Citizen Participation in Village Assembly Meetings and Service Delivery: Evidence from Karnataka
R Manjula
Abstract
The 73rd Constitutional Amendment makes a provision for the village assembly (Ward and Grama Sabha) meetings to enable citizens to participate and present their needs and preferences to improve decentralised governance. Karnataka, being a pioneer in democratic decentralisation, has initiated reforms in the design of these institutional mechanisms so that people could participate and prioritise their needs, select beneficiaries and monitor the progress of programmes. The existing literature shows that the citizen participation in the Ward and Grama Sabhas has been low and uneven. The literature on who participates in these meetings, and implications of participation on service delivery is also scanty. To address this gap in the literature, this paper examines the social status of the participants in the village assembly meetings and the implications of their participation on service delivery. The study objectives are explored with the help of primary data on participation in village assembly meetings collected from 154 Grama Panchayats spread across nine districts in Karnataka. It also explores the type of households participating in village assembly meetings. An attempt is also made to relate performance in service delivery with citizens’ participation in village assembly meetings.