Decentralisation in Kerala: Problems and ProspectsK Rajasekharan

Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA)

Mulagunnathukavu Kavu, Thrissur

Introduction

The main purpose of this paper is to consolidate the major problems the Indian state of Kerala

experienced during the process of decentralising its governance.

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. The State had a long history of half-hearted

reforms characterised by partial successes and blatant reversals in the area of decentralisation

since its creation in 1957. The state that claims appreciative development indicators comparable

to developed countries again intensified its experimentation with decentralisation and

participatory local democracy, since the enactment of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & Kerala

Municipality Act in the year 1994. It was for realizing the constitutional goal of establishing

genuine "institutions of local self government" mandated by the 73rd and 74th Constitutional

amendments in the year 993.

Decentralisation – decentralising governance - is a complex activity. It involves devolution of

political, administrative and fiscal responsibilities to the elected local governments aiming at

establishing accountable, efficient, accessible and transparent local governance. The 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 of decentralisation in Kerala

The enactment of the Kerala Panchayat Raj Act & 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. The act enlisted both mandatory and sectoral responsibilities and

institutional structures of the local government system in Kerala. The acts incorporated only the

bare minimum mandatory constitutional requirements in the initial stage.

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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

as Ex-officio secretaries with all powers and responsibilities of the local government Secretary,

with regard to their specific sector.

The State budget, which set apart a small amount of untied funds to draw local plan projects by

the local governments, of Government of Kerala, presented in February 1996 was the next

milestone in the history of decentralisation in the state. 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 transferring 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 the decentralisation works well in practice.

Kerala adopted a ‘bing bang‘approach towards decentralisation, in ‘reversal’1 of the classical

approach of transferring funds, functions and functionaries to local governments in one go and

make attempts to build up the capacity of the local governments to undertake the transferred

tasks later.

1 The ‘reversals’ include giving responsibility and then building capacity, giving powers and then creating procedures and systems and giving funds and then setting up accountability mechanism.

2

The PPC, consisted of a series of phases,2 had been used as an acceptable entry point to push

for a high degree of decentralisation in the State. The campaign could establish adhoc systems

and procedures, which were later, corrected or were attempted for correction 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 started with the expectation that it should move from experimentation,

corrective and consolidation phase to an institutional phase later. But the campaign could not go

much ahead in transforming the existing administrative and 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 a new model of growth with equity in Kerala. (Thomas

Isaac T M and Richard W Franke 2000)

The amendments made to the Kerala Panchayat Raj & Municipality Acts in 1999, consequent to

the recommendation of the Committee on Decentralisation of Powers (popularly called Sen

Committee), had transformed the legislations proactive to the needs of decentralisation to a very

great extend. The later initiative to institutionalise the good features of learning from PPC, in the

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, has 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)

2 The stages followed in the People’s Planning Campaign are identification of development needs in the gramasabha, preparation of a development report by task forces (renamed now as working groups) constituted by the local bodies, conduct of a development seminar for strategy setting, projectisation of the needs contained in the development report by the task forces(working groups , plan finalisation by the local body, plan vetting by the expert groups, plan approval by the DPC and implementation by beneficiary groups, agencies or functionaries of local bodies

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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 in the long run 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 the democratic decentralisation strongly

buttressed by the state support can be an effective strategy for reducing inequality in living

standards. (Franke, Richard W and Barbara H Chasin 2000)

Major problems

The state confronts many problems that cannot be solved easily in its decentralisation process as

in any other place. Poor legislative framework, difficulty in integration of sectors, absence of

managerial efficiency, ineffective management of transferred institutions etc are major problems.

Refining legislative framework

Decentralisation in the state is a process launched by legislative enactments - the 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 strict conformity 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

be pushed ahead.

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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 on a website regularly. The

documents thus uploaded can be made accessible to the functionaries through the commercial

internet kiosks without lapse of time. A few sites are there for the purpose now, but the

comprehensive and reliable uploading does not take place.

Lack of departmental integration

The decentralisation expected to bring down all developmental programms earlier run by the

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 vestiges of District Rural Developmental Agency

(DRDA), the operation of MP/MLA Local Area Development programme outside the local

government system, the separation of a part of Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) from the local government

realm, the existence of many state level Corporations 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. The existence of all these parallel systems

indented to enhance people’s 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 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 yet 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

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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 decentralisation efforts in Kerala veered round PPC and its vestiges. Decentralisation is a

far more comprehensive concept touching a broad spectrum of areas than the PPC which

concentrated mainly on planning. The PPC ignored regulatory functions of the local governments

that had a great role in a globalised economy. The management which followed traditional

practices in local governments 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, flow, storing and retrieving of data or files. There

should be a system for providing feedback to the elected representatives. The administrative

procedures in local governments need to be refined with elements of professionalism.

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. To

increase the managerial efficiency elaborate management manuals for all offices and 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,

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are other essential managerial issues. The local government offices in the state 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 attempts to delineate 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). But the

distinction is not very clear and a lot of overlap exists. The 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 transferred 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.

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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.

Human resource management: A neglected issue.

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,

functioning as 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

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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.

Effective Account Keeping- another need

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 a new system

of checks and balances to ensure “fairness in decision, propriety in expenditure, legality in actions

and legitimacy in policy” is essential. 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

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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

PPC 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. The 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.

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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.

3Local governments had made only limited initiatives in creating employment opportunities for the unemployed and under employed due to complexity of problems, lack of multi tier integration and absence of creativity and lateral thinking to formulate innovative projects.

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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 issues like health care, domestic violence,

alcoholism etc. have 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 conveners 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 15 lakhs. There is urgent need to explore

ways to bring back genuine community contracting system. Providing leadership training to

public-spirited local leaders and groom them for community work would be the probable solution.

Disinterest in resource mobilisation by local governments

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 that

they get. The local governments can collect very higher amount of taxes, tolls and fees than

earlier at the current revised rates. They 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 the local-level plans

show weak credit linkages. "Both commercial and cooperative banks have by and large been

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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.

Difficulty in Revitalizing Institutions

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 people’s 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

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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 system for capacity development

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.

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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.

An overall strategy, to provide uniform content and quality to the training process for

decentralisation in Kerala, needs to be evolved.

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 needs 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

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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 the

District Development Committee (DDC), consisting of all members of the legislative body and

sectoral officers in the District with collector as chairman, undermines the DPC to a great extend.

The DPC & the DDC need to be harmonized together, as the latter as an extended general body

of the former, by legislation.

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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.

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