Comment: The Panchayati Raj institutions and district administration should develop a new relationship for achieving the goal of good governance. (2007, 20 Marks)
The district is where the Indian state meets the citizen, and it still runs on a colonial blueprint: the Collector as revenue chief, magistrate and coordinator of everything. The 73rd Amendment placed an elected zila parishad beside him without redrawing the lines between them. The statement is right. Good governance, which means accountability, responsiveness and participation, needs the bureaucracy to move from control to facilitation.
The old relationship: deconcentration dressed as devolution
- Colonial legacy — district administration was built to collect revenue and keep order. After 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru saw the bureaucracy as the vanguard of development, and the Community Development Programme put a BDO rather than an elected body at the centre.
- Committee record — Balwantrai Mehta (1957) made the Collector chairman of the zila parishad, keeping official supremacy in place. Ashok Mehta (1978) wanted the district as the first point of decentralisation under popular control, and blamed bureaucratic resistance for the decline of panchayats. G. V. K. Rao (1985) found rural development so bureaucratised that it had become “grass without roots”, and proposed a District Development Commissioner as the zila parishad’s executive.
- Dual hierarchy today — line-department officers for agriculture, health and education answer to state directorates, not to the zila parishad. Collector-chaired scheme societies and DRDAs have run in parallel. The District Planning Committee (243ZD) is often chaired by a minister and aggregates departmental proposals. James Manor‘s distinction applies: this is deconcentration of officials, not devolution to elected bodies.
The case for a new relationship
- Accountability — the person voters can remove should direct the person who delivers the service. Part IX, silent on functionaries, left elected heads dependent on officers who answer upward.
- Subsidiarity and convergence — the 2nd Administrative Reforms Commission (6th Report, Local Governance, 2007) proposed comprehensive activity mapping and a District Council representing rural and urban areas, with the DPC reduced to an advisory arm. The Commission even asked whether the Collector’s office should continue, or its powers be delegated to the CEO of the zila parishad.
- Proof of concept — Kerala transferred schools, primary health centres, Krishi Bhavans and their staff to local governments in 1995, before the People’s Plan Campaign (1996), and issued a code of conduct for officials and elected members. Maharashtra’s and Karnataka’s zila parishads have long had senior officers as CEOs.
The new relationship, specified
- Split functions — regulatory work (law and order, land records, elections, disaster response) stays with the Collector; devolved subjects move to the zila parishad, with the functionaries attached.
- Line officers for devolved subjects work under the zila parishad, with a role for elected heads in their appraisal.
- The Collector as facilitator — coordinating, giving technical sanction and ensuring legality, not supervising elected bodies.
- One district plan — a working DPC consolidating Gram Panchayat Development Plans, with parallel societies merged into panchayats.
- Capacity — cadres, training under the Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan, e-GramSwaraj–PFMS transparency.
The caution
Elected bodies can be captured by local elites, which is B. R. Ambedkar‘s old warning and the “decentralisation of corruption” the Mani Shankar Aiyar Committee (2013) described. So the relationship must bind both sides: social audit, an ombudsman, and a Collector who remains guardian of legality. Progress is real but slow. The Status of Devolution to Panchayats in States 2024 shows the functionaries score rising from 39.6% to 50.9%, while finances lag.
Conclusion
The statement holds, but “new relationship” must mean partnership with clear boundaries, not the Collector’s retreat. Officials should be accountable to the elected body for development, and the elected body accountable to law and to the gram sabha. That is good governance at the district.