Abstract

As part of its endeavour to continue its work on decentralisation, CBPS invited Prof. Abhijit Datta to share his thoughts. To this invitation, Prof. Datta wrote and shared a paper on District Government in Pakistan as a model for India. The attached monograph contains Prof. Datta’s essay, as well as comments from eminent scholars in the field of decentralisation on the same. Prof. Datta’s responses to these comments are also present in Part 3 of this document. The monograph has been edited by Shashikala Sitaram.

The essay under discussion first starts with a recapitulation of the Indian thinking and state level experiments in district government, followed by a comparative analysis of the limited Indian experiments and the Pakistani district government. Section 3 makes a detailed comparison between the Pakistani District Government and the form of district government proposed as part of the 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission. The paper concludes by analysing the current situations of district government in India and Pakistan.

Datta, A. (2009). District government in Pakistan: a model for India - a symposium. Bengaluru: Centre for Budget and Policy Studies.