Background:

Democratic decentralisation is barely alive in India. Over 25 years after the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments (they mandated the establishment of panchayats and municipalities as elected local governments) devolved a range of powers and responsibilities and made them accountable to the people for their implementation, very little and actual progress has been made in this direction. 

Local governments remain hamstrung and ineffective; mere agents to do the bidding of higher level governments. 

Devolution as per the Constitution:

• It is not mere delegation. 
• It implies that precisely defined governance functions are formally assigned by law to local governments, backed by adequate transfer of a basket of financial grants and tax handles, and they are given staff so that they have the necessary wherewithal to carry out their responsibilities. 
• Yet, none of this has happened, by a long shot. 

Key issues:

• The volume of money set local governments for them is inadequate to meet their basic requirements. 
• Much of the money given is inflexible; even in the case of untied grants mandated by the Union and State Finance Commissions, their use is constrained through the imposition of several conditions.

There is little investment in enabling and strengthening local governments to raise their own taxes and user charges.

• Local governments do not have the staff to perform even basic tasks. 
• Furthermore, as most staff are hired by higher level departments and placed with local governments on deputation, they do not feel responsible to the latter; they function as part of a vertically integrated departmental system.
• If these structural problems were not bad enough, in violation of the constitutional mandate of five yearly elections to local governments, States have often postponed them.

Way forward:

• Gram sabhas and wards committees in urban areas have to be revitalised. Consultations with the grama sabha should be organised through smaller discussions where everybody can really participate. Even new systems of Short Message Services, or social media groups could be used for facilitating discussions between members of a grama sabha.
• Local government organisational structures have to be strengthened. Panchayats are burdened with a huge amount of work that other departments thrust on them, without being compensated for the extra administrative costs.

Local governments must be enabled to hold State departments accountable and to provide quality, corruption free service to them, through service-level agreements.

• We cannot have accountable Gram Panchayats, without local taxation. 

Local governments are happy to implement top-down programmes because they know that if they collect taxes, their voters will never forgive them for misusing their funds. 

Conclusion:

India’s efforts in decentralisation represent one of the largest experiments in deepening democracy. We have given ourselves a reasonably robust democratic structure for local governance over the last two decades and more. It is for us to give life to this structure, through the practice of a robust democratic culture.