Local Government

A democracy needs more than elected governments at the national and State levels. Many problems of daily life, such as drinking water, street lights, local roads and village schools, are best handled by a government close to the people. This government at the village, town and district level is called local government.

Local government has two great advantages. The people who live in a place know its needs and problems better than any distant officer. They can also reach a local body quickly and cheaply. Strong local governments therefore make democracy deeper by letting ordinary people take part in the decisions that shape their own lives.

Local government is the form of government closest to the common people. It deals with the everyday needs of a village or a town. It rests on the belief that local knowledge and local interest lead to better and more people-friendly decisions. When the people of a place run their own affairs, they take part in democracy in a direct way and can hold their representatives to account.

Be precise about the purpose of the Panchayati Raj system. Its fundamental objects are two: people's participation in the development effort, and democratic decentralisation, the dispersal of decision-making power from the capital down to the village. Political accountability of representatives and the mobilisation of local finance do follow from the system, but they are by-products, not its fundamental objects. Local self-government is therefore best explained as an exercise in democratic decentralisation.

Mahatma Gandhi held that real independence must begin at the bottom. He believed every village should be a small republic able to manage its own affairs. He saw strong village panchayats as the heart of Indian democracy.

Village assemblies have existed in India since ancient times in the form of sabhas and panchayats. The modern story, though, was a long, slow climb from a weak start to full constitutional status:

• 1688: the first Municipal Corporation. On the urban side the story starts much earlier. Madras received India's first Municipal Corporation in 1688, under the East India Company.
• 1882: the first elected bodies. Elected local bodies of the modern kind began under Lord Ripon.
• After independence: left on the sidelines. The subject of local government was handed to the States and placed only in the Directive Principles. This made it advisory and not binding. For this reason it did not receive much importance in the early years.
• The leaders' doubts. Nehru feared that too much localism would weaken the unity of the nation. Ambedkar feared that the caste divisions of the villages would defeat the purpose of local self-government.
• 2 October 1959: Panchayati Raj is born. Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated independent India's first Panchayati Raj at Nagaur in Rajasthan. Rajasthan was thus the first State to introduce the system, with Andhra Pradesh close behind.
• Around 1960: a half-hearted start. Other States followed with elected local bodies of their own. But in many States these bodies had little power, depended on the State for money and were often dissolved or denied timely elections.
• 1992: the turning point. Real change came only with two amendments to the Constitution.

The 73rd Amendment of 1992 (in force from 24 April 1993) gave constitutional status to rural local government, known as the Panchayati Raj. It also brought in a uniform three-tier structure across the country:

• Gram Panchayat: at the base, for a village or group of villages.
• Intermediate (Block or Mandal) Panchayat: in the middle. Optional for small States: a State with a population not exceeding 20 lakh need not constitute it.
• Zilla Panchayat: at the top, for the whole district.

The amendment also made the Gram Sabha compulsory. The Gram Sabha is the assembly of all persons registered in the electoral rolls of a village within a panchayat area. It is the only body that gives every adult villager a direct vote on local affairs.

The amendment fixed several firm rules:

• Direct election and five-year term. All seats at all three levels are filled by direct election from territorial constituencies. Every panchayat has a fixed term of five years from its first meeting (Article 243E). It may be dissolved earlier under State law, but elections must be completed before the term ends, or within six months of an early dissolution.
• Remainder-of-term rule. A panchayat reconstituted after a premature dissolution serves only the leftover part of the original five-year term, not a fresh five years. If that remainder is less than six months, no fresh election need be held at all (Article 243E).
• Minimum age 21. Anyone qualified to be elected to the State legislature is qualified to be a panchayat member, except that the minimum age is 21 years, not 25 as for the State Assembly (Article 243F). Disqualification questions go to the authority the State legislature specifies.
• Reservations. Not less than one-third of all seats (and one-third of the chairperson posts) are reserved for women (Article 243D). Seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their share of the population. The women's one-third applies within those reserved seats too. So a panchayat may be headed by a Dalit woman or an Adivasi woman.
• Subjects. Twenty-nine subjects from the State List, listed in the Eleventh Schedule, may be devolved to the panchayats (Article 243G). Each State decides how many it actually hands over.
• Two mandatory commissions. Each State must appoint a State Election Commission to superintend and conduct all panchayat elections (Article 243K). Every five years, a State Finance Commission must also be appointed to review panchayat finances and recommend how State revenues are shared with them (Article 243-I).

One exam caution here. The District Planning Committee sits in Article 243ZD, which is technically part of the 74th Amendment's chapter. But the 73rd and 74th Amendments were enacted together in 1992 as one decentralisation package, and examiners treat that package as a whole. When a question asks what the 73rd Amendment provides for, the accepted answer counts District Planning Committees alongside State Election Commissions and State Finance Commissions. Count all three.

Articles:

• Articles 243–243-O (Part IX): the panchayats: the three-tier structure, the Gram Sabha, five-year terms and direct elections.
• Article 243D: reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women (at least one-third) in the panchayats.
• Article 243E: the five-year term and the rule that a panchayat reconstituted after early dissolution serves only the remainder of the term.
• Article 243F: qualifications for membership. The minimum age is 21 years.
• Article 243G and the Eleventh Schedule: the 29 subjects a state may devolve to the panchayats.
• Articles 243K and 243-I: the State Election Commission for panchayat polls and the State Finance Commission for their funds.

The 74th Amendment of 1992 (in force from 1 June 1993) did for the towns and cities what the 73rd did for the villages. It gave constitutional status to urban local government, known as the Nagarpalikas. An urban area is defined by its size, its density of population and the share of its people who work outside agriculture. It provides for three types of municipality (Article 243Q):

• Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area (one changing from rural to urban).
• Municipal Council for a smaller urban area.
• Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area.

The 74th Amendment carries over the main features of the 73rd, and all of the following apply to urban bodies as well:

• Direct elections and five-year terms.
• One-third reservation of seats for women, and SC/ST reservations (Article 243T).
• Transfer of subjects listed in the Twelfth Schedule (18 items) to the municipalities (Article 243W).
• A State Election Commission for urban elections and a State Finance Commission for their funds.

Who may contest a municipal election? The essential qualification is simple: the candidate's name must figure in the voters' list (the electoral roll) of the ward. A college student whose name is on the ward's roll can therefore stand for a Municipal Council. No separate declaration of allegiance and no special property or education test is required.

Two planning committees are also mandatory:

• A District Planning Committee at every district (Article 243ZD) consolidates the plans of the district's panchayats and municipalities into one draft district development plan. At least four-fifths of its members are elected from among the elected members of those local bodies.
• A Metropolitan Planning Committee in every metropolitan area (Article 243ZE) prepares the draft development plan for the whole metropolitan area. At least two-thirds of its members are elected by the municipal and panchayat members of the area. Note that it only prepares the draft plan and is not the sole agency for implementing government schemes there.

Articles:

• Articles 243-P–243-ZG (Part IX-A): the municipalities (Nagarpalikas): their three types, composition and elections.
• Article 243T: reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women in the municipalities.
• Article 243W and the Twelfth Schedule: the 18 subjects a state may devolve to the municipalities.
• Articles 243ZD and 243ZE: the District Planning Committee and the Metropolitan Planning Committee.

The two amendments have changed the face of local government in India. There are now hundreds of thousands of elected local bodies and more than three million elected members, of whom over a million are women. This is a huge gain for democracy. So many people from groups that once held no power now sit in elected office.

The reservations have brought large numbers of women and members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes into local bodies. This has changed their social make-up. Some women began as proxies for the men of their families, yet many have grown into capable leaders.

The Union government also rewards good performance. The Nirmal Gram Puraskar is a Government of India cash incentive award for Panchayati Raj institutions. It goes to panchayats that achieve clean, open-defecation-free village status with full sanitation coverage.

The reform also has its limits. Many States have been slow to transfer real powers and subjects to the local bodies, so the bodies often cannot act on their own. Local governments raise very little money of their own and depend heavily on grants from above. The laws are good, but the true test of local democracy lies in how fully these laws are put into practice.

Local bodies work under the supervision of their State government, but that control runs along defined channels:

• Legislation: the State legislature makes and amends the panchayat and municipal laws under which the bodies function.
• Financial matters: the State controls grants, budgets and the audit of local accounts.
• Citizens' grievances: the State hears and redresses complaints from citizens against their local bodies.

The one area outside this control is day-to-day personnel matters. The State does not run the routine staffing decisions of its local bodies. This exception is a favourite exam question.

Beyond the Constitution, three Central laws have widened the powers of rural local bodies, especially in tribal areas. None of these is part of the Constitution itself. They are ordinary statutes:

• PESA Act, 1996 (Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas). The 73rd Amendment did not automatically apply to the Fifth Schedule (Scheduled) areas. PESA extends Panchayati Raj to them with extra safeguards. In these areas the Gram Sabha is supreme: it can prevent the alienation of tribal land and restore unlawfully alienated land, owns and manages minor forest produce, and its consultation is mandatory before land acquisition and before granting licences for minor minerals. PESA aims at self-governance, recognition of traditional rights and freeing tribal people from exploitation. It does not create autonomous regions or councils (that is the job of the Sixth Schedule, which is a separate scheme).
• Forest Rights Act, 2006 (Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act). It recognises individual and community forest rights of forest-dwelling tribes and other traditional forest dwellers. The Gram Sabha is the authority that initiates the process of determining the nature and extent of these rights, before the claims move up to higher committees for verification.
• Gram Nyayalayas Act, 2008. It sets up village-level mobile courts to bring speedy, affordable justice to the doorstep of rural citizens. A Gram Nyayalaya exercises the powers of both a civil and a criminal court (not civil alone). It is allowed to use local social workers as mediators or conciliators to settle disputes.

The article ranges are listed in the two amendment sections above. Keep only the one-line map in mind: Part IX is the panchayat chapter, Part IX-A is the municipal chapter. What matters here is the committee trail that led to 1992:

• Balwantrai Mehta Committee (1957): recommended the three-tier Panchayati Raj system and made democratic decentralisation the official goal. Its report led directly to the 1959 launch at Nagaur in Rajasthan.
• Ashok Mehta Committee (1978): reviewed the system after two decades of decline and proposed a two-tier structure instead, with the district as the key unit.
• L. M. Singhvi Committee (1986): recommended that local government be given constitutional status. The 73rd and 74th Amendments finally took that step in 1992.