Participatory Practices in Rural Areas: A Study of Gram Panchayats of West Bengal Debabrata Samanta 1 * and Narayan Chandra Nayak** 1. Introduction People’s Participation as understood today in the context of democratic local government is different from its meaning in the 1970s, when the concept meant only involving citizens as users of state-delivered beneficiary programmes (Patnaik, 2005). There is a significant shift in the discourse of people’s participation in the recent past. It is now an integral part of all development initiatives of both national governments and international development agencies. Since 1990s, several countries have witnessed transformations of administrative and planning systems in favour of more people centric policies. The immense importance of participatory development in this era has moved this development paradigm from margin to mainstream (Williams, 2004) and served important economic, institutional and legitimating functions for a mainstream vision of development (Rahnema, 1997). During 1990s, many countries including Philippines, India, Bolivia, Tanzania and Uganda have amended their legislations enabling them to create new spaces for people’s participation and a process of participatory development planning was designed according to people’s needs. It is now widely acknowledged that wider public participation improves the government’s ability to discern public interest and makes public officials more accountable (Patnaik, 2005). India has adopted decentralized and participatory governance system since the inception of the five year plans. The effort to promote decentralized governance is practiced by government through the promotion and strengthening of the Panchayati Raj system. The need for Panchayati Raj system of participatory governance is traced as far back as to the recommendations of the Balwantrai Mehta committee in 1957. The committee recommended a three-tier Panchayat system at district, block and village levels. The National Development Council approved the recommendations of the Mehta Committee in January 1958 and suggested that each state should implement this as best suited to its own particular conditions. Although this recommendation is considered as the stepping stone of the Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) in India, the 73 rd * *Assistant Professor, Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna, Bihar India, Email: debabrata@cimp.ac.in ** Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, Email: ncnayak@hss.iitkgp.ernet.in