how panchayati raj has helped in deepening democracy? explain the problems faced by it.
Answers
States have not implemented the 73rd/74th Constitutional Amendments. Rural and urban bodies have no say over resources
Twenty-five years have gone by since India passed the 73rd/74th Constitutional Amendments (CAs) heralding decentralised governance, and 23 years since all the States passed the conformity legislations ushering in the third tier of government in Indian federal polity. Looking back, this was a momentous event, a paradigm shift in democratic governance and fiscal federalism.
While the fiscal federalism literature of the West treats citizens as customers or consumers, the CAs envisage citizens as political entities engaged in the transformation of their environment. The pattern of decentralisation in India since the Government of India Act 1935 and even after the inauguration of the Republic in 1950 was at best only a deconcentration exercise which happens when a superior assigns duties and responsibilities to a subordinate agent to carry out specific tasks. But CAs envisage a devolution package which implies autonomy in regard to assigned functions backed up by funds and functionaries.