The institution of local government is at its best in countries which are governed on democratic lines. It is the experience of many countries that all matters of a local concern are ultimately best administered by a properly organised system of local government.
Local government means the regulation and administration of local affairs by the people inhabiting the locality through representative bodies composed mainly of elected representatives.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
These local assemblies of citizens, says De Tocqueville, “constitute the strength of free nations. Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach; they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it.
A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.” This foundation aspect of local government is described as “grass-roots” democracy, a phrase which has become popular.
Image Source: 185.26.182.219
Local bodies serve as a training ground in the art of self-government and the experience and knowledge acquired in local governance can best be utilised for the wider affairs of central government. Laski says that the institution of local government is educative in perhaps a higher degree than any other part of government.
It cultivates a sense of civic duties and responsibilities and inculcates among citizens a corporate spirit of common administration of common interests. “Whoever learns to be public spirited, active and upright in the affairs of the village,” says Bryce, “has leant the first lesson of the duty incumbent on a citizen of a great country.” Local institutions train men not only to work for others but also work effectively with others.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The citizens develop common sense, reasonableness, judgment and sociability, the qualities of moderation, accommodation and social dependence, which are so essential for the success of democracy.
It is a process of political socialization. De Tocqueville especially argued that local government was valuable because it associated citizens with each other and with the government. It fosters in the citizen “a sober love of the laws of which he is himself the author.”
When all problems of administration are not central problems the obvious inference is that those functions of government which affect mainly or solely the inhabitants of a limited portion of a country should be placed under the special control of this section of the community.
Local knowledge brings about a closer adaptation of administrative activity, for there is a consciousness of common purposes and common needs. “Neighbourhood,” says Laski, “makes us automatically aware of interests who impinge upon us more directly than upon others.”
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The central government is very often indifferent to these interests, and if it interests itself in them at all, its transactions are subject to red-tapism which unnecessarily delays the plans requiring immediate execution.
Moreover, an administration which is not local is unresponsive to local opinion. It is, thus, “bound in the nature of things, to miss shades and expression of thought and sentiment the perception of which is in a real degree urgent to the success of administration.”
The central government, in other words, cannot grasp the genius of the place. Being government from without, it fails to evoke either interest or responsibility from the people it seeks to control. It may well evoke indignation, but it does not succeed in eliciting the creative support of citizens.
It is a matter of common knowledge that what is done by our common counsel in the solution of our common problems gives us a degree/of satisfaction which is unobtainable when it is done for us by others from outside.
Both John Stuart Mill and De Tocqueville argued that local institutions of government promote virtue in their citizens. The small unit of government, which they hold, fosters civic morality by linking the exercise of political power with the consequence flowing there from.
A citizen of a locality feels that he is a trustee of the public good. He delegates his authority of governing himself to his fellow citizens and assesses whether they are deserving or unworthy of that trust.
If they betray the trust reposed in them the confidence is withdrawn and others who are deemed worthy of the job are entrusted with it. It is a continuous process of responsibility and vigilance which is the essence of a democratic arrangement.
Moreover, central government inevitably aims at uniformity and not variety. Local problems need variety, because they are peculiar to the needs of a particular area.
Uniformity is usually cheaper, “because it is almost always easier to make a single solution and apply it wholesale than to make a variety of solutions and have them piecemeal.” But uniformity is only a mechanical solution of all problems.
Problems peculiar to a particular locality are not standardised in character. They must be individually solved with reference to the conditions which demand their solution.
Local government aims at division of governmental functions and it lightens the burden of the central government. If the central government is overloaded with work, it becomes incompetent and it would do things tardily, expensively, and above all inefficiently. At the same time, centralisation means the presence and functioning of a strong bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy may create and provide for conditions of an effective and efficient government which is, no doubt, the nature of a good government, but a good government is no substitute for self-government.
Unless local bodies are entrusted with active powers, the central authority will not merely stifle all local initiative, but destroy also that well-spring of local knowledge and local interest without which it cannot possibly exercise its functions. Local government, therefore, is necessary for efficiency and responsibility.
Inaugurating the first Local Self-Government Ministers’ Conference (India) in 1948, the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, observed: “Local Self-Government is and must be the basis of any true system of democracy. We have got rather into the habit of thinking of democracy at the top and not so much below.
Democracy at the top may not be a success unless you build on this foundation from below.” It is only through local government that self-government becomes real. To put it in the words of Bryce, “The best school of democracy and the best guarantee for its success is the practice of self-government.”
Economy is secured by local government. Local functions are performed by local authorities out of funds raised locally. Equity demands that services rendered exclusively or mainly to a limited population, who live within a certain area, should pay for them.
The incidence of such services should not be shifted to others who expect no gain there from. As the inhabitants of the area have to pay for the local services, it is natural for them to demand proper control over those services. It has the results.
In the first place, participation in the work of local bodies tends to develop among the people a sense of mutual interest in their common affairs and trains them to work for others honestly and efficiently. Secondly, the people entrusted with the management of local affairs will manage them more efficiently in order to keep their bill of costs as low as possible.
Finally, by making responsibility widespread the institution of local government encourages a spirit of self-help and self-dependence. The institution of local government is, as such, a great advancement in the realization of true citizenship. Burke has cogently said, “To be attached to the sub-division; to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle, the germ as it were of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and mankind.”
The vigorous development of local government is the only means of realizing the welfare purpose of every progressive State. Welfare services require a flexible technique to cater for individual cases.
The local bodies, on account of their nearness to the people, their wider representative character, their natural familiarity with the details of the situation, and their intimate knowledge of the means and wants of the inhabitants are eminently suited to evolve such a technique. The State has really found in them its most effective instrument for social amelioration.
Soviet Russia was the home of socialism, both national and local. The town Soviets, which were the Russian prototypes of Indian Municipal Committees, besides exercising the usual municipal functions, regulated also the entire political and economic life of the local community.
Commerce, industries, retail trade, cooperation, housing, land partition, criminal justice, recruitment and mobilization, protection of the revolutionary regime, supervision and application of the national progress, etc., all came under its jurisdiction.
The Soviets also supervised and controlled all the organs and institutions of government functioning within their area, and would voice the dissatisfaction of the local community with any of them when necessary. They acted in the dual capacity of agents of the central government and the representative bodies of the local community.
Compared with local bodies of advanced countries, the functions of municipalities in India are less extensive principally in three directions, namely, police, trading enterprises, and the big group of social services comprising health, housing, sickness and unemployment insurance. Some of these functions are not even legally permitted to the municipalities.
Apart from the legal restrictions, the main difference between Indian municipalities and their foreign prototypes is that in respect of legally permitted functions, like education or water supply, the actual standard of development here is very low. Then, the government of the local bodies in India is neither local nor is it self-government.
They have not the means to extend their activities even if permitted by law. Their own resources are not sufficient. They have to depend to a large extent on the financial help of the State governments through grants-in-aid, loans, etc. The authority that pays must also control and direct.
The autonomy of the local bodies, accordingly, vanishes under all encroaching control and direction of the Deputy Commissioner. The Control of the State government is ubiquitous and a minor lapse may mean supersession of a local body. The action may even be politically motivated.
Critics of local government assert that local home rule narrows/the outlook of the people and breeds local patriotism. Such an attitude stifles the life of the community. What is political virtue in the local context becomes parochialism on the national stage.
The good local citizen of nineteenth and twentieth century France or Germany was often the bad national citizen. It is further pointed out that devolution of authority to local bodies not only multiplies administrators, but also results in divided responsibility. The obvious result is inefficiency, delinquency, waste and incompetence.
The officers of local bodies succumb to all sorts of local influences as they are “locally selected and locally directed and locally controlled.” Devolution of authority also deprives local bodies of central direction and advice.
With scanty resources at their disposal, and a meagre source of information and knowledge at their command, local bodies cannot perform their functions adequately and effectively, and if they do, they do it tardily and inefficiently.
What the critics of local government say is true to a great extent, particularly in a country like India where the vision of the people is blurred by the barriers of localism, regionalism, caste and religion.
To love one’s home and locality is the natural instinct of man and there is nothing wrong in it provided it does not inhibit men in performing their higher duties towards their country and its people as a whole. It is our membership of the State which bestows upon us the benefits of devolution of authority and the privileges of working for others with others living in our neighbourhood.
Once this becomes the norm of the political behaviour of man, local government fulfils the purpose of common consciousness of common good. It binds the people living in different areas in a community of feelings and interests and in these feelings narrow localism finds no place.
Willoughby suggests a concrete reform. He says that local officers should be appointed by the State or provincial Government, but a local advisory council in each area, consisting of the eminent and trustworthy citizens, may be associated with them.
The advisory council should be given the responsibility and duty of advising local officers with local problems, to bring to the attention of their superior officers all cases of lapses on their part and failures to perform their duties properly and diligently, to suggest to such authorities proposals which they deem advisable, and to protest against the action of the government where they believe that their areas are not receiving equitable treatment.
But this is not the real solution of the problem. Nor does it advance the cause of local government which aims to inculcate the spirit of intelligent and creative citizenship.
Whatever be the defects of local government, “grass-roots” democracy forms a vital element of democracy for the modem State. The absence of healthy local political roots is a disaster. Robson has cogently said, “Democracy on the national scale can function in a healthy manner only if it is supported and nourished by democratic local government.”
De Tocqueville relevantly argued that local institutions have a special role to play in the preservation of liberty and independence and decentralization of political power is the necessary component of democracy.
Local democracy gives many people a voice in matters touching those most immediately. It associates citizens with one another, with the process of government, and with the rules of government of which they are in part the authors.
Access to the government broadens popular participation and fosters public virtue in the participants and energy in the people. “Popular government,” as Carl Friedrich says, “includes the right of the people, through their majority, to commit mistakes.”
The decisions, which local people make, may seem unwise from the standpoint of experts and technicians, but the citizens “will discover it in time and they may learn a vital lesson in self-government.” Local government is the best school of citizenship.
Such homilies as “democracy stops beyond the parish pump” and “charity begins at home” indicate that “grass-roots” democracy “holds a special place in American folklore and they are accustomed to thinking of dispersed power as more democratic and more conducive to liberty than concentrated.”