India’s Local Autonomy System And Its Modernization Since The Independence

India’s local autonomy system mainly includes Panchayati Raj system in politics and agricultural cooperatives in economy. The former is also called system of village councils, which was based on Taupulega dating back to the primitive society in ancient India. With the independence of India in 1947, the government reconstructed the local autonomy system, of which the most distinctive measure is to build new Panchayati Raj system with the feature of democratic autonomy in rural area. Until now, it has became basic political autonomy organization in India’s rural area. The later was started in the early 20th century and the government increases more investment for kinds of cooperatives since the independence. Nowadays it becomes not only an powerful force of pushing forward national economy, but also an important approach for the development of India’s rural economy. The cooperatives in India follows the principle that local people have their right of joining or not and withdraw it freely. It insists on running and managing by local people, finally they get benefits from it, which reflects the feature of democratic management. The both systems are not only local self-organization, but also local autonomy systems. So the development of the two systems are the modernization of the both.This essay mainly analyses the relationship between local autonomy system and its modernization from three parts. The first part discusses the relationship with political modernization in India according to the development of Panchayati Raj system. There are three aspects to analysis this system playing an important role on promoting the process of political democratization. It includes establishment of local representative system, enlargement of democracy in local and development of local party politics. The second part analyzes the economical modernization in India from the point of agricultural cooperatives. It concludes that agricultural cooperatives promote the technicalization、marketization and industrialization of agiculture and the modernization of rural credit system. The last clarifies the rural social modernization from the two local autonomy systems. It concludes that Panchayati Raj urges the emergence of new leadership in rural area and promotes the development of rural basic facilities and basic education. The cooperatives promote the development of rural welfare and culture service.