'Panchayati raj institutions' growth hampered by governments (ToI)

TNN Nov 10, 2013, 01.06AM IST PANAJI: Twenty years after panchayati raj institutions attained Constitutional status, state governments aided by bureaucrats, still oppose the empowerment of village panchayats and Mahatma Gandhi's pledge towards PRIs remains a dream, Rajya Sabha member Mani Shankar Aiyar said on Saturday. Aiyar was delivering the fifth and final lecture of the festival of Gandhian ideas organized by the council for social justice and peace and peaceful society. Aiyar spoke on the topic 'Gandhiji's views on Panchayati Raj'. Aiyar cited Gandhiji's reply when asked for his dream for an independent India as "I shall work for an India in which the poorest will feel it is his country, in whose making he has an effective voice". Aiyar said there is no way that the common man can have a voice in Parliament simply because his member of Parliament represents millions. On the contrary, his panch member represents just a few hundreds and that is why it is important to empower panchayati raj institutions. The MP cited recommendations from a report of the expert committee chaired by him on "leveraging panchayat raj institutions for the more effective delivery of public goods and services". The report stresses that panchayati raj must not deteriorate into sarpanch raj, that the panchayati raj institutions be structured legally and administratively to function as collegiate bodies, with all elected members being involved in preparing programmes, key decisions being taken by the panchayat as a whole and not at the whim and fancy of the president and implementation being under the effective supervision of the panchayat members and not just the sarpanch." Aiyar argued that this will secure transparency and also enable accountability to the gram sabhas and the effective exercise of social audit responsibilities by gram sabhas. "The fulcrum of the system is the gram/ward sabha. It needs to be statutorily empowered to undertake supervisory functions, reflecting community needs and community satisfaction with the planning and implementation of schemes of economic development and social justice as envisaged in Articles 243G and 243ZD read with the 11th schedule," the report stated. Aiyar advocated empowerment of the PRIs which would result in they getting their entitlements and the marriage of these two would result in enrichment on the Gandhian scale, he said. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-11-10/goa/43885103_1_panchayati-raj-gram-sabhas-sarpanch-raj