Common Cause – Institute of Social Sciences Seminar on `Local Self Government – the Unfinished Agenda' March 28, 2012 A Consultation Paper (Extracts)
Precept, Practice and Potential
People's engagement with local self-government in India has a long history, but its evolution through various regions of the country over time has taken many form - from management of community resources like grazing lands, village commons and water to local dispute resolution and regulating the customs and practices of the constituent population. Its most important attribute was that it was more or less autonomous in most decision-making and did not depend on a distant centre of authority to give its actions legitimacy. The fundamental principle of this form of political order -democratic decentralization- is that elected local bodies are more sensitive to local communities and are as a result, more accountable to them.
Another core principle that defines local self-government is subsidiarity. This principle is based on the belief that the citizens are the true sovereigns and stakeholders in a democracy and must, therefore, be the final decision makers. The Oxford dictionary defines subsidiarity as " a principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level."
If we look at the evolution of this concept in the last hundred years, starting with the Royal Commission on Decentralization, we find that as early as in 1907, it had recognised, "it is most desirable, alike in the interests of decentralization and in order to associate the people with the local tasks of administration, that an attempt should be made to constitute and develop village panchayats for the administration of local village affairs." There was a heightened political awakening in the country during the freedom movement and India's leaders began to articulate the philosophy of decentralization with great force. In 1909, the Resolution of the 24th Congress session at Lahore urged the government to take early steps to establish elected local bodies with elected chairmen from village panchayat upwards and to give them necessary financial support.
The Montague–Chelmsford reforms of 1919 transferred local self-government to the provinces. The Government of India Act, 1935 enabled elected provincial governments to be set up and these governments in turn enacted legislations to further democratise local self-government.
The Gandhian perspective
The foremost advocate of this form of decentralization was none other than the Father of the Nation, who said:
"My idea of village Swaraj is that it is a complete republic independent of its neighbours for its own vital wants and yet interdependent for many others in which dependence is a necessity...The government of the village will be conducted by the panchayats of five persons annually elected by the adult villagers, males and females....Hence there is perfect democracy based upon individual freedom. The individual is the architect of his own government."
In this context, it is interesting to note what Shri T. Prakasham, an important member of the Constituent Assembly, stated in his speech on 22nd November, 1948 in support of establishment of Panchayati Raj:
"This is not the first time that this is introduced in our country. This is not a favour that we bestow upon our people by reviving these republics. When we fill the whole country with these organizations, I may tell you, there will be no food famines; there will be no cloth famine and we would not be spending 110 crores of rupees as we are doing today for the imports of food; this amount could be saved for the country. We have gone away far from the reality. These village republics will put a stop to black-marketing in a most wonderful manner. These village republics, if properly worked and organised on the basis of self-sufficiency, to which some may take exception, if the village is made a self-governing unit, it would put a stop to inflation also which the Government has not been able even to checkmate to any appreciable extent. ..................... There would be no temptation for our own people to become Communists and to go about killing our own people as they have been doing. For all these reasons I would support this and I am very anxious that this must be carried out in all the provinces as quickly as possible, soon after the Constitution is passed, and I am seeing today the light and prosperity before the country when the Constitution is passed and when this village organization comes into existence."
There was, however , a strong contrarian argument against local governments, particularly panchayats, within the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly and leaders like Dr.Ambedkar felt that the power relations obtaining in rural areas would only lead to oppression and exploitation. The direction for organization of self-governing village panchayats was therefore placed in the non justiceable chapter of Directive Principles of State Policy under Article 40 of the Constitution. Moreover, there was no reference in the Constitution to urban local bodies. In consequence, the subject did not receive due attention or priority of the government for almost four decades.
Community Development (1952)
The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments
The recommendations of the various committees and commissions did not by themselves lead to their immediate adoption but set in motion certain proposals that fructified in the 73rd and 74th Amendments, a phase which had begun with the introduction in Parliament of the 64th Amendment Bill (1989). The Amendment required all the states to amend their respective Panchayat legislations in order to bring them in conformity with the Constitution within one year.
The 73rd Amendment put the Gram Sabha at the centre of the scheme of devolution. It is defined as a body consisting of all registered voters of a village within the area of a village Panchayat. Article 243 A provides that a Gram Sabha may exercise such powers and perform such functions at the village level as the legislature of a State may, by law, provide. Hence, the powers assigned to the Gram Sabha vary from state to state.
The main features of the Amendments are:
 Provision for a uniform three-tier system with exemption for only states with less than 20 lakh population.
 Reservation of seats for SC/ST in every Panchayat in proportion to their population.
 1/3rd of the seats reserved for SC/ST and women  All elections to the panchayats/ local bodies are to be conducted under
the supervision of the State Election Commission.  The panchayats would have a term of five years, and if dissolved
earlier for any reason, elections would have to be held within six
months.
 The Act gives powers and responsibilities to the panchayats to plan
and execute development projects.
 The activities assigned to panchayats include poverty alleviation,
agriculture, land improvement, minor irrigation, small scale industry, animal husbandry and fishery, education, health, social welfare and infrastructure development.
Taken together, the 73rd and 74th Amendments gave a constitutional status to the third tier of governance. Hereafter, the federal structure was not a mere union of the Centre and the states, but included institutions of local governance like panchayats and municipalities. This was the level at which people would have a sense of direct participation or influence in making decisions regarding their own day to day administration.
All evaluations of the functioning of Panchayati Raj institutions and urban local bodies showed that even after two decades the system of governance still remained far too centralized with innumerable layers of bureaucracy. Effective decentralisation from states to local governments never really took place due to the unwillingness on the part of states to give it the priority that it deserved and to let go of their powers. Consequently, the plans, policies and schemes conceived in national or state capitals rarely reflected the needs of the people or the ground realities. The actual timing of delivery due to blockages or delays in the elongated delivery channels often nullified the intent of the schemes. In many cases, the funds earmarked for local bodies got diverted.
Moreover, decentralisation per se did not lead to democratisation. Neither deconcentration nor delegation of power was a sufficient condition for effective democratisation. What was missing was real devolution of power to the constitutionally elected representatives at the level of local self-government.
The challenge of making PRIs the key vehicles for social transformation and the location of the countervailing power of the people to claim their rights and demand direct social accountability still remains. The main reasons of this failure are:-
(1) The sensitivity of the local political economy to external influences and the high probability of elite capture of resources.
(2) The central and state level political elite feels threatened having to compete with the local political elite for winning support from a common constituency.
(3) There are State and Central projects that bypass the authority of the
PRIs.
(4) Problems of accountability and transparency often associated with rent- seeking behavior characterise many functionaries at all levels.
(5) Meetings of Gram Sabhas, which are the fundamental units of direct democracy, are often convened at irregular intervals and suffer from poor attendance because the Panchayat officials are not accountable to Gram Sabhas.
(6) There is the problem of `proxy panchayats', as male members of the family act on behalf of the elected women representatives.
(7) Social-institutional barriers often inhibit the role of dalits (the Scheduled Castes) and the Scheduled Tribes in the Panchayati Raj system.
(8) An indifferent bureaucracy has seriously held back the devolution of powers.
District Planning Committees have not yet been set up in some states and even in those where they have been set up, they are beset with problems. The Table below gives the updated status of constitution of District Planning Committees:-
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