Local Politics and Participatory Planning in Kerala analyses how micro-level politics impacts and influences local governance and examines the dynamics of its interaction with honesty. Written within the theoretical framework of Field and Habitus, it incorporates how decentralization and the peoples’ planning campaign, in the early 1990s, reconstructed local governance from its being a mere bureaucratic process to its becoming a highly politicized construct.

The book also investigates how the stratagems and social dynamics of political parties, religious groups and civil society towards grassroots democracy and local development have changed over time, focusing particularly on the extent of participation of women and marginalized sections. Further, considering the evolving nature of local governance, this work analyses the history of the past 20 years of local governments and participatory democracy in Kerala on the basis of empirical data; how the changes in political regimes in the state have affected the democratic decentralization process, and how this is reflected in the village life of Kerala. Three case studies from different locations of the state document this political transition.