On last Wednesday, about 200 of us collected in front of the Bangalore Town Hall to protest against the amendments to the Karnataka Municipalities Act which makes a joke of peoples participation. Pressurised by the Government of India since 2005, the Karnataka Government amended the Municipal Corporations Act in 2011 to create Area Sabhas for peoples participation. However, the representative of the Area Sabha was to be nominated by the Councilor. The amendment also set up Ward Committees which comprised entirely of nominees of the Corporation. And if that was not enough, it also gave veto powers to the Councilor over decisions of the Ward Committees and said that these were final and binding! A group of NGOs went to the High Court through a PIL, and the Court directed the government to consider these NGO suggestions, as also issue the rules for the conduct of Ward Committee meetings. The minister attended a public consultation, said he would do the needful, but only issued the rules for the meeting, without amending the act. On last Thursday, I was in the Kerala Institute of Local Administration - KILA, to attend its silver jubilee celebrations. All the usual suspects were there, the dedicated group of bureaucrats and politicians, the latter cutting across party affiliations, who have been working for democratic decentralisation. I made a presentation at the seminar - in the evening - when the minds of decentralisers are not at their perceptive best, titled devolution is dead, long live deconcentration. That explained the situation nicely. Lets face it, democratic decentralisation through Municipalities and Panchayats is being stymied at every step today. The reasons are often debated, in repetitive and tiresome seminars and conferences. A popular notion is that the law is weak, but this is incorrect – in fact, most States have passed strong laws, but these are weakly implemented. The means of weakening local governments range from the crude to the subtle, with one striking similarity – they are effective. I listed the most frequently adopted ways of crippling the local governments as follows: 1. Fiscal Strangulation: (a) Deny funds to local governments, except for a few central or state schemes, which are expressly mandated to be implemented by them. (All states except Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan do not have a separate budget window in which funds meant for Panchayats are placed). (b) Even though budget windows are formally created, continue mismatch between functional and financial allocations. (Karnataka, till 2004 October, when the mismatch was largely corrected, except for a few gaps. Now the mismatch is again growing. Rajasthan, where the budget window is a charade – a researcher found that the total allocation in 8 budget heads under education, created in the Panchayat sector contain Rs. 8,000/-! Mirror heads of account on the State side contain all the money) (c) Hide embarrassing information on denial of funds to Panchayats, by putting out smokescreens of ‘empowerment’ and ‘participation’. (West Bengal did not give any funds to Panchayats on account of State Finance Commission recommendations for four years, but was to embarrassed to tell anybody!) (d) Allocate funds to Panchayats in budgets, then deny access to them in treasuries. (Kerala, in 1999-2000. Karnataka, on occasions too numerous to mention!). (e) Pretend to give money to Panchayats, use them elsewhere. (Tripura claims officially that it gives Panchayats funds at the rate of Rs. 100 per capita to GPs, Rs. 60/- to Intermediate Panchayats and Rs. 40/- to ZPs. This works out to a budget allocation of Rs. 72 crore for the State. However, for 2007-08, when I checked, the budget allocations were Rs. 46 crore, of which only 12 crore was released. A large portion of the funds were then reckoned as State share towards Centrally Sponsored Schemes, which were then implemented by parallel bodies such as the DRDAs!. And the Panchayats naively believe that they get the allocations – they parrot the official line when you visit them!). (f) Quietly write back funds given to Panchayats, as part of ‘structural adjustment’. (Trust the World Bank to think of this one! In Karnataka, in 2003-4, funds available in ZP accounts were written back to the State, without a word of warning. While some of the allocations written back were notional, such as salary savings, others were not, such as own revenues of ZPs and Earnest Deposits made by contractors bidding for tenders. The entire ZP mechanism ground to a halt in the peak working season as a result. Staff went without salaries for several months, before the matter was sorted out. Kerala followed this ‘good’ practice, but had to back off, smartly, because angry Panchayat representative associations hit the streets!) (g) Allow Panchayats to collect taxes, then impose severe restrictions on how to spend funds. (Orissa, Tamilnadu and Goa. In Goa, a Panchayat can earn Rs. 70 lakhs to Rs. 1 crore, but needs to get administrative sanction from higher authorities to spend Rs. 20,000. Don’t believe me? Visit Candolim Panchayat to find out!). (h) Cut allocations at source. (Tamilnadu, where electricity bills are cut at source. In Karnataka, mayhem prevails. Electricity installations were not metered, then billed on capacity and lump sum pro-rata deductions were made from Panchayats, thereby leaving no incentive for either metered billing or electricity saving by Panchayats. Matters were sorted out through a settlement on arrears followed by a new discipline of metering and billing. The Electricity companies defaulted on metering, the Panchayats defaulted on payments even where they were metered. There is a standoff again. Today, out of Rs. 10 lakhs given to each Gram Panchayat per year, 8 lakhs is cut at source towards electricity bills for unmetered streetlights. Back to square one!) (i) Deny tax assignments to Panchayats, on the ground of rationalization. (Karnataka gave about Rs. 40 lakhs to each Taluk Panchayat through the assignment of a surcharge on registration. In 2003-04, the surcharge was merged with the registration fee, as part of rationalization, again an idea of the World Bank. Since the surcharge did not exist, allocations to TPs came down to Rs. 1.5 lakhs!) Functional Strangulation: (j) Create parallel bodies (examples too numerous to mention, but Andhra Pradesh has about 60 committees headed by the district collector to handle programmes that are meant to be implemented by the Panchayats and Municipalities!) (k) Use management options other than Panchayats even in Panchayat centric schemes. (Though the NREGA states that the CEO of the ZP, the District Collector or any other person nominated for that purpose can be appointed as the District Programme Coordinator, only Karnataka has appointed the CEO as the Dist Pgm coordinator, all others preferring the Collector. So much for NREGA being pro Panchayat! In Assam, the State has appointed the Collector as the coordinating officer for the Backward Regions Grant Fund – completely against the spirit of the guidelines, which are totally Panchayat friendly). (l) Ring fence the Collector from Panchayati Raj. (Panchayati Raj has not changed the position of the Tamilnadu collector a wee bit – he is now well trained to take the credit for the work of others. One Panchayat representative, speaking of the Tsunami said that while Panchayats did all the work, the Collectors did all the power point presentations!). (m) Give overriding powers to District Collectors to suspend Pradhans. (Best done in macho Punjab and Haryana, though Tamilnadu is not far behind). The Humphrey Appleby technique, i.e., (Treat local governments like mushrooms - keep them in the dark and feed them bullshit): (n) Give all instructions in English, so that no Panchayat member is aware of them. ( Simple and effective, as in Orissa). (o) Deny existence of circulars empowering Panchayats – say that official copies are required. (In Karnataka, all circulars are placed in the State’s official magazine, Karnataka Vikasa, which goes to every Panchayats. Even though written instructions exist that these circulars are to be treated as official copies, Panchayat secretaries routinely decline to operate them, stating that they do not have ‘official copies’.) (p) Issue circulars, then bury them. (Several States have done this with activity mapping – Uttaranchal, Punjab, Haryana, Manipur, Assam, come to mind). (q) Lie about Panchayats, in official communications. (Most Panchayati Raj secretaries are torn between telling the truth and officially concealing it. They choose the latter as it is safe. Some with a conscience, phone up and tell the truth, on condition of anonymity.) We could run a competition on detecting more ways of messing with Panchayati Raj, but the black humour apart, the fact that such things are happening constitutes a serious case of constitutional failure. Being a lawyer, I have always been intrigued with the legal enforceability of Panchayati Raj. Now I am looking forward to a new generation of AAP leaders in States taking this issue up. And helping out as well! Lets hope something good comes out of this effort. Otherwise, in a year from now, I will be attending more seminars of Decentralisers Anonymous. All of us decentralisation addicts will be there, to cry on each others shoulders and await the next seminar.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 05:29:40 +0000
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