PANCHAYATI RAJ INSTITUTIONS AND PESA - THE ILLUSION OF RIGHTS: A CASE STUDY OF JHARKHAND (Pages 179-201) by Dr. Yugal Jha in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

The Indian Government has brought certain constitutional reforms to upgrade the entire electoral process and their voting behavior in the rural leadership of India. The Panchayati Raj act passed by parliament in December 1992, easily constitutes a mile stone in the history of “Gram Swaraj” as Gandhi spoke ‘freedom from meanest of our country man’. The amendment, in fact aimed at enhancing the capabilities of the rural people to evolve themselves in the planning process with respect to their priorities. It also exercise decentralization of the execution of all types of development activities with the active participation of the rural masses. In nutshell the purpose of the amendment has to bring good governance at the rural local level through decentralization. The Indian government is trying to ensure participations in governance through the 73rd & 74th constitutional amendments by which constitutional provisions has been conferred on rural and urban local bodies. These bodies are given necessary powers and authorities to function as institutions of local self-Government in order to bridge the gap between urban India and Rural Bharat. The Indian states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and others have also given the priority to this agenda to drive a balance sheet for the half population of the Indian polity. Recently these states have implemented these representative functional experiments in their last election. Likewise the 5th schedule of the Indian constitutions makes provision for the tribes’ advisory council for administration for the schedule areas and scheduled tribes in other states of India. The PESA has given a new insight into the election of local bodies of Jharkhand. The rural agrarian leadership of women are standing for the steel framing of the policy making process of the policy agenda for a shift to stand still from the bottom to top in the village economy of the state. PESA which is seen as enabling law for tribal self-governance also refers that it does not delegates power but devolves them to the village level gram sabha paving the way for participatory democracy but the draft of PESA is faulty and patchy, it seems that the effort is to institutionalize its ineffectiveness. This, in fact, has been an ongoing process which has gathered increasing momentum over the past three decades. The Government of India is making an all-out effort through its PRI with the conformity of PESA to bring the schedule tribes in inclusive participatory growth of country. But the efforts get under mind owing to poor literacy among the tribal population and lack of communication and awareness with the official and the programmes. They become the easy targets of exploitations at the hands of implementing agencies which results in poor delivery of goods and keep them in the clutches of backwardness and poverty. The only method to make these schemes more result oriented by effective monitoring if this can be done, the tribal population can be linked with the main stream making them more empowered to take decision in the areas of planning of schemes for their betterment. Keywords: constitutional reforms, electoral process, The Panchayati Raj act, Gram Swaraj, functional experiments, PESA.