View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Columbia University Academic Commons INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC RESEARCH AND POLICY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY WORKING PAPERS THE PLASTICITY OF PARTICIPATION: EVIDENCE FROM A PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE EXPERIMENT Shubham Chaudhuri Department of Economics Columbia University Patrick Heller Department of Sociology Brown University January 2003 ISERP WORKING PAPER 03-01 Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy The plasticity of participation: evidence from a participatory governance experiment Shubham Chaudhuri Department of Economics Columbia University (
[email protected]) Patrick Heller Department of Sociology Brown University (
[email protected]) July 2002 We are indebted to the Kerala State Planning Board and in particular to Board member T.V. Thomas Isaac for providing us access to the data we use in this paper. During research trips in 1996, 1999, 2001 and 2002, in addition to obtaining these data, we conducted multiple interviews with key officials, civil society activists and Planning Board Members, visited several gram panchayats and attended numerous Gram Sabhas. Funding for these trips was provided by the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University. With funding from the Ford Foundation in India, and in collaboration with the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, we are currently conducting an intensive survey of 85 randomly selected panchayats, including over 900 interviews with key respondents. For details see Chaudhuri, Heller and Mukherjee (2001). Abstract Under the “People’s Campaign for Decentralised Planning,” initiated by the government of the Indian state of Kerala in 1996, significant planning and budgetary functions that had previously been controlled by state-level ministries, were devolved to the lowest tier of government—municipalities in urban areas, and gram panchayats (village councils) in ural areas.