Local Government in Ancient India c6.s1.6

c6.s1.6

In bringing out this contrast between the tendencies of Indian and Western politics and political thought it is not meant that Western administrations leave no room for local self-government or have no place for the autonomous local and municipal bodies. The assumption indeed goes against the very nature of things. For it is physically impossible to administer properly the manifold interests of civilized life in the comparatively larger states of the modern world from one central government. Indeed, as Sidney Webb well points out, if we consider the most progressive countries of the West, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, or the United States, we shall find that by far the largest part of their government is now that which is not carried on in the capital cities by the dignified departments of state under the control of the Central National Assembly or Parliament, ‘but that which is being administered locally in village, or parish, or commune, in municipality, or county, or district’, under the control and in the interests of the local people in these limited areas. ‘In England, for instance, the aggregate of parish councils, district councils, borough councils, and county councils happens to be, in magnitude or volume of business, greater than all the Government Departments put together.’ In these advanced countries the local bodies between them spend more money, undertake more enterprises, employ more officials, and legislate more extensively than the central government.¹ But, granting all this, it is evident that these organizations of local government are mostly the creation of the central government; that these local bodies owe their present form and constitution to a process of decentralization, delegation, or devolution of powers determined by the national legislature; that they are thus in the ultimate analysis but wheels of a common machine, parts of a single plant, and are not by any means 'extra-legal' associations, devoid of any statutory warrant, and, therefore, in the eye of the law, possessed of no authority whatsoever.²