CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 48 of 120

Correct — D, Liberty. Liberty is the standing argument for decentralisation, not a claim made for centralisation. The case for concentrating authority at a single centre has always rested on unity, uniformity of law and administration, speed of decision and economies of scale; the case against it, from Tocqueville and Mill onwards, is that liberty needs distance and plurality — many centres of power that check one another, local bodies in which ordinary citizens learn self-government, and decisions taken close enough to the governed to be answerable to them. Concentrating power in one authority removes exactly those safeguards. The other three options are the standard textbook merits of centralisation, so the odd one out is the value that appears on the opposing side of the same argument.

• (a)National unity — A recognised merit of centralisation. A single centre speaking for the whole country suppresses regional particularism and gives a common national direction — which is why newly independent and internally divided states tend to centralise.
• (b)Uniformity — The most obvious consequence of centralisation — one law, one standard of administration and one policy applied across the whole territory, with the corresponding loss of local variation.
• (c)Prosperity — Claimed as a merit on grounds of efficiency: uniform economic policy, a single market, planned allocation of resources and no duplication between competing authorities. The claim is contested, but it is a claim made for centralisation, not against it.

Centralisation and decentralisation describe where administrative and political authority sits. Centralisation concentrates decision-making at the apex; decentralisation distributes it downward, whether by devolution to elected local bodies, delegation to field agencies, or deconcentration within a department. The classical merits assigned to centralisation are unity, uniformity, speed and economy. Those assigned to decentralisation are liberty, popular participation, local responsiveness, relief of the burden at the top and training in citizenship. Federalism is the constitutional form the argument takes when the division is entrenched between levels of government.

Odd-one-out questions in public administration are best solved by asking which side of a standard debate each option is normally recruited to. Unity, uniformity and efficiency are the centralisers' vocabulary; liberty, participation and local initiative are the decentralisers'. Once the two lists are held apart, the answer falls out without any need to judge whether centralisation actually delivers prosperity — a question on which reasonable people disagree, and which the item is not asking. In the Indian context the same argument runs through the Constituent Assembly's choice of a strong Union, the Sarkaria and Punchhi Commissions on Centre-State relations, and the 73rd and 74th Amendments of 1992, which pushed authority down to panchayats and municipalities on precisely the liberty-and-participation grounds set out above.

• The standard merits claimed for centralisation are national unity, uniformity of law and administration, speed of decision and economy of scale.
• The standard merits claimed for decentralisation are liberty, popular participation, local responsiveness and relief of the burden on the top level.
• Decentralisation takes three main forms: devolution to elected local bodies, delegation to agencies, and deconcentration within a department.
• The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts of 1992 gave constitutional status to panchayats and municipalities as institutions of self-government.
• Tocqueville's argument that local liberties are the schools of a free people is the classical statement of the case against centralisation.

• Judging whether centralisation really produces prosperity; the item asks which value is claimed for it, not which claim is true.
• Reading uniformity as a criticism rather than a feature; it is the defining administrative consequence of centralisation.
• Assuming liberty must be a feature of any well-run system; here it is the value that belongs to the opposing side of the argument.

Asked as an odd-one-out among the merits of a concept, so the reliable preparation is to hold the merits of centralisation and of decentralisation as two separate lists.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is generally regarded as an advantage of decentralisation rather than of centralisation?

  • (a)Uniformity of administration
  • (b)Popular participation in decision-making
  • (c)Economy through a single apex authority
  • (d)Speed of decision at the top

  Answer(b) Popular participation in decision-making — bringing decisions closer to those affected is the classic argument for dispersing authority.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The transfer of authority and resources to elected local bodies, as distinct from mere delegation to field officers, is known as

  • (a)Deconcentration
  • (b)Delegation
  • (c)Devolution
  • (d)Privatisation

  Answer(c) Devolution — the form of decentralisation the 73rd and 74th Amendments were designed to bring about in India.