One small step closer to englightenment

Churchill once said of Stalin that he was a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” The same might be said of the Indian administrative system.

Today, with Jawahar’s help, I came a little bit closer to unraveling this mystery by figuring out how the system of local administrative boundaries -- wards, panchayats, blocks, taluks, tehsils, and districts – all work.

Ok, so many of you may already know most of this stuff, but when I queried my colleagues around the office there was widespread confusion about some of the details of how this all works – esp. the relationship of blocks to Taluks and the difference between Taluks and Tehsils (there is none). Here is the definitive account, straight from Jawahar’s mouth.

• Districts You probably have a good understanding of what a district is, so I won’t dwell on this one. The head person in the district is the District Collector. District collectors are usually recently accepted IAS officers.
• Taluks, Talukas, and Tehsils are all the same thing. (In some states they call them Taluks and in some states they call them Tehsils.) A Taluk or Tehsil is a subdivision of a district (though in a few rare cases, a Taluk may spread across more than one district) in which revenue collection activities (e.g. – land tax) take place. The head person in a Taluk is usually called a Tehsildar.
• Blocks are subdivisions of a district in which program disbursement activities (e.g. – spending on NREG, Indira Awas Yojana, etc.) happens. The head person in a block is the Block Development Officer.
• The block and Taluk systems run completely independently and block and Taluk boundaries are usually completely different even though they are of roughly the same size.
• A panchayat (or gram panchayat or GP) is a subdivision of a block in which local administration and program disbursement activities take place. Panchayati leaders are locally elected but the system of election varies from state to state.
• Wards are subdivisions of panchayats. Ward leaders are locally elected but the system of election varies from state to state.
• The system for cities is slightly different. In cities, there are no Taluks or Blocks. Instead there is a corporation (in the case of large cities) or a municipality (in the case of a medium size city). There are still wards though.

There’ll be a quiz on all this tomorrow.