Articles
How Panchayats Can Serve Better
Dt: 1/2/13
How Panchayats Can Serve Better
Dr T.H.Chowdary *
While deliberating on constitution -making Dr Rajendra Prasad wondered as to how we were giving a vote for every adult irrespective of his educational or other qualifications and allowing him to elect Members to Parliament for whom also no qualification are laid, but who would determine the economic policies, taxes, budgets, foreign relations , social engineering and many laws that govern the public; providing legislatures for the State and the Union, however we are not giving the very villagers any say in determining what is required for their own village . Some are thinking that they are unfit to decide what is good for themselves and their won village but at the same time, they think that those very people are competent to deliberate upon and influence national policies. He strongly pleaded that we must remember that India, inspite of being submitted to waves of foreign invasions and internal wars for centuries, had administrations which ensured prosperity and stability because every village was administered by the villagers themselves through Panchayats. But Dr.Ambedkar strongly and eloquently characterized villages as dens of caste oppression, bigotry and ignorance. The learned Pt.Jawaharlal was equally dismissive of villages and villagers’ ability to manage their affairs. So, the Pachayats unique to India for centuries found no place among representative institutions for governance and development in our Constitution until 1992 when the 73rd amendment Act ( initiated as a Bill in 1991 under Rajiv Gandhi’s Prime Minister ship) gave the Constitutional status to the village Panchayats. The good intentions of Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi are however frustrated by ignoble politicians curtailing the scope and operation of the Panchayats. A few illustrations would bring out the outrages.
2. Education alone can help people to lift themselves up from poverty and dependency ( on government- dispensed welfare) . But schools are functioning deplorably in most villages. Government teachers are well-paid. Those posted to village schools especially in Adivasi and remote areas are reluctant to go there; when compelled they manage to “ outsource” their job to a local matriculate at a fraction of their salary, leaving undated casual leave applications to hoodwink inspecting officers; many don’t live in the village they are posted but commute (now and then or late to arrive, early to leave) from a nearby town with the result that teaching is poor, learning poorer and passing is poorest. The result is 40% of boys and girls of school-going age are not in government schools where education is free and mid-day meals are served; they go to costly private schools. The remedy is to make the schools accountable to the Panchayat as regards teachers’ attendance, maintenance of discipline and students’ attainments. The Panchayat’s E.O should conduct the Parent-teacher meetings; Panchayat should be responsible for the provision of toilets; play-ground and mid-day meals and management of the Welfare Hostel.
3. Libraries are great resource for knowledge and information acquisition. The public library in the village should be within the administrative jurisdiction of the Panchayat. Let me illustrate. Angaluru is a village in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh . there the Librarian is paid Rs. 18,000 p.m. But the annual spend on books and periodicals is less than Rs. 10,000! A retired teacher or retired government official living in the village could be engaged by the Panchayat at an honorarium of say rs. 5000 p.m and the money saved could be used to get mreo books, a broadband Internet connection and so on. The Panchayat can form a Library Committee with the Head mater(s) of the schools, the E.O and two or three educated persons in the village to advise and oversea the functioning of the library.
4. The NREGA programme is a money-guzzler. There are no lasting assets, developments or improvements achieved under that. The Panchayat must be the planner for works executed for NREGA. De-silting tanks, ponds, canals; planting and caring of trees; repair of roads, construction-labour for Indira Awas Yojana; repairs, maintenance and upkeep of government’s Panchayat’s properties should be planned by the Panchayat and NREGA labour assigned for it.
The NREGA program is wasting huge amounts of money. It is not eliminating poverty; it is only allowing the poor to live in poverty by preventing death by starvation or malnutrition. This is not a solution to poverty. Productive work must be got from those benefiting from NREGA. There is urban forest scheme. Of course, it is not a success because the local people are not having the ownership of such schemes. But in a village, utilising the NREGA labour the Panchayat should be authorized to undertake tree-plantation along all the streets and their upkeep should be entrusted out of the NREAG labour and funds.
A number of poor people are given milk cattle but fodder for them is a problem. The Panchayat can engage the NREGA labour and put them in charge of growing fodder on government lands, banjar lands and degraded lands in the Panchayat area.
The NREGA labour and funds should be utilized by the Panchayat for sanitation work in the village, for clean and green programs . Every open surface by the side streets should be planted with grass and the grass should be watered and trimmed. The collection of the refuse, its storage in one place and its use for filling up etc., should be the task for the Panchayat.
5. Electrical power supply is essential for farmers who depend upon ground water for irrigation of their food crop- growing lands. It is also essential for rural people to be drawn into the nation’s economic activities. There is lot of pilferage and theft of power in the rural areas. The employees of the state-owned electricity distribution systems ( DISCOM) collude with power thieves. The electricity boards /distribution companies cover up this theft by classifying it as transmission loss. It is easy to steal and escape the consequence, if the distribution and billing and collection are the responsibility of a big organisation like the DISCOM. The theft could be minimized by entrusting the distribution and billing and collection to the village Panchayat. The DISCOM ( distribution company) can put up a transformer for a village or a group of village and put an energy meter and bill the Panchayat according to this meter. It shall be the responsibility of the Panchayat to read the individual meters of the villages as well as farms and bill them and collect the amount. The persons doing this work must be an employee of the Panchayat itself. As reading is once in a month it is not necessary that there should be a full time employee for this purpose. It is only a little work for the Panchayat. The Panchayat doing this work of energy distribution billing & collection may be remunerated by a discount on the energy bill served on the Panchayat. Dr.Varghese Kurian proposed this when he was Chairman of the Gujarat Electricity Board. While the Gujarat government supported this the bureaucrats in Delhi shot it down . Dr Kurian records that 25 years after his proposal, government approved that and asked Dr Kurian to implement it in Kaira district of Gujarat. He said he was not having enough energy to implement such a scheme as it involved educating the villagers and hand -holding the Panchayat for doing this work for some years. Since the losses of the Discoms in all the Sates together have mounted to Rs. 1,90,000 cr having gone up from about Rs. 40,000 cr in the year 2001, it would be prudent to try this scheme in a few well administered Panchayats to begin with.
6. Gujarat is showing the way for use of solar energy to produce electricity. All along the bunds of canal solar panels are put for generating electricity and supplying it to the Panchayat. The Panchayat in turn is selling the energy to the villagers and if there is surplus, it sells to the state electricity grid.
7. Planning in the state should make Panchayta as partners. What do villagers want in regard to roads, school buildings, class rooms, culverts, bridges resurfacing of roads, augmenting electricity, additions to their health centers should all be planned by the Panchayat and estimates prepared for the funds required. These must be aggregated at the Mandal and district levels and the sanctioned schemes in the village must be executed through the Panchayat itself.
8. The vaccination of children, the supply & management of mid- day meals in schools the administration of welfare covering for eg: nutritious food for pregnant women, pensions for the physically disabled, widows and the aged should also be routed only through the Panchayat in order to eliminate payments for ghosts. As these amounts should be distributed by the Panchayat office to physically present people so that there are no bogus payments.
9. No Panchayat work programme should require the approval /recommendation of an MLA/MLC/MP. They are usually partisan.
10. The Primary Health Center in the village also, like the library and school , be under the administration control of the Panchayat.
11. Panchayat Members should have a minimum 10th class pass qualification.
12. Which families are B.P.L should be decided in a public meeting.
13. These are some measures which will give voice and authority to the villagers in regard to their welfare within the resources generated by the Panchayat or granted by state/central governments.
14. If we cannot trust villagers to administer and govern themselves, democracy to that extent will be a myth. Idealising the village people as fit to elect MLAs & MPs who would make profound policies affecting the defense of the country and economic progress but not trusting them for their own governance is scandalous .
P.S: I request that everyone who is interested in true development of our farmers and villages, should read Dr. Veghese Kurien’s autobiographical book, “ I Too Had a Dream” ( Roli Book, 7th Impression 2012; Rs. 295, pages 250). Please ponder over this quote from this book (P 82).
“ If the stark imbalance between the cities and villages, between industry and agriculture in our country was to be corrected, it became necessary for us at Anand to erect structures that would include our people into the decision-making process. What use is democracy in Delhi if we do not have democratic institutions at he grass-roots level? What is a village society if not school where our future leaders should learn how to manage their own affairs? What is a district union if not a college where the elected representatives can get postgraduate training in management and business?”
Our Panchayats are emasculated, corrupted and converted as appendages to politicians; what ought to be managed by the villagers in council- schools, libraries, drinking and irrigation water, electricity, internal and linking roads, sanitation, greenery, ponds and tanks, primary health, temples etc., are all at the mercy of bureaucrats and politicians . Unless the MLA and the Minister in –charge of the district do not recommend precious little happens. The Panchayat’s officials in the village behave as masters; they ought to be employees of the Panchayat under their administrative control and not of government
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