Grassroot Democracy in India Lessons from Odisha

Decentralisation in Africa, China and United Kingdom is taken as a point of departure. Then the chapter interrogates the ageless wisdom of local democracy in ancient India & travels through the spell of British history on Indian local democracy. It examines the process of institutionalization in post independent India with a focus of panchayat rhetoric, slowly moving closer to state of the panchayati Raj System in contemporary times and ends in situating the discussion in the context of Odisha.