Grass root administration at the village and town level has been one of the strong points of the Indian civilization.

We have had great kings and empires throughout our history, but it was not a continuous rule. It was more intermittent in nature. Most of kings concentratred more in territory expansion than in day to day governance.

Then where was the continuous and regular governance of the land especially at the village level, which was the backbone of our civilization?

Few of the rulers did focus on governance and had laid down good rules right down to the village level. But these Rulers were few and far between. The beauty of Indian administration was that when these rules and practice were set they were governed at the village level itself, which formed the backbone of our economy.

This capsule looks at methods adopted in administration.

These methods have gone to rot in the last few 200 years.

What needs to be done to revive them, so that real prosperity comes back to our villages? After all our villages and towns were the most prosperous village units in the world, which attracted the Europeans to India to share in our prosperity.

It is in our capacity to learn from our practices of the past and use the good methods suitable to us to bring back to internal prosperity and empowerment again.