LAHORE, July 3: The Pakistan-India Conference on Local Governance has recommended that the two sides should continue to share their evolving experiences in governance particularly with a view to facilitating the people-to-people contact.
The recommendation was made at the concluding session of the three-day conference held here on Tuesday with Governor Khalid Maqbool in the chair.
The moot discussed outcomes of the local government system in Pakistan and India, fiscal decentralisation, capacity and management, decentralised planning, economic development through local government, including rural and urban integration, and women, youth and citizen empowerment.
It recommended that Pakistan and India should host one meeting each every year to facilitate exchange of information, besides arranging face-to-face encounters in their countries of elected representatives and local self-government institutions. All the stakeholders should be invited to these meetings to share and disseminate the best practices and innovations in service delivery at the local level.
Another recommendation was that the innovations should be regularly shared between the two countries through the National Reconstruction Bureau in Pakistan and the Ministry of Panchayati Raj in India. The stakeholders should be encouraged to exchange views on issues surrounding local governance and participate in action research and in developing comparative studies.
Experts and officials on local governance from both the countries should be invited under an exchange programme to participate as resource persons in the academies, schools and institutions to impart training on emerging developments in the field, was the key suggestion.
In his concluding address, the governor said the district government system had been introduced under the reform policy to empower people because the old model was not suitable for the purpose. It was asked to introduce the system in one district, but it took the bold step and established a fully-functional system throughout the country from the very first day, he said.
It was a whole new bargain to transfer the administrative power to the public representatives who could not enter the offices of deputy commissioners, he said.
He also said the district government system had changed the concept of politics of appeasement because no government could run if it could not raise taxes. The system had also produced a new class of leadership in the country. The participation of public representatives had produced unbelievable results in local planning and development.
The government, he said, had been able to get space for the establishment of sub-campuses of universities without any difficulty and attract foreign assistance from agencies like Jica. The government grants to the district governments had increased from Rs86 billion to Rs112 billion during the past three years, the governor said.
The leader of 51-member delegation from India, Union Minister for Panchayat Raj Mani Shankar Ayar, said the local government system had added a new dimension to the lives of people in Pakistan. He said he was born in Lahore in 1941 and was greatly impressed when the record of his birth was traced on his request.
National Reconstruction Bureau chairman Daniyal Aziz said opening of contacts between the local government representatives of India and Pakistan had a very special meaning in the history of Asia. They had learnt a lot from their experiences; they had appreciated difficulties and benefitted from mistakes and successes.
Sikkim Panchayat Raj Minister K. N. Rai said the literacy rate in his state had increased from 32 per cent to 83 per cent due to ‘panchayat’ system. He pointed out that the India National Congress had demanded introduction of local government system at its meeting held in Lahore in 1941.
Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment chief Zafar Hayat Malik said 37,000 citizen community boards set up in Punjab had contributed over Rs1 billion to development works.
The Indian National Information Centre director-general said introduction of e-governance had connected the entire country and enhanced public participation in accountability.
According to the Punjab Local Government Association president, the local system would help strengthen the political system.