ABSTRACT
This paper analyses the association between Grama Sabha (GS) and performance of the local government in the delivery of key services such as drinking water, streetlights, roads, and drainage. GS is assigned a key role in the promotion of decentralised governance in India. In GS meetings, citizens can present their needs relating to the delivery of basic services, which will be incorporated into the planning after the necessary prioritisation. The implementation of plans can be monitored in GS meetings. This chapter therefore analyses the participation of citizens and issues discussed in GS meetings, and explores the association between the citizen participation and the performance of the decentralised government in the delivery of key services with the help of two rounds of primary data collected from a large number of sample households in nine representative Karnataka districts. This chapter concludes that the proportion of citizens stating that the performance of the local government in the delivery of key services has improved between the two rounds of primary survey had gone up, and this was attributed to the participation of citizens in the GS meetings.
