Talk:Tehsil

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Contents 1 Refactored 2 what is the equivalent of a county? 3 County 4 A Tehsil is not a township

[edit] Refactored

I just refactored the entire article—hope I didn't step on any toes. I saw the comment:

Actually, in Pakistan, Tehsil is below District (locally referred to as Zillah) in administrative pecking order

on this talk page, so I went ahead and stated in the article that the term tehsil is preferred in Pakistan—which I know was not the point of the comment.

I didn't get into whether the next higher unit was "district" or "sub-division" in different states since a) I didn't really know and b) it's not that important to the article to make that type of enumeration - it really belongs in District#India and District#Pakistan.

Anyway, hope you like my changes, I'm just trying to help, please fix any mistakes I left/created.

EsdnePyaJ 13:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] what is the equivalent of a county?

A county is the equivalent of a district. The appropriate parallel to a tehsil/taluka would be a Borough. --Cheeni 07:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Cheeni, I don't think I agree that borough is correct. First of all borough is used in a cornucopia of different ways in different countries, so it doesn't clarify the story for a reader who doesn't know what a tehsil is. Second, the article borough says that a borough is a single town or else a subdivision of a city. Third, if you go back to the older meanings of borough in English (and cognates in European languages) the word basically means town. —The best equivalent term that comes to my mind is township, although we may have to appeal to the old-fashioned senses of that term, because hardly anyone seems to use it anymore to mean "a collection of cities, towns, villages, and/or unincorporated land that is a subdivision of a county" (if they ever did). —Here's a quite close equivalent to the tehsil: the way Westchester County uses the term town. It is smaller than the county but can contain multiple villages. However, it will just be confusing if we say a tehsil is the equivalent of a town, since New York State uses that term in a funny way (it also uses borough in an extremely funny way: it means a county that is a subordinate part of a city, and there is only one City that has them). And there are tehsils that contain dozens of villages, which is not really what is going on in Westchester's towns. Maybe we should just not even try to give an equivalent term. If nothing corresponds closely, I think it just obfuscates the point. —EsdnePyaJ 01:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

EsdnePyaJ, I agree that the word borough has multiple meanings and we are probably better off without supplying an equivalent. My context was this: A county is typically the next administrative division after a state, whereas in India it works like so: State, District, Tehsil/Taluka, Hobli, Gram Panchayat.

For example, the state of Karnataka has 27 districts, 176 talukas, about 800+ hoblis and thousands of Gram Panchayats.

--Cheeni 07:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Cheeni, thanks for your info. I altered the article. Since we seem to agree there is no very good equivalent term, I removed that line. I also added a line mentioning the hobli. —It would be great if you could look at hobli and Subdivisions of India (I didn't choose that article title), I've been basing most of my edits to the latter just on what I pick up from other Wikipedia articles, it would be great if someone who actually knew/had a source/had statistics could contribute. —You seem to use the term Gram Panchayat to describe a parcel of territory; my understanding was that it was a specific governmental body that operated on that territory, which was either a single large village or a group of small villages. Am I correct? If so, what is the actual name for the territory over which the Gram Panchayat exercises jurisdiction? I have been calling it a "large village or Gram Group", but perhaps there is something better. —EsdnePyaJ 14:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] County

From about mid-2004 to September 2006, this article mentioned that a tehsil was the equivalent of a county. A Google search shows that the the term "tehsil" is often translated as "county" [1] I think the article should mention this fact. Statistiki 18:44, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Statistiki— Cheeni and I discussed this a bit, above. I don't like the translation because my experience of what a county is and does bears little resemblance to what a taluka is and does. (Bear in mind that many Indian writers have little concept of what an American or British county's actual functions are, so don't overvalue their use of this tempting translation when they present to non-Indian readers, and vice versa.) First of all, in much of India (and much of this goes for Pakistan too), States are divided into Divisions, which are divided into Districts, which are divided into Sub-Divisions, which are divided into talukas, which are divided into towns and villages. Sometimes there is another layer of subdivision between the taluka and the village levels. I really don't think there are enough British English words to translate this entire hierarchy with its full connotation. It's not even unambiguous what a county actually is—it depends where you are. But talukas (the ones I know anything about) have one or just a few developed towns and then dozens of villages. If a county is a collection of towns, then I think the District really is the closest equivalent. —You then make the point that this translation (taluka=county) is a common practice. This is why I made the edit I made: I expanded the discussion a bit and tried to be fair. People use the translation, but there are reasons not to. The best thing if you came across the term would be to look it up and figure out what it really is. It's not that complicated, for all the words I've been saying about it. EsdnePyaJ 04:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Based on what you have written here, I think there may be differences between the "taluka" in India and the "tehsil" in Pakistan. The Indian taluka may be smaller and/or more developed/town-like than a Pakistani tehsil. What are the average sizes and population densities of talukas and tehsils? FYI, Pakistan has Provinces, not States, and the Provinces are no longer divided into "Divisions", which have been abolished. The "district" is now the third tier of government in Pakistan, after the Federation and the Province. Districts are subdivided into tehsils, which are subdivided into villages , townships, or municipalities. Yusufzada 18:34, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A Tehsil is not a township

I'll offer my opinion here, having lived in both Pakistan and the USA for over twenty years each. The current article says, "It may be argued that county is more akin to the Indian or Pakistani District and that the closest equivalent to the tehsil is the civil township category used in parts of the United States". I have looked at the descriptions of the terms civil township and township. I don't see how "the closest equivalent to the tehsil is the civil township category". Pakistani tehsils contain townships, municipalities, and villages, (often more than one township or municipality, and usually many villages). Tehsils may also contain rural or undeveloped land that is not part of any township, municipality, village. Counties are usually the second-lowest tier of local government. You may cite exceptions, but that is what counties most commonly are. Tehsils are similar to counties in this respect: they are the second-lowest tier of government. A township mainly consists of a town -- a built-up, developed, urban area -- and perhaps includes a little undeveloped or rural land in its immediate vicinity. In contrast, most of the territory of a typical tehsil primarily consists of rural land. So a tehsil is not a township. Yusufzada 18:34, 31 March 2007 (UTC)