Grassroots Democracy: Panchayati Raj and Municipal Government: Significance of 73rd and 74th Amendments

• Intro:Grassroots democracy refers to the shift in decision-making authority to the organization's lowest level .
• Gandhi’s swaraj, Roy’s radical democracy, and DDU’s Antyodaya provide ideological inspiration to the idea of grassroots democracy
• DPSP- article 40: state shall take efforts for organisation of village panchayat.

• Context:
• Local self governance has been an integral part of Indian society. The Vedas mention number of self governing institutions like Sabha, Samiti and Vidhata
• History of local govt date back to lord Ripon’s resolution on local govt, 1882.
• 

• challenges:

1. Problem of 3Fs
2. Panchayats have become front offices for several union and state government programmes
3. No steps have been taken to synchronise the term of state finance commission and finance commission for better coordination of the policies and funding of schemes
4. Community or khap panchayats running parallel to gram panchayats 
5. 
   Paul brass- PRI were made to fail because of the reluctance of state politicians to devolve much powers to the district level or below because they feared Such local institutions would become alternative source of influence and patronage
6. 
   Rajni Kothari argued that village councils were nothing but catchy slogans and false promises that enabled the local elites to prevent forces of revolt and public discontent from getting organised
7. World Bank study “Overview of Rural Decentralisation ”, suggest that India is best performer in political decentralisation , middle performer in fiscal but worst on administrative
8. Substantive provisions of 11th schedule are voluntary-
1. Making panchayats autonomous bodies
2. Devolution of powers and responsibilities on Panchayats to prepare plans for economic development and social justice
3. Granting financial powers to the panchayats to levy, collect and appropriate taxes, duties, fees.
9. The PRI still functions in the grip of state bureaucracy. The village pradhan has to contact several times in a month the Block office for technical and financial sanctions.
10. Ambiguity about the functional jurisdiction of panchayats is one of its serious limitations. It is dependent upon the discretion of state legislatures for being assigned the functions.
11. In many states the gram Sabha has become a powerless body with routine functions to rubberstamp the decisions taken by gram Panchayat.
12. Most of staff is in the form of deputation and hence does not feel responsible to the panchayats,
13. In states like UP there is 100% dependency of panchayats on state govts for funds,
14. As pointed out in eco survey 2019-2020, local govt suffer from low eqbm trap- too poor to save and invest in local capacity development
15. Societal factors like Upper caste refusing to accept authority of women and dalits as sarpanch of the village.

• Findings of Mani Shankar Aiyyar committee-

1. It has led to decentralization of corruption
2. Introduced sarpanch Raj- nexus between local bureaucrats and sarpanch 
3. Bogus gram Sabha meetings
4. Like Kerala other states need to introduce Panchayat ombudsman where people can register complaints against corrupt officials
5. 11th schedule is a half baked cake.

• achievements of local governments-
• Policy research paper by world bank says political reservation in PRI for women have led to increase in female LFPR and have increased their bargaining powers in intra home matters as well(personal is political)
• New research suggests that *50% of the increase* in the number of female candidates at higher levels is due to reservations at panchayat levels - MIT
• That a Gram Sabha (legislative body of Panchayati Raj System at village level) representing the most primitive tribes in Niyamgiri, Odisha can veto a mega mining project is a testimony of the power these institutions enjoy under this new democratic experimentation

• best practices:
• Kerala model- model code of conduct for bureaucracy and elected members 
• Entitlement-Based District Planning (EBDP) is a unique initiative that institutionalises decentralised planning at the district level across Bihar through an entitlement-based approach to ensure inter-regional and social equity. EBDP has educated district officials and Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) representatives on various schemes and statutory provisions they are entitled to and has helped improve the process of monitoring and decision-making while reducing the scope of corruption and leakages besides enhancing public participation.

• recommendations:
• 2nd ARC:
• The idea of ‘Democratic decentralization’ is based on the ‘principle of subsidiarity’
• State panchayat council under CM
• ECI to have powers to issue directions to state election commission
• CAG should be empowered to conduct audits of PRI
• Manishankar Aiyar committee-
• The scope of the devolution of powers to local bodies to act as institutions of self government should be constitutionally defined through appropriate amendments-
• setting up of NAtional commisson for panchayati raj
• freezing of rotation of reserved seats to 2 or three terms to incentivise good work
• Re-orient the outlook of lower bureaucracy to panchayats
• Punchhi commission-
• recommended to constitute legislative council in all the states and give representation to panchayats and municipalities
• 
  Vijay kelkar asks to give a share in GST to the local government as well.

• During Covid19-
• Andhra pradesh: village volunteer system to help trace people with foreign travel history
• Union Health ministry’s - Micro plan for containing local transmission of covid19 has placed panchayats at forefront in increasing community mobilisation and awareness
• Odisha govt - delegated powers of collector to sarpanches.
• the Kerala government[73]allowed local bodies to do contact-tracing, conduct health camps and sanitation drives, and sensitise people on health protocols. The local governments at the village level also helped “in sustaining agricultural activities by ensuring the labour supply and availability of critical food supply chains in villages.”

• Govt efforts
• Rashtriya gram swaraj yojana
• Bharatnet 
• Panchayats given autonomy to develop GPDP
• e-gramswaraj
• Swamitva scheme

• Examples of women Pradhan

1. Woman sarpanch in Himachal kashlog district prevented illegal mining by ambuja cemet
2. Kantibai in MP disabled advisai women installed various handpumps and construction of roads
3. Women run panchayats more effective in tackling corruption- down to earth mag

• 74th AA

1. City administration in India dates back to the Indus valley civilsation.
2. ex of Delhi where pwd lays roads and mcd has to check drains. Ineffective coordination leads to drains getting blocked during road repair.
3. Isher judge ah- there cannot be smart cities without smart municipalitities.
4. Punchi-create legislative council in all states that can create platform for reprentation of local bodies
5. Cities get ignored as the rural areas have greater representation in lok sabha.
6. Municipal bonds to raise finance. 
7. Performance based grants to municiplaities needed.
8. Greater use of SPV is taking away powers from Municipalities
9. Power tussle between Municipal commissioner and Mayor.

• Conclusion- local self governments have made Parliamentary democracy in our country participated in the real sense. They have removed the bottlenecks from the path of empowerment of the weaker sections of society like the dalits, tribals and women