Chapter 10: Local Self-Government in India
In the middle of 1989, a Bill was introduced in Parliament that proposed something India had never done before. It would write village councils into the Constitution itself.
Until then, panchayats existed only because state legislatures had chosen to create them. What a state law had made, a state law could unmake. Councils were dissolved and left unelected for years. Elections were postponed with no penalty. The Bill proposed to end this by making regular elections to local bodies a constitutional obligation rather than a state government’s choice.
The Lok Sabha passed it. In the Rajya Sabha, it failed to secure the special majority that a constitutional amendment requires. Members who opposed it argued that the Union was reaching past the states to deal directly with villages, and that local government was a subject the Constitution had left to the states. Supporters replied that states had been given four decades and had not delivered.
The idea did not die with the Bill. Three years later, a differently drafted pair of amendments was placed before Parliament, negotiated with the states, and passed. In April 1993 the 73rd Amendment came into force, and in June 1993 the 74th. Together they gave India a third tier of government with a fixed term, reserved seats, and an election commission of its own.
That defeat, and what followed it, is where this chapter begins.
Diagram
Fig. 10.0-1 Caption: After 1993 the Indian Constitution recognises three tiers of elected government. Brief: Three stacked horizontal bands, widest at the base. Top band labelled ‘Union Government — Parliament’. Middle band labelled ‘State Governments — State Legislatures’. Base band, drawn widest and shaded most strongly, labelled ‘Local Self-Government — Panchayats and Municipalities’. A thin upward arrow at the left margin labelled ‘elected directly by voters at every tier’.
10.1 The Third Tier of Government
India is governed at three levels. Parliament makes law for the country, state legislatures make law for the states, and below both sit the councils that run a village, a block, a district, a town or a city.
That third level is the subject of this chapter. It is the level of government a citizen meets most often and thinks about least — the body that lays the drain, lights the street, runs the primary school building and collects the rubbish.
For most of India’s history as a republic, this third level had no constitutional protection at all. It existed at the pleasure of the states. Understanding why that changed in 1993 requires first being clear about what exactly changed.
10.1.1 Local Government and Local Self-Government
The two phrases are often used as though they mean the same thing. They do not, and the difference is the whole point of this chapter.
Local government means the administration of a local area by officials who are appointed from above. A district officer posted by the state government is administering locally, but nobody in the district chose him.
Local self-government means the administration of a local area by representatives whom the people of that area have elected, and whom they can remove at the next election. The word ‘self’ is doing the work: the authority runs upward from the residents, not downward from the state capital.
The distinction is one of accountability, not of efficiency. An appointed officer answers to the government that posted him. An elected councillor answers to the ward that elected her, and must face it again in five years.
This is why local self-government is treated as part of democracy rather than as a branch of administration. It rests on decentralisation — the transfer of decision-making power from a higher level of government to a lower one, so that decisions are taken closer to the people they affect.
Two arguments are usually made for decentralising in this way. The first is a claim about knowledge: a ward councillor knows which lane floods every monsoon, and a state secretariat does not.
The second is a claim about participation. A citizen who will never address Parliament may well speak at a village meeting, and the habit of governing is learned at the level where governing is possible.
Both claims have limits worth naming now. Local knowledge does not guarantee local honesty, and a body close to the people is also close to local power — to the landlord, the contractor and the dominant family.
10.1.2 The Road to Constitutional Status
The framers of the Constitution did not ignore village councils, but they did not entrench them either. The subject was placed in the Directive Principles of State Policy, the non-enforceable part of the Constitution that sets goals for the State to pursue.
A panchayat is a village council; the word comes from the idea of a council of five. Because Article 40 could not be enforced, what followed depended entirely on what each state chose to do.
Four official committees examined the problem between 1957 and 1986, and their reports mark the stages of the argument. The sequence is set out in TL 10.1.
The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee reported in 1957. It proposed a three-tier system — a council at the village, one at the block and one at the district — and Rajasthan was the first state to adopt it, in 1959, followed the same year by Andhra Pradesh.
By the late 1960s most states had panchayat legislation of some kind. But each state had written its own Act, so the powers, the tiers and the funds differed sharply from one border to the next.
The record of the following decades was uneven. Elections were postponed, councils were superseded by state governments for long periods, and the funds that were devolved were small and often tied to schemes designed elsewhere.
The L. M. Singhvi Committee, reporting in 1986, drew the conclusion that the earlier committees had circled. If a state legislature could create, suspend and dissolve a panchayat at will, no reform of its structure could secure it. Protection had to come from the Constitution.
That is the reasoning behind the amendment of 1989 that failed, and behind the two amendments of 1992 that succeeded. Devolution — the handing down of powers, functions and money from a higher tier to a lower one — was to be written into the Constitution rather than left to state discretion.
Whether the amendments actually achieved that is a separate question, and the chapter returns to it at the end.
10.2 The 73rd Amendment: Panchayati Raj
The Constitution (Seventy-third Amendment) Act, 1992 came into force on 24 April 1993. It inserted a new Part IX into the Constitution, headed ‘The Panchayats’, running from Article 243 to Article 243-O.
It also added the Eleventh Schedule, a list of subjects that state legislatures may hand over to village councils. The system it created is called Panchayati Raj — rule by panchayats, the elected councils of rural India.
The Amendment did not create panchayats. Most states already had them. What it did was take the essential features of a panchayat out of the reach of ordinary state legislation and place them in the Constitution.
The difference is worth stating precisely. Before 1993 a state could postpone a panchayat election indefinitely by amending its own Act. After 1993 it could not, because the requirement now sat in a document that a state legislature cannot amend by itself.
10.2.1 The Three-Tier Structure
The Amendment requires a uniform structure of three tiers in every state, shown in Fig. 10.2-1. Before 1993 states had built two-tier, three-tier and even four-tier systems, and comparison between them was almost impossible.
Diagram
Fig. 10.2-1 Caption: The three tiers of the Panchayati Raj system created by the 73rd Amendment. Brief: A three-step pyramid, narrowest at the top. Apex labelled ‘Zila Parishad — district level’. Middle step labelled ‘Panchayat Samiti — intermediate or block level’. Base labelled ‘Gram Panchayat — village level’, with a smaller box attached beside it labelled ‘Gram Sabha — all registered voters of the village’. Mark the middle step with an asterisk keyed to the note ‘may be omitted where state population does not exceed twenty lakh’.
At the base is the gram panchayat, the council of a village or group of villages. Above it is the panchayat samiti at the intermediate or block level, a block being an administrative sub-division of a district.
At the top is the zila parishad at the district level, which the chapter examines in detail in section 10.3.
The Constitution allows one exception to the three-tier rule. A state whose population does not exceed twenty lakh need not constitute the intermediate tier at all, since a small state may not need a layer between village and district.
Beneath the entire structure sits the Gram Sabha, which is not a tier of council but the body of all persons registered on the electoral rolls of the village. It is, in effect, the village assembled.
The Gram Sabha is the one part of the system in which every adult resident is a member rather than a voter choosing a member. What powers it holds — approving plans, reviewing accounts, selecting beneficiaries — is left to each state legislature to decide by law.
The village panchayat is headed by an elected chairperson, called the sarpanch in most states, who presides over its meetings and represents it before higher authorities.
10.2.2 Key Features of the 73rd Amendment Act
Direct Election At Every Level
Members of a panchayat at all three levels are elected directly by the voters of the territorial constituencies into which the area is divided. This is the feature that makes the body self-governing rather than administrative.
The chairpersons of the intermediate and district panchayats are elected indirectly, by and from among the elected members of that body. How the village chairperson is chosen is left to the state legislature.
Reservation Of Seats
The Amendment requires seats to be reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their share of the population in that panchayat area. It also requires seats to be reserved for women.
The women’s reservation applies to the total number of seats and also within the seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Offices of chairperson are reserved on the same principle.
A Fixed Term Of Five Years
Every panchayat has a term of five years, counted from the date fixed for its first meeting. This is the provision that answers the older practice of leaving councils unelected.
A panchayat may still be dissolved before its term ends, but the Constitution attaches a condition to that power, set out in FC 10.1.
Flowchart
FC 10.1 — Term, Dissolution And Fresh Elections Caption: What the Constitution requires when a panchayat completes or fails to complete its five-year term. Nodes: Panchayat constituted, first meeting held → five-year term begins → [Branch A] term runs to completion → election completed before the term expires → new panchayat with a full five-year term. [Branch B] panchayat dissolved early → election must be held within six months of dissolution → new panchayat serves only the remainder of the dissolved body’s term → exception: no election is required if the unexpired remainder is less than six months.
The second branch matters more than it looks. Because a panchayat constituted after early dissolution serves only the leftover term, dissolving a body brings no advantage of a fresh five-year clock to whoever ordered it.
An Independent State Election Commission
Every state must constitute a State Election Commission, headed by a State Election Commissioner appointed by the Governor. It superintends, directs and controls the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of all panchayat elections.
This body is distinct from the Election Commission of India, which conducts parliamentary and assembly elections. Placing local elections with an independent commission removes them from the state executive that the panchayats are meant to be independent of.
A State Finance Commission
Every five years the Governor must constitute a State Finance Commission to review the financial position of the panchayats. It recommends how taxes and duties collected by the state should be divided with local bodies, and what grants-in-aid they should receive.
Its recommendations are placed before the state legislature. They are recommendations, not commands, and this distinction becomes important when the chapter examines why constitutionally protected bodies can still be financially weak.
Taxes, Funds And Audit
A state legislature may authorise a panchayat to levy and collect specified taxes, duties, tolls and fees, and may assign to it taxes collected by the state. It may also provide grants-in-aid from the Consolidated Fund of the State.
The legislature may also make provision for how panchayat accounts are maintained and audited. Every one of these powers is granted in the form ‘the legislature of a state may, by law’ — the enabling word is the state’s.
10.2.3 The Eleventh Schedule In Brief
The Amendment added the Eleventh Schedule, which lists twenty-nine subjects. These are the matters a state legislature may entrust to panchayats so that they can prepare and implement plans for economic development and social justice.
The twenty-nine subjects fall into recognisable groups:
- Land and production — agriculture, land improvement, minor irrigation, animal husbandry, fisheries, social forestry, minor forest produce.
- Rural industry — small-scale industries, khadi and village industries, and the handloom and handicraft trades that depend on them.
- Basic services — drinking water, fuel and fodder, rural housing, roads and culverts, rural electrification, non-conventional energy.
- Human development — education, technical and vocational training, adult education, libraries, cultural activities, health and sanitation, family welfare, women and child development.
- Welfare and distribution — poverty alleviation programmes, social welfare, welfare of weaker sections, the public distribution system, maintenance of community assets, markets and fairs.
The Schedule is a list of possibilities, not a transfer of power. Article 243G says a state legislature may endow panchayats with these subjects, and it is state law that decides which of the twenty-nine actually move, and with what money attached.
That single word — ‘may’ — is the hinge of the whole system, and section 10.6 returns to what it has meant in practice.
10.3 The Zila Parishad
The Zila Parishad is the district-level council, the apex body of the three-tier Panchayati Raj system. Its area is the district — the same district that the state administration uses as its main unit of governing.
That overlap is the key to understanding it. In every district there is an elected council and an appointed administration working on the same territory, on many of the same subjects, at the same time.
The Zila Parishad is therefore both a government and a coordinator. It runs schemes of its own, and it holds together the work of the Panchayat Samitis and Gram Panchayats below it.
Its exact composition, powers and name differ from state to state, because the Constitution fixes the framework and state law fills it in. What follows is the pattern common to most states, with the constitutional requirements identified as such.
10.3.1 Composition of the Zila Parishad
The Zila Parishad contains four kinds of people, and they arrive there in four different ways.
Directly Elected Members
The core of the body is its directly elected members. The district is divided into territorial constituencies, and the voters of each constituency elect one member, exactly as they elect a member of a legislative assembly on a larger map.
These members alone give the body its democratic character. Everyone else in the room is there because of an office they already hold.
Seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their share of the district’s population, and for women as required under Article 243D. The office of chairperson is reserved on the same principle.
Ex-Officio Members
An ex-officio member is one who sits in a body by virtue of holding another office, without being separately elected to it. Two groups usually sit in a Zila Parishad this way.
The first is the chairpersons of the Panchayat Samitis of the district. Their presence is what links the intermediate tier to the district tier, so that block-level plans are represented where district-level decisions are taken.
The second is the Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Assembly whose constituencies fall within the district. Their inclusion is meant to align local plans with state and national schemes, though states differ on whether they may vote.
The Chairperson
The chairperson — called the Adhyaksha, the Zila Pramukh or the President in different states — is elected by and from among the elected members of the Zila Parishad. This follows the constitutional rule for the district tier.
The chairperson presides over meetings, and is the political head of the district council in the way that a chief minister is the political head of a state government.
Officials
The Zila Parishad is served by a Chief Executive Officer or equivalent, a senior civil servant posted by the state government, who runs its administration and executes its decisions. Heads of district departments — health, education, agriculture, engineering — attend its meetings and advise it.
None of these officials is elected, and none of them is answerable to the district’s voters. They are answerable upward, to the state government that posted them.
The Zila Parishad has a term of five years, and the same rule on early dissolution applies as for any panchayat — fresh elections within six months, and only the unexpired remainder of the term.
10.3.2 Functions of the Zila Parishad
The functions of a Zila Parishad come from three sources: the subjects a state has devolved from the Eleventh Schedule, the duties written into the state’s own panchayat Act, and the schemes that the state and Union governments route through it.
They can be grouped under four headings.
Planning For The District
The Zila Parishad prepares the development plan for the district as a whole. It receives the plans made by the Panchayat Samitis and Gram Panchayats and consolidates them into a single scheme of priorities.
Since 1993 this work is connected to the District Planning Committee, which the Constitution requires every state to constitute in each district under Article 243ZD. Its task is to combine the plans of rural and urban local bodies into one district development plan, and at least four-fifths of its members must be elected by and from the elected members of the district’s panchayats and municipalities.
Executing Development Work
The Zila Parishad carries out development functions across the subjects devolved to it — agriculture and irrigation, rural roads and bridges, drinking water, primary education, health and sanitation, rural housing and electrification.
It also administers welfare schemes for women, children, the elderly, persons with disabilities and the weaker sections, and implements poverty-alleviation and employment programmes designed at the state or national level.
Coordinating And Supervising
Because it sits above two other tiers, the Zila Parishad coordinates their work so that two bodies do not build the same road or leave the same gap. It distributes among the Panchayat Samitis the funds that the state allots to the district.
It supervises the working of the lower tiers, monitors the progress and quality of projects, and examines whether funds have been used for the purposes sanctioned.
Financial Functions
The Zila Parishad prepares and passes its own budget. It receives grants-in-aid from the state, the share of state taxes recommended by the State Finance Commission, and whatever local taxes and fees state law allows it to levy.
It maintains accounts of its receipts and expenditure, which are audited as the state legislature provides.
Read together, these four groups of functions describe a body with wide responsibility and narrow discretion. It plans, executes, coordinates and audits — but largely within a framework of schemes and funds set by governments above it.
Whether that amounts to self-government is the question the last section of this chapter puts to the student.
10.4 The 74th Amendment: Urban Local Bodies
The Constitution (Seventy-fourth Amendment) Act, 1992 came into force on 1 June 1993, six weeks after its rural twin. It inserted Part IX-A, headed ‘The Municipalities’, running from Article 243P to Article 243ZG, and added the Twelfth Schedule.
The two amendments were drafted together and share most of their architecture. Where the 73rd Amendment protects the councils of villages, the 74th protects the councils of towns and cities.
The reasons for acting were also parallel. Municipal bodies had existed in Indian cities since the nineteenth century, but they too were creatures of state law, superseded for years at a time and left without elections.
But a city is not a large village, and the 74th Amendment had to answer problems the 73rd did not face — settlements that change character as they grow, wards too large for a single council to hear, and metropolitan regions that spill across several municipal boundaries.
10.4.1 Three Kinds of Urban Local Bodies
The Amendment recognises three kinds of urban local body, and which one a place gets depends on what kind of place it is. The Governor specifies the category by public notification, taking into account population, population density, local revenue, the proportion of people employed outside agriculture, and the economic importance of the area.
A Nagar Panchayat is constituted for a transitional area — a place that is ceasing to be rural and becoming urban, and is not yet either.
A Municipal Council is constituted for a smaller urban area: an established town whose service needs are real but not complex.
A Municipal Corporation is constituted for a larger urban area — the cities, where the scale of water supply, drainage, transport and building regulation requires a large administration of its own.
The three are compared in Table 10.1. The comparison is one of scale and complexity, not of constitutional status: all three are protected in exactly the same way by Part IX-A.
The categories are not permanent. A transitional area that keeps growing is reclassified upward, which is why the boundary between a large Municipal Council and a small Municipal Corporation is a matter of state judgement rather than a fixed population figure.
10.4.2 Key Features of the 74th Amendment Act
Constitutional Status And Direct Election
The three kinds of urban local body are recognised in the Constitution itself, which is what protects them from being dissolved or left unelected at a state government’s convenience.
All seats in a municipality are filled by persons chosen through direct election by the voters of the ward. A ward is the territorial constituency into which a municipal area is divided, and each ward returns its councillor.
How the chairperson of a municipality is chosen is left to state law. This is why in some states the mayor of a city is elected directly by the citizens, and in others by the councillors from among themselves.
Reservation Of Seats
As in the panchayats, seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their share of the municipal area’s population, and not less than one-third of all seats are reserved for women, including within the reserved seats.
Several states have since raised the women’s share to one half by their own legislation. The constitutional requirement remains a floor of one-third.
Fixed Term And Fresh Elections
Every municipality has a term of five years from the date fixed for its first meeting. If it is dissolved earlier, an election must be held within six months, and the newly constituted body serves only the unexpired remainder of the dissolved body’s term.
The rule is identical to the rule for panchayats, and it exists for the same historical reason.
Wards Committees
A large city council can be as distant from a resident as a state government is. The Amendment therefore requires Wards Committees within the larger municipalities.
State Election Commission And State Finance Commission
Municipal elections are conducted by the same State Election Commission that conducts panchayat elections, and on the same principle: the body that runs the election must be independent of the government being judged by it.
The State Finance Commission constituted every five years reviews the finances of municipalities as well as panchayats, and recommends how state taxes should be shared with them.
Taxes And Funds
A state legislature may authorise a municipality to levy and collect specified taxes, duties, tolls and fees, may assign to it taxes collected by the state, and may provide grants-in-aid from the Consolidated Fund of the State.
Urban bodies generally have stronger own-revenue than rural ones, since property tax, trade licensing and user charges yield more in a town than in a village. This does not make them financially independent, but it does make the gap between the two systems real.
Planning Committees
Two planning bodies complete the design. The District Planning Committee, described in section 10.3, consolidates the plans of the district’s rural and urban bodies into one district plan.
For every metropolitan area with a population of ten lakh or more, the Constitution additionally requires a Metropolitan Planning Committee, because a metropolis is normally governed by several municipalities and panchayats whose plans must be made to fit together.
10.4.3 The Twelfth Schedule In Brief
The Twelfth Schedule lists eighteen subjects that a state legislature may entrust to municipalities so that they can plan for economic development and social justice and deliver civic services.
The eighteen subjects fall into four recognisable groups:
- Planning and land — urban planning including town planning, regulation of land use and construction of buildings, planning for economic and social development.
- Physical services — roads and bridges, water supply, public health and sanitation, solid waste management, fire services, street lighting, parking lots and public conveniences.
- Environment and amenity — urban forestry, protection of the environment and ecology, provision of urban amenities such as parks and playgrounds, promotion of cultural and aesthetic aspects, and burial and cremation grounds.
- Social responsibility — safeguarding the interests of weaker sections including persons with disabilities, slum improvement and upgradation, urban poverty alleviation, and regulation of slaughter houses and tanneries.
Like the Eleventh Schedule, this is a list of what may be devolved, not a transfer that has already happened. Article 243W uses the same enabling formula: the legislature of a state may, by law, endow municipalities with these powers.
The difference between the two lists is instructive. The rural list is dominated by production and livelihood, the urban list by services, land use and the management of density. The two Schedules describe two different kinds of governing problem.
10.5 The Municipal Corporation
The Municipal Corporation is the urban local body constituted for a larger urban area. It is the city government — the body responsible for the water in a city’s taps, the drains under its roads and the rules under which its buildings go up.
Every Municipal Corporation is created by a state Act, and no two state Acts are identical. What follows is the pattern that runs through them, and the constitutional requirements are identified as such.
A Municipal Corporation has two wings, and confusing them is the commonest error a student makes. There is a deliberative wing of elected representatives who decide policy, and an executive wing of appointed officials who carry it out.
10.5.1 Composition of the Municipal Corporation
The composition of a Corporation is shown in Fig. 10.5-1. The elected councillors are its core; everyone else is attached to that core in some way.
Diagram
Fig. 10.5-1 Caption: The deliberative and executive wings of a Municipal Corporation. Brief: Two columns under a single heading ‘Municipal Corporation’. Left column headed ‘Deliberative wing — elected’, listing Mayor and Deputy Mayor, Councillors elected from wards, Standing Committees, Wards Committees. Right column headed ‘Executive wing — appointed’, listing Municipal Commissioner and departmental officers. A horizontal arrow from left to right labelled ‘decides policy’; a return arrow labelled ‘executes and reports’.
Councillors
The city is divided into wards, and the voters of each ward directly elect one councillor. The councillors together form the deliberative body of the Corporation — its legislature, in effect.
They pass the budget, approve the taxes state law permits, and take the decisions that the executive wing then implements. Because each represents a ward, every part of the city has a voice in the room.
Seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their share of the city’s population, and not less than one-third of all seats for women, as Article 243T requires.
The Mayor
The Mayor is the head of the Corporation and presides over its meetings. The office carries dignity and political weight, but in most states its executive authority is limited.
How the Mayor is chosen depends on state law. In some states the citizens elect the Mayor directly; in others the councillors elect one of their own number. The term of office also differs — one year in some states, the full five in others.
A Deputy Mayor is usually elected to preside in the Mayor’s absence.
Nominated Members
State law may provide for persons with special knowledge or experience of municipal administration to be nominated to the Corporation. In several states they are called aldermen.
The Constitution attaches an important limit to this. Under Article 243R, persons nominated for their special knowledge do not have the right to vote in the meetings of the municipality. Expertise is admitted; a vote that no ward gave is not.
Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Assembly
State law may also provide for the representation, in the Corporation, of Members of Parliament and Members of the Legislative Assembly whose constituencies lie wholly or partly within the municipal area. The intention is to connect city decisions to state and national policy.
The Municipal Commissioner
The Municipal Commissioner is the chief executive officer of the Corporation, a senior civil servant appointed by the state government. The Commissioner runs the administration, controls the staff, prepares the budget estimates and executes the resolutions the councillors pass.
This produces the most argued-about feature of Indian city government. The elected Mayor is the political head; the appointed Commissioner holds most of the executive power, and is answerable to the state government rather than to the city’s voters.
Committees
Corporations work largely through Standing Committees, each taking a subject — finance, works, health, education — so that a large body can examine detail. Wards Committees, required under Article 243S in municipalities of three lakh or more, work below the Corporation at neighbourhood level.
The Corporation has a term of five years from its first meeting, and if dissolved earlier must be re-elected within six months, the new body serving only the unexpired remainder.
10.5.2 Functions of the Municipal Corporation
Municipal functions are traditionally sorted into two classes, and the distinction is a legal one rather than a matter of importance.
Obligatory functions are those a Corporation is required by law to perform. Discretionary functions are those it may perform if it has the funds and chooses to.
Obligatory Functions
These are the services a city cannot lawfully leave undone:
- Supply of drinking water, and maintenance of water works and pipelines.
- Public health and sanitation — drainage and sewerage, control of disease, vaccination and public health measures.
- Solid waste management — collection, transport, treatment and disposal of the city’s waste.
- Construction, maintenance and lighting of streets, roads, bridges and public places.
- Regulation of building construction, including approval of plans and enforcement of building rules.
- Registration of births and deaths.
- Fire services, and maintenance of burial and cremation grounds.
- Regulation of markets, slaughter houses and dangerous or offensive trades.
Discretionary Functions
These are the services a Corporation may undertake as its resources allow:
- Parks, gardens, playgrounds and other public amenities.
- Public transport within the city, where the state has entrusted it.
- Libraries, museums, art galleries and the promotion of cultural activity.
- Housing for the poor, and relief in times of famine, flood or epidemic.
- Tree planting, urban forestry and measures for the protection of the environment.
Developmental Functions
Alongside these, the Twelfth Schedule adds the developmental work that the 74th Amendment expected of municipalities: planning for economic and social development, urban planning and land-use regulation, slum improvement and upgradation, urban poverty alleviation, and safeguarding the interests of weaker sections.
Financial Functions
To pay for all this, a Corporation levies the taxes state law permits — property tax is the largest — together with user charges, licence fees and advertisement fees. It receives grants-in-aid from the state and the share of state taxes recommended by the State Finance Commission.
It prepares an annual budget, and its accounts are maintained and audited as state law provides.
The classification therefore does real work. It tells a student not only what a city government does, but what it does when it cannot afford everything — and that is usually the more revealing question.
10.6 The Two Amendments Compared
The 73rd and 74th Amendments were passed together, drafted on a single design, and brought into force six weeks apart in 1993. Reading them side by side shows what India decided about local self-government — and what it left undecided.
The similarities are not accidental. Both amendments were answering the same failure: bodies that existed on paper, were superseded at will, and went years without elections.
So both give their institutions constitutional status. Both require direct election of members, a fixed term of five years, fresh elections within six months of any early dissolution, and reservation of seats for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women.
Both hand elections to an independent State Election Commission and finances to a State Finance Commission constituted every five years. And both attach a Schedule listing the subjects a state may devolve.
The differences follow from the difference between a village and a city, and are set out in Table 10.2.
The comparison also exposes what the two amendments have in common at a deeper level, and it is not a strength.
Where The Power Was Left
Both amendments guarantee that local bodies will exist and will be elected. Neither guarantees what they will be allowed to do.
Article 243G and Article 243W both use the same enabling formula: the legislature of a state may, by law, endow these bodies with powers and authority. The Schedules list what could be transferred; state law decides what is.
The same is true of money. A state legislature may authorise local taxes, may assign state taxes, may make grants. The State Finance Commission recommends; the state government decides how far to accept.
The Difficulties That Remain
Four difficulties are recorded across the whole period since 1993, and they are connected.
The first is finance. Most local bodies raise a small fraction of what they spend, and the rest arrives as grants tied to schemes designed at the state or national level. A body that mainly implements other people’s schemes has limited room for priorities of its own.
The second is devolution. Because the Schedules are permissive, states have transferred different subjects to different degrees, and functions have sometimes moved without the funds or the staff to perform them.
The third is capacity. A council may hold a subject on paper and lack the trained personnel, the office and the technical support to exercise it — a gap that falls hardest on the smallest bodies.
The fourth is participation. Constitutional provision brings a Gram Sabha or a Wards Committee into existence; it does not by itself bring residents into the room, or ensure that those who attend are heard.
What The Amendments Did Settle
None of this makes 1993 a small change, and the record should be read carefully rather than dismissed.
Regular elections to local bodies are now the norm rather than the exception, and lakhs of representatives are elected across the country at each cycle. Reserved seats have brought into elected office large numbers of women and members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who had not previously held it.
Whether that has changed who exercises power, and not merely who occupies the chair, is a question on which serious scholars disagree — and on which the evidence differs sharply from state to state.
The honest conclusion is the one the chapter began with. The 73rd and 74th Amendments settled that local self-government would exist. They left open how much of it there would be, and that question is still being decided in each state legislature.
10.7 Summary
Local government means administration of a local area by officials appointed from above. Local self-government means administration by representatives elected by the residents themselves.
Decentralisation is defended on two grounds: local bodies know local conditions better, and they let ordinary citizens take part in governing. Both claims have limits, since closeness to the people is also closeness to local power.
Article 40, a Directive Principle, asks states to organise village panchayats as units of self-government. Being a Directive Principle, it could not be enforced, so what happened next depended on each state.
Four committees between 1957 and 1986 examined the problem. Balwant Rai Mehta proposed the three-tier structure; L. M. Singhvi concluded that only constitutional status could protect these bodies from being superseded.
The 73rd Amendment Act, 1992 inserted Part IX, Articles 243 to 243-O, and the Eleventh Schedule of twenty-nine subjects. It requires a three-tier system — Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samiti, Zila Parishad — except that a state of not more than twenty lakh people may omit the intermediate tier.
Its key features are direct election at every level, the Gram Sabha of all village voters, reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to population and not less than one-third of seats for women, a five-year term, fresh elections within six months of early dissolution, a State Election Commission and a State Finance Commission.
The Zila Parishad is the district-level council. It contains directly elected members, ex-officio members — the chairpersons of the Panchayat Samitis and the district’s MPs and MLAs — a chairperson elected from among the elected members, and appointed officials who advise but do not vote.
Its functions are planning for the district, executing development and welfare work, coordinating and supervising the tiers below it, and managing its budget and accounts. Its discretion is narrow because most of its funds arrive tied to schemes made elsewhere.
The 74th Amendment Act, 1992 inserted Part IX-A, Articles 243P to 243ZG, and the Twelfth Schedule of eighteen subjects. It recognises three kinds of urban body: Nagar Panchayat for a transitional area, Municipal Council for a smaller urban area, Municipal Corporation for a larger urban area.
Its key features mirror the 73rd Amendment, and add Wards Committees where the population is three lakh or more, a District Planning Committee in every district, and a Metropolitan Planning Committee for metropolitan areas of ten lakh or more.
A Municipal Corporation has a deliberative wing of elected councillors headed by a Mayor, and an executive wing headed by an appointed Municipal Commissioner. Nominated members with special knowledge may sit but, under Article 243R, may not vote.
Its functions are obligatory (water, sanitation, waste, roads and lighting, building regulation, registration of births and deaths, fire services), discretionary (parks, transport, libraries, housing for the poor) and developmental (urban planning, slum improvement, poverty alleviation).
Both amendments guarantee that local bodies will exist and be elected. Neither guarantees what they may do, because Articles 243G and 243W leave devolution of functions, and the State Finance Commission’s recommendations on money, to state decision.
Four difficulties therefore persist: weak own revenue, uneven devolution, limited administrative capacity, and thin actual participation. Against these stand regular local elections and the entry into elected office of large numbers of women and members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
10.8 Key Terms
Decentralisation — The transfer of decision-making power from a higher level of government to a lower one, so that decisions are taken closer to the people they affect.
Devolution — The handing down of powers, functions and money from a higher tier of government to a lower one.
Discretionary functions — Services a local body may perform if it has the funds and chooses to, such as parks, libraries or city transport.
District Planning Committee — The committee required in every district under Article 243ZD to consolidate the plans of the district’s rural and urban local bodies into one district development plan.
Ex-officio — Holding membership of a body by virtue of holding another office, without being separately elected to it.
Gram Sabha — The body consisting of all persons registered on the electoral rolls of a village; the village assembled, rather than a tier of council.
Local self-government — Administration of a local area by representatives elected by the residents of that area and answerable to them.
Mayor — The elected head of a Municipal Corporation, who presides over its meetings; chosen directly by citizens or by the councillors, depending on state law.
Municipal Commissioner — The chief executive officer of a Municipal Corporation, a civil servant appointed by the state government, who runs its administration and executes its decisions.
Municipal Corporation — The urban local body constituted for a larger urban area, that is, for a city.
Municipal Council — The urban local body constituted for a smaller urban area, that is, for a town.
Nagar Panchayat — The urban local body constituted for a transitional area that is changing from rural to urban.
Obligatory functions — Services a local body is required by law to perform, such as water supply, sanitation, waste management and street lighting.
Panchayati Raj — The system of elected rural local self-government through panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels.
State Election Commission — The independent commission in each state that superintends, directs and controls the preparation of electoral rolls and the conduct of all panchayat and municipal elections.
State Finance Commission — The commission constituted by the Governor every five years to review the finances of local bodies and recommend how state taxes and grants should be shared with them.
Urban local body — Any of the three kinds of elected municipal institution recognised in Part IX-A: Nagar Panchayat, Municipal Council or Municipal Corporation.
Zila Parishad — The district-level council, the apex body of the three-tier Panchayati Raj system.
10.9 Points to Ponder
If a constitution guarantees that a body will be elected but not what it may decide, has it created a tier of government or only a tier of representation?
The Eleventh and Twelfth Schedules say what a state may devolve, never what it must. Would the amendments have been stronger with a compulsory list — and what would have been lost?
Reserving a seat changes who occupies an office. What further conditions would have to hold before it changed who exercises power?
A Gram Sabha includes every adult in the village, while a city ward may hold more people than a small town. Can direct participation mean the same thing in both places?
The elected Mayor is the political head of a city and the appointed Commissioner holds most of the executive power. What can be said for this arrangement, and what against it?
Local bodies are closest to the people and also closest to local power. When these two facts pull in opposite directions, which should decide how much authority is decentralised?
10.10 Objective Questions
- The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992 added to the Constitution:
- Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule
- Part IX-A and the Twelfth Schedule
- Part IX-A and the Eleventh Schedule
- Part IX and the Twelfth Schedule [1 mark]
- The intermediate tier of the Panchayati Raj system need not be constituted in a state whose population does not exceed:
- Five lakh
- Ten lakh
- Twenty lakh
- Fifty lakh [1 mark]
- An urban local body constituted for a transitional area moving from rural to urban character is called a:
- Municipal Corporation
- Municipal Council
- Nagar Panchayat
- Cantonment Board [1 mark]
- Under Article 243R, a person nominated to a municipality for special knowledge of municipal administration:
- Has the same rights as an elected councillor
- Does not have the right to vote in meetings of the municipality
- Automatically becomes chairperson of a Standing Committee
- Must be a Member of the Legislative Assembly [1 mark]
- The number of subjects listed in the Twelfth Schedule is:
- Eleven
- Eighteen
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty-two [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): A panchayat constituted after the early dissolution of an earlier panchayat serves only the remainder of that body’s term. Reason (R): The Constitution fixes a term of five years for every panchayat from the date of its first meeting.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): The Eleventh Schedule by itself transfers twenty-nine subjects to the panchayats. Reason (R): Article 243G provides that the legislature of a state may, by law, endow panchayats with such powers and authority.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
- Assertion (A): Municipal elections are conducted by an independent State Election Commission. Reason (R): The body conducting an election should be independent of the government whose performance the election judges.
- Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
- Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
- A is true, but R is false.
- A is false, but R is true. [1 mark]
- Match the following: [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Balwant Rai Mehta Committee | i. Recommended constitutional status for panchayats |
| b. L. M. Singhvi Committee | ii. Consolidates rural and urban plans in a district |
| c. District Planning Committee | iii. Reviews the finances of local bodies every five years |
| d. State Finance Commission | iv. Recommended the three-tier structure in 1957 |
- Fill in the blanks:
- The 74th Amendment inserted Part __________ into the Constitution.
- Wards Committees are required in municipalities with a population of __________ or more.
- The body consisting of all persons registered on the electoral rolls of a village is the __________. [1 mark]
- State whether the following statements are true or false:
- The Municipal Commissioner is elected by the councillors of the Corporation.
- Article 40 is a Directive Principle of State Policy.
- The Zila Parishad operates at the block level. [1 mark]
10.11 Check Your Concepts
Define local self-government. [2 marks]
State any two functions of the Gram Sabha. [2 marks]
What is meant by an ex-officio member? Give one example from the Zila Parishad. [2 marks]
Differentiate between local government and local self-government. [3 marks]
Differentiate between the obligatory and the discretionary functions of a Municipal Corporation, with one example of each. [3 marks]
Explain briefly the three kinds of urban local bodies recognised by the 74th Amendment Act, 1992. [3 marks]
Explain, with an example, why a fixed five-year term was considered essential for local bodies. [4 marks]
Describe the composition of the Zila Parishad. [4 marks]
Evaluate the claim that reservation of seats in local bodies changes who exercises power at the grassroots. [4 marks]
Describe the key features of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, 1992, and state one criticism that has been made of its working. [6 marks]
Compare the 73rd and the 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts, bringing out three similarities and three differences. [6 marks]
Discuss the functions of the Municipal Corporation, and explain why its financial position affects which of those functions are actually performed. [6 marks]
10.12 Source & Passage-Based Questions
- Read the extract and answer the questions that follow.
Article 40 of the Constitution provides that the State shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government.
a. Under which part of the Constitution does this Article fall, and what follows from that for its enforceability? [2 marks]
b. Why did this Article prove insufficient to secure regular elections to panchayats before 1993? [2 marks]
c. What did the 73rd Amendment add that Article 40 could not supply? [2 marks]- Study the situation and answer the questions that follow.
A district in an Indian state has an elected Zila Parishad and a Chief Executive Officer posted by the state government. The Zila Parishad resolves to give priority to repairing village link roads. Most of the funds available to it that year, however, have arrived as grants for a centrally designed housing scheme, and may not be spent on anything else.
a. Identify the difficulty of local self-government that this situation illustrates. [2 marks]
b. Explain why constitutional status alone does not resolve it. [2 marks]
c. State one reform that would address it, and one objection that could be raised to that reform. [2 marks]- Study the described cartoon and answer the questions that follow.
A cartoon shows a large signboard reading ‘City Corporation’. Behind it stand two figures. One, labelled ‘Mayor’, wears a ceremonial chain and holds a small hammer. The other, labelled ‘Commissioner’, is much larger, holds a bulging file marked ‘Budget, Staff, Tenders’, and is walking away towards a door marked ‘State Government’.
a. What claim about city government is the cartoonist making through the difference in size? [2 marks]
b. Explain, using the chapter, the constitutional and administrative basis for that claim. [2 marks]
c. State one thing this cartoon cannot tell you about how a Municipal Corporation actually works. [2 marks]