Q.5 scenarios (steel-plant Gram Sabha consultation demand; 20% govt expenditure via panchayats; school-building fund denial; village split into two; pond/well revival via voluntary youth work) — do they strengthen/weaken panchayats as self-government units?

A village's ability to actually decide, resource, and act on its own local affairs — not just hold formal elections — is what makes it a real unit of self-government. Some of the five situations show panchayats exercising exactly that ability, while others show it being denied or bypassed.

The Constitution envisages village panchayats as units of self-government — bodies that do not merely execute orders from above but actually participate in deciding what happens in their own area, and control at least some resources and initiative of their own. Judged against that standard:

1. A Gram Sabha of an affected village passing a resolution that it must be consulted, and its grievances redressed, before a big industry is allowed to affect the region, is a textbook act of self-government — the village asserting a right to be heard on a decision that affects it directly. This strengthens panchayats as self-governing units.
2. A government decision that 20% of all its expenditure will be routed through panchayats gives panchayats a genuinely larger functional and financial role in implementing development work. This strengthens panchayats, since more resources and responsibility flow to them.
3. A panchayat repeatedly demanding funds for a school building, only to have government officials turn the proposal down citing other allocations, shows the panchayat has no independent financial power of its own and remains completely dependent on, and at the mercy of, higher officials' priorities. This weakens panchayats as self-governing units — exactly the kind of resource-dependence the chapter describes as a real, ongoing problem.
4. A government unilaterally splitting village Dungarpur and merging its parts into other villages, with the original village ceasing to exist in government records, is a top-down administrative decision about the village's own identity and boundaries, apparently made without the village's own consent. This weakens panchayats, since it shows the government can simply redraw local units by fiat.
5. A panchayat itself deciding to mobilise village youth for voluntary work to revive drying ponds and wells is the panchayat using its own initiative and local social resources — exactly the kind of self-directed local action self-government is meant to enable. This strengthens panchayats.
   ✓Final answer

   1. Strengthens
   2. Strengthens
   3. Weakens
   4. Weakens
   5. Strengthens Self-government is strengthened whenever the panchayat itself gets to decide, resource, or initiate something, and weakened whenever a decision affecting the village is imposed on it from above.