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The last example that I want to give from here is called National Rural Health
Mission. It’s a national flagship program to improve the health condition of the rural
population. Within that, there’s a probation for the formation of village health
sanitation and nutrition committee. Again it’s, in a way, asking citizens to contribute
to raise generate awareness for the fellow citizens. So, it’s kind of responsibility given
to the citizens. Then, just to give you one example that this committee also
responsible for undertaking nutrition surveys, and find out local food stop with high
nutrient values. In a way, this committee is responsible again for developing a village
level, Gram Panchayat level, health plan, its implementation, and auditing. So, a lot of
resources which comes to the Gram Sabha… Gram Panchayat, again, through this
committee, the citizens are empowered to implement plans and monitor those
programs.
So, these are sort of invited spaces for citizen participation in the rural areas.
Let me focus on the urban areas. Unlike rural areas, about 1/3 of the Indian
population is now living in urban areas. So, it’s like the majority of people live in rural
areas. But if you take the absolute number, 30% is quite the population. Almost like
equal to the population of the United States in terms of headcount. So, in the
constitution as it was Part IX of the constitution, and Part IX (A) of the constitution
which is called 74th Constitutional Amendment Act. It provided an opportunity and
created a space for citizen participation in the formal what we called wards
committees.
So each municipality is divided into several administrative areas. And each
administrative area is called ward. In each ward that is supposed to be a ward
committee in all urban local bodies. But there was a catch. The constitution provided
that only those urban local bodies at municipalities, which have more than 300,000
populations would have a ward committee. So, cities which have below 300,000
population will not get the constitutional mandate or constitutional push to have a
citizen space for participation.
That was likely sort of in a way modified in 2006 when we had community
participation law. Community participation law was drawn based on the experience
that we have had in the rural areas. Like, we have Gram Sabha. In urban areas it is
called Area Sabha. Area Sabha is basically a polling booth that will be called them
area. And several areas would make a Ward Sabha or Ward Committee at the ward
level. So, that’s the structure.
Unfortunately, in our local governance, it is the subject of the State government.
Although the national government provides the legal framework, but the actual law
and rules had to come from the State governments. And many State Governments are
ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ institutions and as a result also to the citizens. So, it’s a kind of peculiar in a paradox
unwilling to devolve too much of resources, power, authority to the local governance
between urban and rural areas.
In recent years, particularly with the new government came in 2014. Several
new programs were launched in the urban areas and one was the Clean India
