ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the experience of India's rural local self-governments and points out the major limitations to the successful working of such democratically elected bodies, which elected over a million women representatives, mostly of the socially underprivileged, which itself is a remarkable record of sorts in terms of formal political empowerment. The global literature on comparative local governance suggests a few insights which are useful with respect to an analysis of the Indian case. Since India embraced reforms in 1991, there have been reforms pertaining to the States' freedom of action in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) and other kinds of investment in their domain, and to engage themselves in trade and commerce by leaving more space to the market. Govinda Rao and Singh pointed out that the local governments raised a very negligible 0.04 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in India around 1998.
