Decentralisation and women: from patriarchy to empowerment?
A study of the impact of democratic decentralisation on the empowerment of women in theory and in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India.
Anouk Merle Baron S1722549 Emmastraat 15 - A303 9722 EW Groningen The Netherlands Master thesis Version 2.0 Research Master Modern History and International Relations University of Groningen, the Netherlands Supervisor: dr. ir. M.R. Kamminga
2 “Mar khati rahungi case farti rahungi”
-
“I will take the beating and continue to fight the case”
Quote by Yamini Regar, an illiterate, Dalit, female sarpanch (elected president) of a Gram Panchayat (cluster of villages) in Panchayat Samiti Bonli of district Sawai Madhopur in
Rajasthan, India. Taken from: N. Buch, From oppression to assertion. Women and panchayats in India (New Delhi, 2010) 169.
Pictures above: proceedings of a Gram Sabha (villagers’ assembly) in Luhara Gram Panchayat of Newai block in Rajasthan. Pictures made by Anouk Baron, December 2011.
3
Contents:
Abbreviations/glossary. 5
Acknowledgements. 7
Introduction. 8
1. The impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment in theory. 16 1.1. The evolution of decentralisation as a development approach and its meaning. 17 1.2. Theoretical arguments about the assumed merits and drawbacks of democratic
decentralisation. 26
1.3. The feminist concepts ‘patriarchy’ and ‘gender’ and feminists’ visions on
‘women’s empowerment’. 33
1.4. The theoretical connection between decentralisation as a development approach
and women’s empowerment. 41
1.4.1. A gender analysis of the democratic state. 42
1.4.2. The theoretical links between representation, participation, democratic
decentralisation and women’s empowerment. 46
1.4.3. Operationalisation of the concept of ‘women’s empowerment’. 56
1.5. Conclusion. 61
2. Democratic decentralisation in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in
India and women’s positions in these areas. 66
2.1. The Indian republic and society and federal policies regarding rural development
approaches and governance structures. 67
2.2. Women in the institutional, political, economic and socio-cultural context in rural
Rajasthan. 78
2.3. Women in the institutional, political, economic and socio-cultural context in rural
Karnataka. 85
4
3. The impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment in the rural
areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India. 97
3.1. The impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s ‘power within’. 98 3.2. The impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s ‘power over’. 106 3.2.1. Democratic decentralisation’s impact on women’s representation. 107 3.2.2. Evidence of democratic decentralisation’s impact on women’s ‘power over’. 109 3.3. The impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s ‘power to’. 131 3.4. The impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s ‘power with’. 135
3.5. Conclusion. 144
Summary and conclusion. 149
5
Abbreviations/glossary.
Adivasis India’s aborigines or tribals
BDO Block Development Official
CDP Community Development Programme
CSS Centrally-Sponsored Scheme
Dalits The suppressed ones
DC District Collector
EMR Elected Male Representative
EWR Elected Women Representative
GNP Gross National Product
GOI Government Of India
GP Gram Panchayat (cluster of villages in Rajasthan)
GS Gram Sabha (villagers’ assembly)
Harijans Children of God
Jagruk manches Platforms of awareness (in rural Rajasthan) Jagruthi vedikes Platforms of awareness (in rural Karnataka)
Jati Local caste
Mahila samooh Women’s group (in rural Rajasthan)
Mahila sangha Women’s group (in rural Karnataka)
MP Mandal Panchayat (cluster of villages in Karnataka)
MS Mahila Samakhya (women to be equally valued)
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
Nyaya panchayat Local disputes settling bodies
OBCs Other Backward Classes
Panch Members of the Gram/Mandal Panchayat
Prakriti Uncontrolled nature
PRIs Panchayati Raj Institutions (village council rule institutions)
PS Panchayat Samiti (block level in Rajasthan)
Purdah The custom of female seclusion
Sahyoginis Group of helping women
Sarpanch President of the Gram/Mandal Panchayat
Sathin Friend
6
SCs Scheduled Castes
Shakti The energising principle of the universe
SHG Self-Help Group
STs Scheduled Tribes
THP The Hunger Project
TP Taluk Panchayat (block level in Karnataka)
Varna Caste category
VLW Village Level Worker
7
Acknowledgements.
This thesis is inspired by my internship at the Governance unit of the United Nations Women South Asia Regional Office (UN Women SARO) in New Delhi, India, from the beginning of September until the end of December in 2011. My research for this thesis both during and after my internship and the final text could not have been completed without the support of several individuals in India and in the Netherlands. I hereby want to thank them.
To begin with, I want to thank Suraj, Madhu, Gitanjali, Renu, Rachna, Bharti, John and Diya at UN Women SARO for all the stimulating discussions about and interesting insights into women’s empowerment, the position of women and democratic decentralisation in India. I am also grateful to them for offering me a lot of valuable opportunities for learning and studying. For example, thanks to them, I could participate in conferences from various United Nations (UN) organisations in Delhi as well as in Vizaq and travel to a Gram Sabha in Rajasthan. I could also visit the office of The Hunger Project in Delhi and study at the UN Information Centre, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the Institute of Social Studies and the Indian Social Institute in Delhi and at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie. I am also thankful to N. Jayal, professor at the Centre for the study of law and governance at JNU, for offering valuable feedback on my research proposal and for providing useful academic sources for my research. Furthermore, my thanks are due to M. Indira, professor at the faculty of economics at the University of Mysore, for sharing her research on the Mahila Samakhya program in Karnataka with me. In addition, I am grateful to Kushi and Nirbhay for translating Hindi, Kannada and Rajasthani for me.
My fellow students at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands - especially Fenna, Daniela, Abel, Germa, Bernard, Marijn, Ruben and Sanne - also deserve my grateful thanks for their constructive comments on my work. On a more personal note, I want to thank them - as well as my parents Jan and Tineke, my brother Remco and my other friends - for supporting me in my academic quest that is intertwined with my aim to help to achieve social change in favour of the choice-, voice- and powerless. They have always nurtured and energised me and give me food for thought and life. Finally, I owe thanks to my supervisor dr. ir. M.R. Kamminga at the University of Groningen for supporting, challenging and stimulating me in my work. A big thanks to all of you; shukriya!
Anouk Baron.
8
Introduction.
Over the last two decades, experimenting with ‘decentralisation’ has become an increasingly important fashion in many countries around the world. The plunging of confidence in centralised modes of governance and development in the 1980s led especially many third world or developing countries towards experimenting with alternatives to the centralised state and they started implementing various forms of decentralisation. Given the feminisation of poverty and the underrepresentation as well as low participation of women in governance systems around the world, attention is also increasingly paid to enhancing the position of women, increasing their representation and participation in governance systems and ‘empowering’ them. This resulted in widespread affirmative action for women and the introduction of quotas for women in democratic systems. In India, for instance, two constitution amendment acts came into force in 1993, which institutionalised self-government in a system of decentralisation and stipulated that in every municipality and at the three lowest levels of governance in most rural areas “not less than 1/3 of the total number of seats to be filled by direct election (…) shall be reserved for women”.1
When one reads about these two trends of focussing on decentralisation and on women’s empowerment, it is striking that supporters of decentralisation connect the two concepts in such a way as to suggest that decentralisation somehow leads to women’s empowerment. Consequently, contemporary debates on decentralisation are burdened with assumptions about the positive impact of transferring powers from central government agencies to lower-levels organs of government or to semi- or non-governmental bodies on the
1 See for a global database of quotas for women: http://www.quotaproject.org/. Accessed on the 10th of February
2013.
J. Manor, ‘Local governance’ in: N. Jayal and P. Mehta, ed., The Oxford companion to politics in India (New Delhi, 2010) 62-63. ; A. Greig, D. Hulme and M. Turner, Challenging global inequality. Development theory
and practice in the 21st century (Hampshire, 2007) 229-233. ; United Nations Women, Women, poverty & economics. http://www.unifem.org/gender_issues/women_poverty_economics/. Accessed on the 20th of August 2012. ; S. Baden, ‘Gender, governance and the feminization of poverty’ in: United Nations Development
Programme, ed., Women’s political participation and good governance: 21st century challenges (2000) 28. ; V.
Peterson and A. Runyan, Global gender issues (Boulder, 2nd edition, 1999) 142. ; D. Dahlerup, ‘Gender balance
in politics: goals and strategies in a global perspective’ in: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, ed., The Arab quota report: selected case studies (2007) 19-26. ; D. Dahlerup, ‘Gender quotas - controversial but trendy. On expanding the research agenda’, International feminist journal of politics, volume 10, number 3 (2008) 322-328. ; F. Bari, Women’s political participation: issues and challenges, paper prepared for the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women expert group meeting on enhancing participation of women in development through an enabling environment for achieving gender equality and the advancement of women (Bangkok, 2005) 6-7. ; B. Mohanty, ‘Panchayat Raj Institutions and women’ in: B. Ray and A. Basu, ed., From independence towards freedom. Indian women since 1947 (New Delhi, 1999) 19. ; The
constitution (seventy-third amendment) act (1992) clause 243D3. http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/amend/amend
73.htm. Accessed on the 11th of January 2012. ; The constitution (seventy-fourth amendment) act (1992) clause
9 empowerment of women. Such supporters are, next to governments, international organisations, like the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank (WB), and other development organisations and donors. Most of their policy analysts, advisers, developers and implementers, as well as academic researchers, view especially ‘democratic decentralisation’ as a development approach that has a positive impact on women’s empowerment. They therefore vigorously promote or even prescribe it. They view democratic decentralisation in India, for example, not solely as a top-down administrative undertaking, but also as an instrumental and normative political project of greater inclusion, representation, participation and empowerment of historically disadvantaged and marginalised groups like women.2
As a result, implementing decentralisation, and especially ‘democratic decentralisation’, to achieve, amongst others, women’s empowerment is now hot business in
2 G. Kumar, Local democracy in India. Interpreting decentralization (New Delhi, 2006) 13. ; G. Cheema and D.
Rondinelli, ‘From government decentralization to decentralized governance’ in: G. Cheema and D. Rondinelli, ed., Decentralizing governance: emerging concepts and practices (Washington, 2007) 3-4, 10. ; N. Jayal, ‘Introduction’ in: N. Jayal, ed., Local governance in India. Decentralization and beyond (New Delhi, 2006) 5-6. ; S. Batliwala, ‘Taking the power out of empowerment - an experiential account’, Development in practice, volume 17, numbers 4-5 (2007) 562. ; M. MacLean, Developing a research agenda on the gender dimensions of
decentralization: background paper for the International Development Research Centre 2003 gender unit research competition (2003) 5-9. ; H. Blair, ‘Participation and accountability at the periphery: democratic local
governance in six countries’, World Development, volume 28, number 1 (2000) 21-22. ; A. Williamson, P. Sithole and A. Todes, Decentralising voice: women’s participation in integrated development planning
processes in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, paper presented at the conference on the place of participation in a
democratising South Africa (2006) 2. ; D. Olowu, Decentralization policies and practices under structural
adjustment and democratization in Africa, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development,
programme papers on democracy, governance and human rights, number 4 (2001) 6, 10. http://unrisd.org/unrisd /website/document.nsf/ab82a6805797760f80256b4f005da1ab/543ffcd9808693fd80256b5e003b4e1e/$FILE/olo
wu.pdf. Accessed on the 17th of August 2012. ; United Nations Development Programme, Decentralised
governance for development: a combined practice note on decentralisation, local governance and urban/rural development (2004) 2, 21-23.
http://www.undp.org/content/dam/aplaws/publication/en/publications/democratic-governance/dg-publications-for-website/decentralised-governance-for-development-a-combined-practice-note-o n-decentralisation-local-governance-and-urban-rural-development/DLGUD_PN_English.pdf. Accessed on the
17th of August 2012. ; United Nations Development Programme, Annual report 2011/2012. The sustainable
future we want (2011) 5. http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/corporate/UNDP-in-action/2012/Englis
h/UNDP-AnnualReport_ENGLISH.pdf. Accessed on the 17th of August 2012. ; The World Bank,
Decentralization & sub-national regional economics, bank operations. http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector
/decentralization/operations.htm. Accessed on the 17th of August 2012. ; The World Bank, Projects,
Decentralisation. http://www.worldbank.org/projects/search?lang=en&searchTerm=&theme_exact=Decentraliza
tion. Accessed on the 17th of August 2012. ; C. Santiso, ‘Good governance and aid effectiveness: the World
Bank and conditionality’, The Georgetown public policy review, volume 7, number 1 (2001) 11-13, 18. ; T. Scott, Decentralization and national human development reports, National Human Development Report
occasional paper 6 (2006) 5-6, 20. http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/Decentralization_GN.pdf. Accessed on the 17th
of August 2012. ; European Commission, Development and cooperation: Europeaid, Democratic governance.
http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/what/governance/index_en.htm. Accessed on the 17th of August 2012. ; European
Commission, Supporting decentralisation and local governance in third countries (2007) x, 9-10. http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/what/governance/documents/decentralisation_local_governance_refdoc_final_en.p
df. Accessed on the 17th of August 2012. ; United States Agency for International Development, Democracy,
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/governance/gov_strategy.html. Accessed on the 17th of August 2012. ; Centre for democracy and governance,
USaid’s experience in decentralization and democratic local governance (2000). http://transition.usaid.gov/
10 the development scene. This thesis investigates this trend, thereby focussing on the rural parts of two states in India, and scrutinises how democratic decentralisation impacts on the empowerment of women in theory and in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India. This scrutiny serves theoretical as well as societal purposes. As said above, supporters of decentralisation postulate that decentralisation leads to women’s empowerment. However, most of them do not explain how exactly the one leads to the other. Moreover, in many studies and reports, neither the concept of ‘decentralisation’ nor the concept of ‘women’s empowerment’ is analysed. Consequently, in the existing literature, these concepts as well as how they impact on each other remains vague and the theoretical link between decentralisation and women’s empowerment remains obscure. This is mainly the result of a lack of theoretical and conceptual arguments to support the idea that decentralisation has a positive impact on women’s empowerment. This theoretical and conceptual gap is problematic, since both concepts and the idea that decentralisation somehow leads to women’s empowerment importantly inform development thinking and practice. Indeed, the idea of ‘decentralisation’ is put into practice widely, so that an increasing number of decentralisation processes are going on worldwide. Moreover, the concept of ‘women’s empowerment’, which originates from feminist theorising, has become a mainstreamed buzzword in and aim of a lot of development programs and policies, including those that focus on decentralisation.3
As decentralisation and women’s empowerment are important concepts that inform development thinking and practice, it is thus necessary both from a societal as well as intellectual standpoint to fill this theoretical and conceptual gap by discussing the two concepts and by theoretically exploring the links between decentralisation and women’s empowerment.4 This thesis therefore problematises and critically investigates the widespread assumption that democratic decentralisation impacts positively on women’s empowerment. It scrutinises what theoretical beliefs support this postulation and whether there are any theoretical critiques of these beliefs. Subsequently, it confronts these theoretical insights with real-life (counter-)evidence of women’s empowerment in democratic decentralisation processes in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India. It thus also scrutinises the
3 Batliwala, ‘Taking the power out of empowerment - an experiential account’, 557-564.
4 In similar vein, E. Hust has observed, and aims to fill, a theoretical and conceptual gap in arguments about the
link between women’s political presence (representation) and women’s empowerment.
11 impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment in rural Rajasthan and Karnataka. India is given its size and its bold policy one of the most interesting examples of the decentralisation experiment. Because the Indian case is so interesting, decentralisation processes in India have indeed been studied widely. However, research so far has focused especially on the implementation of decentralisation policies and their results in the different states. There has been no attempt to explicitly critically investigate decentralisation’s impact on women’s empowerment in rural Rajasthan and Karnataka. In order to fill this gap as well as the theoretical and conceptual gap discussed above, this master thesis analyses how democratic decentralisation impacts on the empowerment of women in theory and in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India. It is therefore a qualitative and comparative research on democratic decentralisation as a development approach for the empowerment of women in both theory and in the cases of rural Rajasthan and Karnataka.
To answer the main research question that guides this thesis, a literature research has been undertaken, so that this thesis is built on primary sources (notably documents from governments and international organisations), historical and theoretical secondary sources and qualitative and quantitative case studies that focus on women’s empowerment and democratic decentralisation as well as on local governance. The main goal of this thesis is to add to the academic debate on the links between democratic decentralisation and women’s empowerment by assessing the assumption, which prevails in the development scene, that decentralisation is a development approach that has a positive impact on women’s empowerment from a theoretical as well as practical standpoint. The deepening and extension of this debate furthers the feminist goal of achieving equality between men and women by producing emancipatory knowledge, meaning knowledge that helps to inform ways to improve women’s lives. This thesis is therefore useful for both theorists and policy makers or implementers concerned with decentralisation, development and women’s empowerment and ultimately leads to better and more gender responsive theorising and policies.5
The first chapter of this research investigates the sub-question how democratic decentralisation impacts on women’s empowerment in theory. The chapter aims to understand how different people construct, define and operationalise the concepts of decentralisation and women’s empowerment and how they link the two concepts. It adopts working definitions of the concept of ‘(democratic) decentralisation’ and of the feminist concept of ‘women’s
5 J. Tickner, ‘Feminism meets international relations: some methodological issues’ in: B. Ackerly, M. Stern and
J. True, ed., Feminist methodologies for international relations (Cambridge, 2006) 21, 28. ; J. Tickner, ‘Gender in world politics’ in: J. Baylis, S. Smith and P. Owens, ed., The globalization of world politics. An introduction
12 empowerment’, assesses decentralisation’s assumed merits and drawbacks and fills the theoretical and conceptual gap in the existing literature on the impact of especially democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment. It also provides a theoretical framework of democratic decentralisation’s impact on women’s empowerment and an operationalisation of the feminist concept of ‘women’s empowerment’ in order to be able to assess the impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment in the rural areas of Karnataka and Rajasthan in the subsequent chapters of this thesis.
After the theoretical analysis of the impact of democratic decentralisation on the empowerment of women in chapter 1, the assumption that democratic decentralisation impacts positively on women’s empowerment is examined by investigating the cases of rural Rajasthan and Karnataka. The theoretical insights from chapter 1 are thus confronted with evidence as well as counter-evidence of women’s empowerment in democratic decentralisation processes in Rajasthan and Karnataka. The process of democratic decentralisation in India was launched in Rajasthan in 1959 by the first prime minister of India. Consequently, Rajasthan has the longest history of post-independence experiments with decentralisation in India. Nevertheless, as one can see in table 1.1, its Human Development Index (HDI) score, its Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) score, its Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) score, its Gender-related Development Index (GDI) score and its Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) score are still worse than the country’s average scores.6 Consequently, Rajasthan is widely believed to be an especially inequality-
6 The Human Development Index (HDI) “is a summary measure of human development”. It measures the
average achievements in a country by combining indicators of “three basic dimensions [capabilities, ed.] of human development: a long and healthy life (health), access to knowledge (education) and a decent standard of living (income)”. The Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) adjusts the HDI “for inequality in distribution of each dimension across the population. (…) The IHDI equals the HDI when there is no inequality across people but is less than the HDI as inequality rises. In this sense, the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for this inequality), while the HDI can be viewed as an index of ‘potential’ human development (…) that could be achieved if there was no inequality”. The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) “reflects both the incidence of multidimensional deprivation, and its intensity”. It “identifies overlapping deprivations at the household level across the same three dimensions as the HDI” and “shows the number of people who are multidimensionally poor (suffering deprivations in 33% of weighted indicators) and the number of deprivations with which poor households typically contend”. The Gender-related Development Index (GDI) discounts the HDI for inequality between women and men. It thus “measures achievement in the same basic capabilities as the HDI does, but takes note of inequality in achievement between women and men”. The greater the disparity between women and men “in basic capabilities, the lower a country’s GDI compared with its HDI”. “While the GDI focuses on the expansion of capabilities”, the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) “is concerned with the use of those capabilities to take advantage of the opportunities of life”. It uses four indicators to measure females’ political and economic participation and decision-making power and power over economic resources.
United Nations Development Programme, Human development reports, Human Development Index (HDI). http:/
/hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/hdi/. Accessed on the 26th of February 2013. ; United Nations Development
Programme, Human development reports, Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). http://hdr.und
13 Table 1.1. The HDI, IHDI, MPI, GDI and GEM scores of India, Rajasthan and Karnataka.7
ridden, underdeveloped and patriarchal Indian state. Contrary to Rajasthan, the HDI, IHDI, MPI, GDI and GEM scores of Karnataka are all better than the country’s average scores. Moreover, Karnataka was the first state in India that introduced reservations for women: in 1987, it introduced a 25% reservation of seats for women at the district level and in village clusters at the local level. Karnataka, with its relatively good HDI, IHDI, MPI, GDI and GEM scores, thus seems to live up to the belief that democratic decentralisation - at least when connected to reservation policies - impacts positively on the empowerment of women.8
In short, Rajasthan and Karnataka are respectively so-called least likely and most likely case studies: Rajasthan is a case in which the belief that decentralisation impacts
Human development reports, Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/mpi/.
Accessed on the 26th of February 2013. ; United Nations Development Programme, Human development reports,
Measuring inequality: Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). ht
tp://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/gdi_gem/. Accessed on the 26th of February 2013. ; United Nations
Development Programme, Technical note 1. Calculating the human development indices. http://hdr.undp.org/en/
media/HDR_20072008_Tech_Note_1.pdf. Accessed on the 26th of February 2013.
7 IHDI: M. Suryanarayana, A. Agrawal and K. Prabhu, Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index for
India’s states, United Nations Development Programme (New Delhi, 2011) 18. http://www.undp.org/content/da
m/india/docs/inequality_adjusted_human_development_index_for_indias_state1.pdf. Accessed on the 16th of
August 2012. ; HDI: M. Suryanarayana, A. Agrawal and K. Prabhu, Inequality-adjusted Human Development
Index for India’s States, United Nations Development Programme (New Delhi, 2011) 18. http://www.undp.org/
content/dam/india/docs/inequality_adjusted_human_develop ment_index_for_indias_state1.pdf. Accessed on the
16th of August 2012. ; MPI: Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, Country briefing: India.
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) at a glance (Oxford, 2011) 2, 5. http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uplo
ads/India.pdf?cda6c1. Accessed on the 16th of August 2012. ; GDI: Government of India, Ministry of women
and child development, Gendering human development indices: recasting the Gender Development Index and
the Gender Empowerment Measure for India. Summary report (New Delhi, 2009) 12. http://wcd.nic.in/publicati
on/gdigemSummary%20Report/GDIGEMSummary.pdf. Accessed on the 16th of August 2012. ; GEM:
Government of India, Ministry of women and child development, Gendering human development indices:
recasting the Gender Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure for India. Summary report
(New Delhi, 2009) 15. http://wcd.nic.in/publication/gdigemSummary%20Report/GDIGEMSummary.pdf.
Accessed on the 16th of August 2012.
8 Nagaur, About the district. http://nagaur.nic.in/. Accessed on the 16th of August 2012. ; U. Singh,
Decentralized democratic governance in new millennium (New Delhi, 2009) 278. ; Buch, From oppression to assertion, 25, 30-32. ; A. Srivastava, A long journey ahead. Women in panchayati raj. A study in Rajasthan
(New Delhi, 2006) 13-16. ; K. Raabe, M. Sekher and R. Birner, The effects of political reservations for women
on local governance and rural service provision. Survey evidence from Karnataka, International Food Policy
Research Institution discussion paper 00878 (New Delhi, 2009) 8. http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publica
tions/ifpridp00878.pdf. Accessed on the 16th of August 2012. ; K. Ananthpur, ‘Dynamics of local governance in
Karnataka’, Economic and political weekly, volume 42, number 8 (2007) 667.
India Rajasthan Karnataka
Human Development Index score (2011) 0,468 0,468 0,508
Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index score (2011)
0,343 0,308 0,353
Multidimensional Poverty Index score (2011) 0,283 0,338 0,206
Gender Development Index score (2006) 0,590 0,526 0,611
14 positively on women’s empowerment is “least likely to hold true”, whereas Karnataka is a case that is almost certain to fit that belief if the belief “is true for any cases at all”.9
An investigation of precisely these two case studies is therefore especially interesting, because it allows for the development of comparative conclusions regarding the impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment in different contexts. To be sure, the aim is thus not to uncover or construct law-like generalisations or conclusions about the extent to which the belief that decentralisation positively impacts the empowerment of women is warranted, but to problematise and critically inquire this assumption in different contexts.10
The research of the case studies focuses specifically on the decentralisation processes in the rural areas of Karnataka and Rajasthan. This is because, despite urbanisation, the majority of Indian women still lives in rural areas. In those areas, traditional patriarchal norms are more present than they are in urban areas. This means that the marginalisation of women and the feminisation of poverty is biggest at the country side. It is therefore particularly interesting to research rural areas in the context of this thesis, as it means that one is researching how decentralisation impacts on women’s empowerment in the most un-conducive, but also most populated, environments in the states under scrutiny.11
Still, before focussing on women’s empowerment in rural Rajasthan and Karnataka, chapter 2 of this thesis provides the background information that is required to enable the confrontation of the theoretical insights from chapter 1 with (counter-)evidence of women’s empowerment in democratic decentralisation processes in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India in chapter 3. The sub-question that guides this second chapter is what decentralisation processes are going on in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India and what is the position of women in the institutional, political, economic and
9
A. Bennett, ‘Case study methods: design, use, and comparative advantages’ in: D. Sprinz and Y. Wolinsky-Nahmias, ed., Models, numbers & cases. Methods for studying international relations (Michigan, 2004) 29.
10 Idem, 22, 29. ; J. Moses and T. Knutsen, Ways of knowing. Competing methodologies in social and political
research (Hampshire, 2007) 132-134, 223, 229, 236-237.
11
Government of India, Ministry of home affairs, Rural - urban distribution of population (New Delhi, 2011). ht
tp://censusindia.gov.in/2011-prov-results/paper2/data_files/india/Rural_Urban_2011.pdf. Accessed on the 16th of
August 2012. ; P. Rustagi, ‘Women and poverty: rural-urban dimensions’, Social change, volume 37, number 4 (2007) 1-8. ; United Nations Development Programme, About India, challenges. http://www.in.undp.org/content
/india/en/home/countryinfo/challenges.html. Accessed on the 16th of August 2012. ; Women watch, Facts &
figures: rural women and the Millennium Development Goals. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/ruralwo
men/facts-figures.html. Accessed on the 16th of August 2012. ; S. Fan, C. Chan-Kang and A. Mukherjee, Rural
and urban dynamics and poverty: evidence from China and India (Washington, 2005) 15-16. http://www.ifpri.o
rg/sites/default/files/pubs/divs/fcnd/dp/papers/fcndp196.pdf. Accessed on the 16th of August 2012. ; L. Andrist,
Social capital’s dark side and patriarchy in India, India human development survey working paper number 7
(2008) 29-31. http://www.ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_papers/SCdarkside.pdf. Accessed on the 20th of August 2012. ;
15 cultural contexts in these areas? The second chapter thus analyses decentralisation policies in India and especially Rajasthan and Karnataka. It also researches the institutional, political, economic and socio-cultural contexts in these states and especially the position of women in these contexts. The chapter provides an insight into the decentralisation processes going on in these two Indian states and the position of women in these processes and contexts to enable an analysis of democratic decentralisation’s impact on women’s empowerment in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India in the third chapter.
This third and final chapter explores the last sub-question of this thesis, namely how does democratic decentralisation impact on women’s empowerment in the rural areas of Rajasthan and Karnataka in India? It analyses and compares on the basis of real-life evidence how democratic decentralisation processes in these two states impact on women’s empowerment. This last chapter builds on the background set in chapter 2 and is guided by the theoretical framework of democratic decentralisation’s impact on women’s empowerment and the operationalisation of the latter concept developed in chapter 1.
16
1. The impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment in theory.
The two central concepts in this thesis, namely decentralisation and women’s empowerment, are hotly debated. Different people and organisations that focus on decentralisation and women’s empowerment construct, define and operationalise these concepts in profoundly different ways. Given the centrality of these concepts in this thesis, it is important to understand what decentralisation and women’s empowerment mean according to different people and how they are understood in this thesis. Moreover, as explained in the introduction, different authors have suggested that democratic decentralisation somehow leads to or at least is linked to the feminist concept of women’s empowerment. However, these links remain obscure in their work. This first chapter delves into debates about the concepts of decentralisation and women’s empowerment, their evolvement, meanings, operationalisations and their theoretical connection. It also aims to establish working definitions of these concepts. The central sub-question that guides this chapter is how does democratic decentralisation impact on women’s empowerment in theory?
The first section of this chapter focuses on the (development of the) concept of decentralisation in the development community, consisting of international inter- and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and donor countries. It discusses from a birds-eye view popular development approaches in especially the 1990s and 2000s, when decentralisation became a common development approach. The aim is to provide an insight into the evolution of the current worldwide interest in decentralisation, thereby paying special attention to the ideas of ‘governance’ and ‘participation’. Section 1.1 also provides a working definition of ‘decentralisation’ as well as of some concepts that are connected to it, like democratic decentralisation or devolution. The second section discusses the theoretical arguments that are frequently given in the literature about the assumed merits and drawbacks of democratic decentralisation. The goal is to understand the popularity of democratic decentralisation and to enable a discussion of its assumed merits and drawbacks, its impact on women’s empowerment and the link between democratic decentralisation and women’s empowerment from a feminist viewpoint later on in this chapter.
17 on the idea that democratic decentralisation positively impacts on women’s empowerment and discusses the theoretical connection between democratic decentralisation as a development approach and women’s empowerment from a feminist perspective. It starts off with a gender analysis of the democratic state. After that, it analyses the theoretical connection between representation, participation and women’s empowerment from a feminist viewpoint, thereby referring to the assumed merits and drawbacks of democratic decentralisation discussed in section 1.2. Lastly, an operationalisation of the concept of ‘women’s empowerment’ is developed, in order to be able to assess the impact of democratic decentralisation on women’s empowerment in the rural areas of Karnataka and Rajasthan in the subsequent chapters of this thesis. Finally, in the conclusion of this chapter, an answer is formulated to the sub-question that guides this chapter.
1.1. The evolution of decentralisation as a development approach and its meaning.
In the 1980s, attention in the development community was increasingly deflected away from debates on modernisation and dependency/world systems theory and development approaches based on these theories. Instead, attention was focused on the ‘good government agenda’ that was supported initially in the bilateral aid policies of particular Western countries and later on by the international aid community at large, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and United Nations agencies. This agenda, which came to be known as the ‘Washington Consensus’, dictated that development assistance be tied to structural political and economic adjustments. In short, in order to be eligible for aid, countries had to adopt Western style multi-party democracies, to open and liberalise their economies, to pursue macroeconomic stability by controlling inflation and decreasing fiscal deficits and hence cutting down state expenditure by reducing public services. The underlying idea was that central state-led development undermines national economic performance, because of inefficiency and, often, corruption. The development approaches that followed from this neoliberal agenda thus focused on democratisation, decreasing the size and the role of the state and making way for free market forces as well as for the non-state sector, including civil society.12
12
18 Later on, during the 1990s, the good government agenda changed as the broader term ‘governance’ entered the development community. The term ‘governance’ has been defined by different organisations in different ways, but in its broadest sense it is the “exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs. It is the complex mechanisms, processes, relationships and institutions [including the state, civil society and the private sector, ed.] through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights and obligations and mediate their differences”.13 The adjective ‘good’ refers to different specific desiderata in different contexts, depending on the wishes of different international development organisations and donors. Still, one can state that in general it refers at least to improved, efficient public sector management, including increased accountability and transparency. Given these foci, good governance reform agendas often also include requirements to democratise a country. In addition, in all definitions of good governance, the state is seen as a very important actor in governance that consequently has to play a big role in the process towards achieving good governance. Indeed, in the 1990s, reforming this state to improve public administration to achieve good governance became a central concern of development approaches and, in many cases, a condition for development aid. The state was thus brought back into development approaches in the 1990s, but it had to be, in most cases, fundamentally reformed. In practice, this reform often took the form of decentralisation. It was therefore at this point and in this context of a focus on what came to be called ‘new public management’ that the concept of decentralisation entered the development scene. In this scene, the concept was viewed, both by a lot of donors as well as by leaders of developing countries, as a means or strategy to implement the good governance agenda and to achieve efficient, accountable and transparent government.14
C. Johnson, Decentralisation in India: poverty, politics and panchayati raj, Overseas Development Institute, working paper 199 (London, 2003) 10, 1. ; Greig, Hulme and Turner, Challenging global inequality, 64-65, 73-75, 87-92, 226. ; B. Axford, ‘Political participation’ in: B. Axford, G. Browning, R. Huggins and B. Rosamond,
ed., Politics. An introduction (Oxon, 2nd edition, 2002) 123. ; W. Rostow, The stages of economic growth
(Cambridge, 1960) 4-11. ; A. Frank, Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. Historical studies of
Chile and Brazil (New York, 1967) 3-14. ; I. Wallerstein, The modern world-system. Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century (New York, 1974) 349-350. ; A. Linklater,
‘Marx and Marxism’ in: S. Burchill ea, ed., Theories of international relations (Hampshire, 4th
edition, 2009) 123-124. ; N. Jayal, ‘The governance agenda. Making democratic development dispensable’, Economic and
political weekly, volume 32, number 8 (1997) 407, 412. ; M. Mukhopadhyay, Decentralisation and gender equity in South Asia: an issues paper, prepared for the women’s rights and citizenship programme of the
International Development Research Centre (Ottowa, 2005) 7. ; Gore, ‘The rise and fall of the Washington consensus’, 789-792.
13 United Nations Development Programme, Reconceptualising governance, discussion paper 2 (New York,
1997) 9.
14
19 We will explore definitions of decentralisation and its instrumental and more fundamental values later on in this chapter. This is because at this point, it is important to first note that there were two other connected changes going on in the development scene in the 1990s. Firstly, there was a move away from the Washington Consensus that prescribed the design and implementation of donor conditionality-driven and outside-expert-led top-down development approaches aiming at economic growth measured in terms of increasing Gross National Product (GNP). Secondly, there was a shift away from the perception that development is about making sure that people’s basic needs are satisfied, so that development approaches need to concentrate on the bundle of basic goods and services, including food, water, shelter, clothing and health care, that deprived populations need.15
Instead, development theorists and practitioners started to focus on the idea of multi-dimensional sustainable human development and on people-centred participatory development approaches that are based on a more equal partnership between developing countries and donors. The idea of human development implies that development naturally is a people-centred, dynamic “process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy”.16 According to this viewpoint, the purpose of development is to improve human lives by expanding the range of things that a person actually is able to do and to be; that is, by expanding a person’s capabilities. Development approaches that are based on this thinking therefore focus on improving the nature of people’s lives by expanding their choices. Moreover, such approaches aim to ‘empower’ marginalised people in society, who are
for Public Administration and Development Management, ed., Participatory governance and the Millennium
Development Goals (New York, 2003) 167-170. ; J. Graham, B. Amos and T. Plumptre, Principles for good governance in the 21st century, Institute On Governance, policy brief number 15 (Ottawa, 2003) 7. ; R. Crook
and J. Manor, Democracy and decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa (Cambridge, 1998) 1-2. ; Greig, Hulme and Turner, Challenging global inequality, 229, 237. ; Mukhopadyay, Decentralisation and gender
equity in South Asia, 7-8. ; N. Jayal, ‘Locating gender in the governance discourse’ in: M. Nussbaum, A. Basu,
Y. Tambiah and N. Jayal, ed., Essays on gender and governance (New Delhi, 2003) 96. ; The World Bank,
Overview of rural decentralization in India, volume III, background papers (Washington, 2000) 16. ; Blair,
‘Participation and accountability at the periphery: democratic local governance in six countries’, 21-22. ; Cheema and Rondinelli, ‘From government decentralization to decentralized governance’, 1-4. ; S. Joseph, ‘Neoliberal reform and democracy in India’, Economic and political weekly, volume 42, number 31 (2007) 3213-3216. ; E. Bryld, ‘Increasing participation in democratic institutions through decentralization: empowering women and scheduled castes and tribes through panchayat raj in rural India’, Democratization, volume 8, number 3 (2001) 149-151. ; Jayal, ‘Introduction’ in: N. Jayal, ed., Local governance in India, 3-4, 7. ; J. Beall, ‘Decentralisation, women’s rights and development: lessons from India and South Africa’ in: C. Sengupta and S. Corbridge, ed., Democracy, development and decentralisation in India. Continuing debates (New Delhi, 2010) 176-177. ; M. Islam, ‘Decentralised governance. Looking back and forth’ in: T. Joseph, ed., Local governance in
India. Ideas, challenges and strategies (New Delhi, 2007) 34-38.
15 United Nations Development Programme, Human development report 1990. Concept and measurement of
human development (New York, 1990) 9-10. ; The United Nations intellectual history project, Briefing note number 8: the UN and human development (2009) 1-3. ; Gore, ‘The rise and fall of the Washington consensus’,
795, 799-800. ; G. Rist, The history of development. From Western origins to global faith (London, 1997) 162-165. ; Cheema and Rondinelli, ‘From government decentralization to decentralized governance’, 3.
20 perceived as the active subjects (instead of passive objects) of development interventions. Such approaches also aim to give these subjects a feeling of ownership and to enhance their ‘agency’, which is “the ability to pursue and realize goals that one values and has reason to value”.17
Such approaches are founded on the participation of the subjects in their own development as freedom and capability expansion process. The concept of participation has been famously defined by the World Bank as the “process through which stakeholders influence and share control over development initiatives and the decisions and resources which effect them”.18
Moreover, participation is perceived as a human right, which is laid down in article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and in article 1, 2 and 8 of the Declaration on the right to development. Nevertheless, different organisations and authors view this concept and its status, operationalisation and implementation in different ways.19
Notwithstanding these differences, bottom-up participatory approaches focussing on human development as opposed to top-down superimposed development approaches
17 Human Development and Capability Association, Briefing note: capability and functionings: definition &
justification (2005) 2.
18
The World Bank, The World Bank participation sourcebook (Washington, 1996) xi.
19 Ibidem. ; Sen, Development as freedom, 3, 10, 20, 86. ; Human Development and Capability Association,
Briefing note: capability and functionings: definition & justification, 2. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/ccpr.htm. Accessed on the 28th of October 2012. ;
Declaration on the right to development (1986). http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/41/a41r128.htm. Accessed
on the 28th of October 2012. ; Greig, Hulme and Turner, Challenging global inequality, 234, 236-238. ; S.
Osmani, ‘Participatory governance: an overview of issues and evidence’ in: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, ed.,
Participatory governance and the Millennium Development Goals (New York, 2003) 3-4. ; United Nations
Development Programme, Human development report 1990, 9-10. ; The United Nations intellectual history project, Briefing note number 8: the UN and human development (2009) 1-3. ; Gore, ‘The rise and fall of the Washington consensus’, 795, 799-800. ; S. Fukuda-Parr, ‘The human development paradigm: operationalizing Sen’s ideas on capabilities’, Feminist economics, volume 9, number 2-3 (2003) 301-303. ; J. Stiglitz, Towards a
new paradigm for development: strategies, policies and processes, United Nations conference on trade and
development, 9th Raúl Prebisch lecture (Geneva, 1998) 4, 17-18. ; P. Singhal, ‘Theories of participation: a
developmental standpoint’ in: M. Dube and M. Padalia, ed., Democratic decentralisation and panchayati raj in
India (New Delhi, 2000) 244-245. ; F. Cleaver, ‘Paradoxes of participation: questioning participatory approaches
to development’, Journal of international development, number 11 (1999) 597-598. ; J. Platteau, ‘Pitfalls of participatory development’ in: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Public Administration and Development Management, ed., Participatory governance and the Millennium Development
Goals (New York, 2003) 127-128. ; Islam, ‘Decentralised governance. Looking back and forth’, 41-42. ; H.
Henkel and R. Stirrat, ‘Participation as spiritual duty; empowerment as secular subjection’ in: B. Cooke and U. Kothari, Participation: the new tyranny? (New York, 2001) 170-171. ; R. Chambers, Whose reality counts?
Putting the first last (London, 1997) xvii-xviii. ; B. Cooke and U. Kothari, ‘The case for participation as tyranny’
in: B. Cooke and U. Kothari, Participation: the new tyranny? (New York, 2001) 5-13. ; S. Hickey and G. Mohan, ‘Towards participation as transformation: critical themes and challenges’ in: S. Hickey and G. Mohan, ed., Participation. From tyranny to transformation? (New York, 2004) 6-8, 11-13. ; B. Cooke, ‘Rules of thumb for participatory change agents’ in: S. Hickey and G. Mohan, ed., Participation. From tyranny to
21 focussing on rising GNPs became the trend at the end of the 1990s.20 This trend thus coincided and sometimes conflicted with the good governance agenda of the 1990s that tied aid to top-down state reform, which led to a decentralisation trend. Still, in order to allow for the implementation of such bottom-up development approaches, a change in the governmental structure of many societies was required: it had to be decentralised. In short, because of the focus of the development community on human development and participation as well as on good governance and decentralisation, questions regarding how people are governed in developing countries and how they participate in the governance of their own lives became the new principal concerns of development approaches in the beginning of the new millennium and they have remained so ever since.21
Having discussed from a birds-eye view the history of development thinking and practice regarding decentralisation, it is now time to explore the latter concept more in depth, given its centrality in this thesis. When one starts to read academic literature as well as policy documents focussing on decentralisation, one quickly realises that the writers interpret the concept in multiple ways. Moreover, they connect ‘decentralisation’ to other concepts, which are generally labelled as ‘democratic decentralisation’, ‘devolution’, ‘deconcentration’, ‘delegation’, ‘privatisation’ and ‘deregulation’. Different authors have given overviews of the wide range of definitions of decentralisation and of the concepts that are believed to be connected to it. In addition, they have argued that this cloud of concepts and definitions is the result of the “vast diversity of experiences relating to decentralisation”, so that these concepts have “to be contextually defined and understood”.22
Given the fast array of possible interpretations and implementations of the concepts, it is indeed recommendable to define decentralisation and its connected concepts contextually. However, in order to give the reader a broad idea of what decentralisation and the concepts connected to it imply, it is necessary to at this point provide preliminary working definitions of the concepts. These definitions will be contextualised in chapter 2, when we discuss decentralisation processes in India and especially in Karnataka and Rajasthan in India.23
20
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are an influential set of goals for poverty reduction that was agreed upon in 2000 by a large majority of heads of state and government and international organisations, reflect this trend to some extent. The MDGs emphasise human development rather than economic growth and provide quantitative targets for and indicators of human development. For a critical discussion of the MDGs see: Greig, Hulme and Turner, Challenging inequality, 129-137, 150-161. ; The United Nations intellectual history project, Briefing note number 7: the UN and development policies (2010) 5-6.
21 Bryld, ‘Increasing participation in democratic institutions through decentralization’, 150-151.
22 M. Oommen, ‘Rural fiscal decentralisation in India: a brief review of literature’ in: L. Jain, ed.,
Decentralisation and local governance. Essays for George Mathew (New Delhi, 2005) 222-223.
22 When looking at the existing overviews of the definitions of decentralisation and the concepts that are assumed to be connected to it, one can see that in general ‘decentralisation’ is interpreted as an overarching concept that comprises the other concepts. Furthermore, even though those overviews exhibit that different authors interpret the concepts in profoundly different ways, there seems to be a consensus that the difference in the meanings attached to the two concepts of democratic decentralisation and devolution is minor. Consequently, the two concepts are often used synonymously. The same applies to the concepts of privatisation and deregulation. One can also grasp from these overviews that important conceptual distinctions are made between different ‘forms’ and ‘typologies’ of decentralisation. Moreover, those forms are divided into intra-governmental and extra-governmental ones. The mental map that is shown in figure 1.1 summarises these different concepts, forms and typologies regarding decentralisation that are frequently used in the literature.24
Figure 1.1. Mental map that summarises the different concepts, forms and typologies regarding decentralisation that are frequently used in the literature.
Self-government Forms:
1. Intra-governmental transfers of power:
- Deconcentration Typologies of these transfers:
- Devolution/democratic decentralisation - Political decentralisation 2. Extra-governmental transfers of power: - Administrative decentralisation
- Delegation - Fiscal decentralisation
- Privatisation/deregulation
24 Johnson, Decentralisation in India, 4-5. ; Crook and Manor, Democracy and decentralisation in South Asia
and West Africa, 6-7. ; D. Rondinelli, ‘Government decentralization in comparative perspective: theory and
practice in developing countries’, International review of administrative sciences, volume 47, issue 2 (1980) 136-139. ; S. Widmalm, ‘What are decentralisation and panchayati raj reforms and who likes them?’ in: L. Jain, ed., Decentralisation and local governance. Essays for George Mathew (New Delhi, 2005) 34-38. ; K. Siddiqui, ‘Major governance issues for poverty reduction in South Asia’ in: L. Jain, ed., Decentralisation and local
governance. Essays for George Mathew (New Delhi, 2005) 439-441. ; Kumar, Local democracy in India. Interpreting decentralization, 13-14. ; Cheema and Rondinelli, ‘From government decentralization to
decentralized governance’, 3. ; Jayal, ‘Introduction’ in: N. Jayal, ed., Local governance in India, 7. ; M. John, ‘Gandhi and the contemporary discourse on decentralisation’ in: T. Joseph, ed., Local governance in India.
Ideas, challenges and strategies (New Delhi, 2007) 21. ; Beall, ‘Decentralisation, women’s rights and
development: lessons from India and South Africa’, 176-177.
23 When zooming in on and combining the different interpretations in the literature of the central term on this mental map, one arrives at the following broad working definition of decentralisation: it is a political process whereby powers, that is, legal or official authority to excercise control, “are transferred from central government agencies to lower-level organs of government” or to semi- or non-governmental bodies.25
Decentralisation is thus an umbrella term to indicate processes that reallocate power and impact the way power, resources and privileges are distributed in a country. As indicated above, such processes are of course very context dependent. Nevertheless, they often do have certain features in common, so that they can be broadly categorised into different forms and types that specify the umbrella concept of decentralisation.26
The category of ‘forms’ refers to the route of the transfer of power in decentralisation processes. First of all, there are intra-governmental transfers of power. These are transfers of power away from a central authority to lower levels organs of government. The first form of intra-governmental transfers of power is ‘deconcentration’. Deconcentration can be defined as a process in which powers “are transferred to lower units within central line ministries and agencies”.27
In this process, the central government is not giving up any of its powers. Instead, it is relocating its offices and officers to “different levels or points in the national territory” to “extend the scope or reach of the central government”.28
Deconcentration has therefore also been called “centralisation in disguise”.29
The central government does give up some of its powers when decentralisation takes the form of ‘devolution’ or ‘democratic decentralisation’. This form of intra-governmental decentralisation can be defined as a process in which powers are transferred to elected sub-national units of government “that are accessible and accountable to the local citizenry” and “enjoy (…) a certain degree of autonomy of higher levels of government”.30
In this process, the central state thus cedes power to democratic institutions and political actors at lower levels. These democratic institutions are “granted legal personality and legally defined areas of competence”.31
Therefore, democratic decentralisation or devolution processes always
25 Johnson, Decentralisation in India, 4.
26 Ibidem.
27 Ibidem.
28 Crook and Manor, Democracy and decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa, 6-7.
29
Siddiqui, ‘Major governance issues for poverty reduction in South Asia’, 440. ; Johnson, Decentralisation in
India, 4. ; Crook and Manor, Democracy and decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa, 6-7.
30 Blair, ‘Participation and accountability at the periphery’, 21. ; Jayal, ‘Introduction’ in: N. Jayal, ed., Local
governance in India, 7.
24 result in a form of legalised “power-sharing between central government and elected sub-national authorities”.32
In the case of democratic decentralisation or devolution, power is thus not moved around bureaucrats as is the case in deconcentration processes. Instead, power is “transferred to people who are elected to serve in offices and as representatives” and who are accountable to the local citizenry.33 Consequently, “there is scope for participation of the local community in decision making” in devolved or democratically decentralised systems of government.34
Democratic decentralisation and devolution processes therefore open up governance to participation of the citizens. What is more, radical democratic decentralisation and devolution processes that transfer a lot of power to the local communities can even lead to a situation of sovereign, autonomous polities in which citizens govern themselves; that is, they can lead to local self-government. Self-government exists when:
“a level of government has dominion over substantial, clearly defined functions, and can pass/enact laws with regard to these functions within its area of jurisdiction - state, district, village, etc. For self-government to exist there must be unambiguous political, fiscal, and administrative devolution of assigned subjects”.35
This possibility and idea of self-government as well as the concepts of democratic decentralisation and devolution have been very important ideas in the thinking about state reform in India and in Indian policies regarding governance structures. In fact, decentralisation processes in India can be described as democratic decentralisation or devolution processes. Therefore, after introducing the other forms of decentralisation below, democratic decentralisation or devolution will be extensively discussed in this thesis. For the sake of readability, only the term ‘democratic decentralisation’ will be used from now on to refer to this form of decentralisation, thereby thus leaving out the synonymous term ‘devolution’.36
32
Blair, ‘Participation and accountability at the periphery’, 21. ; Jayal, ‘Introduction’ in: N. Jayal, ed., Local
governance in India, 7. ; Crook and Manor, Democracy and decentralisation in South Asia and West Africa, 7. ;
Johnson, Decentralisation in India, 4.
33 Widmalm, ‘What are decentralisation and panchayati raj reforms and who likes them?’, 36.
34 Siddiqui, ‘Major governance issues for poverty reduction in South Asia’, 440.
35
The World Bank, Overview of rural decentralization in India, volume I (Washington, 2000) 3.
36 Idem, 3, 9-11. ; Widmalm, ‘What are decentralisation and panchayati raj reforms and who likes them?’, 36. ;
25 In contrast to democratic decentralisation processes, in which power is transferred intra-governmentally, transfers of power can also take the form of extra-governmental transfers. These are transfers of power away from a central authority to semi- or non-governmental bodies. The first form of extra-non-governmental transfers of power is ‘delegation’. Delegation can be defined as the process in which powers are “transferred to organisations that are outside the regular bureaucratic structure and are only indirectly controlled by the central government”.37
In such processes, power is thus transferred to semi-autonomous authorities. However, in ‘privatisation’ or ‘deregulation’ processes, power is transferred to non-governmental bodies. Such extra-governmental forms of decentralisation can therefore be defined as processes in which “all responsibility for government functions is transferred to” actors in the private sector that are completely “independent of the government”.38 This means they are processes in which responsibilities for activities are shifted from the public sector to both the profit as well as non-profit private sector, including non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations.39
The routes that the transfers of power take in decentralisation processes thus differ considerably. Moreover, different types of power are transferred in the different forms of decentralisation processes. One can classify the types of power that are being transferred in such processes broadly into three types: political, administrative and fiscal power. The categorisation of ‘types’ of decentralisation does not refer to the route of the power transfers, but instead zooms in on what is being decentralised and hence on what powers are being transferred. The first type of decentralisation is political decentralisation, which involves the transfer of “power to decide the allocation and distribution of public resources”.40
Political decentralisation can therefore be defined as the transfer of policy and legislative powers from higher levels in the government system to lower-level structures. Administrative decentralisation, however, transfers personnel and power to plan and to implement programs and policies from higher levels in the government system to lower-level structures. Lastly, fiscal decentralisation transfers substantial power to raise and spend public revenues from higher levels in the government system to lower-level structures. It thus transfers taxing and spending powers.41
37 Johnson, Decentralisation in India, 4.
38 Ibidem.
39
Ibidem. ; Siddiqui, ‘Major governance issues for poverty reduction in South Asia’, 439.
40 Johnson, Decentralisation in India, 4.
41 Ibidem. ; The World Bank, Overview of rural decentralization in India, volume I, 3, 17. ; Oommen, ‘Rural
