Abstract

In the Amrit Kaal (golden period) of independent India, the ‘citizen first’ approach guides public governance by deepening the outreach of service delivery mechanism so that international standards could be achieved in India@100. The goal can only be achieved by all inclusive governance involving stronger and effective local self-governments both panchayats and municipalities. Thirty years ago, with the passage of the 73rd and the 74th Constitutional Amendments, Part IX and IXA were inserted in the Constitution for rural and urban local self-governments respectively. Since then, various commissions and committees have reviewed the working of the twin amendments and made suggestions. Notable among them is the 6th Report on Local Governance by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission (Second ARC)1. The Commission looked for easy political acceptance, but worked within the parameters of the 73rd /74th Constitutional Amendment Acts and which can be described as “conventional wisdom”. This paper attempts to a) present an assessment of the conventional wisdom presented by various committees and commissions particularly the Second ARC, b) touch upon the fundamental issues and c) suggest out of box solutions for effective local governance. 

Introduction

Within the Indian federal architecture, local self-governments both panchayats and municipalities are closest to the notion of direct democracy distinct from a representative democracy of the Union and States, due to their proximity to the community they serve. Local self-governments have faith in democracy in which a common man in the local area has a huge capacity to have a good living for himself and the community under the healthy environment that the state creates. If a common man appears to be indifferent to the high economic growth, it is because he is devoid of the mainstream national development and has not been provided equal opportunity to participate in activities for his own betterment. The objectives of a local self-government either a panchayat or a municipality include organising common men in the process of developing themselves through their own efforts on a continuing basis, at the same time, enhancing their capacity and self-reliance. This begins with ‘citizen participation’ in political processes and ‘service delivery’ of local public goods, e.g. potable drinking water, general sanitation, primary health, elementary education, maintenance of public properties etc. Hence, the key objectives of the twin constitutional amendments arguably envision citizen participation with service delivery (Alok 2013, p 1). 

The paper discusses some issues relating to rural and urban local governance on which suggestions were made in the past on various issues including political executive in local self-governments, municipal staffing, local self-governments’ representation in the states’ second chamber, tiering of municipal elections, district planning committee to be transformed as district government,  integrated district-based local self-government, state-municipal relations, and energising the Gram Sabha.

The legal framework needs correction

Both the amendments i.e., the 73rd and 74th were drawn in identical words followed the bills presented when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister. The bills contained the dual structure with similar wordings, differences in the two functional schedules, duty of the Union Finance Commission (UFC) to recommend measures to augment the state finances for both panchayats and municipalities “on the basis of the recommendations” of the state finance commissions (SFCs), and, creation of district and metropolitan planning committees (DPCs and MPCs) in the municipalities’ bill. In many cases, provisions for the panchayats have been applied to the municipalities where these were not relevant. All these happened due to the limited objectives of these bills; e.g.: (i) holding regular elections, (ii) limiting the period of superssions, (iii) devolution of powers and functions, and (iv) representation of weaker sections and women. Earlier, the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (NCRWC) suggested that “serious consideration should also be given on whether these two Parts can be integrated by omitting the provisions which are a duplication of each other and rationalising the arrangement of the other provisions”(India 2001, p.66). The Second ARC chose not to unify Parts IX (panchayats) and IXA (municipalities) of the constitution. Perhaps the Commission consciously decided to avoid making recommendations that would involve constitutional revision- a task on which the national political parties are divided. Ideally, bold and politically neutral steps are needed in Amrit Kaal to integrate these two separate amendments which authoritatively divides India into two parts.

Mandatory provisions

The mandatory provisions of the amendments, with a parallel expansion of the Union Finance Commission (UFC) to cover the local self-governments2, were limited to five areas: (a) structural uniformity of three levels of panchayats3 (except in states with less than two million population)) and municipalities, (b) five-yearly election of local self-governments and appointment of a state election commission (SEC), with restricted supersession of the local self-governments, (c) reservation of seats and chairpersons for weaker sections and women, (d) constitution of SFCs, and (e) constitution of District Planning Committees (DPCs) and Metropolitan Planning Committees (MPCs). 

“Conventional wisdom” contained in the Second ARC and other reports could not sense  why a three-level structure of the local self-governments is necessary when a two-level structure could be more efficient considering the viability of each entity in terms of population and area. Similarly, the Commission attempted to impose structural uniformity between the panchayats and the municipalities without realising that the existing asymmetry was the result of their different institutional role and structural uniformity is possible when their roles become uniform. On election, supersession and reservation issues, the Second ARC’s job was mainly operational. On the contrary, the NCRWC pointed out antiquities in articles 243D and 243T, which contain provisions related to reservation of seats in panchayats and municipalities for scheduled caste/scheduled tribes and women. It is suggested that state governments may provide guidelines for the process of reservation to ensure transparency and opportunities to elicit voter response.

As for the SFC, however, the Commission faltered; it recognised that the SFC’s weakness lay in its membership composition, but did not notice that this was solved for the UFCs through a central law- Finance Commission (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1951. It identified lack of congruence between the UFCs and SFCs regarding the methodology and duration of appointment of SFCs. This was a blind endorsement by the Second ARC of the 11th and 12th UFCs’ position that wanted to lay down rules for the SFCs-a task not contemplated by the Constitution.  Later, the 13th UFC went a step ahead and proposed a template for the SFC report and the 14th UFC recommended grant only to ‘Gram Panchayats’ in rural areas violating article 243B of the Constitution, soon after, the 15th UFC corrected the anomaly. Briefly the situation is: (a) both the UFC and the SFC are parallel constitutional bodies without the latter’s subordination to the former. (b) the method followed by the UFCs of fiscal transfers through ad hoc lump sum grants is open to question, (c) it is not possible to aggregate the fiscal gaps of multiple SFCs under diverse assumptions to calculate fiscal gaps of local self-governments, and (d) the time matching of the SFCs with the UFC is not possible due to the delay in issuing the states’ action taken reports (ATRs)-a constitutional requirement that the UFCs are to recommend measures for local self-governments “on the basis of recommendations” of the SFCs. Ideally, the UFC can make normative assessment of the fiscal requirements of the local self-governments and recommend devolution as a share of the union divisible pool. For this purpose, a detailed assessment of the cost of local public goods is necessary for different geographical terrains across states in India (Alok 2021). 

Similarly, on the DPC-MPC issues, the Second ARC did not come to grip with the realities of the working of the local self-governments. The Constitution provided under Part IX A that local planning is the preserve of the local self-governments themselves and the DPC-MPC task is to consolidate the local plans and undertake planning for “matters of common interest.” Since the local self-governments lack the capacity to plan or they think that this is a wasteful task; the DPCs have been envisaged to plan for the residual common task with the help of state planning outfits; and the Kolkata MPC4.

Though, the Second ARC made some recommendations on the election, reservations and SFC, but did not touch upon the crucial institutions of local planning namely, DPC-MPC issues.  Whereas, NCRWC suggested far-reaching changes to redefine ‘district’ and ‘panchayat area’ and restructure DPC and MPC to make these units functional. In the Amrit Kaal, there is a need to constitute State NITI Aayog which can take their inputs from the DPCs and MPCs as envisaged in the Gandhian Constitution, 1946.

Discretionary Provisions

The discretionary provisions of the amendments included devolution of powers and functions, the term ‘self-government’ was not preceded by the term ‘local’, nor was it defined to allow the restrictive decision-making sphere of the local self-governments to continue. What remained to be clarified were (i) their own domain of functions and taxes, decision-making power, creation of political executive, accountability to residents, fiscal responsibility etc., and (ii) declaring local governments as units of ‘local self-government’. 

The Second ARC did not suggest any amendment of the Constitution, including that of the 7th schedule to improve the status of local self-governments; instead it floated the idea of a ‘Framework Law’, under Article 252 for the states to adopt, on the lines of the South African Act5. The Law should be based on the following:

• Principle of subsidiarity

• Democratic decentralization

• Delineation of functions

• Devolution in real terms

• Convergence

• Citizen centricity

At the same time, the Second ARC took shelter behind the earlier recommendation of the NCRWC to amend the Constitution (article 243G) by replacing the word ‘may’ with ‘shall’ to compel the state legislatures to endow the panchayats with “all functions which can be performed at the local level”.6 In the Amrit Kaal, a parallel provision (article 243W) on the municipalities may also be made.

Both the amendments covered the functional domain of the local self-governments in terms of their objectives as (a) preparing plans for economic development and social justice, and (b) implementation of schemes in relations to the matters listed in the two schedules (11th for the panchayats and 12th for the municipalities). This effusive attempt to define local self-government and their functions lies at the heart of the decentralisation dilemma of the panchayats,7 but not the municipalities as their functions were defined in the respective state acts since pre-independence days (the genesis of the differences in subjects covered in the two schedules lies here). It may be noted that these two schedules contain matters on which local self-governments may be assigned roles in vertical schemes. The constitution does not envisage these two schedules to enumerate functions which should be devolved to local self-governments by the state.

Decentralization “focuses on the structure and processes of decision making and on resource and responsibility allocation among different levels of government.” The 2nd ARC’s definition of decentralisation also means “the transfer of decision-making power and assignment of accountability and responsibility for results.”9 It is clear from all available evidence that functional devolution has not gone beyond the implementation responsibility of the schemes/projects of the state or union government.10 What is intriguing is the blind acceptance by the Second ARC of the strategy of decentralisation, called the ‘functions, finances, functionaries’ (FFF) advocated by the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MoPR) in the beginning.11 The purported idea of FFF was to transfer plan schemes with related expenditure, and transferring unwilling state employees to the panchayats in the decentralisation process.

Instead of defining the own functional domain of the panchayats, the Commission wrongly suggested that the plan schemes of the panchayats could be taken as their legitimate functional domain. In the next few years within the Amrit Kaal, the 11th and the 12th schedules need to be integrated and make it mandatory at par, in status, with the lists on the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution. 

Other Aspects 

In this section, we review the other aspects of the “conventional wisdom” by which basic issues were inadequately addressed. These include: (a) fundamental issues relating to local self-governments, (b) district government, and (c) local autonomy and accountability. 

Fundamental issues relating to Local Self-governments

7th schedule and the local self-governments

One of the most glaring anomalies of the Indian Constitution after the insertion of the Parts IX and IXA is their disconnect with the 7th schedule 1935 vintage12 which is probably the sole claim to India’s quest for federalism.13 The 7th schedule defined local government (List II, item 5) in terms of its colonial form:

“Local government that is to say, the constitution and powers of municipal corporations, improvement trusts, district boards, mining settlement authorities and other local authorities for the purpose of local self-government or village administration.” [Italics indicate elected bodies, although not all local authorities are elected.]

This convoluted definition was not changed to ‘Panchayats and Municipalities’ in both amendments or by the “conventional wisdom” of various commissions, with the result that even industrial townships, water boards, or other local parastatals can claim to be local governments with given powers to collect non-tax revenue it not tax revenue. In the Amrit Kaal, there is a need not only to correct the illustrative part of the entry, but also to mention its characteristics, viz. elective nature, multi-purpose local authority, right to tax, pass delegated legislation, autonomy under the doctrine of ultra vires, control of its own staff and accountability to residents. The “conventional wisdom” ignored this vital aspect of local governance as it regarded the 7th schedule as sacrosanct.

In the Amrit Kaal, the role of local self-government in India@100 will be clarified with autonomous local self-government, similar to provincial autonomy under British India.

Tiers at the local level

The Second ARC’s suggestion for strengthening the municipal ‘wards’14 committees is not based on an assessment of their effective functioning or a reconciliation with the existing executive system. Dual membership of the elected ‘wards’ committee and the municipal council assumes a conflict of interest between the two. It can be argued that the interest of the council or town hall is larger than the aggregate interests of the wards. If the ‘wards’ committees are viewed as deconcentrated entities of the municipal administration then their existing advisory role seems to be in line with the unitary structure of municipal government. The municipal ward or zonal officer represent the council and not accountable to the ward councillor, like the collector is not accountable to the elected legislatures in the district.  

However, if the municipal council is indirectly elected from the ‘wards’ committees then municipal government becomes a tiered electoral institution attempted under the Balvantray Mehta Committee15 pattern of panchayats and is now abandoned. This arrangement also implies a move away from direct to indirect election of municipal council with possibilities of conflict with the ward committees dominated by the political opposition in the municipal council. At the metropolitan level (with a population above 10 million), the success of a two-tier system depends on the adequacy of the revenue base that can support the upper tier from the lower tier taxes, unless it is primarily grant-aided. The conclusion is that the Second ARC did not consider the implications of its suggestion for municipal tiering.   

It is noticed that, with few exceptions Gram Panchayats (GPs) and nagar panchayats (NPs) are in deficits. Municipalisation is primarily based on the census test of an urban area – population, density and non-agricultural activities – and the non-urban  areas are treated rural. Out of 28 states, the majority of States had GPs below the 7,000 population range (Alok, 2019) and only – Assam, Bihar, Kerala, and West Bengal - have large GPs (with more than 10,000 population). While Kerala GPs are viable, Assam, Bihar and West Bengal  GPs are not considered so. It is due to the creation of GPs and NPs mainly on census criteria that could be a proxy of fiscal needs, but the proxy of income potential is property tax valuation. Most states created GPs for reasons other than their viability. The general thinking, including that of the Second ARC, is that an increased GP-size would improve their viability. The future of GPs and NPs lie in making these as expenditure and tax authorities in the Amrit Kaal. 

Nature of Political Executive

The Second ARC has supported the idea of a political executive in the form of a directly elected executive mayor/chairperson with a fixed term and a cabinet from the elected councillors, mainly for consideration of political stability. On the other hand, the West Bengal system of a cabinet-type mayor/chairperson, introduced first in Kolkata and then extended to other local governments has been functioning well despite several local governments with a party in opposition to the ruling party in the state. Under both systems, the legislative and executive roles are separate. The real test of political uncertainty would be when there is a fractured council and a coalition cabinet, as in the case of the union (in the past) and the states in the country. Therefore, a single pattern of local political executive may not be desirable and the states might be given the choice to opt for either form. 

In the Amrit Kaal, there is a need for a political executive in the reform of local self-government where the municipalities and the panchayats have an official executive.

Staffing

The Second ARC suggested seven municipal staffing groups: (a) conservancy and waste management, (b) public health, (c) engineering, (d) revenue, (e) financial management, (f) audit, and (g) education and culture. There is scope to rationalise the groups further. For example- group (a) and (b) could be merged and sanitation might be added; a new group on basic health care could be created; the engineering group could be renamed as road and works; revenue group might be renamed as taxation and revenue; financial management and audit groups could be combined as internal audit is only an aid to management; and education and culture group could be renamed as primary education and culture- in all there could be six groups, viz. 

i. Public health and sanitation, conservancy, and waste management

ii. Basic health care services

iii. Roads and works

iv. Taxation and revenue

v. Financial management and internal audit, and

vi. Primary education and culture  

While these groups might be a useful guide for the municipal corporations and councils, the NPs might have only three groups: sanitation (under a sanitary inspector), works (under an overseer), and revenue and finance (under an accountant). The model for the NPs would apply to the GPs as well. This also gives an indication of a minimum survival budget for the NPs and GPs and their viability tested.

The Second ARC suggested that staff appointments are made by the municipalities themselves within statutory procedures and conditions; and the existing state directorates of municipal administration created to control municipal staff should be abolished-all in line with local self-government autonomy. The missing part is the staffing of the panchayats  on which the Second ARC was silent. In Amrit Kaal, the State Public Service Commission should be involved in the recruitment of staff for the local self-governments. 

Local self-governments’ representation in the state’s second chamber

The Second ARC has recommended revival of the legislative council in each state, with members drawn from the local self-governments on the pattern of the Rajya Sabha. It would comprise members elected by the local self-governments to strengthen the voice of local self-governments in the states’ second chamber. At the same time, it recommended removal of MPs and MLAs from membership of local councils. This is similar to NCRWC’s proposal, although some would argue that the Rajya Sabha type election would be made by political parties on a complex system of proportional representation; a better option might be, in the Amrit Kaal, to introduce an indirect election by the local self-governments themselves where local self-government interest would predominate. 

District Government

District planning to District Governance

The 2nd ARC made a bold proposal to introduce district government (DG) in India16 that was influenced by a similar devolution in Pakistan promulgated through Ordinance 200117. The significant reform of district administration in Pakistan was abolition of the Deputy Commissioner18 and distribution of his powers to the District Police Officer (DPO; earlier, superintendent of police), District Coordination Officer (DCO), district revenue officer and the judiciary. Provincial field administrations at the divisions and sub-divisions (taluks), above and below the district, have also been abolished. DPO and the DCO were made accountable, under the ordinance, to the elected zila nazim (district mayor), although the actual working of this relationship was not encouraging.

The range of such reforms has lessons for India where a DG has been advocated with the collector also acting as its secretary.19 However, such a move would violate the autonomy of the DG and a clear separation of the state and local sectors of governance is necessary.20 Second ARC thought it proper to keep the district collector to act in a dual capacity as the CEO of the DG, and heading state’s district administration at the same time. The position of the district Superintendent of Police (SP) is not clear, although the Second ARC suggested crime prevention, local intelligence and traffic policing in large cities be transferred to the local self-governments.    

Second ARC approached the proposal by transforming the DPC into the DG for all rural districts. The operational details were:21

• These would represent both urban and rural areas

• It would be a representative body for both rural and urban population

• DPC would be redundant with the formation of DG 

As for the MPC, the Second ARC kept the issue open. In Pakistan, urban districts have single-tier government for large cities. In India, future development, in this regard, might follow the Pakistan route, except for the mega-cities where a two-tier structure for the mega-cities might be relevant. These operational details have not been examined in India, but the Second ARC’s suggestion has been received with cautious optimism within government circles and among civil society. 

Integration of Panchayats and Municipalities

Although the Second ARC implied integration of panchayats and municipalities in its district government proposal, it shied away from suggesting a unified local self-government system bound by common objectives, a single list of functions and taxes, enjoying similar autonomy in decision-making and primary accountability to the voters. This aspect was glossed over under Pakistan’s Plan, 2001 where the municipalities were placed at the intermediate level in rural districts, - small municipalities were at the taluks and the large municipalities or corporations were placed at the tehsils- overseen by the district government. In the urban districts (mainly provincial capitals) the rural local government envisioned to end at the taluks and the urban district governments were required to coordinate the rural-urban provision of local services. The lowest formation of local government at the union council22 level with a population of around 20,000 included both rural and urban areas. 

The Second ARC recommended a Pakistan-style institutional integration only in the rural districts, leaving the urban districts and mega cities realising the difficulties of cohabitation by ‘attached’ local administration (panchayats) with a ‘detached’ local government system (municipalities).23 These difficulties include: (i) direct municipal access to the state and panchayats’ access to the state only through the collector, (ii) limited autonomy of the panchayats compared to the municipalities, (iii) absence of clarity of panchayat functions, (iv) inadequate panchayat revenues to provide a minimum level of civic services, and (v) tiering of the panchayats. In other words, the proposal can be considered, in the Amrit Kaal, as the first step to integrate the panchayats and municipalities in its proposed district government in a systemic sense.

Local Autonomy and Accountability

State Control Over Municipalities

The range of state control over municipalities, as listed by the Second ARC, includes the following forms:

• Seeking state approval for major municipal projects

• Power of a state to ask for documents

• Power of a state to inspect municipal offices and works

• Power of a state to issue directions to the municipalities

• Power of a state to suspend or cancel municipal resolutions

• Power of a state to dissolve or supersede the municipalities

Except for the last, other powers are exercised through the collector or even by the commissioner of a municipal corporation. The Second ARC recommended that:

a. Municipalities should have full autonomy over their delegated functions and activities, and

b. Any punitive state action against any municipality or its elected member must be approved by a municipal ombudsman.

These decisions were long overdue, but except for the power of dissolution or supersession, for which there are now constitutional restrictions by the 74th amendment, other powers have been sparingly used partly because of judicial oversight and partly because of adverse public opinion with adverse political consequences. The states also have extensive power of sanctioning municipal financial and other activities, e.g. contracts, budget, imposition of a new tax, expenditure above a limit, staff appointments etc. The Second ARC’s views have not covered these operational aspects.

Secondly, although the Commission has detailed similar restrictive powers over the panchayats 24, it did not make any recommendations on their continuation.

Accountability to Residents

Presently local self-governments are legally accountable to the state as their single parent; the situation has changed with their right of existence under the 73rd/74th amendments with the position of the state as a nurse. The accountability to residents includes: (a) periodic reporting of a local self-governments activities and accounts of the previous year, and their budget and an action plan for the coming year, (b) inviting suggestions for action to solve major problems facing the community, (c) redressal of citizens’ grievances, (d) seeking constituency approval of market borrowing, project location, and other major choices of the local self-government, if necessary through referendum, and (e) arranging direct interactions with the citizens at different locations as in the gram sabha meetings. Major restructuring of state-local relations is involved here, in the Amrit Kaal, requiring a thorough overhaul of the existing state laws on local self-government.

This puts the role of the gram sabha in perspective as a part of the accountability syndrome, but not an end in itself as both the amendments suggest and the Second ARC insists. The record of the gram sabha experiment has not been a success due to poor attendance partly because of the panchayats’ inability to provide a minimum level of civic services, and the high opportunity cost of attendance by the poor. The way to make the gram sabhas work, in the Amrit Kaal, is to improve local services, rather than to act as the page boy of states’ field administration. 

Conclusions

The conclusions are that despite some commendable recommendations in the past by commissions the major failure of “conventional wisdom” lies in taking the 73rd/74th amendments as its guide, which led it to take the function-finance and state-local relations issues in a permissive context. Instead, it should have been realised that the objective of the bills on local governments presented in Parliament during Rajiv Gandhi’s government were limited to ensuring regularity of local self-governments’ elections, in the belief that the newly elected local councillors would generate enough political pressure to empower local self-governments in terms of devolution of functions, finances and functionaries. This may happen in the long run “when we are all dead”, as Lord Keynes once quipped. 

Endnotes

1. India, Government of (2007).

2. This was done on the recommendations of the Joint Parliamentary Committee headed by K.P. Singh Deo (Lok Sabha 1992), by expanding the duties of the UFC through the 74th Amendment Act. Later on, identical provision was incorporated in the 73rd Amendment Act. 

3. It is interesting to note that tiering of panchayats was not mandated in the 73rd amendment, perhaps as recognition that it has not been successful so far. In other words the use of the term ‘tier’ now does not have a hierarchical relation among different units of panchayats as envisaged earlier.

4. Except for Kolkata, no state has made MPCs operational, although it is mandatory under article 243ZE. However in some states, legal provisions do exist to set up MPCs.

5. In South Africa, a new constitution was adopted in 1996 after extensive discussion with the stakeholders and inviting suggestions from international experts; this was followed by issuing a white paper on local government, and the framework law was passed afterwards. This was reviewed to devolve more taxes to the provinces and to install a two-tier metro-government. In contrast, the Indian Constitution literally lifted more than half of the 1935 colonial constitution (see, M, Brecher, 1969), including the contents of the 7th schedule that have been amended a number of times since independence for increased centralisation.

6. India, Government of (2001).

7. Veerappa Moily, the chairman of the Second ARC admitted that: “In most parts of the world the role of the local government remains confined to the delivery of civic services. The post amendment panchayats are functioning, like before, within the framework of what may be called ‘permissive functional domain’” (India 2007, p.350). 

8. Smith (2001).

9. India, Government of (2009).

10. India , Government of (2001).

11. Later on, two more dimensions i.e. ‘capacity building’, and ‘accountability’ were added in the MoPR thinking while ranking states on various indicates of devolution (see Alok, 2013 and 2014).

12. India, Government of (1937).

13. The other label is the term ‘union’ to mean central. Indian federation is a political reality, but is a constitutional imagination so long as it is based primarily on the list of functions and taxes in the 7th schedule.  

14. For inexplicable reasons the term ‘wards’ committee was used in the 74th amendment to denote a single ward or a group of wards or a zone; see, Sivaramakrishnan (2000). 

15. India, Government of (1957).

16. A plea for district government in India was earlier made by late Nirmal Mukarji; see, Mukarji, Nirmal (1986). 

17. Pakistan, Government of (2007).

18. In British India the District Officer was known as Deputy Commissioner in the non-regulated provinces (Punjab and Assam), while in the regulated provinces (e.g. in Bombay, Madras and Bengal) he was known as Collector or District Magistrate

19. Mukarji (1989) and Bandyopadhyay (2006).

20. Datta (1989). 

21. As explained by Veerappa Moily, the Chairman of the Second ARC; (see, India 2007, p.355).

22. Union council is the lowest level in the governanace stracture of Pakistan.

23. See, Datta (1994). 

24. See, India, Government of (2007).

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23. Smith, Lawrence D. (2001). Reform and Decentralization of Agricultural Services: A Policy Framework, Rome, FAO.