Awareness of Development Programmes of Rural Political Elites

Abstract

This is the subject of study that why the villagers are not getting benefits of rural development programs of panchayti raj system? or why the planning of development are not reaching on villagers? The 1994 report of Indian Social Science Institute, asked the rhetorical question: why did the panchayats not come under the legally enforceable section of the constitution? The answer was that the urban and the rural elites, their representatives in politics, and bureaucracy conditioned its class character, had a disdain for panchayat, and has ever since remained intact. This disdain seems real enough. In what has thus become a famous quote, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar wrote: ‘What is the village but a sink of localism. A den of ignorance, narrow- mindedness and communalism’. During the decade of 1990, it was realized that without constitutional power the self government can not be fruitful, therefore the Central government passed the 73rd constitutional amendment act in 1992, which become effective from 20th April 1993. Indian rural structure is a multidimensional social structure. So an objective study is required for rural development. Certain barriers like illiteracy, poverty, political polarization, caste, and the self group attachment, hunger, untouchabilety, communal hatred, socio economic barriers and so many others. Villages in India occupy a prominent place in the country’s socio-economic structure . But when India achieved her independence, its rural life exhibited a spectacle of actual misery, social disintegration, cultural backwardness, economic poverty and low political awareness which had created a major crisis for development, modernization and nation building in India. Now in villages socially, economically and politically powerful peoples are known as “Rural Elites”. these persons play an important role in rural development programs in panchayati raj system. In other words we can say that these are the mediator between villagers and rural development programs. In this study we shall try to know that which type of role play in rural development programs of panchayati raj system? We will find out whether they are cooperative or non cooperative with planning?