Creating distance: a localized understanding of decentralization

Decentralization sought to bring effective, people-centric local governance to post-colonial societies that were predominantly centrally planned. Tamil Nadu has been an emblem of effective decentralization, ranking in the top three of India’s Panchayat Devolution Index 2024–2025. It thus stands to reason that the state would be useful in telling us the story of how decentralization could manifest in the global South. However, bringing the CAGE (cultural, administrative, geographic, economic) framework into dialogue with interviews conducted with farmers in Tamil Nadu reveals that decentralization has not bridged the gap between governments and farmers and has instead created distance between them. The paper contributes to the rich corpus of scholarship on policy studies by examining the Tamil Nadu example and its implementation of Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (national micro-irrigation policy) as a case study of agricultural decentralization in the Global South. It draws on fieldwork over three years in the districts of Kanchipuram, Chengalpattu, and Tiruvallur in Tamil Nadu.