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38(nominated or elected) members from the GP, the person or persons securing the secondhighest votes in the preceding panchayat election (that is to say, members from the oppositionparty), members from NGOs and other community based organisations, from self-helpgroups functioning in the area, serving or retired government employees in the area, servingor retired teachers. At least 40 percent of the members shall be women. Far from being apolitically settled issue, the constitution, composition and functions of the Council are stillvery much at the centre of public debate. Only recently some government orders have beenissued to facilitate the operationalisation of the project of planning from below, involvinglocal development experts and the people at large.Three distinct responses to the current drive for creating the GUS are in circulationnow in the State, ranging from a laudatory, to sceptical, to an overtly critical overtone.Some commentators view this recent legislative initiative as a welcome extension of thelowest tier of self-governance in order to ensure greater transparency and accountability indevelopmental activities – ‘as a bold step towards open direct participatory democracy’.The idea is, so the laudatory view holds, not to create another ‘mini panchayat’ and therebysubstitute ‘people’s representation’ for ‘people’, but to move away from representationbaseddemocracy to people-centred direct democracy. A more sceptical reading of thelatest legislative initiative invites us to recall the experience of the programme of theConvergent Community Action (CCA) – introduced by the Government of West Bengal in1986 in the district of Medinipur. The current proposal, some argue, is just a new ‘avatar’of the old CCA movement – village planning by the villagers, with an accent on mobilisationand utilisation of local productive forces, the achievement record of which is mixed atbest. Hence the question, “Why is it being revived by giving it some other name?”(Chatterjee, 2003, p.4091).A stronger critique is waged against the latest Amendment Act on the ground thatadditional rounds of decentralising exercise often lead to unnecessary institutionalproliferation, which leaves new institutional vestiges without making any substantivedifference to the functioning of the existing regime. Bandyopadhyay (2003b), for example,argues forcefully that legislation is creating tier after tier of non-functional PR bodies,without funds, functions, and functionaries. Instead of empowering the GP, he continues,the amending act makes it more ‘dysfunctional’. Indeed, the Act is not very clear about thekind of relationship that it envisages between the GP and the GUS, or for that matter withthe State government. Is there any overarching authority that can supersede the Council?