3 power centre
PM, CM And DM

A huge Democratic Gap exist Between State Secretariate and Gram Panchayat
There are almost 800 elected or nominated representatives in our national parliament, who are being elected in Lok sabha and Rajyasabha election held on every 5 years and 2 years respectively? We have around 3800 members for the legislative assemblies and councils of 32 states and UT of the country. And we have around 2 lakhs representative for local democratic bodies like gram panchayat, block panchayat, muncipalties and district councils etc. These all reflect a picture and structure of a democratically ruled govt. of republic of India and Indian union. Now we should try to observe how these democratic bodies work for the welfare of public.
At the top level prime minister is nucleus of power who heads the council of ministers and in a way he is the leader of around 800 elected representative of national parliament. Down the order state govt. follow the same suit, means chief minister is the head of state council of ministers and all the MLAs elected in the assembly. In the Indian democratic setup, the third most significant power center is district collectoriate headed by district magistrate,who is not a democratic representative, rather a bureaucrat who hails from Indian administrative service.
When we •talk about public welfare, we must not forget out of all these 3 power centers, local administration is the key, where public is directly attached with govt. in its day to day affairs. It is the block office which renders all kind of development work meant for villages level. Circle office which manages all matter related to land records and revenues, land registry office, renders sale and purchase of land and other properties., local hospitals, local school comprised of .primary, middle and secondary, local police station etc. These all institutions’ work are rendered not by public representatives rather by the civil officials or technicals like engineer or doctor or teacher or police men. The whole set up of welfare providing units actually work basically under the district collector or superintendent of police. Off course we have a third tier of democracy that is called gram panchayat, headed by grampradhan has become active now in a big way after the initiation of grampanchyatraj.
Now we try to diagnose the whole gamut of local administration. In this democracy Primeminister and ministers exercise their executive power that is followed by long pyramid of bureaucratic setup. The Union cabinet control the all 97 subjects allotted to center. Same thing is visible at state level also. The state cabinet headed by chief minister controls the legislative and executive power on all those 56 subjects allotted to the states. At the lower level district magistrate control all the subjects whether it is development or social welfare programs or it is supervising the whole administrative activities. The whole thing lies in this fact that under this democratic set up, the executive power is controlled by minister whether it is at center level or state level. After this there is huge democratic gap from grampradhan onwards . There is no democratic executive and this area is completely dominated by the bureaucratic pyramid. So what about all those democratic representatives who represent their lok sabha and vidhan sabha respectively. What do they to fulfill the different aspirations of their constituency people in day to day governance. Let us look at this base of democracy, at constituency level. These public representatives have to either attend assemblies during the session or to travel their constituency in rest of time. Secondly they are simply taken as an agent for pairvi and sipharis. They don't have any direct role in the administration and executive work in their respective constiutuencies. There is only one provision that is called MPLAD scheme, where they are being allotted 2 crores of rupee every year to spend as per their will in different development activities.
Now the question is, if MP and MLA are the democratic representative then why are they not able to render any kind of day to day administration and governance whether related to public grievances or providing schems’ benefit to the needy people. Off course one who becomes minister out of these MPs or MLAs they enjoy executive power as a democratic representative at the upper level , but they can not control the whole layer of administration single handedly, specially at the lower level. It is followed by bureaucracy, not by democracy.
The whole conclusion is that what is the role of MPs and MLA as a democratic administrater whether at upper level administration or at the local level administration, they are simply the symbol of democracy without having the executive power to render any kind of welfare work except doing recommendation and taking commission in their allotted quota of petrol pump and etc. Though some person may not agree with this point of view because we are habituated of this system but the question is who will be responsible and accountable for the well being of people living at local level, because in a way we all are local people . In all practical purposes local officials are responsible for rendering all kind of public work and these officials have not been made accountable to the public rather they are accountable to the officers sitting above and at last they are accountable to the ministers sitting above. So, who will take care of locals people. On a moral counts, it is MP or MLA who are accountable to public, because they have to face election at every 5 years. But the irony is that they don't have role in administering the public in their own constituency.
Some people can say, the role of public representative is only to observe the work activities of the bureaucratic officials. If they find anything wrong with them, they can report it to upper level. To my mind these things create nexus between politicians and bureaucracy. It does not reflect the character of a democracy. Under these circumstances how can we apply right to recall on our democratic representatives. In actual sense, under this present set-up right to recall should be applied to the local bureaucracy who is directly and vehemently involved with day to day public affairs whether it is related to hospitals or schools, whether it is related to road construction or maintaing regular civil supplies of essential commodities to the poor people. Yes if the public representative is minister and who has executive power at the upper level and if he does some unpopular kind of work, he must be brought under the purview of right to recall. So it is very difficult to introduce the right to recall until and unless MPs and MLAs have ample executive power and they are not made fully accountable to public..
this is need of hour to make a proper coordination between democracy and bureaucracy. In principle it is said that civil servants work under democratic boss, but it is true at the highest level only. This is not ture at the local level. So what kind of interaction must be made between democracy and bureaucracy, this is a big question. In real terms bureaucracy is parallel power system which is very much uprooted in our whole administrative system. Generally what we see in a district there is at least one lok sabha constituency. In some cases one lok sabha constituencies has area in another district also. Will it not be better the formation of district should be based on lok sabha constituencies. It means the lok sabha constituency and district should be same. Means we have 542 lok sabha constituencies and we should have 542 district also which is right now 596. In the same way vidhan sabha seat should be formed blockwise. If these steps are taken it would have more beneficial affect over local administration and will result in a better coordination between democracy and bureaucracy, not only that it will make democracy more realistic and effective and will make bureaucracy more accountable to the public also. Then there will be no arising of issue like political interference in administration.
Under this present setup, usually political interference are done for bad purposes. Actually due to absence of a defined set up there is a hotchpotch situation in the governance , but when the things are get defined, these matters will not arise. Under the new set up democrats will not interfere rather they will involve in a more meaningful ways. It will keep bureaucrat right under the democrat in a more meaningful way and in fact this politician-bureaucratic combo sytem will be more accountable to the local public.
Different kind of services, whether is roads or school , if these things come under the purview of direct elected representative, it will have more positive effect over governance and administration. Though at village level gram pradhan is a elected representative enjoy more executive power than other democratic representatives like MLA and MP. All kind of work whether it is development or any statutory work, it all comes under the complete executive control of grampradhan.Official like VLW works as a coordinating govt. servant only. But here two types of imbalances have emerged. First there are no institution like monitoring committee who can create checks and balances over all decisions taken by mukhiya and on his approach shown towards the villager. But problem is that despite no. of adminstrative work done by mukhiya there is no provision of wage’ salary or any kind of emoluments for them. Whenever MP or MLA get salary and emolument, then why it should not be done for mukhiya. The consequences are that mukhiya usually siphon the development fund..Minister of Rural development Raghuvansh Singh openly says that mukhiya are more corrupt than officers. This statement clearly says that there is a great question mark over our democracy. Though Govt. of Bihar has just announced pay and emoluments for the third tier of democracy.
Nothing to say we need all kind of correction measure for all three tier of democracy. Our present setup is a politician - bureaucrat setup where corruption has become a key problem for the both society and polity; it is not making our economy to grow in a decentralized manner. When MP and MLA will have district and block under their command respectively their political worker will have a more constructive role ,they will be more focused on good governance and election would be more competitive on matter like governance and welfare. And then factor like caste, community and religion would be less pronounced in the elections. nnn