Governing locally institutions, policies and implementation in Indian cities

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Public services, especially in urban areas, are a pressing concern. Following India's landmark constitutional amendment in 1992-93, it was expected that local governments would be more able, responsive and accountable, and public service delivery more effective. Both scholarly and other approaches emphasise two routes for this - formal architecture of decentralisation (laws) and people's participation. However, a quarter century later, both everyday experience and literature suggest that local accountability is low and service delivery is poor despite the presence of a legal framework and people's participation. Why is this the case? This book provides an answer by opening up the 'black box of local governance' through studying specifics of administrative procedures, organisational structure, staffing, and interactions with other levels of government. In these seemingly stodgy contents of the government black box, the book locates the explanation of how and why some city governments can effectively deliver services and others cannot. It examines the various aspects of city governments as "decentralised capacity" and traces differences in local service delivery - street lighting, water supply, sewerage, drainage, roads, and other services - to differences in decentralised capacity. It makes the argument through a comparative study of states with city governments as units of analysis (23 city governments in the three states of Gujarat, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu). The work looks closely at subnational variation and uses the comparative approach both for structuring the empirical material well as for theorisation. Specifically, it finds that while there is considerable interstate variation in capacity of city government and decentralised service delivery, there is far less intrastate variation on these matters. Methodologically, this enables the analysis to locate the larger explanation within a framework of state-local political and administrative relations. It explores details of the "policy process" from national legislative intent (constitutional amendment) to accompanying state laws to administrative rules for organising government. It also examines the designing of policy instruments against potential "policy drift" through which implementation is at odds with original intent"--