On Federalism and Reform in India
نویسنده
چکیده
Introduction Fifty years after Gandhi wrote the words above, India embarked on what may prove to be one of the most significant changes in its structures of governance, the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India, which give local governments, rural and urban, a legal status that they formerly lacked. If these institutional reforms towards greater decentralization of governance do support the more efficient provision of public or collective goods to the majority of Indians, they will be as significant as the decentralization of the provision of private goods, through the relaxation of industrial controls and other deregulation, that has been the centrepiece of Indian economic reform since 1991. While the impetus for the changes in governance has been independent of the factors that precipitated the current economic reforms, the two sets of reforms are related, both broadly in terms of the general spirit of decentralization of control over economic activity, and more specifically in the area of government finances, which have been of concern from a macroeconomic perspective, and which will be a crucial aspect to ensure the success of the decentralization of governance. In this paper, I review the developments embodied in the two constitutional amendments, and relate them to broader reform issues.
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