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Decentralisation, as required by the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, is examined in respect of village government, education, water supply, and urban development. Public institutions, like gram panchayats, are consistently distorted so that caste and gender dominances are preserved; for example, women are elected to panchayats and even to headships, but they are rarely allowed to stand for re-election, on the grounds that other women must have the opportunity too – which ensures that women do not gain experience of sustained periods in elected office. Secondly, substantial proportions of elected posts are filled uncontested, as male village elders and dominant castes persuade candidates to withdraw in favour of a single favoured one. Thirdly, elected local bodies receive ridiculously low public funding – Rs.100 per year – and legislation ensures that significant powers remain with the bureaucracy, whose officials prefer dealing with local Mr. Bigs and are not answerable to local elected representatives. Finally, public funds intended for the village poor are stolen at every stage. Even funding rules seem to ensure that the poorest benefit least; inevitably, the lurking threat of violence deters resistance.

There are, nevertheless, successes. Where inequalities within villages are not too severe, formal systems function better, and where there is involvement across caste, tribal, and communal lines – as detailed for parts of Uttaranchal – forest management improves (the authors note that satellite pictures showing 43 per cent forest cover in the state contradict the official 70 per cent). And in Mumbai, self-administering mohalla committees’ continuing dialogue with the police since the post-Ayodhya slaughter of 1992-3 has prevented much bloodshed.

The Indian state has apparently abandoned systemic improvement. In face of widespread failures in public-sector education, officials’ own children attend private schools, and the state even encourages the proliferation of private educational institutions, where standards are sometimes no better – and often worse – than those in the maintained sector. The book shows what a wretched education most Indian children receive, and how powerful are the forces against girls’ and young women’s education. The viciousness of the battle over Indian education, typical of caste societies, has interesting parallels with the English education system.

Wealthier groups in society, such as the corporate sector and the elites, are only too eager to suborn the state to their own interests. Papers on urban administration show how the current free-market frenzy is anything but free-market, with legislation centralising power ever more in Union bodies, who – including the Supreme Court - in turn seem to do everything the corporate sector wants. Examples include the casual sale, with planning permission included, of areas around cities to corporates, such as retail chains, whose destructive impact on local economies is known around the world. Much of the legislation undermines the political sphere, even at state level, by ceding authority to financial bodies international and domestic, despite the dire financial condition of many of the relevant corporates. Meanwhile the private sector avoids serious systemic improvement (one famous IT firm has abandoned its attempt to improve rural primary education, saying it cannot cope with the interconnected problems it discovered). That leaves the Indian state to abdicate its political responsibilities by throwing third-rate physical infrastructure at every problem, as if that is the solution.

It appears that the poor, without whom much of Indian life could not function, are permanently excluded. Even five years after these papers were prepared, controversy has erupted over Mumbai Corporation’s plan to let Indian and foreign companies compulsorily relocate a million inhabitants of Dharavi into high-rise apartments while the developers make billions from the forcibly-vacated land. The developers, ever averse to the public process, say that as the plan is a government one, planning permission is unnecessary.

The strongest papers here show the kinds of political will required. These include not just rehabilitating the urban poor but by involving them preventing the growth of the slums which keep Indian cities working, and also include political competition – for all the rhetoric of the Left parties, they are much more responsive to the public when they are not certain of re-election. Perhaps the main implication of this quietly authoritative book is that it will take us a very long time to accept that we have to share India with a billion other Indians.

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