Democratic decentralisation is the process of devolving the functions and resources of the state from the centre to the elected representatives at the lower levels so as to facilitate greater direct participation by the citizens in governance. The basic principle governing the devolution of functions and resources should be that of subsidiarity: what can be done best at a particular level should be done at that level and not at higher levels. All that can optimally done at the lowest level should be reserved to that level. Only the residual should be passed to the higher levels. The different tiers while functioning in ways complementary to each other, should have functional, financial and administrative autonomy. The concept of democratic decentralisation proposed here also requires a movement beyond representative democracy. Appropriate institutions and opportunities but also necessary capabilities have to be created at the lower levels in order for ordinary citizens to participate in the decision making, implementation, monitoring and sharing of the benefits and responsibilities of governmental activities. Such popular participation would make the elected representatives continuously accountable to the citizens and would facilitate a transparent administration. The description just presented closely corresponds with the principles of decentralisation enunciated by the Committee on Decentralisation of Power (popularly known as Sen Committee, after its late chairperson Dr. Satyabrata Sen) appointed by the Government of Kerala: autonomy, 2 subsidiarity, role clarity, complementarity, uniformity, people's participation, accountability and transparency. The legislative and administrative changes that are being introduced in the state to empower the local self-governments have been guided by these principles. The legislation is being backed up by a powerful Campaign to mobilise the people for democratic decentralisation. Fundamental reforms cannot be merely legislated. Legislation remains empty phrases unless powerful movements oversee their implementation. Legislation is necessary but not sufficient for decentralisation. Kerala's success in land reform reinforces our argument. The laws were successfully implemented because they were backed by a powerful peasant movement. This political conviction has given rise to a fascinating and unique experiment in social mobilisation for decentralisation. What are the salient features of Kerala's decentralisation programme that makes it unique? In Section II we shall present a fairly detailed discussion of the campaign designed to promote maximum participation, transparency and scientific objectivity in plan formulation and implementation. The effectiveness of these mechanisms in achieving the objectives of democratic decentralisation are critically evaluated in Section III. In the present …
{"title":"Campaign for Democratic Decentralisation in Kerala","authors":"T. Isaac","doi":"10.2307/3517982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3517982","url":null,"abstract":"Democratic decentralisation is the process of devolving the functions and resources of the state from the centre to the elected representatives at the lower levels so as to facilitate greater direct participation by the citizens in governance. The basic principle governing the devolution of functions and resources should be that of subsidiarity: what can be done best at a particular level should be done at that level and not at higher levels. All that can optimally done at the lowest level should be reserved to that level. Only the residual should be passed to the higher levels. The different tiers while functioning in ways complementary to each other, should have functional, financial and administrative autonomy. The concept of democratic decentralisation proposed here also requires a movement beyond representative democracy. Appropriate institutions and opportunities but also necessary capabilities have to be created at the lower levels in order for ordinary citizens to participate in the decision making, implementation, monitoring and sharing of the benefits and responsibilities of governmental activities. Such popular participation would make the elected representatives continuously accountable to the citizens and would facilitate a transparent administration. The description just presented closely corresponds with the principles of decentralisation enunciated by the Committee on Decentralisation of Power (popularly known as Sen Committee, after its late chairperson Dr. Satyabrata Sen) appointed by the Government of Kerala: autonomy, 2 subsidiarity, role clarity, complementarity, uniformity, people's participation, accountability and transparency. The legislative and administrative changes that are being introduced in the state to empower the local self-governments have been guided by these principles. The legislation is being backed up by a powerful Campaign to mobilise the people for democratic decentralisation. Fundamental reforms cannot be merely legislated. Legislation remains empty phrases unless powerful movements oversee their implementation. Legislation is necessary but not sufficient for decentralisation. Kerala's success in land reform reinforces our argument. The laws were successfully implemented because they were backed by a powerful peasant movement. This political conviction has given rise to a fascinating and unique experiment in social mobilisation for decentralisation. What are the salient features of Kerala's decentralisation programme that makes it unique? In Section II we shall present a fairly detailed discussion of the campaign designed to promote maximum participation, transparency and scientific objectivity in plan formulation and implementation. The effectiveness of these mechanisms in achieving the objectives of democratic decentralisation are critically evaluated in Section III. In the present …","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132062348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper seeks to make a theoretical critique of the ongoing politics of democratic decentralisation in Kerala by problematising why it largely remains a constitutional reform of development administration stabilising the status quo rather than leading to alternate institutional development, rise of people-centred politics and the entailing empowerment oriented praxis triggering struggles over access to, and distribution of critical resources, and initiating structural changes in the local power relations ? It is not altogether unexpected, for anything basically different could not have happened theoretically under the contemporary socio-economic processes and power relations. Nevertheless, what is theoretically unfeasible are to be politically confronted with adequate preparations of mass mobilisation. How do we explain the lack of political will in the society for doing it ? The paper first examines the historically contingent context of expectations about the positive results of democratic decentralisation in Kerala. It then moves on to the contemporary socio-economic scenario for explaining the so-called unexpected plight of the decentralisation politics in the state. Identifying the inadequacy of the people's knowledge about the concepts of decentralisation as one of the major impediments of political development, the paper highlights the debating perspectives to show what the people should have been enabled to learn. The paper argues that lack of knowledge made popular consciousness eclectic and depoliticised. Reviewing the state's experience of the politics of decentralised planning, the paper is concluded with the argument that nothing more can be
{"title":"When A Coalition of Conflicting Interests Decentralises: A Theoretical Critique of Decentralisation Politics in Kerala","authors":"Rajan Gurukkal","doi":"10.2307/3517984","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3517984","url":null,"abstract":"The paper seeks to make a theoretical critique of the ongoing politics of democratic decentralisation in Kerala by problematising why it largely remains a constitutional reform of development administration stabilising the status quo rather than leading to alternate institutional development, rise of people-centred politics and the entailing empowerment oriented praxis triggering struggles over access to, and distribution of critical resources, and initiating structural changes in the local power relations ? It is not altogether unexpected, for anything basically different could not have happened theoretically under the contemporary socio-economic processes and power relations. Nevertheless, what is theoretically unfeasible are to be politically confronted with adequate preparations of mass mobilisation. How do we explain the lack of political will in the society for doing it ? The paper first examines the historically contingent context of expectations about the positive results of democratic decentralisation in Kerala. It then moves on to the contemporary socio-economic scenario for explaining the so-called unexpected plight of the decentralisation politics in the state. Identifying the inadequacy of the people's knowledge about the concepts of decentralisation as one of the major impediments of political development, the paper highlights the debating perspectives to show what the people should have been enabled to learn. The paper argues that lack of knowledge made popular consciousness eclectic and depoliticised. Reviewing the state's experience of the politics of decentralised planning, the paper is concluded with the argument that nothing more can be","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115002399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
On one level translating Saadat Hasan Manto into English is not very difficult. As a storyteller he never retreats from the complexity of lived experience to find easy refuge in political posturing or moral and religious sermonising. That is why the style of his best stories, devoid of all metaphoric excess and sentimental inflections, is always precise, bare-boned and conversational. Most of his narrators are either hard-drinking and whoring men who live in cities which have neither space for graciousness nor time for romance, or are men who have seen so much horror that they can only offer a disenchanted and cynical vision of the world. Their descriptions, ironic and coldeyed, seem to be authentic versions of life at a particular historical moment, because they have the feel of the real and the pitilessness of stone. It should not, therefore, be impossible for a translator to find verbal and cultural equivalents for his stories in English. Structurally, Manto's tales are idiosyncratic but should not make a translator anxious. Manto often disrupts the linear and chronological flow of his stories by using the same kind of parenthetical interruptions, digressions or elisions that are common to all ordinary conversations. Since he is not conducting political and ethical arguments, he doesn't worry about constructing well-argued paragraphs, whose internal coherence is essential to convince us of the truth of some abstract proposition. Instead, with the fine cunning of a master storyteller, at times he disrupts the narrative to increase suspense, or breaks the story's spell to remind us that life always frustrates our longing for completion; at other times, he offers different narrative possibilities within the same story and invites us to puzzle them out, or merely writes a fragment which emerges from silence
从某种程度上讲，把Saadat Hasan Manto翻译成英语并不难。作为一个讲故事的人，他从不回避生活经历的复杂性，在政治姿态或道德和宗教说教中寻找轻松的避难所。这就是为什么他最好的故事的风格，没有任何隐喻的过度和感伤的变化，总是精确的，赤裸的和对话。他的大部分叙述者要么是酒鬼和妓女，他们生活在城市里，既没有空间给仁慈，也没有时间给浪漫，要么是看过太多恐怖的人，他们只能提供一种幻灭和愤世嫉俗的世界观。他们的描写，讽刺和冷酷，似乎是在一个特定的历史时刻生活的真实版本，因为他们有真实的感觉和无情的石头。因此，对于译者来说，为他的英语故事找到语言和文化上的对等点应该不是不可能的。从结构上讲，曼托的故事与众不同，但不应让译者感到焦虑。曼托经常使用在所有普通对话中常见的插入式打断、离题或省略，从而打乱故事的线性和时间顺序。因为他没有进行政治和伦理的论证，所以他并不担心构造论点充分的段落，这些段落的内在连贯性对于说服我们相信某些抽象命题的真实性至关重要。相反，他以一个讲故事大师的精湛技巧，不时打断叙述，增加悬念，或者打破故事的魔咒，提醒我们，生活总是挫败我们对完成的渴望;在其他时候，他在同一个故事中提供不同的叙事可能性，并邀请我们去弄清楚它们，或者只是写一个从沉默中出现的片段
{"title":"The Politics of Translation: Manto's Partition Stories and Khalid Hasan's English Version","authors":"Alok Bhalla","doi":"10.2307/3518123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3518123","url":null,"abstract":"On one level translating Saadat Hasan Manto into English is not very difficult. As a storyteller he never retreats from the complexity of lived experience to find easy refuge in political posturing or moral and religious sermonising. That is why the style of his best stories, devoid of all metaphoric excess and sentimental inflections, is always precise, bare-boned and conversational. Most of his narrators are either hard-drinking and whoring men who live in cities which have neither space for graciousness nor time for romance, or are men who have seen so much horror that they can only offer a disenchanted and cynical vision of the world. Their descriptions, ironic and coldeyed, seem to be authentic versions of life at a particular historical moment, because they have the feel of the real and the pitilessness of stone. It should not, therefore, be impossible for a translator to find verbal and cultural equivalents for his stories in English. Structurally, Manto's tales are idiosyncratic but should not make a translator anxious. Manto often disrupts the linear and chronological flow of his stories by using the same kind of parenthetical interruptions, digressions or elisions that are common to all ordinary conversations. Since he is not conducting political and ethical arguments, he doesn't worry about constructing well-argued paragraphs, whose internal coherence is essential to convince us of the truth of some abstract proposition. Instead, with the fine cunning of a master storyteller, at times he disrupts the narrative to increase suspense, or breaks the story's spell to remind us that life always frustrates our longing for completion; at other times, he offers different narrative possibilities within the same story and invites us to puzzle them out, or merely writes a fragment which emerges from silence","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124055525","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Political Economy of Communalism: Some Observations on the Contemporary Political Discourse in India","authors":"V. Ananth","doi":"10.2307/3518125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3518125","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115006630","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Brahmanical Ideology, Regional Identities and the Construction of Early India","authors":"B. P. Sahu","doi":"10.2307/3518122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3518122","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134086017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"1930: Turning Point in the Participation of Women in the Freedom Struggle","authors":"M. Chatterjee","doi":"10.2307/3518124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3518124","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122059124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Collective Mastery in Kerala","authors":"V. Prashad, T. Isaac, R. Franke","doi":"10.2307/3518298","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3518298","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123268370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Once Again on the Falling Rate of Profit","authors":"K. K. Theckedath, R. Bellofiore","doi":"10.2307/3518299","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3518299","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"101 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122269590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The 'Modern' in Modern Indian History","authors":"B. Rao","doi":"10.2307/3518296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/3518296","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":185982,"journal":{"name":"Social Scientist","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2001-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121496339","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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