Intro: An effort to reinforce the Panchayati Raj system which today is miles away from the vision and purpose with which it was conceived.
Dr Chandra Shekhar Pran, former Director of Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS), took voluntary retirement just to engage in a serious campaign, to strengthen the village Panchayats. He wants people to partake in electoral and decision-making process of village Panchayats. Gram Sabha is the general body and every villager is a member of that body. Thus this is the forum where one finds real participatory democracy, which Dr Pran calls ‘Teesary Sarkaar’; the first two being State Government and Union Government, where we have representative democracy and not the participatory one.
To achieve his goal, Dr Pran formed ‘Vardaan Foundation’, an association of volunteers working in the rural areas for socio-economic upliftment. He says the 73rd amendment of the Constitution strengthen the Panchayati Raj system with the objectives of realising true freedom, participatory democracy and decentralisation of governance in true spirit and form. However, the Panchayati Raj system today is miles away from the vision and purpose with which it was conceived.
Vardan Foundation launched the campaign with a State level workshop on October 11, 2014 in Lucknow. The objective of the workshop was to bring all stakeholders on one platform and devise a collective strategy for empowerment of Panchayats in Uttar Pradesh. The workshop generated lots of discussions and subsequently a yearly action plan for the campaign was chalked out. The entire State was divided in ten regions to organise regional workshops to take the concept of Third Government to the next level. The overall objective of the Third Government Campaign is institutional development of Panchayats and promoting people’s participation in its affairs. This will institute the Panchayats as empowered institutions of Third Government.
The specific objectives of the campaign are to form a robust civil society network to take up a range of activities for institutional development of Panchayati Raj, to form a network of CSOs to lead the campaign in the entire State, to enhance capacity of CSOs on Panchayati Raj System, the development of technical resources, to use toolkits on Panchayati Raj System, to advocate with the State government to reform the Panchayati Raj system in light of the 73rd amendment of the Constitution, active advocacy with the Government of Uttar Pradesh for bringing about the policy reforms with regards to Panchayati Raj System, to initiate awareness activities, to engage people with the Panchayati Raj system at grass roots level, to organise district level march, wall paintings, street plays, IEC activities and social media campaigns. The programme also aims at creating a pool of 175 trainers on Panchayati Raj, organising training programmes for newly elected members of PRIs on the roles and responsibilities and leadership development.
Dr Pran was born and brought up in a middle class rural family of village Puretorai in Partapgarh District. He rose to the present position of high social repute simply by virtue of his committed and sustained efforts to mobilise common man, especially the youth, to make them aware of the greater national challenges and lead them to achieve the higher goal of social transformation in rural India. Before joining NYKS, he had founded ‘Rashtriya Yuva Parishad’, a national organisation of 1,500 youth spread across the country. He acted as its founder President till March 1988.
In 1999, he went on a cycle journey called ‘Panch Prameshwar Cycle Yatra’—“Gram Sabha se Lok Sabha Tak” covering a distance of 4,500 kms. in 72 days to study the ground realities and create awareness about Panchayati Raj and holding of direct meeting and conversation with Gram Sabha members of 460 Gram Panchayats.
Dr. Pran has worked throughout for different social causes in close association with renowned national personalities like Acharya Ram Murti, Sunder Lal Bahuguna, Subba Rao, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Magsaysay Award Winner Rajinder Singh and Dr SY Qureshi, former Chief Election Commissioner of India. His topic of research for doctorate was – “Role of Gram Panchayat in Development and Changing of Attitude and Behaviour of Youths”, an empirical research work on 30 Gram Panchayats of five States under Socio-Psychology.
Dr Shakti Kumar Pandey (The writer is a Lucknow Correspondent)
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