The panchayati front: Tap potential of local self-government to fight COVID-19 -Mani Shankar Aiyar

-The Indian Express

Mani Shankar Aiyar writes: Planning for withstanding the ingress of COVID-19 requires the full deployment of the mechanisms for district planning envisaged in Article 243 ZD involving all three tiers of the panchayats and the municipalities brought together in the district planning committee

An unintended but welcome consequence of the struggle against COVID-19 is that the “confrontational federalism” that has characterised the Centre’s relations with the states, especially those run by non-BJP parties, is now yielding under the pressure of the nation-wide crisis to an element of “cooperative federalism” that was promised in 2014, and then reduced to a “jumla” over the next six years. Repeated teleconferences between the prime minister and the chief ministers has made a centralising establishment accept, however reluctantly, that there is no way the COVID-19 situation can be tackled except through a measure of cooperation between the Centre and the states, with the Centre acknowledging the need to evolve solutions through a consultative process involving the states and offering flexibility to states to adapt guidelines to their respective circumstances, and the states accepting the need for guidelines from the Centre along with adequate availability of funds to meet this wholly unexpected and very expensive contingency.

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