Online edition of Sunday Observer

Esmond Wickremesinghe who took control of the Lake House Newspapers from Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. Founder, D. R. Wijewardene, wrote this article in 1958. The late Mr. Wickremesinghe's death anniversary fell on September 29.

This article, demonstrating a remarkable foresight on the need for a decentralised administration in, published to commemorate that anniversary.

The first step in the creation of a dynamic economy is to provide institutions which can serve as the means for popular participation in the process of economic development.

Wherever rapid social change has to be effected (as is necessary in Ceylon today) the best way is to utilise such existing institutions as lend themselves to this purpose, with whatever modifications are needed.

The advantage of this approach is that the institutions are already familiar to the people and certain organisational links with the people already exist that can be used for new purposes.

In Ceylon, the most effective political institutions capable of associating the people with the building of a new society are the local bodies. On all levels from the village committee right up to the municipal council, they are working organisations potentially capable of drawing the whole body of the people into activity.

In fact, the original village communities (the gamsabhavas) in Ceylon in the era preceding colonial rule were as in many other parts of Asia the machinery whereby a village - the unit of society in those times - managed its own affairs. Through them the people of the village were brought into partnership in all the tasks and activities that confronted the village political, economic, social, religious, judicial, etc.

With the break-up of the self-sufficient village as an economic unit and the imposition of a bureaucratic colonial state in which all administration was determined and carried out from the top, the village committee lost these functions. The development of local government institutions in their place did not entirely make up for the loss for these local authorities were modelled on the British pattern which grew up under very different conditions. The automatic transplantation of these institutions to Ceylon did not mean that they were suited to or adequate for Ceylon.

The local bodies today carry out only certain limited functions of administration and social welfare. Although they are elected by the people they do not draw the people into their day-to-day functioning. The attitude of the people towards the local bodies has remained very much the same as their attitude to the central government; they expect them to provide welfare services and various amenities and are content to criticise them when they fall down on the job.

There has been no attempt made to transform the local bodies into institutions through which the people can do the job of expanding production - out of which better welfare services and higher living standards can come - for themselves.

The present government has criticised the existing structure of local government as being too bureaucratic and subject to excessive control by the central government, and envisages a system of wider responsibilities for local bodies through the setting up of regional councils. This will not, in itself, touch the heart of the problem for what seems to be contemplated is only a decentralisation of certain administrative and governmental functions and their transfer to local bodies or their representatives.

What is important is that these bodies should not remain merely political bodies shouldering some administrative responsibilities (to whatever extent these may be widened in the future) and managing certain welfare services in their own area. The most valuable potentialities of the local bodies lie in their capacity to serve as instruments for drawing the people into participation in the task of converging the stagnant economy into a dynamic one.

It might be objected that to entrust the local bodies directly with the responsibilities of organising production and giving them funds and other facilities for this purpose will lead to abuses, corruption and misappropriation of funds on a wide scale. It is certainly true that some of the local bodies at their present level of development are unreliable. It is also true that many of them lack the capacity to think out and initiate productive schemes.

The answer to both these objections, however, is that the regional councils which the government proposes to set up will offer a framework through which it should be possible both to provide the initiative and direction as well as to maintain supervision at all times in order to prevent breakdowns, malpractices and abuses. These councils will be composed of both elected representatives of local bodies and officials as nominees of the central government. They will thus serve as an organisation through which popular participation in the tasks of development can be stimulated, while at the same time the necessary checks and safeguards are maintained by the government.

The regional councils should be the bodies responsible for initiating development in their own area. In executing their projects they can work through the local bodies, giving them funds and other forms of assistance while exercising supervision at all stages to ensure that work is efficiently and honestly carried out. The quantum of development that can be entrusted in this way to the local bodies will necessarily vary from one local body to another.

A major local body like the Colombo Municipal Council may be able to run even a fairly large-scale enterprise, while urban councils and village communities will have to concern themselves with small industries and crafts in their own area. But even among local bodies of the same status their capacity for development may vary according to a number of imponderables - the quality and competence of the peoples' representatives, the resource available in the particular area, the degree of co-operation they receive from their electors, etc. The regional councils can take all these considerations into account in drawing up its plans and entrusting particular projects to local bodies.

In the initial stages it is to be expected that the regional councils will have to do all the spade-work of thinking out ideas and planning out projects in their own areas. But once the first momentum has been given and the local bodies have been awakened to activity, it is very likely that suggestions and proposals will begin to flow in from the local bodies themselves to the regional councils, though the latter will always have to examine and approve or reject them. At the other end the national planning body will have to co-ordinate the economic functions of the regional councils relate them to the central plan and provide whatever assistance is needed from the centre.

Thus, the structure envisaged is one in which there will be a flow of initiative in both directions; on the one hand, the national planning council and the Central Government will lay down the broad policy for economic development, while the regional councils will work out projects in their own areas within the framework of this policy and implement them by entrusting responsibility for undertaking all projects other than those for which the regional council itself retains responsibility to the various lesser local bodies.

On the other hand, the lesser local bodies will also be free - and should indeed be encouraged - to make proposals for approval by the regional councils consistent with the national plan for development. Responsibility will be maintained at the centre, while execution will be decentralised.

The Indian Planning Commission, too, is apparently exploring a similar idea - that of converting the village panchayat into an institution for development. In Yugoslavia, the local bodies, termed communes are basic agencies of economic development, within the framework of the national plan formulated by the State. In the Soviet Union, too, the Soviets themselves perform similar functions, though with the greater rigidity of the Soviet dictatorship, they are primarily executors of the State plan for their area, in the formulation for which they are consulted.

Though the degree of its independent discretion is very limited, as compared with what has been envisaged in this article for a local authority in Ceylon's democratic context, the Soviet as the basic local authority in the USSR demonstrates that a local authority even in a totalitarian state, is a useful instrument for development.

Thus if wide powers and responsibilities in the economic sphere (subject to safeguards against incompetence. corruption and the abuse of power) were given to the regional councils to undertake schemes of development within the State's over-all economic policy, along with powers and facilities to enable them to do so, they would be useful in supplementing the economic activity of the State and in broadening the base of development.

The forms of economic activity to be engaged in by a local authority can vary with its own circumstances. It may organise an industry and manage it with its own effort; or it may assist a group of independent workmen to form a co-operative or guild for production (as in Japan or Switzerland where an appreciable section of the economy is thing on these lines) or of independent agriculturists to form such a co-operative or guild as in Israel, or it may take shares in a local limited company or take the initiative in forming such a company itself and sell its shares to the public.

One great benefit that will come with the evolution of the regional councils and local bodies, under their direction, as agencies of development is that it will make it possible for people to be brought into participation in development at all levels. Members of opposition parties at the centre, for instance, can be brought into participation through local bodies in the national tasks of development it this way.

If a party which belongs to the Parliamentary Opposition secures a majority in a local body, it will be able to play its part in organising development within that area. As things are at present, the skills of members of Opposition parties are unutilized.

Moreover, the entrusting of economic functions to local bodies should imbue Opposition parties themselves with a great sense of responsibility. They cannot indulge in purely destructive criticism if they are entrusted with the practical tasks of running industry or organising production.

Indeed the widening of the functions of local bodies should lead to an enhanced respect for these institutions and stimulate better and abler men to come forward as candidates. This process could be assisted by giving these elected representatives of the people a definite status analogous to though lower than, that of members of Parliament.

Perhaps later, as in the Soviet system, constitutional arrangements could be made to provide for local authorities to elect a certain number of representatives to the centre legislature (say, to the Senate) if its constitution is revised.

It may be mentioned that the broadening of the responsibilities of local bodies can and should extend to cultural, social, educational and other matters. This article is not concerned with the general question of the future development of local government, but with their place in economic development.

With the re-invigoration that the local bodies will receive when they become agencies of economic development it is natural that they should take over a number of concomitant functions as well. The ultimate aim would be that these bodies like the gansabhavas of old, should become (subject to the overriding responsibility of the centre) not merely real organs of self-government, but also organs of self-help.