The resurgence of deliberative institutions in the developing world has prompted a renewed interest in the dynamics of citizen engagement. Using text-as-data methods on an original corpus of village assembly transcripts from rural Tamil Nadu, India, this paper opens the "black box" of deliberation to examine the gendered and status-based patterns of influence. Drawing on normative theories of deliberation, this analysis identifies a set of clear empirical standards for “good” deliberation, based on an individual's ability both to speak and be heard, and uses natural language processing methods to generate these measures. The study first shows that these assemblies are not mere "talking shop" for state officials to bluster and read banal announcements, but rather, provide opportunities for citizens to challenge their elected officials, demand transparency, and provide information about authentic local development needs. Second, the study finds that across multiple measures of deliberative influence, women are at a disadvantage relative to men; women are less likely to speak, set the agenda, and receive a relevant response from state officials. Finally, the paper shows that although quotas for women on village councils have little impact on the likelihood that they speak, they do improve the likelihood that female citizens are heard.

This paper reviews the national context and practical experiences of local governments’ role in LED activities across the five South Asian Commonwealth countries: Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The paper has been commissioned by CLGF and prepared by Okapi Research and provides recommendations on ways to enhance the enabling environment for pro-poor local government-led LED across South Asia.

Although urban women generally enjoy some advantages over their rural counterparts, a range of gender inequalities and injustices persist in urban areas that constrain their engagement in the labour market and in informal enterprises and inhibit the development of capabilities among younger women. These include unequal access to decent work, human capital acquisition, financial and physical assets, intra-urban mobility, personal safety and security, and representation in formal structures of urban governance. But the nature of these varies for different groups of women, not only on account of poverty status and where they live in the city, but also according to age, household characteristics, degree of engagement in income-generating activities and so on. This paper reviews what we have learnt from the literature on gender and urban development. It discusses disparities in access to education and vocational training and to land and housing ownership through a “gender lens”. It considers service deficiencies and associated time burdens, which limit income generation among women. Violence and gender, and gender divisions in access to different spaces within the city and in engagement in urban politics, are also covered. These factors cast doubt on whether women’s contributions to the prosperity often associated with urbanization are matched by commensurate returns and benefits.

‘Inclusive Growth’ is both the title and the overarching goal of the Eleventh Five Year Plan of India. Economic reforms have led, especially over the last five years or so, not only to accelerated growth but to sustained accelerated growth. Yet, notwithstanding the considerable space given to Panchayati Raj in the Eleventh Plan, there still seems to be some reluctance to accept inclusive governance as the quintessential and unique path to inclusive growth.