Locus of decision-making: Understanding a decentralized flagship programme on health in India

This book is an analytical examination of financing and public service delivery challenges in a decentralized framework.

This paper is addressed to a broad audience of development professionals who are interested in both the substance of decentralisation issues and their impact on economic development. The paper summarises experience with alternative decentralisation arrangements and suggests a new analytical framework for assessing the impact of such arrangements on the performance of economic development programmes and projects. Consideration of alternative forms of decentralisation reveals the need to clarify and establish priorities among economic and political objectives. The potential for conflict among multiple objectives and the need to assess decentralisation policies in terms of acceptable trade-offs among those objectives summarises the importance of this paper.

Representational government is not authentic democracy. The American Constitution cannot defend us from socioeconomic domination by centralized power. Independence means that people organize among themselves in order to meet all of their existential needs, which include more than preserving corporal survival. It means actualizing a better civil and civic organization, and adding to that a civic-economic organization (explained in my other writings) in order to afford every child the support needed to grow as individuated people. The genius my father contributed is the means of making consensus-based decision making processes a structured organization in conjunction with mutual banking, and its production-based economy, which as an organization must expand, or perish. That inbuilt expansive component is what distinguishes DESO from all other attempts to create a better lifestyle. By forcing decentralization to expand, as a structural component, consequent of consensus-based organization and its mutual banking, and its production-based economy, it will compete with mass centrist society for members, because living in real, sovereign community provides a better quality of life; a better culture. I am encouraged that there are people really interested in making this project move into its actualization, and that eventuality is nearing. My blog: http://decentralizationblog.wordpress.com

This book is an analytical examination of financing and public service delivery challenges in a decentralized framework. It also provides critical insights into the effectiveness of public expenditure, through benefit incidence analysis of education and healthcare services in India. The benefits of decentralization always come with conflicts and trade-offs. By unpacking the process of decentralization, the authors identify that 'unfunded mandates', arising from the asymmetry between finances and functions at local levels, are a major challenge. The analysis is carried out by distilling the existing studies in this area, and through an empirical investigation of public finance data at different public sector levels in India, as well as in some selected developing countries. Using the household survey statistics of consumption expenditure, an analysis of utilization or benefit incidence of public spending on social sectors in India is achieved, covering education and health sectors. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Decentralization is defined, interpreted and made a political issue in several-sometimes contradictory--ways. This book attempts to understand and describe one segment of the story: welfare policy. It makes an inventory of who are the main actors, what is decentralized in the social sector (administrative, fiscal, political, service-delivery structures, and institutions), where or to what level of governance decentralization is relevant, and how and by what means is decentralization implemented in the social sector.

This publication presents an overview of the concepts and definitions of environment and sustainable development, showing the importance of environment and natural resources for the economies of developing countries. It provides basic knowledge and analytical tools related to environment/economy interactions and how these should be taken into account in decision-making at decentralized, or subnational, level. It reviews the role of government and the instruments at its disposal, in addition to regulatory instruments, to create a context in which environmental issues are analysed and addressed.