Service delivery, especially in urban areas, is a hot-button issue. Piles of garbage in city centres, blackouts in streets, patchy piped water – such realities have inspired activism, investigation and scholarly work. In India, public services are seen as the responsibility of the government but there is a widespread perception that it is heavy-handed, ineffective and unjust. Decentralisation is often seen as a mantra to address such problems: locating governance in local populations and reducing the distance between the ‘government’ and the ‘governed’. Proponents hope that decentralisation will make public service provision – and governance, more broadly – responsive to local needs in general and particularly the well-being of those with precarious lives and livelihoods. Reduced distance between the government and the governed also deepens democracy so that people participate in governance. This is the double allure of decentralisation.

The ability of decentralised governance to pursue the common good, enhance public services and deepen democracy is hardly assured. Powerful national and global technologies of rule threaten local possibilities and local action. Authoritarianism and the dominance of big capital are important concerns. Local government can also be upended by locally dominant groups. Nevertheless, lurking authoritarianism, ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘local capture’ do not overwhelm the transformative potential of local government. For much of India, we see a reality in which strong local possibilities exist. The ability of local government to pursue the common good and enhance public services can be greatly strengthened by institutional features of government. Indeed, we already see instances of conducive institutional features – hardly perfect, but showing considerable possibilities for local government. The stakes for democracy are high: if local government does not ‘work’ effectively and justly, it can compromise people's belief in engaging with governance, thereby compromising democratic deepening.

The two chapters of Part I engage with governance and decentralisation. Chapter 1 introduces the main arguments by comparing two cities with very different realities of decentralisation and patterns of urban governance. It raises the basic puzzle of why the cities are very different and why major nationwide reforms failed to substantially change these realities. Chapter 2 broadens the two-city comparison and advances systemic explanations for the difference, applicable more broadly across the country. It addresses these puzzles and presents answers arising primarily from the political-institutional features of the government rather than meta modes of governance or inequalities of social structure, important as these are.