Holistic Panchayat Raj

 

Towards Holistic
Panchayat Raj

Arguing that “bad Panchayat Raj is perhaps worse then no Panchayat Raj”, the report stresses that Panchayat Raj must not deteriorate into sarpanch raj. To this end, the Report urges that PRIs be structured legally and administratively to function as collegiate bodies, with all elected members being involved in preparing programmes, key decisions being taken by the Panchayat as a whole and not at the whim and fancy of the President, and implementation being under the effective supervision of the Panchayat members concerned and not just the sarpanch

It is not by coincidence that this article carries the same title as our Report1, for this is by way of an introduction to a Report that we believe should be essential reading for all those who would like to see the fulfillment of Gandhiji’s dream for independent India. Replying to a query on his “Dream for Independent India”, he wrote in his journal, Young India, 10 September 1930:

“I shall work for an India in which the poorest will feel it is his country, in whose making he has an effective voice”

This vision is inscribed on the cover of the Report and constitutes its leitmotif.

There is no way in which the aam admi, let alone the poorest Indian, can have a sense of belonging in a Parliament in which his MP represents 15-20 lakh others, or an effective voice in decisions are taken in remote State capitals or Delhi, let alone even in the inaccessible reaches of the Collector’s office. 65 years after Independence, almost every Indian feels alienated from the political and administrative process, the sense of alienation being the greater the lower down the economic scale and social hierarchy that person finds himself or herself in, and also the more distanced he or she is geographically from the imposing Bhawans where his or her future is decided. Six and a half decades of democracy leave most individuals as distant from having an “effective voice” in the making of their country as their parents and grandparents were under colonial rule.

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Aadhaar Number in India

The Possibilities of Aadhaar Number

The Aadhaar number is a powerful tool as governments move to more individual-oriented programs. It is an identification infrastructure available to every resident in India, including infants

Economic growth is not an end in itself; its power lies in the ability it gives us, the financial wherewithal to address the many problems that a developing country faces. Governments in India have accordingly, with economic growth, implemented new social programs and safety nets that tackle our poverty, health and education challenges. The ambitions of these programs however, have been marred by challenges in execution, and a significant one has been the lack of clear identification and targeting of individual beneficiaries.

The problems of identification bog down millions of people in India across communities and in different situations. Rural women for example, face difficulties in accessing social benefits and employment, especially if they are not part of a household; most benefits and programs, as well as identity mechanisms are linked to households, and single women or widows are excluded as a result. Backward communities and tribal groups similarly find themselves caught in a cycle of exclusion, where the lack of one service cuts off identification documents and consequently access to other services, such as when the inability to get a ration card also means difficulty in opening a bank account.

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