Friday, April 18, 2025

Rethinking Participation in Urban Governance: Kerala at the Crossroads

Is participation real or ritualistic?

In Kerala, the answer is not straightforward.

The decentralisation experiment, with its celebrated Grama Sabhas and three-tier governance structure, has earned global admiration. But does this machinery deliver genuine democratic participation—or does it merely simulate it? Let us explore that question by revisiting global theories of participation, mapping Kerala’s practices on those scales, and imagining bold futures powered by data, sensors, and civic intelligence.

At the heart of the debate lies a deeper inquiry: what does it mean to “participate” in governance? Is it merely the right to be informed or consulted, or does it mean shaping budgets, influencing decisions, holding the system accountable—and being held accountable in turn?

The Ladder and the Labyrinth

In 1969, Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation marked a foundational moment in how the world would come to evaluate public involvement in governance. Arnstein’s eight rungs begin with manipulation and therapy—forms of participation in name only—then ascend through informing, consultation, and placation, before finally reaching partnership, delegated power, and citizen control.

"Arnstein's ladder" of citizen participation. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherry_Arnstein 

Fifty years later, the ladder has grown into multidimensional frameworks like the Participation Cube, which allow us to consider not just the depth of participation, but also its breadth, frequency, and inclusivity. These models urge us to ask: participation by whom, for what, how often, and with what consequence?

Placed against this conceptual backdrop, Kerala occupies a complex and shifting position. The architecture of decentralisation—the Panchayati Raj institutions, the People's Planning Campaign, the Grama Sabhas, the rights-based approach to development—is really ambitious. The statutory structure invites participation not just in isolated events but as a systemic right, embedded within planning, budgeting, and monitoring processes.

And yet, as any local resident will admit, these Sabhas often becomes an event to attend, not a forum to influence. Meetings are called, resolutions passed, reports read out. But the presence of people does not always mean the presence of, or expression of power.

Between Design and Delivery

To evaluate the state of participation in Kerala today is to distinguish between designed participation and delivered participation. On paper, Kerala performs spectacularly. It mandates periodic Grama Sabhas, ensures representation through quotas, provides institutional platforms like working groups and development seminars, and allocates substantial budgetary powers to local bodies.

But in practice, participation is often reduced to consultation. A 2023 audit of ward-level Sabha attendance in multiple districts showed that turnout was less than 10% in urban panchayats and below 15% even in well-functioning rural areas. Women and marginalised communities were present, but rarely vocal. Youth turnout was almost negligible. Decisions, when made, tended to ratify proposals prepared in advance by officials or intermediaries.

Why does this gap persist? Partly because structures alone do not ensure agency. Legal architecture can invite participation, but the culture of governance must also nurture it. Bureaucratic capture, political tokenism, and citizen fatigue often combine to dilute what was once a radical vision.

From Participation to Power

To move forward, we must ask: how can Kerala make citizen participation more meaningful, legitimate, and transformative?

A useful starting point is to recognise participation as more than attendance. Participation is about agency—the capacity to shape, to contest, to co-create. It is also about continuity, not just episodic engagement. And most importantly, it is about consequence. If participation does not change decisions, it ceases to matter.

Kerala could lead the way by developing a Participation Index—a composite measure that tracks not just how many meetings were held, but who spoke, what proposals were accepted, which projects emerged from citizen input, and how many were eventually implemented. This could be visualised ward-wise, published publicly, and tracked year on year. Just as health outcomes are measured through indicators, so too can democratic health be assessed—systematically and honestly.

Would such data make a difference? Yes—if it is used not to blame, but to learn. Participation fails when it is evaluated through anecdote. It can be revived when it is evaluated through shared reflection.

Learning from Elsewhere: Time-Tested Practices in Public Participation

Let us first ask—what have democracies around the world already learned about effective, inclusive, and sustained public participation? And, there is no shortage of inspiration.

Across continents, local governments have developed low-tech, high-trust mechanisms that embed citizen voices meaningfully into decision-making. These are not always dramatic innovations; more often, they are systems that work quietly, consistently, and transparently. Here are a few worth considering:

1. Participatory Budgeting (PB) – Porto Alegre to Paris

Arguably the most widely referenced model of deep participation, Participatory Budgeting began in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in the late 1980s. It allowed ordinary citizens—not experts or politicians—to decide how a portion of the municipal budget would be spent, through open deliberations at the neighborhood level.

Since then, cities from New York to Paris have adopted PB, modifying it to suit scale and context. In Paris, for example, residents can propose and vote on projects citywide using simplified online platforms. What matters is not the method, but the mindset: trusting people to make real fiscal decisions, and building institutional processes to support that.

Kerala’s People’s Plan once mirrored this spirit. It is time we revisit those roots and go further.

2. Standing Citizens' Panels – Scotland, Canada, Australia

In cities like Melbourne and Edinburgh, permanent citizens' panels—demographically representative groups selected through sortition (the action of selecting or determining something by the casting or drawing of lots) —serve as ongoing advisory bodies to city councils. These panels meet regularly, review policies, scrutinize service delivery, and offer long-term insights.

Unlike Grama Sabhas that meet sporadically and often suffer from low attendance, these panels create a culture of sustained dialogue. Because members are selected to reflect social diversity, and because their role is formalised, they bring both legitimacy and continuity to participation.

3. Civic Lotteries and Deliberative Assemblies – Ireland, France

When Ireland grappled with sensitive issues like same-sex marriage or abortion rights, it turned not to experts but to ordinary citizens. Through civic lotteries, a diverse group of people was selected and then immersed in learning, deliberating, and debating over months before submitting recommendations to Parliament.

France used a similar model to inform national climate policy. These examples show that deliberative participation can operate even at national levels—and that informed citizens, when given time and trust, can offer reasoned, equitable perspectives.

Could Kerala initiate a district-level citizen assembly each year to deliberate on one key development challenge?

4. Embedded Participation in Service Loops – Helsinki, Seoul

Not all participation happens in town halls. Some of the most effective practices are embedded into daily service interactions.

In Helsinki, public transport users can flag route inefficiencies through SMS codes at bus stops. In Seoul, school management committees involve parents and local residents in curricular and facility-related decisions, and such participation is tied to funding benchmarks.

What these approaches offer is distributed participation—not as a grand event, but as a thousand small moments of voice. Kerala’s Kudumbashree network, anganwadis, school PTAs, and MGNREGS job cards all offer entry points to embed civic feedback loops.

5. Community-Run Data Audits – India’s Own MKSS and NREGA Samvads

India itself has been a pioneer in community-led transparency. The MKSS movement in Rajasthan first introduced the concept of Jan Sunwais—public hearings where government expenditures were read out and questioned by villagers. The practice later influenced national rights-based laws like RTI and NREGA.

In states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, civil society has used NREGA Samvads—local dialogues that audit employment records and payments using printed job cards and muster rolls—to hold local officials accountable. These are tools of voice, dignity, and data.

Why not revive such formats in Kerala—not just for wages, but for public works, welfare delivery, and municipal services? We are certainly more digitally savvy, so that could be the route?

Digital Frontiers and Sensorial Futures

The future of participation also lies in reimagining how we listen to citizens. Must every opinion be spoken in a Sabha hall or scrawled on a form? Or can it be sensed, measured, and aggregated in other ways?

Imagine a Kerala where smart phones capture not just mobility patterns, but civic priorities: footpath congestion in a ward, waiting times at public toilets, missed garbage pickups, or even heat stress reported through wearables. These are signals of participation too—signals of what people need, experience, and endure. When aggregated ethically, and visualised clearly, such data can guide more responsive governance.

Similarly, interactive dashboards could allow citizens to track ward budgets, rate local amenities, or even upload issues. Such platforms already exist in cities like Taipei and Barcelona. Kerala—with its digital literacy and dense institutional networks—is well placed to pioneer this model in the Global South.

This is not to argue for technology in place of human engagement, but rather for a hybrid model: sensor data where relevant, deliberation where needed, and co-governance where possible.

The Way Forward: A Culture, Not a Campaign

Kerala’s participatory journey must now evolve from being a campaign to becoming a culture. Campaigns mobilise. Culture sustains. The real success of decentralisation lies not in one-off innovations but in building institutional reflexes—where administrators expect to co-design with citizens, and citizens expect to be heard and respected, not merely informed.

We must reclaim the political in participation—not in a partisan sense, but in the deepest sense of that word: as a collective negotiation of the public good.

In that pursuit, Kerala is not starting from scratch. It has already walked further than most. The challenge is not invention, but reinvention. Not just more meetings, but better meanings. Not just new platforms, but renewed trust.