'A separate Local Government Service Commission can be set up to recruit panchayat employees'

The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution of India calls upon states to enact laws that enable panchayats to function as local governments. To assess the extent of this devolution of power, the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj has studied and ranked the states since 2004.

-  RAJU SAJWAN

The most recent of these studies, "Status of Devolution to Panchayats in India: An Indicative Evidence Based Ranking, 2024", released in February 2025, has been prepared by the Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), Delhi, and uses a devolution index to rank the states. V N ALOK, author of the study and professor at IIPA since 1999, tells RAJU SAJWAN that due to weak tax collection systems, the revenue generated by panchayats is not sufficient, which hinders their functioning. Excerpts:

When and why was the need for the devolution index felt?

About 10 years after the 73rd Constitutional Amendment in 1993, a separate Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj was established in 2004. The same year, it was decided that a devolution report and index would be prepared to assess how far the process of devolving powers and responsibilities to the panchayats had progressed. I was instrumental in presenting the concept paper in the Roundtable of State Ministers In-charge of Panchayats. Following this, the devolution index was published annually until 2015-16. Now, after the gap of a decade, it has been released again in 2025. At the very beginning, the constitutional provisions made for panchayats under the 73rd Amendment were categorised into three main areas, popularly known as the three Fs: functions, finance and functionaries. In 2008, a fourth “F”—framework—was added. Later, based on our study in 2012, two more dimensions were incorporated: accountability and capacity-building.

Which of the six dimensions is the most important?