Panchayati Raj in India

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About The Book The institution of Panchayati Raj is now recognised as an important mechanism for decentralizing power and ensuring people's participation in development activities. It received special emphasis after the 73 Constitutional Amendment which made the transfer of power to the panchayats a part of the most basic document of this nation-The Constitution of India. We have come a long way.

This publication considers the various stages through which this system evolved and also the promise it holds for the future.

About the Author Prof. M. Aslam has rich and varied experience both at national and international levels in Rural Development and Panchayati Raj. He spent about 8 years abroad on an international assignment as Director (Training) at the Centre on Integrated Rural Development of Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP) based in Dhaka.

Foreword Panchayats-the rural local governments of our country- got Constitutional protection and sanctity only after the 73rd Amendment in 1993 which led to the incorporation of Part IX and IX A in the Indian Constitution. They have, of course, existed as institutions of local government since ancient times. However, their development as.organised Institutions with codified rights and responsibilities has been uneven across the different States of the country, depending upon the political will of successive State Governments as 'local government' is a subject exclusively on the State List in our Constitution. The 73rd Amendment has given a new lease of life to these Institutions in their role as the third tier of our governance structure by mandating elections every five years and providing for reservation for women and socially deprived classes. The creation of a new Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj has helped focus on the strengthening and empowerment of these institutions across the country. The vision of Panchayats acting as institution of self government can only be realized if we work towards empowering Panchayats and their Gram Sabhas by devolving the three Fs-specific functions, commensurate finances and accountable functionaries to the Panchayats. This will help our rural populace to access their entitlements through empowerment, thus leading to their enrichment and going a long way towards addressing the concern for a more equitable model of growth for all our citizen.

Preface The local self-government, as a system, has existed in India since long. Its form may have varied, but its spirit has always been a part of our socio-cultural ethos. In the medieval times, it was seen in the form of a Gram Sabha functioning through its executive committee viz Panchayat, a village body able to govern and sustain small communities of people. During the British period, the institution became the instrument of the ruling elite, intended to project the interests of the British Government. After independence, it was in 1959 that the local self-government system, known as Panchayati Raj took its present shape. The enthusiasm generated by this new form of local self-government, however, did not last long. Conflicting interests at various levels eclipsed the concept as well as its practice. After decades of debate, the Constitutional (73rd Amendment) Act-1992 outlined the task of rejuvenating the Panchayati Raj system in the country.

The institution of Panchayati Raj is now recognised as an important mechanism for decentralizing power and ensuring people's participation in development activities. It received special emphasis after the 73rd Constitutional Amendment which made the transfer of power to the panchayats a part of the most basic document of this nation-The Constitution of India. We have come a long way. It is now about one and a half decades since the 73rd Constitutional Amendment came into effect. It is high time that we examined its historical evolution in its appropriate perspective and at the same time recognised and confronted directly the complexities and inherent paradoxes involved in materialising democratic decentralisation through Panchayati Raj. A large number of publications have appeared on the subject of Panchayati Raj during the last one and a half decades, but very few of these have been addressed to the elected representatives of Panchayats who are the ultimate engines of the process of democratic decentralisation. They need to know about its past, present and future.

It was also felt that an attempt should be made to locate photographs of those who contributed to the evolution of Panchayati Raj in India and those responsible for giving it its present shape. It was also realized that although a number of committees were constituted in the post- independence period to study its various aspects and to make reformative recommendations, the common people could not have access to the deliberations/reports of these committees.

Introduction The experiences of the past suggest that the Panchayati Raj System could be a very effective instrument in the process of devolving power to lower levels for materializing democratic decentralization through people's active participation. The basic philosophy behind this thinking is that the process of development gets accelerated as and when common people identify themselves as active partners in the process of development. Another school of thought advocated by Norman Uphoff' (1985) considers "creation of local capacity for resource mobilization and management in support of development programmes", as a principal concern for existence of institutions of local governance. Whatever the case, the grass roots level institutions of local governance are important instruments in the process of democratic decentralization. Experimentation with one or the other form of democratic decentralization has been going on for quite sometime in many developing countries of South and South-East Asia. It has shown mixed results.

In the context of India, particularly rural India, the Panchayats have been providing the institutional. mechanism for such democratic decentralization. It is a well known fact that Panchayats in one form or the other have existed in India since long. The literature on the subject reveals that even in medieval ages, in spite of radical political changes, one or the other form of village local-self government existed. During the British rule, we witnessed, the emergence of local-self government as a direct projection of the ruling elite. After independence, although the draft Constitution of India did not make any mention of Panchayats, a mention was added in the final draft under Article 40 in the chapter on Directive Principles of State Policy. It states, "The State should take steps to organise Village Panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government." This provision of the Constitution was primarily advisory and not taken seriously. Immediately after the independence the policy planners got engaged in experimenting with the Community Development Programme (CDP) for most of the 1950s. It was only in 1959, that the Panchayati Raj System came into existence in a formal way after the Study Team headed by Balwantrai Mehta expressed concern about the lack of popular participation in the Community Development Programme and made a strong plea for the devolution of power to lower levels through Panchayati Raj. The initial enthusiasm generated by this system, however, did not last long and it was subjected to rough weather wherever introduced. What followed in the subsequent decades were some sporadic and indifferent steps taken by some of the state governments to organise Panchayats, but they were invariably denied any meaningful powers and authority and, worst of all, the elections were seldom held at 5-year intervals as required. During the late 1970s the formation of the Asoka Mehta Committee as a possible way out to catalyze rural development through Panchayati Raj could not turn the tide.