who recommended democratic decentralisation which is popularly known as panchayat raj
Panchayati raj (India) Mahatma Gandhi advocated Panchayati Raj as the foundation of India's political system, as a decentralized form of government in which each village would be responsible for its own affairs.[6][7] The term for such a vision was Gram Swaraj ("village self-governance"). Instead, India developed a highly centralized form of government.[8] However, this has been moderated by the delegation of several administrative functions to the local level, empowering elected gram panchayats. There are significant differences between the traditional Panchayati Raj system, that was envisioned by Gandhi, and the system formalized in India in 1992.[9]