ABSTRACT
The history of the devolution policy is of particular importance for understanding the present role of the samad. In a way he is an irrelevant vestige of a failed policy. In many ways, the policy of devolution in the Gezira Scheme was one issue on which the conflict between the administrators of the colonial state and the metropolitan capitalists was fought out. The de facto situation was crystallized in 1947 when the Devolution Policy finally came home to roost on the shoulders of the field staff. After nationalization, the Sudan Gezira Board had formal obligations to undertake social development and implement the policy of devolution. Overall, the history of the policy of devolution in the Sudan Plantations Syndicate/Kassala Cotton Company and later on in the Sudan Gezira Board seems to lend support to one of P. Selznick’s hypotheses in TVA and the Grass Roots.
