Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2009 > October 2009 > Regrettable Lapse
Mainstream, Vol XLVII, No 46, October 31, 2009
Regrettable Lapse
Sunday 1 November 2009, by
#socialtagsCOMMUNICATION
I am grateful to you for publishing my piece “Unfinished Agenda of Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj: Fifty Years of Panchayati Raj†(Mainstream, October 10, 2009). But in this context I must bring to your kind notice a serious lapse that I have inadvertently committed due to the hurry in sending the piece to you for ensuring its publication in the Gandhi Anniversary Issue. It is the omission of the following reference:
Partha Nath Mukherji, ‘Participatory Democratisation: Panchayati Raj and the Deepening of Indian Democracy’, ISS Occasional Paper Series 34, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, 2007.
It was from this source that I had taken the fact that the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution and the Minister of Law, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, did not reply to the letter dated May 10, 1948 from Dr Rajendra Prasad, the President of the Constituent Assembly, as to why the Draft he had circulated did not even use the two words ‘Panchayati Raj’. I had also used the information on the debate in the Constituent Assembly from this source.
I shall be grateful if you kindly publish this letter or publish this lapse as corrigendum in the forthcoming issue.
Regretting this lapse,
Nilokheri Ranbir Singh
Consultant, HIRD