Madhavan Palat: Nehru talked of panchayats as if they were bureaucracies, imagining them as elected civil servants rather than political leaders

Jawaharlal Nehru restlessly sought to provide Indian democracy with a firm and unshakeable base. The Constitution supplied the framework, Parliament and State legislatures stood as the superstructure, and adult suffrage ensured the possibility of universal participation. But this edifice lacked an institutional foundation in the villages. Should the top falter, the base would subside. That deficiency would be made up by the village council or panchayat. Electoral democracy would be triple layered — the panchayat at the bottom, the State legislature above it, and Parliament at the apex. But Nehru did not seem to be able to decide whether the panchayat was a political body or a bureaucratic committee.

He sometimes spoke of panchayats as if they were to be political leaders in their domain, but the Constitution had not provided for them and he did not move to correct that omission. He imagined them representing the nation in the manner that Parliament and State legislatures did. In 1951, he expressed the hope that panchayats in Madhya Bharat “can rise above parochial feelings and think of larger issues and the service of the country.”

The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution did provide for autonomous districts and regions which he considered “a very wise provision”. They had been formed in the Northeast and he expected them to do well when they could raise finances through taxation. This was the Soviet pattern, with its political hierarchy going from the Union through the Union Republics (the equivalent of Indian States) to the Autonomous Republics; but panchayats were clearly not comparable to even the last of these.

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