Chapter 3: Political Organisation
On 2 October 1959, a large crowd gathered in Nagaur, a district town in Rajasthan. The date was chosen with care, for it was Gandhi’s birthday. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had come to inaugurate something India had not seen in this form before — an elected, three-level system of local self-government that reached from the single village all the way up to the district. It was called Panchayati Raj, which means, quite simply, “rule by panchayats.”
The idea itself was old. For centuries, Indian villages had settled disputes and managed shared affairs through small councils of respected members. Gandhi had imagined a free India built from the village upward, with each village a small self-governing republic. Later, a committee led by Balwant Rai Mehta studied why government development programmes were failing to reach ordinary villagers. Its answer was blunt: real power had to be handed to elected local bodies.
Rajasthan acted first, and Nagaur is where it began. Over the following decades the experiment stumbled and was revived several times, until it was finally written into the Constitution itself through the 73rd Amendment in 1993. That single change turned local self-government from a favour granted by state governments into a right anchored in the country’s most basic law — reshaping who holds power in rural India, and who finally gets a seat at the table.
Diagram
Fig. 3.0-1 – photograph-style illustration of a village gram sabha in the open air: men and women of different ages seated together on the ground, one member standing and addressing the gathering, a register and a few papers in front; generic and non-identifiable, no real named person
Hold these questions in mind as you read — this chapter is built to answer every one of them.
3.2 Panchayati Raj: Local Self-Government in India
You met the word “panchayat” in the last section. It is worth pausing on what it means, because the whole system this chapter studies is built on it.
3.2.1 The Meaning of Panchayati Raj
The word “panchayat” comes from panch, meaning “five”, and once referred to a council of five respected persons who settled disputes and managed the shared affairs of a village. Raj means “rule”. Panchayati Raj, then, means “rule by panchayats” — though in its modern sense it is far more than a village council of elders.
Today Panchayati Raj is a system of local self-government in rural India. In it, councils elected by the local people themselves manage local affairs and development at three levels: the village, the block and the district.
The key word in that definition is self-government. In local self-government, the people of an area run their own local affairs through bodies they elect, rather than being administered only by officials appointed from above.
A panchayat is the elected council at the heart of this system. Because its members live among the people they serve, decisions are taken close to the ground, by those who feel their effects directly.
Seen sociologically, Panchayati Raj does several things at once. It spreads democratic habits among ordinary people. It strengthens a shared sense of community. And it weaves everyday social relationships together with political and judicial functions in a single local body, linking the social life of a village to the machinery of self-rule.
3.2.2 An Old Idea Revived: From Gram Swaraj to the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee
Local self-government is not a foreign import into India. Long before it was written into any law, Indian villages managed a great deal of their own life. Village panchayats settled quarrels over land and relationships, looked after common resources, and organised shared work, often without any outside authority.
This tradition weakened under centuries of centralised and colonial rule. As distant governments took over administration, revenue collection and justice, the older, village-based style of self-government was pushed into the background.
When India began planning for freedom and after, the idea returned with force. Gandhi placed the self-governing village at the centre of his vision of a free India. He called it Gram Swaraj — village self-rule — and imagined each village as a small republic: managing its own vital needs, largely self-reliant, yet linked to others where cooperation was necessary.
Gandhi’s reasoning was that democracy could not be real if power sat only in distant capitals. If freedom were to mean anything to an ordinary villager, decisions had to be brought down to the level where that villager actually lived — decentralised, in other words, to the grassroots.
After independence, the government launched large rural development schemes, most notably the Community Development Programme. But these were run mainly by officials, and ordinary villagers took little part in them. In 1957 a study team led by Balwant Rai Mehta was asked why popular participation was so weak. Its diagnosis was sharp: development would not take root unless real power was handed to elected local bodies.
The Mehta team recommended what came to be called democratic decentralisation — a linked, three-tier system of elected councils running from the village up to the district. Acting on it, states began setting up Panchayati Raj from the late 1950s, with Rajasthan leading the way.
That first wave of enthusiasm did not last, as Fig. 3.2-1 traces. In many states the panchayats were starved of funds and powers, elections were postponed, and the bodies quietly withered. For nearly three decades reformers argued, through one committee after another, that Panchayati Raj could work only if it were given a secure legal footing that no state government could take away at will. That footing finally arrived with the 73rd Amendment, which the next section examines.
Diagram
Fig. 3.2-1 – timeline of the revival of Panchayati Raj: traditional village panchayats → eclipse under centralised and colonial rule → Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj → Balwant Rai Mehta Committee, 1957, recommends democratic decentralisation → early Panchayati Raj from the late 1950s → first wave falters → 73rd Amendment gives constitutional status, 1992–93
3.3 The Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992
3.3.1 How the Amendment Became Law
By the 1980s one thing was widely agreed: Panchayati Raj had failed to flourish for a basic reason — it had no protection. Local self-government is a subject on the State List of the Constitution, which means states are free to strengthen it, weaken it, or ignore it. Too often they chose to ignore it.
The first attempt to fix this came in 1989, when the government of Rajiv Gandhi introduced the 64th Constitutional Amendment Bill to make elected panchayats compulsory in every state. The bill passed the Lok Sabha but was narrowly defeated in the Rajya Sabha, and it lapsed.
The idea returned under the government of P.V. Narasimha Rao. After detailed examination by a committee of Parliament, a fresh amendment was passed with near-unanimity in both Houses in 1992. It received the President’s assent, and the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act came into force on 24 April 1993 — a date now marked each year as National Panchayati Raj Day.
The Act required every state to bring its own panchayat laws into line with the amendment within a year, and to hold elections to the new bodies. This is why the mid-1990s saw panchayat elections held across the country, many of them for the first time in decades.
The significance is hard to overstate. Before 1993, Panchayati Raj existed only where and when a state government allowed it. After 1993, it was written into the Constitution itself. Regular elections, reserved seats and a fixed term were now guaranteed, not granted as a favour.
3.3.2 The Main Features of the Act
The amendment did not merely revive panchayats; it fixed their essential shape so that no state could hollow them out. Its main features can be grouped as follows.
Gram Sabha: the village assembly
At the base of the whole system stands the Gram Sabha — the assembly of every adult whose name is on the electoral roll of a village. It is not an elected council but the full body of village voters, meeting in the open to discuss and question the panchayat’s plans and accounts.
The Gram Sabha matters because it recognises the village itself as the primary source of democratic power. Everyone may attend and speak; it is the one forum where local self-government is fully direct rather than representative.
A uniform three-tier system
The Act laid down a single, uniform structure of three levels for the whole country, shown in Fig. 3.3-1: a Gram Panchayat at the village level, a Panchayat Samiti at the intermediate or block level, and a Zila Parishad at the district level. Section 3.4 examines each in turn.
One exception was allowed. States with a population below twenty lakhs need not create the intermediate (block) tier, since for a small state a two-level system is enough. Everywhere else, all three tiers are required.
Diagram
Fig. 3.3-1 – pyramid diagram of the three-tier system: a broad base labelled ‘Gram Sabha (all village voters)’, then rising tiers labelled ‘Gram Panchayat — village level’, ‘Panchayat Samiti — block / intermediate level’, and ‘Zila Parishad — district level’
Reservation of seats
Perhaps the boldest feature is reservation. Seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their share of the local population, so that these groups cannot be shut out of local power.
Just as importantly, not less than one-third of all seats are reserved for women — and this one-third cuts across every category, including the seats already reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The offices of chairperson at all three levels are reserved on the same principles. Reserved seats are rotated among different constituencies from one election to the next, so that no single ward is reserved forever.
A fixed five-year term
Every panchayat is elected for a fixed term of five years. If a panchayat is dissolved earlier for any reason, fresh elections must be held within six months, and the new body serves out the remainder of the term. This ends the old practice of postponing elections indefinitely.
Independent election machinery
To keep elections free of interference, the whole task of conducting panchayat elections — preparing the rolls and running the poll — is placed in the hands of an independent State Election Commission, separate from the government of the day.
A State Finance Commission
Self-government is empty without money. The Act requires every state to set up a State Finance Commission at regular five-year intervals, to review the financial position of the panchayats and recommend how funds should be shared with them.
Taken together, these features turned Panchayati Raj from a fragile experiment into a guaranteed structure of rural democracy.
3.3.3 Functions and the Eleventh Schedule
Giving panchayats a secure structure was only half the task. They also needed real work to do. For this, the amendment added a new list to the Constitution — the Eleventh Schedule — naming twenty-nine subjects that a state may hand over to its panchayats.
These subjects were drawn from the State List and cluster around the everyday development and welfare needs of village life. They include agriculture and minor irrigation; animal husbandry, fisheries and rural housing; drinking water, roads and rural electrification; primary education, health and sanitation; poverty alleviation; and the welfare of women, children and the weaker sections.
Two points deserve care here. First, the Eleventh Schedule is a menu, not a command. Each state decides how many of the twenty-nine subjects it actually transfers, and how much money and staff go with them. As a result, panchayats are genuinely powerful in some states and remain weak in others.
Second, these functions matter sociologically because they touch exactly the areas where old inequalities are felt — schooling, water, housing, the welfare of weaker sections. Placing them in local elected hands is meant to let villagers themselves steer resources toward long-neglected groups.
3.4 The Three-Tier Structure of Panchayati Raj
Panchayati Raj is built in three linked levels, one above the other, so that self-government reaches from the single village all the way up to the district. The tiers are not rivals; each has its own area and its own tasks, and plans and funds move between them. We take them from the ground up.
3.4.1 Gram Panchayat: The Village Level
The Gram Panchayat is the foundation of the system — the elected council of a single village or a small group of villages. Its elected members, each chosen from a ward, are called panch, and its elected head is the sarpanch. As at every level, not less than one-third of the seats are reserved for women.
The number of members and the minimum population needed to form a Gram Panchayat vary from state to state, but the principle is the same everywhere: the ward members and the sarpanch are directly elected by the villagers themselves.
A Gram Panchayat needs its own money to work. Its main source is usually a tax on houses and open plots within the village. It may raise smaller sums from taxes on trades, fairs and markets, and it receives grants from the state government and from the district body above it. A government official — often called the gram sevak or village development officer — helps with paperwork and links the panchayat to the wider administration.
The Gram Panchayat’s work is close and practical: village roads and drains, drinking water, street lighting, sanitation, the local school, and the fair distribution of welfare benefits. Because it sits within the village, people can see its work and question it directly at the Gram Sabha.
3.4.2 Panchayat Samiti: The Block Level
Above the villages sits the Panchayat Samiti, the middle tier, which works for a group of villages that together form a development block. (In many states the block corresponds to a tehsil, an administrative sub-division of a district.) It is the bridge between the villages below and the district above.
Its members are drawn mainly from the elected representatives of the area, and it is headed by a chairperson — in several states called the Pramukh — chosen by those members. Alongside the elected side, a senior government officer, the Block Development Officer or BDO, runs the administrative machinery of the block.
The Panchayat Samiti’s central job is coordination. It gathers the plans and proposals prepared by the Gram Panchayats under it, weighs them against the money available and the needs of the area, and processes them for funding and execution. In this way it turns scattered village demands into a workable block-level plan.
3.4.3 Zila Parishad: The District Level
At the top stands the Zila Parishad, or District Council — the third tier, covering a whole district. Like the others it is an elected body, but its membership ties the whole structure together: it includes the chairpersons of the Panchayat Samitis below it, together with members elected from divisions across the district, and certain others.
The Zila Parishad has two heads, and it is important not to confuse them. Its elected chairperson is its political and deliberative head, presiding over its meetings and decisions. Its administrative head is the Chief Executive Officer, usually a senior civil servant, who carries out the council’s decisions and runs its day-to-day machinery.
The Zila Parishad plans and coordinates development for the district as a whole. It reviews and approves the plans that rise from the blocks, shares out funds among them, and oversees schemes too large for a single village or block to manage alone.
The three tiers are best understood together, as Fig. 3.4-1 shows: a need identified in a village travels upward for coordination and funding, while guidance and money flow back down.
Diagram
Fig. 3.4-1 – flow between the tiers with a return path: ‘Gram Panchayat identifies village needs and proposes plans’ → ‘Panchayat Samiti gathers and coordinates block plans’ → ‘Zila Parishad approves, funds and oversees district-wide development’, with a return arrow showing funds and guidance flowing back down through the tiers
3.5 Panchayati Raj and the Empowerment of Women
3.5.1 Reservation: One-Third of Every Seat
Of everything the 73rd Amendment did, its effect on women may be the most far-reaching. By reserving not less than one-third of all seats — and one-third of the chairperson posts — for women at every tier, the Act placed women in elected office on a scale India had never seen.
The numbers tell the story. In the first round of panchayat elections held under the new law, in the mid-1990s, close to a million women were elected to local bodies across the country in a single stretch of elections. For very large numbers of them, it was the first public position they had ever held.
The idea behind reservation is worth stating plainly. Women had been almost entirely absent from formal political power, not because they lacked ability, but because social barriers kept them out. A guaranteed share of seats was meant to break that barrier at once, rather than wait for attitudes to change slowly on their own.
This is what sociologists mean by empowerment — not charity or protection handed down from above, but the process by which people who have been kept out gain the capacity, confidence and power to shape decisions about their own lives and their society.
Reservation for women was not an isolated Indian idea; it grew partly from a wider international shift. The same one-third reservation was later extended to urban local bodies — municipalities and city councils — by the 74th Amendment, so the change reached town and countryside alike.
3.5.2 Why Empowerment Was Needed
To see why a guaranteed political voice mattered so much, we have to look at the position women held in much of rural society. Their disadvantage was not scattered or accidental; it was patterned, running through health, education, economic life and personal safety alike.
Underlying all of it is what sociologists call patriarchy — a system of social arrangements in which men hold most of the authority, and women’s roles and worth are defined largely in relation to men. Political reservation was aimed, in effect, at prising open one corner of that system.
Health and nutrition
In many households, women and girls have traditionally eaten last and least, and received less medical care when ill. This is not a matter of poverty alone; it cuts across castes and classes. And because a mother’s health shapes her children’s, this quiet discrimination reaches into the next generation.
Education
For a long time, far fewer girls than boys were sent to school, and female literacy lagged well behind male literacy, especially in the countryside. A woman who cannot read is more easily kept unaware of her rights, and less able to press her case in a public forum.
Economic dependence
Women have long worked hard — in fields, homes and family enterprises — without owning the land or capital they work with, and often without any recognised say in family decisions. Weak property rights left many economically dependent on fathers, husbands or sons, and dependence narrows the freedom to speak and act.
Vulnerability to harm
Women have also been exposed to specific forms of harm, female infanticide and foeticide, domestic violence and harassment among them. These are named here not to shock but because they are the social facts that made the question of women’s power urgent. Sociology records them in order to study and address them.
Put together, these conditions form a structure, not a string of isolated misfortunes. Reservation in panchayats was one attempt to give women a lever against that structure — a place at the table where decisions about water, schools, health and welfare are actually taken.
3.5.3 From Presence to Power: Gains and Limits
Has reservation actually empowered women, or merely put them in seats? This is the honest question a sociologist must ask, and the answer is: some of both.
Start with the gains. The sheer presence of large numbers of women — many from Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe backgrounds — in bodies that had been almost entirely male is itself a change of historic size. And presence has begun to shift priorities: women representatives often press harder for the things that daily fall to women, such as drinking water, sanitation, schooling and health.
There is a further, slower effect. Where villagers grow used to seeing women in charge, the very idea of what a woman can do begins to change — lifting the aspirations parents hold for their daughters, and the aspirations girls hold for themselves.
But the limits are real, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. In some places a woman is elected while the actual decisions are taken by her husband or another male relative — a pattern known bluntly as the sarpanch pati, literally “the sarpanch’s husband”. A reserved seat, this reminds us, hands over a chair but not automatically the power to use it.
As Fig. 3.5-1 suggests, empowerment tends to move in a chain. A seat gives a voice in decisions; using that voice builds skills and some control over resources; that standing carries back into the household and the wider community; and a visible woman leader becomes an example for others. None of this is guaranteed — but where it takes hold, the effect reaches far beyond the council chamber.
Diagram
Fig. 3.5-1 – causal chain of empowerment: ‘reserved seat’ → ‘voice in local decisions’ → ‘skills and control over resources’ → ‘greater standing in family and community’ → ‘role model for other women and girls’
3.6 Bal Panchayats and the Empowerment of Children
3.6.1 What a Bal Panchayat Is
We have seen how reserving seats can bring an excluded group — women — into local decision-making. Children are another group whose voices are rarely heard, even in matters that shape their own lives. The Bal Panchayat is an attempt to change that.
A Bal Panchayat — the name means “children’s panchayat”, and it is sometimes called a children’s parliament — is a body of children, mostly of school-going age, modelled on the village panchayat. Through it, children discuss the problems they face, take part in decisions about their own development, and carry their concerns to adults and officials.
The idea has been encouraged by UNICEF and taken up by some panchayats and voluntary organisations in different parts of India. Its members are usually school-going children, roughly between the ages of five and eighteen.
What does a Bal Panchayat do for children? Through meetings, surveys and small projects, children learn about their rights and about how public decisions are made. They pick up the knowledge, skills and habits of active citizenship early, and they are connected to one another, to supportive adults, and to the community and its decision-makers.
3.6.2 Bal Panchayats in Action
The most developed example comes from Karnataka. There, from the mid-1990s, an initiative known as the Makkala Panchayat — literally a children’s panchayat — grew up alongside the village councils, together with a union of children called Bhima Sangha. Children in these bodies do real work: they survey their own villages, identify problems such as school dropouts or missing amenities, and carry their findings to officials and elected representatives.
Their special concern is for the children most easily overlooked — working children, children with disabilities, and girls. By raising these children’s needs in public, the Makkala Panchayats press elected representatives to be accountable to children too, and affirm that children have a right to take part in decisions that concern them.
The tasks a Bal Panchayat sets itself are practical and close to home, as Fig. 3.6-1 shows. They work to bring dropouts back to school and to move toward full literacy; they campaign against social evils such as child marriage; and they keep an eye on basic amenities like safe drinking water and sanitation. In doing so they sometimes even question the decisions of the adult panchayat itself.
Diagram
Fig. 3.6-1 – action cycle of a Bal Panchayat: ‘children meet and discuss’ → ‘identify problems affecting children (dropouts, child marriage, water, sanitation)’ → ‘survey and gather facts’ → ‘raise concerns with elders, the panchayat and officials’ → ‘follow up and check results’, looping back to the start
Now an honest word on limits. Bal Panchayats hold no formal legal power; children cannot vote or command budgets, and much depends on the goodwill of supportive adults and organisations. Only a few states have taken the idea up seriously. Yet within these limits they do something valuable: they give the most marginalised children a voice, and they teach a whole generation the habits of democratic participation long before they are old enough to vote.
3.7 Summary
Political organisation is the system of institutions, roles and rules through which a society organises power and authority, settles disputes, keeps order and makes decisions binding on all its members. Power is the ability to impose one’s will; authority is power accepted as legitimate.
Political organisation is also an engine of social change — through making law, decentralising power, allocating resources and drawing people into participation. The relationship runs both ways, but political change is usually necessary for social change without being sufficient on its own.
Panchayati Raj is a system of rural local self-government, in which councils elected by the local people run local affairs at the village, block and district levels. Local self-government means an area’s own elected bodies managing its affairs, rather than officials appointed from above.
India had an old tradition of village panchayats, which faded under centralised and colonial rule. It was revived through Gandhi’s ideal of Gram Swaraj (village self-rule) and the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee of 1957, which recommended democratic decentralisation and a three-tier system; but this first wave weakened for want of legal protection.
The Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992 — in force from 24 April 1993 — gave Panchayati Raj constitutional status for the first time, turning it from a favour granted by states into a right protected by the Constitution.
Its main features are the Gram Sabha (the assembly of all village voters), a uniform three-tier system (the intermediate tier optional for states under twenty lakhs), reservation of seats, a fixed five-year term, an independent State Election Commission, and a State Finance Commission.
Reservation sets aside seats for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their population, and not less than one-third of all seats — and of chairperson posts — for women, cutting across every category and rotated among constituencies.
The Eleventh Schedule lists twenty-nine development and welfare subjects that a state may transfer to its panchayats; each state decides how many it actually devolves, so panchayats are strong in some states and weak in others.
The three tiers are the Gram Panchayat (village level; head the sarpanch, members the panch), the Panchayat Samiti (block level; a chairperson with a Block Development Officer), and the Zila Parishad (district level; an elected chairperson with a Chief Executive Officer). Village needs travel up the tiers, while funds and guidance travel back down.
Empowerment is the process by which excluded people gain the capacity, confidence and power to shape their own lives. Reservation brought close to a million women into local bodies in the first elections under the new law, many entering public life for the first time.
Women needed this lever because their disadvantage was structural — rooted in patriarchy and running through nutrition and health, education, economic dependence and vulnerability to harm.
Evidence shows real gains: women representatives often shift spending toward priorities such as drinking water, and their presence raises aspirations for girls. But limits remain, notably the sarpanch pati or proxy problem; with time and experience, presence can grow into genuine power.
A Bal Panchayat is a children’s council that involves children in self-governance for their own development. It holds no legal power, but gives children a voice, trains them in citizenship, and lets them raise issues such as school dropout, child marriage and basic amenities — as the Makkala Panchayats and Bhima Sangha in Karnataka have shown.
3.8 Key Terms
Authority — Power that people accept as rightful, obeyed out of consent rather than fear.
Bal Panchayat — A children’s council through which children take part in raising and discussing matters affecting their own lives.
Block Development Officer — The senior government officer who runs the administrative work of a development block and its Panchayat Samiti.
Chief Executive Officer — The senior civil servant who heads the administrative machinery of a Zila Parishad.
Decentralisation — The handing down of decision-making power from central or higher authorities to lower, local levels.
Democratic decentralisation — The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee’s idea of decentralising power through a linked system of elected local councils.
Eleventh Schedule — The list added to the Constitution of twenty-nine subjects that a state may transfer to its panchayats.
Empowerment — The process by which excluded people gain the capacity, confidence and power to shape their own lives and society.
Gram Panchayat — The elected council at the village level, the base tier of Panchayati Raj.
Gram Sabha — The assembly of all registered voters of a village, through which villagers take part directly in self-government.
Gram sevak — The village-level government official who assists the Gram Panchayat and links it to the wider administration.
Gram Swaraj — Gandhi’s ideal of a free India built from self-governing, largely self-reliant village republics.
Legitimacy — The quality of being accepted as rightful, which turns mere power into authority.
Local self-government — The running of a local area’s affairs by bodies elected by the people of that area themselves.
Panch — An elected ward member of a Gram Panchayat.
Panchayat — An elected council of a village or local area.
Panchayat Samiti — The elected body at the block (intermediate) level, linking the villages to the district.
Panchayati Raj — The system of rural local self-government run by elected councils at the village, block and district levels.
Patriarchy — A form of social organisation in which men hold most authority, and property and decision-making are ordered mainly in men’s favour.
Political organisation — The system of institutions, roles and rules through which a society organises power and makes decisions binding on all its members.
Power — The capacity to make others behave as one wishes, even against their will.
Reservation — The setting aside of a share of seats or posts for particular groups, such as women and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Sarpanch — The elected head of a Gram Panchayat.
Sarpanch pati — The pattern in which a woman is elected but a male relative actually exercises her powers.
Social change — Any significant alteration over time in a society’s relationships, institutions and values.
State Election Commission — The independent body that conducts panchayat elections in a state.
State Finance Commission — The body a state sets up every five years to review panchayat finances and recommend how funds are shared with them.
Zila Parishad — The elected body at the district level, the top tier of Panchayati Raj.
3.9 Points to Ponder
The law can reserve a seat for a woman, but it cannot make her village listen to her. If a reserved seat and real power are not the same thing, what would have to change for one to grow into the other?
Panchayati Raj brings decisions closer to the people. But does bringing power closer to the village always make it more democratic — or can local power be captured by the already-powerful just as easily as distant power can?
The Gram Sabha lets every villager speak directly, while the panchayat is a small elected council that decides. Which is more truly democratic — everyone having a voice, or a few being chosen to decide — and why might a society need both?
Why might a community that has just elected a woman still expect her husband to speak for her? What does this tell us about the difference between holding an office and holding authority?
A Bal Panchayat gives children a voice but no legal power. Is a voice without power worth having — and what might the answer suggest about how social change usually begins?
Panchayati Raj has been praised both as an ancient Indian tradition revived and as a modern democratic reform. Can something be traditional and modern at the same time, and does it matter which of the two we choose to call it?
3.10 Objective Questions
- The term “Panchayati Raj” refers to: [1 mark]
- rule by appointed district officials
- a system of rural local self-government by elected councils
- the central government’s ministry for villages
- a court that settles village disputes
- The body made up of all persons on the electoral roll of a village is the: [1 mark]
- Gram Panchayat
- Panchayat Samiti
- Gram Sabha
- Zila Parishad
- Under the 73rd Amendment, the share of seats reserved for women is: [1 mark]
- not less than one-tenth
- not less than one-fifth
- not less than one-third
- exactly one-half
- The recommendation of “democratic decentralisation” through a linked three-tier system is associated with the: [1 mark]
- Mandal Commission
- Balwant Rai Mehta Committee
- State Finance Commission
- State Election Commission
- Read the assertion and reason and choose the correct option. [1 mark] Assertion (A): The 73rd Amendment is called a landmark in democratic decentralisation. Reason (R): It gave Panchayati Raj constitutional status, so that it no longer depended only on the will of state governments.
- 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.
- Read the assertion and reason and choose the correct option. [1 mark] Assertion (A): Reserving one-third of seats for women does not, by itself, guarantee that women exercise real power. Reason (R): In some places the powers of an elected woman are exercised by a male relative, a pattern known as the sarpanch pati.
- 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.
- Match each body in Column A with its level in Column B. [1 mark]
| Column A | Column B |
|---|---|
| a. Gram Panchayat | i. district level |
| b. Panchayat Samiti | ii. assembly of all village voters |
| c. Zila Parishad | iii. village level |
| d. Gram Sabha | iv. block level |
- State whether the following is True or False: A Bal Panchayat has the legal power to take binding decisions in the same way as a Gram Panchayat. [1 mark]
3.11 Check Your Concepts
Define local self-government. [2 marks]
What is the Gram Sabha, and who are its members? [2 marks]
Differentiate between power and authority, giving one example of each. [3 marks]
Explain briefly what is meant by democratic decentralisation. [3 marks]
Explain, with an example, how a political organisation can bring about social change. [4 marks]
“A reserved seat hands over a chair, but not automatically the power to use it.” Evaluate this statement with reference to women in panchayats. [4 marks]
Describe the main features of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992. [6 marks]
Discuss in detail the role of the 73rd Amendment Act in the empowerment of women, bringing out both its gains and its limitations. [6 marks]
Explain the role of Bal Panchayats in the empowerment of children, and assess their limitations. [6 marks]
3.12 Passage-Based Questions
- In a village, a panchayat seat is reserved for a woman for the first time. Meena is elected, but for the first few months her husband attends the meetings and speaks on her behalf. Encouraged by a neighbour, Meena begins attending herself, learns how the council works, and within a year is leading a demand for a new water connection in her ward.
- Name the pattern seen in the first few months of Meena’s term, and explain it. [2]
- Using Meena’s case, explain the difference between holding an office and holding real power. [2]
- What does this example suggest about how reservation can lead to empowerment over time? [2] [6 marks]
- The residents of a small village find that their only well has dried up. They raise the matter at a meeting open to all the village’s voters. Their village council then passes a proposal for a piped-water scheme and sends it upward. The block-level body fits it into its plans and forwards it, and the district-level body finally approves the funds.
- Name the open meeting of all village voters, and state its role in this example. [2]
- Identify the three bodies mentioned, from the village to the district, and the level at which each works. [2]
- How does this example show the three tiers working as a single linked system? [2] [6 marks]
- In a village, several children stop coming to school after Class V, because the upper-primary school is far away and the path is unsafe. In their children’s council the children discuss the problem, prepare a list of those who have dropped out, and take it to the Gram Panchayat to ask for safe transport.
- What is the children’s council described here called, and what is its main purpose? [2]
- The children have no legal powers. How, then, can such a body help bring about change? [2]
- State one way in which a Bal Panchayat differs from a Gram Panchayat. [2] [6 marks]
3.13 Practice With Data
A Gram Panchayat has 12 ward seats. The law requires that not less than one-third of the seats be reserved for women. (i) Calculate the minimum number of seats that must be reserved for women. (ii) Explain why the actual number of women members could turn out to be higher than this minimum. [3 marks]
The reservation for women is described as “not less than one-third of the total seats.” (i) Express one-third as a percentage, correct to one decimal place. (ii) Does the phrase “not less than” describe a minimum share or a maximum share? Give a reason for your answer. [2 marks]
The table below gives illustrative figures for the seats in one Zila Parishad after an election.
| Category of seat | Total seats | Seats won by women |
|---|---|---|
| General | 40 | 16 |
| Reserved (SC/ST) | 20 | 8 |
- Work out the total number of seats and the total number of seats won by women. [1]
- What fraction, and what percentage, of all the seats were won by women? Show your working. [2]
- Does this meet the “not less than one-third” requirement for women? Justify your answer with the figures. [1] [4 marks]