Democratic decentralisation: Panchayati Raj and urban local bodies

1. Two visions

Gandhi wanted India built from self-sufficient village republics, each a gram swaraj governing itself, with power flowing upwards in widening circles. Ambedkar disagreed sharply. In the Constituent Assembly on 4 November 1948 he called the village “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism”, and welcomed the Draft Constitution's choice of the individual as its unit. The compromise was Article 40, a directive principle asking the State to organise village panchayats as units of self-government. The tension between these views, local democracy as liberation or as a vehicle for local dominance, is the whole debate.

2. The road to constitutional status

• Balwant Rai Mehta Committee (1957): a three-tier system of village panchayat, panchayat samiti and zilla parishad; Rajasthan began on 2 October 1959.
• Ashok Mehta Committee (1977–78): a two-tier system with mandal panchayats; party participation.
• Karnataka's experiment: the 1983 Act under Ramakrishna Hegde and Abdul Nazir Sab created elected zilla parishads and mandal panchayats (elections in 1987) and is often treated as the model for the national law.
• G.V.K. Rao Committee (1985) and L.M. Singhvi Committee (1986), which recommended constitutional recognition.
• The Sixty-fourth Amendment Bill (1989) failed in the Rajya Sabha.
• The Seventy-third and Seventy-fourth Amendments, 1992, in force in 1993, inserted Parts IX and IXA and the Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules.

3. The constitutional scheme

Two weaknesses are built in. Article 243G says the legislature may devolve powers, so devolution of functions, funds and functionaries depends on State will. And Articles 243O and 243ZG bar courts from interfering in electoral matters except by election petition. Many States have raised the women's quota to one-half. The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 extends Part IX to Fifth Schedule areas with strong gram sabha powers over land, minor forest produce and customary dispute resolution. Karnataka's law is now the Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj Act 1993.

4. The case law

• Kishansing Tomar v. Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad, 2006 INSC 713: the State Election Commission must hold elections before the term ends; State governments cannot delay them, and the Commission can approach the court if the State does not cooperate.
• K. Krishna Murthy v. Union of India, 2010 INSC 307: reservation for backward classes in local bodies under Articles 243D(6) and 243T(6) is valid; it rests on political, not social and educational, backwardness; but must stay within an overall 50% vertical ceiling and requires a rigorous inquiry.
• Vikas Kishanrao Gawali v. State of Maharashtra, 2021 INSC 150: the “triple test”, namely a dedicated commission to inquire into backwardness in local bodies, local-body-wise proportions, and a total not exceeding 50%. Elections in several States were delayed until it was met.
• Rajbala v. State of Haryana, 2015 INSC 912: minimum educational qualifications and a functional toilet as conditions for contesting panchayat elections upheld. Critics point out that it excluded a large share of rural women and Dalits, the very groups Part IX was meant to bring in.

5. Has decentralisation transformed society?

Gains. Very large numbers of elected women representatives; Dalit and Adivasi presidents of panchayats in villages where they could not earlier enter the temple; gram sabhas as forums for social audit (MGNREGA, 2005); Kerala's People's Plan Campaign (1996) showing what real fiscal devolution can do. Studies of randomised reservation for women pradhans in West Bengal and Rajasthan (Chattopadhyay and Duflo, 2004) found that women leaders invested more in drinking water and other goods that women prioritised.

Limits. Proxy representation (the “sarpanch-pati” problem); dominance by locally powerful castes, which bears out Ambedkar's fear; weak fiscal base and dependence on State grants; parallel bodies and MP/MLA local area funds that bypass panchayats; delayed elections; State bureaucracies that keep control of staff. Urban local bodies are weaker still, with mayors in most States lacking executive power.

6. Nyaya panchayats and Gram Nyayalayas

The panchayat as a dispute-resolution forum links this topic to justice delivery. Nyaya panchayats existed under State laws from the 1950s but declined. The Gram Nyayalayas Act 2008 now provides courts at the intermediate panchayat level; it is discussed in the note on reform of justice delivery.

7. NGOs and civil society in social transformation through law

The syllabus pairs Panchayati Raj with non-governmental organisations because both are routes by which people outside the State use law. Voluntary organisations play four roles:

• Litigation. Social action litigation was largely brought by organised groups: Bandhua Mukti Morcha v. Union of India, 1983 INSC 203 (bonded labour) and People’s Union for Democratic Rights (1982) on the Asiad workers, and women’s groups behind Vishaka (1997). Upendra Baxi preferred the term “social action litigation” for this reason: the petitioner speaks for a group that cannot reach the court.
• Law-making from below. The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan’s public hearings in Rajasthan in the 1990s led to State laws and then to the Right to Information Act 2005; campaigns by the Right to Food movement shaped the National Food Security Act 2013; the forest rights campaign produced the Forest Rights Act 2006.
• Implementation and social audit. NGOs act as legal aid bodies, monitor schemes in gram sabhas and train elected women representatives, linking this topic to section 5.
• Watchdog. Bodies such as the Association for Democratic Reforms brought the candidate-disclosure and electoral bonds cases.

The State has also regulated the sector. The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act 2010 bars organisations “of a political nature” from receiving foreign funds; in Indian Social Action Forum v. Union of India, 2020 INSC 290, the Court read that phrase down so that an organisation is not penalised merely for supporting the rights of citizens through lawful means such as protests. In Noel Harper v. Union of India, 2022 INSC 411, it upheld the 2020 amendments, which ban the transfer of foreign contributions between organisations and require receipt in a designated State Bank of India account, holding that there is no fundamental right to receive foreign funds. Critics answer that registration cancellations have been used against organisations critical of government. The comparison often drawn is with the international standard in the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders (1998), which recognises a right to seek and use resources for the protection of human rights.

How this is examined

Essays: role of local self-governing bodies in democratic decentralisation; democracy and social change; Panchayati Raj and social transformation. Short notes: Panchayati Raj institutions, local self-governing bodies in rural areas, the Panchayati Raj system in India, PESA. Begin with Gandhi and Ambedkar, give the table, use Krishna Murthy and Gawali, and evaluate. For the role of democracy and NGOs in social transformation, add section 7.