Role of municipal councillors in the implementation of social protection schemes for children—A case of Ahmedabad, India

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2018
• Author: Astha Agarwalla,Ishu Gupta,Ankur Sarin
• Date: 01 May 2020
• Published date: 01 May 2020

ACADEMIC PAPER

Role of municipal councillors in the implementation of social

protection schemes for children—A case of Ahmedabad, India

Astha Agarwalla

1

| Ankur Sarin

2

| Ishu Gupta

2

1

Adani Institute of Infrastructure Management,

Ahmedabad, 382421, India

2

Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad,

Vastrapur, Ahmedabad, 380015, India

Correspondence

Astha Agarwalla, Assistant Professor,

Economics and Public Policy, Adani Institute of

Infrastructure Management, Ahmedabad,

India.

Email: asthagovil@gmail.com; astha.

agarwalla@aiim.ac.in

Funding information

UNICEF, Grant/Award Number:

GFO/ISP/2019/88

The 74th constitutional amendment paved the path for strengthening of local gov-

ernments in India, by devolution of functional and financial powers. The elected local

representatives (municipal councillors), as the closest link of the Government to the

citizenry, are expected to be the bearers of information regarding the needs and pri-

orities of the people they represent. They can become the champions for effective

implementation of service delivery schemes designed locally or at higher levels of

governance. This study examines the designated and perceived roles of municipal

councillors in the context of the implementation of social protection schemes for

children in the city of Ahmedabad. Based on the information collected through per-

sonal interviews with a sample of 18 municipal councillors over 4 months, the study

brings out the stark absence of designated roles for councillors and the limited per-

ceived role in information dissemination. Councillors’political ambition, experience,

and access to the executive machinery come out to be the most critical determinants

of the effectiveness of limited mediation role played by councillors to ensure faster

delivery of benefits or inclusion of beneficiaries. The need for institutional strength-

ening and capacity building at the local level also gets substantiated by the analysis.

1|INTRODUCTION

The boundaries between state and citizens are often blurred in large

democracies, as the local politicians end up playing intermediation role

to supplement the state's limited capacity of providing the public

goods (Berenschot, 2010). There are available accounts of this “bro-

kerage role”played by local municipal councillors, which transcends

the boundaries of administering the service provisioning, in a more

traditional sense (Agarwalla, Gupta, & Sarin, 2019).

We take a step backwards in this study and attempt to discover if

these local councillors are sufficiently given a specific role in the pro-

visioning of public goods, by design. Further, we examine whether

there are differences between the designated roles and perceived

roles. In any public good provisioning exercise, out of the three stan-

dardized roles, of the receivers or the citizens, the providers who are

mostly the executives and the designers who are mostly the politi-

cians at the Central or state level in a federal structure, local council-

lors, often transcend the boundaries between the policymaking and

provisioning roles (World Bank, 2003). The intermediation roles

played by the councillors are perceived roles, and the efficiency and

effectiveness of which is a function of political ambition and access of

the councillor to the executive arm.

We study the designated and perceived roles of municipal council-

lors in the city of Ahmedabad in the context of schemes and

programmes specially designed for the social protection of children.

As a powerless group, out of the electoral process, children are the

most vulnerable. Social protection schemes for children are designed

to address these vulnerabilities, through providing access to education

and health and safeguarding them against abuse and violence (United

Nations Children Funds [UNICEF], 2008). These programmes and

schemes are often very poorly implemented, with far-reaching conse-

quences (Roelen & Sabates-Wheeler, 2012; Sabates-Wheeler, Dever-

eux, & Hodges, 2009).

The local councillors are envisaged to be the representatives of

the citizens in their constituencies, the familiar face of the state to the

citizens (Jakimow, 2018). With the process of decentralization, or

Received: 25 June 2019 Accepted: 3 September 2019

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2018

J Public Affairs. 2019;e2018. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1of9

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2018

J Public Affairs. 2020;20:e2018. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 1of9

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2018