What is the main purpose of Panchayati Raj?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, To enable people to participate in development administration. Panchayati Raj was invented to fix one specific administrative failure, and knowing that failure settles the question. The Community Development Programme launched on 2 October 1952 and the National Extension Service that followed on 2 October 1953 were independent India's first mass rural-development efforts, and both were run downwards through officials. In January 1957 the Government of India appointed a study team of the Committee on Plan Projects under Balwantrai G. Mehta to find out why they were not delivering. Its report, submitted in November 1957, diagnosed the problem as an absence of popular participation: there was no elected institution at village, block or district level through which villagers could own the development work being done in their name, so the programmes remained the officials' business and never became the people's. Its remedy was what it called democratic decentralisation — a three-tier structure of a directly elected Gram Panchayat at the village, a Panchayat Samiti at the block and a Zila Parishad at the district, to which development administration itself would be handed over. The National Development Council accepted the recommendations in January 1958, and Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated the first Panchayati Raj system at Nagaur in Rajasthan on 2 October 1959, with Andhra Pradesh following on 1 November 1959. Option (d) is therefore not a description of an effect; it is the founding brief, in almost the founding words. The Constitution says the same thing twice over. Article 40, a Directive Principle, requires the State to organise village panchayats and to endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government. Article 243G, inserted by the 73rd Amendment in 1992, lets the Legislature of a State endow Panchayats with the powers needed to function as institutions of self-government, expressly including 'the preparation of plans for economic development and social justice' and 'the implementation of schemes for economic development and social justice', with the 29 subjects of the Eleventh Schedule as the field of operation. Preparing and executing development plans is development administration, and the Constitution places it in the hands of an elected village body. The Commission's own disposal of objections put it in the same terms — the main purpose of Panchayati Raj is to enable people to participate in development administration; it is local self-government, and its decisions are taken on the basis of consensus.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This was the target of a different set of instruments — the Community Development Programme, the Intensive Agricultural District Programme begun in 1960-61 and the Green Revolution package of high-yielding varieties. Agriculture is indeed the first entry in the Eleventh Schedule and Panchayats work on it, but it is one of 29 devolved subjects, not the reason the institution exists. A body created only to raise output would not need elections.  (b) Employment generation is the object of programmes routed through Panchayats, not of Panchayats themselves — the National Rural Employment Programme of 1980, the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana of 1989 and MGNREGA in 2005, under which the Gram Sabha recommends the works and Gram Panchayats execute a major share of them. Confusing the delivery channel with the purpose of the channel is the error here; the same Panchayat also runs water supply, sanitation and primary education.  (c) The most intelligent wrong answer, because it is genuinely true as a consequence — the Ashok Mehta Committee of 1978 went so far as to argue that Panchayati Raj is a political institution and that its politicisation was inevitable and even desirable. But a consequence is not the purpose. UPSC settled this distinction in 2015 by marking people's participation in development and democratic decentralisation as the fundamental objects of Panchayati Raj while excluding political accountability, and BPSC's own remark points the same way, to local self-government and decisions by consensus.

Concept: Two ideas sit underneath every Panchayati Raj question, and they are not the same idea. Democratic decentralisation is about where authority is located: power to decide is pushed down to bodies that the affected people themselves elect, rather than being exercised on their behalf from the district collectorate or the State secretariat. Development administration is about what that authority is used for: the planning, financing and execution of schemes that change material conditions — roads, water, schools, sanitation, livelihoods. Panchayati Raj is the point where the two meet, which is why its purpose is stated as enabling people to participate in development administration rather than as any single outcome. The institutional history is a sequence of committees pushing that meeting-point further. Balwantrai Mehta in 1957 created the three-tier design. Ashok Mehta, appointed in December 1977 and reporting in August 1978, proposed a two-tier alternative of Zila Parishad and Mandal Panchayat covering populations of about 15,000 to 20,000, and reframed Panchayati Raj as a political rather than merely administrative institution. G. V. K. Rao in 1985 examined rural development administration and found the process bureaucratised. L. M. Singhvi in 1986 recommended that Panchayati Raj be given constitutional status and that the Gram Sabha be treated as the base of decentralised democracy. The 64th Amendment Bill of 1989 carried that recommendation, passed the Lok Sabha and was defeated in the Rajya Sabha; the 73rd Amendment finally succeeded in 1992 and came into force on 24 April 1993, adding Part IX and the Eleventh Schedule. What the Amendment guarantees is the structure — three tiers, five-year terms, reserved seats, a State Election Commission and a State Finance Commission. What it leaves to the States is the substance, because Article 243G only says a State Legislature 'may' devolve; whether funds, functions and functionaries actually follow is a State decision, and that gap is why devolution varies so sharply between States.

State PCS 2025 Q68 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q68 — Polity & Governance PYQ with Answer