Institutionalising Panchayati Raj in India

Institutionalising Panchayati Raj in India is an exceptionally insightful account of the nation-wide attempt at decentralization in India in the early 1950s, known as the Community Development Programme. Tracing the growth and decline of this programme and of other decentralization programmes started since then, the author identifies three forces: political factors, bureaucracy, and international organisations and bilateral donors, responsible for blunting the effectiveness of decentralisation.