![](https://www.nextias.com/ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/4043021Screenshot_6.png)
In News
Recently ,Issues related to decentralisation in India have been highlighted .
About decentralisation in India
- A major step towards decentralisation was taken in 1992 and the Constitution was amended to make the third-tier of democracy more powerful and effective.
- The Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992 has added a new part IX.
- The Amendment envisages the Gram Sabha as the foundation of the Panchayat Raj System to perform functions and powers entrusted to it by the State Legislatures.
- It provides for a three tier Panchayat Raj System at the village, intermediate and district levels.
Key issues
- Local governments remain hamstrung and ineffective; mere agents to do the bidding of higher level governments.
- Democracy has not been enhanced in spite of about 32 lakh peoples’ representatives being elected to them every five years, with great expectation and fanfare.
- The constraint lies in the design of funding streams that transfer money to local governments.
- The volume of money set apart for them is inadequate to meet their basic requirements.
- Much of the money given is inflexible; even in the case of untied grants mandated by the Union and State Finance Commissions, their use is constrained through the imposition of several conditions.
- There is little investment in enabling and strengthening local governments to raise their own taxes and user charges.
- Local governments do not have the staff to perform even basic tasks.
- Furthermore, as most staff are hired by higher level departments and placed with local governments on deputation, they do not feel responsible to the latter; they function as part of a vertically integrated departmental system.
- The current Union government has further centralised service delivery by using technology, and panchayats are nothing more than front offices for several Union government programmes.
- Criminal elements and contractors are attracted to local government elections, tempted by the large sums of money now flowing to them.
- They win elections through bribing voters and striking deals with different groups.
Suggestions
- Democratic decentralisation is barely alive in India and to curb existing issues gram sabhas and wards committees in urban areas have to be revitalised.
- Consultations with the grama sabha could be organised through smaller discussions where everybody can really participate.
- Even new systems of Short Message Services, or social media groups could be used for facilitating discussions between members of a grama sabha.
- Local government organisational structures have to be strengthened.
- Panchayats are burdened with a huge amount of work that other departments thrust on them, without being compensated for the extra administrative costs.
- Local governments must be enabled to hold State departments accountable and to provide quality, corruption free service to them, through service-level agreements.
- India’s efforts in decentralisation represent one of the largest experiments in deepening democracy.
- We can keep track of corrupt local government representatives; at the higher level
- Given diverse habitation patterns, political and social history, it makes sense to mandate States to assign functions to local governments.
Mains Practice Question [Q] Decentralisation is vital to strengthen participatory democracy, facilitate responsive governance and enable public service delivery.Discuss |
Previous article
The coalition of the world:United Nations
Next article
Trend Analysis of Non-Performing Assets (NPAs)