Tracking Functional Devolution by States to Panchayats

The Eleventh Schedule added to the Constitution by the Seventy-third Amendment lists twenty-nine functions devolvable by States to Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs). States were free to set the speed and design of their approach to decentralization under the general framework of the Constitutional mandate. Fourteen years on, a quantitative measure is attempted in this paper of the extent to which functional transfers have been achieved through the budgetary transfer of funds, with respect to the fiscal year 2006-07, in four states: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Orissa. The approach taken here is thus radically different from that in official documents, where functional transfer to PRIs is dealt with in a purely qualitative manner, based on administrative notifications. Without an associated budgetary provision these do not carry any operational significance [NIPFP WP NO. 48].