Class 6 Social Science Chapter 11: Grassroots Democracy — Part 2: Rural Local Government

A country of villages

Begin with the size of the problem. India holds about 600,000 villages, some 8,000 towns and more than 4,000 cities. Its population has passed 1.4 billion, and close to two-thirds of that lives outside the towns altogether.

One village, to make it concrete

Picture Lakshmanpur, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Two hundred houses, about seven hundred people, most of them farming or keeping cows and goats. Some families have a relative in the armed forces. A few of the younger people have left for city jobs.

The questions such a village faces

Water for the fields. A main road broken up by heavy rain. A primary school that needs keeping open. A dispute over land, or a crop that has gone missing. None of these is unusual, and all of them need somebody to decide.

Why they are not sent to a capital

Now ask the obvious question. Should the villagers travel to the State capital, or to Delhi, every time one of these comes up? The distance alone answers it. So does knowledge: the people of Lakshmanpur understand their road better than anyone in a capital could.

What a Panchayat is

Every village in India has a council for exactly this purpose, and the word for it is Panchayat. Its members belong to the village. The matters it settles are the matters of that village.

Panchayati Raj

The whole system built on those councils has its own name: Panchayati Raj. It is a form of self-government, which means something precise. The people a decision falls on are the people who take part in making it.

Governance, brought closer

That is the point of the arrangement. It puts governance within reach, so that ordinary villagers can take an active part in deciding. It also matters for delivery: government schemes are meant to reach the last village, and a local body is what carries them there.

Three tiers, not one

Panchayati Raj is not a single council. It works at three levels, and the usual way to draw it is as a pyramid. Counting from the bottom up, those levels are the village, the block and the district.

The village tier

At the base sits the Gram Panchayat, the institution closest to the people of a rural area. This is the tier a villager deals with directly, and the one the next two are built on.

The block tier

Above it is the Panchayat Samiti, working at the block level. In different States you will meet it under other names, including Mandal Parishad.

The district tier

At the top is the Zila Parishad, sometimes called the District Panchayat. A district holds many blocks, and each block holds many villages, so each tier covers more ground than the one beneath it.

Read the pyramid upward

That order is worth holding on to. Village, then block, then district. The system is drawn from the bottom because the bottom is where it starts.

What they are responsible for

Taken together, these institutions cover almost everything in the life of a district. The list runs from agriculture and housing to the upkeep of roads and the management of water, and on to education, health care, social welfare and cultural activities.

Nobody is too far away

That breadth is the second half of the argument. A village council is not a minor body with a small list. It is the tier through which a great many public things actually reach the people who need them.

Why the base matters most

Notice what the shape is saying. A pyramid rests on its base, and here the base is the village. Rural local government is built upward from the smallest unit, not downward from the largest.

Scenario:

A class is given three figures: about 600,000 villages, some 8,000 towns, and more than 4,000 cities. Meera says cities must matter most because they are in the news. Their teacher asks the class to work with the population instead. India has passed 1.4 billion people, and close to two-thirds live outside the towns. The children divide and find that the rural population runs to many hundreds of millions. Meera revises her view. Villages are small individually and enormous together, which is why a system of local government reaching every one of them is not a small administrative detail.

Analysis:

Six hundred thousand villages are easy to overlook one at a time. Two-thirds of 1.4 billion is what makes the rural tier the largest thing in the system.

Activity:

Find your district's rural and urban population. Work out the share living in villages and compare it with the national figure.

Title:

Sort the problem to its tier

What You Notice:

Most everyday problems stop at the village tier. The higher tiers come in when something has to cover more than one village.

Safety:

None needed.

About two in every three Indians live in a rural area, so rural local government is the government most Indians meet first.

Cultural activities sit on the list of what these institutions look after, alongside roads and water. The range is wider than most people expect.

A district holds many blocks and a block holds many villages, so each tier of the pyramid covers more ground than the one under it.

The three tiers, in order — Village, Block, District - small to large — Read the pyramid upward. Gram Panchayat at the village, Panchayat Samiti at the block, Zila Parishad at the district. Each covers more ground than the one below.

Why local government exists at all — Near problems need near answers — A broken village road is a village problem. Sending it to a distant capital would be slow, and that capital would know less about the road than the villagers do.

Who votes, and who is elected

Two bodies sit at the village level, and they are not the same thing. Keep them apart from the start, because almost every confusion here comes from running them together.

The Gram Sabha

The first is the Gram Sabha. Its members are the grown-ups of one village, or of several that lie together, provided their names are on the voters list. Not a committee, and nobody appoints you to it. If you are an adult voter there, you are in it.

What happens in it

Women and men alike speak there, on every matter that touches the area, and the meeting decides. This is the part of Panchayati Raj where democracy is direct: the villagers themselves are in the room.

Why that matters

A body nobody selects you for is unusual. It means the Sabha cannot be packed, and it cannot quietly drop the people it finds inconvenient. Every adult voter of that village has a standing right to be in the room when the decision is taken.

The Gram Panchayat

The second body is the Gram Panchayat. Its members are elected, and the Gram Sabha elects them directly. So the voters do not choose a party or a distant representative; they choose the people who will sit on their own village council. That is the relationship worth holding on to. The Gram Sabha is everybody; the Gram Panchayat is the smaller elected body it puts there to act between meetings.

The Sarpanch

Each Gram Panchayat then elects a head of its own, called the Sarpanch in many places and the Pradhan in others. The title differs from State to State, but the post is the same one. In recent years more and more of the people holding it have been women.

Three Sarpanchs worth knowing

The chapter names three people, and each shows something different about what the office can be.

Dnyaneshwar Kamble

Kamble, a transgender person, was elected Sarpanch of Tarangfal in the Solapur district of Maharashtra in 2017, against six other candidates. The motto is lok seva, gram seva: serving the village is serving the public.

Vandana Bahadur Maida

Maida belongs to the Bhil community, in Khankhandvi village in Madhya Pradesh. She became the first woman Sarpanch there against the customs of the place. She persuaded the women of the village to come to the Sabha meetings, and took up education and sanitation.

Popatrao Baguji Pawar

Hiware Bazar, in Ahmednagar district, used to face drought after drought and poor harvests. Once Pawar became Sarpanch he applied Anna Hazare's approach: harvesting rainwater, conserving the watershed, and planting trees in lakhs.

What it produced

All of that recharged the groundwater. Working with the villagers, he turned Hiware Bazar green and prosperous within a few years. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2020.

What the three have in common

Notice what they share. None of them held national office, and none needed to. Each changed a single village, working through a council that every village in India already has sitting there, whether it is used well or not.

The Panchayat Secretary

A Gram Panchayat is not left to manage its own paperwork. A Panchayat Secretary handles the administration: calling the meetings, and keeping the records.

The Patwari

In many parts of India a second officer helps too, called the Patwari, who keeps the villagers' land records. Some Patwaris hold maps that are generations old.

Why old maps matter

Those maps are worth a thought. They show who held what, and where the fields and paths ran, long before anyone alive remembers. A land dispute today can turn on a line drawn a century ago.

The office and the person

One last thing about all this. The offices described here exist in every Indian village, filled or empty, used well or barely used at all. What the three Sarpanchs show is what happens when somebody decides to use them properly.

Scenario:

A village of about 900 people has had three poor harvests, and its wells run dry by March. At the Gram Sabha a farmer argues for a new borewell, deeper than the rest. A schoolteacher answers that the last two borewells also ran dry within four years, and that the real loss is the water leaving the village after the rains. The Sabha is divided. The Sarpanch asks the Panchayat Secretary to put both proposals on the next agenda, and asks the Patwari for the old maps. Those maps are about eighty years old, and they show two stream beds now dry and partly built over. The Panchayat votes to cut trenches along the slope above the village. It also repairs the old bunds and plants trees higher up. Three years later the wells hold water into May.

Analysis:

Every actor in this story is doing the job this topic describes. The Gram Sabha is the villagers themselves discussing and deciding, which is why the disagreement happens in the open rather than being settled elsewhere. The Sarpanch does not decide alone: the head of the Panchayat puts the question to the body. The Secretary handles the administration by placing items on the agenda. The Patwari supplies the land records, and the old maps are exactly the kind that are generations old and still decisive. The measures chosen are the ones Hiware Bazar used: hold the rain where it falls, conserve the watershed, plant on the slope, and let the groundwater recharge. A deeper borewell would have taken more water out; the trenches and bunds put water back in.

Activity:

Draw the slope above a village in profile. Mark where you would cut trenches, where you would repair a bund, and where you would plant. Then draw an arrow for the rainwater in each case, and label whether it leaves the village or soaks in.

Some Patwaris hold village maps that are generations old. A land dispute today can turn on a line drawn a century ago.

Dnyaneshwar Kamble, a transgender person, won the Tarangfal Sarpanch election of 2017 against six other candidates.

Hiware Bazar went from repeated drought to green and prosperous in a few years, and its Sarpanch received the Padma Shri in 2020.

Sabha and Panchayat — Sabha is everybody, Panchayat is the elected few — The Gram Sabha is all the adult voters of the village. The Gram Panchayat is the smaller body they elect. Sabha first, Panchayat second.

The two officers — Secretary keeps the meetings, Patwari keeps the land — The Panchayat Secretary calls meetings and maintains records of what the Panchayat does. The Patwari maintains records of who holds which land.

Everyone includes children

A Panchayat is supposed to hear every voice in the village. Read that carefully and a question follows. Children live in the village too, and a good deal of what a Panchayat decides lands on them.

The initiative

That is the thinking behind the Child-Friendly Panchayat Initiative. Its purpose is to open a way for children to say what they think about the things that affect how they live. Not to decide for them, and not to speak on their behalf, but to make a place where they can be heard directly.

Bal Sabhas and Bal Panchayats

Several States have been setting up Bal Sabhas and Bal Panchayats, and encouraging children to take part in them regularly. These are not one-off events. The idea is that they meet as a matter of course.

What the elders do

The children raise their concerns, and the elders of the village then work at finding answers to them. So it is not children playing at government. It is children putting real problems in front of people who can act on them. The difference matters: a complaint that nobody has to answer is only a complaint.

Maharashtra: two hard problems

Some Bal Panchayats in Maharashtra took on two of the hardest problems a child can face. One was children being put to work instead of studying. The other was girls being married while they were still of school age. Both take a child out of the classroom, and both are held in place by what the adults around them believe is normal.

What they achieved

They got a good many children back into classrooms. The method was talking: members went to parents and to other adults, and argued the case for sending a child back to school.

And for the girls

They made the same argument about marriage. A girl of school age should be studying, they said, not being married off. Children were making that case to adults, which is harder than it sounds.

Sikkim: a Panchayat that acted

In west Sikkim, the Sangkhu Radhu Khandu Gram Panchayat put children's needs and rights near the top of its list, and two of the things it did are worth naming.

Walls and kitchens

It put boundary walls around the schools, which made them safer places to be. It also built kitchens inside them, so the midday meal could be cooked in clean conditions rather than out in the open. For those efforts the Panchayat was recognised as a child-friendly one. Notice that neither thing is dramatic. Both are ordinary building work, decided on because somebody asked what children needed.

Rajasthan: a Parliament of children

The third example is the largest. The Children's Parliament grew out of Bunker Roy's Barefoot College in rural Rajasthan, a few decades ago, and it worked with children who had least.

Who took part

Children between the ages of eight and fourteen were brought into the running of things. They learned how democracy works, and what social responsibility means, through night schools and through elections held like real ones.

Run like the real thing

The procedures were not simplified away. There were voter identity cards. There was campaigning. Those elected formed a Cabinet, which looked after the running of the schools and pressed for what the community needed.

What it built in them

It built leadership, and an awareness of the society around them. Children began to question norms they had grown up with, and to argue for change.

What they took up

The issues they worked on were real ones: getting to school at all, sanitation, and fairness between people. Their work fed back into the development of the community around them.

The recognition

The initiative collected a number of honours over the years. Among them was an international award for children's work, received in 2001.

Three ways of being heard

Set the three side by side and they answer the same question differently. Maharashtra's children changed adult minds by arguing. Sikkim's Panchayat changed the conditions children studied in. Rajasthan's children were handed real procedures and used them. Any of the three counts as a voice.

Scenario:

A class hears about the Child-Friendly Panchayat Initiative and is asked what children could usefully raise. Arjun says adults already know the village problems. Their teacher asks the class to list problems that affect children most. Street lights on the route to school, a safe place to play, drinking water at the school, and the state of the road in the rains. The class then asks who else would notice the first and last of those. Both are things a child walking to school meets daily and an adult driving past may not. Arjun changes his position, seeing that a voice adds information rather than merely a vote.

Analysis:

Arjun assumed participation was only about fairness. The list shows it is also about evidence, because some problems are visible only to the people who meet them.

Activity:

List three problems on your own route to school. Write who would notice each one and who would not.

The Children's Parliament issued voter identity cards and allowed campaigning. The procedures were not simplified because the voters were young.

Bal Panchayat members in Maharashtra went to parents and argued, face to face, for sending a child back to school.

The Sangkhu Radhu Khandu Gram Panchayat built kitchens inside schools so that the midday meal could be cooked in clean conditions.

Three examples, three States — Maharashtra talks, Sikkim builds, Rajasthan elects — Maharashtra's Bal Panchayats persuaded parents. Sikkim's Gram Panchayat put up walls and kitchens. Rajasthan's Children's Parliament held elections with real procedures.

Why children are heard — They live with the decision — A Panchayat decides about schools, water and sanitation. Children live with all three, so the argument for asking them is the same as for asking anyone else.

Above the village

Two more institutions sit above the Gram Panchayat, one at the block and one at the district. They are built on the same idea, and they exist because some problems are bigger than one village.

The middle tier

The Panchayat Samiti works at the block level, and its job is to join the two ends together. Below it are the Gram Panchayats. Above it is the Zila Parishad at the district. It is the link between them.

Who sits on it

Local people elect its members. But the body may also hold others: the Sarpanchs of the villages in that area, and the members of the State Legislative Assembly from there. So the village and the State both have a presence in it.

Different from State to State

How a Panchayat Samiti is put together is not the same everywhere. What it is for does not change, though. Everywhere its purpose is to strengthen the part local people play in decisions.

Pulling the plans together

Here is the clearest thing it does. Every Gram Panchayat in the block draws up what it wants done in its own village. The Samiti collects all of those, puts them together into one picture of the block, and carries that to the district or to the State. One village asking is easy to set aside. A whole block asking, set out as a single plan, is not.

Why that matters

Money follows plans. Presenting the block's needs as one set makes it possible for funds to be allotted for development work, and for government schemes to be directed where they are wanted.

A scheme you can name

The chapter names one: the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. It pushes the building of all-weather roads in rural areas. The phrase all-weather is doing real work there. A road that turns to mud in the monsoon cuts a village off in exactly the season when it can least afford to be cut off.

Rules for those least heard

Something else runs through all three tiers. Special rules exist so that the sections of the population who are worst off can get their needs and their problems into the room where the decisions are actually made. Being allowed to speak is not the same as being present.

One-third for women

The clearest of those is a fixed share of seats. At every one of the three levels, one-third of the seats are reserved for women. That is not a recommendation; it is a provision.

Why reserve at all

Ask why this is needed. A seat that is open to everyone in theory can still go to the same kinds of people every time. Reserving a share changes who is actually in the room when a decision is taken.

The States decide the details

The structure and the functions of these institutions differ a little from State to State. That is not untidiness. The States hold authority over Panchayati Raj institutions, so each shapes its own.

What does not differ

The aim is the same everywhere, whatever the local arrangement looks like. It is to let villagers take a real part in managing their own village, and in developing the area around it. The alternative is having both done for them by somebody else.

An old idea

Now something surprising. Around 2,300 years ago a text on governance was written by Kauṭilya, later known as Chāṇakya. Its name is the Arthashastra, and it is a book about how a state should be built and run.

What the text covers

It sets out how to structure a state, how an economy may be made prosperous, what a ruler owes his people, and how war is to be conducted. It is not a small book.

A structure from village upward

One passage lays out an administrative ladder. A headquarters for every ten villages. Another for every hundred. Another for every four hundred. A provincial centre for every eight hundred.

The same shape, long ago

Compare that with the three tiers of today. The names are different and so are the numbers, and there were four steps rather than three. The instinct is the same one, though. Build administration upward from the village, in steps, so that no settlement ends up too far from somebody who can act.

Scenario:

A class is shown the rural structure: Gram Panchayats at the bottom, the Panchayat Samiti at block level, and the Zila Parishad above. Nita asks why a middle layer is needed when the top and bottom could speak directly. Their teacher asks the class to count. If a district holds several hundred Gram Panchayats, the Zila Parishad would have to deal with each one separately. The block level gathers them into a manageable number. The class sees that the Panchayat Samiti is not an extra step but a joining one, and that its membership links elected village heads to the levels above them.

Analysis:

The middle tier exists because of arithmetic. Several hundred separate conversations become a few dozen once the block gathers them.

Activity:

Find the name of your block and district body. Draw the three levels and mark which one your village or ward belongs to.

A Panchayat Samiti may include the Sarpanchs of its villages and the local members of the State Legislative Assembly, so village and State meet in one room.

The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana is about all-weather roads, the kind that survive a heavy monsoon rather than washing away.

The Arthashastra also covers how an economy may be made prosperous and what a ruler owes his people. It is far more than a manual of war.

What the Samiti is for — It is the hinge — Gram Panchayats below, Zila Parishad above. The Panchayat Samiti is the joint between them, and it carries the block's plans upward as one set.

The old ladder — Ten, hundred, four hundred, eight hundred — The Arthashastra put a headquarters at each of those counts of villages. Different names from today, the same instinct: build upward from the village in steps.