Democratic Decentralisation and Local Self-Government

In one line

Article 40 asked for village panchayats in 1950 and nothing happened for forty-two years, and then two amendments made them constitutional bodies with elections, reservations and a finance commission.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: article 40 directs the State to take steps to organise VILLAGE PANCHAYATS and to endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as UNITS OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. It is a Directive Principle and for four decades it produced State legislation of very different kinds, with panchayats that were superseded, whose elections were postponed and whose finances depended on the State. The Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act 1992 inserted PART IX, articles 243 to 243O, making panchayats constitutional bodies: a GRAM SABHA in every village; panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels; direct election; reservation for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and WOMEN; a term of FIVE YEARS with elections before its expiry; a State ELECTION COMMISSION; a State FINANCE COMMISSION every five years; and the ELEVENTH SCHEDULE of twenty-nine matters that a State Legislature may devolve. The Seventy-fourth Amendment did the same for municipalities in Part IXA.

Article 40 and the forty-two years

Article 40. The State shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government.

Why it was a Directive Principle and not more. The Constituent Assembly divided on it. One view, associated with Gandhi, saw the village as the natural unit of Indian self-government; the other, stated most sharply by Dr Ambedkar, saw the village as a sink of localism, ignorance and communalism, and doubted that a body dominated by the locally powerful would emancipate anybody. Article 40 is the compromise: a direction and not a right.

The Balwantrai Mehta Committee, 1957. Recommended a THREE-TIER structure, the village panchayat, the panchayat samiti at the block and the zila parishad at the district, with the block as the effective unit, and gave the movement the name PANCHAYATI RAJ. Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh implemented it first in 1959.

The Ashok Mehta Committee, 1978. Recommended a TWO-TIER structure, the mandal panchayat and the zila parishad, with the district as the effective unit and the zila parishad as the executive body, and open participation by political parties.

The G.V.K. Rao Committee 1985 and the L.M. Singhvi Committee 1986, the second of which recommended CONSTITUTIONAL RECOGNITION for panchayati raj, which is the recommendation that eventually became the Amendment.

Why the earlier attempts failed. Because everything depended on the State: a panchayat could be superseded, an election could be postponed indefinitely, and the funds were a grant. Constitutional status is a response to exactly those three.