This book examines the renewed interest and commitment that countries across the world have shown in recent decades towards adopting models of decentralising, or "downsizing" the state, and moving towards more participatory models of government.
It examines systems of decentralised development such as self-managing co-operatives from a global and comparative perspective with a focus on developing countries. Drawing on examples from Kerala and a few other states in India, as well as Cuba, Bangladesh and South Africa among other countries, the book offers critical perspectives on the positive impacts of these experiments and the promises these offer for the future. It discusses the challenges of implementing these models, how well these work in coordination with the civil society and the state, issues of transparency and democratic oversight as well as corruption and capture of power due to entrenched structures of inequality. The volume analyses welfare and development models and self-management interventionsin countering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also looks at the meritsand demerits of decentralisation in countering the global socioeconomic and environmental crisis and the rise of authoritarian populism in many countries.
The book will be of interest to students and researchers of development studies, political science, business, community development, social justice as well as of co-operative management programmes. It will also appeal to students of political economy as well as development professionals, think tanks and policymakers.
1. Introduction: Experiments of Deepening Democracy Through
Decentralized Governance: An Overview Part I - Concepts and Visions: Some
Reflections
2. Embedded Democracy
3. Socialist Construction and Commoning
4.
Thinking Beyond Capitalism
5. Covid 19 Context in India and Working Towards
Alternative Paradigms
6. Citizenship and Social Suffering in the Context of
Covid 19 Part II - Decentralized Governance and Development in Comparative
Perspective
7. Roles of NGOs, State and For-Profit Organizations in
Improving Maternal and Child Sector in Bangladesh: Towards a Division of
Labour
8. Comparative Notes on the Pros and Cons of Decentralization in the
Context of the Corona Crisis
9. The Cure Remains a Symptom: Sub-National
Government, Democracy and Development in South Africa
10. Democratic
Decentralization in Kerala: A Critique of Recent Experience
11. The Capacity
Conundrum, Decentralization and Local Governance: How Kerala Tackles It
12.
Employment Creation at Decentralized Level Through Construction of Niche
Structure and Promotion of Self-Organization Part III - Experiments in
Cooperativism, Decentralized Governance and Self-Management
13. Workers
Self-Management in Argentina: Contesting Neo-Liberalism by Occupying
Companies, Creating Cooperatives, and Recuperating Autogestión
14. Factory
Takeovers for Production Under Self-Management: Three Examples From Europe
15. Cooperativism to Manage Covid 19
16. From Agricultural Cooperatives to
Farmer Producing Companies Analyzing the Transition of Cooperativism in
India Part IV - Conclusion
Joseph Tharamangalam holds the Ayyankali Chair at Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala, India. He is also Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Canada and Adjunct Professor of International Development Studies at St. Marys University, Halifax, Canada. He has published extensively on agrarian struggles, human development, decentralisation and co-operativism in India, Cuba and elsewhere.
Jos Chathukulam is former Professor of Sri. Ramakrishna Hegde Chair Professor of Decentralization and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) Bengaluru, India. Currently, Chathukulam is the Director of Centre for Rural Management (CRM), Kottayam, Kerala, India. He has done extensive research on decentralisation and local governance across Indian states, Latin America and Africa. He is an expert of 'Devolution Index', which is used to compare the rate of decentralisation across the Indian states.
