Malawi'’s agricultural sector is critical to its economy, employing around 77% of the population and accounting for 23% of gross domestic product (GDP). The majority of workers in agriculture are smallholder farmers, many of whom cultivate less than one hectare of land. Despite its importance, the sector faces significant challenges, …
on april 21, 2007, the Karnataka legislative council (upper house of the legislature) passed an amendment to the state Panchayati Raj Act, 1993, to take over the role of panchayats in selecting beneficiaries for development programmes at the village-level. "If the gram panchayat fails to prepare beneficiaries' list in respect …
The panchayats suffer from a collective failure because governments treat them like an implementing arm or a line department, without the powers of one. This tier of government is seen as a way that the country can down-size bureaucracy and hand over work to this elected group of people. It …
There is a great push to make panchayats the fulcrum of rural development in India. But 16 years after the third tier of government was created, it has not got its due. RAMESH Singh Yadav is much sought after. Especially among creditors and moneylenders, to whom he owes a total …
karnataka's decade-old plan for creating a Greater Bangalore entity has finally got a fillip with the state government's recent go-ahead for the merger of seven city municipal councils (cmcs), one town municipal council (tmc) and over 100 villages within the Bangalore metropolitan area under the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (bmp) limits. …
The government of India has for long considered watersheds as catalysts for development activities in rain-fed areas. In 1994, it developed guidelines for implementation of watershed programmes. These were subsequently revised, in 2001, by the department of land resources of the ministry of rural development and circulated as guidelines for …
Participatory democracy is finally coming of age. At least in Madhya Pradesh (mp). A process that began with empowering the tribal people of Jhabua district in 1994 is culminating in Gram Swarajya for every person living in the 70,000-odd villages of mp . To coincide with India's 51st Republic Day, …
Sahashradhara, Dehradun, India. A soft drink shop greets thousands of tourists at this confluence of a thousand streams. So what's the big deal? Well, its just that the shop is located right inside a microhydel powerhouse that supplied electricity to three nearby villages for over four years. Two year ago, …
As the world wakes up to a depleting finite sources of power like coal and the growing opposition to big dams, countries all over the world with water resources and difficult areas to electrify are opting for the community mode of electricity generation and distribution. "Today, a confluence of technological, …
In India, the Central Electricity Act, 1948, does not allow individuals, communities or cooperatives to take up electricity generation and distribution. Only a private company bound to sell power to the government can do so. Of course the company has to sell power at rates the government fixes. Since such …
Three years ago, when Chija Maya, a resident of Piughar, spoke about a run-of-the-river microhydel power station in her village, many people thought that she was whistling in the dark. Though hydro-electricity first came to Nepal in 1911 to light the King’s palaces, it still remains a dream for 85 …
communication is vital for progress, and road links are crucial for this. A novel and viable approach for building rural roads and maintaining them was evolved in Madagascar in 1995. The approach advocates that the government, business institutions and local communities jointly undertake road construction projects. The need for such …
A thin strip of land trapped between the Arabian Sea and the Kerala backwaters. This is Challanam in Ernakulam district. Freshwater used to be very scarce. Although it rains in torrents during the monsoon, the water would flow into the sea. Groundwater was useless due to ingress of saline water. …
Leftist politicians have a reputation across the world for being immensely centralised in their thinking. So, what was different in Kerala, where the major steps in the decentralisation drive have been taken by the ldf alliance? For one, the socioeconomic conditions desperately called for a change. For another, a highly …
Four years of decentralised planning have resulted in a functional division between state plans and local plans. Policy analysts say this would lead to subsequent material improvement in local life, for example, better management of agriculture and water resources. "An important change is the right focus of planning and, so, …
It is a labour bank called Thozhil Sena . Its capital is human labour and the clients are mostly farmers who loan labour at a rate of interest. Perhaps the first of its kind in India, the
The future of the decentralisation process is uncertain, and the real threat comes from the bureaucracy. A wide spectrum of people - from political leaders to policy planners - share such fears. "The bureaucracy is organised, and is a great problem. Earlier there was stiff resistance from the bureaucracy to …
Here is a success story. May every Keralite feel proud. Kerala is the most literate state in India, the first where population levels stabilised and now they have even successfully dealt with decentralised planning. But the god's haven't been fair to the state in the past few decades. The state …
In japan , "the land of paradoxes', as Masafumi Nagao, a professor at the Centre for the study of International Cooperation in Education at Hiroshima University, puts it, the third sector that constitutes the non-profit and the non-governmental sector "is not without history'. The first and the second sectors comprise …
THE Dilip Singh Bhuria Parliamentary Committee, set up to recommend special provisions for the introduction of Panchayati Raj in tribal areas (under the 73rd Constitutional Amendment), has just submitted its report. It is natural for a lay person to question why a separate committee was needed to make special provisions …
