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Letter from the Editor
24th April is observed as Panchayati Raj Day because on this day in 1993, the 73rd Constitutional Amendment was implemented, setting up the three-tier panchayat system — village panchayats, panchayat unions and district panchayats — for grassroots-level governance.
It is time to take stock once again The process of devolution operates through transfers of authority and resources. How far have we reached?...read more |
The State of Panchayats
Except Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa, and Chhattisgarh and to an extent Madhya Pradesh, a majority of the states has been reluctant to delegate responsibilities to Panchayats as mandated by 73rd amendment of the constitution
Her drawing room cabinet brims over with awards, trophies, mementoes and citations . .... read more |
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Feature: Swabhimaan
Taking Banking to the last mile
While the new Swabhimaan scheme is a welcome step, the government must maintain its focus on financial literacy and linking financial inclusion efforts to poverty alleviation read more
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Stop Press
The great movement for Jan Lokpal may not achieve much in the absence of police, electoral and judicial reforms and empowerment of institutes of local governance. But it has definitely paved the way for involvement of civil society in dialogue on policy formation... read more
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Focus
Internal Security Critical for Growth
26/11 not only brought terrorism right into our drawing rooms and made us the battlefield but also exposed the chinks in the armoury of our security establishment. Moreover, it lobbed homeland security right into the centre of our polity. There is an emergent need for instruments like common chain of command, customisation and integration of applications to strengthen security... read more. |
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Blue Pencil
The centre would be served better to remember that cash transfer can never be a substitute for service delivery. The delivery under PDS and other schemes needs to coexist, says Narendra Kaushik... read more
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Q&A
Need to Incentivise
the Government Sector
Prajapati Trivedi, Secretary to Government of India (Performance Management) in the Cabinet Secretariat, tells Inclusion how the government is seeking to establish a mechanism for results-based performance monitoring and performance evaluation in the Government... read more |
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eCourts: Speeding up
Justice Delivery
The eCourts project will facilitate citizen’s access to online case status, copies of orders and judgements, cause list and eventually e-filing, says Neela Gangadharan, Secretary, Department of Justice... read more |
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Sudha Pillai
Unorganised Workers’
Health Insured
RSBY keeps unorganised, illiterate,
semi-literate, poor and selfemployed
employees who migrate
from place to place in search of
wage employment in mind... read more
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Devaki Jain
Re-imagining
India
We need to deconstruct power and thus reconstruct India from the lower rungs of economy, of administration, of capability...read more |
Deepak B Phatak
Swadeshi Software
and Swaraj
India needs to harness its software self-reliance to attain true Swaraj.
It should not be seen as a herculean task...read more |
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Marketing Feature || Bajaj Allianz
Serving at your Doorstep
Bajaj Allianz Life treats
sales and service
as integral to each
other when it comes
to insurance officer
serving the rural
customers. The rural
insurance officer is
trained to be the... read more |
Case Study || State Bank of India
Banking
for India
SBI is truly an institution the ‘Nation banks
on’ holding over 250 million customers in a
country where only half of the population is
estimated to have access to banking... read more |
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Book Review || Federalism and Fiscal Transfers in India
Framework for
Fixing Debt & Deficit
It is an enormous challenge to design
a scheme for fiscal transfers
for a country as heterogeneous
as India. But when C Rangarajan,
the Chairman of Prime Minister’s
Economic Advisory Council and doyen
of Indian economy and D K Srivastava... read more
Book Review || Agrarian Crisis and Farmer Suicides
Level-playing
Field for Farmers
A part of the series on
‘Land Reforms in India’,
Agrarian Crisis
and Farmer Suicides is
a collection of essays
that builds a clear linkage between
an agrarian crisis and its impact on
farmers and its dovetailing effect on
public policy. Looking at the... read more |
Column
Reinventing Decentralisation
Bibek Debroy
The word decentralisation
means different things and
is used in different contexts,
with differing normative
connotations. Even
within the narrower domain of governance,
political, administrative and
fiscal decentralisation may overlap,
but are conceptually different. Why
do we want decentralisation? At one
level, there is an efficiency argument
in delivering public goods and services.
Local governments are closer to
citizens, they know local needs. Why
should there be a centralised template
in determining what services read more
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Column
Making Decentralised Governance Work
N C Saxena
According to the 11th Plan
Mid-Term Appraisal
(MTA), significant devolution
of funds and
functionaries to the
panchayats has been effected in only a
few States, with departmental staff in
most states answering to their respective
departments. The MTA identifies
two factors that constrain the effective
working of the Panchayati Raj Institutions
(PRIs): inadequate capacity, and
limited manpower and resources with
panchayats for implementing their
plans. There are, however, other factors
too that limit their performance.
Panchayats are more concerned
with consolidating existing economic
and social relations rather than using
the democratic process to change inequitable
rural societies. PRIs function
more or less as “political” bodies, i.e.,
as organisations dealing with power,
and development funds are used to
consolidate that power. Heterogeneous
and unequal village socie read more |
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