LOCAL GOVERNANCE FOR LOCAL DEVELOPMENT Contextualising the Role of Local Institutions in Nagaland

Local governance has been conceived as an instrument of local government for promoting healthy development. It is expected to facilitate participation, enhance transparency, and ensure greater accountability. Being closer to the people, local governance is also assumed to provide more effective and competitive delivery of services at the grassroots level by meeting the needs and preferences of the people. Theoretically, local governance brings service providers and service users closer to co-operation. Because of this more direct link, citizens' control over their governments should increase. This should make the government more responsive to people’s needs and more accountable to them (G. Lutz and W. Linder, 2004:47).