Prakash Chittoor and Naveen Kolloju
India’s urban governance reveals a central paradox of federalism: despite constitutional decentralization under the 74th Amendment, Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) continue to operate with limited autonomy. This study examines how intergovernmental power asymmetries shape urban governance outcomes and contribute to persistent infrastructure deficits. Drawing on federal political economy, fiscal federalism, and multi-level governance, it develops the concept of constrained federal decentralization to explain the gap between formal institutional design and actual local empowerment. The analysis shows that ULBs function within a system marked by fiscal dependency, incomplete functional devolution, and administrative centralization, producing a condition of devolution without autonomy. These constraints generate a misalignment between autonomy, capacity, and accountability, conceptualized as a Federal Governance Trilemma. By situating urban governance within intergovernmental relations, the study challenges explanations that attribute governance failures solely to local capacity deficits. It argues instead that infrastructure deficits are structurally embedded within federal political economic arrangements. The study contributes to federalism scholarship by offering a theoretically grounded framework for understanding decentralization outcomes in developing federations.
