Current Public Administration Magazine (August - 2014) - Local Governance & Second Generation Reforms in India
Sample Material of Current Public Administration Magazine
POLITY, CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNANCE
Local Governance and Second Generation Reforms in India
Self-governing village communities characterised by agrarian economies had existed in India from the earliest times. Not only are they mentioned in the Rig Veda, which dates from approximately 1200 B.C., there is also definite evidence available of the existence of village sabhas (councils or assemblies) until about 600 B.C. These village bodies were the lines of contact with higher authorities on matters affecting the villages.
In course of time, these village bodies took the form of panchayats (an assembly of five persons) which looked after the affairs of the village. They had both police and judicial powers. Custom and religion elevated them to a sacred position of authority. These village bodies, both in north and south India, had been the pivot of administration, the centre of social life, and, above all, a focus of social solidarity.
Sir Charles Metcalfe, the provisional governor general of India (1835-36), had called the Indian village communities “the little republics.” Given the caste-ridden feudal structure of the village society, they were not ideal institutions working with the participation of all the people.
British Colonial Period
In 1687 a municipal corporation was set up in Madras, on the British model of a town council, empowered to levy taxes, comprising nominated members. In 1870 the viceroy, Lord Mayo, passed a resolution for decentralisation of power to bring about administrative efficiency in meeting the demands of the people and collecting taxes to add to the finances of the imperial government. It was followed by the government resolution of 18 May 1882 during the viceroyalty of Lord Ripon, providing for local boards consisting of a large majority of elected non-official members and presided over by a non-official chairperson. The Ripon resolution is considered to be the Magna Carta of local democracy in India. Although the progress of local self-government on the lines of the Ripon resolution was tardy, the term “self-government” gained currency. Mention may be made of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Decentralisation (1907), the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms (1919), the Government of India Act (1935) marking important stages in the evolution of panchayats in the country.
During the freedom movement, village panchayats were central to its ideological framework. Mahatma Gandhi had defined his vision of village panchayats as a complete republic based on perfect democracy and individual freedom. In 1946 he wrote “Independence must begin at the bottom. Thus, every village will be a Republic or Panchayat having full powers. It follows, therefore, that every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its affairs even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world”.
Constitutional Debate
Despite the nationalist movement’s commitment to panchayats and Gandhi’s unequivocal propagation of the ideal, the first draft of India’s constitution did not include a provision for panchayats. It was included only in the Directive Principles of State Policy (Article 40), which is not mandatory.
Whatever happened during the making of the Constitution of India, the followers of Gandhi considered panchayats both a means as also an end. They sincerely believed in their immense potential for democratic decentralisation and for devolving power to the people. In the early fifties itself it was realized that without taking cognisance of Gandhiji’s idea of “village republics” development and good governance will remain a pipedream.
In the state of Rajasthan, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated independent India’s first panchayati raj on 2 October 1959, following the recommendations of a study team appointed by the government of India. Nehru hailed the system as “the most revolutionary and historical step in the context of new India.” By 1959, all the states had passed panchayat acts and panchayats reached all parts of the country.
Nevertheless, the panchayati raj system had been moving downhill since mid 1960s because of the domination of the economically and socially privileged classes and not holding elections at regular intervals. If regular elections were held, political education of communities oppressed for ages would have changed permutations and combinations accelerating the decline of traditional rivalries and giving way to issue-oriented groupings.
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Asoka Mehta Committee
In 1977 the Government of India appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Asoka Mehta to enquire into the working of the panchayati raj institutions, and to suggest measures to strengthen them so as to enable a decentralised system of planning and development to be effective. The committee’s report (1978) is a seminal document which seeks to make panchayats an organic, integral part of our democratic process. The panchayati raj institutions which came into being after the Asoka Mehta committee’s recommendations are considered as the second generation panchayats in independent India.
The second generation of panchayati raj institutions started in West Bengal in 1978 followed by Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Later Jammu and Kashmir took steps to strengthen decentralization and local governance. These states adapted the recommendations of the Asoka Mehta Committee to suit their conditions and learnt from each other’s experience in bringing forth new legislations or amendments to the prevailing state acts. The most important thrust of the second phase was that the panchayats emerged from a development organisation at the local level into a political institution. The emphasis shifted from the bureaucracy to the political process. This was a welcome trend. The attempt had been to make panchayats into genuine political institutions. Thus they were a microcosm of the state itself with all its ramifications.
Need for Constitutional Support
It is well established that constitutional support and legislative measures are necessary for bringing about social change. In India, since there was no constitutional support for self-government below the state level, no state government took the process seriously. Therefore, the frequently asked question was: “Why is it that we cannot have a constitutional amendment which will make it obligatory for local elections to be held on time?” Even those states which had gone ahead, as far as they could, in the devolution of powers to the panchayats, had felt that concentration of power at the Union level was working as serious impediment. In 1985 Abdul Nazir Sab, the minister for panchayati raj and rural development in Karnataka, stated that “without a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the [panchayats] our efforts may not be as fruitful as we desire”.
Since the second generation panchayats gave more powers to the local bodies and as their orientation was more political than developmental, they evoked widespread enthusiasm both in their implementation as well as their working. The functioning of the panchayats in the state of West Bengal was considered a success story.
The Constitution Amendment
It was against this backdrop that on 15 May 1989 the Constitution (64th Amendment) Bill was introduced in Parliament by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Although the 1989 bill in itself was a welcome step, there was serious opposition to it on two basic grounds and due to its political overtones. These were: (a) the bill overlooked the states and was seen as an instrument of the Centre to deal directly with the panchayati raj institutions; and, (b) that it was imposing a uniform pattern throughout the country instead of permitting individual states to legislate the details, keeping in mind the local circumstances. There was an outcry against this bill not only from the political parties but also from the intellectuals and concerned citizens. Although the bill was passed in the lower house of the Parliament (Lok Sabha), on October 15, 1989 it was defeated in the upper house (Rajya Sabha).
In the following years the issue of decentralization and local government came to the centre stage of political and academic discourse. Political parties through their statements and manifestos supported constitutional amendment for strengthening panchayats and a pro-panchayati raj climate was created in the country. Thus in September 1991, the Congress government under prime minister Narasimha Rao introduced two bills, one for rural local governance and the other for municipalities. The parliament passed the bills on 23 December 1992. They came into force as the Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act 1992 on 24 April 1993 and Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act 1992 on 1 June 1993. These amendments to the Constitution brought about a fundamental change not only in the realm of local self-government but also in India’s federal character heralding a new chapter in the process of decentralisation. The 73rd and 74th Amendments provided a broad framework to states within which the Panchayati Raj (PR) and Municipalities became the Institutions of self government.
Today India has 537 District panchayats, 6094 Intermediate panchayats and 2,32,913 Village panchayats with 28,28,779 elected representatives. At the village panchayat level, each elected represntatives’ constituency consists of about 350 people, making India the largest and most intensely democratic country in the world.
The Gram Sabha, comprising the assembly of all people living in a village, has been especially enshrined therein, so as to enable the people to manage their affairs as a collective. Thus, the Act has opened avenues for facilitating social mobilisation process at the grassroots level. The Gram Sabha which can function as the institution of participative democracy ensures direct democracy.
That the Constitution envisages a crucial role for panchayats in development is evident from the fact that the 11th schedule provides an illustrative list of functions that may be assigned to the panchayats. This list contains 29 items covering economic sector, social sector and infrastructure. Responsibilities for undertaking activities in each of these sectors are to be assigned to the panchayats.
In the economic sector, there are subjects like agriculture, land reform, land improvement, soil conservation, minor irrigation, animal husbandry, fishery, social forestry, fuel and fodder, markets and fairs, small scale and cottage industry. Thus almost all the components of rural economy may be brought under the purview of panchayat-level development planning. Besides for alleviating poverty, panchayats may be entrusted with the implementation of various anti-poverty programmes like employment generation, construction of houses for the poor or mid-day meal for the school children.
In the social sector, panchayats are assigned an important role in providing elementary education, skill formation, preventive and curative health care, water and sanitation, development of women and SC/ST people, social security, public distribution system, disaster management and relief.
Economic and social development needs improvement of physical infrastructure. Here also the 11th schedule gives the panchayats responsibilities in respect of roads, bridges, waterways etc and rural electrification including development of non-conventional energy sources.
The two Amendments have given the local self-government institutions the responsibility of preparation of plans and implementation of schemes for economic development and social justice. The constitution of District Planning Committee (DPC) has brought the decentralized planning to the forefront. The DPC is a monitoring and facilitating body, consolidating the plans prepared by the Panchayats and Municipalities in the district and preparing a draft development plan for the district as a whole. It brings all the developmental agencies operating in the district on a single platform in order to provide an opportunity to listen to each other and identify the development potential of the district and devise suitable strategies.
With the constitutional provisions, India entered into multi-level planning in which each level is entitled to exercise autonomy within a common framework that evolves through constant bottom-up and top-down interactions and flow of information among different levels. This was critical for development planning in a country with more than six hundred thousand villages and over five thousand towns and cities. In short, the new pachayati raj had set in motion a silent social revolution.
Today elections to the local self-government institutions every five years have become a norm although in the initial years states irrespective of the party in power had defied the constitutional provision. As the civil society organizations took the initiative to fight the anti-constitutional approach of the states by filing public interest litigations (PILs), the judiciary at different levels effectively intervened.
Constitutional bodies like the State Election Commission (SEC), State Finance Commission (SFC) etc., in all states are now firmly in place. The SECs have taken up the panchayat elections seriously giving a lot of credibility to the grassroots level democratic process.
There has been a steady progress as far as the inclusion of excluded sections of our population in the decision making process from village to the district level is concerned. Women have received the maximum mileage. Today 1.2 million women are elected to the local governments every five years and more than three times that number are contesting elections. This is not a mean achievement in a hierarchical and male dominated society. The common refrain that it is the men folk in the families who control the women elected members may be partly true but studies show that the situation is rapidly changing. One-third of all the panchayats and municipalities at various levels have women presidents. As years go by, the number of women being elected from general constituencies is also increasing. Although the national reservation for women is 33 per cent of the total seats, 10 states today have provided for 50 per cent reservations. The low caste (formerly untouchable) and Tribes are equally securing their due share in the local governments.
As local self-government bodies have come into existence throughout the country, their functioning has come under scrutiny. A congenial climate for taking governance to the doorsteps of the people is slowly being created. A major achievement of this process is that patronage and clientelism are slowly shifting from traditional castes and families to political parties and ideologies.
There are numerous elaborate mechanisms at Central and State levels to ensure accountability and efficient utilisation of public funds. There are time tested institutional mechanisms for audit. So also vigilance committees sponsored by the government and supported by civil society organisations are active today. The concept of `social audit’ has emerged from these innovative steps.
Many states, taking advantage of the prevailing situation, have gone for innovative and creative experiments in local governance, planning and rural development. The people’s participation in local planning in Kerala is an illustrative case in point.
The experiences of the last 20 years show that whenever reliance has been placed on panchayats and adequate resources and other kinds of support have been given to them, they have produced results. It would be appropriate to cite the cases of Kerala and West Bengal to bring home the point.
Case of Kerala and West Bengal
The two states – Kerala and West Bengal have shown how panchayats can play crucial role in rural development.
In 1996, the Government of Kerala took a ‘big bang’ approach for decentralization by devolving as much as 35-40 per cent of plan funds to the local bodies in untied form and by institutionalizing the local level planning. For this purpose all the rural and urban local bodies along with the DPCs were activated. A detailed methodology of participatory local level planning was developed and the local councils were given autonomy in taking decisions on local development projects, within the framework of broad guidelines developed by the State Planning Board. In evaluating the experience of this bold experiment, an observer noted that in respect of making provisions for ‘shelter, drinking water, sanitation facilities and connectivity, the local governments …performed beyond expectations. In other sectors, particularly in agriculture, animal husbandry, health and education, there have been good models, which can be … replicated’.
West Bengal introduced the panchayat system and empowered them in the late 1970s, much before the enactment of the Constitution amendment bill. In the 1980s and 90s the state experienced a ‘green revolution’ particularly in the production of food grains and dramatic reduction of rural poverty. Many authors are of the view that the panchayats played a crucial role in making these outcomes possible. Panchayats contributed to the growth process of the rural economy (which also reduced poverty) directly by improving the rural infrastructure and providing various services. Panchayats played an important role in improving connectivity, developing social forestry, improving small irrigation systems, providing water supply and sanitation facilities. They were also involved in providing non land inputs to farmers, such as seeds and fertilsers and in facilitating farmers’ access to credit. After the advent of the panchayats, horizontal coordination at the field level of different development departments improved. Panchayats also played a very important role in implementing the state’s land reform programme, which facilitated the growth process and helped reduce poverty. Last but not the least, it is because of the panchayats that there has been negligible targeting failure in the execution of various poverty alleviation programmes. Taken together all these contributed to the reduction of rural poverty.
Centrally Sponsored Schemes and Local Governments
The Union government has introduced Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) for reducing rural poverty and to improve rural infrastructure. It guarantees employment for at least 100 days in a year to all who need jobs. The landless agricultural labourers are being given job cards that entitle them to get job or financial compensation if a job cannot be given. The three-tier panchayat system has been put in charge of executing this huge programme.
Another flagship programme of Government of India relates to health. Known as National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), this programme aims at ensuring health for all with particular emphasis on women and children by making ‘architectural correction of the health system’. A major strategy of this ‘architectural correction’ is decentralization of health management at the local level. For this the Mission has given several important roles to the panchayats, particularly gram panchayats. This includes preparation of village health plan, management of sub centres, and integration of health care services with drinking water supply, sanitation, improvement of personal hygiene and environmental cleanliness and nutrition. Without the involvement of panchayats, it would have been impossible to implement these and other centrally sponsored poverty alleviation schemes in the economic and social sector.
The advocates of decentralization are against these Centrally Sponsored Schemes being controlled by their respective departments and not by the local governments. According to the second Administrative Reforms Commission, the Centrally-sponsored schemes have to shed their separate vertical identity and be part of the overall development plan of the panchayati raj system.
Developments since 2000
The new panchayats, which had began their journey in 1993 entered the new millennium with great hopes. The letter written by Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee to Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu on 27 April 2001 which categorically stated that in the Constitution panchayats have been visualized as the third tier of governance in the federal polity and deplored “the tendency of many state governments to create parallel structures, which marginalize panchayti raj institutions” gave a much-needed fillip to the confidence of all concerned.
Since 2001, three reports have been tabled which deal with panchayats and its critical place in governance and federal polity in the country. These three reports were : (i) the Task Force constituted during the conference of state ministers of panchayati raj held in New Delhi on 11 July 2001 (report submitted on 31 August 2001), (ii) National Commission to review the working of the Constitution (31 March 2002), and (iii) the Second Administrative Reform Commission (October 2007). The three reports had one concern in common: the panchayats are not functioning according to the constitutional provisions; the Union government and state governments are responsible for it.
For instance, the report of the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution had observed: “… the change brought about by the [73rd] Amendment has not been radical, nor its implications are found to be far-reaching. For, Panchyats have, till now, failed to emerge as governments at the third stratum, up to the expected level…. It is not without some justification that the Panchayats that came in the wake of the post-73rd Constitution amendment have been described as democratic institutions without power – a decorative box, as it were, that contains nothing inside”. Therefore, the Commission recommended several amendments to Part IX of the Constitution., which included giving an overseeing function to the Central Election Commission over the State Election Commission, restructuring the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules in the Constitution of India in a manner that creates a separate fiscal do main for panchayats and municipalities; conferring on the panchayats full power of administrative and functional control over staff transferred to them and the power to recruit staff required for service in their jurisdiction.
It also recommended the constitution of a State Panchayat Council under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister and Comptroller and Auditor-General of India to conduct the audit or lay down accounting standards for panchayats.
In the same vein, the Second Administrative Reforms Commission had recommended that States should ensure that village panchayats are of an appropriate size to make them viable units of local self-government, the state Governments should not have the power to suspend or rescind any resolution passed by the panchayati raj institutions or take action against the elected representatives or to supersede/dissolve the panchayats. The powers to investigate and recommend action should lie with the local Ombudsman. The flow of funds for all public development schemes in rural areas should be exclusively routed through panchayats. Local Area Development Authorities and other organizations having similar functions should be wound up and their functions and assets transferred to the appropriate level of the panchayat. The Members of Parliament Local Area Development (MPLAD) and Members of Legislative Assembly Local Area Development (MLALAD) funds should be abolished.
But, there has been almost no action taken either by the state governments or the Union government to implement these recommendations or to bring them to the centre-stage for discussion and debate. On the other hand, the Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) fund has been increased from Rs. two crore to Rs. five crore per year (following in their footsteps all states have also raised the local area development fund for their MLAs) while panchayats are facing resource crunch all over the country.
In 2004, when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government came to power, for the first time, a separate Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MOPR) was created. There was a very positive response to this move, but there was also a view that it should have been the Ministry of Local Government to coordinate and facilitate core ministries, which are closely associated with local development to ensure better planning and monitoring of local development programmes as also their efficient implementation. Evidently, only a full-fledged ministry of panchayats and municipalities − Ministry of Local Government − with appropriate mandate, could implement the provisions in Part IX and IXA of the constitution. However, no action was taken by the coalition government in this regard.
During the five-year period (2004-2009) the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, nevertheless made an impact on the seventy per cent population of this country. The push it gave for national debate on various issues affecting the lives of ordinary people, the ideas and programmers it generated at the state level and below to make panchayats the ‘institutions of self-government’ created a lot of hope in the mind of the common man.
From July to December 2004, MOPR organized seven Round Tables of state ministers in-charge of panchayati raj on major themes in different parts of the country.. The Union Minister of Panchayati Raj signed memoranda with 22 state chief ministers as to how to strengthen the panchayats by implementing the provisions of the 73rd constitution amendment through the State Acts.
Three initiatives launched during this period need mention here. The first was Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme (BRGF) for 250 districts in 27 states. It was started in 2007 in 232 district panchayats and the municipalities . The grant is ‘untied’; and nearly 11 per cent of the total allocation is for capacity building.
Second was activity mapping. In the first Round Table held in Kolkata, it was resolved that “ On the basis of the identification of activities related to devolved functions, and through the application of the principle of subsidiarity, States UTs may review/undertake time bound activity mapping….”. It was clear that hardly any substantial devolution of functions, functionaries and funds to panchayats had taken place in most of the states (except Kerala) making the activity mapping exercise irrelevant or out of context.
Third was the introduction of Panchayat Empowerment and Accountability Incentive Scheme (PEAIS). Its aim was to motivate states to empower the panchayats and to ensure panchayats to have accountability systems to bring about transparency and efficiency. A devolution index was computed since then using funds, functions and functionaries and their sub-components as parameters of measurement. Since 1989 the devolution index had also a fourth dimension viz.; framework − establishing the state election commission holding regular panchayat election, state finance commission at regular intervals and setting up of district planning committee. The PAES rewards incremental devolution in addition to cumulative devolution. From 2011-12, panchayat performance is being assessed and rewarded.
Since 2000, three Union Finance Commissions (UFCs) submitted their reports – Eleventh (2000-2005), Twelfth (2005-2010), and Thirteenth (2010-15). The reports of these UFCs gave special emphasis on local government finance.
The Thirteenth Finance Commission (2010-2015) noted that all local bodies across the states indicated their inability to meet the basic needs of their constituents. Therefore the Commission recommended that local bodies be transferred a percentage of the divisible pool of taxes after converting this share to grant-in-aid under Article 275. This grant has two components: (i) a general basic grant and total special area grant of 1.5% of the previous years’ divisible pool, and (ii) performance grant based on a variables that are important for promoting decentralization.
The Judiciary in India has been extremely positive about the importance of the 73rd and 74th Constitution Amendments. The judgement taken by a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Y. K. Sabharwal had directed that panchayat and municipal elections must be held within the stipulated time-frame. “The Election Commission shall try to complete the election before the expiration of the duration of five years’ period as stipulated in Clause (5)”.
The local government system in this country, which was inaugurated with great enthusiasm, is facing enormous problems and challenges. The intensity of the negative forces varies from State to State because local government is a state subject. Many state governments are riding roughshod over the local government institutions, the latter are either they are not adequately empowered or starved of funds as well as human resources. Hence their roles in development are uneven across the states.
At a deeper level, the negative forces are feudalism and patriarchy. So long as these remain the organizing principles of rural society, little good can be expected from self-governing panchayats. For, they will only give more power to those who are already powerful in social and economic terms. Control over the instrumentalities of self-government will further strengthen their hands. “Out” groups of one kind or another, especially the poor and women, may well come to feel the weight of oppression more than before. For them, decentralized governance could turn out to be a curse rather than a blessing.
A section of bureaucracy is not cooperating with the democratically elected local governments to enable them to emerge as institutions of self-government. India’s administrative culture is to retain the powers of the line departments and not to give power to the people. What an elected panchayat member in Andhra Pradesh said in 1995 tells it all: “the officials worked against giving power to the non-officials and especially the people’s representatives from the villages. In this, they were hand in glove with state level politicians” . They create parallel bodies which have devastating impact on democratically elected local bodies and sabotage the new generation of local governments.
In a socially stratified society like India, the landlords and members of the upper caste control everything even today, except in a couple of states where land reforms have been implemented. In a typical village panchayat of about 8,000 population, 70 per cent people have no land, and the 30 per cent control everything from gram sabha (village assembly) meetings to the panchayats and influence assembly and parliament elections including development schemes implementation. The officials happily work with the leaders of the 30 per cent village landowners. In such a village about 15-20 per cent people are the Dalits/Scheduled Castes ( former untouchables) and they don’t own land. In such situations, elected panchayats function as proxy. It is the landlords who get elected as president. If Dalits, courageous women, people with idealism question their actions or if and when they get elected and they try to bring changes through the panchayats, they are at the receiving end of the ire of the landlords or upper castes.
Conclusion
The decentralization and local governance in India has taken strides since India got independence. But it still has miles to go. The Union and State governments as well as the civil society have to play an important role. How important decentralized local government is for India, is evident from the following statement of 30 eminent academics:
“It is a matter of deep concern that even after 16 years since enactment of Constitution 73rd and 74th amendments, the progress towards implementing them is very slow and uneven among the States. … … it is clear that the political intent and consensus that lead to the major step of the amendments giving constitutional status and rights to local self government, has been dismally lacking in implementation at the union and state levels. The Union Government has given the impression that the substance and phase of implementation of the Constitutional provision are to be determined by consideration of political equations and sensitivities… … … Continued failure to empower local governments will have serious consequences of not only flouting the Constitution but breading popular resentment”.
Courtesy - George Mathew, Chairman, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi