Introduction

Participatory planning involves the intensive participation of local communities in analysing their current situation, envisioning a long-term collective future and attempting to attain this vision through collective planning of development interventions that would be implemented by different state agencies area.  This paradigm has emerged as a way of ensuring responsiveness and accountability of local state actors, especially with the expansion in the magnitude and complexity of everyday actions of the state. 

It is seen as both a process and an outcome of empowered citizen action in planning and monitoring the activities of public officials in provisioning of services and protection of citizen rights in between elections (Ackerman, 2005, Peruzzotti & Smulovitz, 2006). In India, the prospects of effective participatory planning are tied to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), especially, Gram Panchayats (GPs) since they serve both as platforms for citizen participation and as implementers of the plans thus prepared.  Within each GP, Gram Sabhas form the crux of citizen participation in planning and monitoring in GPs. The roles of Gram Sabhas include selection of beneficiaries for various government schemes, planning for local development works and overseeing the implementation of on-going works became quintessential elements of Gram Sabhas.

Three decades have passed since the institutionalisation of Gram Sabhas and the PRIs through the 73rd amendment to the Indian Constitution. While political decentralisation has been achieved with moderate success in most states, devolution of 3Fs; funds, functions and functionaries hasn’t progressed in most states. Meanwhile, the outlays of state and central finance commission grants to PRIs (specifically to GPs) have increased over the years. Flagship schemes and CSSs like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Swacch Bharat Mission (SBM) and Pradhan Mantri Awas scheme are being implemented through PRIs throughout the country together with numerous other state government schemes. The result of such schemes and grants is a multi-fold increase in the financial outlays of expenditure in social sector schemes, mainly implemented through PRIs (The Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act, 2016). 

The tied nature of funding in these schemes may have debilitating implications in shaping PRIs as institutions of local self-governance (as mandated by article 243G) since PRIs may not have the autonomy to plan and the functionaries to implement activities that cater to local needs. Issues like the lack of participation of line-departments in Gram Sabhas and lack of institutional mechanisms for enforceability of decisions taken in Gram Sabhas also diminish the constitutional role of Gram Sabhas to effectively plan and monitor local development interventions. Further, national level reports on status of people’s participation in planning and monitoring of local governance have drawn attention to problems such as a) paternalistic attitudes of higher levels of government, b) expectations of unrealistic timelines, technical and process sophistication and c) the overbearing demands of accountability to the top while no such guarantee exists from the top to GPs (Planning Commission, 2008, p. 3; Government of India, 2011). These problems have led to an ecosystem of distrust on the motives and capacities of PRIs and specifically of GPs in planning and responding to local needs of development and service delivery. Nevertheless, considerable efforts and resources are continued to be invested to improve planning at the grassroots.

The successful experience of Kerala in its People’s Planning Campaign shows that intensive participation of local citizens in planning and monitoring of development activities at the local level, fostered by strong political will at the state level and civil-society engagement can overcome these obstacles. Based on this experience, the central government launched the “Gram Panchayat Development Plan” (GPDP) initiative in 2015. GPDP attempts to encourage effective local autonomy of Gram Panchayats (GPs) in planning by enhancing the quality of people’s participation in local governance while at the same time ensure better development outcomes. 

The GPDP marks a significant shift from the fragmented approach that was earlier followed for local planning in GPs where different Gram Sabhas would be needed to plan for different schemes. In GPDP, the plans are to be developed based on a detailed study of status of development and service delivery, visioning exercises for clarifying short-term and long-term goals, identification and prioritisation of local development needs, consolidating the available resources and preparation of multi-year action plans. It seeks to promote a demand-based convergence of resources and to incorporate people’s needs and priorities in the plans. It also seeks to provide space for integration of people’s knowledge and local wisdom into local development. 

People’s participation is the driving force of every phase of GPDP, which means multiple Habitation, Ward and Gram Sabhas have to be held in each GP, followed by deliberations at the GP level on availability of funds, resource envelopes and administrative mechanisms to finalize the five-year and annual action plans. In addition to this, considering the lack of capacity at the GP level for formulating and implementing such elaborate plans, measures are also to be taken to enhance the capacity of local governments through formal training of the existing staff and elected representatives, co-opting of locally available expertise and involving corps of volunteers. 

Considering the complexity of the mobilizing, planning and reporting tasks involved in GPDP, it is important to track its implementation and assess its influence on important process and output markers of participatory planning. We also recognise that there were pre-existing protocols for participatory planning across PRIs in the country before the advent of GPDP. Thus, there is the possibility of comparing GPDP with earlier planning initiatives as well to understand the relative effectiveness of GPDP in influencing local autonomy, people’s participation and better targeting of development initiatives.  This paper presents the results of a study of this nature of GPDP undertaken in six GPs of Udupi district in Karnataka. The nature of people’s participation in planning activities, the kind of outputs generated from planning processes and accountability mechanisms in implementation before and after the advent of GPDP are studied to highlight the influence of GPDP on local planning processes and its outputs. 

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section presents a summary of the Indian experience in participatory planning and highlights the main bottlenecks relevant today. The proceeding section describes the study methodology and the field sites chosen for the study. The next section summarizes the main findings of the study followed by a discussion on the potential implications of these findings. 

Review of literature

Though state institutions play important roles in the lives of poor people around the world, these institutions are neither responsive nor accountable to them (Narayan et al., 2000, p. 197). As the everyday actions of the state become more and more complex, newer ways of democratic participation are needed beyond representative democracy and techno-bureaucratic accountability measures to ensure that state action ensures liberal outcomes like the creation of just, humane and egalitarian societies. Local democratic institutions aim to reimagine the role of citizen participation in local governance, not only to ensure that local knowledge and information is used in decision making but also to derive legitimacy, representativeness and public accountability for state action (Gaventa, 2004). However, these new institutions face multiple challenges. 

Firstly, they are expected to engage and monitor local state officials who report not only to these local institutions but also to a pre-existing bureaucratic hierarchy of government officials. These bureaucrats are frequently found to be inefficient, corrupt and absent (Wade, 1982; Banerjee et al., 2004; Chaudhury et al., 2006; Beteille, 2009). Further, the design of local democratic institutions and schemes they implement generally follow a top-down approach and face the additional threat of either being co-opted or neutralised depending on the nature of political actors who control these institutions through diverse strategies (Aiyar, 2010; Cornwall, 2017). India’s own experience with participatory planning has been a story of its inability to tap the potential of citizen participation in effective planning and monitoring of state interventions. While the CDP experiment in the early decades of independence sought the participation of rural communities in selection of works and development activities in the preparation of village plans, it was less successful in fostering participation and ensuring distributive justice (Mathur & Narain, 1969, p. 238), since the programme was mostly controlled by government bureaucrats themselves (Bhambhri, 1967, p. 133). 

In analyzing the degree of participation of Panchayats in CDP and other initiatives, a Planning Commission report commented that Panchayats were “at best to be consulted or co-opted as faithful assistants of the planning process directed from above” (Planning Commission, 2008, p. 3). In turn, villagers responded with general apathy and distrust (Dube, 2012). Thus, local planning exercises in GPs were always conducted in a hurry and followed a strong paternalistic approach, which resulted in a “virtual stillbirth of effective, locally responsive adaptive planning” by PRIs (Neale, 1985, p. 680). 

With the advent of the 73rd amendment to the Indian constitution, Article 243G acknowledged panchayats as institutions of local-self-government and mandates them to prepare and monitor local plans for economic development and social justice. The Gram Sabha was made the locus point of participatory planning and monitoring of development activities at the GP level. 

Over the past three decades several initiatives have been taken up by the States and the Union to encourage participatory planning at the grassroots. The central government attempted to develop GP level perspective plans in 2006 to align with the 11th five-year plan. Much before that, the development of participatory five-year plans was experimented in Karnataka, with the moniker of Janayojane in 2003, and again under Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF) in 2007-08. Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (2009-10), Intensive Participatory Planning Exercise (IPPE) under MGNREGA (2013-15), community need assessment under Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (2014 onwards) and holistic planning under state level schemes like Suvarna Gram (2009) have all experimented with various forms of decentralised participative planning.  

Kerala’s People’s Planning Campaign (PPC) has been widely considered as a success story in inducing substantial benefits to the poor by empowering them to voice their opinions in local planning processes and increasing the effectiveness of local state action (Heller, 2001). It had its roots in exploring if political mobilization of local people leads to economic development or enhancement of productivity. PPC has been considered as an important step towards decentralised planning and provision of flexibility of fund utilization without imposing rules and regulations on how funds should be spent. Close to 40 per cent of the state’s budget was committed for implementation of plans devised by PRIs, which was unprecedented for any state of India. 

Many new experiments in participatory planning were implemented wherein, people’s role in planning extended beyond participation in selection of works to leading the planning process itself. This was realized with the partnership of NGOs, community-based organizations and volunteers. The state government lent its full support to capacity building, administrative coordination and implementation of plans (Isaac & Franke, 2002).  

However, recent experiences in Kerala also indicate that these state institutions can become susceptible to bureaucratic capture and tacit technocratic strategies that in effect centralise control and decision making power (Sharma, 2007; Harilal, 2013). Thus, even when political will, institutional norms and sustained civil society organisations support institutions of participatory democracy, they have to be constantly vigilant about threats to their effectiveness and legitimacy, arising out of the inequalities in power and centralising tendencies of technocratic interventions (Cornwall & Coelho, 2007).

As this brief review of literature shows, participatory planning isn’t a new concept in the development sector in India. It has been called by names: bottom-up planning, grassroots planning, community-based planning etc. Many experiments have already been conducted through various government initiatives. However, none of these attempts reached the scale of a national movement towards planning. The recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission provided an important opportunity for a sustained nation-wide attempt to institutionalise participatory planning in GPs. 

The 14th Finance Commission (followed by 15th Finance Commission) devolved a substantial quantity of funds to GPs for delivery of basic services. In addition to this, GPs also get at least an equivalent amount from MGNREGS. Further, the State Finance Commission transfers, Own Source Revenues and flows from other State and Centrally sponsored schemes enlarged the resources available with GPs noticeably. Thus, the financial stakes and potential to influence development outcomes reached historically high levels during the latter half of the past decade. 

A mechanism like GPDP which aimed to guide local state agencies in planning of development interventions was inevitable in such a situation, if GPs had to effectively use these resources available to them. However, the challenges around effective implementation of participatory planning were also well known; resource and time constraints enforced on planning operations, inadequate facilitation and capacity gaps and GPs not being able to sustain and carry out the full mandate of serving as autonomous units of development planning and implementation. 

The solutions to these vexing problems lie both at the national and state levels; that of effective design and sequencing of participatory planning and fund devolution at the national level and providing local leadership, sustain mobilisation and ensuring legitimacy to the plans at the state level. In the proceeding sections, we attempt to explain how these concerns were addressed in Udupi district of Karnataka.

Methodology

This study is located in Udupi, a coastal district of Karnataka, carved out of the Dakshina Kannada district in 1997. The district has consistently ranked in the top 5 districts in the state in indicators of human development including indicators of gender disparity. The district is lauded for its proactive administration and has been a site for many innovations and experiments in governance and development (preparation of five perspective plans, piloting the preparation of district human development reports, cashless payment of GP taxes, GP level solid and liquid resource management to name a few). 

However, the district faces considerable challenges due to its difficult geographical terrain, vulnerability to climate change and provision of basic amenities in rural areas. Thus, Udupi presents an ideal case in tracking the effectiveness of GPDP in improving capacities of GPs to better respond to the felt needs of people in Karnataka. 

Field work for the study was conducted in 6 GPs of the district, with 2 GPs in each taluk of the district. Attempt was made to select GPs that cover all the three taluks of the district and provide representative illustrations of the varied geographical and socio-economic characteristics of the district. The tables below provide a brief profile of the GPs selected.

Table 1. Profile of GPs

Bommarabettu was the largest village in the selected GPs whereas Vandse had the least population. SC and ST population together was the highest in Bommarabettu which had a Koraga rehabilitated settlement. SC population is highest in Bailoor and Yerlapady. Vandse and Kote have the least proportion of SC and ST populations in the same sites.  

Table 2. Population profile of the GPs

Findings

Nature of people’s participation and planning before GPDP

As discussed earlier, there were specific planning and monitoring exercises prevalent in the selected GPs before the advent of GPDP. The major planning exercises of the GP included a) preparation of annual budget using a prescribed format, which were prepared entirely by GP level bureaucrats and used as an administrative compliance routine rather than as a planning guide, b) selection of works for different schemes through Gram Sabha and c) finalisation of action plans for different schemes in which works mentioned in the Gram Sabhas were included, which were done by elected members of the GP and bureaucrats. After approval of the action plans from the Taluk Panchayat, works would be implemented. 

Major monitoring activities included Social Audit of MGNREGA including visits by Ombudsman teams and Jamabandhi (social audit of GP accounts) Gram Sabhas. Other public scrutiny and discussion on quality of works also happened in subsequent Gram Sabhas. 

At least 3 Gram Sabhas were held in each GP since 2 Gram Sabhas and MGNREGA planning Gram Sabha were to be compulsorily held. In these Gram Sabhas, works to be taken up through various schemes of the GP, discussion on on-going works, receiving applications from residents of the village for prospective benefits were the major activities. Further, special Gram Sabhas for women and children, selection of beneficiaries of housing schemes were also held as and when scheme benefits were made available to the GPs. 

This procedure was commonly observed across the 6 GPs of the district. Meeting minutes, pamphlets and photos documenting these public meetings had been well kept in all GPs visited as part of the study. While documentations showed that monthly meetings, Ward Sabhas and different Gram Sabhas had been conducted regularly in all GPs, there were no details of actual discussions or votes for and against the decisions taken up. Discussions with GP personnel and elected representatives and analysis of signatures in meeting minutes of public meetings like Gram Sabhas (including Ward Sabhas, Jamabandhi, Social Audits and Special Gram Sabhas) show that people’s participation is low except in Gram Sabhas held at the beginning of the year wherein in most GPs, participation count was higher than 100.

In two GPs (Kumbashi and Vandse), five-year perspective plans were prepared in association with a local NGO, for the five years between 2012-17, to match with the implementation of the 12th five year plan. The preparation of these perspective plans was consultative in nature, and did not have pre-defined protocols/formats as seen with GPDP.  In both GPs the 5-year plans were given-up since from the beginning, the fund flows of schemes did not match the funds needed for the implementation of the plans. Before this initiative, a similar perspective plan (Janayojane) was tried between 2002-07 and given-up for similar reasons.

Annual budgets did not serve any other purpose beyond administrative compliance. There was no relationship between the budget and the annual action plans for different schemes implemented by the GPs. Procedure for selection of works to be executed and beneficiary selection also varied across schemes. Hence, although Gram Sabhas would be consulted in selecting interventions, their implementation would be guaranteed only after funds were released and regulations for expenditures under different schemes were explicitly laid down.

In summary, the participation and planning processes in the study GPs exhibited the following characteristics before GPDP was initiated. 

• Participation was high in Gram Sabhas alone. Ward Sabhas and Habitation Sabhas did not have meaningful discussions. Gram Sabhas discussed bouquet of works that were intended for different schemes. 

• Action Plans were finalised by elected representatives and GP bureaucrats based on inputs from Gram Sabhas. Action Plans were also based on scheme guidelines, availability of funds and prioritization decisions taken by elected representatives. There was only a ‘one-way connection’ between Gram Sabhas, monthly meeting decisions and action plans. That is, works in an action plan had to be taken up from the approved list of works emanating either from the monthly meeting of elected representatives or from Gram Sabha. However, there was no guarantee that every work finalized in monthly meetings or in Gram Sabha had to be implemented. 

• There was no prior knowledge of the exact release of funds and regulations for their expenditure.

• GPs had experienced adhoc experimentation of 5-year perspective plans which made them weary of new planning experiments. 

• Levels of documentation of people’s participation in Gram Sabhas and GP meetings were recorded systematically and showed that these events were held regularly. 

Analysis of GPDP implementation in the 6 GPs

GPDP training activities in Karnataka were initiated in 2016, and face-to-face activities spanned the entire year of 2016. GPDP related planning activities were first tried in the year 2017-18 in Udupi. The steps involved in GPDP according to the training materials provided to the GPs included a) data collection b) situation analysis c) public meetings, d) draft plan preparation by GP and e) approval of plan in Gram Sabha. In these 5 steps, citizen participation and consultation were involved in three steps: situation analysis, where citizens will be told about existing status of development in their GP,  public meetings where citizens would come up with ward-wise/village-wise development activity lists and priorities based on situation analysis and finally the Gram Sabha for approving the GPDP prepared by the GP. 

Training: The Zilla Panchayat of Udupi provided the bureaucratic leadership for training and coordinating GPDP activities in the district. Training was initially provided to Panchayat Development Officers (PDO) through face-to-face training sessions followed by SATCOM training from ANSSIRDPR. Later, elected representatives, line department officials and local volunteers were also given training on the GPDP processes and expected outcomes. However, the training of elected representatives and line department officials wasn’t monitored effectively since this training was going on during the process of GPDP plan preparation. While most elected representatives and line department officials missed the training, the participation of GP volunteers in the training was restricted to ASHA and Angwanwadi workers. During the training, PDOs received a plan documentation template, which was a Microsoft Excel Workbooks consisting of 45 worksheets, focussing on demographic profile of citizens, infrastructure availability across different sectors, status of service provision in issues related to health, education and social security and finally, status of funds available and utilized by the GP in the last few years. The same information had to be updated on Panchatantra web portal. This information was collected in previous years under an older template called “Samanya Mahiti.”

Based on the guidelines provided by the district authorities, GPs built volunteer teams for data collection. Volunteer teams consisted mostly of ASHAs, Anganwadi workers and local college students. Line department officials we interviewed; doctors, teachers, agriculture department officials and staff nurses, could not recollect the details of training they received. However, doctors and teachers in 4 of the 6 GPs mentioned that they provided a list of suggestions for repairs and construction that they had given to their respective GPs. When asked if this step was new to them, a teacher replied “We have been going to all Gram Sabhas in the GP since we are not supposed to miss them. This list is given every year but the GP only considers one or two suggestions every year”.   

The next step “Situation Analysis” was supposed to be an analysis of the information collected by the GP to allow the elected representatives and citizens to understand a) the status of development, b) the available resource envelope and c) identify gaps in development and service delivery, it was not implemented in any of the GPs except in Vandse, where an NGO analysed the data collected and presented information to the citizens through a Gram Sabha. In other GPs the PDOs read out briefly the data they collected since they did not have any idea of how the data could be analysed. However, all GPs mentioned that Gram Sabhas were conducted to show that situation analysis was actually held. 

The table below shows how different GPs visualized their funds across the 5 years for which they were planning the GPDP. While Bommarabettu GP predicted that it would have more than Rs 2.5 crores every year after the third year (and only 4 lakhs in the second year) Yerlapady predicted that they would have Rs 1.41 crores in the first year and  just 2 lakhs in year 5.

Table 3. Fund availability across 5 years in GPDP (in Crores of Rs)

The next round of Ward and Gram Sabhas of GPDP resembled the other public meetings GPs used to have since citizens registered their needs and development activities. The preparation of GPDP by the planning and coordination committee was supposed to take up works suggested in Ward and Gram Sabhas and prioritise them. Here, more works that elected representatives wanted to be included together with the existing list of works were added to the already existing list of works. Prioritisation, spreading works across 5 years and using resources optimally weren’t taken into consideration since a) elected representatives weren’t able to come to a consensus on what needed to be prioritised, b) the information of resource envelope, based on funds available across different sources was not accurate and c) it was unclear to GPs on what would happen if any work listed in Gram Sabha was dropped. Hence, final GPDP plan prepared by the GP and approved by the Gram Sabha consisted of works whose quantum was clearly out of the reach of the GPs. 

Further, there was no specific link between situation analysis and final list of GPDP activities. In Kumbashi and Bailoor, infant deaths were listed in situation analysis but no specific health related activity was proposed in the final plan. Similarly, incidences of Malaria, Tuberculosis and Malnutrition were expressed in Kumbashi and Bommarabettu without any activity to promote safe health conditions. While housing sites were expressed as a felt need of communities in all 6 GPs, no GP proposed site formation as an activity to be taken up. On the other hand, quantum of construction work seemed to have enhanced from situation analysis to the final plan. For example, the length of roads, road improvements and the need for drainages listed in the situation analysis was much lower in comparison to list of road and drainage related works approved by Vandse, Bailoor and Bommarabettu. An elected representative in Vandse explained that people hardly know the importance of good quality Cement Concrete roads and hence elected representatives added these roads separately into the plan. 

An analysis of the GPDP plan as reported in the Microsoft Excel Sheet, the approved printed copy at the GP and the plan uploaded on Panchatantra portal showed the how spurious data entered into the GPDP planning system. In Kote GP for example, the approved plan had a total expenditure amount of Rs 15.49 crores whereas on the Panchatantra portal, it was reported as just Rs 1.43 crores. 

The worksheet depicted an amount of Rs 15.14 crores. The PDO in Kote mentioned that data entry errors caused such discrepancies. In the case of Bailoor GP, 412 works were listed at Ward and Grama Sabha levels. 100 new works were added by the time the list was finalized by the core-committee. Among them, the approximate costs/funds reserved for 349 works not estimated. Thus, it is not clear how the final amount of funds needed to meet these expectations was determined. Further the approved GPDP provided to us by Bailoor GP had blanks for overall budgets and the same format on Panchatantra had listed 378 works, with overlaps and new works suggested.  

The following table provides a summary of such discrepancies in the 6 GPs

Table 4 Size of GPDP budget across different GPDP forms (in Crores of Rs)

It is clear from the above analysis that neither the quality of deliberations in the GPDP processes nor the overall planning outputs were implemented as expected. While PDOs and elected representatives had ostensibly valid explanations for the disparities, it wasn’t clear how this information could be used, analysed or collated, by other tiers of PRIs or state/central governments. Together with the complexity involved in public deliberations (situation analysis, proposing works through different levels of citizen consultation, final deliberation on GP’s plan), the confusion over multiple and complex reporting formats, technological glitches and inability to validate entries on different reporting formats resulted not only in spurious information being added, but also bloated lists of construction works getting into different versions of action plans.  

The approval process for implementing development interventions was even more confusing. The Taluk and District Panchayats insisted that works to be implemented under any scheme had to be listed in Panchatantra portal of GPDP. Since the information on Panchatantra portwal was incomplete owing to various technological glitches and errors, the approved plans on Panchatantra were allowed to be edited whenever needed, resulting in an erosion of accountability mechanisms. GPs relied on the previous procedures of planning and implementation, to be on the safer side. 

Implications

The above analysis shows that a formidable set of inter-connected issues hindered the achievement of GPDP’s goals; a) training arrangements for GPDP couldn’t fully anticipate the magnitude of challenges that may arise in implementation and hence couldn’t prevent non-compliance to crucial steps (like situation analysis, accurate analysis of resource envelopes etc), b) GPDP templates and technological platforms were complicated leading to spurious information, 

c) plans were wish-lists rather than practically achievable goals, d) plans didn’t have assured funding sources e) line departments and other levels of PRIs weren’t involved in planning processes and f) GPs weren’t clear if GPDP replaces other institutional protocols related to planning specific schemes. Thus, although GPDP plans were prepared, implementation continued to be driven by short-term fund availability and scheme-specific regulations. 

Thus, in many ways, the current study supports the findings of previous studies that discuss the lacunae in participatory planning experiments. However, the lack of sustained involvement of CSOs and state intervention (as witnessed in Kerala) also meant that when things went wrong or when specific protocols weren’t complied with, there was no scrutiny or penalty. Whatever left was the erstwhile planning and implementation protocols with their own mechanisms of checks and balances. Thus, GPs had no incentive to be astute in implementing GPDP. In addition, GPs not only failed to use the opportunity provided by situation analysis for accurate planning of their requirements but attempted to get ostensible development needs get the validity of people’s approval and bloat the overall plan size and distribution across years. 

While these results indicate the difficulty in introducing a process intensive participatory mechanism, it also alludes to the opportunities such situations create for different stakeholders to use processes that are supposedly created for guaranteeing more accountability to by-pass even existing methods of checks and balances. This study also shows the dangers of introducing technological interventions that are either not stable or lack professional checks and balances into a highly political activity like local planning which creates perverse incentives among stakeholders. The study shows that the solution to guarantee responsiveness to local needs may not necessarily lie in the adoption of more stringent/technocratic processes to foster true citizen participation but to simplify and strengthen people related processes that ensure local accountability.  

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