Peoples Planning in Kerala

People's Plan Campaign, held in 1996 in Kerala State, was an experiment in decentralisation of powers to local governments with focus on local planning. Kerala State lying in the south-west part of India. In India's Ninth Five-Year Plan, each state within the national federation was expected to draws up its own annual plan and the Peoples Plan was an offshoot of it.

In the beginning of the ninth plan, the Government of Kerala took a bold decision to devolve 35% of the state development budget down from a centralized bureaucracy to local governments where local people could determine and implement their own development priorities under the People’s Plan Campaign (PPC).

Decentralization is, basically, the process of devolving the functions and resources of the State from the centre to the elected governments at the lower levels so as to facilitate greater direct participation by the citizens in governance. Peoples Planning is an attempt in this direction.

The Government of India amended its Constitution in 1993 to have a third tier of governance which paved way for passing conformity legislation in all the States including Kerala. The Congress-led government, which was in rule in the State, came up with two bills - Kerala Panchayat Raj Bill and Kerala Municipality Bill - for conformity legislation. In the ensuing public debate, pro-decentralization thinkers and leaders from all political parties including the Indian National Congress, lobbied for introducing amendments for a better legislation on decentralization. Intellectuals and non-governmental organisations took the lead in organising public opinion. Finally, an amended version of the bills were passed in the legislative assembly.

Later, elections to the local governments were conducted by the Congress led government under the Chief Ministership of A.K. Antony. Sixty percentage of the local governments were won by the then opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidates while the remaining 40% went to the United Democratic Front (UDF) candidates.

In 1996 on assuming power, the ruling left democratic party took the agenda of decentralization as the first priority item. The Government of Kerala decided to devolve 33% of the plan budget of the state for preparation of development projects formulated by the local governments at the village, block and district levels. People’s needs were assessed through meetings of the grama sabhas (lowest village consistency) with the village panchayat making it into a plan, coordinated and vetted at the block level and approved at the district level by a District Planning Committee constituted to assist the panchayats. This was the ‘People’s Campaign for Ninth Plan’, popularly known as ‘People’s Planning’ (Janakeeya Aasoothranam). There was much euphoria and expectation.

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