Journal Articles

THIS conversation on democracy and decentralization between Yamini Aiyar, President and CEO of the Centre for Policy Research, and Mukulika Banerjee, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, reflects on the past, present and future of India’s experiment with decentralization.

The conversation began with taking a stock of Indian democracy in relation to the promises of 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments. While India’s record on political decentralization has seen a fair bit of success, the record on financial and administrative aspects of decentralization has been rather poor. In the next segment, this conversation explored the inherent conceptual and design challenges that stemmed from structural and political factors such as caste and gender, as well as India’s weak state capacity. Finally, the discussion turned towards anticipating future challenges and whether they will differ from those encountered in the 1990s, and what can be done to make this project a success.