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39The Act only stipulates, without any further elaboration, that ‘The State Government may,in the interest of public service, issue any direction in the matter of functioning of theGUS’. What irks someone like Bandyopadhyay more is that the law is silent about themanner in which the VDC would be constituted except to vaguely suggest ‘in such manneras may be prescribed’. “This is far too important an issue”, Bandyopadhyay (op. cit., p.4825) remarks, “to be left for subordinate legislation. Leaving it to the rule-making powerof the government makes the intention suspect.” Moreover, he sees a more crafty design inthe proposal than just an act of omission or silence. In his words (op cit., p. 4827), “Onecan only infer two possible reasons for such a retrograde step in the name of ‘massparticipation’. First, to create a front organisation under law in the shape of VDC to legalisethe illegitimate exercise of power by the party local committee. Second, to appease therank and file who had lost the election by making them members of the VDC either throughmanipulative ‘limited’ election or by nomination.”How the opposing perceptions of the promises and perils of the GUS will materialisein actual practice only time can tell. Meanwhile, it is useful to look at some of the substantivecontents of the Panchayati Act of West Bengal.A Thematic Understanding of the Act of 1973 : Necessary amendments have beenmade to the WBP Act of 1973 from time to time; in fact there have been twenty oneAmendment Acts since 1978. We focus below on some of the major features of this Act,as it stands now, in 2003. In particular, we focus on various provisions enshrined in theAct under the following thematic heads:a) (State) government control over PRIs.b) Control over lower tiers by the upper tiers.c) Institutionalised participation.d) Developmental Schemes and PRIs.e) Electoral constituencies, reservations, and rotation.f) Fiscal Devolution.Government control over PRIsThe Act provides for varying degrees of governmental control over all the layers ofPRIs. This control may be further classified into administrative and financial control. TheState government is authorised to supervise and inspect all the activity of PRIs. The PRIactivity is supervised by the government through its bureaucratic apparatus, that is to say,