The goal of Good governance will be achieved only by strengthening the grass root level democracy. (2016, 20 Marks)
The World Bank’s Governance and Development (1992) defined governance as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development”. UNDP (1997) turned good governance into a set of standards: participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus orientation, equity, effectiveness and accountability. The statement is right that local democracy is indispensable. It overstates its case with the word “only”.
Why grassroots democracy is necessary
- Participation and legitimacy — Alexis de Tocqueville saw the New England township as the school of liberty. J. S. Mill (Considerations on Representative Government, 1861) valued local institutions as schools of political capacity. Decisions shaped by those who bear them carry more consent and meet the participation standard directly.
- Local knowledge — villagers know which hamlet lacks water and whose name is missing from a pension list. Plans drawn up at the level of the problem are better targeted than those drafted in a state capital: the case for subsidiarity.
- Proximate accountability — the voter can watch the sarpanch in a way she cannot watch a minister. The gram sabha social audit under the employment guarantee read muster rolls aloud to the village, which is transparency in its most concrete form.
- Responsiveness and equity — reservation under Article 243D put about 14.5 lakh women and lakhs of Dalits and Adivasis in office. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo (2004) found that women-led panchayats shifted spending towards drinking water. In Amartya Sen‘s terms, excluded people became agents rather than recipients.
- Delivery and social capital — water, sanitation, schools and health are delivered locally. Robert Putnam (Making Democracy Work, 1993) linked good regional government to dense civic networks, and Kerala’s People’s Plan Campaign (1996) combined both.
Why “only” is too strong
- Elite capture — B. R. Ambedkar called the village “a sink of localism”. Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee show that devolution into unequal villages hands power to the dominant. The Mani Shankar Aiyar Committee (2013) found “decentralisation of corruption”. In September 2025, the National Human Rights Commission asked all states to report on proxy “sarpanch-patis”. Local democracy can reproduce bad governance.
- Rule of law and state capacity — policing, courts, land records and regulation lie beyond panchayats. Lant Pritchett‘s “flailing state” has a sound head that cannot control its limbs; the remedy runs through civil-service, police and judicial reform at higher tiers.
- Scale — macroeconomic stability, infrastructure networks, pandemics and inter-district equity need national and state action.
- Technology and transparency — e-governance, direct benefit transfer, the RTI Act and e-GramSwaraj–PFMS accounting raise transparency with or without a strong gram sabha.
- Panchayats’ own limits — own-tax revenue is about 1%, devolution is about 43.9%, and the Panchayat Advancement Index rated no gram panchayat an “Achiever”. Strengthening them depends on the states’ willingness to devolve.
Reconciling the two
Grassroots democracy supplies what governance from above cannot: information, consent and the watchfulness of neighbours. A capable, law-bound state supplies what villages cannot: impartial enforcement, redistribution across regions and protection of the weak against local majorities. The best Indian cases, such as Kerala and the social audits, needed both a willing state and an organised village.
Conclusion
Strengthening grassroots democracy is a necessary, not a sufficient, condition of good governance. Without it governance stays distant and unaccountable; with it alone, it risks becoming local oligarchy. The goal requires multi-level reform: panchayats with real funds, functions and functionaries, embedded in a state that guarantees the rule of law.