Control Over PRIs

Control over PRIs as essential as would be for any other public institution. Not only do PRIs need guidance at several steps, but also protection against vested interests. Financial control is also indispensable in order to ensure that public funds reach the right beneficiaries. Control is also necessary to maintain an optimum level of efficiency and economy and besides, through the system of control, there is a continuous interaction between the state government and the PRI. This is done by the following four methods:

1. Institutional Control : This control is exercised through the constitutional provisions and enactments of the concerned state legislature. The acts of the legislature determine the size and territorial jurisdiction of the PRIs, their composition and electoral procedures, their functions, the methods of settlement of disputes in the PRIs, control over the staff and control over the property and documents of the PRIs.

2. Administrative Control : This implies the control exercised by the state government to check and regulate the day-to-day working and administration of the PRIs. The government can review, modify or reject the proposals put forth by the PRIs, remove their members under certain circumstances through prescribed procedures, conduct periodic inspections, execute the no-confidence motions passed by the PR bodies and even supersede and dissolve these bodies. However, all these powers will now have to be exercised within the provisions of the Indian Constitution.

3. Financial Control : The Act setting up or governing the PR bodies in a state determines to a great extent, the sources of their revenue in terms of taxes, fees, loans and grants. As already indicated, the state government determines the general principles governing the framing of their budgets and lays down rules regarding the nature and forms of accounts to be maintained. Through the office of the Examiner of Local Funds Audit, the accounts of the PRIs are audited and reports submitted to the government.

4. Technical Control: All plans and schemes prepared by the PR bodies have to be technically approved by the government. The state government officials provide technical guidance to these bodies. Various meetings of the PRIs are attended by technical, officers who articulate the approach and desire of the government.

PROBLEM AREAS

Experience has shown that panchayati raj in India is affected by a number of limitations and weaknesses. To begin with, the chief malady identified is the domination of the PRIs by bureaucracy. The instrument for the implementation of all the major schemes, be it the CD Programme, NES or the IRDP, has been the bureaucracy. District Rural Development Agencies have further deprived the PRIs of their core functions like action planning and programme implementation, especially of poverty eradication and employment orientation schemes.
Several government registered societies and cooperatives have sprung up 10 implement the schemes sponsored by the Central and state governments. They have, unfortunately, bypassed the PRIs by taking over a lot of their functions. Though it must be added that exceptions like CAD apart, most special agencies, like DRDAs, do not themselves implement schemes, but use panchayat samitis or government district level workers (DLWs) to get the work done.

It must be mentioned that, in recent years, the Central government has launched a series of new development schemes which, broadly, have glossed over the role and potentiality of the PRIs. Some of these schemes are Intensive Agricultural District Programme (IADP), later changed to Intensive Agricultural Area Programme (IAAP), the Small Farmers Development Agency SFDA) and Marginal Farmers and Agricultural Labourers Agency (MFAL) later merged with the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), the Rural Works Programme (RWP), the Drought-Prone area Programme food for Work Programme, Desert Development Programme, NREP, JRY etc. Thus, the whole domain of integrated development was systematically kept outside the purview of the PRIs, making these people’s organizations irrelevant in a major part of the process of rural change. There were exceptions though. Of course, PR elected non-officials are represented in governing bodies of DRDA etc., and panchayat samitis and gram panchayats have been involved in programme implementation, but the panchayat bodies have not called the tune. For instance, the Government of Rajasthan, during the Janata regime, had involved panchayats in the implementation of the Antyodaya and Food for Work programmes. But, in the case of Central government programmes, the PRIs have generally been compelled to act as “concerned spectators” and have often been despirited and demoralised. This approach of the central government was also reflected in Rajiv Gandhi’s proposal (1989) to send funds meant for the panchayati raj institutions directly to the district Collectors. There is a common feeling that, in some states, the Collectors have dominated the functioning of the zila parishad. Cases of bureaucrats dominating the rural development scene in Manipur, Kerala and Bihar are well publicized. And, the implementation of Rajiv Gandhi’s proposals made the Collector the overlord of the district. Until now, there have prevailed strong undercurrents of bureaucratic domination in the PRIs. The district, block and village panchayat bodies have been controlled by the bureaucrats at the corresponding levels of administration. With the enhancement of its powers, the bureaucracy develops, as has been highlighted by Fred Riggs and other scholars, strong vested interests in retaining power in its own hands. Besides, it develops alliance patterns in order to strengthen its own position and power. In this context, S.R. Maheshwari refers to a BDO as follows:

Demands on him are numerous and exacting and, on occasions, he, as a defence mechanism, aligns himself with factions in the Samiti. And, having once tasted blood, some civil servants start dabbling in local politics to promote their selfish ends. There is no denying the fact that the panchayati raj civil service has become politicalised.

It may be argued that the PR service is not a civil service in the true sense of the term (The 73rd Amendment however, takes the converse view). Presently, almost all the senior positions in the PRIs are manned by officers of the state government, who are sent on deputation to these institutions. Hence, they have no strong loyalties towards these institutions and, more often than not, they are not truly committed to the philosophy of panchayati raj. Regarding these deputationists, James Warner Bjorkman and Het Ram Chaturvedi remark: “With moorings in their parent departments, these officials had few incentives, much less compulsion, to develop new ways of working or shift their loyalties to the new structure.”

Frequent transfers of officials also obstruct continuity, which is vital for carrying out completed developmental activities.

The next question is that of mass participation at the rural level. Undoubtedly, through institutional devices such as councils and committees, avenues for participative decision-making have been opened, and yet, rural participation, in a true sense, has not really been forthcoming. The meetings at the three levels are held without any visible zeal or sense of purpose and, often, without an agenda. Sometimes, meetings are postponed for no specific reason. Take for instance, the gram sabhas. It is meant to provide direct participation to the rural population, but it has remained dormant and ineffective for several reasons including illiteracy, general public apathy, the tendency on the part of the rural elite to monopolise their functioning and absence of any effective mechanism to enforce their decisions. People’s participation in the rural development programmes seems to be limited to receiving the benefits.

Also, no efforts are made to motivate, guide and train the rural people. Without training in the art of self-governance, they lack direction. Similarly, field workers, and more particularly the village level workers, have been given very little guidance and supervision. Besides, the mechanisms for effecting inter-institutional coordination have not facilitated proper communication, because of which reliable feedback on the implementation of the plans and on the working of PRIs is obtained only rarely.

The weaker sections still feel that they do not have an adequate voice in the PRIs. Panchayat bodies continue to be dominated by the richer strata of the rural community in the tradition-bound village society. Now the 73rd Amendment ensures reservation of seats in PRIs for women and for SC and ST. But, so far, a case of the weaker sections getting authentic representation in the PRIs has been n exception rather than the rule. This proves that, irrespective of several legislations, the hegemony of the dominant castes in the local power structure persists.

Though, until mid-1994, elections to PRIs were contested on a party-basis, election time has always brought to surface several malpractices in which politicians indulge. Talking of elections at the panchayat samiti level, the Santhanam Committee on Panchayati Raj Elections (1965) had pointed out:

In the case of some of them, open and heavy bribery amounting on occasions to thousands of rupees per samiti member, practical kidnapping of members, confining them in particular places or sending them away on long tours and resorting to all other kinds of undue pressure and influence were brought to our notice. These gross abuses are easily possible because of the small electorate.
Such malpractices have only brought down the image as well as the efficacy of panchayati raj institutions.

The PRIs had also to face hostility from higher level political leaders, including MPs and MLAs. These leaders have generally viewed PRIs as threats to their influence. In fact, in most of the states, ‘real” decentralization from state to local level did not take place. The state governments have generally been reluctant to part with their powers. As a result, no real functions or funds were transferred to PRIs. And, to cap it all, the state governments have always retained the powers of removing the members of the PRIs and dissolving them and have used these powers, occasionally, without valid reasons.

In spite of loud sympathy for decentralized planning, there has been very little systematic planning at the local level. During the early 1960s, efforts at involving panchayat bodies in decentralized planning were made. However, subsequently, the stress on planning techniques started outweighing the emphasis on participative planning. In fact, in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, some states set up district planning bodies, independent of the panchayats, though elected non-officials were associated in the district planning bodies. However, the district planning bodies have also had only a limited role in decision making at the state level, except for some untied funds being provided by the state governments at the district level. Planning has so far been a centralized function and, in some states, the role of the PRIs was limited to implementation of only some schemes. Paradoxically, even though the schemes were meant for the welfare of the rural population, local factors and needs were rarely taken into consideration while designing the development schemes; Central or state level guidelines were being followed. With all the talk of block and district planning, local people have not been truly involved in the actual planning process. The situation is likely to improve when the 73rd Amendment is implemented by various states. The Amendment enables state legislatures to assign, subject to conditions which it may impose, the function of preparing plans to panchayat bodies.

Lack of adequate resources has also come in the way of effective functioning of PRIs. Their main sources of revenue have been taxes, levies, fees etc., but their main dependence is on grants-in-aid from the state government which are not made available on time and which, even otherwise are grossly inadequate. Not only do the resources flow from the Central and the state government but they have also been inadequate. The PRIs themselves have shown a reluctance to garner their own resources. An interesting analysis in the context of Rajasthan may be cited here, since the situation is more or less the same in other states.
Local Panchayati Raj leaders chose a political strategy of avoiding risk by almost uniformly failing to extract and deploy local resources for development. All resources continued to come from the Central government via the state government. While the tax-base of rural Rajasthan was, and remains, neither high nor elastic, the history of Panchayati Raj has been marked by a tenacious reluctance to raise even voluntary resources in kind or in labour. The cash value of “people’s participation, under Panchayati Raj has been, for all intents and purpose, nil.

Thus, even when the powers to mobilise resources are provided to PRIs, the required political will cannot be institued from above.

It is also felt that the actual poor have no say in the activities of the PRIs. The presence of the MPs, MLAs, Collector et al. stifles the initiative of the local people, which in the long-term is not in the interest of the PRIs. The views of an observer are pertinent in this regard:

Traditional leadership entrenched in caste and land ownership is still in dominance. Functional leadership has not emerged. Vested interests..., corruption, inefficiency, groupism, unhealthy rivalry, misuse of powers and motivated decisions and actions have adversely affected the functioning and limited the utility of panchayati raj to an average villager?

Obviously, this image is not very heartening to a common villager.

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