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Decentralisation and the Changing Geographies of Political Marginalisation in Kerala

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  • Glyn Williams

    (Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield S10 1TN, England)

  • Binitha V Thampi

    (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Chennai, India)

Abstract

One of the benefits often claimed for ‘moving’ the state closer to people through the institutional reforms of democratic decentralisation is an improvement in the inclusion of politically marginalised groups. Decentralisation promises to deliver both the closer physical presence of centres of government and the formalisation of practices of representation at the grassroots. These changes in turn are expected to provide opportunities for historically marginalised groups to improve their associational capacities, and to gain recognition as rights-bearing citizens. This idea is examined through the experience of Kerala, which has one of the most thorough programmes of democratic decentralisation within India. Decentralisation has indeed provided new pathways to engage with local government. However, attempts to ‘rescale’ the state to the local level have also reshaped existing institutional channels for representation, political discourses, and everyday state practices, in ways which produce new microgeographies of exclusion. This paper highlights the importance of these everyday experiences of marginalisation for programmes of state reform. It argues that if they are ignored, decentralisation risks reproducing narrow forms of majoritarian localism, and its potential to contribute to building substantive democracy will be lost.

Suggested Citation

  • Glyn Williams & Binitha V Thampi, 2013. "Decentralisation and the Changing Geographies of Political Marginalisation in Kerala," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(6), pages 1337-1357, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:45:y:2013:i:6:p:1337-1357
    DOI: 10.1068/a45218
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Glyn Williams & Binitha V. Thampi & D. Narayana & Sailaja Nandigama & Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, 2011. "Performing Participatory Citizenship -- Politics and Power in Kerala's Kudumbashree Programme," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(8), pages 1261-1280, July.
    2. Patrick Heller, 2001. "Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre," Politics & Society, , vol. 29(1), pages 131-163, March.
    3. David Mosse, 2010. "A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, Inequality and Power," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(7), pages 1156-1178.
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    Cited by:

    1. Binitha V. Thampi & Aarti Kawlra, 2019. "An Experiment in Feminist Technology in Local Governance: Revisiting the Question of ‘Invited Spaces’ of Participation in Kerala," Review of Development and Change, , vol. 24(2), pages 205-223, December.
    2. Fischer, Harry W. & Ali, Syed Shoaib, 2019. "Reshaping the public domain: Decentralization, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and trajectories of local democracy in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 147-158.

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