IOSR Journal of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 26, Issue 2, Series 9 (February. 2021) 49-55 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org DOI: 10.9790/0837-2602094955 www.iosrjournals.org 49 |Page Emerging Trends in Decentralization and People’s Participation in the Educational Governance Ms. Rashmi Sinha* Prof. Dr. Khagendra Kumar** *Assistant Professor, Department of Education, Patna Women’s College, Patna. ** Prof. Khagendra Kumar, Professor, Department of Education, Patna University, Patna. Abstract The major concern of education policy reforms has always been to make the delivery of educational programmes more effective and community need based. Since schools are the ultimate delivery points in the overall educational management, administration of school education in India has undergone unprecedented changes. The direction of policy reforms in management of elementary education indicated enormous efforts towards the changes that have taken place from centralized control of education to decentralized participatory management of the local people. The decentralization of administration encourages people to participate in planning and decision-making process. The present paper brings into light that enormous efforts have been made in the past to empower people and to decentralize educational administration at district, block and village levels. Keeping in view the emerging issues and challenges of educational administration, the study attempts to analyse the current and emerging trends in the decentralization and people’s participation in the educational governance in different states of the country. The researcher has also made an effort to study the developmental course of community participation in educational governance in India. Keywords: Decentralization; People’s Participation; Elementary Education & Educational Governance --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Submission: 16-02-2021 Date of Acceptance: 02-03-2021 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. INTRODUCTION School education system in India has expanded at a phenomenal rate during the post- independence period. The number of institutions has increased tremendously in the last few decades. There has been a considerable boost in the number of students and teachers in the educational system. The educational system has become complex due to the various governments’ initiative to bring about qualitative and quantitative improvement in the system. Supervising, monitoring and controlling the complex educational system by a centralized structure was not an easy task. Due to the unprecedented expansion of school infrastructure across the country, a large number of initiatives are being taken to improve the governance of the education system at the national, state, district and sub-district level. Thus, to cope up, reformation of educational management was needed to shift from highly centralized, standardized and command-driven forms of management to more decentralized and participatory decision-making at lower levels. Hanson (1998) has defined decentralisation as the transfer of decision-making authority, responsibility and task from higher to lower organizational levels or between organizations. According to Bray (1984) decentralization is the process in which subordinate levels of a hierarchy are authorized by a higher body to take decisions about the use of the organization’s resources. Thus, from the definitions it can be interpreted that transfer is being initiated by higher authorities to the lower bodies. Decentralisation of authority means conscious effort to bring dispersal of decision-making power to the lower levels of the organization. In decentralization, certain planning powers are reserved at the top level. All the responsibilities of school management are devolved to the local bodies in decentralization of school governance. It is believed that effective school management is only possible through wider involvement and participation of the community. When people are entrusted with some power or given the decision-making power, the people at the bottom get empowered leading to effective management of a system entrusted with them. This increased capacity of decision making at the local level has been expected to improve the educational delivery system and its quality directly by increasing the amount of input and its quality in the schooling. Since decentralization of educational administration promotes people to participate in the planning and decision- making process, continuous efforts have been made in the past to empower people and to decentralize educational administration at district, block and village levels. It is in this context that the initiatives towards