The Gram Sabha and Participatory Democracy

PESA, 1996

The Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, Act 40 of 1996, extends Part IX to the Scheduled Areas under article 243M(4) and, by section 4, forbids a State Legislature to make any law inconsistent with the features it lists. Among them:

Section 4(b): a village shall ordinarily consist of a habitation, a group of habitations, a hamlet or a group of hamlets comprising a community and managing its affairs in accordance with traditions and customs. The unit is the community, not an administrative area.

Section 4(c): every village shall have a Gram Sabha consisting of persons whose names are in the electoral rolls for the panchayat at the village level.

Section 4(d): every Gram Sabha shall be competent to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the people, their cultural identity, community resources and the customary mode of dispute resolution.

Section 4(e): every Gram Sabha shall approve the plans, programmes and projects for social and economic development before they are taken up by the village panchayat, and shall be responsible for the identification or selection of beneficiaries under poverty alleviation and other programmes.

Section 4(f): the village panchayat must obtain from the Gram Sabha a certification of utilisation of funds for those plans and projects.

Section 4(i): the Gram Sabha or the panchayat at the appropriate level shall be consulted before the acquisition of land in the Scheduled Areas for development projects and before resettling or rehabilitating those affected.

Sections 4(k) and 4(l): the recommendation of the Gram Sabha or the panchayat shall be mandatory before a prospecting licence or mining lease for minor minerals is granted, and before a concession for their exploitation by auction.

Section 4(m): the State must specifically endow the panchayats and the Gram Sabha with the power to prohibit or regulate intoxicants, the ownership of minor forest produce, the power to prevent alienation of land and restore land unlawfully alienated from a Scheduled Tribe, the management of village markets, control over money lending to Scheduled Tribes, control over institutions and functionaries in the social sectors, and control over local plans and resources including tribal sub-plans.

Section 4(n): the State law must contain safeguards to ensure that a panchayat at a higher level does not assume the powers of a panchayat at a lower level or of the Gram Sabha.

PESA is the strongest answer to "what could a Gram Sabha be". Approval before implementation, selection of beneficiaries, certification of expenditure, mandatory consultation before land acquisition and a mandatory recommendation before a mining lease are decision powers, not consultative ones. In the Scheduled Areas Parliament made the Gram Sabha a governing body; in the rest of India the States have not.

The Forest Rights Act, 2006

Section 2(g) defines the Gram Sabha for that Act as a village assembly which shall consist of all adult members of a village, and, in States having no panchayats, of Padas, Tolas and other traditional village institutions and elected village committees, with full and unrestricted participation of women.

Section 6(1): the Gram Sabha shall be the authority to initiate the process for determining the nature and extent of individual or community forest rights, by receiving claims, consolidating and verifying them and preparing a map of each recommended claim, and shall then pass a resolution and forward it to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee.

Section 6(2): a person aggrieved by the Gram Sabha's resolution may petition that Committee within sixty days, and may not be decided against without a reasonable opportunity to present his case.

Section 4(2)(e): where rights holders are to be resettled out of a critical wildlife habitat, resettlement requires that the free informed consent of the Gram Sabhas in the areas concerned has been obtained in writing.

Two things here are worth a line in an answer. The Act widens the assembly to all adult members with full and unrestricted participation of women, which is broader than the electoral roll of article 243(b). And it makes the Gram Sabha an authority determining rights with an appeal from its decisions, which is a judicial rather than an advisory function.

Participatory democracy

The definition. Participatory democracy is a system in which citizens take part directly and continuously in the decisions that affect them, rather than only in the periodic choice of the representatives who will decide.

Its argument, which is Rousseau's and Mill's and Green's from Modules I and III. From Rousseau, that the general will cannot be represented, so a citizen who only votes for a representative is free only on election day. From Mill, that participation educates: a person who takes part in a public decision learns to weigh interests other than his own, and that is the chief benefit of local institutions. From Green, that freedom is a positive power to do things worth doing, and taking part in the government of one's own place is one of them.

Its forms: the assembly, as in the Gram Sabha; the referendum; participatory budgeting, in which residents decide directly how a share of the local budget is spent; the social audit, in which the people who were meant to receive a benefit verify the record in public; and the right to information, which is what makes any of the others possible.

Representative democracy is also called indirect democracy, and MU has asked for its two main features by that name. They are that the people do not decide the questions themselves but elect representatives who decide for them, and that those representatives are accountable at periodic elections, from which the rest follows: a fixed term, a defined constituency, and a body small enough to sit, debate and legislate. Direct democracy is the opposite arrangement, in which the citizens decide the questions themselves, and the Gram Sabha is the one place in the Indian constitutional scheme where it survives.

Its relation to representative democracy is not competition. No modern State can be run by assembly, and no assembly can legislate for a country. The claim of participatory democracy is that representation is necessary at scale and insufficient by itself, and that at the level where people live there should be direct decision, which is exactly the design of Part IX: representation in the panchayat and participation in the Gram Sabha.

The criticisms. Attendance is low, and those who attend are not a cross section, so an assembly may be captured more easily than an election. Deliberation in public exposes the poor and the excluded to pressure from those they depend on, which is Ambedkar's objection at chapter 880 applied to the meeting itself. It is slow. And decisions taken by those present bind those absent without their having consented, which is not obviously better than representation.

A worked example

A company applies for a lease to quarry sand from a river bed in a Scheduled Area. The village panchayat supports it. Thirty of the households that use the river for irrigation object. The Gram Sabha meets and resolves against the lease.

Outside the Scheduled Areas, under article 243A alone, the resolution has whatever effect the State Act gives it, which is usually none. The panchayat may proceed and the Gram Sabha has no remedy, because the article says the State Legislature may provide the powers and this State has not.

Inside a Scheduled Area, section 4(k) of PESA makes the recommendation of the Gram Sabha mandatory prior to the grant of a prospecting licence or mining lease for minor minerals, and section 4(n) requires the State law to prevent a higher panchayat from assuming the Gram Sabha's powers. The lease cannot lawfully be granted against the Gram Sabha's recommendation.

If forest rights are involved, section 6 of the Forest Rights Act makes the Gram Sabha the authority to determine community forest rights over the same land, with a petition to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee for anybody aggrieved.

The example is the whole topic in one page. The same assembly of the same villagers is a debating society in one part of India and a decision maker in another, and the difference is not the Constitution but what Parliament and the State Legislatures have done with article 243A.

Distinctions that carry marks

What this is NOT

The Gram Sabha is not a committee of the panchayat. It is the village electorate itself, and article 243A treats it as a separate institution.

It is not elected. There is no such thing as a member or a chairperson of a Gram Sabha elected as such, and nothing in article 243D applies to it.

Article 243A does not give it any power. It permits a State to give it powers. That distinction is the point of the article.

And participatory democracy is not a substitute for representative democracy. It is a claim about the level at which direct decision is possible, not a proposal to abolish legislatures.

Quick revision

1. Article 243(b): the Gram Sabha is a body consisting of persons registered in the electoral rolls of a village within a village level panchayat area. Not elected, not a committee, and existing automatically.
2. Article 243A: it may exercise such powers as the Legislature of a State may, by law, provide. The assembly is guaranteed; its authority is not.
3. Only at the village level, and there is no urban equivalent; article 243S's Wards Committee is a committee of councillors.
4. PESA 1996, section 4: the village is a community managing its affairs by tradition and custom; every village shall have a Gram Sabha; it is competent to safeguard traditions, cultural identity, community resources and customary dispute resolution; it approves plans before implementation and selects beneficiaries; it certifies utilisation of funds; it must be consulted before land acquisition; its recommendation is mandatory before a minor mineral lease; and higher panchayats may not assume its powers.
5. Forest Rights Act 2006: section 2(g), a village assembly of all adult members with full and unrestricted participation of women; section 6, the Gram Sabha is the authority to initiate the determination of forest rights, with a petition to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee within sixty days; section 4(2)(e), resettlement from a critical wildlife habitat needs its free informed consent in writing.
6. Participatory democracy: citizens decide rather than only choosing deciders. Grounded in Rousseau (the general will cannot be represented), Mill (participation educates) and Green (positive freedom). Forms: assembly, referendum, participatory budgeting, social audit, and the right to information.
7. Criticisms: low and unrepresentative attendance; public deliberation exposes the dependent, which is Ambedkar's objection inside the meeting; slowness; and binding the absent.

Test yourself

1. What is a Gram Sabha, and what does the Constitution do about it? Article 243(b) defines it as a body consisting of persons registered in the electoral rolls relating to a village comprised within the area of a panchayat at the village level, so it is the whole village electorate rather than an elected body, it has no seats and no term, and it exists automatically wherever there is a village panchayat. Article 243A provides that it may exercise such powers and perform such functions at the village level as the Legislature of a State may by law provide. The Constitution therefore guarantees the assembly and leaves its authority to State law, which in most States has amounted to a duty to meet a fixed number of times a year and to consider accounts, audit reports and programmes, with resolutions that do not bind the panchayat.

2. Where does the Gram Sabha have real power, and what power is it? Under two central Acts. Under section 4 of PESA, 1996, in the Scheduled Areas, every village must have a Gram Sabha; it is competent to safeguard the traditions, customs, cultural identity, community resources and customary dispute resolution of the people; it approves plans, programmes and projects for social and economic development before the panchayat takes them up; it identifies or selects beneficiaries under poverty alleviation programmes; it certifies the utilisation of funds; it must be consulted before land is acquired for development projects and before resettlement; its recommendation is mandatory before a prospecting licence or mining lease for minor minerals; and State law must ensure that higher panchayats do not assume its powers. Under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, it is the authority to initiate the determination of individual and community forest rights by receiving, consolidating and verifying claims and passing a resolution, subject to a petition to the Sub-Divisional Level Committee within sixty days, and resettlement from a critical wildlife habitat requires its free informed written consent.

3. Define participatory democracy and give the argument for it. It is a system in which citizens take part directly and continuously in the decisions that affect them, rather than only in the periodic choice of representatives. The argument has three strands from earlier modules. Rousseau's, that the general will cannot be represented, so that a citizen who merely elects a representative is free only on polling day. Mill's, that participation educates, because a person who takes part in a public decision must weigh interests other than his own, which he treated as the chief benefit of local institutions. And Green's, that freedom is a positive power to do things worth doing, of which governing one's own place is one. Its forms are the assembly, the referendum, participatory budgeting, the social audit and the right to information.

4. Is participatory democracy an alternative to representative democracy? No, and Part IX shows why. No modern State can be governed by assembly and no assembly can legislate for a country, so representation is unavoidable at scale. The claim of participatory democracy is that representation is necessary but not sufficient, and that at the level where people actually live there should be direct decision. Part IX embodies exactly that division: the panchayat is representative, elected from wards for a fixed term with reserved seats, and the Gram Sabha is participatory, consisting of every voter with no election, no term and no reservation, because everyone is already a member.

5. State the criticisms of the Gram Sabha as an instrument of participation. That attendance is low and those who attend are not a cross section of the village, so an assembly can be captured more cheaply than an election can. That deliberating in public exposes the poor, the landless and the excluded to pressure from the people they depend on for work and credit, which is Ambedkar's objection to the village applied to the meeting itself, and it is why the Forest Rights Act's insistence on full and unrestricted participation of women matters. That assemblies are slow and cannot handle technical business. That decisions taken by those present bind those absent, who have consented to nothing. And, most importantly in India, that article 243A leaves its powers to the State, so that outside the Scheduled Areas the assembly usually has no decision to be captured or contested in the first place.