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Decentalized Planning and Panchayati Raj contains the views and experiences of five outstanding persons actively associated with planning and the process of decentralisation in the country. The rich experiences of and lessons from, experiments in decentralized government below the state level in two states—Karnataka and West Bengal—the pioneers and architects of political and economic decentralisation in the post-Independence history of India, are presented by Ramakrishna Hegde and Ashim Dasgupta. Pranab Mukherjee has urged the necessity of switching to a three-tier system of elected government backed by constitutional guarantees for any meaningful decentralisation, while Malcolm Adiseshiah has warned of the perils of political decentralisation in the absence of agrarian reforms. George Fernandes discusses the various dimensions of decentralisation, emphasizing the relevance of Rammanohar Lohia’s four pillar State” model for constructing a new and better India today. With local self-governments having recently gained constitutional status, the views, suggestions, experiences and lessons that form part of the D.T. Lakdawala Memorial Symposium Proceedings will be a valuable addition to the literature on local self-government and decentralised planning.