LOCAL SELF GOVERNMENT

Local self-government is a form of public administration,

such that the inhabitants of a certain territory form a
community that is recognized by the central government and
has a specific legal status and was originated by the Anglo-
Saxons.

Local governments are administrative office that are smaller

than a state. The term is used to contrast with offices at
nation-state level, which are referred to as the central
government, national government, or (where appropriate)
federal government.

In modern nations, local governments usually have same

powers as national governments do. They usually have some
power to raise taxes, though these may be limited by central
legislation. In some countries local government is partly or
wholly funded by subventions from central government
taxation. The question of Municipal Autonomy—which
powers the local government has, or should have, and why—
is a key question of public administration and governance.
The institutions of local government vary greatly between
countries, and even where similar arrangements exist, the
terminology often varies. Common names for local
government entities include state, province, region,
department, county, prefecture, district, city, township,

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town, borough, parish, municipality, shire and village.
However all these names are often used informally in
different countries & local government is the legal part of
central Govrment.

Main articles on each country will usually contain some

information about local government, or links to an article
with fuller information. The rest of this article gives
information or links for countries where a relatively full
description is available.
In India the local government is the third level of government
apart from the State and Central governments. There are
two types of Local Government in operation: Panchayats in
rural areas and Municipalities in urban areas. The
Panchayats are a linked-system of local bodies with village
panchayats (average population about 5,000),panchayat
samities at the intermediate level (average population about
100,000), and district panchayats (average population about
1,000,000).

Number of Panchayats and Municipalities in India, 2004

Panchayats Nos. Municipalities Nos. Gram (Village) 236,350

Municipal Corporations 109 Samities (Intermediate) 6,795
Municipal Councils 1,432 Zilla (District) 531

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Nagar(Town)Panchayats 2,182 Total 243,676 Total 3,723
Source: India, Twelfth Finance Commission Report, 2005

The rural panchayats created in around 1959 were based on

the soviet model (Yugoslav variety ) of tiering with
hierarchical control to undertake mainly agency tasks of the
states through earmarked funding, with limited civic tasks
financed from assigned land revenue and local surcharge
thereon. This resulted in overlapping functional jurisdiction
and a mismatch of functions and taxes among the three
tiers. The urban municipalities, created during the colonial
days of mid-19th century, survived the ‘socialist’ experiment
and retained their separate character as their English
counterparts. In 1991, through two identical constitutional
amendments, one for the Panchaysts and the other for the
Municipalities, a number of changes were introduced to
strengthen local governments in India ensure regularity of
their ekection every five years and limiting their period of
supersession or dissolution to six months, three sets of local
local govetnments for the Panchaysta and the Municipalities,
reservation of seats and chairpersons for women and
scheduled castes and tribes, creation of independent state
slection commission (SEC), state finance commission (SFC)
linked with the central finance commission, and planning
committees at the districts (DPCs) and metopolitan areas
(MPCs). In addition, these amendments have indicated

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guidelines for the states to empower the local governments
through increased devolution of functions and taxes to them-
these are not been followed-up by the states. However, the
CFCs have been allocating discretionary grants for local
governments passed through the states. One lacuna in the
existing arrangement is that the Panchatars do not have a
statutorily delegated list of functions on which its revenues
could be spent; this has created problems of financing their
own activities rom their oen revenues or through general
grants fron the CFC-SFC arrangements. Panchayats act
mostly as agencies for implementing thr erstwhile soviet
plan schemes and projects on cost reimbursement (around
96% of their activities) that do not have any maintenance
component for transferred completed works. The major
national parties are committed to improve the effectiveness
of the Panchayats through further central action to remedy
the situation.