This Quote Means: When Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘Every village has to become a self-sufficient republic’

In fact, Gandhi stated that after Indian independence from British rule in 1947, he wished for the Congress Party to transform into a volunteer organisation consisting of panchayat-like units in all Indian villages to interact with villagers for achieving swaraj. We explain what Gandhi meant when he spoke about the concept and why the law was a milestone.

Also, the UPSC Civil Services Examination often asks questions about Gandhi and Gandhian principles in the Essay, Ethics and Polity papers. Moreover, Panchayati Raj is an important topic in General Studies II (in Polity syllabus), which has both basic and advanced questions. For example, in 2018, UPSC asked the following question in its Mains examination: “Assess the importance of the Panchayat system in India as a part of local government. Apart from government grants, what sources the Panchayats can look out for financing developmental projects?”

What was the context of Gandhi’s quote?

Gandhi’s full quote, from a 1946 issue of the Harijan magazine, reads: “Independence must mean that of the people of India, not of those who are today ruling over them… Independence must begin at the bottom. Thus, every village will be a republic or Panchayat having full powers. It follows, therefore, that every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its affairs even to the extent of defending itself against the whole world.”

In his various experiments against colonial forces and creating an alternative to their model of governance, Gandhi put forth values like ahimsa (non-violence) and satya (truth). But apart from ideology, he also gave practical steps for achieving true self-rule or swaraj. He said India must have panchayats, a setup where the village’s adults elect a council of five people and a head among them, as local representatives.

Although, Gandhi clarifies this does not mean not taking any help from the outside world, but simply that each person must be so capable as to take care of their own basic needs in life in harmony with nature and those around them.

This would mean contributing labour for public work like sanitation, growing food locally, creating a rotational force for guarding the village, ensuring education for all, wearing hand-spun khadi to promote local artisans, shunning intoxicants, etc.

Where does swarajya in villages fit in Gandhi’s ideology?

Gandhi said that in a structure composed of “innumerable villages there will be ever widening, never ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom.” And so instead of a hierarchy of a powerful district or state or Centre, villages must be equal, important micro units from whom the Centre ultimately derives its power through coordination. This has also been termed “democratic decentralisation”.

He recognised the difficulties in achieving this, but added it was to be a template, saying, “If one man can produce one ideal village, he will have provided a pattern not only for the whole country, but perhaps for the whole world.” The idea also reflects his larger inclination towards preserving Indian traditions and resisting external forces.

What was the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act of 1992?

Before the act, India’s Constitution only mentioned a two-tier form of government and local institutions found a mention only in Directive Principles of State Policy – which is not enforceable by courts or bound to be followed, only meant as a guiding document for governments.

With a lack of focus here, absence of regular elections, insufficient representation of marginalised sections like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women, inadequate devolution of powers (transfer from a higher level of government to the lower levels) and lack of financial resources from the state and the Centre were some issues plaguing village-level governance.

Several committees were constituted for studying these issues, such as the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee and the Ashok Mehta Committee, which gave important recommendations. In the late 1980s, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi prioritised the issue and after cross-party support, the measure was finally passed. Being enshrined in law and an amendment to the Constitution meant these provisions could no longer be easily ignored. The 74th Amendment Act, passed in the same year, sought to look at local governance in urban areas and constituting municipal bodies.

What did the Act change?

As The Indian Express noted in its 2018 editorial on 25 years of the act, “The Panchayati Raj Act not only institutionalised PRIs [Panchayati Raj Institutions] as the mandatory third tier of governance, it transformed the dynamics of rural development by giving a say to a large section of the people — significantly, women — in the administration of their localities.”

Here are some other key changes it brought:

*It said the state government may devolve powers for such bodies to implement schemes for economic development and social justice, authorise a Panchayat to levy, collect and appropriate taxes, duties, and tolls and provide for making such grants-in-aid to the Panchayats from the Consolidated Fund of the State – a major move to help fund them.

*It mandated women’s representation in one-third of the seats. Women now constitute more than 45 per cent of the nearly three million panchayat and gram sabha representatives in the country, standing in contrast to their representation in the current Lok Sabha, at 14 per cent. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe groups were also mandated to be assigned seats in proportion to their presence in the population.

*A five-year term was fixed for representatives, with a procedure given for conducting timely elections.

*It also noted that the Governor of a State would constitute a Finance Commission to review the financial position of the Panchayats and then recommend to her what their requirements are, how they can be met, etc.

And how can the act be evaluated now?

Undoubtedly, the act has been instrumental in involving more and more people in the democratic processes at a grassroots level. As James Manor notes in The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, decentralisation generally results in more transparency between the government and the people, better grievance redressal and better information flow. Manor notes how civil servants can gain timely news about developing health concerns or outbreaks in rural areas, for example, to suggest intervention.

However, he also noted that many of the initial worries – having to do with finances, real devolution and genuine representation of marginalised groups – remain. Too often, these are dependent on the approach of the political parties in states or a reluctance to cede power.

Notably, the domain of local governments comes under the State List as per Schedule 7 of the Constitution. Manor explained that this meant, “The amendments had to suggest more things than they required of the states.” State governments’ varied responses have led to varying results of the act’s impact across India.

In 2013, former MP Mani Shankar Aiyar headed a committee titled ‘Towards Holistic Panchayat Raj’ on evaluating the act 20 years after it came into effect. He also noted some steps to rectify these problems in an article in The Indian Express, ranging from financial incentivisation of the states to encourage effective devolution to greater involvement of these bodies in district-level planning.