Measuring decentralisation: the case of Kerala (India)

Abstract

Attempts at measuring decentralisation are still in an underdeveloped stage. The reason for this lies in the failure to devise common standards against which measurement is possible and the lack of consensus about the very meaning of decentralisation. An attempt to measure decentralisation was made by Vengroff and Ben Salem in the context of Tunisia nearly a decade ago. An expanded and adapted version of this model is used to measure decentralisation in Kerala using the same judgmental criteria that they used after involving a panel of nine experts. These experts had a fairly good understanding of the practice of decentralisation to score on the basis of the adapted criteria. An ideal form of decentralisation envisaged in this measurement exercise is devolution. It has been found that on a scale ranging between 0 and 5, the state of Kerala obtained a score of 2.00 in spite of the fact that the investment that the state had made in decentralisation has no parallels anywhere in the developing countries. Such a low score, despite the much publicised campaign for decentralisation, was due to the focus on planning rather than on decentralisation issues. Attempts to measure decentralisation will not only enable us to develop more contextually valid measures of decentralisation, but also contribute to the clarification of the concept of decentralisation, particularly by identifying aspects neglected hitherto.

Decentralisation and Poverty Reduction: A Conceptual Framework for the Economic Impact

“…This is in line with John and Chathukulam (2003) who note that only devolution fulfils the normative characteristics commonly associated with decentralisation while delegation and deconcentration are merely empirically rooted. …”

A Study on Emerging Management Practices of Renewable Energy Companies after the Outbreak of Covid-19: Using an Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) Approach

“…The results of the study indicate that emerging management practices such as resilience leadership and a central response center are the baseline to implement the concepts of knowledge management and decentralization. Similar ideas have also been provided by different researchers in the past: namely, decentralization (John and Chathukulam [30]) and emerging management [4,15,36,48] are weak in the energy sector of developing countries. However, in many cases, the companies are aware of the importance of these subjects.…”

“…Therefore, the objective of this study is to explore decentralization as an emerging practice that can have an impact at the corporate level in developing countries [28,29]. It is also argued that the implications of implementing decentralization include the complexity of the process and ambiguity in the roles of employees at a higher level [30]. This phenomenon is still misunderstood because of prevailing ambiguity about its mechanisms and strategies.…”

Does Citizen Participation Improve Local Planning? An Empirical Analysis of Stakeholders’ Perceptions in Nepal

“…In fact, many context-specific factors may enable or constrain the participation process and its outcomes including the degree of devolution of power (John & Chathukulam, 2003;King, Feltey, & Susel, 1998), the level of local autonomy (Blair, 2000), the existence of a democratic, responsive and participatory LG (Blair, 2000;Box, 1998), the presence of elected representatives (Yang & Pandey, 2011), the state of social networks and partnerships with them (Krishna, 2003;Putnam, 1993), the characteristics of citizens, particularly their representativeness, empowerment and competence (Fung, 2006), the nature of local power, politics, social values and norms (Armony, 2004;Sen, 1999) and the level of social mobilization (Mohanty, Thompson, & Coelho, 2011). Although these factors may be relevant, they do not explain the differences in particular outcomes observed across different country contexts.…”