“There shall be constituted in every state at the district level a District Planning Committee to consolidate the plans prepared by the panchayats and the municipalities in the district and to prepare a draft development plan for the district as a whole” – Article 243 ZD, Constitution of India.

The very first five year plan (1951–56) expressed the desire for decentralised planning when it suggested breaking up the planning process into national, state, district and local community levels. The Administrative Reforms Commission in its report of 1967 stressed the need for meaningful planning at the district level especially focusing on local variations in development patterns. Consequently, the Planning Commission issued guidelines for district planning in 1969. The 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution of India are the milestones in the field of decentralised planning as they provide the much needed constitutional legitimacy to local governance institutions, define their functional domains and provide for financial devolution to these institutions. Yet, stakeholders in the planning process face several challenges while implementing decentralised planning processes.

PRIA’s work on decentralised planning began with its activities on empowering the rural poor to engage with panchayati raj institutions at the village, block and district levels. Its interventions in bottom-up, participatory and integrated planning of development schemes, especially poverty alleviation programmes of the government have been the focus of its participatory planning projects.

The support that it gives to the District Planning Committee’s in different states inpreparing the draft district plans and strengthening participatory planning within the districts has shown its commitment towards the promotion of participatory district planning, issue based micro-planning in rural and urban areas, and spatial planning for development over the years. It has used its experience in the field to Strengthen the District Planning Committeein Madhubani district of Bihar.

PRIA has also prepared district plans in two districts of Angul and Nayangarh in Orissa. In the urban setting it has created City Development Plans for Dumka, Jharkhand where it developed a methodology for participation of people in the area of urban planning. Besides this, PRIA has also worked as an appraisal agency jointly with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Pvt. Ltd.

Gurgaon, for Ministry of Urban Development,to monitor the implementation of the reforms of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) scheme in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh and the union territories of Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

PRIA conducts capacity building training programmes for a diverse range of actors on the theme of strengthening decentralised planning. One such project has been for the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Rajasthan wherein PRIA developed a training course and contents on development issues to strengthen decentralised planning with a focus on the Millennium Development Goals for five pilot districts of Rajasthan (Barmer, Chittorgarh, Sawai Madhopur, Sirohi and Udaipur). In addition to developing the understanding of elected representatives on the decentralised planning process and the exercise of their roles and responsibilities and accountability, PRIA has also undertaken Capacity Building of Panchayati Raj Institutions on Decentralised Planning in Tonk, Rajasthan .

City level sharings are organised by PRIA to make urban governance better and urban multi-stakeholder consultation on decentralised participatory planning. These are usually based on citizen report card (CRC) surveys conducted like those conducted in all the 48 wards of Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh covering a sample size of 1000 respondents with regard to the level of basic services like water supply, sanitation (focusing on sewerage, drainage and solid waste management) and transport infrastructure delivered by the Bilaspur Municipal Corporation (BMC).

planning participatory so as to promote

A pamphlet was created to highlight the issues based on earlier consultations and an issue paper was also circulated. This helped both the supply side (concerned government agencies responsible for delivering services) and demand side (concerned citizens, CSOs, academia, media personnel) to put forward their concerns and prioritize the ways in which to tackle prominent issues.

PRIA also develops training modules to develop master trainers at the state level so as to strengthen the decentralized planning process. A state wide roll out of decentralised district planning process has been undertaken in Madhya Pradesh in collaboration with UNICEF. Here, besides training master trainers PRIA will work towards development of planning tools/processes/checklists to be used by the facilitators as ready reference.

Field monitoring support in partnership with the state institutions – training, research and academic– including Jan Abhian Parisad cadre/state core group of NGOs will also take place. Efforts will be made to include State Administrative Training Institute (ATI) and State Institute of Rural Development (SIRD) or alternative institutions to address issues related to sustainability.

A study on the extent of devolution to urban local bodies as per 74th Constitutional Amendments in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Haryana was also conducted in order to analyse the state of municipal finance, functions and functionaries as well as to look at the state municipal acts, rules and notifications. The knowledge generated through the research study was used for advocatinggreater devolution of power and authority to ULBs by respective state governments.

The research findings were shared with the State Urban Development Departments and other stakeholders like elected councillors, media and civil society interest groups.

Backed by PRIA's vast experience in the field and its commitment towards ensuring participatory and integrated decentralised planning, it has also extended its work towards developingshort term courses on Participatory Integrated District Planning, Participatory Town Planning and Activity Mapping which will be launched shortly.

The work that PRIA has been doing on decentralised planning throughout the years has spurred it to establish a resource centre (National Resource Centre for Decentralised Planning – NRCDP) for promoting decentralized planning with local governments in 2011. The centre prepares City Development Plans (CDPs), Detail Project Reports (DPRs) and Local Area Plans (LAPs) while adopting participatory methodologies.