Recent Reforms in the Panchayat System in West Bengal

The experience of West Bengal under the panchayat system stands in sharp contrast withthat of other states and, together with land reform, it has been credited for playing animportant role in the impressive economic turnaround of the state since the mid 1980s. WestBengal is the first and the only major state to have had timely panchayat elections on aparty basis regularly every five years since 1978. However, despite its pioneering status interms of reforms of the panchayat system, West Bengal lags behind several other statestoday in terms of devolution of power, finances and functions to the panchayat. Also, theextent of people’s participation in the planning process is significantly less compared to thatin Kerala. This paper studies a particular component of a set of recently introduced reformsof the panchayat system in West Bengal that is aimed precisely at addressing this concern –the introduction of mandatory village constituency (gram sansad) meetings.[...]