Citizens’ Participation in Urban Governance: Quest for Transparency and Accountability

Abstract

Growing urbanization in India has not only boosted the country’s economy but also presented complex governance challenges that need to be resolved to harness economic opportunities associated with urbanization. One of such challenges is decentralized urban governance where citizens need to have a stake in deciding on how cities should be managed. Experiences implicate that in the view of growing urbanization in the country, the structures of citizen participation provided under the 74th Constitutional Amendment Act are failing in insuring effective citizen participation. The paper, therefore calls for a rethinking in this regard, and discusses experiences of successful citizen participation in urban governance and learning of such experiences. [Formula: see text]