Problems Of Administration In Two Indian Villages (An Old And Rare Book)

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I have great pleasure in writing a short foreword to Shri K. S. Desai's book on the problems of village administration in the State of Bombay. Shri K. S. Desai has selected two villages of Jabugam and Thuvavi in the Baroda District for intensive study. Shri Desai has been for years associated with the Department of Politics in the M. S. University of Baroda. He has been teaching Public Administration for many years. His long experience as a teacher entitles him to write authoritatively on this subject. He has discussed every phase of village administration, the revenue administration, judicial and police organization, the village panchayats, education, the co-operative movement, health and sanitation, the agriculture department and all the miscellaneous activities of the State which affect the village administration. He has taken great trouble over the preparation of this useful book. There are very few books at present giving us a detailed picture of village administration. I am sure this will be a very useful addition to the existing literature on local administration. Shri K. S. Desai deserves our congratulations for this careful and laborious study.

The purpose of this survey was to gather factual material based on field study about the structure and functioning of government in the rural areas of the State of Bombay. Its scope extended to making a complete study of the structure and functioning of all State government agencies and popular agencies at the village level, the response of the people to the working of these agencies, the de fects noticed in their working, and the desirable improvements that have to be made.

Accordingly, this report of the survey describes in some detail the organisation and working of the Departments of Land Revenue, Police, Education, Medical and Public Health, Co-operation, Agriculture, Public Works and Charity and also of the Village Panchayats and the Co-operatives, and this it does with special reference to two villages. The data on the response of the people to the working of these agencies, the defects found in their working and the suggestions for their improvement have been included, wherever possible, only in a general way.

The plan of the report is like this: First, it gives in each chapter by way of introduction the functions of the Department concerned, the Acts administered by it and the organisation of the Department at different levels, then it gives de tails about the recruitment, training, pay scale and functions of the lower functionaries of the Department; and finally it examines their working.

The importance of studying administration at the lower levels, in terms of persons there, was emphasized by Prime Minister Jawarharlal Nehru at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the General Body of the Indian Institute of Public Administration, held on April 25, 1959, in these words: "I feel that more and more attention is needed to these what might be called the lower ranks of public administration, than to the higher ranks. Higher ranks are important. Because higher ranks get some attention they are much more in the public eye, but the lower ranks are much more important for the life of the common people. I do not know how far this Institute or other institutes of the kind think of that aspect of administration at the level of the petty revenue official, the petty this and the petty that, who is far more important from the point of view of the average resident of India, specially in the village, than high officials. Here, you may well recall an old story of an old lady whose son was, I believe, being tried for a very serious offence, may be murder, before the High Court. And when he was acquitted by the High Court, the old lady thanked the Judge saying: "May you rise to be a Kotwal (Circle police official)!" For her the Kotwal was a much more important person than the High Court Judge. She had to deal with him daily. So we have to think of the lower functionaries, for they are the base." This survey is an attempt in that direction studying as it does administration at the level of the petty officials.

**Contents and Sample Pages**