Tuesday, 30 May 2023, at 3:45 pm IST onwards

The weaknesses of urban local bodies have long been a concern in the discourses on local governance and service delivery, and the need for capacity building has become almost axiomatic. Despite various policy and programmatic interventions for capacity building in the last decades, the persistence of this situation reveals that these efforts have had limited effect. On the other hand, despite substantial regional and temporal variations, and many weaknesses, the capacities of Panchayats appear to be relatively better in many important aspects. Much of this can be traced to the concerted capacity-building efforts from 2004. This talk will examine signal initiatives and processes undertaken then at the national and state levels, the modalities for the involvement of non-state actors, and the possibilities of using similar approaches for building ULB capacities.

Speaker:

Kajri Misra is the Dean of the School of Human Settlements of XIM University, Bhubaneswar. Her research interests are local governance and participatory planning for sustainability and gender inclusion in both rural and urban contexts. Currently, she is exploring professional needs for sustainable urban development and institutional structures and processes for building capacities for spatial planning.

This is the hundred and fifty-nine (159) in a series of Urban Workshops planned by the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), New Delhi and Centre for Policy Research (CPR). These workshops seek to provoke public discussion on issues relating to the development of the city and try to address all its facets including its administration, culture, economy, society and politics. For further information, please contact: Stéphanie Tawa Lama of CSH at tawalama@ehess.fr, Mukta Naik at mukta@cprindia.org or Marie-Hélène Zerah at marie-helene.zerah@ird.fr