30th anniversary of the Panchayati Raj

  • May 30, 2022
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30th anniversary of the Panchayati Raj

Concept:

  • Three decades ago, in 1992, the Constitution 73rd (on Panchayat Raj) and 74th Amendment Acts (on Nagarpalika or urban local bodies) were enacted.
  • These amendments were to give expression to Article 40 of the Constitution which enshrines one of the Directive Principles of State Policy, which requires the State to 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.

Historical Background

  • India has a long history of ‘democratic’ institutions from ancient times.
  • Marked by shared sovereignty, the separation of power and authority left the villages to a great extent to function as self-governing village republics.
  • REGULATING ACT OF 1773
    The earliest efforts in municipal Government in India were made in the Presidency towns of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay. In 1687, an order of the Court of Directors directed the formation of a Corporation of European and Indian members of the city of Madras. However, the Corporation did not survive.
  • Under the Regulating Act of 1773 the Governor-General nominated the servants of the Company and other British inhabitants, to be the Justice of Peace, to appoint for the cleaning and repairing of the street of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.
  • In the year 1817 and 1830, sporadic attempts were made in Madras and Calcutta to undertake works paid out of the lottery funds and much was done with this money in laying out these towns.
  • In1840, an Act widened and in 1841 an Act was passed for Madras. These Act widened the purpose for which the municipal assessment was to be utilized.  The inhabitants of the towns were given control over the assessment and collection of taxes. There was no response from the public.

Charles T. Metcalfe, the acting Governor-General of India (1835-38) recorded that “The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything that they can want within themselves…Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down. Revolution succeeds to revolution…. but the village communities remain the same……This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the peoples of India.”

MAYO’S RESOLUTION OF 1870
It was only after 1870 that real progress was made in direction of local-self government. Lord Mayo’s government in their Resolution of 1870 dealing with decentralization of finance, referred to the necessity of talking further steps to bring local interests and supervision to bear on the management of funds devoted to education, sanitation, public works, etc. New municipal Acts were passed in the various provinces between 1871 and 1874. The Acts extended the elective principle. The results of the policy of 1870 were described in the Resolution of the Local self-government, 1882, thus considerable progress  had been made since 1870.  A large income from local rates and cesses had been secured, and some provinces the management of the income had been freely entrusted to local bodies.

RIPON’S RESOLUTION OF 1881
The next step was taken during the tenure of Lord Ripon who has been rightly called the father of Local Self-government in India. His resolution on Local Self-government is a great landmark in the growth of Local Self-government in the country. After pointing out the beneficial effects on the local finance of the resolution of 1870,the resolution of 1881 stated that the Governor-General of India thought time had come when further steps should be taken to develop the idea of Lord Mayo’s Government. It was asserted that agreements with the provincial Government regarding finance should not ignore the question of Local Self-revenues to the local bodies.

RESOLUTION OF 1882
In this Resolution of Lord Ripon took special pains to make it clear that the expansion of the system of Local Self-government. Would not bring about a change for the better from the point of view of efficiency in municipal administration.

Lord Ripon’s resolution enunciated the following principles which were henceforth to inform and guide local government in India:

  1. Local bodies should have mostly elected non-governmental members and chairman.
  2. The state control over local bodies should be indirect rather than direct.
  3. These bodies must be endowed with adequate financial resources to carry out their functions.
  4. Local government personnel should operate under the administrative control of the local bodies. The government personnel who are deputed to the local government must be treated as employees of the local government and subject to government its control.
  5. The resolution of 1882 should be interpreted by the provincial government according to the local conditions prevalent in provinces.

Another significant stage in the history 0f local government was the publication in 1909 of the report of Royal commission upon Decentralization, set up in 1906. It made the following principal recommendations:

  1. The village should be regarded as the basic unit of local self-government institutions and every village should be constituted in urban areas.
  2. There should be a substantial majority of elected members in the local bodies.
  3. The municipality should elect its own president, but the district collector should continue to be the president of the district local board.
  4. Municipalities should be given the necessary authority to determine the taxes and to prepare their budgets after keeping a minimum reserve fund. The government should give grants for public works like water-supply, drainage scheme, etc.
  5. The bigger cities should have the services of full-time nominated officer. Local bodies should enjoy full control over their employee’s subject, of course to certain safe-guards for the security of services.

INDIA ISSUED THE RESOLUTION RE-AFFMING 1918
In 1918 the object of self government is to train the people in the management of their own local affairs and the political education of this sort must in the main take precedence over consideration of departmental efficiency. It follows from this that local bodies should be as representative as possible of the people whose affairs they are called upon to administer, that their authority in  the matter entrusted should be real and not nominal and that they should not be subjected to unnecessary control, should learn mistakes and profiting bt them.

The resolution contained the following:

  1. Panchayats should be levied in the villages.
  2. local bodies should contain a large elective majority.
  3. local government should be made broad-based by suitably extending the franchise.
  4. The president of the local body should be a member of the public and elected, rather than nominated.
  5. Local should be allowed freedom in the preparation of the budget, the imposition of taxes and sanction of works.

THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT OF 1935
The diarchic system of government at the provincial level was replaced by provincial autonomy.  The national movement for independence was also reaching new proportions. With the growing strength of the national movement in India ceased to be a mere experimental station of self-government The central provinces set up on enquiry committee in 1935, the united provinces in 1938, and Bombay in 1939. Although the recommendations of the municipal enquiry committees were unevently carried out in various provinces, there was a definite trend towards democratization of local government by further lowering of the franchise and abolition of system of nominations, and secondly by the separation of deliberative functions from executive ones.

After Independence: 

  • Panchayat Raj did not find a place in the draft Constitution.
  • As a result of the efforts of M.K. Gandhi, Article 40 was inserted in the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution and thus, was left for the future governments to deal with.
  • After the 1950’s, many states created a new three-tier system or a two tier system of local governance, but they all faced neglect.
  • Numerous official committees examined the issue of effective rural governance.
  • The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee (1957) recommended the transfer of decision-making powers from the state to the village panchayats.
  • The National Development Council (1958) wanted democracy to be extended to the grassroots and people’s participation in all governmental processes and development.
  • The Ashok Mehta Committee (1977) proposed a two-tier system with the district panchayats to be the power centre below the state.
  • The V.K. Rao committee (1985) recommended a three-tier structure.
  • Recognising the gram sabhas to be incarnations of direct democracy, the L.M. Singhvi Committee (1986), favored a new chapter to be brought in through constitutional amendment, with the gram sabha as the base of decentralized democracy.
  • This resulted in the 73rd Amendment Act on Panchayat Raj and Constitution 74th Amendment Act on Nagarpalika, passed on December 22 and 23, 1992 respectively.

The amendments

  • Two new parts were added to the Constitution: Part IX ‘The Panchayats’ and Part IXA ‘The Municipalities’.
  • The Acts transferred 29 subjects to the panchayats and 18 subjects to the municipalities.
  • Rural governance was to be handed over to a three-tier Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs), and urban governance to three types of municipalities, one each for the large and smaller urban areas, and towns in transition from rural to urban area.
  • As the subject of ‘local government’ is under the State list in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution, the States were to enact suitable laws for operationalising Panchayats.

Exemptions

  • Nagaland, Mizoram, Meghalaya, hill areas of Manipur, hill areas of Darjeeling district in West Bengal, and the scheduled areas and tribal areas referred to in Article 244 (1) and (2) of the Constitution were exempted from the application of the 73rd Amendment.
  • The special Constitutional provisions under Article 371A for Nagaland  and 371G for Mizoram  provide exclusive power to their state assemblies on matters concerning religious or social practices, customary law and procedure of the concerned communities, administration of civil and criminal justice in areas covered by customary law, and ownership and transfer of land and its resources.
  • Similar arrangements exist in the Sixth Schedule Areas, dominated by tribal populations.
  • Such areas are in Assam (six of the 21 districts), Meghalaya (except for the municipality and cantonment of Shillong), Tripura (about 68% of the State) and Mizoram (three districts).
30th anniversary of the Panchayati Raj