ShodhPatra: International Journal of Science and Humanities

Health Provisioning Under Panchayati Raj: An Introduction to Decentralized Health Governance in India

Since, decentralization has gained widespread recognition as one of the crucial determinants for development, hence, India like many other countries in the world has adopted decentralization as a key development strategy through the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act of 1992. This act provides constitutional status to the village panchayats and recognised their role in rural development with 29 functional items including health, family welfare. Later, the principle of decentralized planning and implementation was further embedded through National Rural Health Mission in 2005, particularly in primary health care. The present study traces the evolution of decentralized governance in health sector, and examines the role of village panchayat in primary health care in India. The paper is mainly grounded on secondary data, collected from the sources like scholarly books, journal articles, government reports, and policy documents etc. It has been concluded that the panchayats are playing a central role in health governance at local level, but the issues like limited resources, poor administrative capacity, and dominance of local elites etc., – continuously undermining their effectiveness in health service delivery.