Committees and Commissions in India 1975: A Concept's Project (Concepts in Communication Informatics and Librarianship-49)

Developing countries in Asia and Africa are currently re-inventing and restructuring their institutional mechanisms towards decentralized and participatory systems, against a background of rising expectations and broken promises. The crucial questions being asked everywhere are. Through what mechanisms and incentives can we activate and accelerate the planning and development functions at various area levels in the Third World countries, characterized by numerous development and capacity constraints, financial crunch and political compulsions? Again with the diminishing development intervention from the state, following the new economic reforms, liberalization and globalization, how are we to achieve the development goals of equity with growth on a sustainable basis? This book tackles these and related questions in the context of a two-way process of planning and development, governed by the principles of decentralization, local autonomy and people's participation. It lays down the concepts and principles of decentralized multilevel planning, focussing on the dynamic role of institutional and participatory structures, information dissemination and exchange as well as social and cultural values, sets out critical lessons from country experiences and discusses the vital issues in capacitation and human resource development. It elaborates on a new and viable alternative development paradigm, which combines the top-down and bottom-up approaches emerging in many countries of the world. The volume has both practical and academic value. Besides clarifying concepts and principles, it provides development practitioners with guidance on how to move forward in promoting multilevel planning with people's participation.