Panditji was particularly enthused with the kind of grassroots work involved in democratic municipal administration. He said in words that are perhaps even more relevant today than when he spoke: "Corporations and municipalities seem to bring one in more intimate touch with the life of the people… When you go to Delhi, you get farther away from the common man, sitting, as it were, on some legislative mountain top…. The poor people are sometimes completely forgotten… Government departments grow, till one department hardly knows and recognizes the other or becomes jealous of the other."

The commencement of our freedom struggle virtually coincided in time with Lord Rippon's attempt in 1882 to organise local self - government in urban India. Interestingly, from 1882 till Independence the proportion of our urban population to the total population remained virtually the same, at something under 10 percent. Through much of this period, the total urban population of India was not much more than that of Greater Bombay alone today. India, as Gandhiji said, lived in her villages and it is to democratic local self - government in rural India that Gandhiji concentrated his attention. Therefore, although the municipalities were the nurseries of administrative experience for our freedom fighters, the role of municipalities in the life of the nation was limited.

However, in the four decades that we have been free and independent, the demographic profile of the country has changed vastly. Already, almost a quarter of our population is urbanised and the number of Indians living in urban settlements is nearly 200 million. The urban population is growing at around 4 percent per annum, as against 1.5 percent for the rural population. By the turn of the century, something like one Indian in three will be living in urban India. Inevitably, this proportion will grow till, as in developed countries, around ? of the population will become urban, leaving not much more than a quarter in the rural countryside. It, therefore, becomes incumbent on us to confer on urban Indian the same kind of advantages and benefits of democracy and devolution as we are seeking to secure for rural India through the Panchayati Raj Bill.

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It is our expectation that the development process will receive a new impetus and a new thrust through democratic decentralization. Planning will become more finely - tuned to the needs of the people and the realities on the ground. Implementation will become more efficient and less prone to corruption through the involvement of the people and their representatives at the grassroots level. Since urbanization constitutes one of the most important motors of growth and modernization, it follows that the development benefits of democratic decentralization require the process to incorporate urban as much as rural areas. Also, it is growth in the towns and cities that comprises many of the agents of change and transformation. For change to be democratic and transformation to be cognizant of ground realities.

We have before us three options for urban renewal. One is to leave the system and structure as it is and pray that it will somehow dynamize itself, by a process of internal combustion, as it were. To do so would, however, be utterly unrealistic. Urban local bodies are in as advanced a stage of decay as the management of urban development is in crying need of rejuvenation. In these circumstances, persistence with the status quo would be nothing short of a prescription for disaster.

The second option would be fore the Centre to resume all powers for urban development and push through its plans for change by direction and enforcement from above. I have no doubt that this could be done efficiently but it would not be democratic. I would prefer to trust the people and their elected representatives.

This brings us to the only remaining option, the third option which we are now pursuing, that is, Constitutional sanction for ensuring democracy in urban local bodies and Constitutional sanction to endow them with the responsibilities and finances required to ensure that urban Indian flourishes and leads the country forward to progress and prosperity.

How far removed urban local self - government is from present realities might be gauged from the fact that the essential structure of such self - government is seven years older than Jawaharlal Nehru, whose centenary we are celebrating this year ! A structure conceived in Imperial times for a relatively tiny urban population, which was almost wholly dependent on the requirements of Imperial administration and imperial trade, has persisted through four decades of freedom. In the Constitution, while the Directive Principles of State Policy refer, albeit glancingly, to village panchayats, the reference to urban local self - government is confined to an implicit mention in Entry Five of the State List.

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The consequences of the absence of adequate Constitutional provision for urban local self - government can be seen in the mess in which municipal administration in much of the country finds itself. More than half the Corporations stand suspended. Some of the suspensions, as in the case of Madras and Lucknow, stretch back to 15 to 16 years. The Bhagalpur Corporation heads the list, having been suspended eighteen years ago. That is, the youngest voter who will cast his vote in the next general election was born after the Bhagalpur Corporation, was superseded !

This is not a matter of political party or political persuasion. If it is a fact that three - quarters of the suspended Corporations in States run by the Congress Party, it is equally a fact that three - quarters of the Corporations that are in operation are also operating in Congress - run States. Prolonged and arbitrary suspension is not the consequence of party policy. It is the consequence of weak Constitutional base for local self - government.

The Panchayati Raj Bill, which I introduced in Parliament on the 15th May, 1989, holds out the promise of maximum democracy and the maximum devolution to 75 percent of our population which lives in rural India.

There is no reason in principle, and every reason in equity, for these essential democratic rights to also reach our rapidly growing urban population. The concept of Panchayati Raj must change to incorporate the country's changing demographic profile, and must expand to incorporate the country's growing urban population.

That is not merely a matter of figures and ratios. Impulses for the generation of wealth, income and employment are strongest in urban centres. Much of the country's best talent is being attracted to our towns and cities. The best educated, the young to take risks, those willing to place the highest stakes upon their own abilities, those with enthusiasm, enterprise, zeal and ambition are migrating in droves from rural to urban India. While we must do something to moderate this inflow and ensure that rural India too enjoys the benefits of this precious human capital, we must at the same time give to these dynamic forces un urban Indian the democratic voice and participation in development which we have sought to ensure for rural India through the Panchayati Raj Bill.

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It is to consider how best this might be done that we have called you to this conference. We are beginning the process of consultations on Panchayati Raj with the district bureaucracy. Subsequent phases of the consultative process will include the elected representatives of the municipal bodies and the State Governments. The reason we begin with you is that we have reason to believe that you share with the district bureaucracy two characterises which powerfully impressed me when I participated in the District Magistrates Workshops on Responsive Administration.

The first was the deep sense of dedication to duty which the district bureaucracy displayed. We know that a similar sense of discipline and devotion characterises the approach of the municipal bureaucracy. Yet, even as the district bureaucracy itself felt that the individual merits of the officers not with-standing, district administration is insufficiently responsive, sub-optimally efficient, and skewed away from the people's priorities, so also do we imagine the municipal bureaucracy is less than satisfied with the functioning of municipal administration and would wish to suggest ways of making it more responsive, more efficient, and more relevant to the people's needs.

The second characteristic which we noted in the approach of the district bureaucracy was the pervading conviction that responsive district administration is not possible without representative district administration. Twenty or thirty years ago, and certainly before Independence, the Civil Services used to regard the political authority as an interfering nuisance. In contrast, the young men and women of the IAS and the Provincial Civil Services whom we met at the Workshops were almost unanimous in the view that bureaucratic administration, however well-intentioned, is no substitute for democratic administration. It is with their wholehearted backing that we have introduced the Panchayati Raj Bill.

We have reason the believe that the municipal bureaucracy like its counterparts in the district administration, also believes that sine qua non of responsive municipal administration is democratic municipal administration. But, in practice, democracy in municipal administration is either totally abrogated by arbitrary and prolonged suspensions, or is weakened, even nullified, by various provision which dilute the representative character of those bodies. There is the device of nomination and other such non - representational means of packing these bodies. There is the vesting of effective powers of decision - making in non - elected officials. There is the host of agencies that have sprung up outside the framework of democratically - elected municipal bodies to undertake not only the discretionary tasks of these bodies but even many of their obligatory tasks.

We would like you to advise us on how best we can make maximum democracy and maximum devolution, the leitmotif of our municipal administration.

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At this stage of the consultative process, we have no proposals to put to you. We only have issues which we would like to pose for your consideration. We are open to suggestions regarding other issues which you think might be germane to our tasks. There is a substantial body of literature on the subject. There are the background papers to this conference which are in your hands. But above all we look to your rich personal experience to gain an understanding and an insight into the steps that must be taken to make municipal administration responsive, representative and responsible.

The first set of issues relates to the structure of municipal administration. The practice varies widely from one part of the country to the other. There is generally no accepted set of criteria regarding even what constitutes an urban agglomeration, let alone the manner in which it should be run.

At what stage, in your opinion, does a rural area start assuming an urban character? Is this merely a question of population - or are there other factors which would warrant a rural area being redesignates as urban? Further, are the existing gradations from a notified area to town to municipality to corporation appropriate and adequate? Indeed, are they meaningful at all? If they are, should there be some uniformity in determining the criteria which would distinguish, say, a town area committee from municipality?

Associated with this is the question of uniformity and diversity. Given a country as geographically diverse as ours is, with wide variations in such key variables as climate, natural geographic features, occupation patterns, density of population, and other factors perhaps it would be best to restrict the search for uniformity to basic principles and leave the rest to the immense variety of the country. But, put this way, the query really begs the question, because the moot point is: what are the basic principles that ought to be uniform?

In the Panchayati Raj system that we envisage for rural India, the basic unit of local self - government is the village panchayat, with each panch representing an electorate of somewhere between a hundred and five hundred voters.

Such a small electorate ensures ready access for every voter to the elected representative. It also ensures that the basic unit of decision making and implementation is intimately responsible to the people. There would be a transparency about the administrative actions of the unit because the general body of the electorates is aware of what are the functions that are to be performed. What is the money available for performing these functions, who are the entitled beneficiaries, and whether undue functions, who are the entitled beneficiaries, and whether undue favoritism is being shown or unjustified discrimination is being practiced. The system is bound to lead to more efficient implementation, less exploitation, reduced corruption and, we hope, the elimination of nepotism.

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By the same token, should not the basic unit of urban administration be the equivalent of a village panchayat, say, a mohalla panchayat? There are, of course, many dissimilarities between the rural and the urban situation, notably the relative isolation of one village from another compared to the very strong linkages between one mohalla and the other, and the integrated nature of most of the services required by an urban agglomeration. Therefore, there can be no mere imitative replication of the village panchayat in the urban setting. But we would like you to consider what might be the optimal size of population for the basic unit of urban administration, and what might be the functions vested in this unit.

From this follows the question of the remaining levels of urban administration. Would the intermediate panchayat of the Panchyati Raj Bill find equivalent in the median size of population served by say, a notified area committee or a town committee? If so, should there be a two - tier system of local self - government for these bodies and, possibly, a three - tier system for Municipalities and Corporations? In considering the questions of levels of local self - government, we would like you to draw on your own experience, the historical experience of urban local self - government in India and other countries, as well as the imperative necessity of ensuring responsive democratic institutions at the grassroots level in urban India as in rural India.

The kind of suppressions we have experienced in municipal administration are incompatible with the norms of democracy. The Panchyati Raj Bill provides for regular elections every five years. It requires dissolved panchayats to be reconstituted within six months of dissolution to serve out the remainder of the term. And it establishes a system whereby all panchayats at all levels will simultaneously go to the polls at the expiry of their tenure. Should similar provisions be built into the Bill we are proposing to introduce to set the Constitutional framework for urban local self - government?

Existing practice in regard to reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and women in urban local bodies varies considerably from State to State. Some States like Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Rajasthan provide for the reservation of seats for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their proportion of the total population. Other states use other formulae. Yet other States have no provisions at all for SC/ST reservations.

As regards reservations for women, no State can claim to have done justice to half of our population. At best, a token number of seats are reserved for women.

There are wide variations in the manner of choosing representatives to fill reserved seats. In some places, this is by straight - forward direct election; in many others, by nomination. Much the same position obtains in respect of Corporations, for which most States have separate Acts.

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It is impossible for the weaker sections of society to secure adequate representation, full participation and an equitable share of the benefits of municipal administration unless there are reserved seats for SC/STs, at least in proportion to their proportion of the population, and a substantial share of reserved seats for women, Moreover, it is crucial that reserved seats for SC/STs be filled by direct election from reserved constituencies and not by nomination. Similarly, reserved seats for women also need to be filled by direct election and not nomination. How, in your view, should reservations operate?

We would like your views on whether the Chief Executive and his colleagues should be directly elected by the electorate or elected by, and from amongst, the elected members of the local bodies? Also, what in your view should be other forms of representation to be permitted in urban local bodies? Related to this is the issue of whether the Municipal commissioner or other Municipal officer should be responsible to the elected Chief Executive or to the State Government.

If democracy is to be assured through suitable constitutional provisions relating to the structure of local administration, elections and reservations, the kernel of responsive administration lies in the powers devolved to municipal bodies.

In the Panchayati Raj Bill, there are two broad stipulations in respect of the devolution of powers. First, plans drawn up by the panchayats are to constitute the basic inputs for the planning process. Moreover, each panchayat is to dovetail its plan for economic development into plans for social justice. We would like your views on these two separate but related points in respect of planning at different levels of municipal administration.

We would like you to share with us the role which you envisage for elected local bodies in the planning process. At present, there exist many different agencies outside the framework of democratically elected local bodies, to whom is entrusted most of the major tasks of urban planning. These include City Development Authorities and City Improvement Trusts, besides a number of State agencies, owing responsibilities to the State Government above, but not to the people below. If planning for economic development and social justice is to become the centerpiece of the activities of democratic local bodies, should all these other agencies be dissolved or merged into the elected local bodies? Or should they be kept separate and above the system, as at present? The answer you give should be compatible with our basic principle of maximum democracy and maximum devolution.

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The second point relating to planning is the methodology for co - ordinating urban planning with rural planning. While it would, of course, be appropriate for urban and rural bodies respectively to plan matters which fall exclusively within their respective jurisdictions, it has to be recognised that growth impulses largely stem from the interaction between urban agglomerations and their rural hinterland. It is because the linkages between town and country are so crucial to growth that many state Governments have established bodies like the District Planning Board or the District Planning and Development Council to identify and strengthen these linkages. The tragedy is that, in the name of co - ordination, District planning Boards and DPDCs have been established outside the framework of democratically elected local bodies and generally placed under the control of a Minister appointed by the State Government.

Thus, the most crucial planning functions and much of the effective decision - making power, as also the allocation of the bulk of finances, has been vested in bodies which are outside the democratic framework of local government and are dominated by Ministers appointed by the State Government. I call it a tragedy because it is through these agencies that the elected authority is bypassed or over - ruled. In the name of co - ordination, the democracy is being sabotaged. In the name of coordination the will of elected local bodies is being subordinated to the will of the State Government. In the name of co - ordination, the people's will is being replaced by the will of officialdom.

What measure would you suggest to establish a democratic district planning body that would take account of linkages between town and country in the formulation of district plans? Should such a body be directly elected by the people? Or should the DPDC be elected by an electoral college comprising all the elected members of both the rural and the urban panchayats? Or should it be composed ex - official? We would need to be guide by your experience in this matter.

The second major act of devolution envisaged in the Panchayati Raj Bill is the implementation of development schemes relating to the subjects set out in the proposed Eleventh Schedule. We would wish you to pool your experience of the different State of India and suggest the subject which might be set out in a separate Schedule in respect of which Constitutional authority would be available for the meaningful devolution of powers to urban panchayats.

The financial condition of municipal bodies at all levels is pitiable. They most barely have the funds to sustain themselves. They are unable to even maintain community assets and services, let alone create new ones. Debt and default are widespread. There is fiscal irresponsibility allied to financial indiscipline.

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The sound finances of urban institutions of local self - government is a matter of critical importance. Much of the wealth of India is generated in urban India. Its rates of which municipal bodies sit on, namely, urban land, is a very valuable commodity whose value goes on increasing rapidly. We would like you to examine in depth all questions relating to the financial health of urban bodies. You have numerous reports on the subject prepared by Committees established by both the Central and State Governments. You have in the Panchayati Raj Bill the proposal for the establishment of a State Finance Commission to set out principles on the basis of which taxes may be assigned to, or appropriated by the Panchayati Raj institutions at different levels. Then there are the grants - in aid from the Consolidated Fund of the State and funds from Centrally - sponsored schemes. Should the proposed State Finance Commission also set out similar principals for financial devolution to urban local bodies? Should there be Centrally - sponsored schemes for urban areas? There is also the question of access for municipal bodies to institutional finance and the capital market.

We would like your consideration of these financial questions to be guided by the sentiments expressed by Jawaharlal Nehru when he presented his first report as Chairman of the Allahabad Municipality sixty six years ago. He said: "The first necessity of a municipal administration is financial equilibrium… But we want to stand on our own legs and do not believe in a municipality being habitually carried on promise of doles."

Finally, we would like you to consider issues that are vital for efficient municipal administration but are not, perhaps, amendable to settlement through a Constitutional provision.

For example, what should be the relationship between the municipal bureaucracy and the elected municipal representatives? How does one ensure harmony and co - operative relations between the municipal bureaucracy and the democratically administration be carried out at the behest of the elected representatives rather than by bureaucratic fiat, however benevolent and well - intentioned? And what mechanisms of co - ordination are required between the district bureaucracy and the municipal bureaucracy?

We would also wish you to consider the sort of training and orientation the municipal bureaucracy would require to fit itself in with the new democratic system. In this context, would it be advisable to have municipal civil service separate from the existing Provincial Civil Service and the IAS?

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I am posing several questions. I do not wish to pre - empty the answers. We have hypothesis in our mind, some of which are implicit in the issues I have raised and in the points set out in the issues paper. But our mind is open. We have not closed any options.

I look forward to spending several hours with you in panel discussions. I hope you will be frank and uninhibited. We seek your advice because we value your advice. We hope you will give us your advice freely and frankly. We shall then carry the debate forward to political levels. The final decisions will, of course, be ours, but they will be based on a consultative process without precedent in regard to either its intensity or its extent.

We are determined to give power to the people. But in determining the mode and modalities of doing so, we wish to begin with the Municipal officers who, by virtue of their experience and expertise, are best suited to set the ball rolling.

2.Towards a Responsive and Representative Municipal Administration
3. Dimensions of Panchayati Raj and Nagarpalika Bills