Description
Book SynopsisAn account of one of the world's most extensive and successful experiments in decentralization. Launched in 1996, the campaign mobilized over three million of Kerala's 30 million people and resulted in bottom-up development planning in all 1052 of its villages and urban neighbourhoods.
Trade ReviewThe book provides a very good account of the process of decentralised planning in Kerala along with its theoretical underpinnings. The book should be essential reading for all those interested in decentralised planning. * Journal Of Development Studies *
An extraordinarily well informed and detailed description of the campaign. * Journal of Asian Studies *
A particularly insightful analysis of the political conditions and configurations that made the campaign possible and those that present important obstacles to its full institutionalization. If democracy is about the actual practice of citizenship, then this book provides a critically important exploration of a particularly ambitious and large-scale experiment in democratic deepening. * H-Asia *
Table of Contents1 Chapter 1. Decentralization, Democracy, and Development: The Kerala Experiment 2 Behind the Campaign: Political Vision, Civil Society, and the Kerala Model 3 Phase 1: the Grama Sabhas—Identifying Local Needs 4 Phase 2: PDRs and Seminars—What Is to Be Done? 5 Phase 3: Task Forces Prepare the Projects 6 Phase 4: Elected Councils Formulate the Plans 7 Phase 5: Planning Up Instead of Down—The Blocks and Districts 8 Taking Stock: The First Year's Local Plans, 1997-1998 9 From People's Planning to Plan Implementation 10 The Great Laboratory 11 From Experiment to Institution: The Plans and the Campaign, 1998-2001 12 The Long March Ahead 13 The Kerala Experiment in International Perspective
