Understanding Local Self Governance in Nagaland

October 10, 2017 27030 Views No Comment

5.3 District Planning and Development Boards

Area Councils were established in the erstwhile Nagaland Village and Area Council Act, 1978, to act as link between the village and state authorities at the district levels and to oversee development and to resolve disputes. Area Councils were however abolished and the District Planning and Development Boards (DPDB) introduced to provide the much needed linkage to the grassroots and to ensure a responsive and holistic approach towards development. The DPDB consists of Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and district heads of departments. A Chairman is appointed by the government from amongst the members and the Deputy Commissioner of the district is the Vice Chairman and District Planning Officer the Member Secretary of the Board.

All in all, the DPDB however remains a pure government agency to basically oversee the implementation of the Local Area Development projects. The Village Development Boards (VDBs) on the other hand, though a government initiated body organically functions under the Village Councils and therefore is much more connected to the grassroots in a social way and is also directly linked with the state government by virtue of its governance framework.

6. The Communitization of Public Institutions and Services

Building upon the strong traditional institutions and governance systems, the Nagaland government initiated “Communitization of Public Institutions and Services Act” which fosters a strategic partnership between the government and the communities. The Act to improve services and ensure peoples’ buy-in to public assets as stakeholders further delegates management responsibilities for essential services such as health, primary education, power, rural tourism, rural water supply, etc to the community.

This Act institutionalized a process of going to the community beyond the Village Development Boards. The law provides for ownership of public resources and assets and control over service delivery to be transferred to the community directly. To start with this has been done in elementary education, grassroots health services and power utilities.

“Communitization is a contract between the government and the community. In this contract, the community becomes the owner of the government institutions and assets and is granted powers and resources to manage the employees and maintain institutions. In other words, it is privatization of government-owned public institutions in the hands of the user community. It is ‘empowerment, delegation, decentralisation and privatisation at the same time’”

The move has in many ways become an effective instrument to ensure that the institutions and services set up for the benefit of the community operate efficiently and that the authorities are accountable to the beneficiaries and not only to the government. The decision

16 R.S. Pandey. 2010Communitisation: The Third Way of Governance, Concept Publishing Company Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi

of the State Government to declare each Village Council and their subsequent committees as ‘local authority’ within the meaning of the Communitization of Act further legitimizes the institutions under the local self governments.

The ‘privatization’ has effectively handed over the management and maintenance of infrastructure and management of power, rural tourism, elementary education, public health engineering and health and family welfare to the Village Council under different committees in the departments.