One of the central issues in evolving an effective third tier of governance is, therefore, reconciling the imperative of making administrative and technical expertise available to the local authorities with the imperative of ensuring that decision-making and the responsibility for decisions taken remains with the elected representatives.
The problem begins at the top. The British, for their purposes, brought into being a pyramidical structure of district administration, the district magistrate being the Great White God who presided over the entire gamut of district and sub-district administration. Till the British were here, the Great White God was, more often than not, indeed White, although the induction of Indians into the ICS rendered the top echelon substantially off-White by the time Freedom came at Midnight.
I hold Nehru's biggest mistake to have been his decision to keep the steel frame in place while we moved into the era of planned development. At the time, and for many decades thereafter, Nehru's decision was regarded as the mark of a truly generous man who forgave any animus he might have had against the ICS for having so enthusiastically participated in his many incarcerations. Generous it was but, 50 years into Independence, its wisdom can be called into question.
What we needed to spark rural and slum development was grassroots democracy as vigorous as the democracy being introduced in Delhi and the state capitals. Instead, reliance was placed through the first decade of development on the benevolent authoritarianism of the civil and technical services to tend the needs of the poor. Nehru himself was the first to recognise the grim consequences of the Constituent Assembly having given short shrift to democracy at the grassroots. The Balwantrai Mehta Study Group's report of 1957 became the basis of launching the second revolution. Certainly, no other domestic issue received as assiduous attention from the prime minister as panchayati raj did. Yet, it was a flawed revolution because the entrustment of development functions to the bureaucracy-based community development machinery, at the same time as elected panchayats were being put in place, meant, in effect, that the block development officer (BDO) became the kingpin of sub-district level administration. The BDO was responsible primarily to the collector (in some states, to the district development officer drawn from the same biradari as the collector). Elected panchayat representatives were quickly downgraded to not much more than a consultative role.
Nehru died. Even the consultative role of the panchayats progressively ceased. Panchayati raj was replaced by BDO raj. After a while, the BDO was co-opted by the state-level politician. In almost every state, the BDO became, over time, the prime political representative of the state-level political authority. In consequence, in matters involving rural development, particularly the disbursement of anti-poverty funds, the collector was slowly marginalised, the state politician-BDO nexus ensuring that, as a recent estimate has shown, less than 15 per cent of Jawahar Rozgar Yojana funds actually reach the intended beneficiaries, an element of the remaining 85 per cent finding its way into the pockets of the state-level politician and, of course, the BDOcracy.
Is it therefore, ironic that the prime justification advanced for maintaining the steel frame in development administration is that it would insulate development from the predatory ways of unwashed, uneducated and, therefore, venal elected representatives. No sarpanch, pradhan or mukhiya is ever going to exert the influence or extend the protection that state-level politicians exert/extend.
What we need is the replacement of the BDO