Panchayati Raj in India .... better and needs to be further better
The Panchayat raj is a South Asian political system found mainly in the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. It is the oldest system of local government in the Indian subcontinent. The word raj means "rule" and panchayat means "assembly" (ayat) of five (panch).
Traditionally panchayats consisted of wise and respected elders chosen and accepted by the local community. However, there were varying forms of such assemblies. Traditionally, these assemblies settled disputes between individuals and between villages.
The leader of the panchayat was often called the mukhiya or sarpanch, an elected or generally acknowledged position. The modern panchayati raj of India and its gram panchayats are not to be confused with either the traditional system nor with the extra-constitutional khap panchayats (or caste panchayats) found in northern India.
Mahatma Gandhi advocated panchayat raj as the foundation of India's political system. It would have been a decentralised form of government where each village would be responsible for its own affairs.
The term for such a vision was Gram Swaraj ("village self-governance"). Instead India developed a highly centralised form of government.
However, this has been moderated by the decentralisation of several administrative functions to the local level, empowering elected gram panchayats. There are significant differences between the traditional panchayati raj system, that envisioned by Gandhi, and the system formalised in India in 1992.
The system has three levels: gram panchayat (village level), mandal parishad or block samiti or panchayat samiti (block level) and zila parishad (district level). It was formalized in 1992 by the 73rd amendment to the Indian Constitution.
Local Governments in Independent India, since 1992,has been formalized under the panchayat raj system (rule by village committee), a three-tier system with elected bodies at the village, taluk and district levels. The modern system is based in part on traditional panchayat governance, in part on the vision of Mahatma Gandhi and in part by the work of various committees to harmonize the highly centralized Indian governmental administration with a degree of local autonomy.
The result was intended to create greater participation in local government by people and more effective implementation of rural development programmes. Although, as of 2015, implementation in all of India is not complete the intention is for there to be a gram panchayat for each village or group of villages, a tehsil level council, and a zilla panchayat at the district level.
India has a chequered history of panchayati raj starting from the self-sufficient and self-governing village communities that endured the rise and fall of empires in the past, to the current highly structured system.
