of Managerial Efficiency
The recent decentralisation efforts in Kerala veered round peoples plan campaign activities even though the former is more comprehensive concept touching a broad spectrum of areas than the latter. The management functions in local bodies, which follow traditional administrative practices, remained almost ignored or unattended from any improvement. ‘There has been no improvement in areas like budget preparation, office management including records maintenance, control over staff, procedures relating to meetings of panchayat committees including sub committees and so on” (Chathukulam Jose, and M S John 2002:4917-26) There is urgent need to explore the possibility to develop efficient management systems and new office procedures relating to maintenance of files, flow of files for decision making, storing and retrieving of data or files, providing feedback to elected representatives and establishing public procedures with elements of professionalism in our local bodies. It appears that there is no systematic way of preparing timely agenda notes, accurate recordings of minutes and drafting of speaking resolutions in the meetings of the local governments. For increasing managerial efficiency elaborate management manuals for office administration and for the management of each sectoral institutions coming under local governance, on the lines of election manual, need to be prepared as envisaged in the Report of the Committee on Decentralisation of Powers. The manual should contain all the mandatory obligations as well as suggestive ideas to be followed by the local government with reference to that particular function. The manual should provide guidelines for smooth control of day today work in the local governments. The number of registers maintained in local governments would be reduced to an optimum level to avoid unnecessary duplication and easy maintenance. Newly inducted staff needs to be given induction training. The practices of non-maintenance of proper records regarding collection of taxes and issuance of certificates need to be corrected.
Ineffective distribution of work, absence of job description, dual control of officers by sectoral departments and local governments, location of several wings in different places with weak links between those units, lack of supervision and lack of relevant well identified operational practices, are other essential managerial issues. The present day local government offices are characterised by inefficiency, corruption and nepotism, to a large extent .The old office procedures have deteriorated due to pressure of work, imprecise instructions from above, untrained staff, ineffective supervision, imperfect procedures and corrupt motives. Establishment of scientific management based on 'system approach' and simplicity coupled with continuous training and social control, is the only way out. The use of e-governance to simplify the management of offices should also be explored.
Kerala decentralisation has made possible clear distinction in delineating the functional domain of each tier of local bodies. It has been "found that it is easier to define the functions in the management of institutions, creation of infrastructure and provision of services but when it came to the question of defining the functional areas in sectors like agriculture and industries there is bound to be certain overlaps, and only based on several years experience can the comparative advantage of each tier in performing various functions would be known early"(Vijayanad S M: 2001). Thus overlap in the demarcation of functions in the sectors like agriculture, industry etc. remains as a difficult task.
Lack of clear demarcation of functional responsibilities exists among the three tiers of local governments and between state government and local governments in economic development sectors such as agriculture &allied activities, rural industries, poverty reduction etc. lead to duplication of efforts, waste of resources and unnecessary conflict over identification of localities and person to be benefited.
Ineffective management of institutions
Most of the institutions at the district level and below levels like hospitals, schools, anganawadies, hostels, farms, agricultural offices etc. providing important services to less privileged people have been transferred to local governments. The local governments have not been very effective in managing the transferred institutions and professionals, except in improving the infrastructure, particularly in education and health sectors. This is a major area of concern as the efficiency of services of these institutions is dependent on the manner in which they are managed by the local governments.
Improvement of healthcare and educational institution is a serious problem area, which needs attention. The local bodies are unable to formulate good projects for sustainable development in those sectors except creation of infrastructure. Serious efforts are needed for local assessment of problems and finding local solutions in those sectors, which constitute the core of Keralas development paradigm. Local governments need to manage professionals and run institutions and to enhance quality of services and efficiency of institutions in both the sectors in a better way. The support of officials and the State Government departments in those sectors are lukewarm. As well, planning and development in health and education is more complicated than in other sectors.
Lack of clarity on the role of elected local government in the management of these institutions, absence of positive working relationship between the professionals managing these institutions and the elected local governments, dual control of these institutions by the State Government departments and local governments, focus on improving infrastructure rather than on quality of services and weak capacity on the part of elected functionaries to manage these institutions are the reasons for such a sorry state of affairs.
Neglected human resource management
Decentralization process in Kerala envisaged that the excess staff in various state government departments which devolved functions to local governments, when transferred, would meet the shortage of staff in local governments and the local bodies would discharge those function more effectively than earlier, while allowing the staff to retain the cadre conditions to allow their career prospects. The local governments are expected to have administrative control over the transferred staff while the department would have professional control over them. In the case of officers transferred to local governments, their professional power and responsibility increases whereas their administrative power remains more or less the same. The transferred officers who are the defacto secretary to local government in their respective sector, need to be equipped to play their new role and can no longer remain as a mere implementer of programmes. This system has created dual control, mutual distrust and misgivings resulting in poor performance. Unless this complex issue is solved reasonably, we cannot push the decentralisation further forward.
The lower status of non-gazatted Grama Panchayat secretaries, in comparison to many gazatted sectoral officers, makes it difficult for him to play the role of first among equals to co-ordinate the officers in the senior management and that also pose serious problem in providing stable leadership in many local bodies. The secretary should be the chief executive with sufficient capacity, motivation and status to provide the administrative leadership, the failure of which should lead to harmful tendencies.
One major deficiency of Kerala decentralisation is that it failed to forge a senior management system in the local governments by integrating the functionaries drawn from different departments. Many of these officers have strongly retained their department identify and have very weak bonds with local government, without having any organic relation among them.
Need for new Purchase Procedure
The financial transactions in local bodies, due to heavy transfer of funds, have increased manifold. Similarly the volume of transactions related to purchase and storage has made the governments a major purchaser of goods and services. But the purchases are made in accordance with the cumbersome Government purchase procedure outlined in stores purchase rules basically designed for a centralised services which do not allow transparency and social audit. There is urgent need to formulate new purchase procedures and management of stocks in accordance with the changing times.
Need for effective Account Keeping
Account keeping is an identified problem area in local governance, which needs correction. The multiplicity of around 150 registers or documents, poor management of them including asset registers, problem of reconciliation among them, lack of accounting skills among the staff and insufficiency of staff in comparison to workload etc. are the problems in accounting. The account formats containing columns for all the activities connected with the newer role of local bodies are approved recently and the switch over to the new format has been made. The functionaries should be well trained to keep accounts properly. Unless well-stabilized account keeping is established in local governments, the decentralisation will be a story of failures. Continuous qualitative training of all practitioners is the urgent need of the hour to have a smooth switch over to the new accounting system.
Auditing as a control measure
Subsequent to launching of decentralisation, enormous function and funds were devolved to local governments with unlimited autonomy, but with reduced control by government. So new system of checks and balances ate essential, to have ‘fairness in decision, propriety in expenditure, legality in actions and legitimacy in policy’. Audit examination is an important control mechanism to keep the local governance in order.
The local fund audit, performance audit, Accountant Generals audit and audit of the Chartered Accountant are prevalent in local bodies. These audits are conducted at various points of time and the duration of auditing also varies. The multiplicity and duplication of audit at varying periodicity ranging from once in a quarter to once in an year at different points of time dilute the professionalism of auditing itself and waste the time of auditor and local body functionaries, forcing the functionaries to compromise on delivery of local government services.
There has been considerable delay and dilution in quality of audit. The routine form of audit, ongoing as of now, does not attempt towards system improvement or enable deterrent penal action on derailed attempts made by the local government functionaries.
The contradiction of findings in audit reports, unscientific performance auditing and delay in non-compliance of audit reports etc. make the audit process a time wasting exercise, doing more harm rather than good. The auditing should be revamped to ensure financial accountability by the functionaries of local governments. Creation of an autonomous Audit Commission headed by experts independent of government control, to function on the lines of the Controller and Auditor General of India as already suggested need to be established.
As well, social audit formally through monitoring committee and informally through gramasabha or committees of the local bodies or community organisations, should form a main deterrent against possible waywardness of local governments. There is urgent need to redefine the role of various types of audits by developing detailed audit manuals and by training audit teams about the new perspectives on decentralisation, to address the issue.
Problems in local economic development
Peoples planning was set to overcome the stagnation in the productive sectors, reverse the decline in the quality of services and to maximize the use of assets in the social sectors.
Preparation of plans for the development of the concerned area with focus on productivity-increase on the one hand and reduction in beneficiary oriented schemes on the other hand is the major responsibility of the local governments. The plans produced by the local bodies now do not qualify to be called plans, but a bundle of unintegrated projects. Many of the projects were modified version of standardized department projects, without any meaningful backward and forward linkages and overall thrust on material production. There has been a tendency to mechanically allocate funds on ward basis and prepare projects in response to the preferences of ‘vote banks’ in each constituency rather than on the basis of common needs of the whole set of people in the local body. The local bodies, in such situation, cannot visualize the long-term needs of development of the area and translate the long-term vision and goals into practice in the form of practical projects. The development strategy now followed is limited to allocate plan funds to different sectors and then distribute ward-wise rather than on the basis of any priority considerations in the planning process. As well, there has been inability to consider local body as a unit of planning by many elected functionaries and there is absolute lack of expertise at the disposal of local body to formulate long-term development strategy and development plan, based on a holistic agreed vision.
Formulation of a long-term vision has recently been made a compulsory step in local planning and the functionaries are to be trained in the creative task of developing a vision in accordance with the local situation.
The resultant production-increase visible in the primary and secondary sectors due to peoples planning is minimal with stray islands of partial successes, against our expectations earlier. Formulation of plans for local economic development is a mandatory responsibility of local governments and hence local bodies should have engaged in promoting material production in Agriculture and small-scale industries for increasing production and generating employment3. Agriculture sector should have gained more attention in the decentralisation process. Traditional sectors like coir, fishery, handloom, cashew etc. were left out of planning process. The projects aimed at local economic development did not have shown strong forward and backward linkages to make an integrated environment for production. Analysis and strengthening of micro enterprises, conducting entrepreneurship development programmes to upgrade skills and making the funding agencies accessible to local governments, are essential activities to be undertaken for shifting our focus from ‘local development’ to ‘local economic development’.
The overall approach to local development in the decentralised planning was rapid, scientific and growth oriented one and hence sustainable and ecological local economic development based on indigenous knowledge and local resources has been more or less ignored in the process.
As part of local planning, the local bodies have not shown any initiative to sustain and manage natural resources and conserve environment. The local bodies should have engaged in identifying natural resources and common property resources while planning and implementing local projects. This has become a dire need in the context of ever-increasing environmental degradation.
Non- integration of spatial considerations in local economic planning is another problem. Construction of roads and buildings, provision of electricity and water supply etc. have critical spatial dimension. They should be planned not on socio-political consideration, but on spatial perspectives. In order to include spatial planning concept in the decentralised planning process, a clear binding provision in the legislation and proper training on spatial planning for the stakeholders are required. It is hoped that the watershed based agricultural planning will improve local spatial planning, raise environmental concerns, and introduce sustainability in the decentralised planning in the course of time.
Problems in gender empowerment
Decentralisation provides gender dimension in local government by earmarking ten percent of the total plan funds, aiming at better quality of life for women and to enhance participation of women in overall development decisions. But, there have been serious lapses in women participation in identifying and prioritising projects and many gender specific issues like health care, domestic violence, alcoholism etc. has been totally neglected in our decentralised planning process.
There is urgent need to include gender responsive budgeting in local governments in order to promote equality and social justice. Gender auditing should also be incorporated in the local governance. Development of skills in conceptualizing, preparing and implementing gender-based projects, should also be provided in the training for gender development to have a balanced growth.
Failure of community contracting
In the early years of peoples planning, community contracting - doing public works by beneficiary committees - was encouraged to facilitate people’s participation, social audit and to do away with the ‘contractor raj’ in local development. But the genuine beneficiary committees could not do much work as contractors masquerading as convenors of beneficiary committees took up work in many of places making community contracting a big failure in the peoples planning era. "Many beneficiary committees have fallen prey to vested interests". This has resulted in bringing the tender system for all works above an estimate of Rs. 25000/- as an interim measure. There is urgent need to explore ways to do away with tender system and to bring back genuine community contracting system. Provide leadership training to public-spirited local leaders and groom them for community work would be the probable solution.
Disinterest in resource mobilisation
The devolution of large amount of plan resources took away the interest of local governments in collecting their own resources, as they are comfortable with the sufficiency of plan grants earmarked to them. Local government can collect very higher amount of taxes, tolls and fees than earlier at the current revised rates. Local governments need to improve their revenue by maximising the collection.
Local governments in Kerala enjoyed a continuous flow of plan resources due to the sustaining political will in the recent years, inspite of severe financial constraints. But weak credit linkages has been identified as a major weakness of local-level plans. "Both commercial and cooperative banks have by and large been unwilling to link official credit planning to the local planning projects. Resources from voluntary labour, donations and beneficiary contributions have fallen short of anticipated levels. However a number of panchayats did successfully mobilize sustainable resources from these sources indicating them as yet untapped potential". (Fung, Archon and Erik Olin Wright 2003). Local bodies should be motivated to bring their focus on resource mobilization from banks and outside sources.
Revitalization of Institutions difficult
Gramasabha:
The gramasabha, endowed legally with enormous powers like prioritising development schemes, identification of beneficiaries, engage in social audit, right to know the statement of accounts, administration report and audit report and all development decisions / rationale in arriving at that decision, is functioning in total deviation from its expectations, inspite of having detailed statutes, rules and orders.
Gramasabha purported to enhance the quality of peoples participation are now functioning as beneficiary determing mechanisms rather than a platform for meaningful dialogue on developmental priorities. The middle, upper and professional classes of people are not participating in our gramasabha meetings and majority of participants are the targeted beneficiaries of development projects. They attend the gramasabha for airing their needs and sharing the benefits. This is a significant threat to the deliberative character of the gramasabha.
Disinterest by the local functionaries to vitalize gramasabha, ignorance of the democratic rights relating to gramasabha by majority of the people, arbitrary decision making by local functionaries in total neglect of the gramasabha proceedings etc lead to weakening of gramasabha. All pervading awareness building process and stable enforcement of legal provisions, are needed to revitalize the gramasabha as a mechanism for direct democracy, deciding development priorities and for channelising public contribution for local development.
Ombudsman & Tribunal
A major threat to decentralisation is ever increasing and persistent malfeasance and corruption in execution of work, selection of beneficiaries and personally benefited projects. Devolution of sustained funds to local communities without proper safeguards will fuel rent seeking behavior, community conflicts and corruption. There would have been irregularities from inexperience and haste rather than corruption in the initial years. But that may lead to absolute corruption unless checked properly.
The local government system is expected to deliver a faster and cheaper grievance redressal system in order to install the traditional virtues of public service like impartiality, neutrality, anonymity etc and to deliver effective, efficient and equitable public services, devoid of corruption.
Ombudsman for state level redressal of grievance relating to corruption and maladministration and Local Government Tribunal at the district level for speedy and easily accessible redressal of grievances on wrong exercise of regulatory functions, are two institutional mechanisms envisaged for the purpose. The ombudsman, established initially with seven members, has been reduced to a one-member body recently and the Tribunal at the district level has not been established in spite of framing the rules governing it, two years ago.
Inability of the single member Ombudsman to handle ever increasing complaints and the functioning of the Ombudsman like a court rather than an informal grievances redressal mechanism are problems which needs correction. Strengthening of internal grievances handling mechanism and ensuring exhaustion of all in-house remedial measures before approaching Ombudsman to minimise the number of complaints, are essential prerequisites to ensure effective functioning of Ombudsman. Revitalization and fine-tuning of Ombudsman and speedy creation of Tribunal are essential to combat decentralisation of corruption and possible mal-administration in local governance.
Need for a decentralised training
Capacity development of local government functionaries plays a very critical role for the success of decentralisation as the decentralisation process is engaged in creating new systems and procedures in local governance, transferring numerous key functionaries from development departments of the State to local governments with newer role and drawing newer elected functionaries in every election who are never exposed to the new systems of local governance. Our experience in the campaign type of training that dominated during the yester years, shows that the initial focus on exposure, orientation and motivation has to move towards sound skill development of actors in local governments. Only an institutionalised system can take care of recurring training needs that emerge with introduction or change of procedures, functions or strategies and only decentralised systems can take care of the ever-increasing volume in the number of trainees.
For enhancing the quality of decentralisation we should have mechanism to train the elected representatives, especially women & Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe functionaries, with in a reasonable time frame on assumption of their elected offices. The elected representatives do not otherwise have the knowledge and skill to manage a panchayat, school or hospital. The existing institutional training available to them from training institutions like Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), Institute of Management for Government (IMG), State Institute Rural Development (SIRD) etc, are of general nature and lacks the rigorousness of intensive training. A mutually agreed overall strategy to be evolved to provide uniform content or messages and to add quality to the training process for decentralisation in Kerala.
The capacity building should, not only focus on developing essential knowledge and basic skills but also change the attitude and values in favour of decentralisation in order to build the capacity to realize the development functions. The capacity development programmes for decentralisation should be able to motivate the relevant local functionaries to manage their responsibilities in tune with the procedures and practices of good local governance. Inclusion of spatial perspectives in every aspect of local economic planning should also be made a focus area in training for decentralisation.
In order to conceptualize, develop and implement capacity development programmes to support decentralisation, a systematic training system comprising of multi-disciplinary, multi-skilled trainers, and a network of training institutions including Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) designed with a two tier cascading training scheme should be evolved for imparting need based effective training. All stakeholders in the decentralisation need to be exposed to training. Exposure training, intensive training, customized training, tailor made training etc. should be combined together to attack the problem in capacity development. We should evolve a training policy, with a binding framework for all capacity building activities by involving all major stakeholders, with clarity on the role of all actors and organizations.
Attempts should be made to identify the institutes, which can involve in the capacity building of local government institutions. The problem of non-availability of quality training material on various subject areas need to be addressed by engaging on the call experts. The problem of in-adequate field exposure of the faculty available in the training institute like KILA, IMG, and SIRD etc. should be solved by engaging them in field studies regularly. Training of trainers should be a critical focus area in our capacity building exercise.
In short, development of a training policy, conducting a scientific Training Need Assessment (TNA) of all stakeholders of decentralisation, identification of training institution at the District and below levels, evolving a training network, coordinated development of practical oriented curriculum and coordination of training implementation can address the problems in the area of capacity development to a very great extend.
Forging civil society organisations with local governance.
Civil society organisations are expected to have an increasingly greater role in the development planning, mobilisation of people for participatory action, implementation of citizen’s charter, social audit, entrepreneurship development and ensuring transparency in local government system. But the role played by civil society organisation in the decentralisation process in Kerala at the local government level is very limited. No systematic effort was made to encourage collaborative activities between both.
Absence of a formal mechanism to involve Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the decentralisation process and the total absence of trust between the NGOs & local governments are the reasons for the weak relation between the mutually essential organisations. Local government laws should provide a space to involve genuine civil society organisations in the decentralisation process in the State.
State Development Council and DPC
State Development Council(SDC), which is expected to act as the highest policy making body on decentralisation in the State, has not been made an effective functional body inspite of our eight year old decentralisation efforts in Kerala. The SDC, consisting of all ministers, local body representatives, opposition leader, Vice chairman of State Planning Board etc, has not gained due value as a newly created platform, that could have pushed the pace of decentralisation much faster in a consensus oriented way. This institution is expected to take the lead in policy making and in sorting out operational issues in decentralisation.
The District Planning Committee (DPC), the coordinating body that integrates the rural and urban local body plans at the District, is not functioning as desired and need to be vitalized. The District Planning Committee is composed of comparatively low profile leaders in the District Panchayat/Municipalities and is playing a very insignificant role in planning. The existence of District Development Committee (DDC) consisting of all members of the legislative body and sectoral officers in the District with collector as chairman plays more crucial role and it undermines the DPC to a great extend. The District Planning Committee & the District Development Committee need to be harmonized together, as the latter as an extended general body of the former, by legislation.
Conclusion
Kerala has made an excellent beginning and moved much ahead in the direction of decentralisation and development of third stratum of local governance with the goal of deepening and widening democracy and local development. But in order to make it efficient, effective and purpose oriented, it has to go a long way.
Since decentralisation is a curious phenomenon, which is preached by all, but practiced by a few, the sincere promoters of decentralisation should take all possible measures to push the decentralisation forward, inch by inch by help solving the major issues by words and deeds.
Introduction
Decentralisation is a very complex activity of devolution of political, administrative and fiscal responsibilities to the local elected governments. Decentralisation aims at establishing accountable, efficient, accessible and transparent local governance. Consolidation of major problems arising out during those changes is the main theme of this paper.
Kerala, the tiny state in the southernmost part of India, has the fertile preconditions such as traditional community life, land reforms, high literacy & education, qualitative health indicators, powerful grassroots institutions, vibrating civil society and sharp political affinities among people, for creating vibrant local government institutions. In decentralisation, the State had a long history of half-hearted reforms characterised by partial successes and blatant reversals right from its creation in 1957. Kerala, with appreciative development indicators comparable to developed countries, has been experimenting with decentralisation and participatory local democracy, ultimately aimed at realization of the constitutional goal of establishing genuine "institutions of local self government" since the enactment of Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & The Kerala Municipality Act in the year 1994.
Decentralisation process necessitates a large number of changes to be made in the political process, administrative structure, distribution of powers and responsibilities, allocation of resources, management of human resources and in the degree of autonomy in each tier of government.
Brief history
The enactment of Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & The Kerala Municipality Act in the year 1994, in tune with the constitutional changes made in 1993, was the first step in the recent history of decentralisation in Kerala and the acts incorporated the bare minimum mandatory constitutional requirement. The act enlisted both mandatory and sectoral responsibilities and institutional structures of the local government system in Kerala.
The functional areas of local governments are made distinctly clearer by transferring a number of institutions and staff positions to the local governments, in September 1995, following the principle ‘work and worker going together’. With this transfer, local governments in Kerala got the services of fairly senior professional officers on Health, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Rural Development, Social Welfare, Scheduled Caste Development, Education etc. They are designated ex-officio secretaries with all powers and responsibilities of the secretary, in their sector.
The State budget of Government of Kerala, presented in February 1996 was the next milestone in the history of decentralisation in the state, which set apart a small amount of untied funds to draw local plan projects by the local governments. This paved way for legislative approval of resource allocation to local governments through a very unique budgetary process.
The process of decentralisation was pushed further forward in 1996 by introducing the participatory bottom-up planning process in a campaign mode namely People’s Plan Campaign (PPC). The Campaign initiated by the transfer of one-third plan resources of the State to the local governments in the ninth five-year plan, really infused life into decentralisation in the State. "The campaign had succeeded in deepening the process of decentralisation, bringing about qualitative changes in planning and implementation and altering of the mindset about participatory development." (Government of Kerala: 1999) The availability of enormous resources entitled the local governments to realise their functional responsibilities assigned by the new legislation. As well, the transfer of a lot of responsibilities and funds to local governments mounted pressure on the State Government to ensure that the responsibilities are carried out effectively and funds are utilized properly. Because of the heavy transfer of funds, it has become the responsibility of the State Government to ensure that decentralisation works well.
Kerala adopted a ‘bing bang‘ approach towards decentralisation, in ‘reversal’1 of the traditional approaches to transfer funds, functions and functionaries to local governments in one go and later made attempts to build up the capacity of the local governments to undertake the transferred tasks.
The Peoples Plan Campaign, consisted of a series of phases, 2 had been taken as an entry point in achieving a high degree of decentralisation in the State. The campaign could establish adhoc systems and procedures, which were later, corrected or were attempted to correct on trial and error basis. The campaign could succeed in setting the agenda of decentralisation and push its pace to a great extent.
The decentralisation efforts were expected to move from an experimentation, corrective and consolidation phase to an institutional phase. But the campaign could not go much ahead in transforming the existing administrative operating systems of local governments to the needs of decentralisation, with local political process, good local financial management, excellent procurement system and meaningful relation between elected and appointed functionaries. The interim systems strenuously made during the campaign could not be institutionalised or made sustainable. The expectation of the campaign was that it would accelerate economic growth and create new model of growth with equity in Kerala. (Thomas Isaac T M and Richard W Franke 2000)
The amendment made to the Kerala Panchayat Raj & Municipality Acts in 1999, consequent to the recommendation of the Committee on Decentralisation of Powers (Sen Committee), had transformed the acts proactive to the needs of decentralisation to a very great extend. The recent initiative to institutionalise the good features of learning from peoples plan campaign, in the ongoing tenth five-year planning process was a good beginning, but the institutionalization process had left much to be desired.
Decentralisation in Kerala, as in other countries is proven to be a very difficult process for three obvious reasons. The most obvious reason is that many powerful forces influencing the State have little interest in decentralisation. The second is that there is much institutional inertia to overcome. The third is that even when state’s elites commit themselves to decentralistion, the task of institutional building such as enacting new laws and regulations, redeploying personnel, rechanneling personnel, building up local administrative capacities etc. is herculean. But Kerala has a long and celebrated history of social mobilization and a dense and vibrant civil society, which make the task slightly easier than everywhere else. (Heller, Patrick 2000:7)
In spite of many debilitating factors, the decentralisation process in Kerala has become almost irreversible and concrete steps are being made to institutionalise the decentralised governance in the State. (Government of Kerala 2003)
But weather decentralisation will deliver good or bad is still a debating question. On the one hand, there has been a growing criticism that in the name of decentralisation, democratically elected governments are urged to abandon social welfare responsibilities and local communities are urged to take up more responsibilities, forcibly dictated by undemocratic international lending agencies. On the other hand, decentralisation can be a way to achieve more quality in the content of democracy.
Kerala shows that democratic decentralisation strongly buttressed by state support can be an effective strategy for reducing inequality in living standards. (Franke, Richard W and Barbara H Chasin 2000)
Major problems
Refining legislative framework.
Decentralisation in Kerala is a process launched by legislative enactments and framing of Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & The Kerala Municipality Act and associated rules in accordance with the constitutional amendment and not by any political or social movement. Continuous refinement of legislative framework, in tune with the discernible political reality, is essential for promoting decentralisation. The contradictions, lack of clarity, possibility of multiple interpretations, critical grey areas of silence etc. in the provisions of the statutes, rules and orders, make the decentralisation initiatives very slow, cumbersome or difficult.
The issuance of numerous government orders to address ever emerging problems without considering the holistic perspective, the delay in or absence of communicating the Government orders to the field level functionaries and the difficulty in ascertaining the correct interpretation of defective statutes or orders, create a lot of confusion in the minds of practitioners of decentralisation process in Kerala. Unless efforts are made to communicate the government decisions in time, to the field functionaries, with absolute clarity, decentralisation in Kerala cannot march ahead.
An advisory legal cell for continuous examination of statutes, rules and orders and for submitting the possible policy options to the Government, should be established as part of academic institutions like Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), to make a refined and meaningful legislative framework for decentralisation. Instantaneous communication of statutes, rules and orders to the field functionaries could be possible by uploading them in a website regularly and the documents thus uploaded can be made accessible to the functionaries through the commercial internet kiosks without lapse of time.
Problem of departmental integration
The decentralisation expected to bring about all developmental programms earlier run by Rural Development Department (Government of Kerala) to the local government institutions. The existence of Rural Development Department in addition to the Local Self Government department with almost similar functions, the existence of District Rural Developmental Agency (DRDA) separate from District Panchayat with same functions, emergence of MP/MLA Local Area Development as a separate programme outside local government system, the separation of a part of Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) from the local government realm, the existence of many state level Corporation or Boards in areas devolved to local governments and existence of many agencies like Urban Development Authorities and the difficulty in integrating all activities of sectoral departments horizontally at local body level, results in duplication of activities, programmes and projects and thereby weakening the decentralisation process through absolute lack of integration.
The existence of parallel organisations such as DRDA which were originally set up to enhance peoples participation and flexibility in implementation of projects, weakens the domain of local governments and empowers the beaurocracy in handling the local affairs.
The existence of Urban Development Authorities, which were created when local governments were weak, to plan and implement the provisions in the Town Planning Act, have failed in their original intention and majority of them are now taking up road construction and shopping complex construction etc. They are also conflicting with the local governments.
The existence of such parallel structures, surviving as creator of burocratic powers, lead to unhealthy competition for space and even pose challenge to legitimate activity of elected local governments. They need to be disbanded or harmonized with local governments.
Absence of horizontal and vertical integration is another problem. All the functions of the departments and agencies coming under the 29 items of functions constitutionally earmarked to local government institutions as per the eleventh schedule of the Constitution should have been horizontally integrated at the District and below level with the local government institutions, without retaining the department or agency identity as far as possible. As well, the vertical integration of plans of all tiers of local governments under the multi-level planning is another requirement. The existence of many Corporations / Boards, as centralized structures, established for professional attention and operational efficiency should not have been allowed to continue. The District Planning Committee (DPC), working in the manner of a Standing Committee of a district panchayat, at present, should be strengthened to enable them to integrate the rural and urban local body plans at the District level more rigorously. The MP&MLA Local Area Development funds, which should have been gone to local governments otherwise, should be wound up/merged with local development plans, so as to avoid the ineffective and wasteful utilization of resources earmarked for the purpose.
Absence of Managerial Efficiency
The recent decentralisation efforts in Kerala veered round peoples plan campaign activities even though the former is more comprehensive concept touching a broad spectrum of areas than the latter. The management functions in local bodies, which follow traditional administrative practices, remained almost ignored or unattended from any improvement. ‘There has been no improvement in areas like budget preparation, office management including records maintenance, control over staff, procedures relating to meetings of panchayat committees including sub committees and so on” (Chathukulam Jose, and M S John 2002:4917-26) There is urgent need to explore the possibility to develop efficient management systems and new office procedures relating to maintenance of files, flow of files for decision making, storing and retrieving of data or files, providing feedback to elected representatives and establishing public procedures with elements of professionalism in our local bodies. It appears that there is no systematic way of preparing timely agenda notes, accurate recordings of minutes and drafting of speaking resolutions in the meetings of the local governments. For increasing managerial efficiency elaborate management manuals for office administration and for the management of each sectoral institutions coming under local governance, on the lines of election manual, need to be prepared as envisaged in the Report of the Committee on Decentralisation of Powers. The manual should contain all the mandatory obligations as well as suggestive ideas to be followed by the local government with reference to that particular function. The manual should provide guidelines for smooth control of day today work in the local governments. The number of registers maintained in local governments would be reduced to an optimum level to avoid unnecessary duplication and easy maintenance. Newly inducted staff needs to be given induction training. The practices of non-maintenance of proper records regarding collection of taxes and issuance of certificates need to be corrected.
Ineffective distribution of work, absence of job description, dual control of officers by sectoral departments and local governments, location of several wings in different places with weak links between those units, lack of supervision and lack of relevant well identified operational practices, are other essential managerial issues. The present day local government offices are characterised by inefficiency, corruption and nepotism, to a large extent .The old office procedures have deteriorated due to pressure of work, imprecise instructions from above, untrained staff, ineffective supervision, imperfect procedures and corrupt motives. Establishment of scientific management based on 'system approach' and simplicity coupled with continuous training and social control, is the only way out. The use of e-governance to simplify the management of offices should also be explored.
Kerala decentralisation has made possible clear distinction in delineating the functional domain of each tier of local bodies. It has been "found that it is easier to define the functions in the management of institutions, creation of infrastructure and provision of services but when it came to the question of defining the functional areas in sectors like agriculture and industries there is bound to be certain overlaps, and only based on several years experience can the comparative advantage of each tier in performing various functions would be known early"(Vijayanad S M: 2001). Thus overlap in the demarcation of functions in the sectors like agriculture, industry etc. remains as a difficult task.
Lack of clear demarcation of functional responsibilities exists among the three tiers of local governments and between state government and local governments in economic development sectors such as agriculture &allied activities, rural industries, poverty reduction etc. lead to duplication of efforts, waste of resources and unnecessary conflict over identification of localities and person to be benefited.
Ineffective management of institutions
Most of the institutions at the district level and below levels like hospitals, schools, anganawadies, hostels, farms, agricultural offices etc. providing important services to less privileged people have been transferred to local governments. The local governments have not been very effective in managing the transferred institutions and professionals, except in improving the infrastructure, particularly in education and health sectors. This is a major area of concern as the efficiency of services of these institutions is dependent on the manner in which they are managed by the local governments.
Improvement of healthcare and educational institution is a serious problem area, which needs attention. The local bodies are unable to formulate good projects for sustainable development in those sectors except creation of infrastructure. Serious efforts are needed for local assessment of problems and finding local solutions in those sectors, which constitute the core of Keralas development paradigm. Local governments need to manage professionals and run institutions and to enhance quality of services and efficiency of institutions in both the sectors in a better way. The support of officials and the State Government departments in those sectors are lukewarm. As well, planning and development in health and education is more complicated than in other sectors.
Lack of clarity on the role of elected local government in the management of these institutions, absence of positive working relationship between the professionals managing these institutions and the elected local governments, dual control of these institutions by the State Government departments and local governments, focus on improving infrastructure rather than on quality of services and weak capacity on the part of elected functionaries to manage these institutions are the reasons for such a sorry state of affairs.
Neglected human resource management
Decentralization process in Kerala envisaged that the excess staff in various state government departments which devolved functions to local governments, when transferred, would meet the shortage of staff in local governments and the local bodies would discharge those function more effectively than earlier, while allowing the staff to retain the cadre conditions to allow their career prospects. The local governments are expected to have administrative control over the transferred staff while the department would have professional control over them. In the case of officers transferred to local governments, their professional power and responsibility increases whereas their administrative power remains more or less the same. The transferred officers who are the defacto secretary to local government in their respective sector, need to be equipped to play their new role and can no longer remain as a mere implementer of programmes. This system has created dual control, mutual distrust and misgivings resulting in poor performance. Unless this complex issue is solved reasonably, we cannot push the decentralisation further forward.
The lower status of non-gazatted Grama Panchayat secretaries, in comparison to many gazatted sectoral officers, makes it difficult for him to play the role of first among equals to co-ordinate the officers in the senior management and that also pose serious problem in providing stable leadership in many local bodies. The secretary should be the chief executive with sufficient capacity, motivation and status to provide the administrative leadership, the failure of which should lead to harmful tendencies.
One major deficiency of Kerala decentralisation is that it failed to forge a senior management system in the local governments by integrating the functionaries drawn from different departments. Many of these officers have strongly retained their department identify and have very weak bonds with local government, without having any organic relation among them.
Need for new Purchase Procedure
The financial transactions in local bodies, due to heavy transfer of funds, have increased manifold. Similarly the volume of transactions related to purchase and storage has made the governments a major purchaser of goods and services. But the purchases are made in accordance with the cumbersome Government purchase procedure outlined in stores purchase rules basically designed for a centralised services which do not allow transparency and social audit. There is urgent need to formulate new purchase procedures and management of stocks in accordance with the changing times.
Need for effective Account Keeping
Account keeping is an identified problem area in local governance, which needs correction. The multiplicity of around 150 registers or documents, poor management of them including asset registers, problem of reconciliation among them, lack of accounting skills among the staff and insufficiency of staff in comparison to workload etc. are the problems in accounting. The account formats containing columns for all the activities connected with the newer role of local bodies are approved recently and the switch over to the new format has been made. The functionaries should be well trained to keep accounts properly. Unless well-stabilized account keeping is established in local governments, the decentralisation will be a story of failures. Continuous qualitative training of all practitioners is the urgent need of the hour to have a smooth switch over to the new accounting system.
Auditing as a control measure
Subsequent to launching of decentralisation, enormous function and funds were devolved to local governments with unlimited autonomy, but with reduced control by government. So new system of checks and balances ate essential, to have ‘fairness in decision, propriety in expenditure, legality in actions and legitimacy in policy’. Audit examination is an important control mechanism to keep the local governance in order.
The local fund audit, performance audit, Accountant Generals audit and audit of the Chartered Accountant are prevalent in local bodies. These audits are conducted at various points of time and the duration of auditing also varies. The multiplicity and duplication of audit at varying periodicity ranging from once in a quarter to once in an year at different points of time dilute the professionalism of auditing itself and waste the time of auditor and local body functionaries, forcing the functionaries to compromise on delivery of local government services.
There has been considerable delay and dilution in quality of audit. The routine form of audit, ongoing as of now, does not attempt towards system improvement or enable deterrent penal action on derailed attempts made by the local government functionaries.
The contradiction of findings in audit reports, unscientific performance auditing and delay in non-compliance of audit reports etc. make the audit process a time wasting exercise, doing more harm rather than good. The auditing should be revamped to ensure financial accountability by the functionaries of local governments. Creation of an autonomous Audit Commission headed by experts independent of government control, to function on the lines of the Controller and Auditor General of India as already suggested need to be established.
As well, social audit formally through monitoring committee and informally through gramasabha or committees of the local bodies or community organisations, should form a main deterrent against possible waywardness of local governments. There is urgent need to redefine the role of various types of audits by developing detailed audit manuals and by training audit teams about the new perspectives on decentralisation, to address the issue.
Problems in local economic development
Peoples planning was set to overcome the stagnation in the productive sectors, reverse the decline in the quality of services and to maximize the use of assets in the social sectors.
Preparation of plans for the development of the concerned area with focus on productivity-increase on the one hand and reduction in beneficiary oriented schemes on the other hand is the major responsibility of the local governments. The plans produced by the local bodies now do not qualify to be called plans, but a bundle of unintegrated projects. Many of the projects were modified version of standardized department projects, without any meaningful backward and forward linkages and overall thrust on material production. There has been a tendency to mechanically allocate funds on ward basis and prepare projects in response to the preferences of ‘vote banks’ in each constituency rather than on the basis of common needs of the whole set of people in the local body. The local bodies, in such situation, cannot visualize the long-term needs of development of the area and translate the long-term vision and goals into practice in the form of practical projects. The development strategy now followed is limited to allocate plan funds to different sectors and then distribute ward-wise rather than on the basis of any priority considerations in the planning process. As well, there has been inability to consider local body as a unit of planning by many elected functionaries and there is absolute lack of expertise at the disposal of local body to formulate long-term development strategy and development plan, based on a holistic agreed vision.
Formulation of a long-term vision has recently been made a compulsory step in local planning and the functionaries are to be trained in the creative task of developing a vision in accordance with the local situation.
The resultant production-increase visible in the primary and secondary sectors due to peoples planning is minimal with stray islands of partial successes, against our expectations earlier. Formulation of plans for local economic development is a mandatory responsibility of local governments and hence local bodies should have engaged in promoting material production in Agriculture and small-scale industries for increasing production and generating employment3. Agriculture sector should have gained more attention in the decentralisation process. Traditional sectors like coir, fishery, handloom, cashew etc. were left out of planning process. The projects aimed at local economic development did not have shown strong forward and backward linkages to make an integrated environment for production. Analysis and strengthening of micro enterprises, conducting entrepreneurship development programmes to upgrade skills and making the funding agencies accessible to local governments, are essential activities to be undertaken for shifting our focus from ‘local development’ to ‘local economic development’.
The overall approach to local development in the decentralised planning was rapid, scientific and growth oriented one and hence sustainable and ecological local economic development based on indigenous knowledge and local resources has been more or less ignored in the process.
As part of local planning, the local bodies have not shown any initiative to sustain and manage natural resources and conserve environment. The local bodies should have engaged in identifying natural resources and common property resources while planning and implementing local projects. This has become a dire need in the context of ever-increasing environmental degradation.
Non- integration of spatial considerations in local economic planning is another problem. Construction of roads and buildings, provision of electricity and water supply etc. have critical spatial dimension. They should be planned not on socio-political consideration, but on spatial perspectives. In order to include spatial planning concept in the decentralised planning process, a clear binding provision in the legislation and proper training on spatial planning for the stakeholders are required. It is hoped that the watershed based agricultural planning will improve local spatial planning, raise environmental concerns, and introduce sustainability in the decentralised planning in the course of time.
Problems in gender empowerment
Decentralisation provides gender dimension in local government by earmarking ten percent of the total plan funds, aiming at better quality of life for women and to enhance participation of women in overall development decisions. But, there have been serious lapses in women participation in identifying and prioritising projects and many gender specific issues like health care, domestic violence, alcoholism etc. has been totally neglected in our decentralised planning process.
There is urgent need to include gender responsive budgeting in local governments in order to promote equality and social justice. Gender auditing should also be incorporated in the local governance. Development of skills in conceptualizing, preparing and implementing gender-based projects, should also be provided in the training for gender development to have a balanced growth.
Failure of community contracting
In the early years of peoples planning, community contracting - doing public works by beneficiary committees - was encouraged to facilitate people’s participation, social audit and to do away with the ‘contractor raj’ in local development. But the genuine beneficiary committees could not do much work as contractors masquerading as convenors of beneficiary committees took up work in many of places making community contracting a big failure in the peoples planning era. "Many beneficiary committees have fallen prey to vested interests". This has resulted in bringing the tender system for all works above an estimate of Rs. 25000/- as an interim measure. There is urgent need to explore ways to do away with tender system and to bring back genuine community contracting system. Provide leadership training to public-spirited local leaders and groom them for community work would be the probable solution.
Disinterest in resource mobilisation
The devolution of large amount of plan resources took away the interest of local governments in collecting their own resources, as they are comfortable with the sufficiency of plan grants earmarked to them. Local government can collect very higher amount of taxes, tolls and fees than earlier at the current revised rates. Local governments need to improve their revenue by maximising the collection.
Local governments in Kerala enjoyed a continuous flow of plan resources due to the sustaining political will in the recent years, inspite of severe financial constraints. But weak credit linkages has been identified as a major weakness of local-level plans. "Both commercial and cooperative banks have by and large been unwilling to link official credit planning to the local planning projects. Resources from voluntary labour, donations and beneficiary contributions have fallen short of anticipated levels. However a number of panchayats did successfully mobilize sustainable resources from these sources indicating them as yet untapped potential". (Fung, Archon and Erik Olin Wright 2003). Local bodies should be motivated to bring their focus on resource mobilization from banks and outside sources.
Revitalization of Institutions difficult
Gramasabha:
The gramasabha, endowed legally with enormous powers like prioritising development schemes, identification of beneficiaries, engage in social audit, right to know the statement of accounts, administration report and audit report and all development decisions / rationale in arriving at that decision, is functioning in total deviation from its expectations, inspite of having detailed statutes, rules and orders.
Gramasabha purported to enhance the quality of peoples participation are now functioning as beneficiary determing mechanisms rather than a platform for meaningful dialogue on developmental priorities. The middle, upper and professional classes of people are not participating in our gramasabha meetings and majority of participants are the targeted beneficiaries of development projects. They attend the gramasabha for airing their needs and sharing the benefits. This is a significant threat to the deliberative character of the gramasabha.
Disinterest by the local functionaries to vitalize gramasabha, ignorance of the democratic rights relating to gramasabha by majority of the people, arbitrary decision making by local functionaries in total neglect of the gramasabha proceedings etc lead to weakening of gramasabha. All pervading awareness building process and stable enforcement of legal provisions, are needed to revitalize the gramasabha as a mechanism for direct democracy, deciding development priorities and for channelising public contribution for local development.
Ombudsman & Tribunal
A major threat to decentralisation is ever increasing and persistent malfeasance and corruption in execution of work, selection of beneficiaries and personally benefited projects. Devolution of sustained funds to local communities without proper safeguards will fuel rent seeking behavior, community conflicts and corruption. There would have been irregularities from inexperience and haste rather than corruption in the initial years. But that may lead to absolute corruption unless checked properly.
The local government system is expected to deliver a faster and cheaper grievance redressal system in order to install the traditional virtues of public service like impartiality, neutrality, anonymity etc and to deliver effective, efficient and equitable public services, devoid of corruption.
Ombudsman for state level redressal of grievance relating to corruption and maladministration and Local Government Tribunal at the district level for speedy and easily accessible redressal of grievances on wrong exercise of regulatory functions, are two institutional mechanisms envisaged for the purpose. The ombudsman, established initially with seven members, has been reduced to a one-member body recently and the Tribunal at the district level has not been established in spite of framing the rules governing it, two years ago.
Inability of the single member Ombudsman to handle ever increasing complaints and the functioning of the Ombudsman like a court rather than an informal grievances redressal mechanism are problems which needs correction. Strengthening of internal grievances handling mechanism and ensuring exhaustion of all in-house remedial measures before approaching Ombudsman to minimise the number of complaints, are essential prerequisites to ensure effective functioning of Ombudsman. Revitalization and fine-tuning of Ombudsman and speedy creation of Tribunal are essential to combat decentralisation of corruption and possible mal-administration in local governance.
Need for a decentralised training
Capacity development of local government functionaries plays a very critical role for the success of decentralisation as the decentralisation process is engaged in creating new systems and procedures in local governance, transferring numerous key functionaries from development departments of the State to local governments with newer role and drawing newer elected functionaries in every election who are never exposed to the new systems of local governance. Our experience in the campaign type of training that dominated during the yester years, shows that the initial focus on exposure, orientation and motivation has to move towards sound skill development of actors in local governments. Only an institutionalised system can take care of recurring training needs that emerge with introduction or change of procedures, functions or strategies and only decentralised systems can take care of the ever-increasing volume in the number of trainees.
For enhancing the quality of decentralisation we should have mechanism to train the elected representatives, especially women & Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe functionaries, with in a reasonable time frame on assumption of their elected offices. The elected representatives do not otherwise have the knowledge and skill to manage a panchayat, school or hospital. The existing institutional training available to them from training institutions like Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), Institute of Management for Government (IMG), State Institute Rural Development (SIRD) etc, are of general nature and lacks the rigorousness of intensive training. A mutually agreed overall strategy to be evolved to provide uniform content or messages and to add quality to the training process for decentralisation in Kerala.
The capacity building should, not only focus on developing essential knowledge and basic skills but also change the attitude and values in favour of decentralisation in order to build the capacity to realize the development functions. The capacity development programmes for decentralisation should be able to motivate the relevant local functionaries to manage their responsibilities in tune with the procedures and practices of good local governance. Inclusion of spatial perspectives in every aspect of local economic planning should also be made a focus area in training for decentralisation.
In order to conceptualize, develop and implement capacity development programmes to support decentralisation, a systematic training system comprising of multi-disciplinary, multi-skilled trainers, and a network of training institutions including Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) designed with a two tier cascading training scheme should be evolved for imparting need based effective training. All stakeholders in the decentralisation need to be exposed to training. Exposure training, intensive training, customized training, tailor made training etc. should be combined together to attack the problem in capacity development. We should evolve a training policy, with a binding framework for all capacity building activities by involving all major stakeholders, with clarity on the role of all actors and organizations.
Attempts should be made to identify the institutes, which can involve in the capacity building of local government institutions. The problem of non-availability of quality training material on various subject areas need to be addressed by engaging on the call experts. The problem of in-adequate field exposure of the faculty available in the training institute like KILA, IMG, and SIRD etc. should be solved by engaging them in field studies regularly. Training of trainers should be a critical focus area in our capacity building exercise.
In short, development of a training policy, conducting a scientific Training Need Assessment (TNA) of all stakeholders of decentralisation, identification of training institution at the District and below levels, evolving a training network, coordinated development of practical oriented curriculum and coordination of training implementation can address the problems in the area of capacity development to a very great extend.
Forging civil society organisations with local governance.
Civil society organisations are expected to have an increasingly greater role in the development planning, mobilisation of people for participatory action, implementation of citizen’s charter, social audit, entrepreneurship development and ensuring transparency in local government system. But the role played by civil society organisation in the decentralisation process in Kerala at the local government level is very limited. No systematic effort was made to encourage collaborative activities between both.
Absence of a formal mechanism to involve Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in the decentralisation process and the total absence of trust between the NGOs & local governments are the reasons for the weak relation between the mutually essential organisations. Local government laws should provide a space to involve genuine civil society organisations in the decentralisation process in the State.
State Development Council and DPC
State Development Council(SDC), which is expected to act as the highest policy making body on decentralisation in the State, has not been made an effective functional body inspite of our eight year old decentralisation efforts in Kerala. The SDC, consisting of all ministers, local body representatives, opposition leader, Vice chairman of State Planning Board etc, has not gained due value as a newly created platform, that could have pushed the pace of decentralisation much faster in a consensus oriented way. This institution is expected to take the lead in policy making and in sorting out operational issues in decentralisation.
The District Planning Committee (DPC), the coordinating body that integrates the rural and urban local body plans at the District, is not functioning as desired and need to be vitalized. The District Planning Committee is composed of comparatively low profile leaders in the District Panchayat/Municipalities and is playing a very insignificant role in planning. The existence of District Development Committee (DDC) consisting of all members of the legislative body and sectoral officers in the District with collector as chairman plays more crucial role and it undermines the DPC to a great extend. The District Planning Committee & the District Development Committee need to be harmonized together, as the latter as an extended general body of the former, by legislation.
Conclusion
Kerala has made an excellent beginning and moved much ahead in the direction of decentralisation and development of third stratum of local governance with the goal of deepening and widening democracy and local development. But in order to make it efficient, effective and purpose oriented, it has to go a long way.
Since decentralisation is a curious phenomenon, which is preached by all, but practiced by a few, the sincere promoters of decentralisation should take all possible measures to push the decentralisation forward, inch by inch by help solving the major issues by words and deeds.
Kerala is a state (or province) in the south-west of India, which is known to have decentralised its local governance in ways far more advanced than most Indian states. It has drawn a lot of attention due to this and is considered a worth emulating model. The essential features of decentralisation in Kerala is as follows :-
Since the formation of Kerala State
The Government of Kerala thought of democratic decentralisation immediately after the State was formed in 1956. The Administrative Reforms Committee appointed by the Government made detailed recommendations in 1958. The report is an excellent prescription for decentralisation in any state under a federal set up. Some of the concepts like list system for election has never been discussed so far in spite of Kerala state had so many unique advantages to go ahead with decentralising its governance and democratic processes.
Kerala is a fertile land for decentralisation
The State of Kerala, with its peculiar geographical features,provides a conducive environment for devolution of powers down to the lower tier governments and the people at the grassroots.
Kerala is a tiny strip of land lying in the southwest corner of India, with a costal lenth of 560 KM and the maximum width of 120 KM.. The area of the State is 38863 sq km, having just 1.18 percent of the nations area, of about the size of Switzerland. The population of the State having 3.25 crore is ----- percent of all India and is comparable to that of Canada. Kerala is one of the most densely populated regions in the world.
Many people consider Kerala as the land of coconuts. The narrow stretch of green land is covered with coconuts all along its beaches, village roads, on the edge of its rice fields, in the house compounds and the foothills of its mountains. Coconut tress can yield nutritious coconut meet, a controversial cooking oil, sap to provide the mildly alcoholic drink toddy, husk for the coir fibre, leaves for thatching the roof and oil to burn the religious lamps. Kerala is the land of spices- cardamom, ginger, tamarind, and pepper, as well as rubber, tea, coffee, teakwood, cashew nuts and many other garden and forest products too.
Almost all people in Kerala speak their mother tongue Malayalam. Kerala's trade with ancient Babylonia may date back to 3000 BC. The spices trade brought progressive influence to the Kerala society and that would be a prominent reason for its modernity and affluence. In Kerala, the traditional Hindus live alongside Muslim and Christian without any conspicuous discomfort. Today 57 percent of Kerala follows Hindusm with 23 percent following Muslim faith and 19 percent following Christianity. A small Jewish population lives in the city of Cochin.
History
For several centuries Kerala was ruled by monarchs who controlled different areas conquering and re-conquering each others domains. In May 1498 a Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama arrived in Kerala to usher in the period of European colonial rule. In 1605 the Dutch came, followed by British and then French traders. In 1792 the English effectively took power in the area that is now Kerala.
The British governed Kerala as three separate units. In the south, Travancore was ruled indirectly through it established monarch. The central region Cochin was similarly administrated. The Travancore and Cochin princely rulers were beholden to the British but had some leeway to make their own policies. Northern Kerala - the Malabar - came under direct British rule as part of the Madras Presidency. With Indian independence in 1947, Kerala's three major areas had developed a common linguistic and cultural heritage leading to the creation of a Malayalam speaking single State.
Kerala Politics
In 1957, voters of newly formed Kerala elected a communist majority to the State Legislative Assembly which was dismissed by India Government two years later. Since then, the right and left coalition parties led by Indian National Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) ruled the State in each alternate turn, except once in 1976. In 1976, the ruling right wing coalition was voted to power again.
Kerala's Achievements
Kerala is very poor with a very low per capita income eventhough you can affluence everywhere. Despite its poverty, Kerala shows high development indicators and stands out very high among low-income countries in adult literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality and birth rate. Kerala achievements area not confined to the expansion of education and health care alone, but the quality of life benefits are fairly distributed among men and women, urban and rural areas and low and high castes.
In agriculture, Kerala ranks first among all Indian States in the rupee value of output per unit of land area. The state is first in India on measures of basic services in its village within a unit area of five kilometers. It stands out above other Indian States in providing basic services.
The Advantages Kerala had
Most of the area of the State receive large amount of rain fall, alongwith having acess to surface water and ground water in plenty. The rain is available for half the year. There are fourty four rivers running east west ,cutting across the Kerala society into smaller communities with strong bonds, with limited access for the people to have access with other side of the river till the bridges were established a few years ago.Lakes, ponds, estuaries, wells etc as sources of surface water are well distributed across the state. So water availability has not been a major problem. The inherent soil quality, better soil management, natural vegetation, diverse crop system , high biomass production, hogh species diversity etc made Kerala a fertile area for production. The settlements are evenly dispersed across the land without any demarcation between urban and rural.areas. Cities, towns and villages are not highly differentiated from each other. Villages are not cluster of houses but a continuum of houses scattered all over the landscape. This dispersion has happened due to the lushness, availability of fertile land around each house site and the ease of getting water.
Because of the dense and fairly even distribution of population, it has become easier to provide cost effective health and accessible education services in Kerala throughout the entire area. The dispersal of settlements also helped to reduce infectious / parasitic diseases and development of excellent road network across the entire area.
Kerala's long history of international contact and trade which dates back to as early as 3000 BC, probably became the basis for development of a progressive outlook in Kerala among its rulers and people. The British colonialism drained local economy for the benefit of British invaders. But the people had good exposure to progressive ideas outside and that might have helped in early land reforms, educational expansion, and the easing out of caste indignities.
British investors took their interest in the cool. well watered Kerala mountains situating close to ocean transport lanes and established their estates for plantations containing cash crops. This has resulted in the emergence of a working class with interest opposing to that of the British investors leading to radical reforms in Kerala development.
Ensuring Food for all
Kerala is a food deficit state as much of the best land in it is used for cash crops. It had to import food from outside. The food items imported are distributed through private markets and a network of public distribution system. The state conducts programs such as school and nursery lunches, special feeding centres, and fair price shops to make the state hunger free. School feeding originated in 1940, and expanded later, is still ongoing with whole funding from State Government and remains as a way of feeding the poor. In addition, many Kerala women and their infants can get one free meal each day at local village nurseries.
Public distribution of food through fair price shops is another mechanism for ensuring adequate nutrition to the poor. Each ration shop serves the 360 households, within an area of two Kilometers. The fair price shops provide some palm oil, kerosene, wheat and sugar also.
Public Health and Sanitation
Kerala had made major accomplishments in health and sanitation. The public health of Kerala is not the product of health programs alone but resulted from combined effects of various factors such as good environment, neat habitat, availability of food, sanitation, awareness of people etc.
Realising that poor housing can be a major source of disease, Kerala had made efforts to provide houses to the poor through its programes. Improving sanitation was another governmental programs to enhance public health. Provision of safe drinking water is probably the most significant in curbing infections diseases. In spite of heavy rainfall from June to December, Kerala experiences prolonged drought from January to the end of May.
Preventive immunization and vaccination are Kerala's most impressive public health programms. Low infant mortality is the result of those health programms. Along with public heath measures, Kerala provides the most extensive set of medical treatment facilities compared to any other Indian state. Services are available throughout and across the state to both urban and rural areas. Rural hospital beds are closer to people than in the rest of India. Compared to other states, the health facilities are far more accessible.
Dramatic decline in birthrate is another impressive achievement. Redistribution of wealth and provision of basic health care are the main reasons for this achievement.
Education
Kerala is well ahead of the rest of India in providing education across urban-rural, male-female, and high caste-low caste barriers. In addition, Kerala conducts an active adult education program for those who bypass education earlier.
Education programms in the State started with establishment of missionary school. The rulers of the princely states later established schools in order to prevent Christian conversion as a fall out of missionaries establishing schools. Later, caste based social organisation and local governments started establishing schools. Social reform movement, village library movement spread of newspapers etc contributed much for the educational development in the State. Education helped people in getting employment, enhancing independent thinking etc. But it changed the taste of many people who longed to have western type of home, food, dress fashion, luxuries and profession.
Land Reform
Land reform is considered to be a successful achievement. The abolition of tenancy resulted in massive re-distribution of land rights. In Kerala, there were a class of land loads at the top, below them another class of tenants and yet another class of third-level inferior tenants who were the actual cultivators. The unique component of Kerala's land reform was the abolition of the second kind of tenancy. Land reforms imposed ceiling on land holding and the excess of land holdings were distributed to tenants.
By land reforms, 1.5 million former tenants became small land owners. Many had lost their giant estates and had transformed as school teachers or administrators. Land reforms had improved the lives of vast majority of people in Kerala's country side and form the basis for many progressive movements including people planning.
Caste Systems in Kerala
Kerala had the most rigid and elaborate caste structure. Kerala was " a madhouse of caste". Lower castes were put to many constraints and discrimination. Spontaneous protests such as clothing agitation, struggle for use of public roads etc. Caste improvement associations, temple entry movement and the workers movements helped to weaken the caste system. Public educational institutions, mass transport system and progressive movements in Kerala contributed to the abolishion of caste system.
Women
Kerala women are far ahead of their all India counter parts. They have higher literacy and fewer children. They marry later and live longer. Female children survive more than do males. Kerala is the only state in which there are more females than men. Over half of the students enrolled in colleges in Kerala are women. It was the first Indian State to have a women cabinet minister. In sports, Kerala women stand out among all the Indian states. Kerala women have to face many traditional problems also.
The decline in agriculture resulted in decline of income to the States's poorest women depended on agriculture. Kerala women face several forms of violence- such as rape, dowry deaths, sexual harassment etc. Women are not supported to travel alone. In Kerala, bus seats are segregated sexually. Kerala women can rely on many social structures and organisations that offer potential for overcoming their problems.
Kerala Provides the Right Envronment
In short, Kerala by all means provides an excellent environment for human development, economic development and a political environment for development of democracy. The features make it a right place for decentralisation and development of grassroots democracy, if there someone to push ahead the concept.
Still decentralisation was in a slow pace
Despite enactment of laws, nothing significant in decentralised development was done for over three decades. As in the case of the rest of India with the formation of a large number of State-level Boards, Corporations and authorities for almost all areas, even the existing village and urban local bodies atrophied over the years since many of their functions were taken over by such para-statals.
There was a short-lived attempt to form District Councils in 1990, following a comprehensive Report on Decentralisation.
Since 1992
However, with the passage of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India in 1992, Kerala carried out pioneering reforms and embarked a path of Comprehensive decentralization since 1995.
Kerala has 999 Village Panchayats, 152 Block Panchayats and 14 District Panchayats; in the urban areas it has 53 Municipalities and Five Corporations.
Milestones in Kerala's decentralization initiatives
These can be briefly listed as below:
* April/May 1994: Enactment of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act and the Kerala Municipality Act.
* October 1995: Transfer of powers and functions to local governments; along with institutions, offices and functionaries.
* February 1996: Introduction of a Special Budget Document for local government allocations,
* August 1996: Launching of People's Plan Campaign for decentralized planning and announcement of earmarking of about 35% plan resources to local governments.
* March 1999: Restructuring of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act and the Kerala Municipality Act.
* March 2000: Amendments to 35 Acts having relevance to local government functioning.
* July 2000: Transfer of district level offices and staff to District Panchayat,
* January 2002: Decision to redeploy surplus staff especially engineers to local governments.
* January 2002: Decision to fix share of untied plan grants as one-third of the total plan size of the State.
* 2003: Redeployment of surplus clerical staff to local governments completed. Redeployment of engineering staff is under way.
Legislative framework: salient features
The Kerala Panchayat Raj Act 1994 which was itself a path-breaking law, was thoroughly restructured in 1999 and several innovative features laying strong legal foundation for evolving genuine institutions of Local Self Government were built in.
* Grama Sabba: Kerala has created a fourth tier in the form of Grama Sabhas (or village council meetings) equated with the electoral constituency of a Village Panchayat All the electors of the Ward are members of the Grama Sabha. It is an attempt to create a new set up for direct democracy - involving the people of the ward.
The Grama Sabhas have been given clear rights and responsibilities with absolute powers for identification of beneficiaries, strong advisory powers for prioritizing developmental needs and wide powers of social audit.
* Functions of local governments: The 11th Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists out developmental areas where local governments should have a role in planning for economic development and social justice and in the implementation of such plans.
Unlike many other States, Kerala defined the functional areas of the different tiers of PRIs as precisely as possible. In areas related to infrastructure and management of public institutions, the functional differentiation is sharp and clear, but in productive sectors it is difficult to clearly earmark functions separately for each tier.
Only through experience can the natural functional area in such sectors get marked. There is a clear recognition that there is a role-range for local governments as Agent, Adviser, Manager, Partner and Actor - with the objective being to reduce the agency role and expand the autonomous - actor role. The Kerala Act classifies functions as mandatory functions, general functions and sector-wise functions. in its schedules.
* Committee System: All Village and Block Panchayats have three Standing Committees and the District Panchayat five Standing Committees. The Standing Committees are constituted in such a way that every Member of the Panchayat gets a chance to function in one Standing Committee or the other. Each Standing Committee is assigned certain subjects and these Committees are expected to go into the subject areas both at the planning and implementation stage in great detail.
For the purpose of co-ordination, a Steering Committee is constituted consisting of the President and Vice President of the Panchayat and the Chairpersons of Standing Committees. In addition, there are Functional Committees for different subjects which can include experts and practitioners and the Panchayats are free to constitute Sub Committees to assist the Standing Committee or Functional Committee. There is also provision for constitution of Joint Committees with neighbouring Local Governments.
* Control by Government: The amended Kerala Panchayat Raj Act drastically reduces the powers of direct governmental control over Panchayat Raj Institutions. While Government can issue general guidelines regarding national and State policies it cannot meddle in day to day affairs or individual decisions. The Government can cancel resolutions of the Panchayat only through a process and in consultation with the Ombudsman or Appellate Tribunal according to the subject matter of the resolution. Similarly a Panchayat can be dissolved directly by government, only if it fails to pass the budget or if majority of its members have resigned. In all other cases a due process has to be followed and the Ombudsman has to be consulted before dissolution takes place. This is a unique feature which does not exist even in Center-State relations.
e) Setting up of independent institutions
In order to reduce governmental control and in order to foster the growth of self government as envisaged in the Constitution, the Act provides for creation of independent institutions to deal with various aspects of local government functioning. They are listed below:
* The State Election Commission: The Election Commission has been given powers which go beyond those required for the conduct of elections. It is empowered to delimit Wards which were formerly done through the executive and it has been given powers to disqualify defectors.
* The Finance Commission: This has been given the mandate as required by the Constitution. The first SFC was constituted in 1994 and the second SFC in 1999.
* Ombudsman for Local Governments: This is a high power institution which has been given vast powers to check malfeasance in local governments in the discharge of developmental functions.
* Appellate Tribunals: These are to be constituted at the Regional/District level to take care of appeals by citizens against decisions of the local government taken in the exercise of their regulatory role like issue of licence, grant of permit etc.
* State Development Council: This is headed by the Chief Minister and
consists of the entire Cabinet, Leader of opposition, Vice-Chairman of the
State Planning Board, the Chief Secretary, all the District Panchayat
Presidents who are also Chairperson of District Planning Committee and representatives of other tiers of local governments. This institution is expected to take the lead in policy formulation and in sorting out operation issues.
* Supremacy of the elected body: The President of the Panchayat Raj Institutions has been declared as the executive authority. The senior most officials of various departments brought under the control of the Panchayat Raj Institutions have been declared as ex-officio Secretaries for that subject. The Panchayats have full administrative control including powers of disciplinary action over its own staff as well as staff transferred to it. In order to ensure a healthy relationship between officials and elected Members, the Act prescribes a code of conduct, which lays down certain directive principles of polite behaviour, respect for elected authorities and protection of the freedom of the civil servant to render advice freely and fearlessly.
All these features are there in the Kerala Municipality Act as well.
* The State made a path breaking decision to amend 34 Acts dealing with subjects which are in the functional domain of local governments. This decision was taken to make it clear that local governments are not just the creatures of the Panchayati Raj and Municipality Acts; but they are entitled to legal space in all legislations having something to do with their functions, thus becoming the third tier of governments below the Central and State Governments.
==Extent of Decentralization--
The extent of decentralization and its nature can be gauged from the following facts:
* In the Health sector all institutions other than medical colleges and big
regional speciality hospitals have been placed under the control of the local
governments.
* In the Education sector, in rural areas the high schools and upper primary
schools have been transferred to the District Panchayats and the primary schools have been transferred to Village Panchayats; in urban areas, all schools have been transferred to the urban local governments.
* The entire responsibility of poverty alleviation has gone to the local
governments; all the centrally sponsored anti-poverty programmes are planned
and implemented through them.
* As regards Social welfare, barring statutory functions relating to juvenile
justice, the entire functions have gone to local governments. The ICDS is fully
implemented by Village Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies. Care of the
disabled, to a substantial degree has become a local government responsibility.
* In the Agriculture and allied sectors, the following have become the de
facto and de jure local government functions.
a) Agricultural extension including farmer oriented support for increasing
production and productivity.
b) Watershed management and minor irrigation.
c) Dairy development.
d) Animal Husbandry including veterinary care.
e) Inland fisheries.
* Barring highways and major district roads, connectivity has become local
government responsibility.
* The whole of sanitation and most of rural water supply have moved over to
local governments.
* Promotion of tiny, cottage and small industries is mostly with the local
governments.
* All the welfare pensions are administered by the local governments.
Thus most of the responsibilities relating to human and social development have been passed down to local governments. Welfare and poverty reduction are now largely dependent on local governments who also have considerable area of responsibility in the primary sector. Local infrastructure creation is also largely in the domain of Panchayats and Nagarapalikas.
Critical institutions of public service like hospitals, schools, anganwadis, veterinary institutions, Krishi Bhawans, hostels for Scheduled Castes and Care institutions for different disadvantaged groups have been transferred to local governments on as is where is condition. The responsibility of local governments which are typical of a non-plan nature in respect of these institutions include
1) routine and heavy maintenance of infrastructure
2) upkeep and maintenance of equipment
3) replenishment of consumables
4) administrative charges relating to telephone, water, electricity, fuel etc.
5) noon-day meal cost in schools.
Though funds for meeting these responsibilities are to be transferred by government to local governments, in practice, due to the fiscal stress during the last few years, the amount has stagnated as may be seen from the Annexure - TV.
This amount is far less than what is required leading to a major operation and maintenance deficit which has its adverse implications for public service delivery to the poor.
Transfer of Resources
The salient features of how Kerala has handled these problems and a highly unionized and powerful staff structure are summarized below:
* The principle of work and worker going together was enunciated. This enabled the government to transfer institutions and offices along with staff to
the local governments. Also, it was followed up by determining surplus staff both professional and ministerial in development departments at the State, regional and district levels and transferring them to local governments. This redeployment process is currently under way whereby about 1200 clerical staff will go to local governments with each of the 991 Village Panchayats getting one clerk. Similarly about 200 large Village Panchayats would get one Assistant Engineer and for the remaining Village Panchayats two of them will share an Assistant Engineer; all 152 Block Panchayats will get an Assistant Executive Engineer.
* The cadre of the staff transferred is not disturbed. This prevents promotion chances being affected and facilitates movement of staff from one local government to another or from local government to government. In a sense the analogy of All India Service Officers serving both Central and State Government is relevant.
* The local governments have full managerial and part disciplinary control over the staff. They can assign any work to the staff transferred to them related to their area. They can review their performance and give the required directions. They are empowered to impose minor penalties on all staff transferred to them and, in the case of non-gazetted officers, resort to suspension whenever warranted.
* A kind of dual control is inevitable. Since the State Government carries out some of its functions through the field level staff who have been transferred to the local governments State control over the staff becomes necessary. Also, as the cadre is managed by State, such control is automatic.
* The salaries of the staff transferred continue to be paid for by Government. This prevents unnecessary burdening of local governments with the costs and efforts of salary disbursement and account keeping.
* Even the own staff of local governments i.e., Village Panchayats and Municipal bodies who are paid for by the local government themselves are recruited through the Public Service Commission and constitute a local government cadre.
vii) Based on work-study, staff pattern has been fixed for different types of local governments. Only government can create new posts in local governments.
* A decision has been taken to have a published transfer norm which would ensure that all local governments including remote and backward ones get the staff on a rational basis. This would also prevent government from exercising partisanship in favour of local governments perceived to be on the government side or discrimination against other local governments.
* To protect the legitimate professional interest of staff a code of conduct has been legislated. The detailed rules are under formulation. This would help officials in discharging their functions without fear or favour.
* In the case of professional staff where ego conflicts tend to be more, government has been trying out a two-pronged approach - one of interfering whenever there is a complaint and sorting it out through negotiations and the other of trying to organize joint training courses for elected heads and the professional staff to foster mutual understanding and trust.
Stages in Decentralized Planning
The Campaign made during the Ninth Plan, has succeeded in providing a concrete methodology for participatory planning for local level development. The salient features of this methodology are described below, stage by stage.
* Needs identification: Through a meeting of Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha, i.e., the ward or the electoral constituency of a Village Panchayat or Municipality Member, the felt needs of the community are identified. There is a period of environment creation to mobilize maximum participation in the Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha. Statistics reveal that about 10-12% of the rural population has participated. The meetings are held in a semi-structured manner with plenary sessions and sub group sessions dealing with specific developmental issues. The decisions are minuted and forwarded to the Local Governments. Each meeting is chaired by the
elected member and has an official as its co-ordinator
* Situation analysis: Based on the demands emanating from the first special Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha and based on developmental data, both primary and secondary, exhaustive Development Reports have been prepared and printed in the case of every Local Governments in the State, These reports describe the status in each sector of development with reference to available data, analyse the problems and point out the directions for further development. This is an one-time exercise for a Plan period and the Reports have been revised before the Tenth Five Year Plan.
* Strategy setting: Based on the Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha feed back and the Development Report, a one day seminar is held at the Local Government level in which participation of experts, elected members, representatives nominated by the Sabhas, practitioners from among the public is ensured. The development seminars suggest the broad priorities and general strategies of developmental projects to be taken up for a particular year.
* Projectisation: The ideas thrown up by the above three stages are translated in the form of projects by Working Groups at the Local Government level. For each Local Government there are about eight Working Groups dealing with different sectors of development. Each Working Group is headed by an elected member and is convened by the concerned government official. The Vice Chairman of the Working Group is normally a non-government expert in the sector. The projects are prepared in the suggested format outlining the objectives, describing the benefits, explaining the funding and detailing the mode of execution and phasing of the project.
* Plan finalisation: From among the projects, based on the allocation communicated, the concerned Local Government finalizes its plan for the year and this plan is submitted to the District Planning Committees (DPCs) through the Technical Advisory Committees. The Panchayat is free to take up any project, irrespective of its cost, subject of course to the resources actually available and within the sectoral limits,
* Plan vetting: The Technical Advisory Committees at the Block or the District level consisting of official and non-official experts vet the projects for their technical viability and conformity with the mandatory government guidelines on planning and costing and forward them to the DPC. They cannot change priorities or projects; they can only ask for rectification.
* Plan approval: The DPC gives the formal approval to the plans after which the Local Government can start implementation. It is to be noted that the DPC also cannot change the priority of a Local Government. It can only ensure that government guidelines are followed. Administrative approval for implementation is given project-wise by the Local Government. Every Local Government has unlimited powers of Administrative sanctions subject only to the limits of its financial resources.
Setting up of accountability systems
Since substantial responsibilities have been passed on to local governments Accountability Systems acquire special importance. In harmony with local government functioning and participatory budgeting, in addition to traditional systems of checks and balances, new forms of downward accountability to the people has also been structured in. The key accountability systems are given below:
(i) Committee System of decision making All decisions of local governments are to be taken by itself through consensus or by voting. Power is not concentrated in individuals.
(ii) Right to Information
All documents of local governments except very few ones like health records of patients, contract documents before finalisation etc., have been declared as public documents by law. Any citizen has the right to peruse them or ask for photocopies. In a literate and politically conscious society this is a powerful Provision against corruption.
(iii) Participatory Budgeting
The evolution of a budget particularly for
development works is through the comprehensive stage by stage planning process which allows space for citizen interaction and intervention, expert involvement and final budgeting before approval by elected bodies. This provides adequate protection against arbitrary decision making.
(iv) Due process in selection of beneficiaries This is ensured through the
following steps.
(a) Clear enunciation of eligibility criteria and prioritisation criteria at the time of scheme formulation.
(b) Assigning weightages to each prioritisation criterion.
(c) Calling of application in writing.
(d) Enquiry process into applications with awarding of marks to each criterion.
(e) Reading out of marks in Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha.
(f) Opportunity to each applicant to see all records including application forms of others.
* Technical Sanction The process of giving Technical Sanction has been taken out of the departmental technical hierarchy. Technical Committees have been constituted at the Block/Municipal/Corporation/District levels consisting of engineering experts drawn from governmental, academic and non¬governmental sources. This gives some protection against inflation of estimates and dilution of technical standards.
* Audit Systems The traditional audit system through Local Fund Audit Department has been strengthened with the technical support of the Accountant General. A special Concurrent Audit System has been designed, manned by surplus staff from the Panchayat and Urban Affairs Departments headed by an Officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service. This system called Performance Audit acts as an online corrective mechanism helping local governments to put their systems in proper place. Performance- Audit is conducted twice a year in all the local governments. Since the minimum grant-in-aid to a Grama Panchayat is Rs.35 lakhs, the Accountant General also
carries out grant-in-aid audit including Village Panchayats. A Technical Audit Team has been put in place at the State level consisting of senior Engineers mostly from outside Government who are selected for their integrity. This Team looks into complaints regarding execution of public works.
* Social Audit A semi structured social audit is conducted in Grama Sabhas and Ward Sabhas where the accounts of Village Panchayats, Municipalities and Corporations have to be presented and querries replied to.
* Awareness Building. IEC campaigns have been conducted through the media of Press and TV explaining the right of the citizens vis-à-vis local governments. Special meetings of NGOs are held to tell them every thing about citizen entitlements vis-à-vis local governments.
* File of the Property Statements. All elected Members have to file their property Statements immediately on election.
New Reforms under implementation
(i) Appellate Tribunals. Judicial Tribunals are to be set up at the regional level to hear appeals against decisions by local governments in exercise of their regulatory powers. The Acts have been amended for this purpose and negotiations were on with the High Court regarding allotment of judicial personnel.
(ii) Social Audit. A draft Social Audit Policy has been approved by the Government and an initiative to take up action research programme to build up good models of Social Audit has been cleared and Rs. 5.70 crore has been allotted in the current year's Annual Plan for this purpose.
(iii) Citizen's Charters. This has been legislated for and in order to operationalize them Rs. 3.25 crores has been provided in the current year's Plan. Once the Citizens Charters are brought out accountability for provision of Services would improve.
(iv) Monitoring by independent institutions. Monitoring of local government programmes by independent institutions has been decided upon. Rs. One crore has been set apart in current year's Plan for this purpose. Institutions have been identified and the working out of the methodology for concurrent monitoring is on through six pilot projects..
A quick assessment of Performance
Decentralization has had several positive spin-offs. They are summarized below:
* The formula based devolution of funds has ensured that funds flowed to every nook and corner of the State including the outlying and backward areas, facilitating public investment.
* The cornerstone of Kerala's decentralization has been people's participation. The processes have been designed to facilitate intervention by the interested citizen at all stages of the development process right from generation of developmental ideas through project planning, project implementation, up to monitoring.
* Decentralization has resulted in better targeting especially in the case of individual benefits by insisting on a due process in the selection of beneficiaries. The quality of identification has certainly improved.
* Decentralization has opened up opportunities for wide ranging reforms. Already right to information, prescription of dire process in giving of benefits, outsourcing of technical services, community management of assets and simplification of procedures have taken place. More reforms in the form of independent regulatory institutions, improved management systems both financial and administrative, enhanced accountability mechanisms etc., are in the offing.
* In development matters local governments have significant achievements. The important ones are:
i) As is evident from the performance, local governments have done well in provision of minimum needs infrastructure both to households as well as to communities. This is particularly true of housing, sanitation, water supply, infrastructure of hospitals and schools and connectivity.
ii) The introduction of the mandatory Women Component Plan has been a path breaker. Local governments have gradually matured in their planning for gender sensitive schemes. Earmarking of 10% of the plan outlay for women has helped considerably the disadvantaged groups among women like widows, and has improved the provision of services, which are of direct benefit to women. The local governments have to be further guided to improve the quality of planning to engender it fully.
iii) Local government plans have shown a strong anti-poverty bias. More funds have flown to families below poverty line through local governments than would normally have been the case.
iv) Local governments have evolved good models in water supply, improvement of quality of education, improving agriculture productivity, etc. They have generally shown a preference for affordable technologies and appropriate solutions. There have been some positive steps in areas like integrated natural resource management.
v) Many local governments have been able to raise public contributions for water supply schemes, repair of buildings, provision of facilities like latrines in schools and dispensaries, supply of computers to schools etc.
There are also certain problems and weaknesses, which are enumerated below:
1) The outliers like Scheduled Tribes are still to gain from decentralization. In a
scenario where one section of the poor lives off another section,
decentralization seems to have certain inbuilt limitations.
* The poorest among the poor need social safety nets particularly for food and health emergencies. This cannot be provided by local governments by themselves.
* The management of services particularly health and education have not improved except for some infrastructure and equipment provisions. These services have direct implications for local development, poverty reduction and employment.
* The flow of bank credit into local schemes has been rather limited resulting more from bankers' reluctance to deal with local governments than from inadequacies of project formulation. This has resulted in higher subsidies.
* In a State like Kerala where the number of educated poor is very high there is an inherent limitation in local government action against it. Linkage with job markets through skill up gradation or identification of self-employment opportunities or small-scale production activities with assured markets are all services, which have to be provided from higher levels.
* There is a tendency to spread resources thinly with funds being given to every electoral constituency whenever a development scheme is taken up. Distribution of assets and inputs, not necessarily productive, has been common.
* Vertical integration of local level programmes has proved difficult to achieve.
* Participatory aspect of planning is often limited to airing of needs and sharing of benefits. There is little healthy discussion by all sections of the population based on data and norms, generating a prioritized list of developmental needs.
* The introduction of local planning and development unfortunately coincided with years of acute financial difficulties of the State government. Due to constant ways and means difficulties, the actual release of funds and implementation of local schemes were not matched leaving to delayed or partial implementation or even abandonment.
* Similarly, redeployment of staff for plan implementation could start only a few years after the programme was started. It is still incomplete. This has also adversely affected local plan implementation.
* Despite Government's over-all approach and pro-local government policy, reluctance to change persists in many individuals and departments.
* The resolution of problems between the local governments (as regards their assigned statutory functions) and para statals like the Electricity Board and Water Authority continues to be knotty (as there can be no redeployment from them).
Since the formation of Kerala State
The Government of Kerala thought of democratic decentralisation immediately after the State was formed in 1956. The Administrative Reforms Committee appointed by the Government made detailed recommendations in 1958. The report is an excellent prescription for decentralisation in any state under a federal set up. Some of the concepts like list system for election has never been discussed so far in spite of Kerala state had so many unique advantages to go ahead with decentralising its governance and democratic processes.
Kerala is a fertile land for decentralisation
The State of Kerala, with its peculiar geographical features,provides a conducive environment for devolution of powers down to the lower tier governments and the people at the grassroots.
Kerala is a tiny strip of land lying in the southwest corner of India, with a costal lenth of 560 KM and the maximum width of 120 KM.. The area of the State is 38863 sq km, having just 1.18 percent of the nations area, of about the size of Switzerland. The population of the State having 3.25 crore is ----- percent of all India and is comparable to that of Canada. Kerala is one of the most densely populated regions in the world.
Many people consider Kerala as the land of coconuts. The narrow stretch of green land is covered with coconuts all along its beaches, village roads, on the edge of its rice fields, in the house compounds and the foothills of its mountains. Coconut tress can yield nutritious coconut meet, a controversial cooking oil, sap to provide the mildly alcoholic drink toddy, husk for the coir fibre, leaves for thatching the roof and oil to burn the religious lamps. Kerala is the land of spices- cardamom, ginger, tamarind, and pepper, as well as rubber, tea, coffee, teakwood, cashew nuts and many other garden and forest products too.
Almost all people in Kerala speak their mother tongue Malayalam. Kerala's trade with ancient Babylonia may date back to 3000 BC. The spices trade brought progressive influence to the Kerala society and that would be a prominent reason for its modernity and affluence. In Kerala, the traditional Hindus live alongside Muslim and Christian without any conspicuous discomfort. Today 57 percent of Kerala follows Hindusm with 23 percent following Muslim faith and 19 percent following Christianity. A small Jewish population lives in the city of Cochin.
History
For several centuries Kerala was ruled by monarchs who controlled different areas conquering and re-conquering each others domains. In May 1498 a Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama arrived in Kerala to usher in the period of European colonial rule. In 1605 the Dutch came, followed by British and then French traders. In 1792 the English effectively took power in the area that is now Kerala.
The British governed Kerala as three separate units. In the south, Travancore was ruled indirectly through it established monarch. The central region Cochin was similarly administrated. The Travancore and Cochin princely rulers were beholden to the British but had some leeway to make their own policies. Northern Kerala - the Malabar - came under direct British rule as part of the Madras Presidency. With Indian independence in 1947, Kerala's three major areas had developed a common linguistic and cultural heritage leading to the creation of a Malayalam speaking single State.
Kerala Politics
In 1957, voters of newly formed Kerala elected a communist majority to the State Legislative Assembly which was dismissed by India Government two years later. Since then, the right and left coalition parties led by Indian National Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) ruled the State in each alternate turn, except once in 1976. In 1976, the ruling right wing coalition was voted to power again.
Kerala's Achievements
Kerala is very poor with a very low per capita income eventhough you can affluence everywhere. Despite its poverty, Kerala shows high development indicators and stands out very high among low-income countries in adult literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality and birth rate. Kerala achievements area not confined to the expansion of education and health care alone, but the quality of life benefits are fairly distributed among men and women, urban and rural areas and low and high castes.
In agriculture, Kerala ranks first among all Indian States in the rupee value of output per unit of land area. The state is first in India on measures of basic services in its village within a unit area of five kilometers. It stands out above other Indian States in providing basic services.
The Advantages Kerala had
Most of the area of the State receive large amount of rain fall, alongwith having acess to surface water and ground water in plenty. The rain is available for half the year. There are fourty four rivers running east west ,cutting across the Kerala society into smaller communities with strong bonds, with limited access for the people to have access with other side of the river till the bridges were established a few years ago.Lakes, ponds, estuaries, wells etc as sources of surface water are well distributed across the state. So water availability has not been a major problem. The inherent soil quality, better soil management, natural vegetation, diverse crop system , high biomass production, hogh species diversity etc made Kerala a fertile area for production. The settlements are evenly dispersed across the land without any demarcation between urban and rural.areas. Cities, towns and villages are not highly differentiated from each other. Villages are not cluster of houses but a continuum of houses scattered all over the landscape. This dispersion has happened due to the lushness, availability of fertile land around each house site and the ease of getting water.
Because of the dense and fairly even distribution of population, it has become easier to provide cost effective health and accessible education services in Kerala throughout the entire area. The dispersal of settlements also helped to reduce infectious / parasitic diseases and development of excellent road network across the entire area.
Kerala's long history of international contact and trade which dates back to as early as 3000 BC, probably became the basis for development of a progressive outlook in Kerala among its rulers and people. The British colonialism drained local economy for the benefit of British invaders. But the people had good exposure to progressive ideas outside and that might have helped in early land reforms, educational expansion, and the easing out of caste indignities.
British investors took their interest in the cool. well watered Kerala mountains situating close to ocean transport lanes and established their estates for plantations containing cash crops. This has resulted in the emergence of a working class with interest opposing to that of the British investors leading to radical reforms in Kerala development.
Ensuring Food for all
Kerala is a food deficit state as much of the best land in it is used for cash crops. It had to import food from outside. The food items imported are distributed through private markets and a network of public distribution system. The state conducts programs such as school and nursery lunches, special feeding centres, and fair price shops to make the state hunger free. School feeding originated in 1940, and expanded later, is still ongoing with whole funding from State Government and remains as a way of feeding the poor. In addition, many Kerala women and their infants can get one free meal each day at local village nurseries.
Public distribution of food through fair price shops is another mechanism for ensuring adequate nutrition to the poor. Each ration shop serves the 360 households, within an area of two Kilometers. The fair price shops provide some palm oil, kerosene, wheat and sugar also.
Public Health and Sanitation
Kerala had made major accomplishments in health and sanitation. The public health of Kerala is not the product of health programs alone but resulted from combined effects of various factors such as good environment, neat habitat, availability of food, sanitation, awareness of people etc.
Realising that poor housing can be a major source of disease, Kerala had made efforts to provide houses to the poor through its programes. Improving sanitation was another governmental programs to enhance public health. Provision of safe drinking water is probably the most significant in curbing infections diseases. In spite of heavy rainfall from June to December, Kerala experiences prolonged drought from January to the end of May.
Preventive immunization and vaccination are Kerala's most impressive public health programms. Low infant mortality is the result of those health programms. Along with public heath measures, Kerala provides the most extensive set of medical treatment facilities compared to any other Indian state. Services are available throughout and across the state to both urban and rural areas. Rural hospital beds are closer to people than in the rest of India. Compared to other states, the health facilities are far more accessible.
Dramatic decline in birthrate is another impressive achievement. Redistribution of wealth and provision of basic health care are the main reasons for this achievement.
Education
Kerala is well ahead of the rest of India in providing education across urban-rural, male-female, and high caste-low caste barriers. In addition, Kerala conducts an active adult education program for those who bypass education earlier.
Education programms in the State started with establishment of missionary school. The rulers of the princely states later established schools in order to prevent Christian conversion as a fall out of missionaries establishing schools. Later, caste based social organisation and local governments started establishing schools. Social reform movement, village library movement spread of newspapers etc contributed much for the educational development in the State. Education helped people in getting employment, enhancing independent thinking etc. But it changed the taste of many people who longed to have western type of home, food, dress fashion, luxuries and profession.
Land Reform
Land reform is considered to be a successful achievement. The abolition of tenancy resulted in massive re-distribution of land rights. In Kerala, there were a class of land loads at the top, below them another class of tenants and yet another class of third-level inferior tenants who were the actual cultivators. The unique component of Kerala's land reform was the abolition of the second kind of tenancy. Land reforms imposed ceiling on land holding and the excess of land holdings were distributed to tenants.
By land reforms, 1.5 million former tenants became small land owners. Many had lost their giant estates and had transformed as school teachers or administrators. Land reforms had improved the lives of vast majority of people in Kerala's country side and form the basis for many progressive movements including people planning.
Caste Systems in Kerala
Kerala had the most rigid and elaborate caste structure. Kerala was " a madhouse of caste". Lower castes were put to many constraints and discrimination. Spontaneous protests such as clothing agitation, struggle for use of public roads etc. Caste improvement associations, temple entry movement and the workers movements helped to weaken the caste system. Public educational institutions, mass transport system and progressive movements in Kerala contributed to the abolishion of caste system.
Women
Kerala women are far ahead of their all India counter parts. They have higher literacy and fewer children. They marry later and live longer. Female children survive more than do males. Kerala is the only state in which there are more females than men. Over half of the students enrolled in colleges in Kerala are women. It was the first Indian State to have a women cabinet minister. In sports, Kerala women stand out among all the Indian states. Kerala women have to face many traditional problems also.
The decline in agriculture resulted in decline of income to the States's poorest women depended on agriculture. Kerala women face several forms of violence- such as rape, dowry deaths, sexual harassment etc. Women are not supported to travel alone. In Kerala, bus seats are segregated sexually. Kerala women can rely on many social structures and organisations that offer potential for overcoming their problems.
Kerala Provides the Right Envronment
In short, Kerala by all means provides an excellent environment for human development, economic development and a political environment for development of democracy. The features make it a right place for decentralisation and development of grassroots democracy, if there someone to push ahead the concept.
Still decentralisation was in a slow pace
Despite enactment of laws, nothing significant in decentralised development was done for over three decades. As in the case of the rest of India with the formation of a large number of State-level Boards, Corporations and authorities for almost all areas, even the existing village and urban local bodies atrophied over the years since many of their functions were taken over by such para-statals.
There was a short-lived attempt to form District Councils in 1990, following a comprehensive Report on Decentralisation.
Since 1992
However, with the passage of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India in 1992, Kerala carried out pioneering reforms and embarked a path of Comprehensive decentralization since 1995.
Kerala has 999 Village Panchayats, 152 Block Panchayats and 14 District Panchayats; in the urban areas it has 53 Municipalities and Five Corporations.
Milestones in Kerala's decentralization initiatives
These can be briefly listed as below:
* April/May 1994: Enactment of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act and the Kerala Municipality Act.
* October 1995: Transfer of powers and functions to local governments; along with institutions, offices and functionaries.
* February 1996: Introduction of a Special Budget Document for local government allocations,
* August 1996: Launching of People's Plan Campaign for decentralized planning and announcement of earmarking of about 35% plan resources to local governments.
* March 1999: Restructuring of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act and the Kerala Municipality Act.
* March 2000: Amendments to 35 Acts having relevance to local government functioning.
* July 2000: Transfer of district level offices and staff to District Panchayat,
* January 2002: Decision to redeploy surplus staff especially engineers to local governments.
* January 2002: Decision to fix share of untied plan grants as one-third of the total plan size of the State.
* 2003: Redeployment of surplus clerical staff to local governments completed. Redeployment of engineering staff is under way.
Legislative framework: salient features
The Kerala Panchayat Raj Act 1994 which was itself a path-breaking law, was thoroughly restructured in 1999 and several innovative features laying strong legal foundation for evolving genuine institutions of Local Self Government were built in.
* Grama Sabba: Kerala has created a fourth tier in the form of Grama Sabhas (or village council meetings) equated with the electoral constituency of a Village Panchayat All the electors of the Ward are members of the Grama Sabha. It is an attempt to create a new set up for direct democracy - involving the people of the ward.
The Grama Sabhas have been given clear rights and responsibilities with absolute powers for identification of beneficiaries, strong advisory powers for prioritizing developmental needs and wide powers of social audit.
* Functions of local governments: The 11th Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists out developmental areas where local governments should have a role in planning for economic development and social justice and in the implementation of such plans.
Unlike many other States, Kerala defined the functional areas of the different tiers of PRIs as precisely as possible. In areas related to infrastructure and management of public institutions, the functional differentiation is sharp and clear, but in productive sectors it is difficult to clearly earmark functions separately for each tier.
Only through experience can the natural functional area in such sectors get marked. There is a clear recognition that there is a role-range for local governments as Agent, Adviser, Manager, Partner and Actor - with the objective being to reduce the agency role and expand the autonomous - actor role. The Kerala Act classifies functions as mandatory functions, general functions and sector-wise functions. in its schedules.
* Committee System: All Village and Block Panchayats have three Standing Committees and the District Panchayat five Standing Committees. The Standing Committees are constituted in such a way that every Member of the Panchayat gets a chance to function in one Standing Committee or the other. Each Standing Committee is assigned certain subjects and these Committees are expected to go into the subject areas both at the planning and implementation stage in great detail.
For the purpose of co-ordination, a Steering Committee is constituted consisting of the President and Vice President of the Panchayat and the Chairpersons of Standing Committees. In addition, there are Functional Committees for different subjects which can include experts and practitioners and the Panchayats are free to constitute Sub Committees to assist the Standing Committee or Functional Committee. There is also provision for constitution of Joint Committees with neighbouring Local Governments.
* Control by Government: The amended Kerala Panchayat Raj Act drastically reduces the powers of direct governmental control over Panchayat Raj Institutions. While Government can issue general guidelines regarding national and State policies it cannot meddle in day to day affairs or individual decisions. The Government can cancel resolutions of the Panchayat only through a process and in consultation with the Ombudsman or Appellate Tribunal according to the subject matter of the resolution. Similarly a Panchayat can be dissolved directly by government, only if it fails to pass the budget or if majority of its members have resigned. In all other cases a due process has to be followed and the Ombudsman has to be consulted before dissolution takes place. This is a unique feature which does not exist even in Center-State relations.
e) Setting up of independent institutions
In order to reduce governmental control and in order to foster the growth of self government as envisaged in the Constitution, the Act provides for creation of independent institutions to deal with various aspects of local government functioning. They are listed below:
* The State Election Commission: The Election Commission has been given powers which go beyond those required for the conduct of elections. It is empowered to delimit Wards which were formerly done through the executive and it has been given powers to disqualify defectors.
* The Finance Commission: This has been given the mandate as required by the Constitution. The first SFC was constituted in 1994 and the second SFC in 1999.
* Ombudsman for Local Governments: This is a high power institution which has been given vast powers to check malfeasance in local governments in the discharge of developmental functions.
* Appellate Tribunals: These are to be constituted at the Regional/District level to take care of appeals by citizens against decisions of the local government taken in the exercise of their regulatory role like issue of licence, grant of permit etc.
* State Development Council: This is headed by the Chief Minister and
consists of the entire Cabinet, Leader of opposition, Vice-Chairman of the
State Planning Board, the Chief Secretary, all the District Panchayat
Presidents who are also Chairperson of District Planning Committee and representatives of other tiers of local governments. This institution is expected to take the lead in policy formulation and in sorting out operation issues.
* Supremacy of the elected body: The President of the Panchayat Raj Institutions has been declared as the executive authority. The senior most officials of various departments brought under the control of the Panchayat Raj Institutions have been declared as ex-officio Secretaries for that subject. The Panchayats have full administrative control including powers of disciplinary action over its own staff as well as staff transferred to it. In order to ensure a healthy relationship between officials and elected Members, the Act prescribes a code of conduct, which lays down certain directive principles of polite behaviour, respect for elected authorities and protection of the freedom of the civil servant to render advice freely and fearlessly.
All these features are there in the Kerala Municipality Act as well.
* The State made a path breaking decision to amend 34 Acts dealing with subjects which are in the functional domain of local governments. This decision was taken to make it clear that local governments are not just the creatures of the Panchayati Raj and Municipality Acts; but they are entitled to legal space in all legislations having something to do with their functions, thus becoming the third tier of governments below the Central and State Governments.
==Extent of Decentralization--
The extent of decentralization and its nature can be gauged from the following facts:
* In the Health sector all institutions other than medical colleges and big
regional speciality hospitals have been placed under the control of the local
governments.
* In the Education sector, in rural areas the high schools and upper primary
schools have been transferred to the District Panchayats and the primary schools have been transferred to Village Panchayats; in urban areas, all schools have been transferred to the urban local governments.
* The entire responsibility of poverty alleviation has gone to the local
governments; all the centrally sponsored anti-poverty programmes are planned
and implemented through them.
* As regards Social welfare, barring statutory functions relating to juvenile
justice, the entire functions have gone to local governments. The ICDS is fully
implemented by Village Panchayats and Urban Local Bodies. Care of the
disabled, to a substantial degree has become a local government responsibility.
* In the Agriculture and allied sectors, the following have become the de
facto and de jure local government functions.
a) Agricultural extension including farmer oriented support for increasing
production and productivity.
b) Watershed management and minor irrigation.
c) Dairy development.
d) Animal Husbandry including veterinary care.
e) Inland fisheries.
* Barring highways and major district roads, connectivity has become local
government responsibility.
* The whole of sanitation and most of rural water supply have moved over to
local governments.
* Promotion of tiny, cottage and small industries is mostly with the local
governments.
* All the welfare pensions are administered by the local governments.
Thus most of the responsibilities relating to human and social development have been passed down to local governments. Welfare and poverty reduction are now largely dependent on local governments who also have considerable area of responsibility in the primary sector. Local infrastructure creation is also largely in the domain of Panchayats and Nagarapalikas.
Critical institutions of public service like hospitals, schools, anganwadis, veterinary institutions, Krishi Bhawans, hostels for Scheduled Castes and Care institutions for different disadvantaged groups have been transferred to local governments on as is where is condition. The responsibility of local governments which are typical of a non-plan nature in respect of these institutions include
1) routine and heavy maintenance of infrastructure
2) upkeep and maintenance of equipment
3) replenishment of consumables
4) administrative charges relating to telephone, water, electricity, fuel etc.
5) noon-day meal cost in schools.
Though funds for meeting these responsibilities are to be transferred by government to local governments, in practice, due to the fiscal stress during the last few years, the amount has stagnated as may be seen from the Annexure - TV.
This amount is far less than what is required leading to a major operation and maintenance deficit which has its adverse implications for public service delivery to the poor.
Transfer of Resources
The salient features of how Kerala has handled these problems and a highly unionized and powerful staff structure are summarized below:
* The principle of work and worker going together was enunciated. This enabled the government to transfer institutions and offices along with staff to
the local governments. Also, it was followed up by determining surplus staff both professional and ministerial in development departments at the State, regional and district levels and transferring them to local governments. This redeployment process is currently under way whereby about 1200 clerical staff will go to local governments with each of the 991 Village Panchayats getting one clerk. Similarly about 200 large Village Panchayats would get one Assistant Engineer and for the remaining Village Panchayats two of them will share an Assistant Engineer; all 152 Block Panchayats will get an Assistant Executive Engineer.
* The cadre of the staff transferred is not disturbed. This prevents promotion chances being affected and facilitates movement of staff from one local government to another or from local government to government. In a sense the analogy of All India Service Officers serving both Central and State Government is relevant.
* The local governments have full managerial and part disciplinary control over the staff. They can assign any work to the staff transferred to them related to their area. They can review their performance and give the required directions. They are empowered to impose minor penalties on all staff transferred to them and, in the case of non-gazetted officers, resort to suspension whenever warranted.
* A kind of dual control is inevitable. Since the State Government carries out some of its functions through the field level staff who have been transferred to the local governments State control over the staff becomes necessary. Also, as the cadre is managed by State, such control is automatic.
* The salaries of the staff transferred continue to be paid for by Government. This prevents unnecessary burdening of local governments with the costs and efforts of salary disbursement and account keeping.
* Even the own staff of local governments i.e., Village Panchayats and Municipal bodies who are paid for by the local government themselves are recruited through the Public Service Commission and constitute a local government cadre.
vii) Based on work-study, staff pattern has been fixed for different types of local governments. Only government can create new posts in local governments.
* A decision has been taken to have a published transfer norm which would ensure that all local governments including remote and backward ones get the staff on a rational basis. This would also prevent government from exercising partisanship in favour of local governments perceived to be on the government side or discrimination against other local governments.
* To protect the legitimate professional interest of staff a code of conduct has been legislated. The detailed rules are under formulation. This would help officials in discharging their functions without fear or favour.
* In the case of professional staff where ego conflicts tend to be more, government has been trying out a two-pronged approach - one of interfering whenever there is a complaint and sorting it out through negotiations and the other of trying to organize joint training courses for elected heads and the professional staff to foster mutual understanding and trust.
Stages in Decentralized Planning
The Campaign made during the Ninth Plan, has succeeded in providing a concrete methodology for participatory planning for local level development. The salient features of this methodology are described below, stage by stage.
* Needs identification: Through a meeting of Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha, i.e., the ward or the electoral constituency of a Village Panchayat or Municipality Member, the felt needs of the community are identified. There is a period of environment creation to mobilize maximum participation in the Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha. Statistics reveal that about 10-12% of the rural population has participated. The meetings are held in a semi-structured manner with plenary sessions and sub group sessions dealing with specific developmental issues. The decisions are minuted and forwarded to the Local Governments. Each meeting is chaired by the
elected member and has an official as its co-ordinator
* Situation analysis: Based on the demands emanating from the first special Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha and based on developmental data, both primary and secondary, exhaustive Development Reports have been prepared and printed in the case of every Local Governments in the State, These reports describe the status in each sector of development with reference to available data, analyse the problems and point out the directions for further development. This is an one-time exercise for a Plan period and the Reports have been revised before the Tenth Five Year Plan.
* Strategy setting: Based on the Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha feed back and the Development Report, a one day seminar is held at the Local Government level in which participation of experts, elected members, representatives nominated by the Sabhas, practitioners from among the public is ensured. The development seminars suggest the broad priorities and general strategies of developmental projects to be taken up for a particular year.
* Projectisation: The ideas thrown up by the above three stages are translated in the form of projects by Working Groups at the Local Government level. For each Local Government there are about eight Working Groups dealing with different sectors of development. Each Working Group is headed by an elected member and is convened by the concerned government official. The Vice Chairman of the Working Group is normally a non-government expert in the sector. The projects are prepared in the suggested format outlining the objectives, describing the benefits, explaining the funding and detailing the mode of execution and phasing of the project.
* Plan finalisation: From among the projects, based on the allocation communicated, the concerned Local Government finalizes its plan for the year and this plan is submitted to the District Planning Committees (DPCs) through the Technical Advisory Committees. The Panchayat is free to take up any project, irrespective of its cost, subject of course to the resources actually available and within the sectoral limits,
* Plan vetting: The Technical Advisory Committees at the Block or the District level consisting of official and non-official experts vet the projects for their technical viability and conformity with the mandatory government guidelines on planning and costing and forward them to the DPC. They cannot change priorities or projects; they can only ask for rectification.
* Plan approval: The DPC gives the formal approval to the plans after which the Local Government can start implementation. It is to be noted that the DPC also cannot change the priority of a Local Government. It can only ensure that government guidelines are followed. Administrative approval for implementation is given project-wise by the Local Government. Every Local Government has unlimited powers of Administrative sanctions subject only to the limits of its financial resources.
Setting up of accountability systems
Since substantial responsibilities have been passed on to local governments Accountability Systems acquire special importance. In harmony with local government functioning and participatory budgeting, in addition to traditional systems of checks and balances, new forms of downward accountability to the people has also been structured in. The key accountability systems are given below:
(i) Committee System of decision making All decisions of local governments are to be taken by itself through consensus or by voting. Power is not concentrated in individuals.
(ii) Right to Information
All documents of local governments except very few ones like health records of patients, contract documents before finalisation etc., have been declared as public documents by law. Any citizen has the right to peruse them or ask for photocopies. In a literate and politically conscious society this is a powerful Provision against corruption.
(iii) Participatory Budgeting
The evolution of a budget particularly for
development works is through the comprehensive stage by stage planning process which allows space for citizen interaction and intervention, expert involvement and final budgeting before approval by elected bodies. This provides adequate protection against arbitrary decision making.
(iv) Due process in selection of beneficiaries This is ensured through the
following steps.
(a) Clear enunciation of eligibility criteria and prioritisation criteria at the time of scheme formulation.
(b) Assigning weightages to each prioritisation criterion.
(c) Calling of application in writing.
(d) Enquiry process into applications with awarding of marks to each criterion.
(e) Reading out of marks in Grama Sabha/Ward Sabha.
(f) Opportunity to each applicant to see all records including application forms of others.
* Technical Sanction The process of giving Technical Sanction has been taken out of the departmental technical hierarchy. Technical Committees have been constituted at the Block/Municipal/Corporation/District levels consisting of engineering experts drawn from governmental, academic and non¬governmental sources. This gives some protection against inflation of estimates and dilution of technical standards.
* Audit Systems The traditional audit system through Local Fund Audit Department has been strengthened with the technical support of the Accountant General. A special Concurrent Audit System has been designed, manned by surplus staff from the Panchayat and Urban Affairs Departments headed by an Officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service. This system called Performance Audit acts as an online corrective mechanism helping local governments to put their systems in proper place. Performance- Audit is conducted twice a year in all the local governments. Since the minimum grant-in-aid to a Grama Panchayat is Rs.35 lakhs, the Accountant General also
carries out grant-in-aid audit including Village Panchayats. A Technical Audit Team has been put in place at the State level consisting of senior Engineers mostly from outside Government who are selected for their integrity. This Team looks into complaints regarding execution of public works.
* Social Audit A semi structured social audit is conducted in Grama Sabhas and Ward Sabhas where the accounts of Village Panchayats, Municipalities and Corporations have to be presented and querries replied to.
* Awareness Building. IEC campaigns have been conducted through the media of Press and TV explaining the right of the citizens vis-à-vis local governments. Special meetings of NGOs are held to tell them every thing about citizen entitlements vis-à-vis local governments.
* File of the Property Statements. All elected Members have to file their property Statements immediately on election.
New Reforms under implementation
(i) Appellate Tribunals. Judicial Tribunals are to be set up at the regional level to hear appeals against decisions by local governments in exercise of their regulatory powers. The Acts have been amended for this purpose and negotiations were on with the High Court regarding allotment of judicial personnel.
(ii) Social Audit. A draft Social Audit Policy has been approved by the Government and an initiative to take up action research programme to build up good models of Social Audit has been cleared and Rs. 5.70 crore has been allotted in the current year's Annual Plan for this purpose.
(iii) Citizen's Charters. This has been legislated for and in order to operationalize them Rs. 3.25 crores has been provided in the current year's Plan. Once the Citizens Charters are brought out accountability for provision of Services would improve.
(iv) Monitoring by independent institutions. Monitoring of local government programmes by independent institutions has been decided upon. Rs. One crore has been set apart in current year's Plan for this purpose. Institutions have been identified and the working out of the methodology for concurrent monitoring is on through six pilot projects..
A quick assessment of Performance
Decentralization has had several positive spin-offs. They are summarized below:
* The formula based devolution of funds has ensured that funds flowed to every nook and corner of the State including the outlying and backward areas, facilitating public investment.
* The cornerstone of Kerala's decentralization has been people's participation. The processes have been designed to facilitate intervention by the interested citizen at all stages of the development process right from generation of developmental ideas through project planning, project implementation, up to monitoring.
* Decentralization has resulted in better targeting especially in the case of individual benefits by insisting on a due process in the selection of beneficiaries. The quality of identification has certainly improved.
* Decentralization has opened up opportunities for wide ranging reforms. Already right to information, prescription of dire process in giving of benefits, outsourcing of technical services, community management of assets and simplification of procedures have taken place. More reforms in the form of independent regulatory institutions, improved management systems both financial and administrative, enhanced accountability mechanisms etc., are in the offing.
* In development matters local governments have significant achievements. The important ones are:
i) As is evident from the performance, local governments have done well in provision of minimum needs infrastructure both to households as well as to communities. This is particularly true of housing, sanitation, water supply, infrastructure of hospitals and schools and connectivity.
ii) The introduction of the mandatory Women Component Plan has been a path breaker. Local governments have gradually matured in their planning for gender sensitive schemes. Earmarking of 10% of the plan outlay for women has helped considerably the disadvantaged groups among women like widows, and has improved the provision of services, which are of direct benefit to women. The local governments have to be further guided to improve the quality of planning to engender it fully.
iii) Local government plans have shown a strong anti-poverty bias. More funds have flown to families below poverty line through local governments than would normally have been the case.
iv) Local governments have evolved good models in water supply, improvement of quality of education, improving agriculture productivity, etc. They have generally shown a preference for affordable technologies and appropriate solutions. There have been some positive steps in areas like integrated natural resource management.
v) Many local governments have been able to raise public contributions for water supply schemes, repair of buildings, provision of facilities like latrines in schools and dispensaries, supply of computers to schools etc.
There are also certain problems and weaknesses, which are enumerated below:
1) The outliers like Scheduled Tribes are still to gain from decentralization. In a
scenario where one section of the poor lives off another section,
decentralization seems to have certain inbuilt limitations.
* The poorest among the poor need social safety nets particularly for food and health emergencies. This cannot be provided by local governments by themselves.
* The management of services particularly health and education have not improved except for some infrastructure and equipment provisions. These services have direct implications for local development, poverty reduction and employment.
* The flow of bank credit into local schemes has been rather limited resulting more from bankers' reluctance to deal with local governments than from inadequacies of project formulation. This has resulted in higher subsidies.
* In a State like Kerala where the number of educated poor is very high there is an inherent limitation in local government action against it. Linkage with job markets through skill up gradation or identification of self-employment opportunities or small-scale production activities with assured markets are all services, which have to be provided from higher levels.
* There is a tendency to spread resources thinly with funds being given to every electoral constituency whenever a development scheme is taken up. Distribution of assets and inputs, not necessarily productive, has been common.
* Vertical integration of local level programmes has proved difficult to achieve.
* Participatory aspect of planning is often limited to airing of needs and sharing of benefits. There is little healthy discussion by all sections of the population based on data and norms, generating a prioritized list of developmental needs.
* The introduction of local planning and development unfortunately coincided with years of acute financial difficulties of the State government. Due to constant ways and means difficulties, the actual release of funds and implementation of local schemes were not matched leaving to delayed or partial implementation or even abandonment.
* Similarly, redeployment of staff for plan implementation could start only a few years after the programme was started. It is still incomplete. This has also adversely affected local plan implementation.
* Despite Government's over-all approach and pro-local government policy, reluctance to change persists in many individuals and departments.
* The resolution of problems between the local governments (as regards their assigned statutory functions) and para statals like the Electricity Board and Water Authority continues to be knotty (as there can be no redeployment from them).
Jackson Heights has a wide array of school choices within walking distance ( one of the largest in the country). Students attend or or several other primary schools. Middle schools in the neighborhood include and . There is also a well-regarded public Charter School (The Renaissance Charter School) as well as various private schools such as the well-known preparatory The Garden School and parochial schools such as St Joan of Arc, Our Lady of Fatima, and Blessed Sacrament School. Hebrew School is also offered at The Jewish Center of Jackson Heights.
Even though most of the children from Kindergarten to Grade 8 stay in the wide array of schools in the neighborhood for elementary school , The majority of older students in Jackson Heights go to high schools through out the five boroughs primarily in Manhattan & Queens via subway. From public high schools — such as Stuyvesant High School , Academy of American Studies, Townsend Harris High School,Brooklyn Technical High School & Bronx High School of Science — to private high schools, such as Archbishop Molloy High School, Holy Cross High School, Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School, Xavier High School,and St. Francis Preparatory School. Students wishing continue in Higher Education in Jackson Heights have the opportunity to attend Plaza College, located on 37th Avenue and 75th Street. Plaza College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of schools and colleges, and offers a wide variety of programs to students who want to pursue careers in the Business or Medical fields.
Even though most of the children from Kindergarten to Grade 8 stay in the wide array of schools in the neighborhood for elementary school , The majority of older students in Jackson Heights go to high schools through out the five boroughs primarily in Manhattan & Queens via subway. From public high schools — such as Stuyvesant High School , Academy of American Studies, Townsend Harris High School,Brooklyn Technical High School & Bronx High School of Science — to private high schools, such as Archbishop Molloy High School, Holy Cross High School, Monsignor McClancy Memorial High School, Xavier High School,and St. Francis Preparatory School. Students wishing continue in Higher Education in Jackson Heights have the opportunity to attend Plaza College, located on 37th Avenue and 75th Street. Plaza College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of schools and colleges, and offers a wide variety of programs to students who want to pursue careers in the Business or Medical fields.
The B4180 is a main road in Great Britain that links Wordsley to North East Brierley Hill via Brockmoor.
Places along the route
*Wordsley
*Brockmoor
*Brierley Hill
Route Names
The route was called the Brierley Hill Road, Leys Road, High Street and John Street
Places along the route
*Wordsley
*Brockmoor
*Brierley Hill
Route Names
The route was called the Brierley Hill Road, Leys Road, High Street and John Street