Actor Padmapriya bats for local bodies

THRISSUR: Actor Padmapriya Janakiraman on Monday said that decentralization initiatives would become more effective when local bodies have enhanced say on the schemes being implemented by the line departments in their areas.

Padmapriya, who also leads research in Panchayat finance and decentralization at the NGO Accountability Initiative, was here to participate in a two-day national seminar to share decentralization experience of different states held at the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) here.

According to her there appeared to be lot of overlapping between the schemes of the local bodies and line departments. The local bodies often do not even get to know which are the schemes being envisaged and implemented by the various line departments, she said.

Padmapriya said in some states the local bodies are being forced to spend much of their allocation on the salary of the staff of the line departments, even though they do not have any administrative control over them.

She said the local bodies should have the powers to monitor the schemes being implemented in their area. They should be able to track the amounts spent in their areas under various developmental schemes.

Some of the local bodies have been able to perform remarkably well in spite of the limitations they were facing , and this was true of states like Kerala and Karnataka. But most of them had enormous capabilities to mobilise own resources and they were not crippled by the vagaries in the allocations from the state and central governments, Padmapriya said.

According to her Accountability Initiative was engaged in tracking allocations to the local bodies and the manner in which those funds were being expended.

KILA Director Prof P P Balan inaugurated the seminar which is being organised by LOGIN (Local Government Initiative), the NGO which is the collective of the experts and NGOs in Asia who support the decentralisation programmes.

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