DECENTRALISATION AND RESOURCE UTILISATION: A MICRO LEVEL STUDY IN KOZHIKODE DISTRICT, KERALA (128-145) by Mr. Maneesh P in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

One of the major problems of every panchayat is carrying out its welfare activities is misappropriation of fund at the panchayat level. Inaddition the problem of allocation of available resources in a most suitable way to different sectors such as productive sector, service sector, infrastructure sector etc, whilst the financial resources available for allocation is meager. In this context the study focused on the trend and pattern of resource utilization by panchayat and issues connected with fund utilization. The study entirely based on secondary data. The Grama panchayat records such as annual financial statements and annual budget reports are served as the major source of data. Besides, books and articles in learned periodicals have also been referred. The study found that there is under utilization of allocated fund in different heads in the study area. During the period 2010-11, the total allocated fund in production sector is 11070712 rupees. Out of this they utilize 6758104 only. That is 61.04% of the allocated fund. During the period 2011-12 the total allocated fund in production sector is 11450987 rupees. Out of this 42.60 per cent was utilized. There is wide variation in allocation and utilisation of fund over the periods. The skewed distribution of plan expenditure over the year adversely affects the quality of plan expenditure of Panchayat. So a monitoring mechanism should be initiated at Panchayat level to ensure the avoidance of this skewed and distorted plan spending.
.Keywords: Decentralization, resource utilisation, sector wise allocation and fund use problems.