“In contemporary development models, decision-making and problem-solving responsibilities are not located close to the source of information and execution defeating the objectives of development.” Critically evaluate.

The statement critiques centralized development models: decisions are taken in distant secretariats while the information and the execution lie with local governments and communities — violating the subsidiarity principle that functions should vest at the lowest competent level.

The disconnect is real

• Incomplete devolution: most states have not transferred the three Fs — functions, funds, functionaries — for the 29 Eleventh Schedule and 18 Twelfth Schedule subjects; panchayats survive on tied grants with little own revenue.
• One-size-fits-all Centrally Sponsored Schemes impose uniform norms on diverse contexts; parallel bodies, societies and line departments bypass elected local governments.
• District Planning Committees (Article 243ZD) are largely defunct; State Finance Commissions are delayed and ignored; PESA, 1996 remains weakly operationalized in Scheduled Areas.
• Consequences: unspent or misdirected funds, assets without maintenance, poor targeting — the Second ARC noted citizens experience government as subjects rather than participants.

The counter-view

• Where empowerment happened, outcomes followed: Kerala's People's Plan Campaign, gram-sabha-based MGNREGA works selection, and Gram Panchayat Development Plans under Mission Antyodaya.
• Some functions genuinely require higher-level handling — inter-state externalities, technical standards, macro stabilization; technology (DBT, Aspirational Districts' real-time indicators) narrows but does not close the information gap, since data cannot substitute for local deliberation.

Way forward

• Binding activity mapping, untied fiscal transfers, regular and respected SFC awards, trained panchayat cadres, and social audit-backed participatory planning.

Development succeeds when the decision-maker, the information and the consequences of the decision sit close together. Deepened decentralization with accountability — not recentralized technocracy — is the corrective the objectives of development demand.