Re-Thinking Governance: Decentralization and Participatory Democracy in India

The overarching purpose of the 1991 reforms was to free the private sector from government controls and shoring up the fiscal system. Now, our prime focus areas for reforms are Rural and agriculture development, urban and human resource development, and the management of public services. We need accelerated decentralization and participatory democracy system. This is an ongoing project that has been developing a ‘state centric-relational’ approach to governance. This has devolved key governance functions to partnerships with societal organizations, or ‘the formulation and implementation of public policy increasingly takes place in and through interactive forms of governance, involving a public and private actors’. In which process the states have enhanced their capacity to govern by strengthening their own institutional and legal capacities but also by developing closer relations with non-state actors. Government and International organizations are perceived to be more important, having a greater impact on people’s lives, so pressures grow for greater transparency, participation and accountability. A greater percentage of the world lives in democracies than ever before.