The role of gramsabha in rural development: Issues and prospects

People are the real wealth or riches of a nation. A nation that facilitates for maximum number of happy people, is the richest nation ever’, quotes Mahathma Gandhi. Development is a universal supremacy as a goal and its natural occurrence. As a subject development is value-loaded concept. Every individual family, community and nation desires to achieve this objective.³⁶ India being the largest democratic country of the world, the process of nation building with such parameters of richness is indeed challenging. Decentralization of power is one of the ways that India chose to face such a challenge efficiently and effectively since independence. The essence of such decentralization of power in India is ‘Gramsabha’ which is the most important tier or unit of ‘Local Self Government or the Panchayat Raj System (PRS)’. In the history of Panchayat Raj System, April 24^th 1993 can be considered as a remarkable day. The 73^rd Amendment of the Constitution was implemented on this day, introducing three tier Panchayat Raj System which gave constitutional status to Gramsabha and Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs). The Gramsabha is a concept intending to represent common citizen's needs and wishes which appeals to the general mass of population irrespective of class, caste, gender, distinction and political partisanship. It refers to supremacy of the people.