Welcome Rohri City! Local Self-Government

The Development of Local Self-Government during the past 125 Years The history of local self-government in the subcontinent can be divided into three distinct periods. The first period was characterized by a marked absence of local participation. Though municipalities had already been established by the British in Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, and certain other cities, the public had no control over them; the central government ran the affairs of the municipalities, and in the rural areas there were committees to manage local affairs such as sanitation, construction of roads, etc. The provincial government was given funds by the central government for specific purposes, and any amount unspent had to be returned to the central government. Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India between 1869 and 1872, brought a radical change to this system by removing restrictions on the initiatives towards local self-government a fixed grant was to be made to the provincial governments from the imperial treasury, and the provincial governments were made responsible for their own finances Within certain limits. The second period dawned with Lord Ripon’s Resolution of 1882, which called for local bodies to be elective and independent of outside control. It was a crucial landmark as it laid the foundation of the local self Government system. Lord Ripon, Viceroy 1880-89, wanted the people of the subcontinent to learn to manage their own affairs, and was a strong supporter of the principle of free elections. His Resolution of 1882 led to the Bombay Act No.1 of 1884, which decreed that the municipalities were to be divided into three classes, that the District Councils were to be replaced by District Local Boards, and that taluka Local Boards were to be created. The chairmen of these institutions were not to be central government administrators, and wherever possible they were to be elected. All the representative institutions were given certain financial powers, but the central government retained the power to inspect local government activities and to suspend officials of local government in case of gross default of their duty.

District Local Boards had between twenty and thirty members, of whom half were elected by the people and half, including the President, were officials nominated by the Commissioners in Sindh. The taluka Local Boards consisted of about fifteen members, of whom half were nominated and half elected. The assistant or deputy collector in charge of the taluka was invariably an appointed member, as was the president of the taluka Board.

The Montague-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 marked the commencement of the third period of local self-government. Lord Montague, Secretary of State for India, and Lord Chelmsford, the Governor-General, drafted a scheme of reforms which became the basis for the Government of India Act, 1919. Under this Act, the provinces became responsible for local government, public health, sanitation, education, public works, irrigation, and agriculture, while the centre retained responsibility for defense, foreign affairs, customs, post and telegraph, and currency. The provinces were given the power to accelerate the pace of progress by means of industrialization, which meant big returns for the central government. This led to the idea that local self government was not just the starting point for the long march to freedom, but was the very basis of it.

The activities of the District Local Boards in Sindh were regularly reviewed by the Government of Sindh. Some salient features of the resultant reports are noted below:

(i) A report on the administration of the Local Boards in Sindh for the year 1936-7 revealed that all the taluka Local Boards had been abolished. It further mentioned that no village panchayat (council of elders) was constituted under the Village Panchayat Act, 1933, in any village in Sindh, while the number of sanitary committees did not increase during the year under report.

(ii) A later report noted with satisfaction the good work done by the District Local Board of Sukkur in the matter of compulsory education.

(iii) In the review of 1939-40 it was noted that the introduction of compulsory education in some talukas those of Dadu, Sukkur, Larkana, and Tharparkar Districts was commendable.

The next stage in the development of local self- government came in 1953, when the Government of Sindh created a Local Self-Government Committee* with Kazi Fazalullah as Chairman and seven other members, all of whom were notable personalities of the time. There was one major concern for the Committee: to study the Sindh Municipal Boroughs Act, 1925, the Sindh District Municipal Act, 1901, and the Sindh Local Board Act, 1923, and to suggest methods for improving the Local Bodies in the province. At the time of the constitution of the Local Self-Government Committee, the following forms of local government institutions were operating in Sindh:

(I)- The Village Panchayat	(II)- The Sanitary Committee
(III)- The Taluka Local Boards	(IV)- The District Local Boards
(V)- The Municipalities	(VI)- The Provincial Boar