Rural Development in West Bengal – Panchayati Raj

The most outstanding contribution of the Left Front government has been the introduction of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) in West Bengal. Panchayati Raj Institutions – the grass-roots units of self-government – have been proclaimed as the vehicles of socio-economic transformation in rural India. The pro-poor orientation and ideological commitment of the ruling Left Front government are said to have precipitated rural development more successfully in West Bengal than elsewhere in India. Panchayats have changed the face of the state of West Bengal. There has been all round development of the rural population. The villages have got an institution of their own which transformed their standard of living to a higher level under the present Left Front regime. The three tier Panchayat Raj Institutions are directed to alleviation of poverty and rural development.

West Bengal is one of the forerunners in installing a 3-tier Panchayati Raj Institutions for rural local governance in India. The present generation Panchayats in the state started its journey in 1978 under the aegis of a new act, The West Bengal Panchayat Act, 1973, 15 years ahead of the 73rd and 74th Amendment of the Constitution of India, passed in 1993. Ever since their inception, the state has demonstrated strong commitment to rural decentralization by ensuring regular elections to Panchayats and entrusting them with increasing responsibility of implementing various rural development programmes. The state also ensured adequate representation of the socially backward classes – Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women for their involvement in the process of socio-economic development.

Direct elections to all the three tiers were made mandatory through universal adult franchise. It was mandated that elections would be held at regular intervals without any discretionary power of any authority to postpone such elections indefinitely.

The Panchayat election in 1978 was a trendsetter, as it broke new grounds in two areas. First, for the first time in the country the political parties were allowed to contest elections to Panchayats openly with their party symbols. Secondly, direct elections were held to all the three tiers. In another way also the Panchayats set up in 1978 were different from those of the rest of the country. Those who came to the leadership of these bodies through elections did not belong to the traditional upper stratum of the rural society. The new leadership came largely from the class of middle peasantry and professional groups like school teachers.

Initially the PRIs played significant roles in education and mass education extension, health support, both curative and preventive including environmental sanitation, supply of drinking water, agriculture, irrigation, animal resources development, village plantation, cottage industry and social welfare. With passage of time the role of Panchayat has been further expanded and its functional area has been increasingly extended to include additional activities. All poverty alleviation programmes sponsored by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, have been assigned to the Panchayat Institutions. In any programme or scheme for extending any benefit to the weaker section including Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the Panchayats, even when it is not implementing the scheme, has been assigned the role of selection of sites and of beneficiaries relating to such schemes. The Panchayats play a very significant role in supporting the State initiative in improving nutrition of children and mothers and are taking initiative of their own for raising nutrition level of the poorer people. 

In the State level, Panchayats & Rural Development Department of the Government of West Bengal is the Nodal Agency for Implementation; Supervision & Monitoring of the major poverty alleviation programmes in the rural areas of the State and at the District-level, Zilla Parishad is the implementing agency for the same. 

Under three-tier system of democratic decentralization, Zilla Parishad is the apex body at the district level followed by Panchayat Samitis at Block level as second-tier and Gram Panchayats, the third-tier.

District Wise Block and Gram Panchayats

Sl. No.	District No. of Blocks / Panchayat	Samitis No. of Gram	Panchayats
1	Bankura	22	190
2	Birbhum	19	167
3	Burdwan	31	277
4	Coochbehar	12	128
5	Dakshin Dinajpur	8	65
6	Darjeeling	8	112
7	Hoogly	18	210
8	Howrah	14	157
9	Jalpaiguri	13	146
10	Malda	15	146
11	Murshidabad	26	254
12	Nadia	17	187
13	24 Parganas (N)	22	200
14	Paschim Midnapore	29	290
15	Purba Midnapore	25	223
16	Purulia	20	170
17	Siliguri	4	22
18	24 Parganas (S)	29	312
19	Uttar Pradesh	9	98
Total		341	3354

A malicious campaign is being carried out by vested interests saying that the incumbent Left Front government has not done anything substantial for the rural poor. These fascist forces are trying to mislead the people into believing that the Left Front government does not believe in democracy and has been trying to strangle democracy in the state. Nothing can be further from the truth. One of the first things that the Left Front did, after assuming power in 1978, was to institute Panchayati Raj Institutions. We need to remember that the opposition has amongst its fold a very prominent leader who, during his tenure as the Minister in Charge of Municipal Affairs between 1972 and 1977, had summarily dismissed the then Communist Party led Kolkata Municipal Corporation. So the people of West Bengal must very prudently elect their next government. They need to decide whether they would want to enjoy their democratic rights as they have been doing for the last 34 years or they want to plunge the state to the dark days of early and mid 1970s. Would we want some draconian law or the whim of an individual do away with all the good work that has been done since 1978 through the Panchayati Raj Institutions ? We need to pause and ponder and then decide in favour of democracy and decentralisation of power. We need to allow the government to carry on with the excellent work that was begun 33 years ago. We do not want an autocratic regime which will run the State from within the four walls of the Writers’ Building.