The whole pyramid

The chapter opens with Rustom K. Sidhwa, speaking in the Constituent Assembly on 13 October 1949: 'I desire that … a full-fledged local body should be immediately formed, … so that people may know really what is an administration, what are the franchise, what are the powers, what are the rights and what are the privileges in a small sphere, in their own town, in their own villages.' His reason: a local body is where people learn what government is, because it is small enough to see all of.

Earlier chapters showed how, in a democracy, good governance aims to empower citizens so they can take an active part at every level: rural, regional, urban, State or national. This wider idea is called participatory democracy.

We saw the system in villages. Now we see how it works in towns and cities. A city is generally more complex and varied than a village: it needs many schools and colleges, parks, hospitals, street lights, water for lakhs of homes and much more. So it makes sense that city government is more complex too.

The book now draws the whole system as one pyramid. The base is the local level, closest to the people; the top is the national level. Chapter 11 explored the left side of the pyramid; now we look at the right side.

• Rural (left) side: the Gram Sabha at the base, then the Gram Panchayat, the Panchayat Samiti and the Zila Panchayat.
• Urban (right) side: the people of the ward at the base, then the Ward Committee, then the Municipal Corporation, Municipal Council or City Council (Nagar Panchayat).

Both sides rise into the same State Government, and above that the Union Government at national level. Two ladders, one building, and both stand on the people. Some city bodies are very old: the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, first the Bombay Municipal Corporation, was created back in 1865.