Sen, Panchali Bhattacharya

The paper looks at participatory rural governance in India through the institution of gram sabhas. The latter, literally village meeting, is a mechanism through which villagers can express their grievances to and monitor the functioning of panchayats. The paper presents the structure, functioning and evolution of gram sabhas and argues that while these institutions have been established by law, their functions have not been spelt out in detail and as a consequence they continue to function ineffectively.