PANCHAYATI RAJ 37
Soon after independence the idea of panchayati raj got a fillip. The Constitution of India enjoined: "The state shall take steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government55 (Article 40). But until the submission of the Balawantrai Mehta Committee report in 1957 there was no specific attempt to revitilize the panchayats^ This report suggested that the performance of the community development programme could be substantially improved through Rancha-vati raj institutions. It was argued that these institutions could secure greater involvement of the people in the development process, increase people's capacity for self-government and accelerate the process of political integration. In short, the major objectives of panchayat institutions were achievement of local participation through planned programmes and democratic decentralism.Jawa-harlal Nehru strongly defended panchayati raj and said <(. . . authority and power must be given to the people in the villages .... Let us give power to the panchayats."6 This obviously stimulated many social scientists of India who argued that panchayati raj institutions would help to identify local problems, involve the villagers in developmental activities, provide better communication between different levels of politics, impart political education, generate new leadership, and all the more, would bring about changes in the villages without making radical structural changes.
Inspiration from Ford Foundation
The community development programme, for the effectiveness of which panchayati raj institutions were thought necessary, was primarily a notion of the Ford Foundation. Douglas Ensmin-gcr, director of the Ford Foundation in India from 1951 to 1970, "played a crucial role in selling the idea of Community Development to the Indian government."6 Indian scholars, till the 1970s, never questioned the political and ideological significance of the programme which originated from a doubtful source. Instead, they reacted favourably to the call for patching up administrative inadequacies in these planned actions.
Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh were the first to adopt pan-chayati raj in 1959, other states following them later. Though there are variations among states,7 there are some features which are common for them. In all the states, for example, a three-tier structure of elected local self-governing bodies—panchayats at the village level, panchayat samitis at the block level and the ^illa parishads at the district level—has been institutionalized. The res-