Saturday, November 28, 2009

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT

The autonomous villa~ councilor local self-government was the most importaJ characteristic of Chola administration. Two Uttaramen inscriptions of Parantaka I dated AD 919 and 929 provid invaluable information regarding these councils. Accordin to these- inscriptions, the following three types of assembliE played a regular part in local administration.

(i) Ur The ur was the commoner type of assembly (! common villages. The land in ur was held by all classe of people. Hence all members of the village could becom the member of ur.
(ii) Sabha It was an exclusively brahman assembly of the brahmadeya villages. All the land in sabha belonged to the brahmans.
(iii) Nagaram It was an assembly of merchants and belonged to localities where traders and merchants were dominant.

A person had to fulfil the following criteria to secure the membership of sabha: (a) ownership of more than one­fourth veli-about an acre and a half-of land; (b) residence in a house built on one's own land; (c) age between 35 and 70; and (d) knowledge of Vedic literature (or one-eighth veli of land and knowledge of one Veda and a Bhashya).

Members were nominated for three years on the basis of secret ballot. One-third of the members would retire after every two years. Their major responsibilities included land distribution, tax collection, irrigation facilities, etc.

Important functions of local administration were en­trusted to committees of 6 to 12 members according to importance of their functions. This was called the variyam system. Important variyams/committees included (i) tottavariyam (garden committee); (ii) eri-variyam (tank com­mittee); (iii) panchavara variyam (a standing committee); (iv) pan variyam (gold committee); and (v) samvatsara variyam (annual committee).
The members of the committee were called variyapperumakkal. They usually met in the village temple. We have no information about voting and quorum. The assembly discussed general questions and passed resolu­tions.

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