Karnataka - Bangalore

Land reforms paved way for panchayat system: economist

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Welcome: Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Institute for Social and Economic Change, S.L. Rao, greeting Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court Cyriac Joseph (centre) at a public lecture in Bangalore on Friday. Michael Tharakan, economist, is with them.

Bangalore: The relative success of land reforms in Karnataka, Kerala and West Bengal prepared the ground for experiments in local self-governance through panchayats to take off in these States, said well-known economist and historian Michael Tharakan.

Delivering the Professor V.K.R.V. Rao Memorial Lecture organised by the Institute of Social and Economic Change here on Friday on the theme of decentralisation, Prof. Tharakan explained how the concept of local self-governance had evolved since the British times. While British officers such as Lord Rippon had their own model of local self-governance to “educate” some Indians, the Gandhian model of “Gram Swaraj” became a slogan of the national movement, Prof. Tharakan said.

The notion of self-governance had been a point of contentious debate between Gandhians and B.R. Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly, with the latter arguing that the caste and other hierarchical structure could not be radically transformed through the Gandhian concept, he said. The resurgence of the idea of de-centralisation in the seventies, after the Janata Party coming to power, could be seen as a response to the persistence of centralisation during the long one-party rule, he added.

Justice Cyriac Joseph, Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court, who presided over the function, said it was time for a scientific evaluation of the success of the system.

The real question was if panchayats had succeeded in speeding up decision making and stemming corruption, he said.

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