The Centre for Decentralisation and Development (CDD) at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru is organising a seminar on “Twenty Five Years of Decentralised Governance in India: Status, Issues and the Way Forward.” The seminar will critically examine the progress that decentralised governance made since then and the impact of democratic decentralisation on development outcomes.

The seminar, to be held from August 28-30, will discuss Karnataka’s contribution to the progress of decentralised governance in India from the times of Ramakrishna Hegde and Abdul Nazeer Sab.

The decentralisation model, implemented in Karnataka in mid 1980s, significantly contributed to the shaping of 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act in 1993, 25 years since the historic legislations were passed by the Indian Parliament. In the last 25 years, public services at the local level were delivered through decentralised governance resulting in good development outcomes in rural and urban areas.

The faculty at ISEC is undertaking considerable research on different aspects of decentralisation in Karnataka and elsewhere since the 1980s. A number of books, reports and research papers on the subject have been brought out including Decentralised Governance, Development Programmes and Elite Capture, and Decentralised Governanment, Cooperatives and Rural Development.

Objectives of the seminar

The main objective is to take stock of developments since the introduction of decentralisation reforms (73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts), critically assess the measures initiated to strengthen decentralised institutions and deepen the grassroots democracy, and identify the extent to which the service delivery has improved at the local level.

The five major themes of the seminar are: i) Inclusive governance; ii) Functioning of the institutions; iii) Fiscal decentralisation; iv) Impact of decentralisation on poverty reduction; and, v) Urban local governments.

Krishna Byre Gowda, Karnataka Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, will deliver inaugural address on August 28. The session will be chaired by Dr A Ravindra, Chairperson, Board of Governors (BoG), ISEC, while the keynote address will be delivered by Prof V K Natraj, former Director, MIDS, Chennai. Prof. M G Chandrakanth, Director, ISEC, will welcome the participants. Experts on decentralisation participating in the seminar are Professors Abdul Aziz, George Mathew, N Jayaram, M A Oommen, M V Nadkarni, Yuko Mori.

On the August 29, a special session on Decentralisation in Karnataka will be organised at 11 am. Dr. A Ravindra, Dr. S S Meenakshisundaram, Mr. C Narayanaswamy, Mr. Venkatarao Ghorpade and Dr. T R Raghunandan will critically reflect on the experience of decentralisation in Karnataka since the mid-1980s to throw light on the current situation, strengths and weaknesses of Karnataka model, and what needs to be done to improve the decentralised system.

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