The Civic/Local Bodies Election in Tamilnadu is going to be held
on 16th and 18th of October 2001. After the "Panchayat Raj" act was
passed in the late 80's by our Parliament, Tamilnadu went for civic
body elections in 1996 after 15 years of gap. This civic poll is held
for the second consecutive term and it shows a semblance of commitment
to strengthen the third tier of our three-tier democracy. If this
is proven to strengthen the democracy, it would augur well for the
"participatory democracy". In this background, let us look at the
positive and negative learning from our prior experience with this
local self-governance.
Enough Representation?
For a country with a hundred crore population, the number of both
the Members of Legislators and Members of Parliaments add upto only
around 4700 representatives. With the addition of the third tier (Civic
Bodies) to our democracy, now more than 30 lakh people participate
in governance. Even this is only 0.3% of the total population, however,
it makes our representative democracy more meaningful. It is true
that local body representatives can not legislate however, they have
the right to demand and the responsibility to implement the welfare
schemes. It should also be viewed as strengthening the hands of legislators
(who are meager in number for a vast nation with one-fifth of the
world population) in tackling the social issues and addressing the
needs of downtrodden. However limited is the power vested with the
local body representatives, their co-operation is valuable as they
are close to the people and field of operation. The State government,
the immediate tier above the Local Bodies, should not view them as
a threat but should use them in a more effective way. There could
be a threat from a local body representative, if he/she emerges as
a messiah among the masses in an area, to the local MLA or MP. Is
this not the one we want so that we get good people to choose?
Awareness
The people should be made more aware of the importance of the civic
bodies election. These are the roots of our democracy. People should
be aware of the power that the Panchayat/Town Councils or City Corporation
enjoys. The constituency of a local body member is small and hence
people should be able to scrutinize the candidature more closely and
elect genuine persons. It should help in weeding the criminals out
of the power structure. Also, it is not very difficult to get to the
history/profile of the candidate who is asking for votes unlike in
the case of a candidate contesting for an assembly or Parliament.
It is very heartening to note that the Tamilnadu State Electoral office
strictly rejected the nominations of those who were imprisoned for
6 months. Also, it is easy for an elected member to have frequent
contacts with his constituency people. This also enables people to
approach their representatives more easily and get their grievances
redressed quickly.
The local body members should be made aware of what are their rights
and what they can do to their village/Panchayat. There is bound to
be a clash between the eagerness of the Local body members to implement
certain schemes and the priorities of the concerned government department.
In such cases, the procedure should be very clear. Frequent training
courses/workshops are needed to enable the local body members to understand
the issues that would require their attention and intervention and
the complexities associated with those issues. While dealing with
the implementation part of any programme, they must be trained to
properly deal with the government officials if priorities of the department
(read secretaries' intellectual/planning egos/priorities) clash with
the immediate needs of their constituency/locality.
The officials who all along enjoyed abundant power in the absence
of this third tier should be made to understand that they are only
facilitators in a democracy and can not usurp the power from people's
representatives. The government officials/civil servants should realize
the fact that in an effective democracy, their role should not be
anything more than mere "facilitators". The government officials should
recognize the fact that the power rests with the people (read as the
power has gone back to the real masters, the people, after implementing
the Panchayat Raj Act in toto) and does not rest anymore with IAS
officials /Secretaries. Because of the aberrations in the past, there
would be resistance from the government departments to give back the
power to people's representatives. For the successful functioning
of the third tier of democracy, officials need to be informed of what
is expected of them now rather than what they ought to continue with.
Weed Corrupts
from Politics
The smallness of the constituency for a Panchayat or a Municipal
Council helps in even those who are not rich to get elected. Even
those who do not possess money and muscle power can contest in the
local bodies election. These representatives need not get into corrupt
deals as they have not "invested" anything in the first place to get
themselves elected to these councils. Moreover the projects that they
deal with do not involve huge sums of money and any short-circuiting
of allotted funds would be easily noticed. Thus, the decentralization
of project implementation and funds helps in eliminating the corruption
to a large extent. The popularity of the representatives would go
up if they work genuinely and this mass support would one day elevate
them to the Assembly and to the Parliament. This way, benevolent and
genuine people could find their way into the Legislative bodies and
help in weeding corruption at that level also over a period of time.
Such is the importance of the Civic Bodies and hence should be taken
very seriously by the educated elites of the society. There is no
meaning in simply cribbing that politics is a gutter and one can not
do any good to society by taking part in politics. In the changing
scenario, it would only remain a cliché if the intellectuals comment
that politics is untouchable and denounce it. . ....more
