Participatory Decentralised Planning in India By Sachinandan Sau

It is indeed a pleasure to have the opportunity of associating myself with the publication of a collection of essays titled "Participatory Decentralised Planning in India Issues of Finance and Statistical Information These essays were culled from the papers submitted in the different sections of a National Seminar on Participatory Decentralised Planning Some Issues organised by Department of Economics with Rural Development, Vidyasagar University held in March 2003 The present collection has been organised around two very important themes pertaining to finance and information vital to any worthwhile effort at decentralised planning anywhere The papers selected for this volume have been authored by scholars and researchers analysing various aspects of the issues drawing upon the actual experiences of Panchayati Raj in operation in different states of India. Most of the papers try to combine empirical findings with theoretical insights Studies on decentralised rural planning in India have just started growing in coverage and analytical depth. The present volume, I am sure, will be a worthy addition to this very important area of socio-scientific research. I wish this effort all success.

The 73 Amendment Act of the Constitution of India has vested 2.28 lakh gram panchayats, 5.91 thousand panchayat samities and 474 zilla parishads of rural India with the statutory powers of planning for economic development and social justice. Progress of decentralized planning in India has, however, been slow and tardy. Many an issue now confronts decentralized planning. What financial issues and problems are encountered by the panchayats in respect of decentralized planning in the country? What issues of statistical information affect them in their functioning in respect of formulation and implementation of local level plans? What variations are there in these respects across states of India like Kerala, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal? The present volume seeks, in a modest way, to find answers to these and allied questions.

The volume is the outcome mainly of a National Seminar on Issues of Participatory Decentralised Planning, which was organized during March 2003 by the Department of Economics with Rural Development, Vidyasagar University under Departmental Research Support (DRS) of the University Grants Commission. The book is designed for students, academics, practitioners and policy makers interested in issues of decentralized planning and participatory rural development.

We wish to thank all contributors to this volume. We are particularly grateful to Mr. Nripen Bandyopadhyay who was the great inspiration behind the building up of this volume and who has kindly given some time out of his schedule to write a brief but illuminating 'Foreword' to this volume. We want to express our feelings of immense debt to Professor Dhires Bhattacharya, Professor P.N. Roy, Professor Biplab Dasgupta, Professor Asim Dasgupta and Professor Ratan Khasnobis.

For the two decades of 1950s and 1960s a primary focus of world economic attention was on ways to accelerate the growth rate of national incomes. The strategy adopted during this period in developing countries focused largely on economic growth in the belief that an increase in gross national product would percolate down to the poorest and thereby euminate poverty, inequality and unemployment in the countries. The planning models that performed miracles in the Western developed countries and centrally planned economies were too readily adopted as ideal and appropriate to the developing countries. But over a quarter of a century's experience and experiments with it, the growth model stands as the "god that failed." In the early seventies thus began a search for "Another Development." Development began to be conceived to be more than economic growth. It is being conceived as an integrated process of economic and social development with social justice. Equity from the point of view of narrowing the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor has been recognized to be an inalienable dimension of development. Since development is an interrelated process of change involving not only economic and social but also cultural and human factors, it demands the active and conscious participation of all people. The Fifth International Action for Development/FFHC Conference stressed that development can only be a reality with the involvement of all people.

In recent years there has been a dramatic flowering of decentralization initiatives among the developing countries of Asia, and the decentralization initiatives have moved forward under the dual banner of democracy and development". Decentralization of the state power from the centre to the state and from the state to the local level is needed for democracy to take firm roots. People are divided into numerous strata and classes. This begets clash of interest. Some sections of the people may welcome governmental actions, but the other sections may not like those.