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Panchayati Raj Institutions

After the passage of 73rd Amendment it was felt that a sea change would be witnessed in panchayats. As a result of reservation, women and dalits in large numbers emerged as panchayat leaders. It was expected that panchayats would develop into units of local self-governance and an alternative to sustainability of programmes would be found.

Pratinidhi grabbed this opportunity to work with panchayats, mainly on two planks:

1. To develop Gram Sabha as unit of local self-governance through education and training and panchayats be prepared for implementation of programmes as per expectations of the people they represent.
2. To impress upon the villagers and ward members that the panchayats were accountable to them and thus break inertia prevailing in this field for the past 50 years.

Several activities were organised. A series of village, block and district level workshops were held. While village level workshops were organised to identify issues at the village level, the others were basically advocacy workshops with kshettra panchayats and zilla panchayats on these issues.

A number of training were organised to equip panchayat representatives with skills to successfully discharge their roles and responsibilities. These training were centred around issues like activity of panchayat committees, concept of panchayats, shape of panchayats, rights and duties of panchayats, micro planning and government linkages. Refresher training were also organised.

Soon it was relaised that panchayats would only function the way they were supposed to was through active involvement of the people they represented. To tackle the situation, ward level organisations were formed in all the panchayats of interventions. These ward level organisations were quite helpful in identifying potential panchayat members and activating them. With an increase in participation considerable help has been obtained in furthering local issues.

For dissemination of information, Pratinidhi established panchayat information centres in five selected villages. All information related to panchayats, including magazines and government orders are available at these centres. Over the time these information centres emerged as a rallying point of villagers.

Following the dictum that panchayat elections were first step towards panchayat strengthening, Pratinidhi intervened in panchayat elections through Panchayat Voter Awareness Campaign so as to ensure that a responsive leadership was elected to panchayats.

Read about Gram Sachivalaya (Village Secretariat)