Walmart and the other America

Exposing the rhetoric behind campaign for consumer rights

Panchayat minister wants control of urban local bodies

The national local elections

Bangladesh loses an opportunity to revive its most important local government—upazilla parishad—as competing national parties turn …

Local authorities in Delhi can use imaginative by-laws to clean up the city

Households must be rewarded on segregating waste and collectors, both formal and informal, should be trained

The road ahead

India with its deplorable rural roads can learn a lesson from Madagascar, which has successfully implemented a decentralised system of …

The third wind

The new challenges before Japan require leadership from not just the government and the corporate sector but also the civil society

The many-straw revolution

The curious case of panchayats in Delhi

The Nagar Swaraj Bill will usher in decentralised governance in the city state, but what happened to rural panchayats?

Why only panchayats?

Other local associations can also manage watersheds effectively

Streamlining autonomy

Panchayati raj ministry suggests amendments to local governance in north-eastern states

Karnataka legislature amends state Panchayati Raj Act

Machiavellian moves

Rajasthan's decision to bar illiterate people from contesting elections to panchayats is one more example of a state government dominating …

The next challenge

Bureaucrats pose a threat to the process

The impact

Kerala's income growth rate has increased, among several other positive signs

A long haul

Decentralisation in Kerala is the work of a persistent civil society

Sure cure: how to tackle India's undernutrition crisis in 10 steps

The finance ministry and the planning department can play an overarching role by ensuring health programmes get sufficient resources

Bridging the gap

Pressured by a highly active civil society, the Kerala state government is actually giving power to the people. The decentralisation theory has …

Shock treatment

Nightmarish laws and an insensitive government keeps thousands in the dark

Global grid

Whether it is Asia or Europe, countries find a new mantra: decentralise and electrify

Micropowerful

A microhydel project a day. Communities snatch the initiative from the government to electrify rural Nepal

Panchayat Raj Half a cheer for democracy

There is a great push to make panchayats the fulcrum of rural development in India. But 16 years after the third tier of government was created, …

Power the people

For the country where only 15 per cent of its population have access to electricity, Nepal has come a long way. It took 84 years to achieve power …

Creation of Greater Bangalore will strain the city's resources

Walk the village talk

After raising the political profile of village councils, government wants to downsize them