Browsing by Author "Deshingkar, Priya"

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Grounding the State: Poverty, Inequality and the Politics of Governance in India's Panchayats
(2003) Johnson, Craig; Deshingkar, Priya; Start, Daniel
"Decentralization is commonly defended on the grounds that it will bring government closer to people, thereby creating political structures that are more transparent and accountable to poor and marginal groups in society. However, a problem that is well-recognized in the decentralization literature is that the devolution of power will not necessarily improve the performance and accountability of local government. Indeed, in many cases, decentralization simply empowers local elites to capture a larger share of public resources, often at the expense of the poor. Reflecting on these relatively long-standing problems, an important strand of scholarship has argued that central government can play a central role in counterbalancing the forces that tend to disfavour the poor. In this paper, we aim to inform this scholarship by reflecting on the interface between local government and local people in two Indian States: Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Madhya Pradesh (MP). Drawing upon 12 months of primary research, we argue that although the Government of AP has not devolved power to the extent that proponents of decentralization would have liked, its populist approach to certain forms of poverty reduction has empowered the poor in ways that the more ambitious decentralization agenda in MP has not. This, we argue, is due in part to the fact that MPs decentralization process failed to challenge the well-entrenched power of the village chiefs, the sarpanches. But the discrepancy can also be explained in terms of the historical evolution of 'development populism' in AP. In particular, we argue that the strong performance of programmes aimed at subsidizing rice for low income households and providing credit to womens 'self-help groups' (SHGs) is part of the State governments wider political strategy of enhancing and maintaining electoral support among women, scheduled castes and the poor."
People on the Move: New Policy Challenges for Increasingly Mobile Populations
(2004) Deshingkar, Priya; Anderson, Edward
"Population mobility within poor countries has increased worldwide as better roads and communication networks offer people employment opportunities in distant locations. High levels of mobility either within rural or between rural and urban areas help to strengthen the livelihoods of those mainly dependent on selling their labour, and in some areas mobility seems to have more than compensated for declining returns from the commons. Yet official statistics continue to overlook this phenomenon and governments remain reluctant to support people on the move. The case of India offers new policy opportunities in a context where poverty reduction programmes have hitherto been premised on the notion that populations are sedentary."
Support for Migrant Workers: The Missing Link in India's Development
(2008) Deshingkar, Priya; Khandelwal, Rajiv; Farrington, John
"India has around 100 million circular migrant workers, placing its experience almost on a par with Chinas. Yet migration in India faces an almost total absence of forward-thinking policies. Rejecting policies to 'keep them in rural areas' as unrealistic, this paper identifies the kinds of migrant support that are needed if migrants are to continue adding to economic growth as they currently do, but at lower personal cost than at present."