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The book is an outcome of the discussions and deliberations on various aspects of decentralized planning and participatory rural development that took place in two national seminars organized by the Department of Economics with Rural Development, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal, under the UGC sponsored DRS Scheme during 30-31 March, 2000 and 1-2 March, 2001. The book contains 15 papers that were presented, discussed and deliberated upon by the distinguished participants in these seminars. These papers discuss the issues like people’s participation in the local level development planning and governance with case studies from different states, problems of integration of physical and financial planning in the decentralized planning framework, decentralized planning and women empowerment, experiments in rural development planning at the village and the gram sansad levels, gram panchayats and rural development, micro-credit planning, and the Panchayats and NGOs. All the papers are based on individual or group research carried out in different areas in the context of decentralized planning and rural development. The book makes significant contribution to the understanding of the actual status of decentralized planning and various aspects of development and empowerment in the states of India, particularly in West Bengal.