Decentralization in Kerala: Revealing the deliberative sphere, political agency and citizen well-beings

This dissertation explores how and in what way does democratic practice address distributional inequalities in the space of human capabilities and freedoms. To ground this question the research conceptualizes an intersection between theoretical scholarship of two policy literatures---participatory and deliberative governance and development outcomes in terms of human well-beings and agency.;The policy context for this exploration is the People's Campaign for Decentralized Planning in Kerala, India that involves participatory development planning with devolution of significant planning functions and resources from the state to elected local governments, i.e. municipalities in urban areas, and gram panchayats (village councils) in rural areas of Kerala. The key democratic element of the campaign is that every gram panchayat organizes gram sabhas (open village assemblies) thrice a year in which citizens, especially disadvantaged groups like scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and women, participate and deliberate on development planning priorities and resource allocation decisions in the village.;The research primarily involved field work in Kerala to engage with ordinary participating citizens and gathered evidence in two areas of inquiry---(1) how do group inequalities of power and socio-political factors influence the deliberative process in the gram sabha and steer the redistribution of valued resources? (2) what are the outcomes of the campaign if assessed in terms of multidimensional well-beings and agency as valued, identified and achieved by participating citizens?;The findings of the research reveal various discursive strategies citizens employ in the deliberative sphere of the gram sabha, as a function of their political agency to pursue valued well-beings. The impact of the campaign on their capabilities ranges from basic capabilities like a comfortable standard of living, being healthy, engaging in productive activities to more complex areas of social and political well-being, including being protected and treated fairly by the law, controlling government and having a voice and influence in participatory decision-making.;The research makes a substantive and methodological contribution to both policy literatures by operationalizing the intersection between deliberation-based redistributive arrangements and evaluation of such arrangements in terms of human capabilities and freedoms, within the framework of a real world policy setting in India.