A New Statistical Domain in India: An Enquiry into Village Panchayat Databases

A new structure of local government, the contemporary village panchayat, has emerged in rural India as a consequence of the Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act, 1992. This new statistical domain requires databases for the development functions that have been allocated to it. This book is a study of panchayat-level databases and their potential use in local-level administration, planning, and policy implementation. It examines the overall status of local-level data available in two contrasting village panchayats: Raina gram panchayat, Barddhaman district, West Bengal; and Warwat Khanderao gram panchayat, Buldhana district, Maharashtra, drawing on interviews on the process of record-keeping and use of accumulated data with officials. The study attempts to understand the current and potential use of such records in decentralized development planning, the periodicity at which the records are updated, and the reliability and accuracy of such records. A specific and unique aspect of the book is its attempt to evaluate the accuracy of certain panchayat-level databases.

Jun-ichi Okabe is a professor in the faculty of economics and the Graduate School of International Social Sciences at Yokohama National University. Okabe’s field of expertise is economic and socio-economic statistics and statistical systems.

Aparajita Bakshi is assistant professor in the School of Development Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. She is a development economist specializing in agrarian studies, inequality, and the land question in India.