Dr Ambedkar's Views on Decentralisation

In one line

Ambedkar opposed making the village the unit of the Constitution, because for the people he represented the village was not a republic but the place where their exclusion was enforced, and he said so in the Constituent Assembly in terms nobody has been able to soften.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: Ambedkar rejected the proposal that the village should be the unit of the Indian Constitution, holding that the village republics had been the ruination of India, that the village was a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism, and that he was glad the Draft Constitution had discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit; his objection rested on the position of the excluded, for whom local dominance was closer and more inescapable than any distant government, and his alternative was constitutional democracy with enforceable individual rights, State-directed economic measures and social reform aimed at caste.

The passage

In his speech on the Draft Constitution, Ambedkar answered those who criticised the Constitution for ignoring the village. He first quoted the classic description of village communities surviving every dynasty and every conquest, and then turned it against those who admired it.

His own words. Such is the part the village communities have played in the history of their country. Knowing this, what pride can one feel in them? That they have survived through all vicissitudes may be a fact. But mere survival has no value. The question is on what plane they have survived. Surely on a low, on a selfish level. I hold that these village republics have been the ruination of India. I am therefore surprised that those who condemn provincialism and communalism should come forward as champions of the village. What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the Draft Constitution has discarded the village and adopted the individual as its unit.

Read the argument, not only the words. Ambedkar's point is not that villages are unpleasant. It is that survival is not a merit, that what survived was a particular social order, and that admiring the survival is admiring the order.

Why he held it

Because of who lives at the bottom of a village. For those excluded by caste, the village was where the exclusion was administered: which well, which street, which land, which occupation, which temple. A distant government is remote and can be appealed to; a village is neither.

Because closeness is not the same as freedom. Gandhi's argument at chapter 870 is that participation is real at village scale. Ambedkar's reply is that domination is also real at village scale, and that a person dominated by neighbours cannot leave, cannot appeal and cannot be anonymous.