Panchayati Perestroika

Panchayati Perestroika?
V R Krishna Iyer The lack of the required majority in the Rajya Sabha has forced the prime minister to stage a strategic retreat until the next session of parliament in October. This interval may be the time for a dissection of the much bruited panchayat and nagarapalika bills which are of common genetic code, structural mould and political goal THE sound and fury of the panchayati controversy has abated for a while. The euphoric clap-trap by the prime minister's claques in parliament, aided by the command performance of the electronic media and other engines of publicity, about the uniqueness of Rajiv Gandhi's eureka of panchayati raj, on the one side, and the epileptic opposition challenging, with dubious unity, the claim of 'Power-to the People' as histrionic, not historic, as baloney, not bona fide, and screaming with alarm that state autonomy would be shot down by the central Czar using democratic decentralism as a deadly stratagem, on the other, leave the masses dazed and dumb. Because the prime minister's brute majority is short of the constitutional minimum by a few who Lave yet to be magneted into his fold ae has staged a strategic retreat until at October session. This lucid interval ruiy be time for an autopsy of the anatomy of the much bruited panchayat and nagarapalika bills which are of common genetic code, structural mould and political goal.