Articles by Nirmal Mukarji

Strengthening Indian Democracy Nirmal Mukarji The root cause of the sickness afflicting Indian democracy is the distance between power and the people. Power is lodged at the centre and in the states whereas the people are at the local level. People's power is thus not available to keep the wielders of political power under check. Electoral reform and judicial activism can at best deal with the symptoms. The disease needs the more basic remedy of bringing power down to the people through minimal central and state governance and correspondingly maximal local governance.

The convention organised by the India-Pakistan People's Forum for Peace and Democracy in New Delhi last month, in which around 200 delegates in roughly equal numbers from the two countries participated, was the largest such gathering till now. Its wholly non-governmental character and its squarely political agenda clearly distinguished it from all previous exercises.

Self-government of any kind must have not only a clearly demarcated field of activities, but also the instruments with which to govern in this field. Consequently, an essential power the states must endow the panchayats with is that to recruit and control their own staff. At the same time, unless traditional notions like permanent employment, security, service cadres and reserved posts are reconsidered, panchayats will be unable to innovate instrumentalities suited to their purpose.

The Third Stratum Nirmal Mukarji The fundamental question before panchayats everywhere in the country has for long been whether they are there for development functions only or for the wider purpose of self-government. The central objective of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act must, therefore, be seen as self-government, unabridged by the quite unnecessary references to economic development and social justice and the wholly avoidable Eleventh Schedule.

Changeful Society and Changeless Governance Nirmal Mukarji With non-Congressism on the rise in the states and the possibility of a non-Congress alternative even at the centre in the air, the civil service will have to learn to be more independent in the political sense. The need for such independence will be all the more if democratic self-governance is extended to the sub-state levels.