The Great Indian Tamasha

1. Introduction The global trend towards decentralization of government focuses attention on local government as an institution responsible for economic development and addressing poverty and social exclusion. The 74th Amendment to the Indian Constitution has followed this pattern towards decentralization to local government. As a result, urban local bodies across India are creating mechanisms for local planning and development, with greater powers than previously. The process offers mega-cities the potential to develop their own economic and 'quality of life' policies, integrating them in global city networks; or leading to exclusionary policies, prioritizing the requirements of the elite at the cost of the majority. Experiences with decentralization show that this process does not ensure greater responsiveness to citizens' issues. Whether local government becomes more accountable depends on the strength of local political processes and the influence of civil society o...

1.   What is Poverty? The world poverty means different things to different people. Clearly poverty is a condition in which people have inadequate incomes , but it is hard to draw an exact line between the poor and the not poor. Poverty can be defined in many different ways, Some attempt to reduce it to numbers, while others argue that more ambiguous definition must be used. Economists have therefore devised certain techniques, which provide the official definition of poverty.            Poverty was officially defined in the 1960s in the United States . The federal government set the poverty line in the 1960s based on income and family size. Researchers estimated that families spent about one-third of their incomes on food, so they calculated how much families spent on food and multiplied those numbers by three to find the minimum amounts that families needed to get by. The numbers are adjusted annually for inflation, but ...