The Hindu Business Line : Panchayat power

For Kerala to remain a socially developed State, with a strong egalitarian bias towards human development, it is important that the panchayats be strengthened and revitalised.

Last week, participants at a meeting in Alappuzha organised by the Common Centre for Panchayati Raj and Decentralisation of Power, concluded that gram panchayats in Kerala are considerably hampered in developing as local self-governing institutions.

The public at large, the elected representatives of the people and officials, are yet to accept panchayats as local governments, the meeting noted. Many of the panchayat members are ill-qualified to understand and implement their duties, and once elections are over, political parties do not care to guide them in discharging their duties.

The crux of the matter is that though the State Government had transferred control over several institutions to local bodies, the officials are not prepared to accept the suzerainty of the local bodies, the participants at the meeting said. The meeting claimed that the panchayats began to lose control over these institutions when the People's Plan was converted into Kerala Development Project.

Tops in Panchayati Raj

This is indeed a pitiable condition for a State that topped the list in an evaluation by the Union Panchayati Raj Ministry for 2004-05. Kerala was judged the best performing State in implementation of the Panchayati Raj, ahead of Karnataka and Sikkim, the second and third rankers. One principal reason for the continued success of Kerala in maintaining a superior social and human development profile is the relative strength of its panchayat raj institutions. And no one can deny the practical power of panchayats today. As the Panchayati Raj Minister, Mr Mani Shankar Aiyar, recently pointed out, the panchayats will now be directing the Planning Commission on what has to be done systematically for their development. Previously, the Planning Commission used to decide what ought to be done for the panchayats, but now the roles have been reversed, in the wake of the recommendations of an expert five-member committee.

"We have institutionalised panchayati raj but not empowered it,'' Mr Aiyar is reported to have said. While some States such as Karnataka and West Bengal have given enough powers to these institutions, he added, others such as Pondicherry, Bihar and Jharkhand are yet to begin the process.

To be sure, Kerala has done quite a bit to outdistance the other States in the Panchayat Raj race, if it can be called that. But the recent trends — as articulated at the Alappuzha meeting — are disturbing.

Often panchayats in the State are controlled by a coterie of senior members and powerful officials. The net effect is not just partiality in distribution and implementation of projects but also misuse and leakage of funds, not to mention the emergence of a group of permanent beneficiaries who corner the benefits of all projects.

This is indeed a far cry from the lofty ambitions that enveloped the introduction by Mr A.K. Antony, the then Chief Minister, of the Kerala State Panchayat Raj Bill in March 1994. It also makes a mockery of the basic principles of decentralised planning as enumerated by the Sen Committee on Decentralisation of Power: autonomy, subsidiarity, role clarity, complementarity, uniformity, people's participation, accountability and transparency.For Kerala to remain a socially developed State, with a strong egalitarian bias towards human development, it is important that the panchayats be strengthened and revitalised.

The writer can be contacted at kgkumar@gmail.com

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