Perhaps the most vitriolic disapproval on
the part of panchayati raj institution (PRI) ‘fundamentalists’ is reserved for
the proliferation of ‘parallel bodies’ that work in the line departments and
not under the PRIs. Many departments and externally-aided projects have spawned
such committees and ‘special purpose vehicles’. For instance, Mathew (2000,
p.16), feels that central ministries and state line departments by-pass the
panchayati raj institutions through the creation of registered societies. If at
all the sectoral line departments allocate funds to the gram panchayats, they
do so as “tied grants”. Schemes mentioned as culprits in this regard include
the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Watershed Development Programme,
Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMC), District Primary Education Programme
(DPEP), the Janmabhoomi programme in Andhra Pradesh “which has come as a big
blow to the panchayats”, and according to a study by the NIRD Hyderabad “has
sidetracked the Panchayati Raj institutions and other local bodies by
maintaining parallel systems of administration by according more importance to
MLAs and other politicians”; the “District Government” setup in Madhya Pradesh
consisting of the minister, collector, MLAs, MPs, ZP representatives, which
makes the collector de facto the
chief executive of the district, under the guise of setting up the District
Planning Committee under the Panchayat Act. Similarly, the author finds the
MPLAD Scheme, whereby each MP gets a discretionary fund to be spent on public
works through the District Collector, “an ‘assault’ on the letter and spirit of
the 73rd Constitution Amendment”, inasmuch as the list of 23 items
of work that can be taken up with these funds, are from the 29 subjects
earmarked for the Panchayats under the 11th Schedule. Now states are
providing similar funds to their MLAs, and “dangerously enough, several
municipalities have started similar schemes for Councillors…This is a dangerous
portent and also a deplorable inroad into the domain of local bodies” (Mathew,
op. cit., p.18).
This position is expanded forcefully by
Chandrashekhar (2011), who cites studies to show that these agencies are
nothing but a ploy to continue the hegemony of the official departments: according
to her, there is “a certain amount of deception” in this sort of
decentralisation in parallel fora, and as these parallel bodies “are expected
to move centre-stage and be mainstreamed”, they will in time displace both the
PRIs and the very line departments that have given birth to them, something
that “does not augur well for a country like India which is characterized by
wide disparities and inequalities” (Chandrashekhar, 2011, p.196). The author
feels that such modes of participation are geared to immediate benefits, and in
the example of a watershed project, terms it a “lackadaisical form of
participation”, or a “utilitarian” approach which is unable to “capture the
imagination of the people” (in contrast to the Gandhian mode, which is based on
sacrifice by the leader and is able to inspire the people to great effort).
Similar observations apply to most of the other departments and the societies
and community-based organisations (CBOs) set up by them. Chandrashekhar is
emphatic that all activities in the 29 subjects earmarked for PRIs should be
brought before only the elected bodies, and not any alternative formation such
as the Gram Sabha (general assembly), which is only a ploy to circumvent the
elected bodies. This point about parallel bodies has been made by many
observers.
Ground experience of panchayati raj
Coming back to the experience of establishing
the rule of panchayati raj institutions (PRI) so far, we sense a certain
inadequacy in reviews like the ones by the Institute of Social Sciences
(Mathew, op. cit.), since they do not seem to tell us much about what actually
has transpired in the working out on the ground of the PRI legislation, such as
an objective analysis of how many of the panchayats could be considered to be
working well, how many poorly, and how many are middling (as has been done in
the searching studies and periodic assessments of the Village Forest Committees
in the country, which will be discussed a little later). An interesting
portrayal of the ground reality is given in Gopalappa’s paper in the conference
proceedings “The Role of Panchayats and
Bureaucracy in Rural Development” (Joseph, 2007), reflecting his
interview-based study in three dissimilar districts of Karnataka, namely
Mandya, Gulbarga and Dakshina Kannada (South Canara ).
In Mandya in southern Karnataka, Gopalappa’
found that the elected members “by and large are ignorant, illiterate and
poor”, and the panchayat is dominated by the secretary (a full-time official).
Where the president is well off, his decisions are final, and if he is
“non-corrupt”, good work is done. If the members are also “strong”, matters end
up in court and development suffers (i.e. there are disputes and disputations).
In northern Karnataka, the author found that “neither the elected
representatives nor the officials take much interest”, and the dominant members
take control. Caste and other factors are influential. In Gulbarga
In Dakshina Kannada (a prosperous and
forward coastal district in the southwest), things were better, and “the
members, office bearers and the officials work collectively for the overall
development of the community”, and often put in their own money into the
development works. Even here, though,
the SC and ST members “do not have any say in the panchayat matters as most of
them are casual labourers” (even after becoming members of the GP). In one
instance, “The woman president of the ST category is controlled by a dominant
member belong (sic.) to Vokkaliga community”,
as she works as a labourer in his gardens. Except for this, Gopalappa found
that PRIs in the Dakshina Kannada district are doing better compared to the
other two, and their panchayat members have “service motive rather than profit
motive”, while it is the opposite in Mandya and Gulbarga districts.
In going through reports of the ground
reality in the context of the
pessimistic assessment of prominent PRI protagonists (quoted earlier), one
aspect that causes concern is the assumption that somehow when it comes to the
panchayat institutions, people will take them as their own, and bring to bear
the level of “skill, honesty and will” that are so woefully lacking in other
spheres, until the State itself can comfortably “wither away” (S.K. Dey, from the
Asoka Mehta report on Panchayati Raj, 1977). This anticipation, which seems to
echo one of the most ardent (though unrealistic) aspirations of Marxist
ideology, creates such a powerful picture of an idyllic state of human affairs,
that it can be employed as a cover-all for all sorts of impractical ideas. Most
factual accounts from the field would, no doubt, corroborate Gopalappa’s
findings about the persistence of unequal and feudal relations among the castes
and sections of rural society. In reality, it is puzzling why anyone should
believe that out of the feudal and casteist ground, an egalitarian and benign
structure should automatically arise like a phoenix from the ashes.
A ground-level view of what panchayats
are in reality (which everyone is aware of, but no one wants to comment on
because PRIs are something of a holy grail in India today), is afforded by
another George, Abraham S. in his book “India
Untouched”, 2004. Let me quote just a couple of passages out of many pages
on this subject (p.145-6):
“Of all the corrupt practices, the
biggest obstacle our foundation faces in its daily work with the rural
communities is having to deal with Panchayat officials and some of the village
thugs. They work in unison, with Panchayat governance offering the cover for
their attempts to extract money from us on some pretext or the other. In the
name of self governance and delegation of power to local officials, the
government has created a monster bureaucracy of unimaginable proportions
throughout rural India
A little later, he explains that
“even well-meaning government
officials are unwilling to stop the activities of troublemakers for fear that
they might write false petitions to
politicians…For NGOs like us, courts may be our only protection, but there is no assurance of a prompt remedy.
The system is so badly broken that only a good government with some courage can
fix it. In the meantime, the way to help the poor is to “help” the rich first.”
An underlying contradiction seems to
persist in the attitude toward elected representatives. For example, Mathew in
his support for indirect elections “in consonance with the cabinet system of
government”, does not seem to find any irony in this formulation, which may
seem to an uncharitable observer to be taking away with the other hand what it
gives with the one hand. Again, in rejecting the idea of giving elected MPs and
MLAs a presence in the panchayats, he
fails to see any irony in his mistrust of elected representatives at a higher
level and reposing of the same faith in equally or less directly representative
members at the local level.
Some of the most commonly cited issues in
the implementation of panchayati raj are the infrequency of elections (which
was addressed by setting up independent State Election Commissions), the
limited amount of funds available to the lower levels (requiring the
establishment of separate State Finance Commissions), the lack of independent
staff and official cadres loyal to the PRI system (rather than to the state
governments), and the role of money and nepotism in elections (which makes it
difficult for honest and well-meaning persons to enter into the fray). While
these analyses are unobjectionable, and their prescriptions are well-meant in a
generalised way, it is ironical that the very system which is expected to take
the country forward is unable to manage itself, and we ultimately have to fall
back upon the old pattern of a centralised and distant executive in the form of
an Election Commission and a Finance Commission to keep the system ticking.
In other words, it appears that in critical
situations, the decentralised pattern does not deliver as effectively as the
professionalized but distant and unattached institutions (the State
Commissions). Once again, the irony in passing judgement against the latter is
lost on the social-political reformer, for instance that “the systems of
government-elected politicians, professional bureaucrats and the variegated
apparatus built around them, has failed…” (Mishra, 2004, quoted by Joseph, 2007,
p.xxvi), while at the same time depending on just such a system to establish
the new order, and even asking for a similar set-up in order to strengthen and
make operational the district and village panchayats.
In reality, of course, neither are people’s
organisations (and lately, civil society organisations and private sector
corporations) so uniformly virtuous as made out in recent popular writings, and
destined to prevail over all else, nor are all our other, state-run
institutions so uniformly bad as to be doomed to extinction (and of course,
vice-versa). Any realistic system of decentralisation would have to take into
account all the foibles and weaknesses of human nature as individuals and as
members of groups, and provide for training, vigilance, and other preventives,
palliatives and correctives, rather than falling back upon a black-and-white
view of society as consisting of the people in government being uniformly bad,
and the persons outside government as universally virtuous.
Nor can we justifiably see panchayati raj
as a stepping stone to a state-less society: what we should be expecting, in
fact, is the reverse, the conversion of panchayats into organs of the larger
state, an importation of all the aspects, good and bad, of large organisations
and bureaucracies down to the village panchayat level. But we accept the
negative aspects as a justifiable risk in the hope that the people at the
receiving end may come to have a greater say on how things are run, and a
greater control over their own lives. We will not be able to escape or
circumvent the obligation to work on the details of our systems, such as they
are, to make them more rational, more responsive and responsible, and less
arbitrary, less dishonest and self-serving, and we may as well start with the
politician-bureaucrat combine at the state and district levels, and carry over
the better values and systems into the lower tier panchayat set-up.
Institutions of 'little government'
While PRI purists insist that the PRIs are
the only legitimate body that should operate in the districts, others, like the
line departments of the state governments and the public sector or quasi-statal
corporations and boards, are continually being entrusted responsibilities to
implement various schemes and programmes, apart from maintaining the basic law
and order in the countryside and safeguarding the physical integrity of the
resource. This is especially true of the forest department, which is the
primary custodian of some 25% of the
land area of the country, much of it remote from centres of population and rich
in biodiversity, timber, minerals and of course land and water resources.
It is all the more intriguing, therefore,
that PRI protagonists are still dreaming of a structureless polity, while
operating through the central government and especially its centres of top-down
power to impose their model. Similarly, ‘social environmentalists’ also think
that the only hope for conserving the environment and natural resources (like
forests, common lands, water resources) is through the autarchic village
republics, which will be imposed by fiat from the centre. There is a close
parallel in this ambivalence between grass-roots empowerment and imposition
from above of environmental values of their choosing, and the ambiguity in
Gandhian thought on the relative merits of grass-roots, bottom-up democracy and
top-down, centralised national governance structures. Perhaps the only thing
that we can say about these dichotomies is that they are more in the mind (of the
polemicist) rather than out there among the general public, and that the
essence of the democratic idea (which the people who vote in elections
doubtless understand) is not so much that it is an ideal system, to be run by
ideal humans, but that it is amenable to constant course correction and
modification as influenced by personages and experiences. As Fukuyama (2011,
p.188) says, “The experiences of China and India suggest then that a better
form of freedom emerges when there is a strong state and a strong society, two centres of power that are better able to
balance and offset each other over time”.
Everybody loves a good draught, as observed
by Sainath (1996), and perhaps the same is the case with local self-governance,
or ‘little government’, whose importance in the US system has been described
and analysed at length, for instance in the volume of readings edited by Erwin
C. Buell and William E.Brigman (1968), The
Grass Roots. Readings
“Faith in local government is an
outgrowth of the frontier concept of democracy. The frontier, or Jacksonian,
concept of democracy contained many values that still have vitality. The belief
that small, local government is better than distant, big government still
possesses propaganda value. Direct election of nearly all decision makers is
preferred to any form of indirect selection on the assumption that
officeholders will be more responsible and honest if directly elected. ...most
Americans probably believe that rural government is more effective, efficient,
and honest than its urban counterpart.”
However, that is only the ideal; the
reality is a little different, according to Roscoe C. Martin, who “challenges
these stereotypes of local government” in his paper “The Physiology of Little
Government” in the volume (op. cit., pp.395-400). Martin contends that “even in
the rural areas where grass roots concepts should be most viable they are
invalid. The government closest to the people is not necessarily the best
government: it may be the most biased, inefficient, and corrupt government”
(ibid., p.393). In Martin’s words (p.399):
“Little government, being personal,
intimate, and informal, is supposed by some to be free of politics. In simple
truth, no concept concerning local government has less merit… politics is found
wherever people debate issues of public import. Grass-roots politics frequently
involves little of public policy; on the contrary, it may be largely of a
personal character, and it may indeed be cast in terms of personal loyalty …
The smaller the unit or area is, the closer the government is to the grass
roots, the less meaningful is the distinction between politics, government, and
administration. ...Grass-roots government is therefore pre-eminently the domain
of the generalist, big government that of the specialist… The differentiations
in process common in big government are hardly known at the grass roots.”
This pattern is expected to obtain in the
Indian scenario too, as in any other country, and it is well that we are aware
of the strengths and weaknesses of either alternative, and indeed of any
others, so that our expectations are tempered to match the potentialities, and
we are not left with the sense of almost obligatory disappointment with the
pace of progress and public support of ‘little’ government that characterizes
the writing of many PRI protagonists.
In the next section, we will hear some
views of actual villagers in three states of the Indian union.
References
Chandrashekhar,
Lalita. 2011. Undermining Local
Democracy. Parallel Governance in Contemporary South India .
Routledge.
Fukuyama,
Francis. 2011. The Origins of Political
Order. Profile Books Ltd, London
George,
Abraham S. 2004. India Madras
Gopalappa,
D.V. 2007. The role of panchayats and bureaucracy in rural development. In
Joseph (2007, ed.).
Government
of India New Delhi
Joseph,
T.M. (Editor). 2007. Local Governance in India
Martin,
Roscoe C. 1968. The Physiology of Little Government. pp.395-400 in the volume
by Buell, Erwin C. and William E.Brigman (eds.). The Grass Roots. Readings Glenview , Illinois
Mathew,
George (General Editor). 2000. Status of
Panchayati Raj in the States of India 2000. Institute
of Social Sciences , New Delhi
Mehta,
Asoka. 1977. Asoka Mehta Committee Report
on Panchayati Raj Institutions. Government of India ,
New Delhi
Sainath,
P. 1996. Everybody Loves a Good Drought. Penguin Books, New Delhi
