POWER TO THE PEOPLE?

The Politics and progress of Decentralisation

Power to the People? The Politics and Progress of Decentralisation

K.C. Sivaramakrishnan

Under the auspices oJ CENTRE FOR POLICY RESEARCH, NEW DELHI

KONARK PT]BLISHERS PIIT LTD

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K
A-149,
e-mall: kprn@bol.net.in

Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi'

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ts

reserved. No

part of this book may

be

or utllised in any form or by any means' or mechanical, includind photocopytng, or by any information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the

Tlpest by Dlgigraflcs, New Delhi and

Printcd at RashhE Rachnn Printers, Delhi

Dedicated to mg brother Late K.C. Sankaranarayanrn who, more ttwn a senror in the LA.S. was a mentor and a model.

Foreword

As we celebrate 5O years of our Republic it ts worth recalling that the very flrst line of the Constitution of India begtns wlth the words "We the People of India". In the flve decades since the Constltutlon came into effect "We the People of Indla" have been left far behind, elther by design or circumstance. The size of the government has grown enormously both in the Centre and Ar the State often at the cost of the cltlzen.,

While we seek to move forward on reforms and

economlc liberallsatton the relationship between the citizen and the government has become more vexed and tedlous The 73rd and the 74th Amendments to the Constltutlon by the Narasimha Rao Government stgdry a maJor attempt to redeflne people as the true basis of state authority, and return to them atleast some of the powers for determlnlng thetr own desttny and course of development. It will be wrong to characterise these amendments merely as measures of adminlstrative change or reordering llnances. In essence, they represent a conscious attempt towards multt-level democratic governErnce. Given the vast dlverslty and rlslng aspirailons across the country, the destlnies of the people cannot be orchestrated exclusively by the Central and State governments. The message inherent in these two Amendments ls that the Parliament and the Assembltes alone cannot

Potuer to the People?

at all levels; we need our Panchayats be the as much. and M The , debate and eventually the passage of these nents have been marked by rapidly changlng ts tncluding some tragic ones like the assassina of RaJiv Gandhi who had initlated the process. e debate on the Amendments was marked by much ln the initial stages. Their s0ope and su were also widened bv Joint Committees of ttre As one assoclated with the Amendment exercise since its ception in 1989, Prof K.C. Sivar4makrishnan been in the unique poslUon to chronicle its history as well as the progress Of its implernentaflon. Hts experience in urban management ln India abroad brings to this book an insight not usually found. The Centre for Policy and a Research es to record its deep appreciation ofhis contrtbu
1.

The

ntre for Pollcy Research (CPR) has

a strong tnterest in issues ofgovernance slnce the -l980s. The CPR is happy to offer to the poltcy mmunity in the countqr and the publtc thts t addttion to the growtng subJeot of governan and the urgent policy action that is
necessary.

Cente Jor New Delht

Research

V.A. PAI PANANDIKER Presldent

Preface

India is not the only country to embark on decentralisation. Complexities of governance, managing diversity and coping with rapid econornic change have prompted many other countries to undertake similar
exercises.

Though local Self Government in the rural and urban areas has had a long history in India and is also reflected in the Directive Principles of State Policy and other provtsions of the Indiem constitution, fifty years of our independence have been marked by a decline rather than development of local autonomy. The limited success achieved in some states instead of helplng its continued progress has itself become a cause of resentment and apprehension about local governments. The efforts to amend the Constitutlon initiated by the RaJiv Gandhi Government and lmplemented during the Narasimha Rao Government were based on the hope that what was derailed in the past by political expediency could be secured by provtding consiltuflonal safeguards. It also marked the outcome of a rapld learning process that RaJiv Gandhi underwent in the early years of his Prime Mlnistership. As one assoclated with the Amendment exercise slnce its inceptlon, I have had the prlvilege and often the pain of wttnessing in close proximity its progress and problems. I have attempted in this document a

Power to the Feople?

and chronological account and a re{rlew of what happened since the Amendments carjne lnto force. It too early to present a clear verdict either posluve or negatlve. However, I have not refrained from my own hopes and fears. filends and colleagues Lrave helped me in this . P. B. Iftishnaswanry, J. B. D'Souza, D.B opadhyaya, George Mathew and Mani Alyar very kindly spared the tlme to go through draft manuscrtpt and made several useful I also had the benefit of tnteractt4g with s. R. Meenakshisundaram, B. G. Vetghese, Ajit M mdar, AJay Mehra and Raj Mohan Gandhi at stages of writing this book. I am gfiateful to all of them for thetr advlce and help. If the flnaf verslon falls short ofthet expeotations, the reason can only my own lnadequacies alrd not the strength of thetr Dr. A. Pal Panandiker, President, CPR has been strongly supportive of this whole effort frorn the I am grateful to him and to the CPR for brlnging out this book as a CPR publicatlon. of this kind can succeed onlv if there is lnd ce and support at horrle. My wlfe Sunita provtded an ample measure of both. She also very klndly through the manuscript and suggested useful es to lts tone and tenor. Iam to Mrs. JasJit Mansingh for editing t}te wtth diligence and speed. Pafamtta Datta p ded very useful research suppott and helped the various tablesr I am thankful to Mr. of the Parliament Library for his help in the relevant records ofthe Lok Sabha and RaJya ha. Mrs. Sarala Gopinathan cheerfully

PreJace

accomplished the task of typing the whole manuscript. No one has clalmed that the 73rd and the 74th Amendments are a masterpiece of legal draftlng. Some demands have already been made for amendtng ttre Amendments. But the spirit and substance of the

Amendments are more important to secure their lmplementation than the letter of the law. As I have repeatedly emphaslsed ln the book the very large number of representatlves from the rural and urban local bodles numbering more than 3 mllllon wlll undoubtedly lnfluence the countr5r's political chemistry. The process of decentralisatlon cannot be held back. An opportunity ls available before the country to ensure that the changes are accomplished wtth deliberation and reason rather than betrg wrested by discontent and warped by chaos. For this it is necessarJr to understand the background and the ratlonale, the intent and purpose, ttre points of agreement and discord and how consensus was eventually reached to enable the Amendments to be
passed.

My labours ln writleg this book would be more than fulfllled lf tt helps thls understanding.
K. C. SMRAI\,IAKRISHNAN

Contents

Foreuord PreJace The Prologue

uii

i8

l. Decentralisation-Past and Present Efforts 3 23 2. The Drafting of the Amendment Bill 40 3. Parliament Debates the Two Btlls 58 4. General Elections and After 87 5. Conformity Legislation 6. Outcome of Panchayat and Municipal lO7
Elections
7. FuncUonal Domain

t27
L57

8. Financial Domaln

9. Some Pending Issues

10.

t78
206 227

Authority, AccountabilrtY and Prodmity to Citlzens

11. Prospects for the Future

INDEX

243

The Prologue

much-embattled hme Minister, yet he hoped that the managers of hls party and his own personal commltment would somehow see the Bllls through an unenthused RaJya Sabha. When ttre vote was taken, a llttle past mtdnlght, there were 83 Nos, and 157 Ayes-three short of the requlrement of a two-thlrd maJortty of the total of 24O members present and votlng. The motion was declared defeated and the house adJourned sine die. As both the Congress and the Opposltton members left the House raising slogans, challengtng each other in the antictpatlon of general elections which would foUow my colleague Vinod Pandey, who was then Secretar5r, Mlnlstry of Rural Development, and I remalned in the offlctal's gallery, clutchtng our flle folders as thoirgh ttrey were chtldren abandoned by qua:relllng parents. After a while we also left in silence and sadness. The bills had been defeated not because

It was late In the night of the l3th of October 1989. The RaJya Sabha was preparlng to vote on the motlon to conslder the Panchayafi\Ral and the Nagarpalika blll-s. f)urlng the precedtng rtronths of the year, RaJiv Gandhl had spent much tlme and effort in gettlng these Bills drafted and pushed through the lok Sabha. By the time they reached the Upper House, RaJtv Gandhl was nearlng the end of his term. He was a

Power to the People?

of thelr substance but because both the Congress

and the years the 74 subs had taken a polltical stand; neither to give any quarter to the other. Four the two bills. renumbered as the 73rd and

Amendments

to the Constitution but

unchanged, became law. What seemed and hasty endeavour tn 1989 came to be regard as a major systemic change in the country's of governance in 1993. While the Centre stru and the tates continue to be the prlncipal eldments of the ederal archltecture. the Panchavat and amendments have marked a sigrriflcant Nag towards multi-level governance.

I
Decentralisation-Past and
Present Efforts

The Panchayat and Nagarpalika amendment btlls of 1993 should not be regarded as the flrst initiatlve towards decentralisation. In 1952 the establishment of Community Development Blocks as part of the natlon-wide programme was itself a major step tn decentrallsing development admlntstratlon. The National Extension Service was eStablished soon thereafter to reinforce the administrafion at different local levels. However, lack of public participatlon emerged as a maJor problem.'The Balwant Rai Mehta Study Team was appointed in 1957 to consider the institutlonal framework and suggest measures for mobilising local initlatives. Beginning in 1958, with

the adoption of the Study Team's Report for establishing a three-tier panchayat system, the

country witnessed considerable progress in organising panchayats at the village, at the block and at the district level. Some States like Karnataka, GuJarat' Maharashtra and Rajasthan established innovatlve structures for decentralised planning and coordinaUon particularly at the district level. In some others, like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, progress was notable

Fouer to ttre People?

at the
196Os, 220.OOO

and at the block level. By the mid60,000 village panchayats coverlngl some had been set up. In additlon, there 7,50O Panchayat Samitis and 330 Zilla

H tnttlative as the
The and

er, the success of the decentralisation

the ascendancy of tb,e panchayati raj, ka Mehta Committee reported later, ln'themselves the causes of a slow down. that was emergtng at the village, block ct levels had a strong local identity and a of local problems and it came to be a potential threat by other levels of political With the passing away of Jawartrarlal e commitment to democratic values If the leadership at the decentralised level litical party different to that at the State difference was taken as a loss of power a fact of political plurallsm. By the middle , decentralisatlon was almost revdrsed. stalwarts ltke S.K. Dey, and the

better
regarded

Nehru,

weaken was of a level, su rather of the I Notwiths supporr leaders ltke Kamaraj andJawaharlal NEhru, the ofdecentralisation had been derailed: the real con of funds and decision-making reverted to the leadership and the officials actirrg on their beh wtth change of government at the Centre in 1977. wh MorarJi Desai became hme Mlriister, andwlth setting up of the Asoka Mehta Committee, there was a revival ofinterest tn pahchayati raJ. The recommended a two-tler structure witr panchaya at the dlstrict and block or mandal levels. Some -Andhra Pradesh and West Bengalmade a changes. Maharashtfa, GuJarat and

fucentaltsa{an-Past

and, Pre s ent

Elforts

Karnataka malntalned the set up at the distrtct level; others continued with the same weakened arrangements as before. It took nearly another decade for any maJor change to be considered. The Slnghvi Committee, appointed in 1986, looked into the legal aspects ofpanchayati raj and urged that they should be glven constituUonal recognition, that their powers and functlons should be set. forth in a new chapter, and that free and fair elections to the panchayats should be organised through the Election Commission of India.a The Sarkaria Commisslon, in its report of 1988 on Centre-State Relatlons, dld not favour amending the ConsUtutlon. It preferred a model bill based on consensus in the Inter-State Council, whlch would then be enacted by the St?tes. Alternatlvely, Parliament could legislate after ob{aining the consent of the States. Prima facie, the Sarkaria Commlssion's vlew was that the subject was wlthin the domaln and competence of the Sates.s

The RaJiv Gandbi Initiatives The panchayati raj and the nagarpallka initiatives started by Rajiv Gandhi were, therefore, not Just a resumption of the decentralisation process but an attempt to force the pace of change. The Singhvt Commlttee's recommendations were accepted ln substance and it was recognised that this time the process should be underwritten by constitutional provislons. The amendment exercise, however, should not be seen as an isolated move; it was part of the rapid learnlng process that RaJtv Gandhi was going through. Rethinldng on national planning and the dlscusslons about organising planning on the basis of different agro cllmatlc regions was one of the early

Pouer to tlw People?

Gandht

The sedes of group consultationS RaJiv eld during 1987 and 1988 with Distrlct
/Collectors from all over the country and iate seminars and discusslons that the of Personnel conducted were signilflcant ts.6 The then Minister of Personnel. was an enthusiastic organiser of these labelled as a sea-rch for resppnslve tion, these semlnars did capture the of the offlcials. Some Oppositlon leaders meetlngs as an attempt by Rajiv Gandhi State and District administration bypassing political leadership. "From the PM to the out the CM" was a frequently heard t which summarised such reactions. critlcism was prompted by consideratlons or anger at what seemed to be a dellberate bypass some Chief Ministers, RaJiv Gandhi workshops and serninars as a learning His belief that decentralisation of power to the distridts and the levels essentlal part of the development process . Decentralisatlon was seen not onlv as to enlarge the funnel,of representation counter "poVer brokers" but alsb as a t way of channeling publlc resoufces to development programmes. It wa$ also to address the shortcomlngs of the ral experience, which might otherwise be or deflect future changes. The concept Plannirg, whatever its lirnitations, strongly RaJiv Gandhi. felt that he could not relv entifelv on t machinery alone or his own party

tlle
develop
events.

resented

to the

DM wi
tndtctm
Whether

of lntent to
used experl and below as was an

and th
more

flnance
necess used to

of

Decentralisation-Past ottd Present Eforts

leadership. Within hls own government there were people with significant experlence ln State administration but either they were not as enthusiastlc about decentralisailon as he was, or were not as forthcoming in expressing their reservatlons. He, therefore, decided to mobilise whatever support he could get for his ldeas on decentraltsatlon from such local bodies as were alive at that time, whether rural or urban. The Panchayati RaJ and the Nagarpallka Sammelans, rvhich took place during the flrst half of 1989, were the platforms he devlsed for the purPose' By any account these sammelans were one of the most extensive series of consultatlons with a wtde variety of offlctals and eleeted representatlves from the local bodies of the country. The hme Minlster hlmself became a very active partictpant in these gatherings. The Panchayati RaJ sammelan serles started ln January and went on ttll April. The Republlc Day celebrattons of 1989 were an opportunlty to bring a large number of offlcials and representatlves of villa$e panchayats to Delhl. I was Secretary ln the Minlstry of Urban Development at that tlme and Vtnod Pandey was Secretaqr, Rural Development. My colleagues and I watched wlttr some amusement and cynlclsm as Vlnod and hls offlcers laboured hard in organlstng one sammelan after another. At the best of ttmes interactlon between our two rnlnistries was mlnlmal and ttris perlod of lntense semtnarlng did not seem an approprtate time to widen the contacts. We were mlstaken.
A Blll for Panchayatt RaJ On 15 May 1989, RaJiv Gandht lntroduced ln the

Power ta the P.eople?

L.ok

establtsh panchayati ral at the village, lntermedlate and levels composed mainly of representatives elected terrttorial constituencies, A separate Schedule the Constitution was prpposed contatntng t$rentysubjects such as agriculture, minor animal husbandry, rural electrlflcation, poverty etc. I quote from the Statement of ObJects Reasons for the Bill:

t Bltl 1989, as it was known, sought to

bill to amend the Consrtitution. The 64th

have

of
and inad and respo

alms and

of the working of Panchayati RaJ has shown that in many states they e weak and ineffective due to a variety tncluding the failure to hold rqgular elections, prolonged supersession, representation of the weaker secUons adequate devolution of power and ility on them. Having regard to the les in the edstlng system and keeping the directive principle of state policy ln Artlcle 40 of the Constttutibn which endowing Panchayats with such ppwers as are necessary to enable thpm to as units of self government, tt is proposed a new section/part to the Constitution to the panchayats.T
a three-tier system ofpanchayats, the nvlsaged elections to be organised by the

Apart

blll

also

Electlon Commisslon, reservatlons of seats for I Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women. years for the panchayats, the setilng up tenure of of Commlsslons ln the State$ and empowedng

Decenhallsation-Post and' Present Efforts

the CAG to audtt the accounts of the panchayats' While introducing this btll, RaJiv Gandhi also announced that a similar exerclse would be taken up to provtde a consUtutional mandate for urban local
bodies.E

Events started movtng very fast thereafter. On 19 May 1989, Mohsina Kidwat, the Urban Development Minister, met with BhaJan Lal, the then Agflculture Mlnister and two other party stalwarts, Dinesh Stngh' the ttren Commerce Minister, and H. K. L' Bhagat' the then Minister of Parliamentary Affairs' At the offlctal level, in the Urban Development Ministry we had prepared some notes for this meeting based mainly on the report of the Nattonal Commission on Urbanlsation, known as the Correa Commission' whtch had submitted its report tn August 1988. Stnce RaJiv Gandhl had already made known his preference for a Constttuttonal Amendment the dlscussions moved quickly, ftom the philosophy of decentralisaflon to its pracflcal aspects. It was declded that, as in the case of ttre panchayats, a seminar to be attended by offlclals wtth direct knowledge and experience of the worlrdng of different types of urban local bodles such

as Corporatlons, Municipal Counclls' Town

be organlsed, to be followed by three or four sammelans of the elected representaUves of such

bodies from the different regions.

Committees, Notifled Area Committees, etc' should

The Sammclan Serlcs The schedule of events to be organlsed was dauntlng. Withtn one month, June, a semlnar of offlctals, three regional sammelans at Bangalore, Cuttack and New Delhi, a meeung of all the Chlef

lo

P0wer ta tte People?

a meeflng of all State ministers of local )nt and a meetlng of the Parliamehtary Committee had to be organised. trhere would be break of no more than two or three davs between . The June events were to be followed bya of all Chlef Ministers in the llrst week of July to such consensus as was possible.e The bill to amend ConstltuUon was to be introduced soon thereafter. Such a schedule, my friends advised, was tlon guaranteed to jeopardise both my physlcal and my offlclal standtng. Anyway, there no alternattve but to plunge lnto the exerclse, I did with some trepldatlon. To begin wlth, cerebral strengths and energies whtch had latn ln the corridors of Nirntan Bhawan had to be mo By and traditlon, the Mlnistrv of Urban Developm nt was an amalgam of miscellaneous responslb es. Prlor to Independence, lts tnain concern the allotment of government land in Delhl the construction and maintenance of buildlngs through the CPWD. It was not a ministry but a part of the much larger Mlnlstry f Industry and Supply, a formidable : The Supply rninistry had shouldered a varlety of responslbllities-.-from delivering mules to during World War I to the procurement of food and defence items large through e Supply Misslons ln London and Aft.er Independence, Industry was hlved off and remalned became'Supply, Works and Retu(ee rllltatton'. At one stage Health, Family Plannlng, y'orks and Houstng were clubbed tooether ks Houslne together but later, true to the prlnctples of bureaucfatic

Decentalisation-Past and Present Efforts

ll

physiologl and the division of cells, 'Works and Housing' became a mtnistry on its own and was
ensconsed ln Nirman Bhawan. Local self-government, urban development, water supply and santtatlon were some of the subJects listed for this minlstry but most of its time was spent in admlnistering the CPWD, the

Delhi Development Authority, the Directorate of

Estates, the numerous samadhis along the Yamuna and, by an odd coincidence, a dozen printtng presses

left behind by the Department of Supply. After

assumlng offlce, Rajiv Gandhi changed the name of the mlnistry to Urban Development, hoping that some day the Ministry would live up to its tlUe. He also brought ln D.M. Sukhthankar, former Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai, as the Secretary of the Mtntstry and set up the Correa Commission on Urbanlsation to help formulate an agenda. When I succeeded Sukhthankar in September 1988, I made a plea to Rajlv Gandhi to remove at least two of the mlllstones around the ministry's neck-the CPWD
and the Directorate of Estates. Rajiv Gandhi responded

with a smtle and said tt was not his Job to llft what was around my neck but if I could do so myself he
would have no obJectlon.

Tbe Mlnlstry of Urban Devclopment and Its

Llmltatlone
The Mlnlstry's concern with local government has always been peripheral; since the subJect was regarded

very much as the responsibility of the State

governments it was expected to act on issues of local government only through them. However, a Central Council of Local Self Government had been establlshed h f97O, as an lnter-State body under Artlcle 263 of

t2

Power to the Feople?

the tution. The Council used to meet about once a , chalred by the Wofks and Hdusing Mtntster. The agenda was set by the Ministry and usually bcused on routlne iternrs like murlictpal budget, taxation, etc. Later the All Indla Councll Mayors Jotned these meetings wlth ttre Central In a few meetings resolution$ were passed supersession of elected local bodies and en uring autonomy and resourceb for munlcl tles.ro The resolution$ were routlnelv but the Mlnistry did not see itself as the of local self-government. the Ministry was engaged in some research es, seminars or workshops. Fori most of this rk, the Ministry relied on two insfltufions. They the Indian Institute of Public Admirristratton (IIPA) ch set up centres for municipal and urban studles Delhl, Lucknow, Calcutta and Hvdenabad. and the Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), Both had a predilection for the extent and cs of urbanisaton, urban development schemes. urban poverty alleviation, land development, etc. Th NIUA's general body included State departments and development authorities rather munlcipalifies. The IIPA would cofrduct some co s on municipal budgetary refbrms, training municipal officials, personnel managdment in es and so on. The Town and Countrv Planning on, considered as a techntcal arm of the , also had a reasonable record brlt that ed to Just town planrrtng while HXJDCO proflle public sector enterprlse trnder was the the aegls the Ministry. But all these organisatlons, as well the Ministry, had kept away from the core

Decentalisation-Past and Present Efforts

t3

lssues of local self-government, such as municlpal elecflons, munlclpal autonomy, urban governrnce,
etc. The Nagarpallka Sammelans, therefore, came as a

dramatic challenge to the Minlstry of Urban

Development to focus attention on the critical lssues of urban self-governance. The Ministry was fortunate in having some able and dedicated offlcers at the Addittonal, Jolnt, and Deputy Secretaqr levels. Some of them like Thakkar, K K Bhatnagar, DharmaraJan,

and Sundaram had also speclaltsed ln urban management and. municipal admtnlstratlon ln their

prevlous asslgnments. The NIUA, under Om Mathur's dlrectlon. had functioned as a secretariat for the Comea Commission and had comptled much useful information. It was, therefore, possible for the Ministry to quickly formulate an agenda for the sammelans backed up by informatlon and data on types of urban

local bodies in the country, their structure, their

powers and responsibilities, flnance, problems, etc. Itwas estimated that there would be a total number of over 5OOO, including both offlctals and elected representatives, who would participate ln the semlnar and sammelan events. The resources of the Ministry of Urban Development wereJust not enough to manage a serles of events on this scale. As in ttre case of the panchayatt ral events, help from other ministries of the Central government was sought. About a dozen Jolnt Secretary level officers were spared by the dtfferent mlnlstrles to help durlng the sammelans. Apart from thelr proven adminlstratlve skills, many of these Jolnt Secretarles had also some background in urban development and munlcipal management in thelr respectlve States. Ttrey were pressed into service

t4

Power to the fuople?

persons to help organise and condupt the events. their misglvings might have been about the substance and outcome of the discussions. persons worked with dedicatton and these

enth number roots I must That the to spend

along with the offlcefs of the Urban Ministry. The fact that a very large
offlcials and representatves from the grass were participating in these eventsl and theirviews with surprising force and clarity, impressed even the diehard bureaucrats. Minister of the country was prepared lot of time and actively participate in the was also an enthusing factor. Personally, wlth a cross sectiqn of able oflflcers mlnistries an enriching experllence. of officials in Delhi had about. 7OO The regional sammelans at Bangalore ck drew over l5OO elected representatives. of elected representatives in Delhi for and western States was by far the largest 1600 representatives. Just in terms of accommodation. venue fon the etc.-the Nagarpalika Sammelan was a e. For the events in Bangalore and State governments shouldered much of . For the sammelan of the elected from the northern and western States. alkatora garden, Delhi. the New Delhi

I found
from the The

and Cu
The the

with
I

meetlngs, maJor Cuttack, the b

held at Municip
consid

Corporation (NDMC) pressed lts

A
had of the National

le resources into service. ofSecretaries set up for the pulpose to flnalise the broad format and substance workshops. With the help of the rmatlcs Centre, a questionnaire was

Decentrallsation-Past and

Pre s ent

Efiorts

l5

prepared seeking the response ofthe partlcipants on various specific issues. Out of about 4,4OO participants, responses were obtained from 3,4OO. At the end of the sammelans at Cuttack, Bangalore and Delhi the responses were analysed and the final outcome presented to the Parliamentary Consultatlve

Commlttee as well as to the meetings of Chief Secretaries, Local Self Government (tSG) ministers and Chtef Minlsters which took place towards the end of June f989. Responses indicated an
overwhelming consensus for providing a Constituttonal

guarantee agalnst supersession and for regularly elected municipal bodies at varlous levels,lr Participants also favoured broad uniformity in terms of population, occupailon and income for setting up urban local bodies in three categories-Nagar Panchayats or Town Committees, Municipalities and City Corporations. A tenure of flve years in keeping with the llfe span of the Parllament and State Assemblies was favoured. About 9O per cent of the particlpants wanted earmarked tax sources for local bodies. Optnion was divided about direct or indirect elections for the positions of Mayor and Munlcipal
Chairperson.

The Sptrlt of the Sarnmelang The format of the sammelan workshops provided for a concluding session where the recommendations of different groups would be presented to the Prime Minister by ten to twelve participants. The Prime Minister actively participated in the discussion followlng these presentations. Two incidents merit mentlon. At the Bangalore event, a young lady who was chai4rerson from one of the smaller munlcipalities

l6
speech

Pouer to the Feople?

inTamil adu, belonging to the DMK, made a fofceful

for Counclls as well,
sanctit5r

to you, shares Gandhi

speaker. meeung. became

shouted the

to others rest of th
as an dlscussi The

of the
29th;t3 a

the Sth o
Ministers
RaJiv G meeting expl

initiative. Gorbach Beijlng, h as a resul

between

whlch she remarked: "We are prepared at all levels; to the city and Muriictpal the poslUons of Mayor and Chalrman dlrect elections. We believe ln the strength of adult franchise. The qu0stion Prime Minister ls whether your own party bellef ln free and fair electlons." RaJiv complimented the forcefulness of the e other incident was during the Delhi one of ttre sessions male chauvinism pant and every woman speakeri was Then, a lady councillor from qne of municipaliUes mounted the dais and a severe tongue lashing as "one Hat'yanvi The main galleries were subdued fdr the session. These two incidet'rts are mentloned of the atmosphere of free and frank whtch characterised the workshopF. workshops were followed by a of Chief Secretaries on 27 J:uneitz ameeting liamentar5r Consultative Committee on brence of the LSG Ministers on the 3oth: of the Government of lndia Secretarlbs on July, and, finally, a meeting of the Chief r 7 July 1989.14 In many of these erfents, il participated. It was at the Secretaries t he made a candid and moving speech the rationale for the decentralisation brring to a conversatiort he had had wtth soon after the Tienanlnan incideht in said Gorbachov had regarded that event of the tr2grc breakdown df communidation Communist party, the Feoples'Army and

Decertraltsalion-Past and. Present Efrorts

t7

the students. These three entlties had always been

central to the Chlnese polity and yet each had misread the stgnals of the other. An important lesson from the massacre was that even in regtmented socletles some plurality erdsted. In other societles the plurality, and the fledbility needed to deal with that, would be much more. As for the Soviet Union, RaJiv recalled that Gorbachov had consldered the political and social aspeets of Perestroika as more important than its economic features. The lesson RaJiv carried from these conversatlons was that ln a multi-ethnic, multl-lingual soclety ltke India, it would never be possible for the Central government to meet the rislng aspiraUons of the people, or cope wtth the wlde range of problems wlth their varylng intenstty in the different parts of the country. These required highly flexible and locally relevant solutions. Besides, for a countr5r of Indlas slze, the funnel of representailon, consisting of the MPs and MLAS in the country, together numbered not more than some 6,000. This limited number regarded themselves as exclusive representatives of the people but in fact they had become power brokers. In his vision, the polity of India and lts survlval as a soclety would be threatened if the avenues and

numbers of representation were not enlarged signtflcantly. This "widening the funnel of
representatlon' became a passion with RaJiv Gandhi. The arithmetic of numbers emerged as one of the organising principles for the political structure of the Panchayats and the Nagarpalikas as envisaged for the proposed Constitutional Amendment.

that it was not going to be easy to get the polittcal

support needed to push through the decentrallsation

RaJiv Gandhi also acknowledged at these meetings

l8

Pouser to

tte People?

initiativ
p and
tj

His own party apprehended that the

measures were far too wide. far tod manv d not be acceptable to the existlng polttical ; some leaders would keep saying,'hozam (cannot be digested). Nevertheless, they did tt prudent to join issue with RaJiv Gandhi. ition parties, however, were not bound by inhbition, Right from the beginning of the the DMK, CPM and the Telugu Desam Party that RaJiv Gandhi was bypassing the spirit nstitution by seeking to legislate on subjects clearly wlthin the domain of the State ents. West Bengal pafticipated in the RaJ sammelan in Calcr,ttta but refused to official or elected representative to any of sammelan events. Tamil Nadu's DMK t and the Telugu Desam government of desh partlctpated in ttre sammelafis but eir opposition at the conference of the of local self government held on 3O 89. West Bengal stayed away from that though initially it promised to serrd its
tive. t5 eeting with the Chief Ministers, on 7 July,

nalti
not The any su
exerclse declared

ofthe
which gover
Pan send the N gov

Andhra voiced
State

June I
meeting
The

was

consul

posed to be the culminating event of the tion process. A few days before, Andhra

Pradesh Chief Minister, Rama Rao, announced his decision to boycott the conference. West Bengal and Kerala f llowed suit. In an open letter dated 4 July dhi wrote to Rajiv Gandhi that if any 1989 constitu nal provision was needed at all it can be only for e purpose of ensuring regular elections to on all other matters it should be left to local to introduce the necessary legislation thus the Sta

Decentralisation-Past and. Present Efforts

l9

Amendments.rT Leaving aside questlons of

Constltutional proprtety, Rama Rao openly accused Rajiv Gandhi and his party of trying to woo voters on the eve of a general election by such manoeuwes on decentralisatlon. In the absence of the opposition-ruled states, the conference of Chief Mtnisters did not produce any surprises. However, the conference was followed by intenslve consultatlon between Mrs Mohsina Kidwat and some Congress Chief Ministers such as N. D. Tiwari, J. B. Patnaik, Pratap Singh Rane, Delhi's Chief Executive CouncillorJag Pravesh Chandra and others. Some of these Congress leaders felt that Ward Committees and Tnnal Committees as proposed for citles would be an overdose of the elective element and might lead to serious conflict of power and fight for office within the party. Jag Pravesh, familiar with the urban scene because of his long assoclation with Delhi, argued the other side with enthuslasm. The ills of democracy, he said 'a-la John Stuart Mill can be cured only by more democracy. Tiwari, on the other hand, repeatedly advised caution and suggested the Centre should llmlt itself to policy guidance, rnrga darstwt as he called it. and leave it to the States to work out the details. However, these Congress leaders as well as other stalwarts in the Central government, such as Bhajan Lal, Narasimha Rao, Solanki or others

recognising that local self-government was exclusively in their jurisdiction.t6However, if the Centre intended to proceed further, the Constitutlonal Amendments proposed should be brought before a conference of Chief Ministers for specilic discussion. Jyoti Basu wrote a similar letter questioning the need and wisdom of the central government in resortlng to Constitutional

Fower to the Feople?

with e

of worldng at the State level, accepted

of the sltuatlon that Rajiv Gandttl had lnitlatlve and had turned the proposed of the Constitution into a maJor plank party's political strategr. As such, of the the party leaders, whatever their mi$givings, kept thelr not wanting to give the impression of own the
re

seDed

The to the

or any withdrawal ln the face of opposition. and conferences oven the scene shifted of the Amendments.

Decentralisatian-Past and

Pre sent

Efforts

2r

NOTES

I.

Singh, S.S. et al. ed. Legislattue Stattts oJ Panchayati R4i rn India. New Delhi: Indian Institute of Public Administration,
1997.

2, Meenakshisundaram. Decentralisation in
Cotnl.lrles. Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1994.

Developing

3. Ibtd 4. Singh, S.S. et. aL ed. Irgislatiue

Indin Op. cil.

Status oJ Panchagoti Rq rn

5. 6.

IbrdReport oJ the Workstwp oJ Dtstrtct Maglstrotes / Collectors on Respottstse Administration, New Delhi: Ministry of Personnel, Government of India, July 1989.

7. IbId 8. The Constltution 64th Amendment Bill 1989 (Btll No. 50 of 19891 as introduced in Lok Sabha. 9. Speech of Rajiv Gandhi introducing 64th Amendment Blll. lok Sabha debate, 15 May 1989. RaJiv Gandhi, *lected Speecfes and Writings 1989, Vol V. Publication Divlsion,
Government of Indla. 1991. lO. From proceedlngs of the meeting between Urban Dwelopment and other Ministers,
19

May 1989, Ministry of

Urban Development.
I

l.

of

Resolution No. I I of the Joint Meeting of the Central Council tncd Govemment and All India Council of Mayors. October

r986.

12. Nagarpaltka Sammelan, Responses from Delegatesi Comparative Analysis, New Delhi: Government of Indta, Mtnistry of Urban Development and Nauonal Informatics Centre, June 1989. 13. Conference of Chief Secretaries; Agenda Notes, Ministry of Personnel, June 1989. 14. "Give Financial Powers to Urban Bodies". News item in Patri,ot New Delhi. of 30 June 1989. 15. 'Bengal Boycott Meet on Urban Bodies'. News item ln Patnot, New Delhi, of l5 July 1989. 16. 'Karunanidhi may not attend the CMs' meet". News item in Indlan Express, Madras, of 4 July 1989.

Pouer to the Feople?

Boycott CMs' meet". News item in Indian .gxpress, 2 July 1989 and "Bengal also to Boycott CMs News item in Hindustan Tirrres, Calcutta. 5 Julv

+a-

The Drafting of the Amendment Bill

Prepartng the Amendment Bill for the Panchayats had not posed any serious conceptual problem. The
recommendations of the Balwant Rai Mehta Commlttee were in considerable detail. Several State governments had also acquired much experience establishing the legal and administrative base for the panchayats. The Ministry of Rural Development had monitored for long the countrywide experience and had made its own formulations from time to time for strengthening the

panchayat bodies. Drafting a bill to provide constitutional safeguards for the functioning of the panchayats was, therefore, a comparatively
straightforward task for the Ministry. The Nagarpalika Bill as an Afterthought It had been expected that some provisions in the 64th Amendment Bill regarding elections, reservations' schedule of responsibilities, etc, would be repeated and more thought given to municipal reponsibilities' The Nagarpaltka Bill, thus, was an after thought-it was announced for the first time while Rajiv Gandhi was introducing the 64th Amendment Bill in the [,ok Sabha. Several ideas emerged from the outcome of the sammelan events. One was the need to classiff

24

Power to the F,eopb?

munlclp
GuJarat,

ties and corporations accordlng to

size and other criteria. The experiehce of Nadu and Uttar Pradesh with Nagar or Town Committees, for smaller rural which were increasingly urbanising had at the sammelan. The general feeling for such transitional setflements, Nagar as a separate category and as a hybrid of as well as rural panchayats wor,tld be . As for the schedule of responsibllifles,

Vesting

the of the participants was very similar to that of who attended the panchayafl raj events. They ted an exclusive mandate for municipal functions wlth adequate resources. They werd also prepared take on poverty alleviation progrartmes their lack of experience Ar this regard.

of executlve powers tn the

elected

The on these

into lead. As
leavlng
RaJtv

to
Pandey, Secretary, and I, as

the group alert legal ttren

was another strong expectation. bill for the Nagarpalikas tried to bulld lnses. A drafting group of sorts came with the Prime Minister's offlce in the cipal Secretary to the hime Mirlister, kept a close tab on the progress ofwork, Shankar Aiyar, a former schoolmate of and now a Joint Secretary in the pMO, the PM's philosophy on the subJect. Vlnod , Rural Development; Krishnaswamy, Planning; Gopi Arora, Flnance Secnetary , Urban DevelolNnent, comprised Dr Rao, then [.aw Secretary, sounded the time to time when our thoughts crossed It fell to the lot of Smt. Rama Devt. Secretary, to make sense of the group's and glve them some legal formulation.

The Dro$ing

oJtte AmendmentBill

idea or other on a daily, and sometimes hourly, basls' The meeUngs of the drafting group often became marathon sessions fortifled by jalebis artd scunosas and, of course, .a steady supply of pant for Vtnod Pandev. Two items became more contentious than others' One related to the setting up of Ward committees and

None of these formulations lasted long as the lrrepressible Mani brought to the group some bright

enhancing prordmity between cltizens and their representatlves' The other was the provision for District Planning commlttees. The response from the samrnelan particlpants to the proposal for Ward and Zonal committees had been m-lxed.t About 45 per cent wanted a three-tier set up in large clfles' conslsting of the Municipal Council, Zonal Committee and Ward Committee: about 350/o did not and the rest were undecided. In the conference of Secretaries, Chief Secretarles, Minlsters, etc., the preference was for Zonal Committees as an administratlve urangement and Ward Commtttees at the neighbourhood level as an informal arrangement rather than as elected entltles. Nevertheless, as mentloned before' the arlthmetlcs of representation and the need to widen the funnel of particlpaUon were considered cruclal by RaJiv Gandhi. Mant Shankar argued vigorously for thls vlewpotnt tn all the drafttng meetlngs. Under the Panchayat Blll, he pointed out, village panchayats would cover on an average a population between flve to ten thousand, with representatives drawn from territorial constit-uencies each comprising about a

Zonal commlttees as

a measure for

thouqand people. In urban areas the ratlo of representatlon should not be very dlfferent desplte

26

Fouer to tfu, Feople?

of population. The urban motwllc- (or perhaps eighbourhood or the miniaipal ward) should really be regarded as the equivailent of a villaAe ln a substantive sense. Similarly, Zonal for groups of wards in large cities could promote tralisation, bettdr accountabilitv and more in the provision of services. While many of were sympathetic to these view points, we felt the and financial implicatiofirs for
the

providin
Neverth

these three tiers wittrin a city with

rersonabl

autonomy and funds would be horrendous. at ttre end of the day tfie PM's views as by Mani Shankar Aiyar prevailed.

Dcdtng

Distrlct Planning

in this
provided

polltical and administrative overtones. As part of th panchayail ral setup, different State$ had

untry for long, with all its romantic.

t5pes of arrangements for planning,

level planning has been a preoccupation

coordina moni expected

prornln

on of development programmes and

successor sorts to the Distrtct Development Boards in the p e-Independence period, would play a

of ttreir lmplementation. Initially it was t the Zilla Parishad, regarded as a

role in this task. In Maharashtra, for

and

example, be

e Zilla Parishads grew rapidly in strength

as distinct from the State level and based on Zllla ishads, emerged. In tJre process, the Mps, MLAs and in partlcular, ministers at the State level began to that their own importance and infltaence were eroded. It was also argued that the fbcus

e powerful bodies in administering -funded programmes. Ey f962, a new

fhe

Dr6W

o;f

tteAmendmentBill

27

of the Zlla Parishad was on rural areas and important problems of rural-urban relationships tended to be ignored by the Zilla Parishads.2 Event.ually, a new body called 'District Planning and Development Council' (DPDC) was formed in each distrlct with a State minister, usually drawn from the district itself, as Chairperson. The Zilla Parishad President, MPs, MIAs, representatives of banks, cooperatives and other non-officlals were included as members. Gradually, all decisions regarding varlous development schemes were taken by this DPDC. It also became the arbitrator or umpire in inter-departmental issues concerning plan allocations and schemes within the district. Though the Zilla Parishad was established under an Act of the legislature, its role became secondary to the DPDC which was only the creature of a governrrient

order.

The situatlon in Gujarat was similar. Some other States like Andhra, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh also provided for such DPDCs under the chalrmanship of mlnisters. In some other States, like West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, PunJab, Orissa, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Assam, district level plannlng or development coordination was treated as an administrative and technical matter and was handled by committees usually under the chairmanship of the Collector or the District Magistrate, as the case may be.3 Karnataka. which started a similar official level committee changed over to a very strong Zilla Parishad system. When Ramakrtshna Hegde was Chief Minister, Nasir Sab, the highly dedicated Panchayat Minister, brought about a new State law establishing the Zilla Parishad as virtually district level government. The chairperson was given the status of a minister and its

28

Potuer to the Feople?

chief

was an offlcer considerablv seirior to

the Dis ct Collector and was designated as Chief

of t]:e Zilla Parishad.a all these varied experiments and till the late 198Os, the position of dtstrict planning vague and loosely established. The series o workshops of District Magistrates and Collecto on Responsive Administration, organised by the Gandhi government between December 1987 an June 1988, provided an opportunity for the framework, content and methodolog/ of district . Though the.focus of the workshop was on administration, its report contained a reco tion that, as a generalised model, the

shad, "suitably composed" to include represen of municipalities and cities as also

Zllla

MPs, charge

, Cooperatives, NGOs, etc.. should take all aspects of planning, executi.orr and
5

lnN

powerful flnd favo Secretari exercise

inclu Distrtct
inde

this
While well as speciffc that the

ent conference of Chief Secretaries. held 1988, was less enthusiastic about a Parishad and considered it migtrt not with existing political groups. The Chief , therefore, suggested that a con$cious uld be made to seek such a consensus a possible ConsUtutional Amendment. The , however, was clear in its vlew that the llector should be the focal point and "his status should not be compromlsed at in our development".o re outcome of the Collectors' workshop as conference of Chlef Secretaries was ilot as he would have liked, RaJlv Gandhi dccided posed Constttutional Amendment should

fhe Drqfthg oJthe AmendmentBiLt

itself be the occasion for securing a consensus. He was also keen to provide for a uniform three-tier panchayat setup in the country. That became the central piece of the Amendment Bill for Panchayats introduced in April 1989. District Planning was to be taken up as an item in a subsequent bill, the
Nagarpalika Blll.

Thc Vlews of the Planning Commission When the drafttng of the Nagarpalka Bill was taken up, there was some opposition from the Planning Commisslon as well to the maldng of a Constitutlonal provision for District Planning. Madhav Singh Solantrd, then Planning Mlnister, feared that providing a Constltutional status for planning at the district level might have some unexpected and adverse implications for the Planning Commission itself. Solanld voiced these apprehensions at an lnformal meeting of the Councll of Mlnlsters on 7 July 1989. On 28 July, I(rlshnaswamy, Secretary of the Planning Commlssion, wrote to Deshmukh, Vinod Pandey and myself drawing our attention to the followtng vlews and recommendatlons of the Sarkaria Commlsslon.T
If the Planning Comrnission ls reconstituted by a statute gtvlng it an autonomous status, divorced

from the polltical executive of the Union, its working wlll be stymied by legalism, rigidiUes and technicalities which are inherent in inflexible statutes. The tasks of Planning Commission are now overseen by the National Development Councll. ThIs arrangement has well answered our planntng needs. The remedy, therefore, lies in reforming these lnstltutlons and thelr worldng,

30

Pouser to

tle

People?

at the same time llull and

in it

effective

with the States at all stages of the process so that they feel that thelr role not that of a supplicant, but of an equal
t.

the Sarkaria Commission's Miews. discussions at the offlcial level. planning remained a contentious item. district I Mani reiterated Rajiv Gandhi's preference provision and a formal setup for for a district . It was also argued that providing a statuto basis for district plarlning would not unde State authority or the status of the Planning Commission at the national level which would, the contrar5r, be an impoftant input for the Eventually, it was decided to provlde for State District Committees composed mainly of tatives drawn from the Zilla Pafishad elected local bodies. and

in

the

The and the Urban on a Cohmon Platform The maining issues were the rural-lrrban interface and how to provide for participation of the pancha ts and municipalities in the planning process. t was noted that out of about 44O dibtricts in the untry, 30 were predomilrantly urban and predominantly rural. In all other di$tricts 3O0 p the pos on varied raising important issues of hips between urban and rural areas, fringes o urban areas and transitional areas. [t was also not that village, block and district level pancha ts were part of a known hierarchy of twhich muni ties and corporations wbre not a part. It

The Droftbtg oJ the Amendment

Bill

3l

was, therefore, proposed that a Joint Planning Committee comprislng representatives of the Zilla
Parishad as well as municipalities and corporations should be set up. The ratio of membershtp from these two streams would be in proportion to the population in the panchayats and urban areas. To make the process appear even more democratic, Mani Shankar proposed the draft development plan should be placed before an assembly of all panchayat and municipal presidents in the district. Vinod Pandey, Krishnaswamy and I feltthat such "Athenian" type conclaves

would only benefit tent houses and shamiana

contractors and would serve no purpose. Our views were brushed aside. Rama Devi faithfully drafted a clause providing for such gatherings which Mani placed at one of the meetings of the group of ministers.8 Even Seshan, then Cabinet Secretary, who was a stickler for details including proper numbering and marklng of Cabinet papers, was a silent spectator to Mani's missiles which landed on the meeting table from ilme to time, These missiles were unannounced but not unexpected since, invariably, RaJiv Gandhi would suggest to his colleagues with his disarming smile, "Why not take a look at what Mani has just proposed?" However, it must be said in all fairness that while Mani paid little regard to procedure or prlor consultation with the concerned ministries, some of his suggestions did add to the substantive merits of the Bill but the suggestion for district level conclaves was not one of them. Mercifully, in subsequent discussions in the Council of Ministers, Rajiv Gandhi was persuaded to drop this provision. In the discussions that I had with Deshmukh, Vinod Pandey and Krishnaswamy' varlous alternatives

32

pouertottw people?
the rural and urban aspects of plannfirg dered. Apart from the representadonal district planning prooess also required

for ln were aspect,

signifi
also felt for the

continu should of con would

was at the

District
proposed the

type of should
also

offlcials should Bill made

also

of water and the

interest between
The Btll

technical inputs, data and analysls. We the preparatlon of the developmerit plan should not be a one-tlme affair but a process. All this required that the pfocess entrusted to one body with some assurance . Once we agreed that the Zilla paftshad the appropriate body for this purpose, it that the chairperson of the panchayat level, whether lt is called Zilla paf.ishad else, should be the Chairperson of the Committee as well. We fdrther that the overall obJectives, priorities set by and State government$, the extent and and other resourcs available: etc.. de the diskict planning propess. It was that tn the planning process ve_rious d ottrer institutlons and organisdtions consulted. Article 243Y sI the Amendment for all these purposes. The arrticle recognised spatial planntng, sharing other physical and natural resources. tegrated developmeht of infrastructurb and conservation as matters of corhmon

the panchayats and

the

on the intense. Gandhi

Shape ttre second half of July 1989, discussions of the Bill became frequent and more from the very strong interest of Rajiv providtng for elected representaflves at

Tle DroSrng oJthe AmendmentBill

multtple levels and establishing a district planning mechanlsm, some other aspects in the amending
legislatton also came to be frequently discussed. One was wlth regard to the cut off flgures of population for constitutlng nagar panchayats, munlcipalitles and munictpal corporations. Given the fact that ln several parts of the country panchayats consisted of large villages with a population of around 2O,OOO, there was a feeling that municipalities should have a populatton of 5O,OOO. Mrs. Mohsina Kldwai felt this would create a lot of prablems for the numerous small municipalitles which already edsted in Uttar Pradesh-her State. Eventually, it was agreed that the cut off would remain 2O,O0O for a munlcipal council and be three lakhs for a municipal corporatlon. Ttrere was also the view that the whole question of cut off sizes should be left to the discretion of State governments, but thts was successfully countered by the Urban Development ministry which felt some rattonallsatlon was essentlal if muntcipalities and munictpal corporations were to become viqble.

Plannlng for Metropolitan Arcas As a corollary to district planning, a proposal to set up Metropolitan Planning Committees for large

urban agglomerations consisting of multlple

municipaliUes and urbanising fringes was actlvely consldered. The rapid growth of large cities overddlng erdsttng municipal boundarieg has been an lmportant feature of Indta's urbanlsatlon. According to the l98l census, there were a dozen of these urban agglomerattons with a populatton of one mtllion or more. By 1991, the number doubled and another twenty were likely to be added by the end of the century.'o

34

Pouer to the People?

the growth of these multi-muhtctpal been a major and mOstly unan$wered

.

In the Nehru era, the Planning Comrrrlssion

had

, quite unsuccessfully, the policy

of

metropolitan growth by limiting investment. Calcutta was probably the worst affected metfopolis where bsolescence of industrv and decav of was matched onlv bv Xack of investtment. Late in e 195Os it also became the centre of with cholera claiming a fbw thousand lives. In 1961, the Ford Foundation and WHO organised a major cal assistance programme in Calcutta to prepare metropolitan-wide programme of rescrtre and However, the Nehru government and, in parti the Finance Minister. T.T. Krlshnamachary were unimpressed wtth the prescriptions and the plea for Central assistance. In thein view, urban lems, whatever the scale, were a muhicipal concern therefore the responsibility of the State . This stand did not seem to apply to Delhi, the Master Plan exercise and large-scale land ition and development benefited considerably central government investments as r,Vell as the interest and guidance of Nehru.tl Inl O, matters came to a head in Calcutth-the ind recesslon beginning in 1966 and the loss ofn 2OO,OO0 jobs since then, the Ndxalite insurgen , the freedom stn-rggle in east Paltistan, and the tinued influx of refugees into the Cdlcutta metropo tan area created an unptrecedented crisis. The of the State itself had been chaotic with on ministries lasting no more than a few months a time. Indira Gandhi decided that as part of measures to arrest further deterioration. a

fhe Drofring oJthe AmendmentBill

35

special programme should be mounted for Calcutta. Slvaraman, then Cabinet Secretaqr, and Ashok Mitra, then Planning Secretary in the Central government, made a few visits to Calcutta in the middle of 1970. A quick review of the various infrastructure schemes

which the Calcutta Metropolitan Planning

compact body

Organlsation had prepared, with the help of Ford Foundation experts, was undertaken. A Rs l5O crore package to finance se*rerai of these schemes was authorised. A combination of loans and grants from the Central government and a special entqr tax to service market borrovings was also approved. To a city which had not seen even 1O per cent of such a scale of investment, this was most welcome. More importantly it marked, for the lirst time in the country, the active involvement of the Centre in a metropolttan development programme. The Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) was set up as a

to coordinate and monitor this

programme. Since West Bengal was under President's rule, legislation for this purpose was prepared in a

few days and endorsed by the Parliament's

Consultative Committee at the Centre.12

government; he was, by any standards, an exceptionally dedicated person. With his unstinted support and inspiring leadership I could set up the CMDA within a short time. mobilise the promised

ordered to take charge, as Secretary and Chief Executive, of the CMDA. Shri Ghosh had been Secretary of the Food Ministry in the Central

In those days I was in Durgapur runnlng a development authority for that industrial complex. In September f 970, I was summoned to Calcutta by B B Ghosh, then Principal Advisor to the Governot and

36

.Power to the People?

funds,
srncuo of the g agencies

a shelfofover 100 schemes processed and and also assemble several organisations nt into a framework of implementing

The ccess and shortcomings of the CMDA is another story but what is relevant to the present context the special mechanism for monitoring of progranrme which was set up by the Central the C under Indira Gandhi's directions. Inttiallv the Uni n Health Ministry and later the Ministry of Works Housing funcUoned as the nodal ministry at t of India level. Once every quarter, the the tary of that ministry, along with Additional level representatives of the Planning, or Joint Finance, Transport and other ministries concerned would Calcutta as a team and conduct a detailed review o the programmes of the CMDA. Problems of

coordin tion would be discussed and special n of the Government of India as needed ln
was

the the status and then make a report to Bengal the t Secretary and the PM. As many as eight tings of this Review Committee took place to ten between 1971 and L972.t3 In addition, the Cabinet and some Union ministers would themselves visit Cal to hold such review meetings. I found this to a very positive exerclse of Centre-State collabo tion in metropolitan developmerlt and t. Since Calcutta had opened a wlndow marlage for su collaboration, the model was picked up in Mumbal and Chennai as well. It convinced me that of metropolitan management were multithe Jurisdic nal and could not be, regarded as the

ed at the meetlng. At the end of that meeting, would brief the Chief Minister of West

The DraJting oJthe Amendment Btll

.'t

responsibllity of corporatlons and municipalities alone. A strong inter-governmental endeavour involving the Centre, the State and the local authorities was required. Almost two decades later the Constitutional Amendment exercise gave me an opportunity to propose that a platform should be devised for such inter-governmental collaboration. Rajiv Gandhi himself did not require much persuasion: The Correa Commission on Urbanisation, which he had set up, had also drawn special attention to the problems of large cities and argued that the animosity about large cities should be given up and they should be regarded as "National Cities".'a My initial proposal was that metropolitan areas should be regarded as special districts and should have a Metropolitan Planning Committee similar to the District Planning Committee. The Committee would consist of elected representatives drawn from the urban, semi-urban and rural areas wlthin a metropolis, representatives of the State and Central government organisations, and also professionals. To begin with, I had suggested that such Metropolitan Planning Committees should be set up for the large cities of Calcutta, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bangaiore and Hyderabad with a 1991 population of two million or more. Rajiv Gandhi, however, decided that it should be extended to all cities of more than one million. Provisions for the Metropolitan Plaanning Committee were made accordingly in the Draft Bill.

Electlon of Chalrperson
In regard to the elections of Mayors and Municipal Chairpersons, the response at the Nagarpalika

38

Pouer ta tte People?

his election would be politically more acceptable. the draft setUed for indirect electiorr. i.e.. electlon and from amongst the elected mempers of a . To ensure strength and stabilfty the draft 2439'7) also stipulated that the removal n from a municipality or corporation ofa would a maJority of the total number of the as also a majority of twolthirds elected present voting. Such a provision would have made the tenure of a Mayor or a Municipal on stronger than even a Chief Minister" Some pick up this idea and provided for stable States tenure we shall see later.Is AsJ neared its end, relief was in sight for Rama who had waited for long for the discussions to end for final drafting of the Bill to comtnence. This came to me on 3l July 1989; lt was by Mrs Kidwai, sent up to the PMO aTrd was introd in the Lok Sabha by the Prime Minister

was not very clear. Rajiv Gandhi found the for direct elections persuasive but some of es in the Council of Ministers felt irrdirect

onSA gust. As mentioned before, the 64th Bill in regard to the Panchayats had
already
N

shall

tntroduced on the 12th of M4y, the Bill now became a companion piece. We in the next chapter how the two bill$ fared

he Drqftlng oJthe AmendmentBill

39

NOTES

l. Nogarpallkrr Sammelan, Responses Jrom 2.

Delegates:

Comparative Analysis. New Delhi: Gwernment of India, Ministry of Urban Dwelopment and National Informatics Centre, June 1989.
Report oJ the Workshop oJ Distict Ma,gistro,tes / Collectors on Responsiue Admtristration. New Delhi: Ministry of Personnel, Government of India, Julv 1989.

3. rbid,. 4. Meenakshisundaram. Decentraliso.tion ln

5.

Deoeloping Cotntrles. New Delhl: Concept Publishing, 1994.

Report o;f the Workshop oJ District Mogtstrates / Collectors on Respnsiue Admini.stration, New Delhi: Ministry of Personnel, Government of India, Julv 1989.

6. rbid 7. Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State Relations, 1988. 8. Draft of the Amendment Bill, July 1989, unrevised. 9. Article 243Y ln the Constitution 65th Amendment Bill 1989;
Bill No.

lO.

6OC of 1989, as introduced in the Lok Sabha. State oJ Indla's Urbanisation. New Delhi: National Institute

of Urban Affairs. 1988. 11. Sivaramakrishnan, K. C. The Indinn Urban Scene, Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1978. 12. Sivaramakrishnan, K.C. with Leslie Green, Metrowlitan Management. Washington D.C: Oxford University Press, World Bank, 1986. 13. tbid. 14. Report oJ *Le Na,tiono,l Commlssion on Urbanisation Vol. I, Recommendations. New Delhi: Ministry of Urban Development, August 1989. 15. The relevant Acts are the following: 1998 - Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Act amended in 1994) Madhya kadesh Municipaltties Act (as - Haryana Municipal Corporations Act 1994 - Uttar Pradesh Urban Local Self-Government Laws - (Amendment) Act 1994.

-a-

Parli

ent Debates the TWo Billls

Whlle in
had decen essence RaJ Instt

and un
went on
largest Its elected

ucing the Panchayat Bill, RaJiv Gandhi the opportunity to unfold his vtsion for tion. He had said then that "though the democracy was elections, for Panchayati ons fhey had been hopelessly irregular . The sine qua non of respolrslve on is responsiblity to the electorate". He elaborate: "A wide chasm separated the of the electorate from a small number of

tatives. This gap has been occupied by the brokers. the middlernen and vested interests. or the minutest municipal function, people have had to run around finding persons with the right co on. We have come to this House after a long co sideration and a national detlate. ted in history in which over lO,OOO elected and offl representatives of Panchayat bodies, State Offlcials, tate Ministers, Chief Minlsters and others had parti ted. With the passage of this Bill the panchaya would emerge as a firm building block of a tion and development. The Bill would then take its p alongside another great event, i.e. the enactmen of the Constitution, as an instrument in the conso dation of democracy at the grass roets."r

Parliament Debates tle ?luo Btlls

4l

The Panchayat Bill faced much opposition, even at ttre stage of introduction itself, whtch focused on three major points. Since panchayats and local selfgovernment were in the State list, the flrst obJection was about the legislative competence of Parliament to consider such a bill. The second was that by adding a new part and providing a constitutional status to panchayats and municipalities, the Amendment Bill was altering the basic features of the Constitution. The third objection was that the RaJiv Gandhi government, neadng the end of its term, was seeldng to make political capital out of an illtlsory legtslation which was in fact no more than a set of guidelines. Madhu Dandavate, Dinesh Goswamy, Jaipal Reddy and Somnath ChatterJee led the attack in the Lok Sabha.2 Dandavate said that there was unanirnity in the country on the need for decentralisation and devolution of powers to panchayats. However, the modus operandi was with the State government and Parliament had no competence to legislate on the subJect. Dandavate also questioned the wisdom of the Election Commission conducting panchayat elections and the CAG auditing its accounts; these would only increase centralisation. Dinesh Goswamy referred to the views of the Sarkaria Commission, which had gone into the question of strengthening panchayati raj institutions, and identified three alternatives.The lirst was for the Central government to prepare a model bill. get it endorsed ln the InterState Council and then urge the States to enact the same: the second was for Parliamer.rt to pass a law with prior consent of the States; and the third alternative, which the Sarkaria Commission did not favour. was to amend the Constitution. Dinesh

42

Pouer to the People?

Goswamy argued

that in style and substance, the

Bill was an erosion of the domairl and the State governments, and there 0ould benod tion to panchayats if the rigtlts of the Sa are not respected. Somnath Chatterjee recalled who had said that the "legislative and tlve authority is partitiohed betweerr the Centre the State. The Centre cannot bv its will alter the daries of that partition".3 Chatte{ee also pointed t that the proposed bill was only a set of directions and asked what the Centre could do if a State did not act. Jaipal Reddy accused the Rajiv Gandhi vernment of surreptitiously trying to introduce third tier. to these points, Shankaranand, RaJiv Gandhi's colleague tn the Cabinet, argued that Parliamen had an inherent competence to enact a Amendment. Whethef the Bill altered the basic cture of the Constitutlon or not was a matter of rretatlon. He also arglred that fulfllling the set forth in the Amendment Bill would bea responsibility and failure on that account amount to a faih-lre to discharge obligations. Both ruling party and the Opposition had IIred openlng salvos. It was time for the L,ok Sabha to Its summer break.
authority
The N Bill is put through lts Paces When t reconvened for the monsoon session, Nagarpalika Amendment Bill, labelled as the 65th rrendment, was ready and was introdlr.rced in the Sabha on 7 August 1989. Introducing the Blll, Rajiv emphasised some of the points on

Parliament Debates the Tuso Bills

43

decentralisation which he had made earlier while introducing the Panchayat Bill. The debate in the I-ok Sabha at that time had helped to draw the battle
Itnes between the Congress and the Opposition parties. Some research was done about past proposals made by some of the Opposition parties, which were similar

ln

substance to those contained in the Amendment Bills. RaJiv Gandhi chose to be less strident and confrontational in introducing the Nagarpalika Bill.a He said no party in India could claim an unblemished record in local self-government. Both the Congress and non-Congress governments have accomplishments as well as fallures to their account. Conferring a constitutional status on municipalities, he pointed out, was a demand not unknown to the Opposition partles. He recalled that in February 1989' a joint meeting of the Central Council of Local SelfGovernment and the All India Council of Mayors' where the representatives of the Telugu Desam party' the left front in Kerala and the CPM in West Bengal

were present, had demanded a Constitutional Amendment.s He also quoted from the Calcutta Corporation's testimony before the Charles Correa
Commission whlch had stated "the country wedded

to grass root democracy must bless its

local institutions with a constitutional status; it would be much more meaningful if the rules, functions and responsibilities are constitutionally defined."6 By introducing items like district level planning' State flnance commlssions and metropolitan planning which had not been included in the Panchayat Bill, RaJiv Gandhi proJected the Nagarpalika Bill as a companion piece of the Panchayat Bill and claimed that together the two would provide a more complete

44

Pouser to ttle People?

prescrip Rajiv G masterls eloquen when "thread megapo

decen

for decentralisation. As speech writer for Mani Shankar helped to elaborate his eas with much fluency, occasionally the far exceeding the substance-for instance iv Gandhi said the Amendments would e farthest rural hamlet to the largest in a rudrakshamala of democracv and n."

Approves the Two Bills this eloquence was lost rather rapidly in because within the short space of a between May and August 1989, the makeup and of the House changed. Since general elections ere expected early in the following yeAr the Oppositio parties were determined not to let the Congress gain any political advantage frorn the decen sation initiative. The Bofors controversy escalat in the meantime and about hundred Oppositio MPs resigned. Though the resignations were not rmally accepted by the Speakea these Mps stayed y from the House and only a few Opposition members like Syed Shahabuddin and Banatwala actually the lok Sabha. Their own oppo$ition to the Bill was muted and focused more on individual provisio . On 8 August 1989, both the 64th and 65th Am ndment Bills .were taken togethen for consid About eighty members participated, but in the of the Opposition stalwarts, the dbate was mos one sided. Speakers from the Congress benches, th few exceptions. followed the routine of eulogis RaJiv Gandhi and heaping blame on the Oppositi n. On legislative cornpetence and constituti ty, Shahabuddin pointed out that the

Lok Much the L,ok fewmon

Partinment Debates the Ttro Bills

45

very llrst Artlcle of the Constitution described India as 'a union of states" and not a "union of states, municlpalities and panchayats". Therefore the Amendments would alter this basic feature. He also argued that while there was no controversy in the country about making the local institutions effective and responsive, the Constitutional Amendment Bills had been conceived and delivered in a hurry. He characterised RaJiv Gandhi as a later day Columbus discovering the panchayats when they had been in existence for decades. "I am not here to match and I cannot match the eloquence of the Prime Minister", he said. "I have no ghost writers. I have introduced a number ofAmendments and I hope the Prime Minister would consider them as a statesman rather than as a politlclan."T Some of the Amendments that Shahabuddin and a few others had suggested sought the substitution of tJle word "governor" by the words 'state government', the vesting of various responsibilities under the proposed Amendment more clearly on State legislatures, and provision for representation of the MPs only in the district panchayat. Sultan Owaisi recalled the bitter experience of Hyderabad where elections were held after twenty-two years. Haroobhai

Mehta wanted the Bill to be more specific in recognising the elected mayor as the executive

authortty bylproviding for a Mayor-in-Council rather than vesting the executive powers in an appointed Commissioner. Bhajanlal and Mohsina Kidwai responded to the debate. Sitting late in the evening of LO August 1989, the Lok Sabha negatived the
amendments proposed by the non-Congress mernbers

46

Potuer to

tte People?

and
RaJya

the Bills, which were then referred to the

ha,E

The Fate of the Bills in Rajya Sabha Next , the scene shifted to the RaJya $abha when the Amendment Bills as passed by the Lok Sabha laid on the table. The debate commenced on 14 and the Opposition heavyrveights like Guru , Balanandan and Upendra were ready.s the attack Gurupadaswamy asked where th government was all these forty years when local selft had become a stronA realitv in States Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala. These S tes run by the Opposition parties had demons ted that what was needed for n was not a Constitutlonal Amendment but politi will and political leadership. Upendra wondered why the government was in such a hurr5r since the rocess of passing the Bills, ratillcation by the Sta and presidential assent would take the date to I I or beyond by which time the Rajiv Gandhi governm nt would have ceased to exist. Some members also assailed the ambivalence of the Congress government pointing out that when the government sent a comptrehensive law on Panchaya Raj in 1983 for obtainiqg the President's assent, Central government had kept it pending till 1985. Sab, the Kainataka Panchayat Mirnister had then threatened to go on a hrirnger strike and a-fter mu polittcal pressure the Ptesident's a$sent

contlnued his attack when the RaJya on 16 August, emphasising the point that devolution to local bodies could not be in
Upen Sabha

Partiament Debates

tte Ttlto Bills

47

isolation but should be preceded or accompanied by devolution from the Centre to the States. He also pointed out that the Prime Minister himself was on iecord that Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu' and West Bengal had done much ln regard to panchayatl raj institutions. If so, he could not understand the distrust of the State governments which seemed to have prompted the Centre to bring up the Bills. Upendra added for good measure that the Nagarpalika Bill contained some rather "funny" provislons-such as Ward Committee and Zonal Committee-and that he assumed "some bureaucrats

who did not know anything about municipal

admtnistration" must have drafted the Bill.to L K Advani was another prominent Opposition leader who partictpated in the Rajya Sabha debate' He observed that those who supported the Bill hailed it as historic, while those who were opposed regarded it as diabolical device to usurp the powers of the State. He attributed this controversy to lnept handling by the government in preparing the Bill and bringing it to Parliament without mobilising consensus on essentlal points. Advani felt that unanimity on some of the essentlal features of the Bill could have been achieved if the government had so desired' His own party had been urging a Constitutional status for panchayat bodies for a long time' In fact, as on date' out of about 72 corporations in the country' 37, which were mostly in Congress ruled States, were superseded. He felt that the Amendment Bill was an exerclse to correct the declining image of the Prime Mlnister and was nothing more than an election gimmick. In conclusion, he offered three suggestions' Ott. *^t"" to replace the word 'State government'with

Power to the people?

If these
the Bill

ll Prakash The ebate in the Rajya Sabha did not continue as the H use was adjourned sine die on lg August. When it reconvened on I I October, Rajiv Gandhi made a statement in the House announcinq the introdu on of the Nehrr. Rozgar Yojana (NRy).12 The NRY presented as a parallel programme to the Jawahar Yojana (JRY) which had operated for some in rural areas. Rajiv Gandhi had hoped that the two programmes launched in the vear of J Nehru's centenary would help to reihforce the -urban links and become eventually a e common for both town and country. Urban wage loyment, housing, shelter upgradaUon for low-in families, urban micro enterprise$ and training self-employment were to be the principal features the NRY. Earlier in the day, Rajiv Gandhi had mad a similar announcemernt ln the l,ok Sabha. While the elements of the prografirne were $ound and the :d for such a programme strongly apparent for d with the alleviation of urban poverty, there isnod the fact that the programme was conceived in a hurry as part of a strategy to ..sell" the Consti nal Amendment. The Rajya Sabha was unimp . So were the newspapers the next day which the effort as 'Rural Jawahar'- .I_trrban Nehru'. , the timing went awry. The Rajya Sabha witnessed dally scenes of acrimony as the Oppo$ition

on's recommendation on decentralisation. o suggestions were not acceptable to the t, the third course open would be to refer a Select Committee as proposed by Satya

; the second was to follow the Sarkaria

Parliament Debates the Ttuo BiIIs

49

demanded the immediate resignation of the government on account of the Bofors controversy'
Neverthless, some parliamentary business continued and the debate on the Panchayat and Nagarpalika

Bills was carried on. Murasoli Maran, who would become the Urban Development Minister in the
successor government, considered the two Bills to be a'virtual war' on the States.t3The Bills were only the tip of an tceberg concealing a lot of hidden rnischief he felt and the States were expected to toe the line of the Centre in needless uniformity' Ram Jethmalani, who would occupy Nirman Bhawan nine years later, thundered that the whole attitude and the philosophy behind the measures was undesirable, the timing and motivation highly objectionable, and the manner in which the measure was being projected and presented to the people of India almost obscene. In his view, the Rajiv Gandhi government was a lune duck and had no moral authority to tinker with the Constitutlon. He also mocked the idea of JRY and NRY as if they were gifts from the Nehru family. Chitta Basu, the veteran Forward Slock leader opposed the Bills in principle because they passed on all responsibility to the States but curtailed their rights. He accused the government of ignoring the Asoka Mehta and Sarkaria Committee recommendations. Chaturanand Mishra conceded that regular elections and reservations for SC/ST were good provisions but

setting up State Finance Commissions without a provision of devolution from the consolidated fund of
India was meaningless.'a The debate in the Rajya Sabha had all the characteristics of a Greek tragedy. Since the two measures were Constitutional Bills' at every stage'

50

Pouer to tte Feople?

starting from the motion to consider the Bills. it required a two-third majority of those present and voting. iv Gandhi felt that he could somehow scraDe through the process. The Opposition on the other hand determined to block the Bills at every stage. knew that the term of the ninth Lok Sabha would to a close by the end of the year. While the Op accused the goverrlment of resorting to on the eve of the elections its own behavio also reflected a keen eye on the forthcoming elections As the debate moved on to October l3th. there a general expectation that this woUld be the last tem of business and thereafter the House would bably be adjourned sine die. N Rajiv Gandhi decided to give all that he had support of the Btlls. As the Rajya Sabha decided carqr on with the debate till the late hours of the ev RaJiv Gandhi's chance to reply came around I p.m . Unlike the Lok Sabha where the party had a comfortable majority and any of his s would have been lost in acclaim, Raiiv Gandhi to be less combative in the RaJya Sabha. He had o marshal his arguments carefully and balance with restraint. He started by referring to the jya Sabha debate as "sometimes stormv, incisive, sometimes reflective but at all times ; a debate which will adorn the text books of consti nal history of the country". Recognising that the bate had revealed general acceptance of democracy and maximu[n devolution, he proceecl to deal with the so-called controversies on jurisdicti n, competence, substance and political propriety. He asserted that the Bills did not imqringe or abridg the jurisdiction of the States in anv wav

Parltament Debates the Two

Bilb

5l

and the State List was not being altered. He Justilled a uniform structure for panchayats and nagarpaltkas

on the ground that the pattern and degree of

not differ from one part of the country to another. He reiterated that "while we celebrate the intellectual, spiritual and cultural diversity of the country, social tyranny and
democracy should suppresslon had to be ended uniformly and that ls possible only if the structure is broadly uniform."rs On the quesflon of propriety, in particular the complaint that the Prlme Minister had dared to tu:teract dlrectly wlth the DMs, Rajlv Gandhi asked "what rtght has the Pdme Minister to remain as Prime Minister, if he cannot feel at home and talk to anyone in any part of the country?" He declared that there was nothlng clandestine about his consultations. When he met the DMs in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minlster Moti Lal Vora had Joined him. At a similar event in Andhra Pradesh, N.T. Rama Rao refused. A sammelan of the panchayati raj representatives was held at Calcutta with Jyoti Basu's cooperation. The consultatlons were open, frank and free with everyone concerned. Assailing the view that these inltiatives were too

close

to the polls, Rajiv Gandhi reminded

hls

opponents that "we were elected for five years and tJre

programme for decentralisation had been a major plank of the government ever since it assunred ofllce in 1985". ln his January 1985 broadcast as well as the Congress Centenary meeting in Mumbai in December 1985, the programme for decentralisation had been made known. Responsive administratlon was also included in the 2o-Point Programme in August 1986. The search for managerial and meaningful solutions to the problems of unresponslve

52

Fower to ttue kople?

rtion had all along been a strong copcern overnment. "The Panohayati Raj and a Bills, brought forward after extensive consulta ons. should be considered as measures for the most ;ubstantive, systemic transformatlon ln the

for

adminis the

governan The su bribery,

vastly in and th voter that the of the Dra in the had

which

era ln p
talked make it element. would flrst d platform auth eloquen brlnging which can now

tion and other multiple malfeasafices." that the proposed Amendments grould rase the number of electqd representFtives )y reduce the gap that now separatQs the his representatives, Rajiv Gandhl dedlared ills are the warrant for ending the rEgime er brokers and intermedlaries". g attention to the provisions for plapning Bllls, Rajiv Gandhi said "surprisingly little sald in the house about these provisions re the heart of the Arnendments; The nal Amendments envisagd an entirely new . Decentralised planning has been for long but the Amendments would . Social justice would be an in[egral trict Planning and Metropolitan Plafining ome cmcial and India wquld be one pf the oping countries in the world to provide a interaction between states and cntral ". Concluding his speech in a bufst of and emotion, Rajiv Gandhi said, "v4e are r an end the kalkaesque nlghtmare thlough people at the grassroots live. Their problems

wtll be

nailed t

PatliamentDebates the Tbo Bills

53

nagarpalika. I invite all sections of the house to adopt thi motion for considering the Bill and therea-fter endorse it as it has been passed by the l-ok Sabha already."6 As the House prepared to vote on the motion for considering the Bills a new controversy arose. Referring to some ministers who were present in the House though they were not members of the Rajya Sabha, Advani said that it would be desirable if they withdrew when votlng took place. The Treasury benches took this as an affront. Shouting and discord again threatened to disrupt the House. Finally, the motion to conslder the 64th and 65th Co^,stitution Amendment Bills was put to vote. There were 83 Nos and 157 Ayeg, three short of the requirement of the two-thlrd maJority of the total of 24O members present and voting. The motion was declared defeated at 3l mlnutes past midnight of 13 October 1989. The House then adJourned sine die.t7 Drafting laws is often regarded as a mundane and untnsptring exercise, of concern only to lawyers and bureaucrats. The preparation of the 64th and the 65th Amendment Bills was an exception. Few Bills had recelved so much detailed attention on substance from the highest levels of political and bureaucratic leadership. Mani Shankar had not been merely a mouthpiece of RaJiv Gandhi but a conscious and tireless participant in the exercise. Both Pandey and I as well as our colleagues in our two ministries had worked very hard during the previous few months, now it seemed all our cfforts had come to nought. But this was not true. Between May and October 1989 as the debates proceeded in the Lok Sabha and RaJya Sabha, there was also a public debate in

54

Pouer to the Feople?

V R Krlshna lyer, the eminent Jurist wrote with his usual eloquence: "What ls in the n ^/spapers this tttutional Amendment Billr which has fgnited a politi I pandemonium?"r8 Krishna Iyer wanted the scope o the Blll to be enlarged sb that panchayats could r function as the village Judiciary with powers to bonded labourers and take actlon 4galnst tlon where Dalits and women were vlctims. e a powerful plea for functions and flnance He also ther: "Negative denunciration of thd RaJiv to go rm RaJ is not enough. Positive alternatives, model the Gandhian paradigm and accepting the the Ambedkar critique fnust be prebented essence examination." Similar articles appeared in for pu vari ou s newspapers in different Ianguages. 'Consti tional status for urban bodies [s not co us with reforms of urban governmentr wrote ese.rs'"The reforms are doomed to failure if B.G. V they are merely intended to gathel votes, thotlgh the ring general election may be the right time to galvani opinion around revolutionary change." Nirmal ukarji, one of the most distinguished former strongly argued for decentralisatlon but civil Centre to the States and then down to the from th . Within and outside Parliament, political local leaders, Congress as well as the Opposition, talked and wr te in extenso, praising or deridiftg the Consti tional Amendments but none questioded the
essence As S.R. Bo

ident of the Janata Dal, V P Sin$h had a Committee under the chairmanbhip of
al. former Chief Ministet of Karnataka with ukarJl, L.C. Jain, Geofge Mathevf, B.K.

Nirmal

and K.S. Krishnaswamv as metmbers.

Parlianent Debates the Ttuo Bills

DD

The Committee in its unanimous report of July 1989 had stated that a "Constitutlonal Amendment to make panchayats and local bodies effective units of self government is not 'per se' unwelcome."2o But the Report identilied several 'grave infirmities'in the 64th Amendment Bill and proposed speciflc amendments to rectiff them. The charges proposed were reasonable and could have been accommodated. The Report had even endorsed the provisions for entrusting local body electlons to the Election Commission and audit of accounts to the CAG. However the reasonableness of the Report was not reflected in the r,'iews expressed by Janata Dal members in Parliament. The essence of the Bommai Report was picked up some months later, when the V.P. Singh government presented its own verslon of a Constitutional Amendment for decentralisatton. Obviously; the most desirable effect of the Amendment initiative was that it had elevated decentrallsation from a mere administratlve exercise to an important element of any political agenda.

56

Power totte ftople?

NOTES

hk
I,oK

of Rajiv Gandhi introducing 64th Amendmetrrt BiI. ha Debate, l5 May 1989. See (aiiv candhi, Sbtected and Writings, 1989 Vol V. Fublications Dilr'ision,

t of India, 1991. ha Proceedings, May 1989. s statement in the Constituent Assemblv; Cited by ath Chatterjee, MP during debate on the introd of the 64th Constitutiortal Amendmerlt Bill. May I L.ok Sabha Debates. of Rajiv Gandhi introducing qsth Amendment Bill on7 1989. op.cit. Cen Councll of Local Government dnd All India Council of rs meet, February 1989. t of Calcutta Corporation Mayor during the vlsit of the Commlssion. Cited by Rajiv Gandhi in his $peech introd the 65th Constitutional Amendment Bill. 7
the 64
1989. 8. L,ok a
,

of S. Shahabuddin, MP in Lok Sabha. Debhte on and 65th Constitutional Amendment Bill, S dugust
Debate on the 64th and 65th Constitutional t Bills, l0 Ausust 1989.

Debates on the 64th and 65th Constitrltional Bills, 14 August 1989. lo. Rajya Debates, 16 August 1989. I I. Rajya Debates, l7 August 1989. 72. t by Rajiv candhi in the l-ok Sabha and Rajya Sabha about the Nehru Rozgar Yojan4. Proceedings of the Rajya Lok
13. Rajya

ll

October 1989. Debates, 13 October 1989.

14. Ibin15.

Rajya
16. Ibid.

replying to the debate, by Rajiv Gandhi October 13, r989.

in

the

17. Votlng
18.

New

Rajya Sabha. Proceedings, l3 October 1989. Iyer, V. R. -lllusion and Realitf", Hrndustan fimes, September 28 & 29 1989.

Parlionvent Debates the Tluo Bills

I9. Verghese,

ts.G. "With Due Care and Caution", lndian Express'

New Delhi, 6 June I987. 20. *The Basics of Democratic Decentralisation", Report on
Panchayats and Self Government of the Committee appointed

by V. P. Singh, President, Janata Dal. A Janata Publication, Delhi, July 1989.

Dal

-a-

eral Elections and After

The gen elections held in late 1989 led to the formation of the non-Congress National Front (NF) governm t with V P Singh as Prime Minlster. Notwl ling the opposition that some qf its consUtu had shoum to the RaJiv Gandhi Bills, the Front not now abandon decentralisation d.s an agenda. the contrary, to strengthen the federal structure ral became an important element of the N F'ront manifesto. Apart from some essential items like regularity of electlons and on which a political ' consensus was
already that a confer the NF government wanted to show more concise legislation, which Would status on local bodies but at the

to have their own anangements, was possible. For such an enabling legislation the
thought ttrat it was not necessary to have two te Bills. The Bommai Corhmittee had also favoured the 64th Amertdment Bill and ln lts place "an integrated and well thought out piece of constitutional legislation sparlning , local governments and cooperatives". r as such was percelved, and rt$htty

e provide enough flexlbility to $tate

Generol0lections

and'\fter

59

so, as a single obJectlve, relevant to both urban and rural bodies. Accordingly' the Law Ministry was asked to prepare a common Bill instead of separate versions from the mlnlstrles of Rural and Urban Development. A group of ministers, headed by Shri Devl t'al' determtned the broad features of the legislatton. A meetlng of the Chief Ministers endorsed the proposals'

'

The N F Government's Composite Bill On 4 September 199O, Dinesh Goswami, the L,aw Minister, introduced in the L,ok Sabha a Composite Bill covering both the Panchayats and the Munlcipalities (Bill No.156 of l99O). The Statement of Obnot subJects and Reasons appended to the Blll was had accornpanied the Rajiv stantially dtfferent to what Gandhi drafts. The absence of regular elections, pro.longed supersession, inadequate representation of the weaker sections, insufffcient devolution of powers and lack of flnancial resources were recognised as major deflciencies. As before, inspiratlon was taken from Article 4O of the Constltution. It was noted that while this Directive Prtnctple applied to village panchayats' urban local bodies should also be organtsed to enable them to functlon as unlts of self-government. The earller obJectlons about the competence of Parliament to legislate on the subJect were quietly put aside. As ln the case of the previous versions, the Amendment Bill added a new part, tltled "local authorltles", covering both the panchayats and muntcipaltties. Ttre Btll envisaged a gram sabha at the grassroots level in each settlement or habitatlon and the constltution of avillage panchayat for a group of such settlements at the village level. The provision for the gram sabha comprising all the voters in a

60

Power to tte Feople?

setUement as some kind of general assembly .ps the most important contribution of the V.P. l government to the Amerldment exerbise: it d the need for proximity between the people and representauves since the Average poprllauon ofa sabha would be about lO0O to 2OOO people., TWo or such gram sabhas wol.rld be constituted formally a panchayat at the villaEe level comprtslng lves elected from territoy'lal consfltuencies. It was I to the State governm4nts to conFtitute ts at other levels and have either a two-tier ora tier setup as they desired. The choide was not on any philosophy ofparichayafl raJ; it had more to with its political overtones. The Balwant

was

Committee had preferred a thred- tier ent wtth panchayats at the village, block and di trtct levels whereas tAsoka Mdhta's recomm ndatlon was for a two-tier arrangement of the District and Mandal panchayats.3
Since the

Rai Meh

non-Congress posiilon while the Balwant prescription for three-tiCr panchay panchay4ti raj, exclusion of the other, cad:le to be iderntified lgress maxim. It is an irony of history that 'ess governments, as in Kafnataka, and West ued three-tier panchayhts as much as or perhaps rre than the Congress led governt'nents such as Maharashtra, GuJarat of Rajasthan; The p ,'ision ln the Goswami B[ll for urbarl local bodles about the same as in Rajiv Gandhi's 'ee t54pes of bodies-a Ndgarpanchayfat for version. areas in nsiilon from rural to urban, a Munricipal Council smaller urban areas hnd a Munhcipal
r

during seen as Rai Meh by simp as the non Bengal, p

soka Mehta Committee had been appbintea 'arl'i Desal's tlme, it somehow came to be

GeneratElectlons

and.Afier

61

Corporatlon for larger urban areas-were envisaged but populatton cut-off sizes fot these three categories were omitted. The attempt to rationalise slze classes presented in the previous Bill was thus $iven up. The reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Trlbes, as also one-third of the seats to be reserved for women, were maintained as before. Ward Commlttees and 7.onal Committees, which Upendra has regarded as "funny" in the Rajiv Gandhi Bill' became serious enough now but were left to be establtshed at the discretion of the State goverments. The provision for a State Finance Commisslon was maintalned but separate provisions for conducting electlons by the Election Commission and audit by the CAG were omitted. As for bringing rural and urban lssues to a common distrtct planning platform and establishing metropolitan planning committees at least for a few large cities, I urged Murasoli Maran' then Minlster for Urban Development, to seize the opportunity and make provision for them in the Bill. Maran shared to some extent my belief in these matters but felt the mandate was limited by such consensus as was already avallable. In his view, the Btll could address only these essentials. We were back to ttre marga darshan approach of N.D. Tiwari' Since the V.P. Singh Bill was based on consensus in the National Front there was a flicker of hope that it could be carried through Parliament but external events extingulshed that flicker' Even before the introduction of the Bill, the stir agalnst the Mandal formula of reservations had begun. V.P. Singh still hoped that the agitation would subslde and the business of the government could be resumed. On 12 October, Deshmukh, who had contlnued as Prlncipal

62

Power to the P,eople?

Secre to the PM, wrote to $ome Secretaries conve the PM's "strong desire" to hdve a su programme of decentrallsation and calling e for ideas. But a new set of problems emerged with &JP's ilrl commencing his Rattr Yatra. The NF,s survival a Mandal versus Mandir issue. On 23 199O Advani was arrested in Sama$tipur after Bihar. The BJP decided to withdrAw its support the government and on 7 NovembEr the government was defeated by 346 votes to V.P. L42. J as the Bofors controversy had killed RaJiv Gandhi's it was now the turn of the Eabri MasJid cast its consuming shadow on thq V.p. Singh

Rao Government and tbe two

Billl

as a

The C mdrashekhar government which followed that of V Singh was in power for only a few months. In his as Special Assistant to the Conlgress Mani Shankar sent a note to Rajiv Gandhi asktng if could pick up the thredds ofpanchayati ral with Chandrashekhar government. He was strictly cted not to do so.a It was expected that the , for whom decentralisatlon was an importan part of its manifesto, would malke a determln I bid to come back. Rajiv Gandhi's on 2l May l99l was a major set back though ections were held. The Narasimha Rao t was sworn in on 2l June: it pledgpd to reintrodu e the Panchayati Raj and Nagarphlika within 1OO days as redemption of Rajiv Gandhi's romise. However, Narasirqha Rao was ]wary of the ls in the process ahead. During the dfbate

Generol Electians and AJter

63

in Parliament in 1989 certain items had stood out as patently controversial. Entrusting the conduct of the Fanchayat and Nagarpalika elections to the Election Comrhission, making the CAG responslble for audit of the accounts; and entrustlng some of the funcUons to the State Governor as distinct from the State Government were some examples. Apart from these' there was also not much enthusiasm among the MPs
for the District Planning Committee or the Metropolitan

Committee as constitutionally mandated bodies' Narasimha Rao wanted the Amendment Bills to be dtfferent from what the V.P. Singh government had proposed but he did not favour a comprehensive or effort like that of Rajiv Gandhi: In fact "rnUition" Rao's perception of what was feasible was not very different from that of V.P. Singh. Yet, at the same time, the Narasimha Rao

government could not go back to the tmncated version of tgSO where V'P' Singh's goveinment had limited itself only to a few enabling provisions leaving most of the actions to the State governments' The Congress government had to show that the decentralisation charter was not a mere legislative shell but a serious endeavour for empowerment of the people and the local bodies. A common bill would have prompted a more careful scrutiny and perhaps achieved more consistency and complementarity in regard to some

aspects like proximity between people and their representatives, functions of urban and rural bodies' rural-urban relationships, etc., but neither the Rural Development nor the Urban Development ministries were keen on a Joint exercise. S'R' Sankaran was then the Secretary, Rural Development' Given his dedlcatlon and commitment to rural development

64

Power to the F,eople?

of Nirman Bhawan as n$t very relevgnt to hls cru purpose of strengthening panchaya,ti raj. He gram sabhas, villaget panchayatE and issues of Ll development at the iBlock or Mandal level as to the Panchayat Bill &nd not applfcable to urban He, therefore, felt that aJoint exercise would o delay matters and dilute attention.s

occu

and pov rty alleviation, Sankaran regarded tne

Madhav
Develo

A{un
but

ministry, was also reported not very c about a joint effort with the Rural ent ministry. The redrafting of the t Bills thus conilnued as two separate exercises, pursued by two separate ministriest The group of set up to guide the process had
enthus Develop Amen
S

le, his counterpaft in the Urban

Develop Develop Shankar

ministries concerned. Whatever the characterilstics and diff ces between the rural and the urrban. decen n was an objective oommon to lboth and a co law for that purpose would have been more d rle. However there was rro indication or suggestl to that purpose from the pMO. The preparatio and pursuit of two sepatrate bills during 's time, more as a result of circumstarrces RaJiv Gan and thus became sanctified,as a prece{ent. Some itles between the two bills persisted iwith undeslrabl consequences as subsequent experience
revealed,

he no lo ger functioned as liaison man or a troubles oter between the pMO and the two

and Sitaram Kesri as common mernbers wtth Sheila Kaul, Minister. Urban t, and Venkataswamy, Minister, Rural t, were held separately; Although fvlani yar had become a Congfess Mp by now,

General Elections attd' Ajter

65

T\ro Bills Introduced On 16 September 1991, the 72nd and 73rd' Amendment Bills were separately introduced in the L,ok Sabha by Shri Venkataswamy and Smt. Sheila Kaul.6 Whlle the two bills broadly resembled the 1989 verslons they differed in some important respects' In the case of ttre Panchayat Bill, differences were ltmited but slgniflcant. The provislon for a gram sabha as a conclave of all voters, introduced by the V.P. Singh government, was included. As for reservation of
chairperson's positions for SC/STs, the draft contained

an affirmative provision rather than merely an enabling clause. Dr. B.D' Sharma, the noted
anthropologist and civil servant, had drawn repeated attention to the fact that during the flrst generailon panchayatt ral in the country there were hardly any SC/ST Sarpanches and mere membership in the panchayat would not be suffictent for empowerment' Pdor to the Amendment, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had provided for reservation of SC/STs for the posts of chairpersons in the panchayats' This experience had prompted a similar provision ln the Constltutlonal Amendment Bill. The 1989 Bill had only stated that nothing would prevent a State legislature from providing for reservation for SC/STs or women in the Chairperson's position but the l99l draft made it more Positive by stipulating that such resewation should be made and it was left to the State legislatures only to determine the manner' In the case of the Bill for the Munlcipallties, the dlfferences were more significant. Firstly' in the Rajiv Gandhl verslon, size classes were indicated for nagar

panchayats, municipal councils and municipal corporatlons. The revised version was content with

66 menUo and a

Pouer to the People?

a'transitional area', a'$maller urbdn area' ger urban area' but left It to State governments determine those wlth regard to some broad criteria. regard to the chairpersbn of a muriicipality, the 989 Amendment Btll had proposed that this should 'e indirect but stipulated some restr[ctions on l. The 1991 Amendment:Bill left the [natter tobed ed by the States. Thirdly, in another maJor deviati the Bill did not make any provision for Ward or Zonal Commlttees leaving the same to be d ed by the State governments. Curior:tsly, in rtant respect, accounts, the Amendment Bill for the cipallties stuck to thd provisions of the 1989 B ; while the 72nd Amendment Bill in fegard to panc ayats speclfically chose to leave actounts and au of panchayats to the State governfnents, the 73 Bill repeated the provisions of the l9g9 verbion, t muntcipal accounts should be kept as advised the CAG and the CAC shall caube the same to rc audited.T It is difficult to understahd the reason r this difference between two bills formulated by .e same government. It could not be that accounts were considered more onerous than chayat accounts and, therefore, shoilld be handled ry the CAG. It can only be concluded that this was oversight. It is also appa_rent that [n the process f formulating and approving t\,!'o bill$ on a similar s bJect, the two ministries,of Rural Develooment an Urban Development proceeded on thelr own with littl interaction. In contrast, Vinod panddy and I, along ith some other officials concerned. ubed to meet t daily during the variorirs stages of drafting the agarpalika Bill and relating it tb the Panc Bill. The Joint Parliament Committeb also

General Elections ond' AJter

overlooked the difference between the two Bills. Eventually the matter was reconciled and the two Bills as passed contalned the same provision. The Naraslmha Rao Amendment Bills were also consplcuous in completely omitting any provision for

district planning or metropolitan planning both of

which had been regarded as substantial innovatlons to which RaJiv Gandhi had brought strong personal support and conviction. It, was of course known that
considerable technical and administrative support was needed to make these entities functional; Narasimha Rao could have pushed it but decided not to do so possibly fearing delays and a lack of support for these 'innovations'.

Bills Referred to JPC Both the Bills were lntroduced in the Lok Sabha on 16 September 199 I towards the end of the monsoon session. When Parliament reconvened, in winter, a motion to refer the two bills to Joint Commlttees of both houses of Parliament was made in the L,ok Sabha by Venkataswamy and Sheila Kaul' The RaJya Sabha concurred in the motion on 2l
December. In keeping with the pattern of two separate Bills, there were two separate Joint Comrnlttees.s The Joint Parliamentary Commtttee (JPC) for th'e 72nd

Amendment was chaired by Nathuram Mirdha and included Mani Shankar Aiyar, Deve Gowda' Sudhtr Roy, P M Sayeed, Deepak Ghosh, Subramanlam Swamy and others. The one for the 73rd Amendment was chaired by K P Singh Deo, and included Chltta Basu, Malini Bhattacharya' Sumitra MahaJan' N E Balram, Gulam Rasul, Pawan Bansal and others'

68

Power to tte PeopLe?

nd Amendment Bill on panchayats did not contaln controversial issue on which the Joint e was expected to spend much Ume. Besides, consens s was already available on reservations and direct ons from territorial constituencies. As for the cho ce between a two-tier and a three-tier pan setup in the rural areas, the draft Bill, while rg viUage panchayats mandatory left it to the Sta to decide on intermediate or district level pan or both. The JPC preferred uniformity, as in the Rajiv Gandhi draft, and recomrnended the uer set up as mandatory. As for election of ns, the draft proposed that at the village level and lntermediate level it should be direct but at the level the method could be decided bv the State. JPCs'recommendation was that it should be dtrect at all levels.s
The

The
One

of the verslon should

felt that
even me

ifp

represen

different very mu
feared I

of MPs and MI"As issup was about the represerltation and ML,As. Even in the Rajtv Gandhi had been agreed that the Mps and MLAs out of village panchayats. As for the level and the district panchayats, opinion ed. The Rural Development ministry itself ch representation was not required and ed, MPs and MLAs should be non-voting The State govermnents, as also some tives of the public who had submitted to the Joint Cornmittee, also exprressed . Obviously, the MPs and MLAs were in favour of their inclusion as they clearly of power otherwise. Eventually, a co{npro-

Cenerol Elections ard AJter

mise was worked out as described in detail in the next chapter. As for the 73rd Amendment. the Joint Committee appears to have been much more proactive. As is customary, the JPC sent out a questionnaire to varlous individuals and institutions and also invited a few to give oral evldence. I was one ofthe ten persons called. On 8 Aprll 1992 I submitted a number of points to the committee; I strongly urged the setting up of

District Plannlng and Metropolitan Planning Committees and other provisions for promoting

thirteen sittings, the Committee finalised its

recommendation ln

decentralisation within large cities and proximity to people. Though I was still in government service at that time, the JPC was kind enough to hear my views in my personal capacity and as Vice President of the National Institute of Urban Affairs. The JPC received responses to its questionnalre from forty individuals and organisations and memoranda from another thlrty. It also undertook several field visits. After

July

1992.to

JPC on Ward.Committees The Report proposed that the provislon for Ward Committees should be made mandatory in the case of cities with more than three lakhs of population but their size and composition was left to be determined by the State legislatures. No speclfic mentlon was made about Zonal Committees but it was open to the States to form these or other committees. The implications of this vagueness are discussed in Chapter 5. The Joint Committee also felt that the District Planning Committee and the Metropolitan Planning Committee were Recessary; it revived them

.Pouer to

tte People?

and

inserted addittonal provislons to the

Bill.u
on I.inancc Commls$lon A addition by the Joint Committee'was in regard o the Finance Comml$sion. While the endorsed the provlsion in the bills for setting of ffnance commissions at the State level. itwas of view that the Central Finance Comrilission should enter lnto the area of locat bodv ffnances d advise how to augment the consollidated tund of State to supplement the resources of the local es in the State. This change was resisted by the Mtnistry and the Minister, Dr Mantrohan Slngh, also opposed to the idea. However, the Joint was lnsistent; it felt the change was cruclal local body flnances. Accordingly, a new clause amend Artlcle 28O of the Constitutlon was added specifically required t$e Central Fbrance Co to address the financial needs of State ts ln the context of the requirements of
JPC'S local Thts and reports of State Finance Commlsslons. a far-reachlng change because traditlonally Cen

the

Finance Commlssion had limitled its to the needs ofthe States. The dhange
for the States and the State Flnance

made

it

ns to take note of the needs of thd rural and local bodies and reflectt the same lfr their own and reports to the Central Flnance In effect, the Amendment considerably mandate of both the Central arrd the widened the State ce Commissions.r2The.effect of thls new tn the assessment of local bodies' Ilnancial needs the impact on the worlting of the Oentral

General Electtons ottd Afier

7l

and State Flnance Commissions are discussed in a

subsequent chaPter.

Thc JPC RePorts and After

recommendatlons on the Bills to Parliament in July 1992. Soon after the government and Parliament became preoccupled with various other matters including theAyodhya issue' However, the recommendatlons of the JPC were discussed in detail by the Cabtnet for two days. The range and durailon of the discussions were greater than any held at the drafttng stage. Eventually the recommendations of the JPC were accepted, barring a few, Four months later, on 1 December 1992, Venkataswamy and Sheila Kaul, the two ministers concerned, moved the motions to consider the 72nd and 73rd Constituttonal Amendment Bills as reported upon by the JPCs.r3While the government agreed witlt most of the recommendatlons of the Joint Committees some offlcial amendments were proposed as well. One was to limit direct elections at the village and intermedlate levels and not all the three levels as suggested by the Joint Committee' Regarding elections, the Joint Committee had

Both the Joint Committees sent their

proposed that conducting them should be the

responsibility of the Chief Electoral Offlcers (CEOs) of the State. Seshan, then Chief Electlon Commlssioner' felt that entrusting local body elections to the State CEOs would affect their work on Assembly and Parliament elections. He is reported to have informed the government that neither the CEOs of the States nor their election boxes would be available for conducting local body elections. The government'

therefore, decided on separate State Election

72

Power to tte pbople?

prompted by odd circumstances was wise step. As happened three years earlier, the Z2nd and the Amendment Bills were taken up together for consl tlon, on I Decernber l992.raThe debate contln for two days. Since the Joint Committees had alrea y reported on the Bills, there were hhrdlv any maj polnts of dissent during the debate. Kashi Ram a former Mayor of Surat, lamented that the 73rd dment Bill had not addressed the question f where the executive authority of a should be placed-with the elected Head or wlth appointed Municipal Comrnissioner. p&wan Bansal of handigarh, who had been an active member of the J t Commtttee, elaborated on the need for Dlstrict and Metropolitan Planning and how the Joint ttee had added these measures to the draft and thus rectified maJor omlssions, The proposal t amend Article 280 of the Constitutioh-to widen the of the Central Findnce Commi$sion actually

shown SECs, th

this decision to set up such sepa_rate

(SECs). Subsequent experience has

to

consl

er the reports of the State Finance

-was generally welcomed. Sharad Dighe a lone voice in questioning the wisdom for MPs and Ml,As to be represented in city rents. He also felt that the Amendrnent Bill shoul have provided some guidelines for size
was of provi
of nagar panchayats, mtrniclpalities and

corpora
Ag thc

l5

ends both thc Governmcnt and thc Bills

Overall the debate was mild cofnpared

to

What

Generol Electlons and AJter

73

had taken place in both the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha three years earlier, in 1989. Shahabuddin' who had opposed the Bills earlier on grounds of both Jurisdictton and substance and who had continued as a focal point of opposition after several of his
colleagues had resigned from the l,ok Sabha ln 1989' now generally supported the Bllls "with all the lacunae' all the faults and all the omissions because the bills as they have come out of the Joint Committees

represent the natlonal consensus". Mani Shankar Aiyar, who had drafted many an eloquent speech for RaJiv Gandhi and was now an MP from Myladuthurai, Tamil Nadu, was also unspectacular; perhaps there was no combat to lnspire him. All that Mani could do was to lament that "when we are at the brink of the

single most important systemic change in our constitution, we should have such a thin attendance".16

As the Lok Sabha moved to other matters, further debate on the two Bills was delayed. Several thousand

kar seuaks had assembled in Ayodhya with the

intention of building a temple for Ram in place of the Babri Masjid. Parliament hovered once again on the brink of chaos. The MasJid itself was demolished on 6 December 1992. On 2l December, a vote of noconfidence against the Narasimha Rao government was defeated, with 106 Ayes and 334 Nos. The Lok Sabha resumed its legislative business immediately thereafter and moved on to a class by class discussion of the two Bills, which were passed the next day. 17 On 23 December, the Rajya Sabha approved them without much debate.rsThe passing of the Bills came within less than 2OO days after the Narasimha Rao government had assumed office. Despite the short-

74

Power to the People?

comlngs Gandhi was an Rao had

the polnts of departure from the Rajiv n, getting the Bills through Parli4ment mplishment, deftly achieved. Narasimha a better understanding of the limits of Parliam nt's perception and eommitment to

of the nstitution. After the ratificationi the Amendm Acts, renumbered as the 73rd and the 74t}], the assent of the Fresident in April 1993. Th State governments then had time till April 1994 to their existing laws on panchayats and ties into conformity with the Amdnded munl Constltu on. A comparision of the principal fealtures

pan ral and urban local governance; he pnshed for and a consensus on What was feasible. He was not visible as the chief protagorlist of the d tralisation plank but made sure his aides performed. The party could claim to and have won battle launched by Rajiv Gandhi though the combat with ground realities was still to follow. In some respects, Narasimha Rao performed ln much same wav as Lvndon Johnson had in Kennedy's passion and rhetorlc for civil rights in law. passing of the Bills, ratification by half After the Sates requlred since the Amendment impinged on the of the executive power of the Union and the as laid down in Artidles 73rd and 162

of

the

fferent versions of the Constitrltion

presen events.

t Bills and the Act as finally passled is ln Table 4. I followed by a chronologr of

Generat Electiorts ottd Afier

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76

Fotuer to the People?

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General Electtons and Afier

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78 lvt
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Patuer to the Ppople?

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Geruerat Elections ortd

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80
ttl
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Power to the Per ,ple?

5'*

{3
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oo o>
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>ta
lJ

ooo cd!?(

xl

H 5 F.E E ;Ei+'ots tr v c) (o!-(!{

E6

v)l

?ar:bo'tr=ts r .. e :(J!r.= F E3 " ;tr

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0
tr

e;:-s frgf ; P'F;PEE?EsiEErEf;e

li;!rE
5li$$!$

?E >o E$ o.6 ila

Gerleral Elections and Afier

r0J
ta

81

:U \(4
r '-

.rJ x

t) F:

>i
{.)

^.: FL{

=+r

Eh

,E <!
oi
L
.E

< trt
+=

^etr'= *AJtr

.i rl b*rli

Cqc=

Itd.: A<9;;b*'-ti 0Jo^.i:

.1 ^n \J

Fi

u)|Ja

,qo
vl

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aJJ O.9:b0
AqJd

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a

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o d

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t-

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'6'd

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t1

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a2

Potuer to tIue People?

ta
I

I r.r

Ir
tcr

:?

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^,.,

'*pF

b*rti '= E

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:-,E3;rifi

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General Electlans ard AJter

83

Table 4.2: Ctvonologg oJ Euents

1958

Balwant Rai Mehta report adopted, recommending a three-tier panchayat

system.

1977

Asoka Mehta report recommends a two-tier set-up with panchayats at

district/block levels.
1986

Singhvi Committee urges that

panchayati raj be given constitutlonal recognition. Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State relations did not favour amending the Constitution. Instead it preferred a model bill based on consensus. National Commission on Urbanisatlgn

r988

August, 1988

(Correa Commission) submlts lts report. Recommends a two-tler setup for larger cities and regular elections for all city and municipal
December 1987June 1988 councils, Series of workshops wlth the DMs: PM as an actlve partlcipant: Focus Panchayati Raj and District Planning. November 1988

on Responsive Administration,

Conference of Chief Secretaries : Stress on the focal role of District

Collector.

May 15, 1989

June 5-8,1989 June 12-14, 1989 June l8-2O, 1989

June 24-26, 1989

RaJiv Gandhi introduces the 64th Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha to amend the Constitutlon. Seminar of Municipal Officers. Sammelan of elected representaUves of the southern. region in Bangalore. Sammelan of elected representatives of the eastern region in Cuttack. Sammelan of elected representatives of the northern region in Delhi.

84

Pou:er to the People?

August 8, 1989

65th Amendment Bill

for

Nagarpalikas introduced tn the Lok

August lO 1989
October I

1989

Sabha. The lnk Sabha passes the bill which then goes to the RaJya Sabha. Nehru Rozgar YoJana (NRY) sqheme introduced in urban areas par4llel to Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY)

October I

1989

operating in rural areas. Announcement irl Parliament. The Panchayat and Nagarpalika Bills defeated in the Rajya Sabha.

Late 1989

Formation of the National Front 4,

1990

November

1990

Government with V P Singh aF PM. Dlnesh Goswami, the NF Government Law Minister, introduces in the l-ok Sabha the Constitutlon Amendment Bill Number 156 of lggO as a composite Bill. Fall of V P Singh Government and

subsequent formation of the

May 21, I June 2l, Chandrashekhar Government. Assassination of RaJlv Gandhi. Narasimha Rao Government sworn in. September 16, 1991 'Ihe 72nd and 73rd Constiturtional

Amendment bills separately lntroduced in the Lok Sabha by

December

I, l99r

July

1992

Venkataswamy and Shetla Kaul. Motion for referring two Bills to the Jolnt Parllament Committee adOpted. Jolnt Parliament Commlttee flnalised Its recommendations on the two Amendment Bills.

December

1992

Venkataswamy and Shetla Kaul moved the motions to consider the

72nd and 73rd Constitut[onal

General Elections and AJLer Amendment Bills together as reported upon by the JPC. December 21, I9Sz

Vote of no confldence against

Narasimha Rao Government defeated. December 22. 1992 Bllls passed in the l-ok Sabha. December 23, 1992 Bills passed in the RaJya Sabha. April 1993 Amendment Acts. renumbered as 73rd and 74th, received the assent of ttre President.

86

Power to the People?

NOTES
Committee Repert: Janata Dal, July [989.
Raj at a Glance, Ministry of Rural Develppment,
3.

S. S. ed. Izgislatiue Stotus

Op. cit.
man

oyf Panchagotl

Raj in

4.

Mani Shankar Aiyar's uritten comments on the drallt of this

5. ln
F

with S. R. Sankaran, Former Secretarv, Rural Government of India, Hyderabad on l8th

1999.

72nd Amendment Eill l99l tBill No. 158 l) introduced in the tnk Sabha lry Shri Venkat4swamy, for Rural Development and the Constitutipn 73rd Bill (Bill No.l59 of l99l) introduced in the Lok by Smt. Sheila Kaul, Minister for Urban Devellopment September 1991. 243H in the 64th .dmendment Bill 1989. Article of the 72nd Amendment Bill and Article 243U of the Bill. of the Lok Sabha, 16 September and Rajya on 2l December l99l . 9. oJ hc Joint Parliament Committee on the Con$titution 72nd AmendnTent Bill. Lok Sabha Secretariat. Julv 1992. lo. oJ the Joint ParltanPnt Committee on the Con$titution 74th Bill. I,ok Sabha Secretariat. Julv lgg2. I l. 243 ZD and Arttcle 2432E inserted by the JPC. t2. of Reference for the I Oth Finance Comrhission. y of Finance, Department of Economic Affaiis, June 1992 and Terms of Reference for the llth Finance , Ministry o[ Finance, Department of Economlc Notification dated Delhi: 3 Jr.'rlv 1998. 13. I,K Debates. I December 1992.

6.

The

ofl

t4.

Ibid. Debates. 2l December 1992. Sabha Debates, 22 December 1992.

15. tbid, 16. tbid.

t7. I,ok la.

Conformity Legislation

Article 243 ZF of the 74th Amendment stipulates that 'any provision of any law relating to municipalities in force in any state, immediately before the commencement of the Constitutional Amendment which is inconsistent with its provisions should be amended or repealed before the expiratton of one year from such commencement'. A similar provision is contained in Article 243 N of the 73rd Amendment relating to panchayats. The provision ofone year as a common factor in both cases was simplistic. In the case of the panchayats several States had already in place comprehensive laws and regulations since the 196Os and the 197Os. To a large measure the 73rd Amendment was built on the substance of these laws. In the case of municipalities many of the States were using laws derived from British India such as the Presidency Acts of the nineteenth century as in Bengal, Bombay or Madras. While there were many common features among these laws, particularly in regard to budgetary and administrative matters, their spirit and substance were not geared to public participation or municipal autonomy. Some of the States felt. therefore, that more tlme

Power to tte Feople?

glven for revlewing the existing municipal should I and amending them as necessary. lVithin the of Urban Development itself therne was some.syr for this plea. Besides, there was also the hope that an opportunity would be available to a comprehensive municipal lawwhich could bea for many States. Notwithstandlng all these views, implementation of the, Amendmerrt Act within year was a Constitutional requlrement and any extension of time would have requlred

consld

the Amendment itself, which was not appropriate. The Mlnistry of Rural
adopted a l5-point programme for conformity legislatiorr and set up a
organised a conference of State Mi4isters

in July 993,

of Minlsters to pursue the followup acflon.I The of Urban Development organised stmilar meetlngs engaged some institutions like theTimes Research Foundation and the NIUA to help the States in amending legislation.2
LaWS

The States of the 7

rmity legislation brought out by the

from a mere repetitiorl of the provlsions Amendment to fairly elaborate amendments State laws. All the flfteen major States and smaller States like Goa, Manipur, Tf:ipura

of
some of

as well as the union territofies of Andaman and Nicobar enacted conformity does not however mean that the conformity was the product of serious analysis and thrddng. In as many as twenty states the conformity put in place only at the last mlnute, in laws April 1 , when the time limit of on yearwas nearlng
and Delhi laws.

Co4for mity Legts lati,on

Its end. A revlew of the laws reflects much ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm on the part of many States; very few have been willing to seize the opportunity which the Amendment provided for long pendlng reforms ln municiPal law.

Slze Claselfication In regard to the setting up of munlcipal bodies' the 74th Amendment provided three types-a nagar panchayat for transitional areas,. a municipal council for a smaller urban area and a municipal corporaflon for a larger urban area. Some broad criteria such as populatton and its density, revenue generated, employment in non-agricultural activitles' etc., were mentioned in Article 243 I of the Constitutlon but the details of these and other criterla were left to be deffned by the States. The amended Municlpal Acts of Andhra Fradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have

glven some attentlon to this subject in their amendments. For example, Andhra Pradesh, in

providing for all the three types of muntcipal bodies using such criteria, also specifled that all distrtct headquarters should be classifled as not lower than first grade municipalities.3 The Maharashtra Act provldes for population cut-off sizes such as 3 lakhs for a corporation, 25,O00 for a municipality and IO'OOO for a nagar panchayat whtch should also be wlthln 25 krn from the territorial limits of a munlclpal corporation.4With regard to the size of the munlclpal councils most of the amended municipal laws provide for a minimum and maximum of munlclpal wards, ranging from ten to fifty-five, depending on the populatlon. The numbers for corporations are more.

Fanoer to the

fuople?

Com As Amendm may be but wtth Nadu, Himac provislon As

the p: few S

as a two
Haryana enacted

but
reforms whlch

of Munlcipalitles compositlon, Article 243 R(ii) 0f the t provides that persons with special and er<perience in municipal administfatton as members of a municipal cquncil votlng rtghts. In Uttar Pradesh, Tamtl asthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Pradesh and Assam laws have tnade such nominatlon wlthln certain litnits.s qualiflcation of candidates to contest elections, while many States have followed in the Representation of People Act, a have introduced additiotlal features such child norm as in Delhi, Andhra Pradesh. Kerala. Anti-defectiort laws werd also Kerala and West Bengal. These are bmall t pointers to the fact that eledtoral be a parallel effort at the local body level not have to depend on some nationally
design.

and MLAs of MPs and M[,As in municipal corporations has been dealt with very ln different States. It was a vexatious lssue rtght 1989 and the subsequeilt drafts of l99l also not avoid controversy. Wtrile some people were of view that such membershtp would go agalnst spirit of the Amendment-whtch was to establish e panchayats and municipalities as a distlnct iler of governance, some others felt that excluslo of MPs and MLAs would create an appre about loss of power in their mind$ and even lead to conflicts of turf. The manner in

Rolc of The councils

ConJormitg

lzgislorflrln

9l

which this was handled in the Panchayat and

Nagarpalika Bills also differed and was quite confusing'

In the 1989 Rajiv Gandhi version village

level it was left to the State panchayats were excluded and

governments to provide for representation of MPs and MLAs tn panchayats at the intermediate and distdct

levels but without vottng rights.6 In regard to municipalities, the 1989 draft contained no specific provision for representation of MPs and MLAs but there was a general provision enabling State

leglslatures to determlne their composition.T The V.P' Singh government's version left the entire composition to the Sates in the case of both panchayats and municipalitles and did not make any speclfic reference to MPs or MLAs. In the Bill introduced in 1991 by the Naraslmha Rao government the provisions of the 1989 version were repeated. However' the Joint Parliament Committee dealirtg with the Panchayat Bill was of the view that representation of MPs and MLAs without voting rlghts would be inappropriate. Eventually a compromise was worked out whereby voting right was allowed except in the election of the chairperson

of the panchayat. Section 5(b) of Article 243 C accordingly stipulates that the chairperson of a

panchayat at the intermediate level or district level shall be elected "by and from amongst the elected members thereof". The participation of MPs and MLAs in such elections was thus precluded. In the case of the Nagarpalika Bill' the Joint Parliament Committee similarly added a provision to Artlcle 243 R for representation of MPs, MLAs and MLCs with voting powers. However' unlike the Panchayat Bill, the JPC did not stipulate any restrictlon on the vottrg powers relating to the election

92

Power to the people?

of the an
case s

munici
These

or any other matter. This patent has led to some contrdversies and court well. In 1995, in the case of a few es in Rajasthan including Alwar the

have to
'whole

ns were removed by votes of no conftrdence. moved the RaJasthan High Court for on the ground that Mps and Ml,.ds had not in the motion. A single Judge of the RaJ High Court held that sirtce Mps and MI_As were not elected members of the municipalities, their cipation did not vitiate ithe motion of no . The Petittoners went on appeal. A Dlvision Bench the Rajasthan High Court has held that though and MtAs are not'elected members' of the cipalities in so far as votes of confldence

carried by a two-third maJority of the

use', the MPs and M[,As should be tanren as part of 'whole house' for the purpose. Stnce they did not cipate, the Division Bench held that the motions f conlldence in the instant cases would fall. It was accordingly that the Petitioners should be reins ed as chairpersons. s from Haryana, a decislon of the punjab and High Court went even furthel.- The

Haryan

represen

that they shall neither have the right to contebt nor the right vote in the election or retrnoval of pre$ident or Vice- resident of a Municipal Committee or Muni Council as the case may be. The punjab and High Court has held that Article 243R gives limited delegation to the State governrhents, i.e, eith to provide for representation of MpS and Ml,As or ot, but it does not give the State any right

Municipal Act while providing for tion of MPs and Ml,As speciflcally states

ConJormity

Legrslafton

93

to restrict the vottng powers of the MPs and MLAs so represented. The High Court has also held that since MPs and ML{s who are nominated to municipal bodies

constituency of which the Municipality ltself forms a part would have the right to vote while considering no confidence motion in the Municipal Committee"' This decision almost confers an inalienable right on MPs to vote in any Panchayat or Nagarpalika even though they are not elected members of these bodies'e

"being elected members from a much larger

The intention of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment however is very clear and the patent contradiction between Articles 243C in the 73rd

Amendment and243B tn the 74th Amendment cannot contlnue. The situation is further compounded by the lack of uniformity in the provisions made by the

different State governments in regard to the

representation of MPs and ML,As in municlpalities' In Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Tamtl Nadu, MPs and MLAs are represented in municipalities but have either no voUng rights or restricted voting rights. In Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, representation with votlng rights has been provided. Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal have not provided for such representation at all. In the case of Punjab, representation wlth votlng rights is limited only to MLAs. It is also interesUng to recall that in the case of Tamil Nadu the initiat amendment of the Munictpalities Act carried out in 1994, when Ms Jayalalitha was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, provided for membership of the MPs and Mt^A.s with voting powers.'0Subsequently,

there was some rethinking by the Karunanidhi government and a second amendment was brought

Power to tle Feople?

out in I
and

districtvote.rr

States. autono

conformity laws thus indicate the conttnued and confusion in the thinking of different implications for decentralisation and local are dlscussed in a subsequent chapter.

which limited the membership of Mps only to corporations, municipalitids and panchayats but wtthout the porlver to

Local

with
more or Election
Co

elections

a misce
Divisio number higher
State

acuvit5r which was previously dismissed as

Elections to the organisation of elections. the legislation from the different States has been uniform in the provision for State mmission. The establishment of such as an independent authority has helped the local bodies to be regarded as an

and practices of Central Election. Seshan, the former CEC, has boen a role for many SECs in substance if not in style-in atters such as the determination of election sch demarcation of constituepcies, conduct of elections, , they have been, by and large, assertive. The a of the State Election Commissioner in Kerala in 1998 in disqualilring more than IS,OOO elected tatives to panchayatF for their fallure to submit rts of election expenses and the O[.issa

more, as Election follow the

administration. Because of the very large representatives being elected, as also the that local elections Usually enJoy, the have allowed the State Eldction a fair measure of autonomv. Furthernstitutionally recognised bodies the State have chosen by and laqge to

us responsibility of District and Sub-

ConJormtfu

Legislalion

95

SEC's obJectlon to the State seeking in the High Court postponement of the local body electlon 1997 are two

illustratlons of the Point''2

Dtetrtct Planntng Scdcd Down

commenced, RaJiv Gandhi felt emboldened to introduce his proposals for district planning' The confabulations at the offlcial level, the eventual compromise and the provisions made in the first set of Amendment Bills have already been recounted in some detail. It has also been stressed that there were Just no takers for the District Planning idea in the V.P. Singh or the Narasimha Rao governments and the item was brought back to the table by the Joint
Parliament Committee. Though the JPC revived the provision for a District Planning Committee (DPC) it departed from the Rajiv Gandhi version of the Bill in two important respects' One was about composition. The 1989 draft envisaged a compact total of twenty-one members to be elected from among the elected members of the Zilla Parishad and the municipaliUes in proportion to the ratio of rural and urban populations' All the members of the DPC were to be elected and there was no provision for nomination. If in a particular district 30 per cent was the urban populaUon, 30 per cent of the DPC members v/ould be elected from among the elected members of the urban local bodies in that district and the rest would be elected from the Zilla Parishad members'r3 The Joint Parltament Committee did not speciff any number but recommended that "in order to impart a

When the Panchayat Bill was moved in Parliament and the drafting of parallel legislation for Nagarpalikas

democratic character

to the DPC not less than

Power to the Feople?

4/Sths
elected of the was wlth

the Rajiv of the as well, the locati

left this
can be

discussi and its fears abo ministers perhaps

open. It 243 ZD The reflected

Madhya Cha the

DPC has

size of th functions the Con itutlonal Amendment. Additionallv. moni evaluation and review of the develop-.rrt schemes the district including Central and $tate sponsored as well as Local Afea Developlnent schemes by MPs and MI-As have also been assigned the DPC.'5 The provisions in the West Bengal trict Planning Committee Act lgg4 are about the same but the Chairperson of the Zilla

the total number of mernbers should be so the panchayats at the district levdl and ities."ta The secondritem of departure to the chairperson of the DpC. While and.hi version provided for the chairperson Parishad to be the chairperson of thd DpC setflng at rest future questions About of the DPC, the parliamentar5r comrtrittee e to be decided by State legislatut'es. It that in the Parliamentary commlttees, , apprehensions about the Zilla parishad becoming a centre of power and t the eroslon of influence of Mps and State volced. The Parliamentary committee it prudent to leave these queStions ore remained content by insertingArticle the Bill for setting up the DpC. eness in the constitutional provisiotns is the Conformity laws as wbll. In tlre cdse of lesh, a State minister d,esignated blz the is the Chairperson of the DpC, whilb the of the Zilla Parishad is a member and Collector, the Secretary, The size of the flxed at L5, 2A or 25 depending on the district and other characteristics. The ed to the DPC are as stipulatdd in

Conlormitg

egistrttion

97

Parishad has been designated as the Chairperson of the DPC and the District Magistrate and Collector as the Secretary of the Committee.r6 The West Bengal Act also provides for the State government to establish urban development sub-committees in the DPC' In the case of the other States enabling provisions for DPCs have been made in the Panchayat Act' Municipal Act or the Town and Country Planning Act as the case may be. The chairperson of the Zilla Parishad is designated to chair the DPC in Bihar' Kerala and Karnataka. Maharashtra has tried to continue with its earlier model of the DPC with a State minlster as chairperson. In April 1999 it passed a law for creating DPCs but kept the minister designated for the district as the chairperson' The President and CEO of th;e Zilla Parishad are ex officio members and the District Collector, is Member Secretary.rz In Tamll Nadu, the District Collector has been made the chairperson of the DPC' while the chalrperson of the Zilla Parishad is regarded only as a member. From time to time this provision has been objected to by various political parties in the State as grossly inconsistent with the spirit and substance of the Constituttonal Amendment. Early in 1999 a high

level committee with representatives of different

polittcal parttes and members of legislature, chaired by the local self government minister, considered this issue along with various other matters on decentralisation. While three members of the comrnlttee objected to the existing arrangement, other members suggested that the chairperson of the district level panchayat can be designated as Vice Chairperson
of the DPC retaintng the Collector as the Chairperson'r8

Thls vlew, whlch is in very sharp contrast to the rest

98

Power to tte ,people?

try, is, however, in keeping with the stand Nadu government that the dlstriOt level ts ttself superfluous and that thb DpC cannot regarded as a panchayati ral body but more as a coordination committee with a techntcal rather an a political mandate.
of the of the set ' DPCs, some others like Andhra prhdesh. Assam, GuJarat, Punjab and Uttar pt'adesh have content to pass enabling lawd only. However, Uttar Pradesh made a stat't in March lggg.re moved to bring the Zilla parishads closer to the by placing District PlanninA Cblls in

to

some States have made ha,lf hearted attempts

the

hads, wlth the Zilla Parishad as the

>n of

its
slow

the DPC and the parishad's CEO as ry.2o Generally, the DpC continues to be a which prompted the Ministry of Rural to write to several States in April 1999
action.

The M

shrlft

Planning Comnlittee givcn short

The etropolitan Planning Committee (MpC), though ded for in the Constitutional Amendgnent, has been virtual non-starter. The backgfound and rati in providing for such. committees have been in detail in an earlier chapten The drafts by the V.P. Singh and Narasimha Rao ts did not make a reference at all to the MPC; it the Joint Parliament Committee which revlved provision. The levant recommendation of the qJoint Comrnittee, Article 243- Zt,, for a Comrfrittee

Cor{ormity

Legtslotion

99

for Metropolltan Planning merits mention and ts

quoted below.
'"There are twenty-three metropolitan cities irt

the country where the metropolitan area would encompass not only the maln Clty Corporatlon but also a number of other local bodies, both urban and rural, surrounding the matn Clty Corporation. By the end of the century, this number may rise to about forty-flve. To ensure that there is an orderly development of the vast area, proper plans need to be drawn up in association with the plan of the maln city. Constderable lnvestments ln these cities are also undertaken by Central and State government agencies. It is necessary to coordinate these
investment plans wlth the development plans and requirements of the metropolitan city. There ls, therefore, need for a suitable planning mechanism which would take care of the interaction between the various local bodies, both rural and urban in such metropolitan areas. At present, the system that is adopted in many metropollses is the creation of a metropolltan development authorlty. The functions assigned to the metropolltan development authority differ from case to case. In some cases, they are only planning bodies while in some cases they take on executive function, particularly of major schemes. Further, at present, these bodies are not democratic instituUons. They are nominated by the Government. The Conrmlttee therefore feel that there should be a provision for constitution of a Metropolitan

Power to the F.eople?

plan

to

ir Com

by,

ttees not less than two-thirds of the of such Committees should be elected from amongst, the elected members of the

Committee to prepare a draft development the Metropolitan area a$ a whole. Inr order a democratic character to the said

and Chairpersons of tJ-e Panchayats in the metropolitan area in proportion to thO ratio the population of the municipalities and of the Panchayats in that area. The other details to composition of the rsaid Comrnlttees,

the of other

er of filling the seats therein, the

tatlon in such Committees of Government and the Government of the State and and institutions. the functions rela to planning and co-ofdinatlon for the Metr politan area to be as,signed to such Co ttees and the manner in whictr the c of such Committees shall be chosen may left to the State lrgislatures." 2r accordingly ed the insertion of a new provision-Article 243 ZE. 243P defined a metropolitan alea as 'an area a population of ten lakhs or more, in one or more districts and consisling of two or municipalities'. The multi-municipal ls, therefore, an essential requiremerlt of a metropo area. Prima facie thefe are twenty-flve ngglomeratlons according to the 1991 sueh census. a population of ten lakhs or more located of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, I{erala, ln the GuJarat, tra, RaJasthan, Madhya Pradesh, PunJab, Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. In the
The

int Parliament Committee,

C onJormitg

Le g

islafion

lol

case of Bhopal and Ludhiana, the metropolitan area as presently dellned conslsts principally of a single municipality. It is, therefore, open to the Madhya Pradesh and PunJab governments to consider whether MPCs are required to be set up for these places. So far as the other States are concerned, the MPC is a constitutlonal requirernent. However, as in the case of the DPC, while conformity legislation or enabling laws have been passed by,more or less reproducing the language of the Constitutional Amendment, not a single State has set up an MPC so far.

Developmcnt Authorltles Sidetract thc Process The reasons for this sorryr state of affalrs are a mixture of bureaucratic confusion about the purpose and role of the MPC, lack of political motivaUon and, most importantly, the fear of the Development Authorltles which exist ln most of these twenty-three cltles that their domain will be undermined. Whlle the Calcutta Mekopolltan Development Authority itself was brought about in special circumstances-more for mobillsing funds and coordinattng implementation-most of the development authorttles ln the other cities were inspired by the Delhl Development Authority model of large scale land acquisition, real

estate development and housing construction.

Eventually these bodies became consplcuous emplres of public works and patronage as in Bangalore, Hyderabad or Jaipur. The creation of these authoritles was no doubt facilitated by the fact that most of the clty corporations concerned were under supersesslon as was the case in Chennai and Calcutta. In the case of greater Bombay consistent opposition from the Corporation limited the BMRDA mandate to some

ro2

Power to the .Feople?

broad of planning contiol and coordinattpn and selected estate actvities. The Calcutta authoritv also tually became a huge amalgam of publtc

works. appreh
develo

tlme, separa
The M

State governments have been rather lve about the large staff which these authoritles acquired over a period of ch would become surplus in the event
Metropolitan Planning Commlttees are Thls ls a totally mi$tdken perceptlon. Planning Committee is expected to level, democratlcally set up body whlch will
mandate to the whole exercise litan development planning. The develop-

bea
bring a of

ment a
Ano conllict

orlties could serve these Metropolitan

Commlttees as their technical secretarlat. pOssible Jurisdiction between MPCs and DPCs. Since areas are predominantly urban, the rural or the component in the MPCs would be rather Where the urban areas are co-teriminus wtth e districts, such as Bangalore, Chennal or the cutta urban district, the problem does not arise at . In such cases a DPC is not necessarv. part of a revenue district is included in a Where area, State governrrlents can suitably redeflne boundaries for the purpose of DFC and MPC wo Alternatively, a functional delineation is also le. The Tamil Nadu government attempted by providing that the MPC for the Chennai to do area wlll be deemed to be a DFC for those rHons of tl.e revenue dlstricts whlch are in the metropolitan area.2s Under the lnclud it is up to the State governments to theJurisdlction of the DPC and the MPC to

er mlsconception is about the

Conlormi$ Legislation

103

avoid conflicts, if any. Both functtonal and geographical delineation of responsibilities are feasible and it ts up to the States to choose either or both'

Statc Flnance Comnrissions The next important provision in the Constltutional Amendment relates to the setting up of the State Finance Commtssions (SFCs). States have followed up the provision through conformit5r laws and also by establishing the SFCs. There has not been any reluctance in this regard presumably because States hoped thls would facilitate increased Central assistance. The amended Article 28O of the Constltutlon stlpulates that the Central Finance Commlssion should make recommendations for augmenttng the consolidated funds of the States, ln the context of the requlrements of rural and urban local bodies and take into consideration the recommendation of the SFCs. The first State Finance Commissions were established in twenty-flve States; of them fifteen have submitted reports. The SFC recommendations are required to be placed before the State legislature along with 'actlon taken reports'. This, however, happened only in nlne cases.2a In substance, the value ofthe SFC reports appears to be varied. In some cases they have been Just an exerclse ln compiling revenue delicits of the local bodles and
forwarding them to the State governments in the hope that the Central Finance Commission would pick up the tab. In some other cases, the SFCs have tried to work out a divistble pool of taxes whlch could be shared between the State and the local bodies. A few SFCs have also attempted to work out unlt cost of

services and norms for capital and revenue

expenditure.

l04
The to be set

Power to tte kople?

tional requirement is that SFQs are p once every five years. By the year 20OO generation of SFCs will be due in most the seco States. then the recommendation of the l lth Central Commission will be known. It *ill be seen to hat extent the reports of the State ns have been used by the CFC and what its tions are in regard to the future work of the S Whether future SFCs will be able to accomp more through these initiatlves depends as much their mandate and terms of refererlce as on their . The mismatch in the timing of setilng up the te Finance Commissidns vls-a-viS the Central Commission is discussed in detail in the cha on functional domain.

ConJormitg lcgislation

r05

NOTES
Anntnl Report, Ministry of Rural Development, Government
of India, 1994.
2. AnrunI Report, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of lndia, 1994.

3. Andhra Pradesh Municipalities [Gradation of Municipal

Councils) Rules. 1994. 4. The Maharashtra Provincial Municipalities Act; Municipal Councils, Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships Act, 1965, modifled up to April 1995. Refer to Article 243 R of the Constitution of India and the relwant State Acts regarding inclusion of experts.

J.

6. Section

3 of Article 2438 of the 64th Amendment Bill,

r989.

7.

Refer to Article 243O of the 65th Amendment Bill. Also refer

to Article 243Q, sub-section 5 for enabllng provlsions

8. Nevt/s

regarding indtvidual experts. item in the Panchagati Raj Update October 1998. Delhi: Institute of Soclal Sciences, regardlng Rajasthan High Court statementl see also Rajasthan High Court, Yogesh Chandra Saini and others Vs State of RaJasthar and 22 others, D.B. Civil Special Appeal (Writ) Numbers 794 ,779, 8OO and 8Ol of 1998, Judgement dated l5 July 1999. 9. RaJpal Chabra vs State of Haryana and others: Civil Writ Petition Number lOt6 of 1995: PLUlio,b lnur Reporter Vol )O(
1998-99.

Tamil Nadu Municipalities Amendment Bill No I during Jayalalitha's timei Select Committee on Tamll Nadu Urban Local Bodies Bill 1997, Report of Select Committee presentation to the Assembly on 24 / 7 f / f 998, IA Bill Number 42 of 1997. I l. Tamil Nadu Munclpalities Amendment Bill No.2 during Karunanldhi's ttme. t2. News item in Statesman, I I November 1998, Thiruvanan10.

thapuram.

13. Report in Panehayati Raj Updote, l9 November 1998. Delhi: Institute of Soclal Sciences.

r06 t4,
16. See 15. ReWrt

futuer to tle People?

2 of Article 243 Y of the 65th Amendmont. Parlianvnt Convnittee. Addltlon of Article

the Jotnt Section 2.

t7.
1994.

to get top Priority". News ltem ln Htndustan Bhopal, 2 December 1998. in West Bengal District Planning Committees Act,

of rni, Government of Tamil Nadu, December 1998, 20, "U.P. t to decentralise planning". News item in Hindu Lucknow, 5 March 1999. 2t. News regarding Rajasthan DPCs, Hindu" Jaipur, 3
Kosl

18. Ordinance of April 1999, 19. Report of the inter-party group under the chairman$hip

June
22. Report of the JPC.

23, Tamll
and

adu Metropolitan Planning Committee Act, Town try Planning Act 1974: Proposed Amendments for
Metropolitan Dwelopment Authority, October 1996. Ra, Update. October 1998.,

-o-

Outcome of Panchavat and Municipal Elections

Regularity of elections was one of the few items on which there was political consensus even during the various controversies preceding the Constltutional Amendment. Opposition leaders like Karunanidhi, Ramarao and Jyoti Basu had all agreed that elections should be held regularly for urban and rural local bodies and supersession should be resorted to only in exceptlonal circumstances and only for short periods. At one stage, in one of the discussions on drafting, it was also suggested that supersession of local bodies, which varlous governments irrespective of their party identification have indulged in, should

be totally eliminated. The Bombay Municipal

Corporatlon Act of 1888 whlch contained no provlsion for supersession was cited as an example. However, the legacy of Article 356 of the Constitution, whereby the elected governments of States could be set aside by the Centre, lingered. It was argued that if the

Central government could supersede a State government in special circumstances, similar circumstances could not be ruled out in the case of
local bodies. The power to supersede and dissolve an

108

Pouer to the People?

elected

of that as
action

similar being

was therefore retained as an expfssion In one of the drafts it was sug[ested the case of the State gwernments, where Article 356 would need ratiflcation bv within two months, there should be a n about the dissolution ofa local bodv by the State's legislative assembly. Later,

this
monttrs This through and was Am
sooner

n was removed but a ceiling of six

force, s appoin Article

a period The disso

the total period of dissolution was retained. on in the Rajiv Gandhl version survlved e V P Stngh and Narasimha Rao versions incorporated in the 73d and 746 ts of the Constitution. 243 E states that "every panchayat lrnless lved under any law, fof the time being in continue for live years from the date of t for its Ikst meeting and no longer". The stipulates that an election to constitute a shall be completed before the expiration of six months from the date of its dissolution. goes on to state that if a panchayat is

before the expiry of its duration and if another chayat is constituted, it shall continue only for e remalnder of the perlod for whidh the panchayat would have eonfinued. .Article 243 U down identical provislons in regard to muni es. It was thus expected that for the first time in dependent India, rural and urban local bodies uld have the "right to live", that such life would normally for five years arld that disscilution lns circumstances would be only a tempomry
measure.

Outcome oJ Potrchayaf and'

Mtnicipal Electia ns

r09

Road to Electlons, neither Smooth nor Speedy: Blhar Dclays The conformity legislation passed by the various States in the wake of the Amendments have l'eproduced more or less these constitutional stipulations. Many of the States constituted State Electton Commissions but very few States held elections quickly. While the amended Constitution stipulated fresh elections wlthin six months after supersession and specified a normal tenure of five years it did not set a time limit for establishtng the new genre of panchayat and municipalities or organising elections for this purpose, after the Amendment came into force. They were repeatedly
postponed in Assam, Karnataka, Orissa, parts of Goa and J&K. If they were held for panchayats, municipal elections were delayed. Tamil Nadu held local body elecUons only in f 997. By end of 1997 elections had been completed in most of the States except Bihar and Pondicherry, parts of some States like Orissa and Uttar Pradesh, and some other smaller States. Subsequent events, however' have shown that what appeared to be a firm course for local democracy could sttll be delayed and deflected' The Bihar case amply lllustrates the situation. In August 1993' just two months after the Constitutional Amendment was brought into effect, the Bihar Panchayati Raj Act was amended. Its provisions are almost identical to those in the Constituttonal Amendment. However, no elecUons have taken place in Bihar till the end of 1999 despite the fact that in Octo6er 1995 the Patna High Court directed in a public interest litigation' that the State of Bihar should hold elections to the panchayats by January 1996 at the latest-' In a

llo
conte rendered High the date electlons electlons take pla before th the

Power to the Feople?

case llled tf,ereafter, the State of Bihar r Apr{l 19964n unqualifled apologr to the and undertook that within slx weeks from declaration of the results of parliamentary scheduled for May 1996, the local body vould be held.2 However, thts also dld not Instead, matters were deflected by agitating Patna High Court another issue regarding n of seats to the positlons of panchayat . The Patna High Court quashed the State orders wherein the quantum of reservation exceeded 50 per cent of the posts.3 The Bihar went on appeal to the Supreme Court but has little to obtain a decision. In public interest litigatton in February 1997, the Supreme Court separately passed an order setung e the action of the State governmcnt in the tenure of the panchayats last elected in 1978.4 appeal regarding reservafions of seats is still pen . before the Supreme Court. Though the

same Co
pan
g

had ordered that continuatidn of

tlll
de

there Nothing

limiting it other of the Co held in deftly us matters. not ha

without elections was not legal, the Bihar t's stand ts that it cannot hold elections a decision on the issue of reservations. course prevents the Bihdr government in a fresh arrangement of reservarilons the Constitutional stipulation as so fntrny have done. Thus, since the Amendment tiorr local body elections have not been r citing one reason or another and also Court cases by various parties to delay of December 1999, the Bhagalpur holds the dubious national record for held elections since September 1979: It is

Atbome

oJ

Panctwgat and Municipal

El-ections

II

where elections have been held on the strength of separate court orders each time.

also curlous that Darbhanga is the only town in Bihar

Karnataka Dcflccts

The Karnataka story is another glaring example of how the regularity of elections can be undermlned' In December 1993, Karnataka successiully organised elections for 5,300 village panchayats involving about 75,000 representatives. But even this did not happen without controversy. Karnataka had set the example for the rest of the country by enactin$ a panchayat

law based on the 1989 draft of the Constitutional Amendment even before it had been passed' Gorphade' then Panchayat Minister of the State, was the moving spirit. Elections were scheduled soon after but were postponed. Gorphade resigned in protest's Finally the .t""Uo.t" were held ln December 1993' The term of ofllce commenced in March 1994 and after flve years' by'March 1999, newly elected members should have come lnto positlon. In December 1998' it was

announced ttrat electlons would be helC as scheduled.G The State Electton Comrnlssion was prepared for the task and notlflcation for the elections was to be issued by the end ofJanuarY 1999. However, as the new year began, some doubts were aired in the State government' The manner of rotaflon of seats for women and SC/ST candidates as

also so called anomalies in the de-limitation of panchayat constltuencies were cited as possible OitflcutUes whlch flrst needed to be resolved' There
was no explanatton as to why these difflculties could not have been sorted out ln the previous flve years' In January 1999 the State government decided to

tt2
postpo

Pouer to the Feople?

resignati rn but the Chief Minister refused to accept it. News reports indicated that the real reasbn for such rement was the fear of the rulin{ party about I the elections.s It was also reported that the g proposed to reorganise the nrumber of 5,300 village panchayats into 3,OOO. A public interest rtion followed and the Karnataka High Court tly ordered holding of elections but the Supreme granted an interim stay in the mhtter.e It is unfortunate that Karnataka which in to other States has had more expefience g in democratic decentralisation and has used that for rather than strengthening such decen tion. Fortunately in many other $tates such have not taken place and elections to the and rural local bodies were held soon after the dment. At the time of writing, a new t has taken oflice in Karnataka and has elections would be held soon.

the Sta e Minister for Rural Development and Pancha at, Shri M p prakash, submittdd his

elections to gram panchayats.z In pfotest,

Dlections Yield a Vaet and Varled Crop Electi have always been a large-scale evdnt in India. by these standards the panchayat and elections following the TSrd and Z4th ofthe Constitution have been an exCrcise on an un scale. Accordirlg to the Ministry of Rural evelopment, there are 2,26,1a9 village in the country with Bl,9E,5b4 members.'o That out to an average of about fifteen menlbers per pan At the intermediate level, which in some is referred to as the Taluk, Mandal or

Outame

oJ

Ponchngat and Municipal

Elections

f 13

Block panchayat, there are 5,736 such panchayats with 1,51,412 members. Additionally, there are 467 dtstrlct panchayats with 17,935 members. Compared to this the number of urban local bodies and their elected representafives is rather limited. As of now, there are 95 Municipal Corporations, 1,436 Municipal

Councils and 2,O55 Nagar Panchayats.ItAs mentioned before, except Bihar and Pondicherry, and a few urban areas of Andhra and Goa elections have been held in all the States where the 74th Amendment is applicable' This leaves out Arunachal Pradesh, J&K, Mizoram' Nagaland, Sikldm, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Lakshadweep. The number of elected representatives from the three levels of urban local bodies is aboirt 60,000. The number will be much more if the Ward Committees are composed of persons elected from territorial constituencies similar to the case of the Panchayats. The most prominent exception to the Constitutional requirement of municipal elections is New Delhi. an area of 43 sq km, an enclave surrounded by the Delhi Munictpal Corporatlon, where the Head of the State and the highest echelons of the Legislature, Judiciar;r and the Parltament a.re ensconed. The New Delhi Municipal Council Act 1994, enacted by Parliamentr2 after the 74th Amendment came into force provldes for a council composed of an official nomlnated by the government as the chairperson, three members of the Iegislative Assembly of Delhi representing their constituencies which comprise wholly or partly the New Delhi area, five other government officials to be nominated, and two other persons again to be nominated from the public from amongst lawyers' intellectuals, traders, social workers, etc. No definition

ll4
of the
wha

Power to ttu People?

will be o short supply in the natlon's capital, It is a moot oint whether the word ,.territorial cies" in Article 243R can apply to either a
Leavlng

rd 'intellectual' is provided in the Act but the specification, it can be presumed there

Delhl is and
and have

rest of (McD),

fact that local bodies have now re-erfrerged as elected platforms for self-goverfrance. the number of elected representatives in the and rural bodies constitute the largest represen base of any democracy in the world. It has vas increased the funnel of represerltation between e people and government. Arithmetic apart, it also rblishes that Members of parliament and

denying in the Together

Councillors in one body. But that can apply to several other State capitals It is also straining the limits of logic to Munlcipal Councillors and MLAs in the i.e., the Municipal Corporation of Dethi not i:r the NDMC. t-he numbers wtll change w.ith the spfead of , and formation of mofe and more Nagar and Municipal Councils, there is no

assembly constituency or a municipal ward. legalities aside, lt can be argued that New small a place to accomrnodate botft MtAs

Legislatures, who number no more than 6000, not the only representatives of the people. Since su a large number of representatives from the local ies have been released in to the stream, the chemistry of representative politics will undou be affected. The mandate and sphere of work at e Central, State and local levels ls bv no means cl at thts stage but clarity will be demAnded
t-lee

Outcome oJParchagat and Mtuticipal Electtons

l15

by these new representatives and wtll eventually

emerge.

Rcgcrsatlon of Scatg and thclr Flrst lEPact The reservation of seats for women, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes is a maJor feature of the 73rd and 74th Amendments. For the SC & ST. the reservation ls ln proportion to their populatton. Thts provlslon, whlch was drafted in the very flrst verslon of the RaJiv Gandhi Blll , endured at all subsequent stages. As far as women are concerned, provislon for one-thtrd reservatlon. was introduced in the llrst draft ttself. It dtd not become an issue at any stage of ttre debate ln Parltament or outside, though most of the members who participated in the debates in the [ok Sabha and RaJya Sabha during 1989 were vociferous about other issues. The Jotnt Parllament Commlttee also did not make any changes in this regard. All this may seem very surprlstng in the context of the llerce controversy now surrounding the issue of reservation of women in the Parliament for which a bill was introduced in December 1998 and again tn December 1999. Perhaps the MPs felt that panchayats and nagarpalikas were comparatively unlmportant and one-third reservaflon for women in these bodles posed no political threat. It should also be mentloned ttrat such reservation was made in Andhra Pradesh. Karnataka and West Bengal even before the Constitutlonal Amendment.
The elections and the experience gained since then,

even during this limited period, has signiflcantly brought out the positive aspects of this reservatlon for women. There was no shortage of candidates. On
an average, there were at least three to four candidates

ll6

Pouer to the F.eople?

per seat ln the rural panchayats and five to slx ln areas. The extenslon of the reservafion prlnctple to the positions of chairpersons has been even signncant. So far as the panchayalts are concern , the conscientious participation and of women mernbers and Sarpanches are becoming a legend. Sqme examplEs are
listed.13

oSa
up

abhama Lawand of Blthargaon, near

,

Maharashtra widowed at the age of 18,

in the fields, dressed as a man, brought

children, learnt the basics of cultivation trade, earned the respect of her village and as an actlve Sarpanch for flve years. Stddhi, another village in Mahar4shtra known for its watershed management, has a slmtlar panchayat. Shetkari Shangatana, a peasant movEment has been instrumental in setting more all-women panchayats. farflung villages of the Kutch reglon of most of the village panchayats are headed ung and middle aged women, maklng rmined efforts to overcome caste and division in the viilages and seeking and cleaner administratlon. ta Bee, a conservative Muslim womair who r nothing about the world outside her home was "terrilied" initially by her inductiton as

had The

in up In
GuJ

by det

kn
and

anch, did exemplary work in Kalva in

district and was honoured with the best ch award of the government and later on
UNDP.I5

Orrtame

oJ

Patrchagat ottd Mtuticipal Elections

Lt7

women Sarpanches being assaulted for thelr

On the other hand there are also horror stories of

asserHveness, or for crossing the boundaries ofcaste. However, such incidents do not escape attention as they used to before. When Gundiabhai, the Sarpanch of Pipra in Madhya Pradesh, hoisted the nattonal flag at the local school on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of Independence, she was beaten up for her

temerity. The press highlighted the story and there was a public outcry.to A few months later the Chief Minlster invited Gundiabhai to hoist the national flag at Tikamgarh, the district headquarters, on Republic Day.tt I-eelavatl, a woman Councillor in Madural was brutally murdered tn 1997 when she organised slum dwellers and insisted that water supply contractors be made accountable to the slum people for delivery. In December 1998, Meena More, a Counclllor of Navt Mumbai Municipal Corporation was doused with kerosene and set on llre over a petty issue of water supply connection in a slum colony.Is Mercifully, such extreme horror stories are still limited in number though caste polittcs and male chauvinlsm continue ln less vlolent ways. For example, Adtamma, a village Sarpanch of Karnataka, was voted out before her term was over on some trumped up charges. The real reason was that she defied some influenttal panchayat members who asked her to give up cleaning tollets after becoming Sarpanch. Adiamma refused because cleantng toilets was her profession which earned her famlly its daily bread.'s Given the higher literacy and education levels in urban areas, lt was generally expected that there would be no dearth of qualified candidates to llll the reserved seats and positions of chairpersons in urban

lr8
local Many

'Power to the People?

thlrd

. The expectations have not been belied. uates and professionally qualifted persons have ed urban local bodies; for several, thts has been Ilrst entry lnto politics. Vandana Ch4uhan, an te ln Pune; Premajam, a college prqfessor in ; Rita Joshi, a Doctor tn Nlahabad: and Dr Sharada Koll ln Guntur are Just a few examples of such tlme entrants who became mayors and could their ofllce and work a new status and Nirmala Prabhavalkar was elected to head Mumbal Shakuntala Arya and later Anita Arva became of the Delhi Corporation. Acc0rdlng to available up to Januilry 1999, twentytwo of -Ilve corporations in the countf;v are headed women.2oThere is little doubt that the one-

has helped. Some women mavorfs llke and Anita Arya also found their civic useful tn moving on to become Mernbers of In some States, thi$ is sought to be done by oaung mayors every year as ln Delhi or
PremaJ . In Tamil Nadu, Andhra Fradesh and

tlon for women of the position of

Pradesh.

Bengal,

Uttar ls determined by the State Eldction on the basis of cities. However. West progressive State in many aspects of has not provided for such reseryation

As

of the
Andhra
Madhya

reservation for backward classes. the Amendment leaves it to the discretion tes. Such reservailon has been made in aclesh, Maharashtra, punJab, RaJaSthan Pradesh. On the other hand. Himachal West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have

esh, GuJarat, Haryana, Karnataka,

and

U Pradesh,

Outrome oJ Panchagal and Mttrticipal Electans

ll9

not provided for such reservatlon. Tamll

Nadu attempted to, but slnce the total of reserved seats for SC/STs, women and backward classes exceeded 50 per cent, the High Court struck down the provlslon'2r Given the large percentage of backward classes in the populatton, the Tamil Nadu government reconsldered its positlon and dectded that even without reservation the backward class candidates would have adequate representatlon.

Proflle of the New Representativeg A detalled proflle of the elected representatlves ls

not avatlable as only a few cases have been researched. A study of the 1995 municipal elections in West Bengal indicated that a total of 2,061 women contested 555 seats in 14 districts, that is roughly four women candidates for each seat. The CPI (M) candidates won 237 seats followed by the Congress (I) with 233' The remaining seats were won by other constltuents of LF and independents.22 Another study of Calcutta and four other municipallties indicated that of the successful candidates, in the relatively younger age group of 36 to 45, a maJority were graduates and postgraduates and two-thirds of them employed as well. Similar studies are in progress in several panchayats and for urban areas too.

Manner of Regervatlon, a Compler Procegg Whtle the reservation of seats and chalrperson's positlon has generally been welcome, the manner of determining the reservation has not been free from controversy. In States where the SC/ST population is limited, or promlnent only in a few districts' the problem has not been pronounced. No established

120

-"

Pouser to the Feople?

formula for

emerged yet as far as reseryation of seats

Pradesh.

stipulat
rotauon. general shall be to follow

some

ates the authoritles responsible for nq the manner of reservation have been

is concerned. In almost all the Statds, the laws merely repeat the Constitutional Some of the State laws. as tn Andhra Assam, GuJarat, Mahatashtra, eto, also that such reservation will be made by However, very few State Acts indicalte the or criteria by whlch such rotation and the necessary rules and regulriations up have not been made in most cages. In

specllied West Bengal, for instance, has made the State Commission responslble. In Kerala, the Pan Act lays down a procedure for dellntting the publication of the draft of such dellmlta lncludtng the resefvatlon of Seats, of obJectlons and suggesfions frotn the public flnallsatlon after considiering the same. A simllar ls prescribed in the electionl rules

formula
been en

by the West Bengal government, In

also, reservation of constituencids has to the State Election Commissiion. In , dtfferent authorities are responsible for the manner of reservation. such As the

other

of rotation
seats

the situatlon does not $eem dlfferent for and urban local bodies. Some States where the conceritration of $C/ST is not high, as for instance in Hafyana, :r each in the Village Panchayat Samiti

Outcome oJ Parchogat attd Mtttricipal

Electiors

l2l

and Dtstrlct Panchayat has to be from the SC/ST as a rninimum and the seat is assigned to that territorial constituency which has a maximum SC/ST populatton. In the case of reservation for women, it has been argued that reserving speciflc constituencies for women on a permanent basis would prevent all others from representing that constituency' The opposite view ls that rotation from one constituency to another prevents any elected representative from building a relattonshlp with his or her electorate' The reservatlon of the position of chairpersons ln both rural and urban local bodies has emerged as a more important and controversial issue' A Madhya Pradesh study reveals that most women entering the panchayat and becoming chairpersons are flrst tlme entrants in politics and most are illiterate' In many cases the decision to participate in the elect{on was not of their own volition. In some cases the outcome has resulted ln a new class ofsurrogate leaders called

'sarpancha-patt', or Pramukh-swami (husband of Sarpanch oi Pramukh respectively)' On the other trani, a study of panchayati raj in Haryana' which has reviewed the progress of hundred elected women in four districts of the State over two years' indicates the beginning of a discernible revolution' The women leadeis are demanding to know more about government schemes, especially schemes for women the role of the panchayat and skllls LO "nitdt"n, needed for running a PanchaYat' The rotation of chairperson positions in urban local bodies has also been a vexed problem' Different States have followed different arrangements' In Tamll Nadu, the corporations and municipalities have been treated as separate categories and in one-third of

t22

Fower to tlu: people?

t}em the
for

oPen.

the

In
months
every

Municlpal

thtrty
Mayor's a woman for the backward more

as well, such rotation becomes The main objection to thls arrangement ts that it reduces the occupant to a rnere poslflon. Distributtng the ffshes and lqaves of offlce, thus, becomes more important than contlnuit5r offlce which is essential for the efflcient runnfng the munlcipaltty. In Maharashtra priqr to the tlonal Amendment, Munlclpal presidents had a offlve years. It was reduced to one Vear after the malnly to faqilitate rotaflon. Ttrere was much resentment about such a short tenure. In April 1999, an ordinance was pa$sed extending tenure to two-and-a-half-years. The to which reeervations can be pursued ls also ted by the MaharasLrtra case. ffhe October I Distrlct Planning Committee Act provtdes such reservatlon formula will apply in the case of :ctlon of the DPC members as well.pa It

,sitlon of chairperson has been reserved The Thirunelveli and the Tlruchirapalli thus have women cha\rersons, whereas Colmbatore and Chennal the seats are State governments have tried to approach by limitlng the tenure of the chairpersons. the tenure of the Zllla parishad was reduced from five years to tWenty the argument that rotation can be done months within the same local bodrr. For :sldents and Vice-presidents the term is s.23 In the case of the Delhi Municipal for example, within a five year span the ls limited to one year., It is reserved for the flrst year and a person from SC/ST year. Where reservailons are made for

Aicome

oJ

ParchaAat and. Mturictpal Electtons

123

may be recalled that four-Iifths of the members of the DPC are to be elected from amongst the already elected members of theZllla Parishad and the munictpalitles, in proportlon to the urban and rural population. For instance, if the total size of the DPC is thirty, twentyfour among these are to be elected. In a given district lf the rural-urban population is 6O per cent to 4O per cent, fourteen members will be,drawn from the Zilla Partshad and ten members from the municipalities. All tlrese persons wlll have already been elected by the public and in that process the reservation system will have been followed. What is the merit, one wonders, by applying the reservation formula to elect a eommlttee when the members are already elected? While family connections, rigidity of caste and

wtlltngness of the exisflng political ellte to permit empowerment of women contlnue to be important issues, the resewation of seats for different categories of people ln local bodles is already caught up in the overall politics of reservatlon in the country.2s The provlslon for resqrved constltuencies in Parliament, rs well as the State legislatures for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes exists in Article 330 and 332 of the Constltutton. The lnitial time llmit of twenty years has been extended from time to time. Outside of legtslatures, reseryatlon and quotas for government Jobs and seats ln educational institutions have been practised in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and some other States for several years sincb Independence. The adoption of the Mandal formula by the V.P. Singh government-Mandalisation-is, therefore, only a geographical extension of these practices to several other States in India. The caste and communal factors are also not new in the politics

124

Power to tfui People?

. In the years preceding Independence, politics itself was organlsed and promoted along and caste lines by different political parties. Reserved constituencies for Muslitns, for were provided in various local bodiesr Where legal did not exist, practices were devised and the sancttity of conventlon. For exarnple, in Tamil rdu, where the Justice Party was verf active

of local

ln

the three decades before Independence, the

of Madras followed the practice of electing each year on the basis of commun[t5r and e annual election of the Mavors tended to be

aMa
caste.

unanlmous because the selection of the was left to the Councillors belonging to a parti community for a given year. the polittcs of reservation was subdued in the N era, in subsequent year$ it became d vtslble Parliament and in the State electlons. The factor Mandal brought it to the forefront and satrrctifled it as organising principle of afllrmatlve action for social J ce. The 73rd and 74th Amendments could not Its influence. While reservation for women and SC ST was made uniform. rdservation for other was left to be decided bv the Statbs. The varylng in the different States harte been In most of the country ot'rly one already. round elections for local bodies has been held so far. It too early, therefore. to assess the spread. ln , and outcome of the polittcs of reservation The indications are that its impact is in local Itkely be more divtsive and contentious in tnatters leadership rather than tn the composition of of municipalities.

Cltc;come oJ ParrchaAaf

ard Mtuticipal Elections

r25

NOTES

l. 2.

"Postponement after Postponement-Brief History of delaying Panchayat elections in all six states". Panctagati RqJ Update' November 1988.

tbid.

3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Aiyar, Mani Shankar' 'A Constitutional Outrage". Swtdog' 6. 7. 8.

3l

"Gram Panchayat Polls"' News item in Hrdu, Bangalore, 16 December 1998. News item regarding postponement in the Deccon Herald'

January 1999.

9, Karnataka High Court's order for holding elections

Bangalore, lO October 1998. Newspaper report on M. P. Prakash's reslgnation: Htndu, Bangalore, 23 January 1999'

on

Supreme Court StaY' lO. Rural Development Annual Report. ll. 'Elections to Urban Local Bodies". Nagarpaliko NetlDork, New Delhi: All India Institute of l,ocal Self Government' August 1998. 12. The New Delhi Municipal Council Act, 1994: Act of 44 of

13. Datta, Bisakha. ed. "And Who will make the Chapathis?": A studg oJ All-roomen Panctagats oJ Malnrasfura' Calcutta: 14. "Women enter into male bastion". News item in Neustime' BhuJ (GuJarat), 25 March 1999. 15, "What Women in Burqa can do". News item in Pioneer, Delhi, 4 October 1998. 16. The Hindu, Chennai: 2l June 1998' 17. 'Gundiabhai to unfurl National Flagi. PanchogattRQ Update' June 199E. 18. "Blazing Crime". News story in India Todag. 28 December 19. "Panchayat Ousts Woman Chief'. Special Report, Inilian Express, 6 June 1999.
1998.

1994.

Stree, 1998.

t26
20.

Power to the Feople?

Local Self-Government.

Mayors in Urban Local Bodies". Na,gqrpo,likoOctober 1998, New Delhi: All Indta Institute of

2t.
22. Peopl

Rqj Update. November 1998. New Delhi: Sciences.

Ihs tute

's perception and participafion-.

Archana.'Municipal Governance in West BengalPd'ncho'yt{rti RdJ

, February 1996. Level leaders and panchayati Raj

Paper

in

Karnataka.

on 24.

25.

Prof. B K Chandrasekhar presented at the Seminar ,atsi Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, December 1997. Panchayat Act, 1993 (as amendedl. , Pai. ed. ?'lle Politics oJ Eackwardness. Delhi:

Publishers, 1997.

Functional Domain

In the pre-Independence period, the functlons assigned to the municipalltles were broadly similar in different States. Most of the Municipal Acts classlfled these functions as obligatory or dlscretlonar5r. They were also grouped into four or five categories like Publtc Health, Medical Relief, Public Works, Education, Development, etc. Laws in almost all States envisaged functlons such as water supply, dralnage, refuse collectlon and disposal or registration of births and deaths as obligatory public health functions. The establlshment of hospitals and dispensaries were

examples of obligatory medlcal relief functions. Simllarly, construction and maintenance of roads, street lighting and municipal markets were examples of public works. In several States, the provision of schools and libraries was also listed as obligatory. Dlscretlonary functions usually covered town planning, area development, etc. While differences
edsted in the State laws, there was a broad acceptance of the functional domain of urban local bodies, partlcularly in regard to a muni0ipality's minimum functions. There was also a general recognitton that a municipallty or a corporation was 'irr charge' of the town or the city.t

t2a

Pouser ta the Feople?

City initlatlve the Britlsh period to identlS the extdnsion of towns and neighbourhoods, and the development within a town, as a separate set of of new activities These functions were then diverted from cipalities and entrusted to Improvement the Trusts, trusts were envisaged as self-finAncing bodies a share of the municipal revenue was made e to them as a contribution for the general of city development. The rationale for setting an improvement trust was not so much the s tion required by the task, rather it was dlstrust f the munlcipality as being 'over politlctsed' and th bre unable to perform the task of city improve ent consistently and obJectively.2 The t Trust in Bombay in 1E98, the first such, tn taking up rnany reclarnation schemes and shaping the numerous sma-ll i$lands into a ci . In Calcutta, the Trust was set up in 19 I I , the same year when the decision was taken to shift e capital of Imperial IndiA from Calcqtta to Delht. e the Calcutta Trust, like Bombay, should be cre ted with the successful planning and implem tation of varlous projeets for the city's imp t and extension. the two bodie$ also marked e diversion of city building functions from a muni and transferring them to a parallel organisa on. Separate taxation powers were alsd given to the rovement Trusts. The development charges lmprovement area were to be colledted as levied in part of n taxes and passefl on to the Trusts. The Tru , set up by the provincial governrhents, usually cluded a couple of representatives from the

Clty Governments rovement Trusts were the flrst major

ntnctionatDr,main

129

Corporation. In return, the Chief Executive of the Trust was taken as a member of the Corporatlon. The Improvement Trust approach was copied in varlous other cities like Madras, Mysore, Lucknow' Kanpur, I-ahore, etc. The motive was partly Fabtanism which prompted some attention to the poor. Houslng for the worlrtng classes and some minimum sanitation in the slums of the ciUes, which provided cheap labour for lndustry, was combined with practical politics which aimed to keep elected city governments within a limtted domain. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Calcutta Improvement Trust Act of l91l was based largely on the Housing of the Worldng Classes Act l89O of U.K.3 Improvement Trusts were also the precursors of Development Authorities in the postIndependence period. These were sought to beJustilied on the ground that the acquisition and development of land for urban expansion or renewal were of an entrepreneurial nature and quite different from the routine functions of a municipality. Unfortunately, these arguments for bypassing the municipal bodies in some specific types of city improvement acilviiles were further extended to obligatory functions, such as water supply. The scale of the need, technical expertise required, magnitude of investment, need for distinct cost recovery measures, etc., were clted as additional reasons. The autonomous water supply distrtcts and functional boards set up in the US or some European countrles were regarded as a model.
Speclal Purposc AuthPrities During the 196Os and 1970s, when WHO, the World Bank, and other organisations became interested in supporting water supply and sanitation

r30

Power to the People?

projects the establishment of such autonomou$ bodles was as the preferred organtsaflonal model. In the of Calcutta, for e*ample, the Basic Plan, prepared tn 1966 with the help of wHo Ford Foundailon experts, prop0sed a

take and for the up, it the CMWSA agency

ona
Tamtl State up as the Jal new the purpose
some passed

though or

the basic function of Water supply, long an obligatory responsibillty of , was removed from the murltcipal mandate Technical staff in State $overnmentb, ltke

manner,

from th Corporation and the tnunicipalitles as hap ln Uttar Pradesh where a separaite Jal for the purpose was created. In this

tan-wlde water and santtafion authority to the funcilons from the Calcutta Corpbraflon munlcipallties in the a_rea. Though the law was enacted and an organisatllon set became functional due to opposiflon from and municipallties. Eventuailly the as it was called, became d proJect executng munictpalittes and ttrel State goverinment basis.aElsewhere ln the country-in Kerala, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradeshwater supply and draindge boards were set bodies. [n the case of Uttar pfadesh was established to plan and execute all supply and dratnage proJects on behalfof and municipalities. Funds for this were usually made available by the State t, much coming from the World Bank and countrles. The loan liabilitv itself was to the Corporation and municipalities bodtes did not have arry say in preparlng the schemes.s [,ater, the operation and ce of water supply was also taken away

regarde munici

as

F\utctionol Domain

l3l

public health engineers, and the State bureaucracy were quite enthusiastic about the process on grounds of technical competence and efflciency. The Central government, whtch had a key role in declding the size and shape of all externally assisted proJects, acquiesced in this divestment of munlcipal functlons

unmindful of its consequences for local self-

government and local accouptability. By the end of the 197Os, State level water and sanitatlon boards, as in Uttar Pradesh. Tamll Nadu, Maharashtra, GuJarat, and PunJab, etc., had come into edstence. City level development or special purpose authorltles were also established in most large cities of the country.6 However, in course of ttme, these parastatal bodies became afflicted wlth the same maladies, such as cormption, unresponsiveness, political interference, lack of accountability, flnanclal mismanagement and so on, wtrlch had been viewed in the past as problems excluslve to municipalittes. The municipalltles and corporations also became increasingly resentful of having to shoulder the loan liability for schemes ln which they had not been involved, whether in plannlng or execution. Entrusting land development and commercial schemes to developnent authoritles whlch had some prospects of revenue and leaving the

muntcipalitles wlth basically non-remuneratlve responsibilities like sanitation and garbage removal

added to this resentment. In the various sammelans which preceded the drafting of the ConstituUonal Amendment, both elected and appointed officials of the municipalitles had overwhelmingly assalled the

role of these special bodies outside the municlpal framework and expressed themselves in favour of a

t32
7

Pouser to the people?

clear li ting of functlons, responsibllitiep and

The AII Indla Council of Mayors, hs the only tive body representing the Mayors Of City Corpora ons in the country, hadlurged for several years th need for such a list. The discusslons ln the had also indicated that such a list should include ew responsibilitie$ like the alleviatlon of poverLy, and child development, welfare of the weaker , etc. The issue heFe was not one of experuse and preparedness slnce no other lqvel of governm could claim any particular advantage in this . On the contrary, it was argued that t of these functions to urban and rural local could facilitate more pauticipation by the people, targeung of beneflciafies and entrlanced accoun
reso

Whe offlcial the ldentlfl W the schedule slmllar

the drafting of the Constitutional

t began there was much, discussion at the about the functions of municipalttles. In of panchayats, the Parrchayat Btltl had

Llst tn the Constltutlon

as. The question was whether such a list of s should be made mandatory. l,egal opirrion was tha the Union List, the State List and the t List of functions and powers as contained tn the Schedule of the Constltution comprtsed one of basic features. Since the Union List a{rd the . were nrutually exclusive and most pf the State
proposed to be entrusted to the panchayats

l-urrctional Do,matr

133

and municipalittes would be derived from the State List, it was felt that separate lists for this purpose would alter a basic feature of the Constltution' The Supreme Court Judgement in the Keshavananda

Bharatt case that the basic features of the Constitutlon could not be altered by an Amendment was repeatedly mentioned.s It was, therefore, decided that the list of functions to be assigned to the panchayats and

municipalities would be illustrative rather than

mandatory.

case of the munlcipalities' however, the initial thinldng was that the illustrative list would include some items contained in the Uni'on and Concurrent lists in addition to the State List' It was therefore proposed that both Parliament and the State

In the

legislature could devolve functions to the

*r-r.ti"ip"tiUes. An initial formulation was prepared accordingly. However, in view of the opposition that the Amendment exerclse was seeking to blpass State governrnents, ,.lt was decided that the asslgnment of functlons would be a State government responslblltty rather than that of the Centre. Since the Amendments came lnto effect there has been some debate ln the

country about the value of an illustrative llst' Suggestlons have been made that the schedule of
functions for the panchayats and the nagarpalikas should be made mandatory. It ls worth emphaslslng that the progresslve dimunition of a municlpaltty's furtctlonal dornain has not been because'of any absence of law on what'those functions are' More

often, these laws have been bypassed or circumvented' The Constitutlonal Amendment went as far as it could ln sanctiffing a,n illustrative list through a schedule'

Pouer to the Pmple?

seven

arpalika Bill, later identilied as the l2th s The Panchayat Bill had a stmilar list of whtch came to be labelle.d as tl:e l lth Sched e. The l2th Schedule incorporated the obligato as well as several of, the discrettonarJz fun assigned to municlpalities tn the riarious
draft
Sched State

;ly, a llst of functions containing thirtywas put together as a schedule to the

sectlo
welfare,

women and child development, famtly

electriflcation, non-convenilonal energr, Erccrrulcauon, non_cqnvenuonal gner5r, erty alleviailon, public dlstribution sb/stem,
uir.Ir ran

Several new ltems like welfare of the Weaker

urban
etc.,

also tncluded.

Both wtth the were rej

compl Stngh

at all
powers|

only fro
leglslatio legisla
so that

Even an

the

Co

separat

Amendment Bill intro{uced by the V p rrment, there was no Schedule of fu4ctions the government was of the vtew that the I authority of all local bodies should flow the State governments. As an enabling the draft only reiterated that the State may entrust to the panchayats and r such functions and powers as necessary may function as units 0f self Aoverrlment. Itst of functions, th was unnecessary and inappioprtate. the Rao government revived the for tlonal Amendment. the

was taken up once agBin. In the qase of the the earlier draft of the I lth Schedule wlsl and adopted wittlout any change, retalnlng all the twenty-nine items as before.

FttncttonalDomrrin

r35

the 12ttr Schedule of functlons was prepared aftesh' While the descrlptton of some items was simplilled, some others were removed in a rather casual manner as not pertahtrg to municipallties. The revlsed Schedule thus contalned only slxteen items as compared to ttre thtrty-seven items listed in the RaJiv Gandhi version. There is really no explanatton avallable as to why some ltems like urban houslng, heritage conservation, city passenger transport, etc., were omitted altogether. It ls even more baffllng why some items listed in the llth Schedule such as non-conventional energr' technical traintng and vocatlonal education' adult

In the case of the municipaltties, however,

educatlon, family welfare, women and child

development, malntenance of community assets, etc.'

whtch were considered legitlmate actlvitles for panchayats were excluded in the case of munlcipalltles.'o The Jolnt Parliament Committee also dtd
not spend much time on the list, apart from adding street lighttng, parklng lots, bus stops and public conveniences as one item and regulaUon of slaughter houses and tanneries as another. These dlfferences between the 1989 and 1991 versions of the Bill, so
far as the Schedule is concerned, have been menUoned in some detail only to show the casualness which marked the 1991 revival of the Nagarpalika Blll. Table 7. I provldes an overvlew.

136

Power to the FeopleT

7.1: Twelfih Schedule-A Comparison

Items listed in the 1989 BiIl

l.

Urban

Town planning, including heritage Conserva on, urban arts and aesthetics Regulation and prorfiotion of land.use and buildings . Works, Iands and bufldings vested !n or in the pqssession of the Munlclpalities o Investment, promotion and developrnent of industrial and commercial estates Item not mentloned

2. Regula
and

and

4, Roads

Communlcauon inclu roads, bridges, ferries; municipal tramways, fopeways anQ inland watepways Water supply for drinlidng, industrial and commetcial purposes

5. Water s

6. Publtc

r Publtc Health
Sanitation, includin$ consen/ancy services, public conveniences, solid waste collection and disposal and recycling of waste water o Preventlon of adultefation of foodstuffs and other
goods

F\nctfonal Domatrr Items listed in the 74U1 Amendmerrt Act

Items listed in the 1989 Bitt

137

.
7. Flre services

Drainage, sewerage and

sewage disPosal

Fire services

8. Urban forestry, Protection Urban forestry of the envlronment and promotlon of ecological

. Welfare of the weaker 9. Safeguarding the sections, in Particular of weaker sectlons of ' of the the scheduled castes and the societY, including the scheduled tribes handicaPPed and the o Social welfare, including mentallY retarded the welfare of the handicapped and mentallY retarded
lO. Slum improvement and uPgradation
I

Slum improvement

l. Urban

povertY alleviation Poverty alleviation Urban programmes

12. Provision of urban

ameniues and facilities such as Parks, gardens ' playgrounds

13. Promotion of

Parks, plaYgrounds and recreational facilities

cultural'

. Cultural activitles

educational and aesthetics aspects

Education, includtng primary and secondary

schools

. Technical training and

vocational education

138

Power to the peopte? 'ms

lbted

ur

the 4ttr endment Act

Iterns listed in the 1989 Biil

. Adult and non formal

. .
14. Burials and

education Libraries, museums and other sirnilar ins tutlons Llcensing of theatres and dramatic performancis
Plilgrimages

burial

groundr ; cremations, cremau n grounds and electrlc )rematoriums

15. Cattle p runds; preventlon of r ruelt5r to

Burials and burial groqnds; cremation$ and crema on grounds

Pounds arid prevention of cattle trespass; preventibn of cruelty to animals
%

animals
16.

including reglstral on of btrths and dea hs

ste -tstics

Mtal

Vital stat[stics including

registration of births and deaths

Specific mention were rnade of the following instead of an ambiguous term like pr.tbltc amenities . Urban electrification,

17. Public a nenitles

including strr et lighttng, parlidng ots, bus stops and oub lc convenlences

.
t8.
houses
n of slaughter

including distribution of electricity Urban housing

rd tanneries

Item not men oned

F\trtctional Domain

r39

Additional ltems Mentioned in the Twelfih

Schedule (1989)

. . .

W'omen and child development

Familv welfare Hospitals, primary health centres and dispensaries Veterinary seMces Publlc Distribution System Maintenance of communitv assets

.
. . .

City passenger transport and other vehicles, whether propelled mechanically or otherwise

Gonformlty I,awB on Municipal Functions ', The expectation was that the l2th Schedule, though limlted and lllustrative, would provide an opportunlty to various State governments to review the functions entrusted to municipalities and corporations and to formulate a new set of municipal functions which could then be incorporated in the Conformlty leglslation. Only West Bengal and Kerala took the trouble to do so. The West Bengal Munlctpal Act, 1993, consolidated and amended the laws relatlng to urban municlpal affalrs previously contalned in varlous separate acts. Chapter VI of this Act contains an elaborate ltstlng of obligatory functions grouped in four categorles, namely, publtc works, publtc health and sanitation, town planning and development and
admtntstratlon. Additionally, the Act also listed various functtons which the municipality may provlde at tts discretion. EducaUon was one of the items listed among these discrettonary functlons. Another section tn the chapter provtded for the transfer of various

Pou:er to the'people?

albng social sports flgured account,

Act, I
Sched The

far the
Under iden twentyitems

disabl
sections list. In

incl high
co

entre ment the Sch the

lies in
the scheme and matters

and the

and duties to be devolved to municipalities, filnds and personnel required. Iterhs ltke prlmary education, public distribution, d youth services, environtnental safety, etc., this list. Taking the various provisions into it can be satd that the West Bengal Municipal , covered all the items listed in thb l2th of the Constitution and also added Some.rr Municipalities Act, 11994, contains by t elaborate list of municipal funcUons. tion 30 of the Act, a separate Schedule, as the 'First Schedule' to the Act. lists groups of items. Social welfare cdntains e child welfare, anganWadis, homes for children and physically handicapped, s, adult education. legal aid for weaker etc., which are a signilicant feature of the Idition, cultural and educational actlivlties. 1 the control and superyisfon of primagy and ools, libraries, non-formal educatiorl, .etc.. ols, non-IormAl eclucatio4, .etc., another important group. Developr4ent of :urship, training programmes for epploypubltc distribution system also figiure in ule. Apart from the corrlprehensiverpess of ule, the real significance of the Kerala Act e fact that under Section 3o(iii) and 3o(iv) ent is required to transfer all institrlrtions, , buildings, other properties, assets and , as also Central and State plan allocations ual budget allocations connected with the mentioned in the 'First Schedule'. to the es concerned. While under both the Kerala West Bengal Acts, the State governments

have t

rlght to prescribe $ome condfitions

F'ttrlctlonal Domoin

14l

accompanying such transfer, the Kerala Act is more forthright in declaring the intent of the transfer.'2 Thls was followed up by government orders from various departments carrying out the transfer. In the case of West Bengal, the broad distinction between obligatory and discretionary functions and transfer of addittonal tasks through a' aarefUl .step-by-step approach has been maintained. Notwithstanding these distlnctlons, the West Bengal and Kerala Acts go well

beyond mere conformity to the Constitutional

Amendment and have indeed utilised the opportunity for clarity and ampliflcation in the functional domain of municipalittes. Tamil Nadu ls another State where an urban local bodies act has been prepared consolidattng different acts for different munlcipalities and corporatlons into one. The Bill was extensively reviewed by the Select Committee of the legislature. Since passed' the Act contains an elaborate listing of the powers and functlons of a municipatity with a broad categorisation of obltgatory, discretionary and delegated functlons.'3 PunJab has prepared a similar comprehensive leglslatlon. In Maharashtra and GuJarat previous municipal laws had listed the obllgatory functlons. After the Consiltutional Amendment, some additions

were made such as soclo-economic planntng,

protectlon of the envlronment, etc. The main provision regarding municipal functions and responsibilltles remalned as before. Unfortunately, in many other States the functional domain of the municipaltties appears to be confused' Thts is mainly because in these States, the Conformity legislatton was limtted to some essentlal items such as electlon, reservations, etc., as required by the

r42

potuer to tte Feople?

The functions and powers have been I and are to be found scatteied in and sections of the munictpal laws before as well as in government drders revised from tlme to time. As in other Delht Munictpal Corporation Act, [9b2, an extreme of non-conformitv wtth the sptrit of Constitution.ra Section 42 of the Act contains the most scanty li$ting of obltgfatory Items llke water supply, sewerage, town planntng, tc., are carefully omitted matnly to pfotect the quo in regard to the Delhi Development Authorlty ed Water Supply & Sewerage Undertaking.
largely various whlch issued matters. is the States ls chapter. Many
some

Functions, under Section 43 of the Act. more elaborate. A comparative picture of domain of the municipalities in different

in Table 7.2 at the end of this

that powers and fuhrctions of diFtrict rayats may be entrusted to local bodies through des made in this behatf.ls It is, ther4fore, open to th executive to delegate to the municipalities several or only a few functions and also alter their scope as pleases, at any time. Thib is precise$r the ldnd of that the Constitutional Amendtnent sought to avoid when Venkataswamy, then Rural avold then nt Mintster, proclaimed irr the Lok Shbha while 19 the 73rd Amendment Blll in De Bill Decetnber "we intend to inscribe in the Consiltution 1992, 'e elements of grassroots democraoy to certaln

p lnstance. level

than

cipal legislaflon. The Andhra Actl, for

as Andhra Pfadesh. Orissa or e chosen to leave tl,re assignmelnt of functions as a task of delegated rather

-such

niJr.ction/rlDomo,in

r43

take them beyond the pale of changing polttical

expedlency". Matters came to a head in Andhra ttself early in 1999 when the Sarpanches of panchayats in Andhra threatened to go on a masslve agitaUon if the

government did not transfer functions in the llth Schedule to the panchayat bodies. Even though Andhra had a better record in holding regular electlons and showing progress in decentralisation, parallel government programmes ltke Janmabhooml and dlverslon of funds to them appeared to go agatnst the essence ofpanchayatl raj. The threat ofagitation bore fruit and the Chlef Minister announced on 3 March 1999 that sixteen of the twenty-nlne subjects contained tn the l lth Schedule of the Constitution would be transferred to the panchayats.t6 Similarly, in 1998, the mayors of Nagar Nigam in Uttar Pradesh mounted a campaign for empowerment and achieved some success. Placing the Jal Sansthan units, which were prevlously looking after maintenance of water supply, under the control of the Nagar Nigam is an actlon which followed, restoring to city governments thetr role in providing baslc services. An Unresolvcd lgeuc Another opportuntty was avallable for many States to address the functtonal domaie of the munlctpalttles when the State Finance Commlssions were set up. Aft.er all, funds and functions go together. But here agaln the opportunlty was not siezed. In some cases, the SFCs chose not to enter tnto the subJect, whlle ln some others the terms of reference specifically excluded consideratlon of such items, more as a matter of propriety rather than substance. The essence of the 73rd and the T4thAmendments

t44
is that

Fotuer to the Feople?

as unlts
Directive the The I tth and illu legal wele so, elaborat

ratiflcati
exlstlng has chall as not

ofthe
already the Sch
was

would

could h ve very well made a forward-looking

and municipalities should fuhctton of self-government. That is stated ln the Principles of the Constitution as well as in le to the 73rd and the 74th Amendrtrrents. and the l2th Schedules are both suggestive . They may not be prescriptive [n the but they are not merely decorative. [f that e country need not have gone through an exercise of amending the Constitution, its by States and getting them to change their to conform to thatAmendment. No State any of the items in these two Schedules to local government. In fact, many cipalities and panchayat lnstitution$ were several of the functions listed in ules. The extent of work might vary, but it that sooner or later most of these funbflons become local responsibilities. The SFCs SomeJudgement about the funcUons and

The service

ilitles of local bodies would have made the t of financial requiremertts more redlistic. t could also have been made forr each tely, irrespective of whether on a given

date that was being provided by a municilpality or not. e States would have benellted bv such an obJective assessment by the SFCs.tTThe failure to address functional domain appears to be a rhatter of inhibi on and bureaucratic reluctance: it has resulted reducing the value of ttre reports df the flrst tlon SFCs. The ctional domain contlnues to be an unreso issue irr many States. However, dlebate has ln the local authoritv ctrcles abotlt the

F\trlctlornl Domain

145

need to make the list of functions mandatory rather than illustrative, and apply it uniformly to the States' It has also been suggested that since there is much commona-llt5r of items between rural and urban local bodies, a composite schedule may be more useful

than two separate schedules as at present.rsA

mandatory schedule on par with the Union and State Llsts may be interpreted as altering the basic features of the Constitution, nor would it be an easy task' However, there is no reason why the example set by Kerala, West Bengal orTamil Nadu cannot be followed towards a more rational rede{lnition of functlons and responstbllities in'keeping with the spirlt and substance of the Constitution. Table 7.2 provides an overview of the allocation of functions as contained in the laws of some States.

146

Power ta tte Feople?

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r56

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NOTES

tarangaiah M. and pattabhiram M. ed., Local

2. 3.

in Indicr:-. tn and Burma: Bombay: Lalwani publishing; 1967. rjee, Manideep in .Calcutta: The planning Ag;enctes ".
F
Cities oJ India ed. Misra, R.p. Sustainable Dwelopment

, Hugh. Foundation oJ Local SeIJ Gouernment

tment bt Indra.. Delhi: Allied publishers, 1g69.

4.S

Pu
Ibid..

tion, Delhi: 1998. K.C. and Green Leslie. Metropolitan Asian Experience. Washington Dc:Oxford Press for tvl/orld Bank, 198g. M. Incal Gouernment in lndia.. Delhi: Allied
1969.

on Nogarpalfka funvnelan. Delhi:

,
8. 9.

Na onal Infqrmatics

1989.

mda Bharati vs. State of Kerala, AIR, 1978, Supreme

1461.

Package to Strengthen L,ocal Bodies-. Hudu 4 March 1999. t7. , O.P. State-Local Ftscal Relahons. Issues Before the I th Finance Commission: A prelimlnary Note. Delhi: Instltute of Public Finance and policy, January

16.

ule; 64th Amendment Bill. ; 72nd Amendment Bill. IL West Municipal Act, 1993. 72. Munlcipalittes Act, 1994, 13. Tamil Nadu Urban Local Bodies Act, 1999. t4. Delhi unlcipal Corporation Act, l9BZ. 15. Pradesh Panchayat Act, 1994. Section 192"

l2ttr

lo. l2th

of Social Sciences Bangalore, January lg9g.

of the Seminar on TBrd and 74th Arnendments:

Financial Domain

With some exceptions, bankruptcy has been a

recurrtng feature of local body flnances in the country' It has been observed that apart from the noble motives of local self government whtch some of the Brltlsh Viceroys nurtured, one of the important reasons for the development of local bodies was to shift a part of the burden of the Imperial government's expenses to local sources.r For lnstance' for several decades mqnicipal boards were compelled to pay for 'town poltce' though the subJect itself was entlrely outslde

municipal control. Levles made by provlnclal

governments were also treated as a'flrst charge'upon local funds. In the early twentieth century, many munlclpal boards ln the erstwhlle Bombay Prestdency were semi-bankrupt because they had to meet the
exercised by the provlncial and Viceregal governments over local flnance has also been an important feature'

cost for plague control services operated by the provincial government' The hlgh degree of control
Though government grants constltuted only a small portton of the lncome of municipal boards' the procedures for their utilisatlon and the scruuny exerclsed at various stages prompted a greater attention to accountancy rather than conslderations

r58

Power to tle Feople?

pment. More importanily, it also fostered increas tg dependence of the rnunicipalitiles on

l.r^"^--*^-r^ governments.

ofd

The PreThe

Scene

e reforms and {inancial devoluuon during 1920-1923 witnessed the gradual

of the government's hold over local authoritv

ffnance the non

given

most complete independence irr the

s

d its relinquishment in stages in fatbur of municipal boards. 2 Municipalities were

of publtc money. While proposals to raise

taxes
withtn
m

requlred government approval, the to process such increases was cteated e municlpallties. At thet same timd. the
did not have the requislte expefience management and, therefore, in dbaling vly found financial independence. In the expenditures grew f,aster than lncome. The
and tl.e provincial secretariats could

in with thts
short
elected

rny municipallties fell back upon the easy solution to balance their budget-appeafls to for increased grants. Asfi taxatlon, it should be remembered that boards of the twenteth century were ldrgely of the members of the new urban middle classe ostly lawyers, traders and teachers. Munlci flnancial policy clearly reflected this
dtrect incidence
L,ocal

process

not also hake off their old official ouUook. Ih the

taxes on

and preferred indirect levies where the fall largely upon the general prnblic. ions of income or land taxes, such as
fesslons and categorisafion of propgrties

Property owntng classes ffercely resisted

FbuncialDomain

r59

based on location, were either not accepted or kept at very low levels. The preference for indirect taxes is revealed by the fact that the octroi sanctifled in history by everyone from Manu to the Mughals has endured over several decades. Octroi was lwied as a central

Trevelyan's strong condemnation in 1835' The provinces were reluctant to adopt it in the face of the Vtceregal pronouncement. However, it reappeared in l87O in Mirzapur, U.P. The rates of the levy were reduced to paciff opposition. It quickly spread to other citles and provinces. By the time of Independence, it had become a promi;rent component of most municipal budgets in the country' Several

tax from 1808 but was abolished after Viceroy

enquiry committees at the State as well as the national level durlng the post- Independence period have urged the abolition of this tax but it has remalned a steady and buoyant source of munlcipal income despite high degrees of leakage and collection charges' In States Ute Uaryana, Madhya Pradesh, GuJarat, Maharashtra' etc. where octroi has been abolished, compensation

to the municlpalities, which depended on this

important source' has been less than adequate' In Maharashtra octroi has been abolished only in the case of medium and small towns resulting in the loss ofrevenue ofabout Rs 4OO crores' It has been retained in Greater Mumbai where in the six month period from April to August 1999 receipts from octroi were about Rs 54O crores, an increase of 27 per cent over the perlod.3 In Pune and Nagpur the Corporatlons have been given the option to substitute octroi by an accounts-based system instead of collection at toll boottrs. The All India Council of Mayors and other

160

Potuer to the Feople?

abolltion
has been as well not

arbitrary It clearly voters or

however,

of wealth
Per compared It was the per in 1937

oflocal bodles have conflnued to restst octrol. :r long-standing feature of rnuniclpal llnance the poor record of property tax assessment collectlon. In most cases, property tax was on any scienffic or empirical basts, lt was haphazard and quite often inequiltable. ted the preference of the influbntial of municipal boards. I-arge dities, use of their comparatively higher levels and income managed to do a litfle better. taxation was Rs 23 in Bombay in 1937, to Rs 6 forty years earlier while in Calcutta Rs 14. In the case of other municipdltties taxation varied between Rs 3 and Rs S compared to around Re I in lgog.4
and Committees Galore be seen that municipal finance t'rever v_ell in the British period. Unfortun4tely, dtd not improve even after Independence. local finance were the subJect ofextensive enqug by various bodies such a$ the ce Enquiry Committee of I95O. the Commlssion chaired byJohn Mathal 55, and the Zakaria Committee of 1g63.5 ons of these bodies were elaborate: and of Zakaria Committee they were also ch as professional valuafion of property, rd collection charges, taxation of unearned to land value and a rnore systerrlatic regtme combining earmarked taxe6 as tives for improved performance. The cll of Locat Self Government lent its

It can
fared too
the Problems

and d
Local Taxation

during 19
The in the speciflc,

incremen grants-in-

well as in
Central

FinarlcialDomrrin

16l

support to these recommendations but the impulse foictrange was not sustained since the political clout of local bodies was further eroded by supersession and diverslon of municipal responsibilities to special boards and development authorities set up by State
governments.

Durlng the 198Os the concerns were picked uP once again by the Planning Commission' One of the four Task Forces it had set up to revlew urban development focused on finance was headed by RaJa Chelliah.G The Task Force reported that local expenditures as a percentage of all expendltures by the Central, State and local governments had fallen to a mere 4.5 per cent in 1980-81 as compared to 8 per cent in 196O-61' The report highlighted the sedous maintenance gap in urban public services as a m{or problem. Funds were spent through a variety of State
agencies and when the assets were created they were

mlrely transferred to municipal authorities for

malntenance. The report also drew attention to the gradual usurpation of local functions by State governments, the ad hoc and unpredictable nature of devolutlons depending on the vagartes of the State budget and the total denial to local bodies of access to capttal markets. The Chelliah Task Force Report also argued for a Municipal Finance Commission to be established in the States at regular intervals and a Municipal Finance Board to keep track of flnances and allocations. Earlier such Commissions had been set up-by Andhra Pradesh in 1971, Orissa and Maharashtra in 1974, Karnataka and Kerala in 1976' Tamll Nadu in 1980 and West Bengal in 1982'

r62

Power to tte peopte?

Flnance Commlsslons This of pedodic review of muntcipal llnances and the : of using devolutions as an insti.ument for Finance India. Flnance Commissions, set up under Article ZgO of the n, had been the allocation of various tax between the Central and the State Incal body finances as such, whether rural or , did not flgure in the terms of reference of the n. Nevertheless, the Commission the impact of local bodies on State ffnances and nditure and wanted to have a better und of the position. Both the 8th arrd the 9th Commissions therefore authorised some detatled and studies. Much of the time-based inf n on municipal finances, in various States of the has become available as a result of tl.ese es. However, after colle0ting all the data, neither e 8ft nor the gth Finance Commission was prepared make any recommendation in this negard matnly of a rather narrow interpretadon of Article it limited their work only to issues of distrib between the Union and the States.z Commen on this, the National Commission on Urbanisa on observed in its report of lggg that .if the Finan Commission had at least laid down some principle Ung to grants-in-aid tro the StateS and stated portion ofsuch grants should be pAssed on to the I I bodies and on what cohditions, pefhaps the cons ts posed by Article 280 could have been overcome 8 Unfortunately, this was not to be the
case.

F.FcrrclalDomain

163

Altcrnatlvce ln thc Anendmcnt Drafts

Even when the Constitution amendment exerclse began, the Rajtv Gandhi government was prepared to

undertake only a llmited foray into the flnanctal domaln of the municipaltttes. Since a mandatory ltst of funcUons itself was not considered feaslble, there could not be any list of taxes, devolutlons or other llnanctal provisions. All these had to be left to the State governments. Howevei, the tdea of State-level Ilnance commlsslons was consldered attractlve and accordirngly both the Panchayat and Nagarpalika Bllls made provlslons for thls purpose. The Bill lntroduced by the V.P. Singh government, as also the draft
prepared by the Naraslmha Rao government, repeated these provtslons. When the Nagarpallka Bill was

referred to the Joint Parliament Commlttee, that Committee spent a great deal of time considerlng tltts subJect. The members were confronted by the slmple fact that it was not lack of analysts or lack of data that had stood in the way of any improvement ln municipal llnances. They also realised that the State-

level flnance commisslons would only be a beginning. The Commlttee was forthright in its assertion that "while every effort should be made to increase taxauon at the Municipality level with a view to tap thelr full

potentlal, responsibility for (flnding) resources for ffnancing urban servlces cannot be left only to the local bodtes. Slnce citles contribute in a big way to the State and the national economy, it should also be the responsibility of the Centre as well as the State to
dovetail creation and maintenance of urban economlc lnfrastructure rtrith overall economlc development.'e

r64

Power to ttuz People?

ARolc
The and gth on the

thc Ccntrd Flnance Ciomsrlssion ) took note of the fact that though the 8th

rtral Flnance Comrnissi0ns had deliherated and magnitude of the problem a4rd also CETInC the conclusion that loeal bodies peeded support, no recommendations wer,e made as ih their vlew Planning Commission was the appropriate body to eal wlth these problems. The JpC also noted that the 9th Flnance Commission'F recommeddation ofa ttme grant of Rs 5O crores each to the ts of Maharashtra and West Ben$al, for rtal improvement of shlms and prgvision of basi amenitles in the cities of Mumbdi and Calcu was a stgnificant dephrture frorir past practice. The JPC, therefore, reacfled the con0luslon that the Plannlng Commissiofr and the Flnance were selzed of the problem intelledtually, tn the .ce of a constitutionalr mechanisni for a regular t of the fiscall resource gap in on account of lncreaslng urbani$ation, and declsi,ons for assistance would conUn to be sporadic and ad hoc. Accordiregfiy, the JPC ted the mandate of ther Central Finance Co ion to be revised so that it specllftcally lncluded conslderatlon of measures for augmenting the Funds of the State to supplbment the of the munlctpalifles. In their view, made by the Finance Commigsions of the te would have litfle value lrnless the eentral Flnance )ommisslon was constitutionally required to conslder tlrem. Arttcle 243Y of the draft Bill was $ amended and a new clatlse was also gdded for the rendment ofArtlcle 28O of the Consflt]ution, ttre terms of reference of the Central Finance

FbuncialDomain

r65

Understandably, the recommendatlon of the JPC did not flnd favour with the Finance Mtntstry. Dr Manmohan Singh, then Finance Minlstel felt that Centre-State flscal relations had already become complicated and lntroducing problems of local body flnances as an addltional dimenslon would only aggpavate the dlfflculties and controversies.ro Ttre JPC

was not moved by the. Flnance Minlstry's

apprehenslons and stuck to its recommendaUons' It ls worth menflonlng that the JPC's review and recommendations were limited to urban local bodtes only. However, the government, after conslderlng the JPC's report, declded that the Amendments could appty wtth equal loglc to the panchayats as well' Accordingly, the modlfled provlsions for the State Flnance Commlssions, as also a new provtsion for amending Article 28O of the Consititution were lncorporated in both the Panchayat and Nagarpalika Bills. Thts change should be regarded as a htghly signtffcant move to provtde an organlc link between the Central and the State Finance Commlssions and to permeate the whole process of devolutton from Centre to the States and from States to the local bodles.

Thc K.C. Pant Flnance Cornmlsslon The loth Central Finance Commission set up by Prestdential order dated 15 June 1992' and chalred by Shri K.C. Pant, had to decide how they could respond to the amended provision of Article 28O' The Commisslon noted that the amendment was not followed by any separate order enlarglng the terms of reference. The Commlssion's view was that once the State Ftnance Commlssions (SFCs) completed thelr

166

Pouer to tle People?

task tt
stream supple

the State the funding requirements for ting the resources of, panchayatF and

be obllgatory upon the Central Finance to assess and build into the expendlture

mtnistry, however, was far more modest in tts to the loth Central Finzlnce Commlgsion. Ciung r trends of urbanisation, slum population and the s of the schemes that itrwanted pur$ued,

ies. However, as tJ.e SFC reports were not avallable the Commlssion felt there was "no dutv cast on it to make recommendations in terms ofArtlcle 28O of he Constttution". At the same time, the ion felt lt was not precluded from entering upon subJect and that the implications of local self-gove t for State financBs could not be overloo The Commission, therefore, concluded.while a per consideration of the measures to augment I resources of the statqs must await ttre of the respective SFCs, sorhe ad hoc lns could be made which worrrld be lnk with the sptrlt of the Amendment.rr The of Rural Development suggested to the lOth Finance Commisslon that sinde the ffnances panchayats had not been studied ln detail for years, and a projection of expenditdre on the r available for LST6-ZT would be quite inadequa , it would be better to relate devolutions to the Sta on account ofpanchayats on a percefrtage basls to the Sates would provide from thetf own On this basls, the Mhntstry of Rural Develop t requested the Financb Commlsslbn to earmark sum of Rs 7,5OO crores lbr distrtbutibn to ral institutions during the flve-year perlod of the rnlssion's award. The Urban Developfnent

FYnrnrcialDomain

167

the ministry requested the Finance Commlsston to award a sum of only Rs 5OO crores for the pedod f995-2OO0. The Nattonal Instltute of Urban Affatrs, on the other hand, estimated that the operation and maintenance of core municipal servlces would need about Rs 6,O00 crores annually in 1995, and twice as much by 2O0O." The Commission did not choose to accept any of
these proposals and preferred instead, to make an ad hoc award of about Rs 4,400 crores for panchayat bodies and Rs IOOO crores for municipalities. The Commlssion stlpulated that these amounts should be in addition to those coming from State governments and that local bodtes should be requlred to suitably match these contributions by raising thelr own resources. The Commission also stipulated that the grants were not lntended for salaries and wages. It was hoped ttrat these ad hoc awards, though modest, would prompt the local bodies and State governments to consider more systematically the issues of local body flnances and to what realistic extent they could be supported by devolutions or grants-in-ald. The Pant Commlssion thus set the stage for the State Finance Commlssions.

State Flnance Commissions Though a few States had established Muntclpal Finance Commissions previously, each was a onetime arrangement. It was not intended as a con0nuing mechanism for periodical review of local flnances, allocation of tax proceeds or establishing formulae for grants-in-ald to the local bodies. GuJarat was an exceptlon; it established a Muntcipal Finance Board in 1979,to make grants and loans to urban local

168

Fouer to tte People?

bodles

to
poslUon.

the 74th
be country. States set in 1995 two. reports avallable State reports Pondlch The itself did

of the allocation of entertainment tax and measures to improve the llnancial State Ftnance Commissions set up after .stltutlonal Amendmenlt, therefore, mav ed as the flrst generation SFCs i4 the tween April and November 1994, nlneteen up such Commissions. TWo more follbwed I one in 1997 making 4 total of twentyPunJab and Rajasthan submitted their December 1994, most others made them during 1996 and 1997. So far tqenfi ce Comrnlssions have submitted their udlng one interim repoft in the cage of
of the State Finance Commlssions

any cri of
of the Dtstrib grants-lnpracuce, be largely in Artlcle lmprove and "any could manner address rather funds and an excell

follow any specific pattern nor was {here as in the case of the Central Finance for which a separate act e>dsts. The terms of the SFCs were in most cases a repetition tons of Article 243Y of the ConstituUon. oftax proceeds, assignrnent oftaxeg and were common features. Howevetr in relailng to these three items tended to exerclse ln accountlnA.rTWo other items referred to "the measures needed to flnancial position of thO Municlpalities" other matter referred to the Finance ln the lnterests of sound flnance". these beerr interpreted in a broad proalctive that the State Finance Cotnmtssions qould substantive issues in rrrunictpal flnance merely compiling fiscal deficits. Since have to go together this was also opportunlty for the SFCs to review the

F-U:oncralDomain

169

which would be both vtable and better sewe public interest. Unfortunately, as discussed in the prevlous chapter, most SFCs felt that thls was outstde thelr ttrandate and did not touch the issue of functtonal domain at all. As regards the other aspects of devolution and grants{n-aid, several SFCs have accepted the status quo in respect of tax and non-tax revenues wlthout rlcommending addlttons or exclusions' Part of the reason appears to be that tax resources already assigned tn the past have not been utllised fully and new assignments might create inter Jurisdictlonal lssues. On devolution' some SFCs have tried to create a divlsible pool as done by the Central Flnance

erdsting situaton and recornmend a functlonal domaln

Commisslon; some others have recommended sharing indtvidual taxes or sharlng allocations of central taxes' llke income tax, flowing to the States' Some SFCs have also recommended transferring ffxed sums' While the wide variance in the work and recommendatlons of the SFCs can be attributed to the unlqueness of dlfferent States, lt ts also to be noted that there was very little attempt at the naUonal level to gutde thetr work. The Committee chaired by RaJa Chellltah made sporadic attempts to help the SFCs in the basic

exercises of revenue and expendlture forecast' establishing unit costs of services, etc', but there was no attempt to prepare terms of reference with some commonality for the different States and also include in them items whtch would enable the work of future Finance Commissions. The Ministry of Urban
Development made some tentadve attempts to provide such asslstance but they were not pursued'

t70

sltc
Out only
manner. been

under
.H"tyutra.

the acceptance has been limifed to a few ltems. Whlle in the apptoach of the various SFCs are sed as inevitable because of the differing contexts the States, most of the Commissions travJ dealt expenditure needs and forecasts on the basis of it and current practice. Few have taken a total vt of development needs and financial i. The West Bengal, Karnataka and plunJab SFCs be the exceptions in addressing the us Lrr(: clucp Ltons In aooresslng domaln of local bodies. Regarding revenue ts, the SFCs have generally supported more for the local bodies in determining the rates. ra regard to plan funds, however, some States Kerala and West Bengal have been more forth Lg ln allocating from 4O to bO per cent of the State plan to urban and rural local bodies to formulate and implement their own schemes. The I Central Finance Commlssion was set up bya ential order in July 199g undef the of Dr A M Khusro. In the case of local bodles, Terms of Reference s{ipulate that the Flnance mmlsslon mmission shall take into account the ations of the SFCs, and where SFCs repofts not available make lts town assessment about the anner and extent of augmentation gf the fund of the State. The Commissiorl has

Finnncio.lDomrrin

t7l

been speciflcally asked to take into account the provisions required to be made for the einoluments
and terminal benefits of local bodies including those of teachers. The Terms of Reference also urge the Commission to consider the raising of additional taxes

by panchayats and municipalities and take into account the power, authority and responsibility

transferred to panchayats and municipalities under the Constitutional Amendment. Prima facie, these Terms of Reference provide a broad enough canvas for the Finance Commission to undertake some path breaking work. The quesUon is, will it do so? Part of the answer lies in the future-in the work of the second generation SFCs which are beginning to be set up. Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have already done so. Given the constltutional provisions, the new SFCs have to shed the reluctance of the previous ones to relate systematically the functional responsibilities of the local bodles to flnancial requlrements. The SFCs will also do well to spell out the principles and their rationale on which the Commission's recommendations will be based. Fiscal autonomy of local bodies can be reached only if they can build up thelr own Ilnances. Almost all the States are now under severe flnancial straln. Current revenue balances which used to flnance State plans to the extent of 40 per cent till the Sixth Five-Year Plan are now negaUve. State plans have to rely increasingly on Central assistance' The flscal malatse has spread across the States.ts If the revlval of local body finances is dependent on devolution, it may well be a non-starter.

t72

Power to the Feople?

The

Commls ions may not be the only route for strength municipal flnances; 'nor should it be. from the Centre may only help meet in part the re dellcits which are evetr-increasin$ as a result of pay. The only Approach open to local is to carve out a tax domatn of theif own and : funding options by other means. In the past few , several city goverffnents have been trying su opfions for mobilising fesources. Access to the market has been an important step. The Municipal Corporation was the lirst to float a bond of Rs 10O crores.r6 The Corpofatton obtained AA credit rating from ORISIL, which was a pion exercise for both orgimisattons. .Apart from fin cial lnstitutions, the rbond has been to by the general public of Ahmedabad as well. rating has since been obtained by sgveral other citi like Pune, Surat, Vijayawada, Banghlore, Mumbat, cutta, etc. Bonds have $ince been flbated by though by private placement instdad of public as in the case of Ahmedabad. Medium llke Nasik, Aurangabad and Sholapur in plan to tap the debt markets.'Z The of obtaining credit rating appears to be of mu more value to the city governments than the mo itself. Ahmedabad, it must be mentioned was bro ln 1994; it had an overdraft ofRs 22 cbores and an cash loss of F[s 35 croresi The
fabled

Access to Gapltal Markbt come of the Central and State F.ihance

did not eem to help their c4pital cityi

bid to

and business acumefi of the Guidratis

An

was appointed who made a deterrhined income from octroi, property tax and

Ftwrclr.lDomain

173

non-tx revenues and also cut costs' By March 1995' all past losses and overdrafts were wlped out't8 ForLunately, the elected regime continued to support the reform initiatives, including the proposal to obtain credlt ratlng. Credit rating, invariably introduces transparency and some minimum efficiency in keeping accounts which may be more enduring benefits than the credlt itself. Public subscription to municlpal bonds also ensures increased awareness in municipal matters and is a significant manifestation of citizen ownershlp. A portion of the tax proceeds are usually
Ahmedabad, or a sinking fund which in turn promotes Ughter flnancial management'

kept tn an escrow account, as in the case of

Prlvate-Publtc PartnershiPs Additionally, several cities have also moved towards prtvatisation of public services, elther for capital ievelopment or for management including publicprivate partnerships. From such metropolitan towns as Chennai, Bangalore or Pune to small towns like Tiruppur or RaJkot, a variety of arrangements have been made to secure such private sector participation in services, for example' the provislon and maintenance of water supply or collection of solid waste. Ttre scope ranges from constnrction, operation and maintenance of water supply treatment plants (as in Pune or Bangalore), construction only (as in Chennat), or comprehensive partnership between the muntcipallty and the main lndustry tn the city and the State government (as in Tiruppur)' ConstrucUon ;rnd malntenance of urban roads and bridges have been taken up through private sector partictpation in Coimbatore, Madurai' Karur' NOIDA' Udalpur' etc'

174

Pouer to the people?

Similar lnitiatives have commerlced in collectton. and recycling of city wastes as well.rs It is not that any of these cases offers an ekample of total lsation. The building and upkebp of a city cture has many implications dnd its flnan is highly complex. The examples mer[floned indicate a departure from the past pattern 0f total depen on the public exchequer; they also show recogni n on the part of city governments thAt their people r, and ue prepared to; pay for sdryices. What i needed is the willingness to devise organis tlonal financial arrangements fof that
purpose
Na -level organisations like HUDCO, and State entities e Karnataka Urban Development Flnance Corpora on or Tamil Nadu Urban Developmeni pund (which Ls become Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure

Financ g Services). as also companies like the Infrastru I-eastng and Financial Service$ have helped t r promote innovative concepts of project IInan and maintenance. Bilateral and multilatlral

aid

age

corporati assistan Strenuo different properLy system, Yet, all

signific magnitu the efforts to ln most

F]ll,l.arcialDomain

t75

The lacuna that remains is ln correlatlng the establishment and work schedule of the Central and State Flnance Commissions. When the loth Finance Commission was set up in 1993, the State Finrnce Commissions had not come into existence. The initlal view of the Pant Commission was that in the circumstances it would not be possible for it to consider the subject at all. However, in the end, as already mentioned, some ad hoc recommendations and awards were made. It ts only thereafter that the SFCs were formed. The l lth Finance Commission set up tn July 1998 will, therefore, have to go back to the 1996 SFC reports even lf they have been limited tn scope and unlikely to be of much help to the Commlsslon. Its own term of offlce will end sometime in 2000. Reports of the second generaUon SFCs are unlikely to be avallable by then. There is thus a mlsmatch in the timing of the Central Finance Commission and State Finance Commissions. State laws and executlve orders should, therefore, ensur.e that SFCs are established and their reports made available in tlme so that they could serve as inputs to the Central Finance Commission. If not, there wlll not be a substantlve response to SFC recommendatlons and the local bodies are in danger of missing the bus.

Flnance Commissions have a catalytic role in thls. So does the Central Finance Commission.

L76

Pouer to thC, People?

NOTES
196

Hugh. Founda tinn oJ t ocal Slby-Gouernmenin maic-, t and Burma, Bombay: Lalwani Publishtng House,

2.V
3. 4.

tarangaiya, l\1 and Pattatrhiram, M. ed. Locol

ln

Indi(J., Select Readings. BombaJr: Allied

1969. Network, October 1999. lssue: All India Institute

Self Government, Delhi. , Hugh. op.cit. D. atarangaiya, M. op.cit. 6. Force on Housing and Urban Development, Shelter for the Urban Poor and Slum Improvement, Flanning nlsslon, Government of India, New Delhi: September

Ref
and

rs and r unc[ronal Devolution" An issue paper arl(I Functional uevolutlon ,An tssue paper
ted at the Regional Meet on Devolution of Fqnctional rancial Powers to Urban Local Bodies, Regiondl Centre 'an and Environmental Studies, Osmania Universitv.

Fourth Constitutional Amendment Act, Institutional

for
8.
9. 10.

Januarv 1999.

oJ The National Commission

on Urbo;niso;ttoru August

ll.
t2.
13.

)rt: l-ok Sabha Secretariat, July 1992. tion between Dr Manmohari Singh and thb author latter's visit to Washington DiC for the Annqal Bank Meeting, 1994.
oJ

the l0th

F1lrqnce Commission (1995-2O0O). New

: Government of India, lgg4.

.ces. Delhi.

RQ Update. October 1998. Institute df Social

t4.

ur, O,P. Issues Bejore the Fttance Conunission: StoteFlscal Relations, A Preliminqry Note. Delhi: National of Public Finance and Policy, January 1999. , Rakesh, "Achieving Economic Security, Ttle Fiscal mt". National Council of Applitd Economic Rbsearch, Mimeo, unpublished.

F-tnrlrrr:inlDomrrin
16.
Nogarpoil|rkc- Netuork. December f 998.

177

All India Institute of

Local Self Government, Delhi'

t7.

*Turning around the city of Ahmedabad", 18. Kawsal, Anita. Paper submitted at the Municipal Management Reforms

Ibtd.

19, Nagaryaltko Network, February 1999' All India Institute of

Local Self Government, Delhi.

Seminar. October 1999, Lahore, Paldstan.

-a-

Some Pending I$sues

the
d

74

governance. Several issues perFlsting past and arising anew, will challenge the purpos and substance of the Constiturtional r. Some issues need to be flagged more than others as meriting public attention, debate resolution. The role of the district as an enttty of )vernance and as a platform for bridging the between the rural and the urban, vesUng the heads of local bodies with executive flowers so that and authority are not dlvorced. the t of multi-municipal aqglomerAtions and interface between the ciflzens and ttle citv are some. of the lssues which ,merit greater a on than in the past.

far rep esent a wide range of beginntngs in

the shortcomings and delays, the 73nd and Amendments to the Constitutiofi, the laws, and the follow up actions taken so

from

Contlnuum The between rural and urban arearb is a hangover from Indla's colonial histqry. However that hiatus d the logic of the economic and political in contemporary India. On the political

The

Some

Pendttg Isates

179

sanctt$r the hiatus. Apart from the well_known statement that India lives in its villages, GandhiJf dld hold forth against cities with some feroc$r. ,.I regard the growth of cities as an evil thing, unfortunate for manklnd and the world, unfortunate for England and certainly unfortunate for India. The Brttish have exploited India through its cities. The latter have exploited the villages. The blood of the villages is the cement with whteh the edillce of the cifles ls bullt."r Strong words, tndeed, but it should be remembered tJrey were prompted by GandhiJi's anguish about the decllne of the village economy, the impact of forelgn cloth on indigenous spinnlng and weavlng, and the siphoning off of the produce and raw materials to forelgn markets. GandhiJi's view on industrialisailon and materialism should not be assumed to convey a consistent denunciation of ciiles en masse. On the contrary, he wrote positively about clttes and the need to manage them properly. ..I consider myself a lover of munictpal life", he wrote ln young India ln 1929, "I think it ls a rare privilege for a person to flnd htmself in the position of a Munictpal Councillor... it ls a sacred task to be approached in a sptrit of servlce."2 Elsewhere he observed that,.the government has hltherto used them (municipaltttes) to consoltdate Its power. But when the cldzens are united they can attaln muntcipal home rule in a moment..3 There ls Ittfle polnt, therefore, in lnvo}dng Gandh{t's name and belabourtng a needless controversy on what represents Indta today-its villages or cities. The truth is they both do. Especially ln post Independent India urbanlsatlon is malnly the spatial mantfestaflon of

side, GandhiJl's name has been invoked frequenily to

180

Power to tte PPopIe?

the country. It ts to the na

c changes which have swept across the

known that the contributlon of agriculture domestic product in percentage terms has been steadily going down, while the share of and, more signlflcantly, of servlces has ily increaslng. Thts, however, does not trnean been decllne ln agrlculture as such. Agricr,llture an conunu to employ a signiflcant part of the lAbour force and in absolute terms the value of agricultural products also been going up. Indeed, lncreaFes in productlvtty and incomes have errlerged t determinant of urbanlsafion across as an . Dlstrtcts like Ludhiana, Gurdaspur, the co

Hlssar,

c
cent htgher res

lndustry
sources changes

dtstrlcts
emp dynamic polttlcal electora GuJarat, flgure is needs aslde.

constltu
average.

etc., whtch contrlbute more than I per to India's total rlce or wheat crop, reveal a gee of urbanisation as compared to the State averages.4 While manufacturing servlces also continue to be important f urbanlsatton, the economic and Focial place tn the 'front line' agricultural lndlcate strong potentlal. In terrtrrs of t and lncome, the mandt towns are equally centres of manufacture and trade. t\s for ce at least one-third of the country's ls urban. In States like Maharashtra, rll Nadu, Karnataka or Kerala the present ly to be 40 per cent or even more. The voice ofthat electorate cannot be brlrshed number of MPs and MLA's that the Urban choose may be less even though urban ncles have a larger electorate than the The reason for that ls the freeue on

rnal, Bardhaman, West

Godavari,

fume Pendhg

Issues

lgl

rearrangement of Lok Sabha and Assembly

dellmltatlon slnce 1976 whtch has prevented any

weaker sectlons of the soclety, accountablllty or prodmtty to cltlzens are all lssues whlch cannot be classlfled as etther rural or urban. Theyare tndlvlslble and public pollcy cannot but treat them otherwtse. As for the physlcal aspects of urbanlsaflon, lt ls often argued that outslde of metropolltan areas urbanlsatlon poses no maJor issues tn regard to plannlng, development or admlnlstraflon. Thls ls stmply not true. From the l99l census we can lnfer that out of about 5OO dtstricts ln the country about 32O may be regarded as predomlnanfly rural ln the sense that urban populatlon ln these dtstrlcts ls only about 25 per cent or less. On the other hand, about thlrty dlstrlcts are predomlnantly urban wlth thelr urban populatton ranglng from 50 to IOO per cent. In the remalnlng hundred districts, urban populaUon ls more than 25 per cent and is lncreaslng rapldly. In seventy of these dlstrlcts the decenntal urban growth rate durlng the perlod l98l-91 exceeded 60 per cent.(r Such dlstrlcts are to be found across the country, for example Karlmnagar ln Andhra Pradesh, Kammp tn Assam, Kasargod ln Kerala, Chttradurga tn Karnataka, Banaskantha ln GuJarat, or Rewarl ln Haryana. Most ofthese dlstrlcts have at least a dozen towns ofvarylng

constltuencles on the basls of current populauon. Coplng wtth and managing these economlc changes and facllltatlng a more equltable dlstrlbuflon of the galns are lmportant concerns of local as much as natlonal and State governments. It makes no sense, therefore, to arttflclally separate the substance of rural and urban self-governance. Democracy, decentrallsatlon, people's parttcipatlon, empowerment of the

r82
slzes,

PoLDer to the People?

growtng fast; these towns are not islands in

de.

tsolatlo

but closely linked to the surroundlng

by agrlcul the very

provlso
the
or part

the

slze

estab he may an lnd

rather

t draft including the one which was Amen reported upon by the Joint Parliament Commlttee. The co slderatlons whtch weighed with the t in maklng this proviso are not clear. The wtth the so-called industrial townships or townshlps ln post-Independence India has one. While standards of planning, been a houslng roads, etc., have been qulte hlgh, the cost of them has been a serious burden on the Indus . The Parllament Commlttee on Public tngs had made several observations about the non vlalblllty of such townships.T An extensive study comp.rny or proJect townships built in Indta focusing ln partlcular on the soafter townshlps of Durgapur, Bhllai, Bokaro called

any of

that urbanisation has been prompted mtc growth whether of industry, servlces or , tt is surprising and unfortunate that in last version of the 74th dmendment Bill, a was added to Article 243Q whereby t could exclude lndustrlal townships from of the Act. The proviso states that "a mav not be constituted ln an urban area f as the Governor may, having regard to of the area and municipal services being or proposed to be provided by an indllrstrial t ln that area and sueh other factors as flt, by publlc notiflcation speciS to be townshlp". Thts provlso appea-rs to be a addltlon which did not flgure at all in e earlier versions of the Constitutional

fume Pending Issues

183

and Rourkela revealed that there have been se@us flnancial and management problems tn these pmpany townships apart from signiflcant social lssues faced by a 'stngle employer and its captlve' populatton.E The experience with the so-called Tata Zamlndarl of Jamshedpur in Blhar has also not been a happy one etther for the cttizens especlally those not worklng for any of the Tata Companles or the government, responsible for dealing wi,th the out growth and pertpherles of Jamshedpur. Yet the preservatlon of the Tata Company's Zamindari status appears to have been one of the reasons for inserting the spectal proviso. International experlence has also shown that this type of company town, where the company management assumes a'womb to tomb' responslblltty for a dependent population, has been unwlse. By denylng partlctpation to the people in the management of thetr town the companles have also dented themselves any prospects of taxatton. Agalnst such experience the proviso to Artlcle 2430 is lne:rpllcable. Prior to the Amendment many of these company townships were administered by an Eurangement known as Notified Area Committees. The 1989 Amendment Bill speciflcally stated ttrat such NoUied Area Commlttees would be deemed to be nagrr panchayats lf their population is less than IO,OOO. The 74th Amendment as finally enacted does not contaln any such clause. The only redeemlng feature is that no State apperrs to have taken recourse to this proviso so far ln speci$rlng lndustrlal townshlps and excluding them from the appltcatton of the amended constitutlonal provlsions. Milltary cantonments however have always remained out of the purview of municipal laws in most

Power to tte People?

of 1924
ments There

of the world. In India the Cantonments Act the admtntstratlon of such cantonBoards constltuted for the pqrpose. only slxty-two such Boards in the cquntry.

Excep
lore, very

ln metropolltan areas llke

Kanpur,

the oth
fore ment

Pune, Secunderabadl Chennal, Bangaor Calcutta where such cantonmepts are a part of the total urban agglomerailon, are somewhat secluded, and do not thereproblems of coordtna,ting thelr developttre surrounding areas.

Dlgtrlct Plannlng Commlttcc

and the countrv have to share the rfarlous physlcal and economlc resources of the dlstriCt such as tunlcatlons, water resources and tr'narket places. llocatton of water for lrrigation, drinking, or lnd ls alreadv a contentious lssue in mahv disrrg with each other's wastes is another serlous lem. The sugar mill and disttllery wastes of small, medlum and large units in westPradesh, or the textlle and dying units ln GuJarat or Andhra Pradesh foultrrg and water courses are a well known phenomenon.s unlclpal solld wastes-be they chemlcals, plasttcs, hospltal wastes or other debris-splll over

tnto th countryslde and ftnd thelr way into

lng and

but
form to nlng ls

streams. Agricultural lands at the fringe large or small, are lncreaslngly prone to These are problems that need undetrstandponse, not in a distant State head{uarter the local area. The district needs a platplre and resolve these lssues. Dlstrict planlmportant process for the purpose.

Some Pending Issues

185

While most of the States have provided for Dtstrtct Plannlng Commlttees (DPCs) in the conformlty laws and some like Andhra Pradesh and Orlssa have got separate laws for setting up the DPCs, in the llrst instance only seven states-Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, RaJasthan, West Bengal, Tamll Nadu and Kerala-established DPCs as envisaged ln the 74th Amendment.ro The process has been delayed mainly because of some bureaucratic and organlsational issues. First is the fact that the provisions on dtstrict planning are to be found ln the 74th rather than the 73rd Constitutional Amendment. Rural Development departments in the various State governments have traditionally regarded distrtct level planning as falling in their domain but since they flnd that the provlslons for the DPC are now a part of the 74th Constitutional Arnendment, under the tttle Part IX A Municipallties, their reaction sometimes has been that these committees are the concern of the Urban Development or Municipal Affairs department ln the State. These departments, on the other hand, do not have a clue about the obJectives and purposes of the District Planning Committee and expect that some other department, like Planning, wlll take care of it; The result is that the item often became orphaned between disinterested departments.

A second unresolved issue has been the

relationship between the Zilla Parishad and the DPC. The amended Constltution envisages the DPC as a stand alone entity. While Article 243 ZD provides for members of a DPC to be elected by and from amongst the elected members of the Zilla Parishad and of the munictpalitles in the distrlct, it does not speciS the relatlonshlp between the Zilla Parishad and the DPC.

186

Pouer ta the: People?

Paris the Divtsional Commissioner and the Collector of the Dlstrict are ex-offfcio members. The Act also stlpulates that the Collector shall be the Member tary. The Maharashtra government has thus co its past approach of treating Zilla as one of the local bodles whtch will be lnvolved dlstrtct planning but not take the lead.

governments have, therefore, been left to The draw own lnterpretatlons. In Assam, Karnrataka, Kerala, and West Bengal the State laws envisage the DPC as a part of the Zilla Parishad." The ofthe Parishad is also designated as of the DPC. In Madhya Pradesh a mlrrister government ts the Chairperson of the of the DPC and expected to lead and guide district planning wlth the help of the district adm-inistration.l2 The c of the Zllla Parishad is a Vice Chatnman. GuJarat d Maharashtra have long had District Plarming Dwelopment Committees with a mlnisrer government as the Chalrperson. The view of the governments has been that these district of these are an adequate substitute for the DPCs. However, to fullil the Constitutional obligation, in October 998 Maharashtra enacted a separate District Plannfng Comrnlttee Act.'3 The Act provides fbr the rninlster charge of the district to be the Chairperson whlle Zilla Parishad President, the CEO of the

Dlctrlct
The

DPC h
varlous

itself been a matter of conslderable ty and confusion. Even before the

and DPC of the district administratlon vis-a-vls the

nal Amendment, the representatives of

departments at the distrlct level did

fume Pending Issues

t87

not regard district planning as an integrated exercise' District Planning Boards or Councils, by whatever name called, were regarded more as committees for helping out interdepartmental cooperation in the lmplementation of various schemes. The formulation of plans and proJects, financial allocations, scheme approval, technical supervision, monitoring' etc', were all constdered the responstbility of the concerned sectoral department. The Collector or the Distrlct Magistrate was regarded at best as a coordinator rather than a leader or captatn ofthe team ofdistriet offlcials' In fact. a team as such did not really edst except ln a numerical sense. If some Collectors indeed performed as a captain, lt was more because of ttrelr personality and the degree of support they recelved from the State governrnent. The language of the Constitutlonal Amendment has also not helped to clarf the mandate of the DPC. Schedules l1 and 12 ltsted various items to be entrusted to the panchayats and the municipalitles whlch would require sector-wise planning' Apart from the Schedule, the main body of the two Acts also speclfies "the preparation of plan for economic development and social justice" as a major purpose of the panchayats and the municipaltties vide Articles 24g G and243W. The presumption, therefore, is that both rural and urban local bodies would formulate plans for thelr respective areas and then they would be consolldated at the district level. At the same time, "the consolldaflon and preparation of draft development plan for the district as awhole" requlres matters of common lnterest between the panchayats and the municipalities to be consldered, including spatial planning, sharing of water and other physical and

188

Power to ttrc people?

natu

consoll ate.

Besides the DPC ls also expected to consult various ons in its work. But neither the Constitution nor any f the State laws indicate which organibations are to consulted or what should be the process of such tatlon. For instancei a public iu/orks, health, lucation or agriculture departmerlt may fo its own State-level sectoral plan with parts of it ng to a particular district. The panchayats and clpalltles in that district may or may not have role to play in these plans. In such a sltuation there not be much for the DpC to con$ult or

resources, tntegrated development of cture, protecilon of the environmertrt. etc.

be trea
d

d ts of a State do not really subscribqlto the concept f their plans converging in a spatial sense in the dis ct. Often their attitude is that any plan by a Zllla Parishad or a Distrlct planning Comml is Just another sectoral plan and should

It is also observd that

sectoral

tal plan.
Thus
e scope

ln the same manner as anv other

and substance of dtstrlct plahnlng,

however poorly on the been

uch its deslrabiltty, has remalned a verv trallsation agenda. Where DpC hds not wtthin aZllla Parishad, the ownership of ttself has not been apparent. The DpC is as a one-shot one-tifne Commlttee. It consldered a panchayati raj type of body an ad hoc group as in Tamil Naclu. In
and a very badly lmplemented item

the then ls not but

States the related State

Madhya Pradesh, GuJarat, and Maharashtra has been that district planning can be the pollcles, priorities and plans of the t only tf a minister of the State

Some Pendtng Issues

r89

government presides over the process' Thts may not f,e free of problems. A minister designated to head a he DPC may or may not hail from that dlstrict' If does, there may be charges from his fellow ministers that he ts trytng to create a personal fiefdom in the dtstrlct. If he does not, and is still nomlnated to head feel the DPC, mlnisters hatllng from that district may chairman left out and also complaln that the DPC has no knowledge of the dlstrtct' The questlon wlll also remaln as to who is responslble tn the State the Assembly for matters falling withtn the ambit of DPC. Will lt be the minister of the admtnlstrative department for the panchayats, the sectoral mlnister concerned, or the mlnlster designated for the distrlct? Underllntng all these confltcting positlons ls the to become fear that lf dlstrtct level planning was tndeed multl-sectoral and lnter-departmental and also cover project allocatlon, monltoring and supeMslon' it would .rru"lty enhance the power and influenc-e of the Zllla Parfshad and other local bodtes in the distrlct' There ts a prevatling vlew that for some years to come' the decentraltsatton wtll be accepted' if at all' only tn gram sabha, the vlllage panchayat- or the small town irunlclpality. In terms of populatton' electorate' executlve power or authority these levels are regarded the as manageable and not perceived as a threat to polltlcal leadershtp of the State' On the other hand' orr" moves up the scale and deals wtth the dtstrtcts' to "" medlum towns and large city, the leadership tends and be more apprehenslve about local autonomy authorlty' The dlstrlct ls the flrst maJor level where the demand for local autonomy and the deslre for State control are ltkely to come into confllct' Identlcal

fears surfaced durtng the l97Os when the Zilla

Pouer to thd people?

the all as ln These

6 b

indeed became prominent and powerful in n and dispensation of government funds nataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and RaJasthan.

ears have also prompted somi State

the instan term for electi five to twenty months for thd ostensible reason that would enable more Zilla parlshad members to beco : chairpersons and facilitate rotation of the office as part of the reservation approach.ra

Distrlct
The

ent
pects of a district emerging as a dlstinct )rnance needs to be considered in the light

of the
of the

tier of

circumstances. Whatever be the loftv

e4pressed while debating the various drafts
as a speclfic objecflve. The word governance

titutional Amendment, this was not

Itself, or rr that matter what consdtutes a tier of , was loosely understood, and even more loosely cussed-ranging from Zilla pariShads perfo advisory functions on the one hand, to dlrectly ,lementing some schemes on the other. The Zilla Parishad itself has not been conceived in the Co ional Amendment as a body adequately or reflecting the characteristics qf the district. te tl:e bulk of its members are to be elected territorial cbnstituencies, Article 245 C allows States to provide for the representailon of ns of intermediate level panchayats in the district I el. The intermediate panchayats, in turn,

Some Pending Issues

l9r

can have representatives from ttre village panchayats' The Zilla Parishad is, therefore, regarded as the apex of rural panchayats though in actual fact this need not be so. Ifthe territorial condtituencies are properly

'

delineated, ttre Zllla Parishad's composition would reflect the rural-urban character ofthe dtstrict' Fune or Nagpur Zilla Parlshad will not be the same as that of Sangtf or Satara; nor will the Coimbatore dlstrlct panchiyat be the same as that of Dharmapuri' Hopefully, If a Zilla Parishad's comPositlon is adequately representative of the district's rural or urban character, it will be reflected in its leadership as well. It would also help if some representation ln the Zilla Parishad is given to the urban local bodies as well, in the salne manner as Panchayat Samitis' The Zilla Parishad could then be regarded as a more broad-based democratically composed body at the distrlct level with the potential to emerge as a district government rather than an apex rural panchayat' Why were these questions not raised before drafting the Constituttonal Amendments? Indeed they were to some extent. RaJlv Gandhl raised them when he addressed the Dlstrict Magistrates during the workshop series on Responsive Administration urging them to conslder 'how best to marry the institutions of Panchayati RaJ with the requirements of District Planning. Panchayatt Raj without district planning migh be a somewhat hollow shell, even as district

plinntng wlthout Panchayati RaJ would

be

,rrtr.pt"""tttative. Democratlc district planning requires expertise. Your task here is to see how' 'wiihout sacrlfictng technical excellence' district planntngl based on representative political insfltuilons wlll reflect the people's priorities and aspirations'"rs

'

r92
He had
r urged

Pouer to the Feople?

consideration ofhow to relate. and lntegrate, decentralisation of powers and responsl llltles to the district level by mobilltslng revenues, maintatnlng a focus on some priortty areas such as needs, requirements of the wbaker sections, by changing the paternalisttc model of dlstrict tlon to make it more responslve and partt patory. He had also raised the questions: "Would th needs of responsive distrirct administtation be best by Zllla Parlshad which is akln to a form of distrtct t or would it be better to have a multtpllci of bodies with separate Jurisdlctlons? And if the cen role ln district planning is assignbd to the Zllla had how do we associate other elected represen tlves like MPs and MI Asr.ro The .e dld take place, but the participants were limlt Perhaps RaJiv Gandhi felt more comfort_ able his ideals and ideas with a group like District M istrates who in age and temper matbhed his own. thls workshop series, as well as ln the numerous conferences and semlnars that follorved. RaJlv r had cautioned there would be resis_ tance to approaches, whether from polluclaris or other ech ons of bureaucracy. His hope was that once the tttutional mandate was secured, rhost people wo d come around to explore and devise the legal and anisational arrangements,for distrlct plan_ ning to be ut in place. That di I happen. More so, ironically, ln West Bengal and Kerala which were stridently vocal duling the debat on the Amendment. These two Statei have made nslderable progress towards meaningful decen tlon, gtving flesh and substance to lttre frame of Constttutional Amendmnt. The Kefala

lf posslb

fume Pendittg Issues

193

State Planning Board has taken the tnitiative in launching . ttigttty participatory and widespread planning lrocess. The Peoples Plan Campaign as it is Ltto*tt, has enabled the 1,142 village and block ""* panchayats to prepare development plans for their with the help of statistlcal and other o*r,

"i."" information compiled by various voluntary

organisations. rTThe Kerala Sashthra Sahitya Parishad had strown the way for this in a small panchayat called Kalyasserl in Kannur District' The integratlon of these panchayat plans as well as those prepared by fifty-flve municipalities and three corporations is ttre tast of the fourteen District Planning Committees in the State. Headed by the Zilla Parishad chairperson' and supported by voluntary technical professionals'

the DPG were able to accomplish thts lntegration while complementing the packages wlth their own

plans.18 Forty per cent of the outlay of Kerala's Ninth iive-Year Plan is accounted for by the Peoples' Plan'

Apart from plannlng, the devolution of powers and functtons and, more tmportantly, the transfer of the related administrative apparatus to the control of the rural and urban local bodies have rendered Kerala's its decentralisatlon programme one of the largest of kind tn the world.te West Bengal, another State in the forefront of oppositlon to n4iv Gandhi, has been largely successful in tnfusing substance and strength to the obJectives of the Constituttonal Amendment' Its DPC Act was one of the flrst ln the country specifftng the Presldent of the Ztlla Partshad as the chairperson of the DPC and the DM/Collector as the Secretary'2o The West that Bengal Act has taken parttcular care to ensure issues ttre bpC addresses both rural and urban

Potuer to the people?

provision of an urban ,development sub_ e. The West Bengal pandhayat Act of l9Z3 the Constltutional Amendrnent, it provideJ aJl lve mandate for the Zilla parishads covering the execution and mairrtenance of variou; control over community assets, supef\rising powers er the intermediate panchayats and villagJ pan , power to levy ,tolls, rates, and fees. etc], In the ake of the Constitutional Amendmeflt. the DPC Act has added to this mandate. Is of only political howa
cen a Marxist paraiox? be argued that such extensive devolution in Kerala and West Bengal has been possible use of the dominance and conttnuity of the ership. The question has been raised party is able to reconcile .democratic which is the party's organising principle, , :ratlc decentralisailon', which is the essence rati raj. It has been suggested that pbwers devolved to the lower echelons of the same not to the local bodies. Flowever the facts story. About 40 per cent of the local ta and about 30 per cerrt in West Bengal by Opposition parties, At least in these writ of the "party bossesi' would not run. both the States also point out the fallacv lation that 'decentralisation' has been ,rs.i the centralism of the party. Their question )mmunist party is really so authoritarian it want to share power with the Opposition level?22 Prima facie the logic of the convlncing; that powers have lndeed been also borne out by the facts. yet partisan

with'
of
have

parfy

tell a bodies in a.re con areas the I.eaders in the to is if the

whywoul at the
argument devolved

Some Pending

lsxrcs

195

poltUcs is not totally absent. When some Manctst members defected and tried to remove the chairman from a panchayat in Payyavur, a Kerala village' the CPM State leadership tried to prevent that by strong arm tactics and also by further amending the antldefectlon laws. The glare of the media and court directives made the leadership retrace its shapes and reconcllq itself to the "loss" of the panchayat' The 'Payyavur Portent'was highlighted by newspapers as an-ominous sign for panchayats but fortunately the event has not been repeated elsewhere'23 Sharing of politlcal power is a complex phenomenon ln any situation. It cannot be resolved lnrougtr theoretical critiques on single or multi-party rule, or organlsailonal arrangements however'elaborate they may be. The problems of power sharlng also

depend on changing political circumstances' Karnataka's experience reveals how the course of decentralisation, thought to have been established well and truly after Nasir Sab's pioneering legislation
and the electlons thereafter, can still be deflected' For

a spell of nearly five years the prospects of the

panchayats, including the District Councils, emerglng as viable and workable units of self-government seemed to be bright. In April 1989, Karnataka came under President's Rule because of very different reasons. However, during the eight months of that

rule, powers of the local bodies were curtailed' drastically so in the case of the District Councils'24 This was around the same time that Rajiv Gandht

was trying to mobilise support across the country for

his decentralisation initiative. The Nagarpalika

Sammelan, held at Bangalore in June 1989' interesting and constructive though it was' could not have gone

196

Power to the people?

down the ca
carne to

in the host state. Though the Congress :r in Karnataka in December lgg9, things did not . The new government undetrmined the s of all the District Councils ln regard to funding changes in the budget, hiring oi staff, etc. The government's hostility to the local bodies ually threatened the very suiwival of which had been so carefully nurtured in the te. Both the Congress and the non_Congress elected to the local bodies resented the State s stance. A special session of the Assemblv called to :nd the Panchayat Law and thereby crrrtuit their was cancelled at the last minute because of RaJiv ndhi's intervention.2s Conllicts arose openly between State level and local level politicians of party afflliations. power sharing became a conten things to the 64th effect an again.
Shartng
Con

ll with the Karnataka public as advancing se of decentralisation because of thi

bya

clout with the government, ability to access publtc or simply Jealousy and apprehension about . Resolution perhaps lles in devising a mutually reficial relationship between the different levels of clitical leaders. Elections at the national and levels ln quick succession seem to have brought sense of realism and the need for a more

ety of considerations such as poliiical

and Patronage tlons regarding power shafing are prorrrpted

Some Pending Issues

t97

enduring political relationship between candidates and

their constituencies which can ensure re-election.

Instead of a mass of supporters whose loyalty depends

on personal quid pro quo, political leaders in some States appear inclined to favour a network of party
functionaries and grassroot workers at the pemchayat, town and district levels. A Lok Sabha or an Assembly constituency contains rep,resentatives of several panchayats and towns. It will not be easy for the contenders to win at any one level without the support of those who are already functioning at other levels. Allahabad, for example, comprises seven Assembly and two tok Sabha constituencies. The Corporation itself consists of sixty wards with an elected Councillor from each and a directly elected Mayor. The MP, the ML,A, the Mayor and Councillor all need each other. Each is as interested in his or her own re-election as any other and that task will be facilitated if they can come together and function as a network, even if that network is transitional. The success of Digvijay Singh and the Congress in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections in 1998, and the repeated re-election of Jyoti Basu's government in West Bengal, have both been held up as examples of sustaining support from the people as well as party workers and functionaries in the decentralised levels. The various measures taken thereafter in Madhya Pradesh and, more recently, in other States like Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra to strengthen panchayati raj are cited as an outcome of this lesson.2{i

The MPLADS as a Dlstortlon

The Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) introduced in 1993 to enable

198

Power to the People?

me

iden

small works of eapital nature i4 their

of both the Lnk Sabha and RaJya Sabha to

has been an uncertain and distorting elemen in the decentralisation scene. Under the scheme much as Rs. 2 crores per year is available to each to be spent on schemes of his or her cholce

and
Co

ge

:.

them implemented thrOugh the District Since MPs are not a part of the executive

and

ofa
argued tenable. the and
gov

and control. "pork

Unfort
tmpl local

various
implem brought
1998

India. F Area
to the

total is well The

d

all items of works financed are essentially nature and not in the Union List it mav be t the whole arrangement is not legally des, the provision of fr,rnds to be spent at r of the MPs and outside of the budgetory procedures of the Central or the State ts may be considered extra constittrtlonal ts to diversion of public funds to private in American politics is referred to as a " has thus been institutionalised irl India. ately in most cases the selectiorr and tatlon of the schemes do not go throUgh the like Panchayats or Municipalities. The deficiencies and irregularities in the ntation of the MPLAD Scheme has been light and adversely comrnented upon in the rt of the Comptroller and Auditor Gerleral of from reforming and correcting tt, the L,ocal lopment Scheme has been extended to of State Assemblies as well in several states t of Rs. 50 lakhs per mernber per year. The available through this discretionarjr route two thousand crores gf rupees pe[ year. tionary scheme is in glaring contrast to n and local autonomy.

Some

Pendirg lssrrcs

I99

Multi-Munictpal Agglomerations If maintaining the rural-urban continuum and securing their inter-relationships through the Zllla Parishad and the District Planning Committee have

remained complex and unresolved problems the'urban-urban continuum' has been no less intractable' The census of 1991 identifies 296 urban agglomerations in the size class I, that is with a population of a lakh or more. If a larger cut off flgure of ten lakhs or one million is applied, the number will be twentythree. Of these, barring a few like Ludhiana' Madural' Lucknow, or Surat' which are large but single municipal enilties, most others are urban agglomeratlons comprislng several municipal Jurisdictlons'27 These multi-municipal urban ailomeratlons have reached their present dimension and conflguration over a period of time. Growth has ovemrn traditional boundaries. Initlally the boundaries of the central city could be extended, two or three times as in the case of Mumbai but after that such extensions were resisted. Surrounding municipalities were not prepared to give up their jurisdictions' The Calcutta Metropolitan area now comprises three corporations' thirty-four municipalitles and numerous non-municipal Lrban localities.2s The metropolitan areas of -Chennat, Bangalore, Mumbal and Hyderabad cover ten to thirty municipal jurisdictions' In Delhi' nominally there are only three--the Cantonment' the NDMC and the Delhi Municipal Corporation (MCD)' But the MCD itself is a leviathan covering nearly l '6O0 sq km and stretching across vastly different localittes such as Shakur Baiti' Rohini and Greater Kailash'2s World govexperience has shown that devising a system of reconcillng local autonomy with a metropoli-

"ri*".

200

power to the Feople?

tan
scale

Becaus
Besldes

ns for their discharge become inevltable.

the tasks are numerous, multiple

has not been easy. Their size, arrd the complexity of problems, are formidable.

Central consplcu us. WhiIe the corporailons or the municipalifles in these agglomerations may be zealous of their domain, the agglomeratton ltself needs wlde perspective, plannlng, advocacy and actlon. ces of water, disposal of waste, traffic and dralnage, abatement of air pollution, es of itenrs where one city corporration or the cipality alone cannot achleve mu0h in isolatlon. BMC for instance, horwever competent it may Itself to be, cannot do much about publlc ort ln Mumbai if the Ministry of RallWays handllng suburban system does not subscribe to plan. The Government of India's Ministrv of Envlro ment or Maharashtra's State pollrrtion Control cannot do much to mitigate polluilon without C's acUve collaboration. Above all,, the main ce of the infrastructure to keep the mlghty econornlc rachine of Mumbai going i$ a task requiring much int on and collaboration between the Central, te and local governments, the public and the priv sector, tndustry, comrnerce and the cltizenry. First'is now a muctr heralded think tank set by the Corporate Sector and one of its tasks ls to develop a vision for Bombay,s future. The Metropoll Planning Committee was envisaged as an interplatform for simllar purpqses. The g of the tdea of an MpC, its inclusion in the

fume Pendirq lssues

20r

74th Amendment and its non-implementaUon have been discussed in an earlier chapter. The Maharashtra government passed an ordinance in June 1999 to enable the creation of a 45-member Metropolitan' Planning Committee in Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur metropolltan areas.3o Thirty of the members are to be elected from among the elected members of the municipalities and panchayats in the area in proportion to their populatlon' The other flfteen including the chairperson, representatives of trade' industry and other walks of public life are to be nominated by the State government. While the enabling legislatton has now been passed, the MPCs have not been constituted so far when the MPC is termed an opportunity will be available to bring the government and industry together in chartlng a course for Mumbat's future.
The East Aslan ExPerience The process of decentralisation itself may work against a metropolitan perspective, because individual municipalities become reluctant to part with the autonomy and powers they have now derived' To give provincial status to large cities, as has been done by Cnitt", can be one possible approach' This would, however, call for a greater degree of sophistication and maturity than what this country has been able to display so far. Beijing, Shanghai and TianJin are 'city sta-tes' so to speak' The mayor appointed by the national government is also the head of the province' The province comprises several urban and rural of Shanghai Jurisdictions. For instance, the province consists of the old city of Shanghai as well as a number of other urban areas and townshlps and

202 several

Potuer to the F,eople?

Metro when her disband Metropoli attempts Metropoli struggle In the metropoli any State

and functions as a Municipalityl or a country, a partlcular jurisdiction.3r Some other cities, e Tokyo or Seoul, have a federative t. The Tolryo Metropolitan Area is a two_ tier fed on comprising several municipalities at one level; ey send their representaitives to the Tokyo Metropo Assembly, The Governor is also an elected . The resources and functions between the me politan area and various municipalities it are carefully demarcated. Metropolitan Manlla :rs eighteen municipal jurisdictions. A
Commlssion, headed by Imelda Marcos usband was President of philippinesi was by Corazon Aquino and replaced by a weak Development Authority. Despite various uring the regime of Fidel Ramos, the Development Authority continuds to search of a mandate and authoritv.s2 case of India, since most of the large areas are also the seat of the State there is no inclinatioh on the part of p to accord a provincial status to . In Delhi, the executive domain is between the Central government, the so_ of the National Capital Territory headed Minlster, the Lt. Governor who is a kind representative and an exec!.rtive and the local bodies. Thls confused set_ ', desiribed as a 'grand design for nont. On the representative front, 7 memlbers

of auton

ups of villages as well. Each has a measure

such citt
called by the of mlx of a fun up, often governan

', cannot be a model for mega city nt, 70 MLAs and 134 Corporation are keen to occupy the same political

of

Par

Some Pendmg Issues

203

space. They all regard themselves as representatives of the people and therefore want to be active at several levels at the same time. Because of the scale of their problems and high visibility, the mega clties of India pre-empt much of

the attention and resources given to address urban problems. The problems persist and, from time to
time, they cast a shadow on the fortunes of the State's political leadership. The CPM in West Bengal has always had a hard time dealing with Calcutta. The Shiv Sena and the B.JP have to continually watch Mumbai and infuse it every nowand thenwith stzeable injecilons of infrastructure investment. Elections have not been held in Hyderabad for tJle past few years, because of the apprehension that the Mayor to be elected directly by the public at large for a five year term may emerge as a counter point to the State leadership. However, the offlcial reason put forth is that the city's boundaries need to be enlarged to absorb the edsttng nine small municipalities which surround it. The 1998 elections in Delhi, which saw the Congress trounce the BJP, raised doubts about the prowess of the nailonal government in managing the capital city. This kind of reaction needs to be avoided. Multi-municipal urban agglomerations are complex entities on their own and they cannot be treated as mere extensions of State headquarters. They dre, ln essence, inter-governmental cities. They need speclal and lnnovative arrangements reconciling the twin poles of centralisation and decentralisation, between aggregation-enabling scale economtes and efftciency on the one hand, and disaggregation promoting proximity and sensitivity to local needs on the other. Mega ciiles in India have largely avoided faclng this challenge.

204

Power to the People?

NOTES
Gandhi "Back to the Village". ln the mtutd oJ tte Gandhi, compiled by R.K. Prabhu in the Rojgar Navj eevan Publications, Ahmedabad, 1945, Gandhi in Young Indta. 28 March 1929. Gandhi in Young India. 3 November 192 I . K.C. Theme Paper on Urbanisotion. LB National Academy of Administration, November 1996. K.C. Under Flanchrlse oJ Urban Areas. ph, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi. of India 1991. Paper II of 1911. of the Committee on Public Undertakings: Third Lok 8th August, lnk Sabha Secretariat, Delhi, 1965. makrishnan, K.C. "New Towns in India:" Indian te of Management, Calcutta mimeo, June 1997. ' F$h Report. Delhi: Centre for Science and

2.
3.

J.

Sab 8.

v.
lo.

Insti tne

ent, 1999.

2,

ed

Decentralised Gooernance in Rural India: Vol I & & S.P. Jain, National Institute of Development (NIRD), Hyderabad.
oJ

R.C. Chaudhurv

I l. Ibid. 12. Ma
13.

Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act, r956.

htra District Planning

1998.

Committee Ordinance.

Oct 14. "Sta

kvel

Leaders and Panchayati Raj

In

Karnataka".

by Prof. B.K. Chandrasekhar, prbsented at the $eminar on ts, Raiiv Gandhi Foundation, December 1997. 15. Inau ural address to Collectors in the workshop on Administration at Coimbatore, June l98E; Raiiu s Selected Speeches and Wnfings, Vol 4, PuL ication

Government ol lndia. 1989.

16. Ibad.
).7
.

Ma
1999

George. "Kerala's Success Story". Hindu,

24 May

18.

Ban

's Participation in Planning: Kerala Experiment", D padhayay Economic and. Folitical Weekly, 27

19. Ri

-3 October 1997. Frank & Barbara Chapin, "Power to the Mdlayalee

Some Pending Issues

205

Instltute of Rural Development (NIRD). lsaac Thomas, T.M. Peoples plan Campaign Kerala: State Planning Board, lgg8. 23. 'Payyavur portent", Indian Express, Chennai, 8 January

20. District Planning Committee Act, West Bengal 1994. 21. Chaudhury R.C, & Jain S.P. ed. patterns o.f Decentralised. Gouernance in Rtro;l India Vol. I & 2. Hyderabad: National

people", Economic and. Political Weeklg,29 November 1997.

22.

1999.

24, Manor, James, Chapter on Karnataka in 25.

26. Ibad. 27. Census of India 1991. 28. 'Urban West Bengal". Institute of l,ocal Government and
Urban Studies, Calcutta: f995-96.

Democracg and Decentrolisdtion in South Asia end. West. Cambridge: lg9g. "A Constitutional Outrage". Article by Mani Shankar Aiyar, Sunday Magozine, 3l January 1999.

29. Municlpal Corporation of Delhi Handbook

3O. Shcnghai-Reuolutinn & Deuelopment in an Asian Metropotis. ed. Christopher Howe. Cambridge University press, l9gl, 31. Metroplitan Manogenant; K C Sivaramakrishnan and Leslie Green;, Asian Experience; World Bank and Oxford University Press. 1988 32. Matnrashtra Metropolitan Planntng Committees (Constitution and Functions) Ordinance 1999 (Mah.Ord XI of 99): June
1999.

10
thority, Accountability and Proximity to Citizens

The and

ce of the decentralisation exercise

in Indta

ding the Constitution for that purpose is that pan hayats and municipalities should function as units f self-government. That objecttve will be lost are treated merely as agents of the if these Central governments for implementing or State programmes and projects sanctiorled by monito also not the intention that the panchayats them. It cipalities would be merely an administrative and m ement with a layer of elected representatives represi over them. Since "power to the people" has been th declared objective, obviously executive authori has to be vested in the elected represenresponsibility for the functioning of the tatlves. es, the exercise of executive authority for local that p , and accountability to the public which this en , all have to go together. Unfortunately, confuslo , contradictions, and inaction continue to prevail this regard. There are five issues whilch are pertinen to the situation. The first ls whether e*ercise of auth ty should have a single person focus such as the ead of a panchayat or the president of a

Authoritg, Accountabilitg and Proimtty to

Citizens

2O7

muntcipality. Second, in what manner should the day-to-day exercise ofexecuilve authority be detailed and allocated to the officials and other staffappointed by the local bodies? The third, arising fiom ttre second, is the inter-relationship between the elected representatives and the officials. The fourth is the degree ofcontrol to be exercised by a State government over a municipality. And finally, there has to be accountabiltty to the public. While the Constltutional Amendment has left it to

the States to determine whether heads of

municipaltties or city corporations should be directly elected by voters, or indirectly elected by and from amongst the elected councillors, it is not intended that all powers should be concentrated in the Sarpanch or the municipal Fresident. Indeed, a fair measure of that may be unavoidable in villages and small towns where one person has to act and take responsibility instead of processing every decision through an elaborate apparatus of committees. In medlum towns and large cities a simplistic 'Strong Mayor' approach may not be workable. In fact, the strength of the mayor may itself depend on the support he or she is able to mobilise and the extent to which the exercise of executlve authority is shared in a ratlonal manner unong the elected representatlves. Tamll Nadu. Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Fradesh are the three States where mayors are elected directly by the cit5r's voters at large. The Mayor of Chennai, for instance, has one of the largest electorates in the country. In all these three States the mayors have a tenure of five years. The procedure for removing them is adequately complex and in effect makes them more secure than the Chief Minister or other ministers in

208

Pouser to the Feople?

In Uttar Pradesh, for example, a motion of ce cannot be brought against the mayor two years. Thereaftel it needs the support ofat I one-third of the members to be moved and a twomajority to be passed. However, Uhough the rs are blessed with a long life they have little byway o execuilve responsibilities. Powers are dsually shared tween various standing committees and a chief tive appointed by the State goverrrment. Irrespec of whether a mayr is directly or indirectly elected, r whether the tenure is one vear or more. this si on prevails in most cities. Mayors or munici chairpersons in most States have thus ceremonial entities, chiefly "cutting ribbons
S

the

no for the

Duri g the debate on the Constitutional Amen t the need for an appropriate stnircture
u'ithin
down Haroob Rana in for such response to do not of struc the con past.
org Mo

and

babies".

any )n may be a good principle as set forth by eu, but in running a city on a day-to-day basis th lines of distinction between delibefation and tion, between debate and decision, ca.n never be clear. reality there is a large gap between what

the deli erative and executive wings of

corporation and municipalities, and laying guidelines in this regard, were discussed. Mehta in the lOth Lnk Sabha and KaShiram e I lth, both former mayors, had pleaded ements but in vain.2 The Eovernrnent's was that the Constitution was not the place , the States should. Unfortunately. thfls has ed. The inability to address the problems in municipal governance has resulted in uation of several anomalies from the cdlonial so-called distribution of powers between

Auttwrity, Accountabtlitg and. Proximifu to Citizerc

209

is declared as policy and what actually happens on

the ground; and the process of reconciling the two is often erratic. In such clrcumstances, the elected representatives find that legislation or so-called policymaking is only a partial exercise, often uninspiring and polltlcally unrewarding. For a municipal councillor to content himself with policy matters and to leave administration to others is considered the height of
folly.3

cities during the British period the municipal Commissioner remained the kingpin of municipal admlnistration. Usually, he was selected and

In the various patterns which obtained in Indian

This conflict of jurisdiction and loyalties with

appointed by the State government rather than the city government. All the municipal staff worked under his supervision and direction. More importantly, as an appotntee of the State government, he was answerable to that government and not to the city.

consequent damage to the running of the municipality has for long remalned an ilem of much debate. In the absence of a conscious search for alternatives, the contrdversies usually degenerated into disputes of personality and tended to focus more on the perks and privileges attached to the Commissioner's post rather ttran on the exercise of his substantive powers. The All India Council of Mayors, the Central Council

of Local Self Government and different State

Commissions and expert bodies have examined the problem and agreed on the nced for better distribution of powers and responstbilites between the appointed Commissioner and an elected municipal chairperson or mayor. It was expected that the Conformity laws in the wake of the Constitution Amendment would

2to
ad done have

Potuer to thA People?

these issues. Unfortunatelv, this has riot been most cases and the provisions of the past

:n allowed to remain. In some cases. the

has become worse. For examole. the Delhi Corporation Act 1957, which was afnended in 1996 stipulates that the entirerexecutive pdwer for the of carryring out the provisions of the Act in the Commissioner.a In Mahat'ashtra, shall Presid ts of Municipalities are recognised as a

situatio Muni

"Muni

Authority" and have been given

some

powers and they also supervise the work of the officer.s But in the case of Corpofations, inclu Mumbai and Nagpur, the Mayor is not even a'M Authority' and the executive powers vest prln in the Commissioner.6 This is another on of the fear of the large city, sirrrilar to the fr of the district, emerging as a focus o[ power parallel the State. Curtailing the executive domain of the , or placing it under vaiious kinds of State control, has been regarded as a way of countering t. In various other States, municipal laws this similar provisions. Only in Kerala and have West was a conscious attempt made to devise cture and vest elected mayors and the a new chairperson with executive powers so that and accountability can go together. The Mayor- -Council. first introduced in Calcutta and to other municipalities of West Bengal, later of this approach. is the

Authorlty
The

ayor-in-Council (MIC) system introduced in adopts the cabinet mode of governance.T or is elected by the elected councillorb of the

Auttorlty, Accowtabrlitg and. Proximitg to Cillz-ens

2ll

Corporation. The mayor in turn appoints a deputy mayor and a madmum of ten other elected councillors and assigns to them different subjects. Together they form the Mayor-in-Council, which is the executlve authority ln the Corporation and ls collectively answerable to the Corporation councll. The Commissloner, though appointed by the State government, is answerable to the mayor and functlons as the principal executlve oflicer in carrytng out the decisions of the Mayor-in-Council. Another person is elected by the councillors to preside over the meetings of the Council as lts Chairperson. A Muntcipal Accounts Committee, chalred by the Ieader of the Opposttlon parby ln the Council, performs monitoring and watchdog funcflons. The Mayor-in-Council ls ttrus a replica of the Cabinet with the Commlssloner functioning as a Chief Secretary helping the Mayortn-Council. The Chalrman of the Councll is like the Speaker of the Assembly or the Lok Sabha. It ts worth meniloning that the Mayor-in-Councll system in Calcutta was adopted well before the T4hAmendment' The Calcutta Corporation had experimented with varlous models for decades. In 1923, lt was Surendranath Bane{ee's Swaral or self-government model with a parliamentary system. ChlttaranJan Das as Mayor and Subhas Bose as Chief Executlve prefened to rrn the Corporation on rigid party Unes. A strong Commlssioner system was established in 1951. The MIC Act itself came into effect tn 1984 after a long and patient search to reconctle the supremacy of an elected Councll and the strengths of an elected execuUve. In between, there were spells of
supersession.

212 The

Power to tte People?

to the
under

-ln-Council system has been extended munlclpalltles ln We$t Bengal aF well name President-in-Council. The system,

whlch
and has States. the el of that slngle Nadu, mayor or by the a
slnce

slmllar to a parliamentary form of

Uttar
approach twelve

but they are

have also there ls

note that
orlglnate syptem Mlnlster Btll for se a llmtted Blll was dlssolutto
to adopt

has been in existence for over ten vears recelving increasing attenuon in other from provldlng execuUve autholity to functionaries tt also enables the sharing thorlty by a grorrp of people rather than a On the other hand, ln States like Tamil Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh whefe the municlpal chalrperson is elected dtnectly , the arrangement prima facie resembles form of government. In reality, however, out earller, this form has been onlv a shell powers have not been vested in them. has recently attempted a moBified provlding for an pxecuilve Committee of ns to be elected by the Corporation 8 The Mayor presldes over this Comrdttee the members are elected bv the Council answerable to hlm. Other State laws maintained a Jumbled arrangement where clear focus of authority. lt ts interesUng to the concept of Mayor-in.Councll dld not Calcutta. A Bfll for setflng up sqch a Delht was introduced by the Union flome early as 1966. There was a companlon up a Metropolitan Councll for Delhi as
for a State governrnent. The s$cond

but the llrst collapsed due to the of the Lok Sabha.e 1998, the Maharashtra government decided Mayor-ln-Council system for Nagpur and

AutJartfu, Accorntabllilg and. Proximiv to

Cilizens

213

Mumbai. Discussion about the legislatlon was accompanied by much acrimony in the Assembly. However, Chief Mintster Manohar Joshi steered it
through, and gave assurances at several stages that the law was an experiment and changes would be made as warranted by experience. The Act provided for a mayor to be elected by the members of the Corporation for a term of two-and-a-half-years. The Mayor would then appoint a Deputy Mayor and such number of other members of the Mayor-in-Council as the State government prescribes. The size of the Mayor-in-Council would thus be decided by the State government rather than by law. Further, deviating
from the Calcutta model, the Maharashtra Act tagged a Departmental Commlttee to every member of the Mayor-ln-Council, comprising twelve Councillors of the Corporation. As a result, about l8O Counclllors of the Corporatlon were sitflng as members of the 16odd departmental committees. Since the Commlttees were vested wlth powers to sanctlon works and award tenders, there was litUe for the Member-in-charge to do. The departmental committees were empowered to deal wlth proposals cosfing up to Rs 2 crores; for proposals irrvolving higher sums, the Mayor-ln-Council was to be the sanctioning authority. The munlclpal commlssloner, as in the case of Calcutta, was made answerable to the mayor.ro Whtle the arrangement vastly altered the previous situation of a strong

Commissioner, nelther the mayor nor the other

members of the MIC felt happy as they did not have any speciflc powers. The expectation was that the MIC system would vest executive authority principally in the elected representatives. The Commissioner and offlcialdom apprehended that the proposal would

2t4
merely vadous

Pou)er to the People?

authority and dllute responstbtlity, and

and ad.lustments had to be made

the brmulatlon and enactrnent of the law. to the Calcutta experience, where the draft law for -in-Council was debated in and out of for nearly four years to anticipalte and sort as many difllculties as posslble, Mumbai the MIC system hastlly. The law also a few other features whlch appeared to sow the of dlscord rlght from the beginningr between the Bombay Corporation and the tra government have been numerous and lasted for a long time depending orl party at either lwel. Mumbai was always regarded asah ey pot: both the Mahapalika and the Man have slidrmished for control frequently. The t Act also contalned some perrricious provlsl right from the start. Investirtg the tal committees with the power to award the co was one. Another was that the Co er, supposed to be answerable to the Mayor, nevertheless furnish a confldential report every onth to the State qovernment on the

ln

of the Mavor-in-Cour,)cil.'r A third was

requlrlng the Commi$sloner to report to if any policles, or actions of the Mavor-in-Councll went agalnst e pollcies and programmes of the State These provisions clearty showed the Co sloner to be a confidant of the State rather than a trusted execuflve of the Nelther the bureaucracv nor the Ctty elected representatlves seemed very happy or about the Mayor-in-Councll systefn. The
the

the Sta e government promptly

Authorat1, AccomtobitiQ andProximitg ta

Ci1zens

215

decislon to treat meeflngs of the Mayor-ln-Councll as closed door sessions brought ln needless secrecy' contrary to the open house tradition followed at the Corporation Council meetings earller't2 In some important cases of awarding contracts decisions of the Mayor-in-Council were reversed by the State government. Differences of opinion between the State tt. Corporation surfaced and received much ".rO attention in the press. Finally, when Manohar Joshl was eased out of office in March 1999' his successor, Rane, decided to scrap the whole system ln both Mumbal and Nagpur. The decision to abandon the system appeared to be as hasty as the decision to adopt it in the flrst Place. However, the Mayor-in-Council system continues to attract attentlon. Madhya Pradesh has passed a law for a modified version applicable to its citles and munlcipalitles.t3The mayors of GuJarat have favoured the system and the State government has formed a

group to prepare a draft legislation' The Delhi Corporation has also requested the Central government to consider reorgantsing the city government on this basis. The All India Council of M.yo." has commended the approach.'a The tnitial perceptlon of most politicians is that the Mayor-inbouncil system will increase their tenure and also

confer more authority on them. The Calcutta system has been in operation since 1985. The elected Councillors prefer it for the important reason that their own colleagues are Members-in-Charge of vadous subJects and it is easier to approach them instead of an appointed official like the Commissioner'rs The interaction between the Member-in-Charge and an elected Councillor is potitically more responsive and

2t6
MLA or

Power to tlw People?

to what happens between a Minister and an MP. In the process, the Councillors flnd their lmportance enhanced and expect a quicker solutlon the problems of their consiltuencles. The bureau also seems to prefer the wider and easier access now have to the political executive rather than the ous system where everything had to go through Commissioner.

loyalUes elected

Reprcsentatlves-Staff Rclatlonship some lessons from the MIC experlence which can be applied to the general issue between elected representatives and offlcials? In staffing aity governments, have been tried in different States. In tra, GuJarat and some other States th chief ofllcers of municipalities belong to a State cadre and can be trarlsferred frofti one city to . Additionally, ln some States, techntcal staff like engineers, Ilnance, or health ofllcer$. can also to similar cadres. Since these officers belong to State rather than the city, it is unrealistic to that they will diligently and expeditiously car5, out of the elected executives. Corporgtions tn larger ies may have more powers in appointing their o staff to technical and admtnistfative posltions rut the Comrnissioner hinlself and. in some cases, a few kev officials may trc sclenfed and ew key officials mnw be selected appotn by the State government. A confllct of
Are in CaI of the appoin several tnevttable. on separation of powers notwithsta4ding, cillors consider their active participation

Tbc

ln

decis

on making at the Committee oT the

t of the Corporation more signillcant and

At/ihor@, Accotn:diabilitA andProximifu to

Citizens

217

important than their legtslative role' They always seek to lnfluence the municipal bureaucracy regardlng priorittes of development expenditure, award of contracts, property tzxation or personnel matters' The patterns of such inlluence and control have been analysed extensively in the case of several Indian cities.r6 Apart from municipal councillors, politicians at other levels also seek to lnfluence municipal functloning in varlous ways. On some occaslons, the process leads to maJor confrontations and attempts to remove the Chtef Executlve Offlcer' The dramatlc happenings surrounding the transfer of Arrn Bhatla' the Commissioner of the Pune Corporation-the Publlc Interest Liilgatlon and High Court decision reversing the transfer order, and eventually the State government prevailing in its 'will' after the Pune Corporaflon passed a resolutlon seeking Bhatia's removal-are discussed in the next chapter' Even wtthout reaching such extremes, the relattonship between the elected representatives and staff are fraught with a number of problems' The theory of decentralisafion is that local bodies should have the flnal say and full control over thelr staff' However' the question is, given the demanding situatlon and the .,r.r-p.."".tt potenUal for confrontation with elected representatives, whether the local bodies will be able to attract and hold good personnel' One obvious answer is that the rights and responsibilitles of the municipal offlcials and staff shotrld be laid down as clearly and as elaborately as possible' The Calcutta Act for instance, identifles over l7O items out of a total of 3OO where the Commissioner has been given speciflc powers and responsibiltties espectally ln regard to ttre Corporation's flnancial and regulatory domaln'r7

2t8
Statc
The

Power to tlrc Feopte?

whtch ttre one nd local self- government was heralded as the cradl of democracy, it was rocked frequenHy by the ro hands of State controll in the ,rul rc of efflcten propriety and financian discipline. For example, ures and restrictions on formulailon of the bu )t in a munictpallty are far too marry to en The bypassing of local authorities and the of thelr responsibLlittes before and aft.er In ce have been discussed earlien The frequ and long periods of supersesslon of valrious tr the counky have also been menfloned. The CorporationAct of 1888 was an excqrtion ln the that it did not contain any provision for superses lon. The Maharashtra government lntrodu a provision for this duri4g the l970s; and imposed a brief period an administrator's regime. Due to outcry, that measurd was withdrawn. In the itsell the Delht Corporation has been under from time to Ume. It was expcted that the 4th Constituilonal Amendment would at least co on the Corporattons the right to live; but elecUons still not been held in many cfties. which had been under Fupersession for twentyyears, is once again without any eldcted city Hierar y ts a prominent feature of rnanv and bureaucracies. In the sub-continent such ls prominent in both the politlcal and .lve arenas. The national governmelrt is to be higher than the States, and even the

trol over Cifieg urth aspect relating to authority, and .ity is State control over munlcipalities, been a long contested Subject. Whlle on

Auttarifu, Accowttabtlitg and Proximitg to Cttizens 219

district admlnistratton is perceived to be superlor to the rural and urban local bodies. While the Constituilon itself has allowed extraordinary powers to these hlgher level governmentb to set aside those below a whole gamut of rules and regulations have been devised to keep in check the lower levels of
admtnistration. Protest agatnst such a command and control regtme has been met usually by appointing committees. The Committee on the Relationship between State Governments and I-ocal Bodies was set up as early as 1954. Like others before and after' this Committee paid lip service to the virtues of autonomy

but also hoisted numerous flags of caution ln

exerclsing that autonomy' Barflwala, a long time champion of municipal autonomy in the country' argued tn his dlssentlng notes that the many vices latd at the door of the local government can be dlscovered also tn the upper levels.ts Thc Clty and the Cltizen It is readily conceded in all literature relevant to governance that authortty and accountability have to go together. An important question is: Accountability to whom? In an hierarchical administratlve setup accountabtltty to the higher level government becomes more prorninent. In a democratic setup, where the people are the real source ofpower, accountabillty to the people is more important. Whatever tJre system of power for the elected representatives' the one fact that appears to be common to most citles is that the existing organisatlonal arrangements preclude any effective partictpation of the people themselves and, therefore, the means for securing public accountability. The provision for the Ward Committee in the

220
Co need.

Pouer to the People?

tional Amendment was designed to mdet this the Joint Parliament Commlttee fevived this on it argued that "in the larger rnunicipal bodies e citizens do not have easy access to the elected epresentatives since the ward size is very large. e Committee therefore is of the vtew that in M having a populatlon,of 3 lakhs of more, Wards ees should be constituted'J.,n 'fhe JpC also re ommended that while the couficillor rep the ward should be the chairpetson of

such a compos

committee, the details regarding its

,

territorial area and the manner of filling

the can be left to the State legislatures. The JpC further mmended that the States could provide for oth committees at the interfnediate level. The inten thus was clear that Wards Committees would operate at the neighbourhood level and ttrrereby proximity between the people and their enhan rep tives. It would also be an important forum to estab accountability and provide an opportunity for the people to have a say in how the city gove nts perform in their own localities. In addition or intermediate committees could be a further ure of decentralisation. The exibility allowed to the State governlments has used rather cynically to achieve the opposite of . Kerala and West Bengal are the only States ere a committee has been provided foF each ward. In ther States, the Ward Committees are for a group of , which has thus increased rather than reduced e distance between ther citizen and their represen tives. In Hyderabad, a Ward Committee is to eover t less than ten wards.2o Ih Tamtl Nadu and ln it is to consist of contiguous wards. In

AufhoritA, AccourtabilitA and Proximitg to

Citizens

221

Maharashtra single member electoral wards are the basic building block for constituting a corporaflon though administrative wards may comprise groups of them. The Greater Mumbat Corporation, for example,

consists of 25 administrative wards with 22 I Counctllors. Each administrative ward has, on an

average, a population of five to six lakhs and covers an area of 20 sq km. In keeping with the essence of the Amendment, it would have been appropriate to set up Ward Committees around a councillor's ward or for a smaller group of them. Instead, the whole administrative ward has been taken as the area for a Ward Committee. The Committee's membership is to consist of all the Councillors (1O to l5)' a few corporation officials and not more than three NGO representatives nomlnated by the councillors'2r As against a ceiling of twenty-five, the number of Ward Committees established in the BMC is sixteen' In Chennal, the 155 municipal wards are grouped into ten Wards Committees, each representing a population of close to four lakhs. Bangalore's Wards Committees covers an average population of about two lakhs. In effect, these are Zonal Committees and not Ward Committees.22 There is' of course, no legal bar to this but the composition of these Wards Committees clearly betrays the intention of the State governments not to regard them as platforms for public interacflon since these committees are to conslst only of the elected councillors and, in a few cases, a sprlnkltng of non-officials. At any rate' the population coverage of these committees precludes any active parttcipation of cltizens. In comparison, a Ward Committee in Calcutta or Trivandrum will represent a populaUon of 4O,OOO to 7O'OOO.

222

Power to tle people?

particl
Commi

by the
the and co org the nomina once in
SU

within
nomina by the mention
States,

by the
It is the

on a fewd parks in As growth complex. structure and in Chen ai. Banjara Hills in Hyderabad is a neighbo hood vastly different ftom Charnlinar. Bandra not the same as Prabha Devi or BycUlla in

has provided by far thetmost broadl-based tory arrangement. Each of the Ward will have the elected councillor as its and not more ttran flfty persons norrlinated cipal chairperson in consultation with .23 Heads of educatlonal institrlrtions. tives of residents' assodiations, indlustrial establishments, sports and ctrltural ons, doctors in government and private , trade unions and prominent citizens are ories from which these persons are to be . The Ward Committee is to meet at least three months and it is given powbrs to development and other municipal activities ward. In West Bengal, the size of the Ward varies from seven to forurteen, half to be by the ward councillor and the other half ration. Here again, ttre categorids are . In Karnataka, Gujarat and some other of the committee are to be nominated te government. In Andhra Fradesh, the are to consist of only ward councilllors.2a in Delhi, but some thlnkins has started Residents' Associatlons to undbrtake t activities and look after comnlunitv neighbourhood. es expand and densiff, problems of trrban d management will ortly become more The morphologr and the socio-ecofiomic of the cities are also highly varied. Myltapore are not the same as Royapuram or Sajldapet

AuttorttA, Accouttabilitg atd Proximitg to Citizens

223

Mumbai. While in Delhi, VasantVihar's nelghbourhood needs and its capacity for community action has little in common with Paharyanj. The nature of the problems

in the ward or ttte ability of its cltizens to mobilise local resources to cope with them are
faced

conspicuously different. For the average citlzen, the City Corporation is as far removed as Rashtrapatl Bhavan. The quality of daily urban life depends much more on whether the roads and dralns in the neighbourhood are kept clean, the street lights work or garbage ls removed from the locality as per schedule, etc. The people in the neighbourhood have a greater stake in ensuring that its few parks are not overrun by ltlth or vandalised, and the chaos of

constructlon and traffic, at least inside the

netghbourhood, is kept wlthin tolerable limits.

neighbourhood-the mohalla, the palli or the pakkam by whatever name it is called-is much more important than the happenings, dignified or otherwise, in the State Assemblies and Secretariat. The ward is not Just a territorial and statistical entity comprising so many voters who are expected to go to the polling booths once in every flve years and remaln qulet for the rest of the tlme. It can be an effective platform for the citlzens' partictpatlon and support which are as much a flnancial as a political necessity. The Ward
Committee ls thus the urban counterpart of the villagelevel panchayat. It need not be as numerous but it certainly has to be representatlve. There is no logic in denying the elective principle to the city dweller. If he can be trusted to elect a Councillor. an MLA and an MP, he can also be trusted to elect members of his own neighbourhood to a Ward

What happens ln the municipal ward' the

224

wer to the FeopLe?

Comml of el

of the ne selection
viewed

consutu

unf
the relteraU in the group or substitu

at

If the numbers involved and the pf.ocess is worrisome to the pollticians, at least a can be made by providing for represenrtation ood people through a transparent process. The Ward Committee has been many States as a concesslon and not a requirement. This is both wrong and . The Ward Committee is intendedl as a platform for public particlpation, organised roots level. There can be no better of its purpose than what has been stated of the Joint Parliament Committee. A a Committee of Councillors cannot be a

Authoritg, Accountabilttg and Proximitg to Citizens

225

NOTES

l.

Nagarpalika Netusork, Vol ll. All lndia Institute of t'ocal Self

2. lnk Sabha Debates. 8 August 1989 and I December 1992' 3. Church, R. "Authorlty and lnfluence in Indian Municipal

Government, Delhi.

4. 5.

Corporations: Politics and Councillors in Lucknow" in D B Rosenthal (ed.), ?he CitIJ in Indaa'n Politircs. Delhi: Thomson Press, 1976. Delhi Municipal Corporation Act 1957 (as amended in 1994)' The Bombay Provinclal Municipal Corporation Act 1949 (as

amended in 1996). 6, The Bombay Munlcipal Corporation Act 1888 (as amended ln 1995) and The City of Nagpur Corporation Act 1948 (as amended in 1995). 7. 'salient Features of the Mayor-in-Council System under the Calcutta Municipal Corporation Act 198O"' Paper presented by R. M. Kapoor at the Workshop Coverning Metropolis organised by All India Institute of Local Self Governrnent, Mumbai: December 1997.

8. The Uttar Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act 1959 (as amended in 1995). 9. "Saltent Features of the Mayor-in-Council System", op'cit' lO. Palnitker, Sneha. Report on Mayor-in-Council System in
Mumbai, All India Institute of tocal Self-Government, April
1999.

ll.

The Mumbai Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act 1998'

t2. Sneha, - Palnitket, oP,cit. 13. Madhya Pradesh Municipal Corporation Act' 1956' I4. Nagorpalllria Netlt)ork. Delhi: All India Institite of Local Self Government, February 1999. 15. Mukhopadhyay, Ashok. "Politics and Bureaucracy in Urban Govemance: The Indian experience in India" in The Challenge oJ IJrbon Governance: ed. Om Prakash Mathur' National Institute of Pub lic Finance and Policy, Delhil 1999' I tr. Rosenthal, D. B. The CttV in lndio:n Politics. Delhi: Thomson Press, 1976. 17. 'salient Features of the Mayor-in-Council System", op'cit' 18. C D Barflwala's note of the dissent in Report of Committee

226

Power to the People?

Relationshlp between State Governments 4nd Iocal Government of India, New Delht lg54, rnentioned Mukhopadhayay, op.cit. oJ tte Joint Pd'rlid;nrr]ntaLry Committee, tqk Sabha

July

1992.

Pradesh Municipal Cori,poration

Act [ 99b tas

21. The

inl

bay Municipal Corporation Act lggg (as Amended

Nettuork. December 1998. All India Institute of Self Government Delhi.

Municipalities Act, 1994. Municipal Corporation Act 1955 (as amended tn

11
Prospects for the Future

Indla is not the only country to embark on decentralisatlon; there are at least fifty to slxty

countries in the world engaged in similar exercises. In some cases, the reason is merely disengagement of the national governments, abandoning some of their responsibllities because they cannot manage them politically or financially and, therefore, passing them to local governments. In some others-such as Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia-it has been a consclous exerclse to create democratic space for cities and communities through decentrallsation. In these countries. the motivation has come from the political changes in the wake of the dismemberment of the former Sovlet Union. Philippines and Thailand have pursued consclous programmes of decentralisation accompanled by elaborate arrangements for functional and financial devolution. Within the South Asia

Region, Sri Lanka has been pursuing

a programme as a means of reconcillng decentralisation its nailonal integrity with ethnic diversity. Bangladesh has set up an elaborate multi-tier system of rural local bodies: Nepal enacted a comprehensive l.ocal Government Act in 1999.

228

Power to tfui psepleT

The ence ofall these countrles is too trecent to arrlve at any deflnitive concluslon but it is clear that ls a long and arduous ptrocess involved in ens that decentralisation accomplishes tts obJ Indla's own experience ln the past Cleuly shows considerable efforts and preparations were for even the modest sulccess that States likeT Nadu, GuJarat, Maharashtra, Kerala otr West Bengal in the pre-Constitutlonal Amendment period. Indtan experience has also demonsrtrated that wh decentralisatlon moved to a stage where it became threat to the power and patronage of the State I the process was deratled by vArious means. e present hope is that constituttonal wlll protect the process. The large nutnbers ofelected representatives who have now been released into the litical stream have a basic responsibility in carrytng process forward. Todaf, the countX.y has more three milllon elected reprresentatives tn the rural an urban local bodies. Even assuming a thid of them clueless, and another third disintefested or self if the remalning third are curious and seek a for themselves, the political chelnistry will undo change.

The gcd Slzc of Representatlon There is enough evidence to slrow that ttris is to happen. The elected representailves and leaders Panchayats and N4garpalika$ are from time to time, implementafion Of the consUtu provisions. These representatives are already an important politlcal constitulency. The I in the States is also rlrore conscious of the need and the usefulness of local suppod. The

Prospects Jor the

Fltfille

229

outcome of the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh in 1998, when the Congress was returned to power' is regarded as a testimony to the beneflts of such mutual support.'Whether such support is based on any rational system of sharing of powers and functions or not, tt is clear that at the local level the elected representatlves are demanding an increasing share in the politlcal domain. As this demand turns more vocal and lnsistnt' changes in the legal and admlnistrative base of the Nagarpalikas will bec,ome inevitable. The State governments will have to IInd ways of dealing with this demand in a ratlonal and systemaUc way. Denial of the demand, deflecting its direction, or diluting its strength by dtspenslng largesse through dlscreUonary grants to MPs and MLAs, or by manipulatlng the

choice of local leaders may delay the process of decentrallsation but ls unlikely to defeat it' It has been rightly observed that however much the higher echelons of political leadership rntght try' the vast numbers of elected men and women in panchayats and nagarpalikas will get restless, demand implementation of constitutionally mandated provisions and succeed in getting their way sooner or
later.2

In the process, the functional domain of the local bodies wtll slowly, but surely, increase. It wtll also include some critical ltems like environment' poverty
alleviation, economic development and gender issues' The enlarged mandate will not be exclusive and other levels of government urill of course be involved ' But the ctty is where these problems are most visible. Globatisation is a comprehensive term which includes so many different elements. Economic liberalisation

230

Power to tle People?

wlth all When

gove

are det rmlned by market forces rathef than

and losses take place. Citizens cannot be to rrrere spectators when the cities become of global players. We should not forget pened during 1997 and 1998 in the cflfies of and Thailand where the bubble of the East e burst. Even wlthin India. fortunds have between one city and another between Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad and in a industries-from ga_rments to electtonics. es have lost Jobs, some others have $ained. But loyment and poverty were not invented by ciues, are simply more visible in the citi0s and aggravated by national and international may be factors. governments may not know much about dealing these problems, or economic development ln but these concerns cannot be excluded from th ir purvlew. Indeed, as, GorbachoV had the survival of the polity will ltself depend on the ent to whlch that concern and responSibility are by different levels of government. The Vor wlnners these reduced the what ha In Aslan wavered Cal variety Some ci

up side and down side is one major ellement. ts, lncomes andr their distrlbutlon

t prescription, there are bound to be and losers. Cities are the theatres where

tralisation, it needs to be repeated, has been the past and it can be derailed again. safeguards alone may not be enough to carry e momentum for decentfalisation fofward. Even the number of elected representatlves with a le assurance of a political life may not be sufflclen Public opinion and pressure are es$ential
deralled

Prospects Jor

tte Fltture

23r

for sustaining the impulse for change and keeplng lt in the right direcUon. Public Interest Llttgation has been a very lmportant instrument of such pressure. So far such littgation has focused malnly on the holding of elections or the implementatlon of the reservatlon arrangements and formulae. In urban areas, the voice of the people is usually heard as problems such as poor water supply' removal of garbage, or filltng up of potholes in the roads' Public opinlon is rarely expressed on issues of governance except when such reactions are solicited by researchers. What happened in Maharashtra in Apr[
1999, as an outcry at the State governmenfs removal of the Municipal Commlssioner of Pune, is therefore remarkable. Arun Bhatla, an IAS officer was posted as Commissioner of the Pune Municipal Corporation on 6 March 1999.'z On 8 March, he asked for a list of tax defaulters and hotels encroachlng on publtc roads. On 1l March thtrty-three structures were demollshed including a porflon of a 5-Star Hotel. On 13 March' i.e. withtn 7 days of hls assuming charge of tJre post, Mr Bhatia recetved orders from the State government transferring him as Director of the State Archtves. The next day, citlzens of Pune arriived in large numbers at the Municipal office to slgn a memorandum protesting agalnst Mr Bhatla's transfer demands for services or ventilatlon of grievances about

order and condemning politlcal interference in the affairs of the Munictpal Corporatlon.s Wtthrr a few days, some cltlzens' groups moved the High Court through d Public Interest Litigatlon' The Hlgh Court took quick cognizance of the case and, wtthin a month of the event; passed orders holding that the transfer

Power

Lo

tlrc Feople?

also

sald the Hlgh Court, "for orders to be issutd for of unauthorlsed stmctures of powerful lobbles, remaln on paper; it is another thtng to these declsions. We wlsh to emphasise that d the present days when unfortunately
and dishonesty are rampant, qualtties lke lntegrlty and honesty deserve a pat more than a
1."4

reJected the State governfrent's JusUfying the same. The High Court order indirect pralse on Mr Bhatia for the drlve undertaken by hint. "It is one ttring",

e and

government wanted to appeal agatnst s orders but the Suprerne Court rdfused an ln stay.s Mr Bhatla reJoined as Munlcipal Co oner on l5 April and the newsph.pers heralded the outcome as a victory for the people.6 Whlle Pune case received a lot of publtclty, four
The the Htgh

months earller, in Thane, in almost similar )es, a part of the poliUcal leadershlp in
as well as the State wanted the Thane

the

Commlssloner, Chandrasekhar, to be because of his orders of demolition of more forty bungalows built on tribal land. lVhen the Munl Corporation passed a resoluilon Urging the of the Commissioner, the populatlon of Thane ln revolt. A transport strike was called professional groups Jotned. As the entire and o agelnsf what they saw as intimldatory clty politlcal partles, the State leadership got tactlcs the and declded not to transfer the Munticipal er.7 Perhaps Chandrasekhar dealt wtth the with more sagacity and less confrontBtion. Perhaps actlon against encfoachments was

ProsryctsJort!le Ftrtwe

233

selective and not sweeplng as in Pune' It has also been suggested that Chandrasekhar made some special efforts to secure support for his actions from important Political sources. The personality and style of functlontng of the two offlcers is not the lssue here. In both these cases' the publlc outcry was not preceded by any careful assessment of the character or personality of these two tndtviduals. The strength of the spontaneous publlc reactlon was lts perceptlon of what is rtght and wrong. Most unauthorised structures are easlly vlsible, they cannot be covered up or concealed from a vigilant pubhc' Both in Pune and Thane the

Municipal Commissioners carried out a basic

responsibility of the Municipal Corporation to prevent encroachments on public land and not allow lllegal structures to stand. What they did was done openly' fn full public view. It was also done speedtly' It is this transparency that hetped to mobillse public opinton' Aparf from prompting public offlcials to perform' the acilon also sent a message to the elected "itt "tt"' that the public should not be taken for councillors granted. By seeking Judiclal interventlon, the Pune also made it known that they did not expect "itr..t" State leadership would be obJectlve and that the therefore decided agatnst peilUoning ttrat government' The outcry was sufflciently strong and visible to merlt a swift. declsion by the Court' The Supreme Court' by refusing to grant any stay of the High Court order' also stgnalled that the runntng of a clty ls more the

concern of the cltlzens and thelr elected ctty government. Clearly, the message was that publlc ipinion should be respected and that the State should not indulge in any arbitrary action'

234

Power to tte People?

cannot,

maladle of municlpal management. The true signtflc ce of the Pune case ls not Just the relnsta of Commissioner Bhatia but that it

Publlc Intereet Interest Litigation and Judictal intervenilon )wever, be a constant response to the

ln the hlm as high be as

of pulous bullders and traders flagrantly violatlng planntng code, on the other was an uprtght cial determined to do his Job as laid down
The State government's action in rempvjng a week of his Joinlng stood out flagranily ed. Other cases of mallbasance mav not

in upho Perhaps e Pune case is straightforward and uncompli ated. On the one hand, there was the arrav

by people's resolve to mobilise ilrem$elves public interest agairtst arbitrariness.

as right NGOs,

cause ln The B after he

to understand, nor be labelled so clearly wrong. It is also fortunate that individUals, some business leaders found corrlmon
Pune episode. story however did not end there. Soon Joined the Pune Corporation some began. This time, within the Corpor4tion the Commtssioner and some of his ther Bhatia was emboldened bv the or whether he merely conilnudd to

and offlcers. Court's do whate

er he had done in all his prevlous

agalnst what he perceived as corrupuon and lel, events started to turn. Some of the munlclpal counclllors mounted a campaign for the removal the'dogmatic' Commissioner. Eventrrrallv the Munl al Corporation ofPune passed a resolution, on 8 June 1999, in which I 18 members out of the total of I accused Bhatia of being ,,dogmatic,

Prospects Jor the

Frth;;-:e

235

dictatorlal and unaccommodative" in his approach and behaviour with the Corporation and called upon the Maharashtra government to remove him under Section 36 of the Municipal Corporations Act'8 The State government acted with alacrity and within a few hours issued orders posilng Shri Bhatla once again in the Archives Department of the State government. Public outcry was muted. The will and resources needed for yet another round of litigation dtd not seem to be forthcoming. Close on the heels of the Arun Bhatta case, the newspapers carried a story about the Municipal Commissioner of Surat, Jagadisan, and how the builders' lobby in the city was seeking his removal

Jagadisan was proposing that a municipal

development fund be raised in part through a levy on all new building proJects. He also recommended that a municlpal plot be used for a shopping centre. Some

private developers feared this might affect their

interest. The local builders' lobby was reported to be opposed to thts idea as well as the porposal to shift transport godowns. "Another Bhatia in the Making" is how the newspapers descrtbed the situation.s Within a few months Jagadtsan was transferred. Whether the conflict of views and interest is between the Commissioner and elements of his staff or whether it is between the Commissioner and the elected representatives or some vested interests in the city, it is to be accepted that as executve authority ls vested lncreaslngly in the muntclpallties and corporations the scope for possible confltcts will lncrease, not dlminish' The long expressed desire of the elected leaders to exercise executive powers and the opportunlties for doing so in the wake of the

isa
the of the

Power to tte People?

tional Amendment signify a maJor change in tion. The solutlon is to break with the $vstems where the appointed Chief Executlve is a parallel centre of power. Clearly, the vesting of authori ln the elected representatives of the people and that At its discharge they are accortrntable to the blic are essential objedflves of decentrallsation. ltre executive has to be a part of the blected muni authortty, supportlve oflit, and ansWerable to lt. ubordination, however, does not mean surrend ci are entitled to an efficient muhtcipal on. Their right is not only to vote in a muni election; they also have a right to expect that the machinery be in place to dlscharge the co ration's responsibtlities. It is, thetrefore. impo t that the process of selecting a Chief Execu ls also particlpatory and transparerit. The sources recruitment may vary; it may be from a cadre in Maharashtra or Gujarat, dr the appoin ent can be from selected service$. The 6 t should offer a few names. Thdn the b sel could be made by the elected head of the city in nsultation with a cross-section of the Councill rs. Once selected and appointed, the Chief Execu should have a fixed term and his removal should be for exceptional reasons, to be Veriffed and es ablished through proper proceldure. Municip Llities have to perform several huhdred functio , and not all can be done bv the elected head. t is important is to speciff the functibns of the Chie Executive, as also of other key exebutive people, make that known td the public. The Calcutta on Act under which the MaVor-ln-

Prospects

for tte FVhtre

237

Council system was adopted identifles in some detall about 20O in a list of 30O tasks that the Commissioner has to perform. The public thus knows who does
what.ro

Pollttcal Partles and Decentrallsation In the general elections of 1998, most of the major political parties included panchayati raj and

decentralisation as im'portant items in their manlfestos. The Congress-I declared its belief in a
"strong centre, strong states and strong Panchayats and Nagarpalikas". The manifesto went on to say that, "Panchayats and Nagarpalikas are not the third tier of development. They are lnstead the first tier of democrary". The Bharatiya Janata Party promised that for better local self-government it would 'introduce suitable changes in the 73rd and the 74th Amendments to the Constttution with a view to further strengthening Panchayati Raj institutions and giving them a greater autonomy."The United Front reiterated

its commitment to strengthen the process of

decentralisation further. The United Front's manifesto also declared that such "decentralisation is a surest guarantee to safeguard and strengthen democracy in the country". While assuming office tJ:e Bharatiya Janata Party and its alliance partners also mentloned

ln the national agenda for governance that

"Panihayats and local bodies would be activated by glving effective decentralisation right up to the grassroots level.ttAll these promises were repeated in the crop of manifestos for the 1999 general elections Notwithstanding these lofty statements, the fact remalns ttrat none of the political parties have really spent Ume and effort to find out what has been the

238

Power to tle Feople?

progress d what problems are encountered in the decen n process. In some States like Kerala and Bengal the State leadership itself took the initiative pursuing the decentrallsation agenda. In Madhya and Rajasthan, the ruling parties appear have shown some understanding bf the ce of decentralisation fon mobilising and g grassroot political support. Some sustal cornmen rs have argued that in'West Bengdl and Madhya esh the kft Front and the Co/lgress party able to overcome the so-called lncumbencv problem d return to power malnly because of the progress hieved in decentralisation which enabled their cadres to come to power in various local bodies.t2 ugh this does not explain the BJP's loss of power RaJasthan in the State elections of 1998, the su r Congress government appears td have the signlflcance and ampliffed ttre initiative

ecentralisation process. Generallyi, the enth appears to be confined to the offlcials and po leaders in the government rather than the politi partles as such. There is no evlderrce of party entering into a Serious dlscourse any
to cr and in the political implications Of decentrali$afion t manner political power is to be shared at

for the

different This
reflected general

ure to think through the proces$ was during the campaign for the 1999

ons. Candidates for the l-ok Sabha vied with other in promising to be the "Iix-it" person for the al problems, be it water or drainage, road repair or treet lights. National issues were hardly ln focus. To between national and local issueb the voter forced to reduce his expectations to very

Prospects Jor the

friblre

239

simplistlc terms. The "Pehle Paani, Phir Advani" slogan, (Water flrst, Advani next), whlch became popular in the Gandhinagar constituency where the
BJP strongman L K Advanl was the candtdate, ts an example of precisely thls approach. It ls both a trap and an opportunity-a trap, if leaders like Advani and other MPs allow themselves to be portrayed as the local problem solvers, an opportuntty if they colloborate with the local bodies and their elected representatives in working out a more enduring process for dealing with such problems.

Local Governmcnt and the SocletY In Ume tl.e general and growing disenchantment with politics and politicians wlll surely extend to the elected representatives of panchayats and municlpaliUes as well. Corrr.pUon, undoubtedly, is a major cause for this disenchantment. Though stories of rectitude, good performance and responsiveness to local needs continue to emanate from Panchayats and Nagarpalikas, these are not enough to counter the charge that decentralisation has only decentralised corruption. Some States have already seized the opportunity to increase State control over local bodies,l3 There is no real alternative to ensure better loeal performance than proximity of the elected representatives to the people and, therefore' closer scrutiny by voters. Many community based organlsatlons also hold and advocate the view that Panchayats and Nagarpalikas cannot and will not take care of peoples' needs whereas the NGOs are more sensitlve and responsive' These organisations also lnvoke the nascent concept of civil society as dtstinct from all levels of government. That concept

240

Potoer to the People?

will
Self-

evo

different

e and acqulre substance differerltlv ln

of the society. Given,the fact that Local ment has been revived after a long period , there is a need for its convergence with initiaUves rather than divergence. c postulate of all democratic dispensb.tions rle are the real source of power arld not

ofd
comm The

is that
hie the pro
arise cascade

from

decen sation is not merely an administnative expedien nor a reuurangement of the financial domain: in it moves a people, and thus a sociefu, towards ulti-level governance. Ques oning the purpose of the Constitutional Am a decade ago Shahabuddin had asked in the Lo Sabha whether the intention was to ctrange India a "Union of States to a Union of States, Panchay and Municipalities". Unwittingly, the question the essence of the 73rd and the 74tb Co titutional Amendments. A countrv of a billton ople cannot forever adhere to a given heirarchy of leadership or institutions of governance. A vast an varied socie$ with immense diversitv such as India have multiple aspiratiorts. They will need to be arti ted, analysed, and answered in mrlltiple platforms We need our panchayats And town hallls as much as ur assemblies and Parliarnent house. Their members are all representatives of the people and none ca be regarded as superior or fnore rep than another. This recognition, indeed, will be a flection of our political pluralism arid in

e States to the local bodies. But

levels of government. Indeed, many of which assall the decentralisation process the flawed perspective that it is a descending f power from the Centre to the States and

ProspectsJor the

F-uhte

241

that sense a "Union of States, Panchayats and Municipalities" can well be a true measure of the success of the 73rd and the 74th Amendments.

242

Pouer ta the People?

NOTES
Oytrage". Mani Shankar Aiyar, Sunday Januziry 1999. L. C, Nofronal Found.ation Jor India, Report. on the Workstrop. Delhi: 7 October lgg4. Bulldozer Throws Out Pune's Demolition Man,'. item in Express, Neros Seruice. 13 March 1999. rged Pune sends stern message to Rane on Bhatia.. item in Indlan Erpress Neus Seruice. pune. 14 March

2.J
3.

3l

Court reinstates.Arun Bhatia", News item

in ptoneen : 14 April 1999. "Court gives pune favourite

back". News item in Indran.Express, Mumbai:
1999.

l3 5.
6.

'SC

oJ

to Stay Bhatia's Reinstatement". News item in Indin. 15 April 1999. Returns with Cheers". News item in Indran Express.
1999.

8.

L
lo.
I

9 June 1999.

Peoples'Rally around the Bureaucrat'. News item in Times, 16 December lgg8. shifted after Recall Motion". News item in Hindustan

l.
Self

12. 'A

Forestalling Development". News Item in Hihdustan Surat: 9 June 1999. Returns with Cheers". op.cu. Bodies in Election Manifestos',. News ltem in Netuork Neu-rsletter. Nl India Institute of Local t, Delhi, Apnl 1998. Outrage". op. cit.

Index

Adtamma, l17 Advani, L.K., 47,53' 62' 239 Aiyar, Mani Shankar, 24-26'
73

Bombay MunlciPal Corporation

Act of 1888, 107' Bommai, S.R., 54

5t'
Bose, Subhas, 2I1

zla

30-3r. 44, 53,62.64' 67,

43, r32, 159, 209' 215

Bommai Committee RePort' 55'

All India Council of MaYors' 12' Ambedkar, 42

Calcutta Corporation Act' 236

Aqulno, Corazon, 2A2 Arora, GoPi, 24 Arya, Anita, ll8 Arya, Shakuntala, I 18

Asoka Mehta Committee. 4. 49' 60, 83

Calcutta ImProvement Trust Act of 191l, 129 Metropolitan Calcutta DeveloPment APthoritY (CMDA), 35-36, I'or
Calcutta MetroBolitan Planning

Organisation,

SS

BMRDA, IOT Balanandan, 46 Balram, N.E., 67 Balwant Rai Mehta Committee'

Cantonrnents Act of 1924' 184 Central Council of Local Self

3, 23, 60, 83 Banatwala' 44 Banedee, Surendranath, 2l I Bansal, Pautan' 67, 72 Barfiwala,219 Basu, Chitta, 49, 67 Basu, Jyoti, 19, 51, lO7' 197 Bhagat, H.K.L', I Bhajan Lal, 9, f9, 45 Bhaua, Arun, 217, 231'35 Bhatnagar, K.K.' 13 Bhattacharya, Malini, 67 Bihar PanchaYati Raj Act' l0g Bofors controversY, 44, 49

Government, ll-I2' 43' 2Og Central Finarrce Commission, 164-65, 170, 172 Chandrasekhar, B.K.' 54, 62' Chatterjee, Somnath, 4l-42 Chauhan, Vandana, ll8 Chelliah, Raja, 161' 169 Chelliah Task Force, 16l Chidambaram, 6
CiUes. anid citizen' 219-24 state control over' 218- 19

a4,232-33

Citizen and cltY ' 219-24 City Improvement Trusts, 12829

244
Conformity
Ues,

fuuer tothe
88- 104

People?

of municipalidevelop

article ?80, 70,72, 164-66

tO!, 162,

ent authorities.

lo1 district p 95-98 local elections, 94-95 MPs and role, 9O-94 metropo tan planning
ee,

Correa Commission on Urbanization, I, f l, 13, 37,

43, 83
Dandavate, Madhu, 41 Das, Chittaranj an, 4l Decentralibation of power

article 33O, 123 article 832, 123 article 356, lO7-08

98-lol
,89

m
size

functions, 139-43
ce Commissions,

State
-f

Cons

of India, ule, 134-35, 143134-40, 144,

Ttlr r rth 44, I l2th

146-

accountability, 2lg Bills debate in Parliamertt, 4446, 73-74 features of, 75-85 JPC on, 67-68, 75-Es
N.F. Government antd, 59-

t87

64th 8, 23, 38, 44, 53 55,58,83. 196 65tfi 42-44.53,

a4

72nd 84-85, 73rd Am

84-85,

dment, 65-74.
t 2,65-74, , lo8, r 12, I15, -44, 178, 185,

L24, I
237, 74th Am

I
t, 2, 88, 93,

108, I 2-73, Lt5, r24, r 36-3 , 143-44, 168, l7a, r -43, 185, 201, 2tt,2 8,237, 240-41 article 40 8. 59 article , 87, 89, 9r-93, 96, 98 loo, lo8, lt4, r64, I , 182-83, r85. r87, I
article

ll

62,75-a5 Nara6imha Rao Government and, 62-85 passed in Parliament, 4446, 73-74 Rajiv Gandhi and, 42-55, 75-45 Citizen and, 219-24 debate on ln, Lok $abha, 42-44 Parlia.ment, 40-55, F5-83 Rajya Sabha, 46-53 Public,53-55 East Aslan experlence on, 20r-03 efforts towards, l-20 elected representativd-staff relatibnship and, 216-l8 future prospects, 227.41 lssues ln, 206-ro local government and
society, 239-41

Index
Marxist and, 194-96

245
district administrauon and, Urban

Mlnistry
15

of

Development role

in, I l-

N.F. Government and, 5962,75-43

Narasimha Rao Government

r86-90 Zilla Parishad and, 185-86 District Planning Commlttee Act 1998, r22, 186, 193-94

and,62-85
political parties and, 237-39 public lnterest safeguard in, 234-37 Rajiv Gandhi initiatives on'
Sammelans on, 9-l l, l3-2O sharing authoritY ln, 21O-16 size of representation, 22830 state control over cities and,

East Asia decentrallsation, experience in, 201-03 Elected representative-staff

relationshlp, 216- 18 Election Commission, 5,

a,4l'

55,6r,63, 71,79
Fatima Bee, I 16 Ford Foundation, 34-35, Gandhi, Indira, 34, 36 Gandhi, Mahatma, 179 Gandhi, RaJiv, l, 5-7,
13O

5-20, 42-55,75-45

218-r9 Delhi Development AuthoritY

(DDA), l0r Delhi Mlnicipal Corporaflon Act

I,

15-20. 23-26, 28, 30-32, 37 3a, 40, 42-44, 46, 48-52, 60, 62-65. 67 -68. 7 3-7 4, 43, 9r,

'

1957, 142,2LO Desai, Morarji, 4, 60 Deshmukh, 24, 29, 31,

95-96, 108, 115, r35, 163,

6l

l9r-93,

195-96

Dwe Gowda, 67 Development Authorities, lOlo3

Devi l,al, 59 Dey, S.K., 4

Dharmaraj an, 13

Ghosh, 8.8., 35 Ghosh, Deepak, 67 Godbole, Madhav, 64 Gorbachov, 16-17, 23O Gorphade, lll Goswami, Dinesh, 4l-42, 59'
84

Dighe, Sharad, 72

Dtstrict administration and

DPC, 186-90

Gundiabai, 117 GurupadaswamY,46

HUDCO, 12, r74
Hegde, Ramakrl slrrra, 27 Housing of the Working Classes

District government, 190-94 District Planning, 6, 26-29 ' 52 District Planning and
Dwelopment Council, 27

Act 1890, U.K., 129

District Planning Committee (DPC), 69, 95-98, 10r-O2, 122-23, 184-90, r93, 199

Indian Institute of Public Admiiistrauon 0IPA, f2

246
InterJag

Power to tle People?

Council,4l
Chandra, 19
235

Krishna$wamy, K.S.,

24,

29,

31,54
Jain, L.C. J4
Jawahar 48-49, Yojana (JRY), Lawand, Satyabhama, I 16 Leelavati, 117 Committee (1950), 160
Ram, 49 Local Government Act, 227 Local Government and Society,

Local Finance Enquiry

yndon, 74 ent Committee Joint Par (JPc), -7r,75-a5,95, rO0, r63-65 r82,220,224 on decentralization
Johnson,

239-41 Mahajan, Sumitra, 67 Malaviya, Satya Prakabh, 48 Mandal issue, 6l-62, 123 Maran, Murasoli, 49, 6l Marcos, Imelda, 2O2 Mathai, John, 160 Mathew, George, 54

,67-68, 75-85
Commission, TOon Committees, 69-70

Joshi, Joshi,

213-r4
r 18

Mathur, Om, 13
Mayor-in-Council (MIC) system,

210-16,2s6-37
Mayor -in-Council Actt 1984,

Urban Dwelopment Corporation, 174 Kaul,

2tl

18,93, lO7 64-65,67,7r,84

Mehta, Haroobhai, 45; 208 Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme
(MPT,ADS), 197-98

Kennedy, 4 palities Act 1994, Kerala 140-41

Metro Manila Commlsgion, 2O2 Metropdlitan Council for Delhi,

KeraIa r33 Kesri, Si Khusro, Kidwai,

45

ashthra Sahitya
r93

212

Metropolitan Development
Authority, Philippines, 2O2 Metropolitan Planning, 52

Bharati
64 170

case,

Metropolitan
ol

Planning

Committee, 69, 98-lr02, 2OO-

9, 19,33,38,

Koli, Krishna

ll8
v.R., 54 T.T., 34

Mill, John Stuart, l9 Ministr]t of Urban Deveflopment,

10-15

Mlrdha, Nathuram, 67

Irdex
Mishra, Chaturanand, 49 Mitra, Ashok' 35 Montague reforms, 158 Montesquie,2OS More, Meena, l17 MukarJi, Nirmal, 54 Multi-municipal agglomerations, 199-201 MuniciPal bodies' access to capital market, 172-73 bypassing city governments ' r2a-29
elections,

247

list ol 132-39
Municipal Finance Board, 16l ttl/

Municipal Finance Commission, l6l-62, 167-68

Nagarpalika Bill, approval in Lok Sabha' 4446 chairPerson election in' 3738 debate on in, Lok Sabha, 42-44' 65-43

holding ol 1O9-12 in Bihar, 1O9- I I in Karnataka, 1l l-12 new representatives, I l9 outcome, 107-24 rePresentatlon in, I 12- l5 resewation manner, I 1924

public, 53-55 Rajya,46-53 district Planntn g' 26-29 drafting, 23-38

metroPolitan areas Planning'

reservation of seats in' 1r5-r9 finances, 157-75 alternatives for, 163

'

caPital market access'

172-73 Central Finance Commlssion role, 164-67 Commissions, 162 Committees for, 160-61
preJndePendence Period' shiPs in, 173-75 SFCs and, 167-71 functions, 127-55 and l2th Schedule'
CD

33-37 objectives,4l Parliament debates on, 4055, 65-83 Planning Commisslon on' 29-30 rural-urban interface in' 3032

Nagarpalika Sammelans, 7' 9-

ll, l3-20 NagarPalikas, functional domain ol 146-55

Naraslmha Rao, 19' 62-63 ' 67

r58-60 Private-Public Partner-

146139-

73-74, 84-85,95, 98' lo8' 134, 163 Nasir Sab, 27' 195 National Commission on Urbanisation, 9, 162 National DeveloPment Council'
National Extension Service' 3
29

'

conformitY laws on,

43

248
National Institute of Urban (NrvA), l2-13, 69, 88 Nazir ,46 Nehru, J ,4,34
Nehru
Yojana (NRY), 48-

Pouser to the People?

reservation manrrer, I lg24 reservation of seats, I l5-

l9

women's partici$ation in,

I l6-19 Finance Commisslons and. 87, t67-71 nnances, Ic/-/b ML,As/MPs representation,

49,
New

Municipal Council

Act I
Owaisi,

, rl3

78-79
Raj

Mayors and Munlcipal

and, 7-9, 42-55,

of, 75-85
JPC 67-7r,75,85
N.F. Government, 59-62,

chairperson eledtion, 80 metropolitan planning, 8l number of tiers in, 75-76

population limit on each type

ot,76
removal of chairperson, reservation of seat$. 78 tenure of, 76
War d /
8O

Rao Governt, 62-85

of Raj

in Parliament,

Zonal Commlttees,

,6,73-74

76-7a
Pandey, Vinod,

Gandhi Governt, 42-55,75-A5

tv laws on. 88- lO4 Bill in, 42-44,65-83
Sabha,46-53
MI-As representa-

l,

7, 24-25, 29,

3r,53,66
Pant, K.C., 165 Pant Commission. 166-67 Patnaik, J.8.. f9 Peoples' Plan Campaign, 193 Planning Commisslorl, 29-30,

debate on

Lk

pu
MPs

C, CJ-DD

tion on. 68-69. 78-79

Rajiv 5-

initiatives on,
42-55. 75-A5
of elections, 79-8O,

condu

t07
el

to7-24

in in

, to9-ll

34, 16r. 164 view$ on Nagarpalika Bill, 29-30 Politic0l parties and decentralisation. 287 -39 Prabhavalkar, Nirmala, I l8 Prakash, M.P., f 12 Premajam, I 18
Ram Devi,

taka, I I l-12 new representatives, l19 I l2-15

24,31, 38

Rama Rho, N.T., 18-lgi 51, lO7

Ramos. Fidel. 2O2

Index
Rana, Kashi Rarrl 72, 2OA, 215 Rane, Pratap Singh, 19 Swamy, Subramanian, 67

249

Rao,24 ' Rasul, Gulam, 67 Reddy, Jaipal, 41-42

Representation of PeoPle Act, 90 Roy, Sudhir, 67

Tamtl Nadu Urban DeveloPment Fund, 174 Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financing Services,
174

Taxation Enqulry Commission,

160

Rural-urban continuum, I7884, 199

Sankaran, S.R., 63-64
Sarkarla Commission, 5, 29-30'

Thakkar, 13 Tienanman incident, Beijing'

l6

Times Research Foundation, 88

41.48-49,83
Sayeed, P.M., 67

Seshan.31,7l
Shahabuddin, SYed, 44-45' 73' 240 Sharma, E}.D., 65 Shetkari Shangatana, 116

Tiwari, N.D., 19,6l Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly' 202 Town and Country Planning Organisation (TCPO), 12 Trevelyan, 159
Upendra, 46-47,

Siddhi, Ralegaon, 116 Singh, Arjuna, 64 Stngh, Digvijay, 197 Singh, Dinesh, I Singh, Manmohan, 70, 165 Singh, V.P., 54-55, 58, 60-63' 65. 84. 9r, 95, 98, rO8, r23, 134. 163 Singh Deo, K.P., 67 Singhvt Committee, 5, 83 Sivaraman, 35 Society and local government' 239-4r Solanki, Madhav Singh, 19, 29 Special purpose authorities, t29-32
State Election Commission, 94, ro9, l1l, 118, 120, 143-44,

6l

Venkataswamy, 64-65,67 ' 71,

84, 142

Verghese, E}.G., 54

Vora, Moti Lal,

5l

wHo, 34, 129-30

Ward Committees, 69-7O, 21924 West Bengal District Planning Committee Act 1994, 96

West Bengal MuniciPal Act r993, 139-4r West Bengal PanchaYat Act of
1973, 194 World Bank, 129-3O Yotng lrLdio, 179 Takaria Committee 1963' 160 Zilla Parishad, f85-86, 188-94'

165-72, 174-75

State Finance Commission' l03-o4 Sukhthankar, D.M', 1l

Sundaram, 13

r99