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Decentralization in Kerala: Panchayat government discretion and accountability
Author(s) -
Venugopal Varsha,
Yilmaz Serdar
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
public administration and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.574
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1099-162X
pISSN - 0271-2075
DOI - 10.1002/pad.541
Subject(s) - accountability , decentralization , discretion , local government , government (linguistics) , public administration , politics , economics , business , central government , public sector , public economics , political science , market economy , economy , law , linguistics , philosophy
Kerala is regarded as one of the most decentralized states in India. Through a ‘big bang’ approach, Kerala implemented a significant fiscal decentralization program and then built the capacity of its local governments. We employ a diagnostic framework to analyze its local government discretion and accountability in political, administrative and fiscal domains. We find that Kerala's local governments have a very high degree of discretionary power accompanied by a high degree of accountability towards citizens. But the areas of administrative accountability and financial management need to be strengthened. Also there may have been excessive focus and investment on social accountability mechanisms at the cost of local government discretion and formal public sector accountability mechanisms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.