LOCAL
GOVERNMENT IN
M. S. PRAKASA RAO
Senior Research Officer
and
Editor: MANPOWER JOURNAL, IAMR,
Understanding
of social phenomena and human behaviour, in addition
to knowledge about the social process and its determinants, is essential for
framing of policies to promote social change and to produce a dynamic society
capable of absorbing and utilising scientific and
technological developments for the welfare of humanity. With this end in view,
the Government of India enunciated a National Social Science Research Policy,
and, for its implementation, established in May 1969, The National Council of
Social Science Research. Delivering the Inaugural Address of the Council, Dr.
V. K. R. V. Rao, the then Union Minister for Education and Youth Services,
accorded top priority in the programme of the Council for the establishment of
a central ‘data library.’ It is to function at the national level not merely as
a clearing house of information but also as an agency to provide essential
facilities to research workers in the form of statistical services and
technical guidance in designing, coding and tabulation.
Thanks
to the vast accumulations during the present century in practically every
branch of human knowledge, documentation has fast developed into a science in
its own right. It has become imperative to devise an ‘information technology’
if only to disseminate knowledge of the sources of information to researchers.
Annotated bibliographies, digests and abstracts form an indispensable element
in the libraries of research centres. That these are
not status symbols but pre-conditions in the context of social dynamism for
genuine research requiring access to authentic documents and primary data, may
easily be inferred from the burgeoning demand for them in almost all major
research institutions.
It
is in this framework of reference that the book under review “Local Government
in India”, a compilation of ‘Select Readings’ edited by the eminent Professor Venkatarangaiya and Shri M. Pattabhiram, the reputed columnist of The Hindu, acquires
its significance. Through this documentation service the authors have doubtless
made a timely and important contribution to the national ‘data library’.
Experience
of our development programme brought the realisation that the shaping and
functioning of appropriate institutions at the grass-roots level is as necessary as planning at
the national level for the attainment of pre-determined economic and social
goals. The rather disappointing results of the Community Development Projects
have shifted the focus of study from central blue-prints to local
administration; and a reappraisal of the adequacy of the existing local
institutions could be attempted on the basis of a full knowledge of their
evolution over time. Since these ‘Select
“This
volume, as the authors tell us, includes all the relevant state papers,
pronouncements of statesmen, recommendations of committees and commissions
which have shaped the system of local self-government in India over these
hundred and odd years” (p. iv), that is, from 1858 when “the British thought
seriously about the desirability of creating institutions of local
self-government” (p. v) up to 1969, the date of the compilation’s publication.
Further, the volume also includes extracts from articles written by leading
publicists and experts in prominent journals, especially the one published by
the Indian Institute of Public Administration. We share the authors’ hope that
the compilation will be found useful by “students of political science who have
been taking sustained interest in the study of local self-government in
The
compilation runs the entire gamut of the relevant source material, ranging all
the way from Kautilya’s Arthasastra
belonging to c. 300 B. C. down to a reproduction of the concluding chapter
of the Report of the Calcutta Corporation Investigation Commission of 1950, and
appropriately ending on an excerpt from John Stuart Mill’s Essay on
Representative Government. The ‘Select Readings’ choice drawn from over 60
basic sources inclusive of original documents, reports, speeches and memoranda,
not to speak of our Five- Year Plans, have been classified into 43 chapters and
again regrouped under four major heads (1) Ancient India, (2) India under the
East India Company, (3) India under the British Crown, and (4) Post-Independence
Period. The value of the documentation service is further enhanced by (a) a
brief explanatory note preceding every abstract and (b) by an introduction
running into 59 pages and providing a comprehensive review of the evolution of
local government during this eventful period, thus aiding the reader in his
critical appraisal of the source material to follow.
Apart
from the scholarship and mastery over the subject implicit in the annotation
and interpretation of documents, the sheer industry necessitated by the
collection, classification and meaningful presentation of the vast mass of
source material in a single, succinct and manageable volume places the whole
body of researchers in this vital field of public administration under a deep
debt of gratitude to the authors.
A
more competent authority to undertake this project than Professor Venkatarangaiya could hardly be imagined. Throughout his
research and writing extending over half a century, the subject of local
government constitutes a recurring theme. The results of his earliest research
in this area as a fellow of the
To
a scholar so remarkably dedicated to research in a specialised
area, two things are bound to be evident as matters of crucial importance for
further research: one–facilitating ready reference to documented source
material, and two–removing identified gaps in information. Hence
this compilation.
The
Professor is singularly fortunate in his collaborator, Shri
Pattabhiram, who as the Chief Correspondent of a
national daily, functioning at the capital, is strategically placed to feel the
impulses of the reading public. His despatches
reflect rare insights into public affairs attributable as much to his wide
travels as to his frequent communion with personalities who make history.
Readers of his impressions of
Limitation
of space constrains our detailed examination of the documentation under review.
We would therefore confine our attention to the extreme ends of the spectrum of
local government, as it were, a metropolitan corporation at one end and a village
Panchayat at the other, with a view to
facilitating by a method of stratified sampling a fuller appreciation of the
basic sources illuminating these areas of study, as documented by the authors.
Let
us begin with the Metropolitan Corporation of
When
in 1961 The World Bank pointed out that “one of the most dangerous weaknesses
in the (Third) Plan” is the neglect of Calcutta, a provision of Rs. 26.81 crores was included in
the Plan to improve civic amenities in the city; but only a sum of Rs. 8.50 crores could be spent by the end of the plan largely on
account of bureaucratic red-tape. The
Calcutta Metropolitan Planning Organization (CMPO) set up later as an advisory
body of experts, was rendered inoperative owing to the non-co-operation of the
Calcutta Corporation and the three Directorates of Public Works. The Calcutta
Municipal Development Authority (CMDA) established in 1969, superseding CMPO,
was rightly vested with statutory powers to execute a Rs.
150 crore plan of improvement. However, the open
hostility of Calcutta Corporation and neighbouring
municipalities towards CMDA precludes undue optimism. Indeed, the Mayor of the
Corporation is reported to have declared “that the authority (CMDA) had been
conceived to cripple the local bodies, to curb the democratic rights of the
people, to frustrate mass movements, and that, as such, it should be scrapped
forthwith.” (The Times
of India, January 25, 1971.)
Next
we turn to the complex of democratic institutions at the District and Block
levels; inclusive of the Gram Sabha and the Villige
Panchayat–broadly
indicated by the term Panchayat Raj. Its
establishment in 1958 constitutes, in the opinion of the authors, “fundamental
and far-reaching changes in the structure of District administration and in the
pattern of rural development” (p. 308). The radical reform, in local
government, consequent upon the recommendations of the Balwantray
Mehta Committee, consists in the replacement of the two-tier system of the
British period by a three-tier system–Zilla Parishads, Panchayat Samithis and Village Panchayats–the
Samithis in the centre being assigned an
operationally crucial role.
By
1962 it became clear that the performance of the new institutions
(notwithstanding their radicalism) in implementing the development programme
would not match the expectations of the reformers. The authors refer to the “large
amount of dissatisfaction with the functioning of the Panchayati
Raj Bodies” (p. 37), and cite a formidable list of grievances against them
causing the dissatisfaction. It is a moot point whether any one single
institution would apply with uniform validity to a country of multinational
dimensions, regardless of the bewildering variations characterising
local community behaviour. In fact, the
Now,
a study team recently appointed by the Punjab Government to examine the working
of these institutions in this State has come to the conclusion that “the best
way to improve the working of Panchayati Raj will be to
adopt the system of direct elections to the Zilla Parishads and abolish the Samithis
altogether.” (The Times of India, January 26, 1971) The dual
responsibility of both Zilla Parishads
and Panchayat Samithis for
carrying out development work was found to result in avoidable delay and
confusion and waste of resources. The team’s recommendation, be it noted,
demands a reversion to the old two-tier system. Has the wheel come full circle?
At
this point, we invite political theoreticians as well as public administrators
to make a close study of the authors’ introduction and the annotated abstracts
(pp. 308-381) relating to the problem of insulating local bodies responsible
for development work from political pressures while ensuring their effective
participation in purely local Government. The study, hopefully, might stimulate
further research and eventually lead to a solution. After all, politics is the
art of the possible.
An
index, a neat cover jacket and faultless printing make this compilation a
credit to Allied Publishers. No institution where Applied Politics is assuming
importance as a major social science could afford not to have these ‘Select
Readings’ in its library.
* Edited by M. Venkatarangaiya
and M. Pattabhiram: Local Government in
** A survey conducted by Dr. K. N. Vaid of Shri Ram Centre for Industrial
Relations,