Table of Contents
Strengthening Governance at Grassroot level
In December 2025 the Ministry of Panchayati Raj organised the PESA Mahotsav. This reaffirmed the Government’s commitment towards effective implementation of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, and strengthening grassroots self-governance in Scheduled Areas.
Union Minister of State for Panchayati Raj, Prof. S. P. Singh Baghel, addressed the two-day PESA Mahotsav (23–24 December 2025) held at Visakhapatnam. He emphasised on the fact that PESA Act provides strong constitutional backing for tribal rights over water, forests, land and natural resources, and that its effective implementation at the grassroots level is key to the tenets of the Act.
Panchayat representatives, craftsmen, sportspersons, artisans, and cultural artists from tribal communities across all ten PESA States participate in the Mahotsav.
PESA Act is a key framework for protecting natural resources in tribal areas of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana. and strengthens grassroots governance in Scheduled Areas. The Act ensures community-led decision-making and places the Gram Sabha at the epicentre of democratic participation in these notified areas thus guiding their own development.
By end-2025, nine out of the 10 states with scheduled areas have either notified or approved the Draft PESA Rules with Jharkhand being the latest state.
While institutional roles and procedures are well calibrated into Acts or regulations implementation challenges often arise not from the absence of legal frameworks but from how roles and processes are understood across administrative levels.
Why awareness matters
In practice, this gap persists when roles and procedures are not clearly allocated, leading to uneven use of statutory authority across the system. Clearer definition of authority when shared across levels of government brings in the speed and consistency of administrative action.
Policy intent and administrative practice
Recent governance communication has increasingly included awareness-building activities alongside programme and scheme announcements. Celebrating PESA Mahotsav is one such event. This reflects the role of institutional understanding of policy intent.
The role of policy education
Policy education focuses on helping institutions understand the laws, roles, and procedures they are required to follow. Unlike training programmes, be it direct or through events, which usually aim to improve individual skills, policy education is concerned with institutional clarity.
The PESA Mahotsav demonstrates how awareness-building programmes function within administrative systems, as decentralised systems require clear guidelines about authority and procedures to operate effectively.