What lies below the district?

Despite all the talk of decentralisation, nothing does. Nobody owns the planning and development functions in panchayat samitis and gram panchayats.

The oldest existing statute is the Bengal Districts Act of 1836. It is a statute with a single sentence and says the following, “Power to create new zilas: It shall be lawful for the State Government, by notification in the Official Gazette, to create new zilas in any part of West Bengal”. This is the text as it stands today, not as it was in 1836. There have been amendments in 1874, 1903, 1920, 1948 and 1950. The parallel legislation still exists in Bangladesh.

Two questions follow. First, why is such an old statute still on the statute books? Aren’t old laws being cleaned up and scrapped? The answer has to do with Article 372(1) of the Constitution. The Bengal Districts Act of 1836 will have to be repealed by the West Bengal Assembly. Second, why does Bengal (West Bengal) alone need a specific statute to create a zila (district)? Other states have sufficient powers under relevant land revenue legislation to create and define districts, sub-divisions of districts and even villages. The answer probably lies in the way land revenue legislation evolved. Since states can create and change districts, the number of districts varies. The 2001 Census had 593 districts, the 2011 Census had 640; the number has crossed 700 now. With that 2011 base, Uttar Pradesh had 71 districts and Lakshadweep had one.

Though not explicitly stated, more districts are presumably created for administrative convenience and delivering public goods and services better. Take the Upper Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh. In 2011, this had a population of 7,984 and a geographical area of 9,129 square kilometres. This makes it India’s largest district, but one with the lowest population density. The district headquarter is Anini and you can imagine the distance of other parts of Upper Dibang from Anini.

When deciding on new districts, there are obvious criteria like population, geographical area and the distance from district headquarters. But the right answer isn’t always obvious. Once revenue laws have determined districts, government development programmes work through DRDAs (District Rural Development Agency), at least on the rural side; there are also elected representatives, through zila panchayats or parishads (ZPs) or district councils, further down to blocks and villages. The number of ZPs is 618, a little lower than the number of districts, because there are urban districts too. (All such numbers change, depending on the year.)

Once there is a new district, barring time-lags, there will also be a new ZP, through the relevant state election commission. Think of various entities involved in a district’s development — the district collector/district magistrate/district Commissioner, the DRDA, the MP, multiple MLAs and ZPs. Unless they work together, a lot of resources, not just financial, will be frittered away.

Because of the DRDA structure, it probably works at the district level. I am not suggesting it works perfectly. For instance, making the ZP president the chairperson of the DRDA doesn’t necessarily mean the ZP works in tandem with the DRDA. Below the district level, I don’t think it works at all.

There are 6,603 intermediate-level panchayats and 2,49,016 gram panchayats. At the district level, one can at least argue the DRDA chairperson has oversight about the district’s development and MPs or MLAs are part of the DRDA. In principle, it should be possible to work on district-level planning. That’s true even if the DRDAs are replaced by something like rural development cells in ZPs, to function as district planning committees.

However, I don’t think one can be that unambiguous at the sub-district level. Going back to the 1950s, government development programmes are through community development blocks (CD blocks), under the overall charge of a BDO (block development officer). Let’s take Andhra Pradesh as an example. The sub-unit of a district is a revenue division and the sub-unit of a revenue division is a mandal. I don’t need to give instances from other states since the point is a simple one. In different states, it is called a mandal, circle, tehsil, taluka, sub-division, CD block, but there is often a revenue division or circle above it.

Other than the BDO, there is the tehsildar/talukdar and the intermediate-level panchayat, variously referred to as the mandal, taluka or block panchayat or panchayat samiti. Sure, the BDO, MP and MLAs are members of the panchayat samiti. But there isn’t a sense that there is a coherent governance structure at the panchayat samiti level, straddling the elected, the executive and land and revenue administration, the last specifically mentioned because development typically requires land issues to be sorted out. Stated differently — no single entity is clearly responsible for a block’s development.

That argument extends lower down, to the gram panchayat, and these have got a substantial amount of resources, courtesy the Fourteenth Finance Commission. I am not merely making standard points about capacity, a lack of devolution of functions, funds and functionaries, convergence and separate cadres. Perhaps those are prerequisites before one can answer my question. Decentralised planning is meant to start from below and “below” doesn’t mean the district. Gram panchayats/gram sabhas are supposed to have several “planning” functions. The intention is to make planning participatory. But unlike the district, and like the block, we don’t have a coherent governance and administrative structure. Unlike even the panchayat samiti, there is no direct link between the executive and the elected in the gram panchayat.

Thus, unlike the district, who “owns” the planning and development functions in panchayat samitis and gram panchayats? I don’t think anyone does. Hence, whenever we talk about decentralised planning, we tend to think of districts — and nothing below.

The writer is member, Niti Aayog. Views are personal

Source: Indian Express, 18-05-2017

The Power of Panchayats

Nidhi Sharma





A year after the government decided to empower panchayats, success stories are pouring in from the villages. The mantra behind the movement is, `your money, your plan', writes Nidhi Sharma

For Latak in Assam's Dhemaji district, floods are a living reality. But this remote village of about 300 houses has found a novel cost-effective way to connect flood-affected areas -a bridge made out of neatly stacked bamboo. It may not sound like a big success story but, for the village panchayat, it is a cause for much celebration. The panchayat planned the project after deliberations with villagers and funded it from its own resources: an example of complete decentralisation of planning.
From a bamboo bridge in f lood-affected Latak to rainwater harvesting in Jharkhand's drought-hit regions and sensitisation programmes on open defecation in Goa, India's villages are deciding what they want to solve age-old problems. The mantra behind focused planning is simple: your money, your plan.
The idea emanated in February 2015 from Fourteenth Finance Commission's recommendation to give Rs 2 lakh crore to gram panchayats between 2015 and 2020. The idea was to give the panchayats the money through state governments and allow them to spend it. Even as the government accepted the recommendations, it was clear that this enormous kitty could not be given in the hands of panchayat functionaries, who had not been trained in planning, accounting and auditing. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj came up with the idea of Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP) -an annual plan of each panchayat where the villagers would decide where the money should be spent. State government communicates the “resource envelope“ to all local bodies. At the end, every panchayat knows how much money it has under different schemes and how it should plan. Once a plan is formulated, the gram sabha passes it.
Joint Secretary Sarada G Muraleedharan, spearheading the project at the ministry, explains: “Planning is generally a very technical exercise. But here we were ready to take a leap of faith and take planning all the way to the people. A massive training exercise had to be undertaken. First we took all the states for a workshop in Kerala last July. After this, states formulated their GPDP guidelines.“
The response from the states has been surprising. States which have been low on the devolution index have shown the most enthusiasm.“Assam, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tripura, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa are some states that have shown good progress in terms of undertaking meticulous exercises for capacity building and generating momentum on the ground,“ says Muraleedharan.
At the grassroots, the villages are thinking out-of-the-box to address local issues. In Jharkhand, Chief Minister Raghubar Das was struck by the statistics on rainfall in the state.Jharkhand gets ample rainfall, but of the last 15 years, 10 have been drought years. This triggered a state-wide campaign with the theme “Every drop of water that falls on the village remains in the village“. On the extent of the campaign, Muraleedharan says: “In a village in Khunti district during a gram sabha, an old lady got up and said, `We are only talking about water for human beings. What about the animals?' This was the extent of the campaign.“
For Jharkhand, this was a complete turnaround. Officials remember that when GPDP was launched, the `Yojana banao abhiyan' (Plan preparatory campaign) was jokingly called `Panchayat kholo abhiyan' (Open panchayats campaign). “The mass mobilisation was immense in the state. In a largely tribal-dominated state, the increase in women participation in gram sabhas was anywhere between 25% and 80%,“ recalls Muraleedharan.
If Jharkhand is concentrating on rainwater harvesting and human trafficking in the tribal belt, Goa has taken up open defecation as a blot on its global image. Punjab villages have decided to take up projects to address the skewed sex ratio and drug abuse. Uttarakhand, which had seen a year of political uncertainty, was prompt in its implementation of the programme conducting 7,950 gram sabhas to pass plans in 2015-16. By the end of the first quarter of 2016-17, it has passed 1,632 plans. Assam decided that it would need three gram sabha meetings to finalise the plans. The first is held to generate awareness about the exercise and form working groups that prepare draft situation reports. The second gram sabha meeting discusses these reports and identifies different projects. The final plan is passed in the third meeting.
The ministry's statistics show that 92,842 gram sabhas have been conducted in nine states to discuss annual plans. About 7,042 gram panchayats have approved their annual plans.However, there are several challenges before the systems are put in place and start working. Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Mizoram and Tamil Nadu have to walk the extra mile to train functionaries and make their processes participatory. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh remain difficult states with very little progress.

KERALA CONNECTION

A bureaucrat of the Kerala cadre drew from his experience in the state in driving local self-governance institutions to conceptualise the larger nation-wide programme

Budget 2015-16 had brought bad news for the Ministry of Panchayati Raj. Its Rs 7,000 crore budget outlay had been brought down to a meagre Rs 94 crore and major flagship schemes -the Backward regions Grants Fund (BRGF) and Rajiv Gandhi Panchayat Sashaktikaran Abhiyan (RGPSA) -had been transferred to the states. Amid rumours that the ministry would be folded up and turned into a department under rural development ministry, SM Vijayanand took charge as the panchayati raj secretary.
The 1981-batch IAS officer got down to his job from the word go. In his 11 years as secretary (local self-government) in Kerala, Vijayanand had played a key role in conceptualising and shaping the local self-governance institutions. He drew from his experience in the state.
Vijayanand, who has since taken over as Kerala chief secretary, started out with writing to chief secretaries of all states and speaking personally to them. The states were asked to form statelevel core groups to help guide in framing GPDP guidelines. In July 2015, the ministry organised a five-day intensive workshop for all states.
Vijayanand entrusted the job of implementing the programme to an old Kerala hand: Joint Secretary Sarada G Muraleedharan. The 1990-batch IAS officer has seen the processes in Kerala closely as district collector and head of the state's Kudumbashree woman empowerment mission. As she speaks passionately about the initiative showing detailed manuals and data sheets, Muraleedharan says: “All you need is a champion in the state.“

Source: Economic Times, 30-07-2016

Matriculation mandatory to contest panchayat polls

To contest the Panchayat Polls, the BJP Government had made it mandatory for the male candidates to have minimum education of class x for filing nomination papers and women and schedule candidates to have minimum qualification till class VIII.

On the mandate issued by the BJP Government, former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has claimed that 71 per cent of Haryanvis would not be able to contest panchayat polls if the state government’s decision to fix minimum qualification for filing nomination papers was implemented.

According to Hooda, the number will exceed in the schedule castes category. He believes as many as 62 per cent men and 83 per cent women from SCs will not be able to contest the election. He emphasised that people should be informed about the laws 5 years in advance.

The BJP Government had decided to amend the Haryana Panchayati Raj Act, 1994, making it mandatory for candidates for panchayat elections to have basic educational qualification of class

Minimum educational qualification for Raj civic polls 

Days ahead of the panchayat poll announcement in Rajasthan, an ordinance issued by Governor Kalyan Singh fixed minimum educational qualifications for contesting polls for panchayat samiti and district councils, drawing much opposition from political parties, local communities and civil society groups. The ordinance effecting an amendment to the Rajasthan Panchayati Raj Act 1994, has made it mandatory for the candidates contesting zila parishad and panchayat samiti polls to be Class X pass and those contesting sarpanch elections to be Class VIII pass. In the scheduled areas the eligibility has been fixed at Class V pass.

Even as the ruling government argues that this will check embezzlement of funds at the hands of illiterate panchayat level representatives, the opposition groups alleged that the move is discriminatory to a large section of the rural population, particularly women among whom the literacy rate is the lowest. In rural Rajasthan, the literacy rate stands at 76.16 percent for males and 45.8 percent for females respectively.

Defending the state government’s move, BJP spokesperson Kailash Nath Bhatt told, “The Centre is spending crores of money on panchayats and this goes directly to the sarpanch. There are thousands of pending cases of fund embezzlement against these elected representatives in the state and the standard excuse is that ‘I am illiterate and put my thumb impression on whatever papers were given to me’.

Earlier, the audits were managed by the state government so the accountability was not with the sarpanch but now with funds to the tune of crores coming in for projects like MNREGA and others, there has to be better accountability. Let us take this decision positively as it will end up encouraging education in rural areas. We are confident this will lead to better literacy rate in the state and as it is we have a 50 percent reservation for women.”

- See more at: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/12/minimum-educational-qualification-for-raj-civic-polls/#sthash.aSyS5Uhh.dpuf