A reference guide to capacity building and training in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI), it analyses key issues relating to effective governance and prospects for outsourcing relevant samples of proposal requests.

The constitutional amendments 73 and 74 ushered in Panchayati Raj in India. The guiding principles include strengthening people’s ownership and participation in local governance-as well as decisions aff ecting their lives, rights based approaches and transparency in public administration. Panchayati Raj with three tier structure of Gram Panchayat, Block Panchayat and Jilla Panchayat since then has been established in India with state specifi c diff erences in Panchayat Acts of the States/UTs.

The Government of India has been developing and implementing statutes, strategies, plans and schemes to further the people’s participation and democracy at grass root levels. The initiatives here include Right to Information Act, E-Governance and ICT tools implementation, decentralised planning with bottom up approach, strengthening of Sate level and Central level institutional structures, etc. All the attempts of stakeholders at the Central and the State level to strengthen the Panchayati Raj Institutions(PRIs) have yet to yield results and PRIs have still a long way to go in becoming strong, inclusive and democratic institutions, in the spirit of the constitutional amendments, due to various constraints of systemic and social nature.

Capacity building of elected representatives and support functionaries in the above scenario is perhaps the only transformational tool available to achieve the aims of 73rd and 74th amendments and make PRIs true pillars of democracy. This was recognised in the Seventh Round Table Conference on CB&T in December 2004. MOPR, with the above objectives, has CB&T emphasis in its schemes (BRGF, RJSY) and other initiatives.