India’s journey towards decentralisation has been long and uneven. From Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of Gram Swaraj to the constitutional recognition of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), the aspiration has remained clear: people should have a greater say in decisions that affect their lives and communities.

More than three decades after the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, Panchayats have become one of the world’s largest systems of elected local government. Yet an important question remains: have Panchayats become institutions of local self-government, or do they still largely function as implementing agencies of higher levels of government?

Decentralisation is not simply about moving administrative responsibilities downward. It is about bringing decision-making closer to citizens and enabling local institutions to respond to local priorities.

From Gram Swaraj to Constitutional Local Government

The idea of village self-government has deep roots in India’s political thinking. Gandhi’s conception of Gram Swaraj placed the village at the centre of democratic life. Article 40 of the Constitution similarly directs the State to organise village Panchayats and provide them with the powers necessary to function as units of self-government.

The decisive institutional shift came with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment in 1993. It gave constitutional status to Panchayats, established regular elections, provided reservations for women and disadvantaged communities, recognised the Gram Sabha, and identified 29 subjects in the Eleventh Schedule for possible devolution.

The amendment therefore did more than create another administrative tier. It placed Panchayats within India’s democratic architecture as institutions of local self-government.

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Three Decades of Local Democracy

The scale of this transformation is significant. According to the Ministry of Panchayati Raj’s Basic Statistics of Panchayati Raj Institutions 2025, India had 2,62,523 Panchayati Raj Institutions and 24,14,943 elected representatives as of 31 March 2025. Women accounted for about 48.4 per cent of elected PRI representatives.

These figures demonstrate the reach of grassroots democracy and the expansion of women’s political representation. But representation is only one dimension of decentralisation.

The more important question is: what can Panchayats actually decide, plan and influence?

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From Representation to Real Devolution

Although the constitutional framework is common across India, actual devolution varies considerably between states. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj’s Devolution Index Report 2024 assesses Panchayats across framework, functions, finances, functionaries, capacity building and accountability. The national average score was 43.89, while Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu recorded the highest scores.

This variation highlights an important reality: constitutional recognition does not automatically translate into effective local self-government. The actual authority of Panchayats depends on the devolution of functions, finances, personnel and decision-making powers.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the implementation of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment has similarly highlighted uneven devolution and noted that Panchayats often continue to function primarily as implementing agencies.

Implementing a programme designed elsewhere is not the same as exercising local self-government.

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What Does Decentralisation Look Like on the Ground?

At the same time, communities possessed rich ecological, cultural and livelihood knowledge that was not always reflected in formal planning. These observations are not representative of every Panchayat in Jharkhand or India. They nevertheless illustrate why decentralisation must be understood through the everyday relationship between institutions and communities, and not only through constitutional provisions or statistics.

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Panchayats, Gram Sabha and Local Planning

This relationship becomes particularly important in local planning.

Water, sanitation, livelihoods, agriculture, health, migration and natural resources are often interconnected. The Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP), therefore, should be more than a list of schemes. Ideally, it should provide a space where local priorities are identified, discussed and translated into collective plans.

Digital systems such as eGramSwaraj can support planning and monitoring, but technology cannot substitute for democratic participation.

The Gram Sabha remains central because elected representatives alone cannot constitute local self-government. Citizens need meaningful opportunities to deliberate, question priorities and influence decisions.

For those seeking to understand decentralisation, Panchayati Raj institutions, Gram Sabha and local governance, the PRIA International Academy course on Panchayati Raj and Decentralisation provides a useful learning resource covering these themes, including the constitutional framework and PESA. Explore the course

Resources Must Follow Responsibilities

From Scheme Implementation to Local Problem-Solving

The next phase of decentralisation requires Panchayats to move beyond a scheme-by-scheme approach towards integrated local problem-solving.

A village’s water challenge may be connected to agriculture, sanitation, women’s work and livelihoods. Migration may be linked to employment, education and social protection. Climate risks may intersect with forests, agriculture, housing and health.

Panchayats are potentially well placed to bring these concerns together because they operate close to communities. But they need more than funds. They need information, technical support, capable functionaries and meaningful relationships with communities and other institutions.

The Garhwa experience also points to another important resource: local and Indigenous knowledge.

Communities possess knowledge about forests, water, agriculture, seasons, livelihoods and ecological change that formal administrative systems may not fully capture. Recognising this knowledge can make Panchayat planning more grounded and responsive, particularly in PESA areas where governance is closely connected with community rights, natural resources and cultural identity.

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Deepening Decentralisation

India does not need to begin decentralisation again. It needs to deepen what has already been created.

Four shifts are particularly important:

1. From formal devolution to substantive devolution: Panchayats need responsibilities accompanied by authority, resources and personnel.
2. From participation as attendance to participation as influence: Gram Sabhas should be judged by whether citizens can influence priorities and hold institutions accountable.
3. From scheme implementation to integrated local planning: Panchayats need the capacity to connect local evidence, community priorities and development programmes.
4. From administrative knowledge to locally grounded knowledge: Community experience and Indigenous knowledge should be recognised as legitimate inputs into local governance.

These shifts also create opportunities for stronger partnerships between Panchayats, communities, civil society organisations and higher education institutions. Universities can contribute research, data and technical knowledge, while communities can bring grounded knowledge and lived experience into planning.

Making Decentralisation Meaningful

The history of Panchayati Raj can be understood as a movement through three broad stages: the idea of village self-government, the constitutional institutionalisation of Panchayats, and the still unfinished task of making these institutions capable of exercising meaningful authority.

India has created an extraordinary democratic infrastructure at the grassroots. But decentralisation should not be judged only by the number of Panchayats, elected representatives or meetings held.

The deeper questions are: Who decides? Whose priorities shape local plans? Who controls resources? Whose knowledge is recognised? Who participates in the Gram Sabha? And can Panchayats act on decisions made through these processes?

The answers will determine whether Panchayats remain primarily channels for implementing programmes designed elsewhere or become genuine institutions of local self-government.

The journey from Gram Swaraj to constitutional Panchayati Raj has transformed India’s democratic landscape. The next step is to bring authority, resources, institutional capacity, local knowledge and citizen participation together at the grassroots.

Decentralisation becomes meaningful when people are not merely beneficiaries of development, but participants in deciding what development should mean for their communities.

Explore all articles on the PRIA International Academy Blog.

My earliest imagination of what the inner workings of a workplace looked like came from sneaking into my father’s office as a child and wandering around the place for the rest of the day. My hobby required a carefully planned strategy. Go with him in the very early hours of the morning and avoid talking to, or being spotted by, anyone I had not already met. My first opponent to hide from was the woman who brought my father his morning tea. Then came his boss, who always seemed to complain about how slowly she worked. I was confused. She seemed to be working more than anyone else on that floor. Everyone else was sitting in front of laptops, and at that age I thought laptops were just video game devices.

After my second visit, I asked my father a question that had been bothering me. Why are the aunties not sitting on your floor? Where are they? What do they do? He told me they also worked in the office but did not sit with his team. Some of them gave him work while others supported him in doing his work. His answer, however, led to another question. If they worked here too, why were they somewhere else?

As I grew up, I found similar arrangements elsewhere. Men teachers and women teachers sat in different spaces in my school staff room. There were very few women on the election posters around my bus stop. Almost every bus driver I saw was a man, while it was overwhelmingly mothers who brought children to the bus stop every morning. I began to realise that the ordinary often concealed unequal ways of organising work, authority and everyday life.

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The Question My History Teacher Asked

What Gender Mainstreaming Really Means

Looking back, I realise that I was asking questions about the gendered division of labour and political participation long before I knew those phrases existed. I noticed that work was organised differently for women, but I did not yet have the language to understand why. Gender mainstreaming perhaps begins from this simple act of noticing. It asks us to question arrangements that appear natural and to examine how institutions produce unequal experiences for different people.

When I later studied gender and began working in this field, I found myself returning to that moment repeatedly because my teacher had done something much more important than correcting a history lesson. She interrupted what all of us, including the textbook, had accepted as obvious by asking whether “everyone” really meant everyone. She questioned the “normal”. Gender mainstreaming, to me, feels like a similar intervention. It is not simply about bringing more women or gender minorities into existing institutions. It is about questioning the assumptions through which those institutions have been built. It asks whose experiences are treated as the norm, whose concerns are considered important, and whose absence has become so ordinary that it is no longer noticed.

Why This Matters for Organisations

This becomes even more important when we think about organisations and workplaces. The questions I asked as a child about where the women employees were, why they sat separately, or what work they did cannot be answered through a technical checklist. They are rooted in longer histories of how work itself has been organised, how productive and reproductive labour came to be separated, and whose labour came to be recognised as skilled and productive while other forms of work remained invisible.

Representation matters, but it is only one part of a much larger process. Gender mainstreaming asks institutions to examine how decisions are made, who participates in making them, whose experiences inform policies and programmes, and whether seemingly neutral practices reproduce unequal outcomes. It requires us to move beyond asking whether women and gender minorities are present towards asking whether the systems themselves continue to privilege certain experiences.

Gender justice is the goal. Gender mainstreaming is the strategy through which institutions work towards that goal. It asks organisations to use a gender lens in all their activities instead of treating gender as a separate concern. It is a continuous process of questioning institutional cultures, everyday practices and decision-making so that inequality is not reproduced.

Learning to ask these questions is only the first step. They must then become part of how organisations work and reflect on their own practices.

What This Looks Like at PRIA

Learning to Ask Better Questions

Perhaps this was the process I was looking for when I wandered through my father’s office wondering where the women employees were. Gender mainstreaming is not about arriving at the right answers once and for all. It is about learning to ask better questions, remaining willing to question them again, and creating institutions that are prepared to do the same. PRIA International Academy’s courses on Gender and Development offer an opportunity to explore these questions further, examining how gender shapes institutions, development processes and everyday life, and how we can work towards more transformative change. The journey towards gender justice begins with learning to notice what has long been accepted as ordinary.

For more reflections like this, visit the PRIA International Academy blog.