Conference Program in English Program in Malayalam Frontline Articles on the Conference
Notes from the Field: The International Conference on Democratic
Decentralization
By Richard W. Franke: Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 34(xx):xx-yy
From 23 to 28 May 2000, 2,762 academics, officials, and activists participated in the International Conference on Democratic Decentralization, held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The conference was organized by the Kerala State Planning Board as part of an attempt to evaluate the experience of four years of the People’s Campaign for the 9th Plan, Kerala’s extensive experiment in local democracy and decentralized planning as mechanisms for development. The large number and range of participants made the conference much more than a local evaluation, as India-wide and international comparisons were supplemented by extensive theoretical discussions, particularly in the academic portion of the conference. While most participants came from Kerala, several attended from other Indian states and more than 30 foreign participants came from the US, Canada, Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, Sri Lanka, England, and Sweden. The Cuban and Vietnamese ambassadors to India attended the entire conference and made comments about their nations’ decentralization policies at the final plenary session.
The conference was actually three conferences in one. A two-day "National Seminar on Local Self-Government Institutions" featured economists, government officers, and some Kerala State Planning Board organizers from the People’s Campaign. A 3-day "Academic Session" heard 55 papers on various aspects of decentralization in Kerala and internationally. Field trips were also arranged for non-Kerala participants to several villages where exemplary projects had been carried out. A "Public Seminar" and a two-day "Public Session" included more than 200 papers in Malayalam by local activists and village leaders who shared information on their experiences in the following topic areas:
| 1. Spatial Dimensions of Decentralized Planning |
11. Institutions of Transparent Administration |
21. Energy Projects in the Local Plans |
| 2. New Approaches to Drinking Water Supply |
12. The Role of Mass Organizations and Other Voluntary
Organizations |
22. Decentralization and Health Services |
| 3. Soil and Water Management Projects in Local Plans |
13. Narratives of Experiences of Elected Women Representatives |
23. Sanitation |
| 4. Watershed Development Programmes |
14. Women and Self-Help Groups |
24. Improving the Quality of Education |
| 5. Rejuvenating Paddy Cultivation in Kerala |
15. Women Status Studies |
25. Towards a Cultural Renaissance |
| 6. Vegetables and Other Crops |
16. The Elected Representatives, Resource Persons, and Volunteer
Technical Corps |
26. Total Housing Progams |
| 7. Animal Husbandry and Homestead Farming |
17. Training |
27. Resource Mobilization, Local Priorities, and Physical
Achievements |
| 8. Fisheries: Culture and Harvesting | 18. Employees and Officers of the Government, |
28. Local-Level Planning and Weaker Sections (low-caste
communities) |
| 9. From Grama Sabha (Village Assemblies) to Neighborhood Groups, |
19. The Beacon Villages and Towns |
29. Electronic Governance |
| 10. Beneficiary Committees |
20. Industrial and Energy Planning |
The Malayalam papers have been published in a 9-volume series for use as an experience-sharing mechanism for local planners and activists. Interested researchers can request the Malayalam papers from the State Planning Board (SPB). A single volume with abstracts of these papers in English is available from the SPB. The English abstracts volume also includes a list of current SPB publications and videos on the Kerala campaign (a few are in English) and a chronology of the major events of the past four years. The papers from the Academic Session – all in English – may be published as a collected volume in the near future, but individual papers or sets of the mimeographed copies can be requested now from the SPB. The conference was also an occasion for the release of a book on the Campaign: Local democracy and development: people’s campaign for decentralized planning in Kerala, by T. M. Thomas Isaac, with Richard W. Franke. At present this book is available only in South Asia, but an international edition is expected. For information on the South Asian edition, contact LeftWord Books, 12 Rajendra Prasad Road, New Delhi 110 001, India, email: leftword@vsnl.com. For information about the conference and the conference papers, write to: Conference on Democratic Decentralisation, Kerala State Planning Board, Pattom, Thiruvananthapuram 695 004, Kerala, India or email: kspb@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in. Put "Democratic Decentralization Conference" in the subject line. You can access the conference program at http://chss2.montclair.edu/anthropology/frankemayconference2000.htm. For the paper presented at the conference by Richard W. Franke and Barbara H. Chasin, go to http://chss2.montclair.edu/anthropology/keralaexperiment.htm .
For a report on a previous international Kerala conference in 1994, see BCAS 26(3):72-73 or go to http://chss2.montclair.edu/anthropology/frankenotesfromfield.htm .
Conference Program in English Program in Malayalam Frontline Articles on the Conference
Questions or comments about this page: goscinskis@mail.montclair.edu