The Hindu : National / Elections 2004 : Divided on most issues, they are united on this

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Thursday, Apr 22, 2004

National

National - Elections 2004

Divided on most issues, they are united on this

M. Madan Mohan

Hubli

The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which are divided on most issues, however appear to agree on keeping one key issue out of the electoral debate. Neither of them is talking about the question of the empowerment of the panchayat raj institutions. Take, for example, the Congress' poll manifesto, which the party went out of the way to publicise with sponsored advertisements in the Kannada dailies.

There is no mention of panchayat raj in the document. The BJP is no different: the party's "Vision Document," released with a lot of fanfare, outlining its programmes and priorities, does not even remotely refer to the issue.

Both parties have not thought it fit to make a commitment to implementing the Constitution 73rd and 74th Amendments to strengthen the panchayat raj and the urban local bodies.

One can understand the BJP forgetting about the panchayat raj, for it has not seriously professed any commitment to the cause either at the State level or the national level. The NDA Government's record in the matter is also a dismal one, having done little to further the cause of local self-governance.

At the State level, the BJP failed miserably to make any inroads into the panchayat raj institutions and fared very badly in the elections held for the three tiers of the panchayat raj institutions in the area.

This is despite the comparatively good show it put up in the Assembly and Parliamentary elections in carving out its own power base in Karnataka.

Its failure to carve out a base in the panchayat raj institutions has also come in the way of the party playing any effective role in the elections to the Karnataka Legislative Council from the local authorities' constituencies, where the panchayat members have a vital role to play.

Things are different with the Congress. The party has been talking about the issue since the very beginning.

Besides its role at the national level in getting the two crucial amendments passed, at the State level, the Congress was instrumental in Karnataka being the first State in the country to bring in legislation in line with the Constitutional amendments, way back in 1993.

It amended the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act in its current spell also — to bring about many changes — though it took an unusually long time to do so.

At the administrative level, it has issued orders on activity mapping, clearly delineating the functions of the three tiers of the panchayat raj.

This has been done under the principle that, what should be done by a particular tier should be done only at that level, with neither the higher tier nor the lower tier doing it.

But all this finds no mention in the party manifesto released by the Congress party for the present election.

This has raised serious doubts about the intentions of the Congress in the minds of those who have been watching the process of decentralisation taking shape in Karnataka.

Despite the steps taken by the Janata Government of Ramakrishna Hegde in 1987, the Congress Government of Veerappa Moily before 1994 and the Krishna Government since 1999, the panchayat raj system continues to be a highly bureaucratised set-up.

The veneer of decentralisation given to the system through legislation cannot hide the fact that the representatives of the three-tier institution hardly enjoy any powers.

The local bodies are still controlled by the bureaucracy at the State and the Central levels. So much so that they have absolutely no role to play in key areas: they are marginalised when it comes to reporting, planning and executing drought relief schemes.

They are only there to execute whatever the Deputy Commissioner tells them to; the DCs finalise the programmes and release the money on their own, without any reference to the grass roots organisations.

This has been the bane of the system ever since it was launched in 1987. The reason for this is that neither the legislators nor the bureaucracy want to give up the powers they have to the new institutions.

In fact, most of the provisions contained in the Constitutional provisions have not been implemented even 10 years after they were passed by Parliament.

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