Understanding peoples’ participation in urban local government in West Bengal

ABSTRACT

In light of the potential of the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act to reinforce participatory practices in Indian cities, this paper, based on field observation from two municipalities of West Bengal, examines the nature of peoples’ participation and identifies the socio-economic factors determining effective participation. It finds that in West Bengal, municipalities’ failures to set up ward committees, the highly partisan nature of the ward committee, and non-occurrence of ward committee meetings made the general population disinterested in utilising these available democratic forum. Elected representatives became the only link between citizens and the municipal administration, and their representation did not necessarily result in effective participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Aid – Accountability
• Civil society – Participation
• Governance and public policy
• South Asia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maumita Das is a Lecturer in the Department of Economics, Barrackpore Rastraguru Surendranath College, Kolkata, India.

Soumyadip Chattopadhyay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and Politics, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.

Notes

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