Decentralization, Local Governance, and Social Wellbeing in India: Do Local Governments Matter? 9780415670654, 9780203357309

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ROUTLEDGE ADVANCES IN SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES

Decentralization, Local Governance, and Social Wellbeing in India Do local governments matter? Rani D. Mullen

Decentralization, Local Governance, and Social Wellbeing in India

Over the past three decades, decentralization has been seen as the means for allowing local gov­ern­ments to become more account­able, and for encouraging the deepening of demo­cracy and the building of village com­munit­ies. By drawing on ori­ginal village-­level case studies of six villages in three different Indian states, this book presents a sys­tematic ana­lysis of the impact of decentralization on the delivery of social ser­vices at the local level within India. Supplementing national and state-­level data and analyzing the different his­ tor­ical legacies in each state, the book argues that decentralization is not simply a function of the structure of the decentralization program or of the relationship between higher-­tiered and local gov­ern­ment. Rather, the pos­sib­il­ity of decentralization affecting social outcomes depends on several interacting factors, including the distribution of power among local elites, the dy­namics of polit­ical com­peti­tion, and the level of civil soci­ety mobil­iza­tion. By examining consti­tu­ tionally mandated polit­ical decentralization across India, this book identifies the circumstances under which local gov­ern­ment structures can lead to improved social ser­vices and societal wellbeing, as well as presenting substantial con­tri­bu­ tion to studies on South Asian pol­itics and local government. Rani D. Mullen is Assistant Professor of Government at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, USA. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, India. She has written art­icles on Indian pol­itics and current de­velopments in Afghanistan.

Routledge advances in South Asian studies Edited by Subrata K. Mitra

South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany

South Asia, with its burgeoning, ethnically diverse popu­la­tion, soaring eco­nom­ ies, and nuclear weapons, is an increasingly im­port­ant region in the global con­ text. The series, which builds on this complex, dynamic and volatile area, features innov­at­ive and ori­ginal research on the region as a whole or on the coun­tries. Its scope extends to schol­arly works drawing on the his­tory, pol­itics, de­velopment studies, soci­ology and eco­nom­ics of indi­vidual coun­tries from the region as well those that take an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the area as a whole or to a comparison of two or more coun­tries from this region. In terms of theory and method, rather than basing itself on any one or­tho­doxy, the series draws broadly on the insights germane to area studies, as well as the tool kit of the social sciences in gen­eral, emphasizing comparison, the ana­lysis of the structure and pro­cesses, and the applica­tion of qualit­at­ive and quantitative methods. The series welcomes submissions from estab­lished authors in the field as well as from young authors who have recently completed their doctoral dissertations.   1 Perception, Politics and Security in South Asia The compound crisis of 1990 P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen Philip Cohen   2 Coalition Politics and Hindu Nationalism Edited by Katharine Adeney and Lawrence Saez   3 The Puzzle of India’s Governance Culture, context and comparative theory Subrata K. Mitra   4 India’s Nuclear Bomb and National Security Karsten Frey   5 Starvation and India’s Democracy Dan Banik

  6 Parliamentary Control and Government Accountability in South Asia A comparative analysis of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka Taiabur Rahman   7 Political Mobilisation and Democracy in India States of emergency Vernon Hewitt   8 Military Control in Pakistan The parallel state Mazhar Aziz   9 Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age Giorgio Shani 10 The Tibetan Government-­in-Exile Politics at large Stephanie Roemer 11 Trade Policy, Inequality and Performance in Indian Manufacturing Kunal Sen 12 Democracy and Party Systems in Developing Countries A comparative study Clemens Spiess 13 War and Nationalism in South Asia The Indian state and the Nagas Marcus Franke 14 The Politics of Social Exclusion in India Democracy at the crossroads Edited by Harihar Bhattacharyya, Partha Sarka and Angshuman Kar 15 Party System Change in South India Political entrepreneurs, patterns and processes Andrew Wyatt 16 Dispossession and Resistance in India The river and the rage Alf Gunvald Nilsen 17 The Construction of History and Nationalism in India Textbooks, controversies and politics Sylvie Guichard

18 Political Survival in Pakistan Beyond ideology Anas Malik 19 New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements in Developing Societies The Bharatiya Janata party Sebastian Schwecke 20 Sufism and Saint Veneration in Contemporary Bangladesh The Maijbhandaris of Chittagong Hans Harder 21 New Dimensions of Politics in India The united progressive alliance in power Lawrence Saez and Gurhapal Singh 22 Vision and Strategy in Indian Politics Jawaharlal Nehru’s policy choices and the designing of political institutions Jivanta Schoettli 23 Decentralization, Local Governance, and Social Wellbeing in India Do local governments matter? Rani D. Mullen

Decentralization, Local Governance, and Social Wellbeing in India Do local governments matter? Rani D. Mullen

First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Rani D. Mullen The right of Rani D. Mullen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mullen, Rani D., 1967–  Decentralization, local governance, and social wellbeing in India: do local governments matter?/Rani D. Mullen. p. cm. – (Routledge advances in South Asian studies; 23) Based on the author’s thesis (doctoral–Princeton University, 2007) under the title, Do local governments matter? Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Local government–India–Case studies. 2. Decentralization in government–India–Case studies. 3. Central-­local government relations– India–Case studies. 4. Human services–India–Case studies. I. Title. JS7011.M85 2011 320.80954–dc22 2011017347 ISBN: 978-0-415-67065-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-35730-9 (ebk) Typeset in Times by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

This book is ded­ic­ated to my husband Patrick, for his unwavering sup­port, and to our chil­dren, awesome Tara and cool Kiran. It is also written with great appreciation of the numerous villagers who gave so unselfishly of their time and hos­pitality during my fieldwork.

Contents



List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

1 The promise of decentralization

x xi xii xv 1

2 Decentralization in India – rooting the state

20

3 Karnataka – advances with the help of competitive local governments

52

4 West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost

91

5 Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power and local governments

140

6 Political power, local governments, and social welfare

172



Appendix A. Powers to be delegated to Panchayats by state governments

192



Appendix B. Methodology

194



Appendix C. Field research questionnaire

204



Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

209 211 215 229

Figures

2.1 Number of national versus total (national, state and independent) parties competing in parliamentary elections, 1951–2009 2.2 The three-tiered panchayat structure 2.3 Key provisions of the 73rd Amendment mandating rural decentralization 2.4 Center–state financial transfers as a percentage of central government GDP, at market prices during the respective Finance Commission (FC) periods 2.5  Local government revenue, 2002–2008 (million rupees) 4.1 The structure of decentralized governments in West Bengal 4.2 Electoral outcomes in West Bengal elections, 1977–2001 (percentage of vote) 6.1 Factors that enable local governments to contribute to improved social wellbeing

26 32 34 37 38 94 98 174

Tables

2.1 Status of devolution of departments/subjects with funds, functions and functionaries to Panchayat Raj Institutions, by state, 2000 40–41 2.2 Poverty rates for selected states and all-India average 48 2.3 Interstate and all-India comparison of key indicators in research states 50 3.1 Social indicators in Bangalore Rural District, 1990/1991 and 2000/2001 66 3.2 Breakdown of election results in Karnataka for 5,675 Gram Panchayats, by social background of elected representative (percentages) 68 3.3 Karnataka: results of selected questions from sample survey in each village in 2000, number responding positively 89 4.1 Share of expenditure on education and public health in West Bengal versus all-India averages, 2005 100 4.2 Selected socioeconomic indicators, Birbhum District versus West Bengal averages 101 4.3 Percentage of seats won by parties of the Left Front Government (LFG) and Opposition in Gram Panchayat Elections, 1978–2008 114 4.4 West Bengal: results of selected questions from sample survey in each village, 2000, numbers responding positively 138 5.1 Selected socioeconomic indicators, Moradabad District versus Uttar Pradesh averages 146 5.2 Funds released versus received for selected programs for Palanpur and Pipli, Chandausi Block, Uttar Pradesh, 2000 (rupees) 155 5.3 Uttar Pradesh: results of selected questions from sample survey in each village, 2000, numbers responding positively 170 6.1 Enabling conditions in the three case study states 184 B.1 Population and geographic location of Indian states 195 B.2 Village case study surveys: quota categories, percentage of quotas in selected district, and percentage of quotas in sample 201 B.3 Selected results of village surveys, number responding positively, percentages, and 95% confidence intervals (CI) 202–203

Acknowledgments

This book would not have come to fru­ition without the help of many advisors, friends and family members. Three main advisors provided the intellectual and personal guidance, which enabled me to produce this work. Jean Drèze provided me not only with the ideas and contacts that enabled my field research, par­ticu­ larly in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, he is also a moral inspiration to me to research issues that mat­ter for the underprivileged in India and other de­veloping coun­tries. Deborah Yashar’s insights on the linkages between polit­ical institutions and social change have guided me in my research. And finally, this research would not have happened had it not been for my dissertation advisor Atul Kohli, whose intellectual and professional advice has carried me through gradu­ate study and work – for which I am immensely grateful. It was his question to me, on a sunny afternoon in Prince­ton, whether local gov­ern­ments really mat­tered for social outcomes that provided the seed that grew into this book. Other Prince­ton faculty members also sup­ported me at various stages of this research endeavor: Marta Tienda, Stan Katz, and Wolfgang Danspeckgruber provided in­valu­able feedback on the big pic­ture of my research. I also learned much and received advice from many other wonderful Prince­ton faculty, including Michael Doyle, John Waterbury, Peter Kenen, Angus Deaton, Kathryn Stoner-­Weiss, Jonathan Murdoch, Miguel Centeno, Robert Finn, and Kent Eaton. Many gradu­ate school colleagues provided intellectual sup­port, in par­ ticu­lar Steve Tibbets, Anne Tully, Estela Rivero, Ann Morning, Marty Stein, Jakub Grygiel, and Tyler Dickovick. Several programs were also central to funding this undertaking. As a student at Prince­ton’s Woodrow Wilson School, the four fully funded first years were im­port­ant, as were all the other aspects of sup­port the School provided. Summer research funding through the Graduate School, as well as the Center for Regional Studies and Center for International Studies (now the Prince­ton Institute for International and Regional Studies), enabled my pre-­dissertation research in India. The Fellowship of Woodrow Wilson Scholars not only gave funding during my dissertation-­writing phase, it also provided a wonderful forum for interdisciplinary intellectual exchange. The Liechtenstein Institute on Self-­ Determination at Prince­ton University under the guidance of Wolfgang Danspeckgruber offered me a professional home for a few years and a fellow­ship

Acknowledgments   xiii during 2008–2009, and gave me the oppor­tun­ity to ex­plore the issue of decentralization in Afghanistan. And finally the Government Department at the College of William and Mary provided me with funding to conduct my follow­up research during Decem­ber 2007–Janu­ary 2008 and also with the space and sup­port to finish this book. Other colleagues at the College, in par­ticu­lar Jim Axtell and Arnab Basu, provided great mentorship and support. My fieldwork in India would not have been pos­sible without the help of many generous indi­viduals and institutions. The Centre for Policy Research provided me with an institutional af­fili­ation and research base during my pre-­dissertation research, as well as an intellectual home while I finalized this book during 2010–2011. The Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) was my research base during my field research and many colleagues at ISS provided background data and advice for my fieldwork. I was introduced to villages I selected for study in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal through the in­valu­able sup­port of Jean Drèze. In Amarpurkashi, Uttar Pradesh, Mukat Singh’s help and friendship in getting us settled into Palanpur was essential. Rakesh Poddar was a great translator and colleague during our stay in Palanpur and Pipli. In West Bengal, Madangopal Ghosh and Sunil Sengupta at Visva-­Bharati, Santinikentan generously provided access to findings from their research of Kuchli and Shahajapur, and helped arrange all the lo­gist­ics of the village studies, while Surajit Adhikary’s translation and research help was in­valu­able. And in Bangalore, Karnataka, G.  K. Karanth at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) kindly provided open access to his prior research of Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal as well as the crucial introductions to people in the villages, while Avinash Samal helped me with all of the lo­gist­ics that enabled the field work. My stay in Karnataka would not have been pos­sible without a home base with Mickey and Ilse Shenoy. I owe the greatest debt, how­ever, to the numerous women and men in the case study villages who had so little and gave me so much in terms of their time and hospitality. There were many whose help over the years enabled me to write this book. Research and data inputting help from Matt Michenfelder was much appreciated. It is an honor to be able to publish in this Routledge series, whose editor, Subrata Mitra, is one of the leading thinkers on the issue of decentralization in India. No one could ask for better editors than the ones I had at Routledge – Leanne Hinves and Dorothea Schaefter. I could not have finished this book had it not been for the sup­port and help of my friend, colleague, and wonderful sister Maya Tudor. It is above all my family that I have to thank for believing in me, nudging me and helping me stay an­chored during the long research and writing pro­cess. My father, Indira, and sister Aarti provided me with a great and welcome base of sup­port during my fieldwork in India. My brothers Kim and Jan have provided me with the quiet brotherly sup­port that made me plough on. My in-­laws Lynne and Phil (we miss you) provided great sup­port throughout. I could not have made it this far had it not been for the faith in me by mother and Harpal – and par­ticu­larly the nudging and baby-­sitting help from my mother at crucial times. The all-­around help from my aunt Dagmar, who managed the home front and

xiv   Acknowledgments looked after my chil­dren so that I could focus on my work, was in­valu­able. And finally this book is ded­ic­ated to my chil­dren Tara and Kiran who provided the sun, love, and laughter, which was always the light at the end of the tunnel and to my husband Patrick, whose steadfast sup­port since my very first day at Prince­ ton helped me bring this research to print.

Abbreviations

ADO AITC BDO BJP BLD BPL BSP CPI(M)  DRDA EAS FC GC GP GS HDI IAS IAY IMR INC IRDP ISEC JD JD(S) JGSY JRY KP LEB LFG MLA MLC MMR MP NGO

Assistant District Officer Trinamul Congress Party Block Development Office/Officer Bharatiya Janata Party Bharatiya Lok Dal below the poverty line Bahujan Samaj Party Communist Party of India (Marxist) District Rural Development Agency Employment Assurance Scheme Finance Commission General Caste Gram Panchayat Gram Sabha Human Development Index Indian Administrative Service Indira Awaas Yojana program infant mortality rate Indian National Congress Integrated Rural Development Program Institute for Social and Economic Change Janata Dal Party Janata Dal Secular Party Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana program Jawahar Rozgar Yojana program Kshetra Panchayat life expectancy at birth Left Front Government member of state legislative assembly member of state legislative council maternal mortality rate Mandal Panchayats Nongovernmental organization

xvi   Abbreviations NSDP NSSO OBC PDS PPP PRI RTI SC SC/ST SFC SGSY SP ST TB TFR TP UF UN UP US$ WB ZP

net state domestic product National Sample Survey Organisation other backward castes Public Distribution System purchasing power parity Panchayat Raj Institutions Right to Information Scheduled Caste Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe State Finance Commission Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana program Samajwadi Party Scheduled Tribe Tuberculosis total fertility rate Taluk Panchayat United Front United Nations Uttar Pradesh United States dollar West Bengal Zilla Panchayat

1 The promise of decentralization

Fifty years of de­velopment planning, anti-­poverty programs, and education and health programs have brought few wel­fare improvements to the village of Palanpur in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Despite being located close to railroad tracks and only a couple hundred kilo­meters east of Delhi in a rel­at­ ively rich agricultural area, most inhabitants of Palanpur are not signi­fic­antly better off than they were several decades ago, and the poor con­tinue to barely make a living. Central gov­ern­ment programs aimed at rural de­velopment and the pro­vi­sion of a safety net for the poor through pub­lic works pro­jects are virtually unseen in this village of nearly 2,000 inhabitants. The Public Distribution System (PDS) has been in place for decades and is intended to give indigent popu­la­tions monthly rations of subsidized goods including wheat, rice, oil, and kerosene. When PDS goods are distributed in Palanpur (thrice a year at most), only a fraction of the goods are actu­ally given out. The poor, who are also gen­ erally illit­er­ate, often do not know their enti­tle­ments. They do not realize that their PDS ration booklets have been stamped to indicate that they have received the full monthly PDS allow­ance. And even if they did know, to whom would they complain without fear of losing the meager rations they do get? Officials in the district capital 20 kilo­meters away? Government, for most of Palanpur’s residents in the early 1990s, was an entity phys­ically and socially far removed. Over the past three decades, decentralization – defined as the trans­fer of polit­ical power to cit­izens and/or their elected representatives at lower levels of gov­ern­ ment – has been attempted by de­veloped and de­veloping coun­tries alike. Decen­ tralization has been touted as the means for shifting power away from the inefficient, corrupt, and rent-­seeking central states towards more account­able local gov­ern­ments and for encouraging the deepening of demo­cracy and the building of village com­munit­ies. It has also been a way of addressing the ineffi­ ciencies of central states in re­du­cing pov­erty by en­ab­ling better local targeting and delivery of social services. Scholars from different ideo­logical backgrounds, from neolib­eral eco­nom­ists to civil soci­ety or­gan­izers, have viewed the increased power given to local gov­ern­ments through decentralization as holding great promise for changing the  efficacy of gov­ern­ment. Advocates of decentralization argue that local

2   The promise of decentralization gov­ern­ments would help demo­cracy take root and be more effect­ive at improv­ ing the wellbeing of their cit­izens. Yet critics countered that decentralization might lead to widening disparities between localities – mainly, that lack of local capa­city among illit­er­ate and poor popu­la­tion groups might lead to local elite capture of pub­lic resources and an in­abil­ity to implement central gov­ern­ment programs. Three decades into the polit­ical decentralization of power, it is appro­ priate to ask whether the shift towards local gov­ern­ments has actu­ally mat­tered in average cit­izens’ lives. Few in rich coun­tries who have not spent time in a de­veloping coun­try can ima­gine the abso­lute pov­erty in which one-­sixth of the world’s popu­la­tion lived at the beginning of the twenty-­first century. Not only do the world’s abso­lute poor gen­erally lack access to basic education, health ser­vices, and safe water, they often do not have enough resources to get the three meals a day that would prevent chronic hunger. But the dy­namics of pov­erty are not static and vary by time and place. While the twentieth century saw large gains in living stand­ards in some coun­ tries, pov­erty and other indic­ators of social wellbeing con­tinued to remain poor in much of the de­veloping world. Some coun­tries, such as South Korea, which were con­sidered “de­veloping” coun­tries 50 years ago, are now in the middle-­ income league with low pov­erty rates. Others, like India, have seen high eco­ nomic growth rates over the last few decades, but these growth rates have not “trickled down” enough to pull over 300 million poor people out of pov­erty.1 Development theorists have hypothesized that the solution to decreasing pov­erty lay in open markets, social-­democratic regime types, and pro-­poor pol­icies. Yet in a de­veloping coun­try like India one finds that pursuit of all three de­velopment pol­icies at different times has not radic­ally reduced pov­erty. Nor has pursuit of these pol­icies alone been able to explain the variance in social outcomes between different regions in India. In a coun­try that is home to more than one-­fourth of the world’s poor (Deaton 2002) it is im­port­ant to understand why some Indian states have improved indic­ators of social wellbeing more rapidly than others. It is also im­port­ant to better understand whether functioning local gov­ern­ments are at least partly respons­ible for more rapidly improving social wellbeing in some states, along with making gov­ern­ment more account­able and bringing gov­ern­ ment closer to the people. This research’s findings show that a state’s his­tory of decentralization, polit­ical com­peti­tion, and social mobil­iza­tion are key ingredi­ ents in determining the abil­ity of village gov­ern­ments to deepen demo­cracy and have an impact their cit­izens’ wellbeing. Different combinations of these key ingredients have led to varying degrees of demo­cratic rooting and efficacy of local gov­ern­ments in implementing decentralization in India. Findings from this study also explain the mixed results of decentralization pro­ grams across the globe. From Mexico to Uganda and India to Indonesia, the promise of greater account­abil­ity, efficacy, and citizen-­wellbeing has brought dif­ ferent results in different places (Blair 2000; Oxhorn et al. 2004; Bardhan and Mookherjee 2005). In seeking to explain decentralization’s differential outcomes, most studies have been macro-­level, inter-­country studies of decentralization with

The promise of decentralization   3 a focus on the implementation of decentralization programs by central gov­ern­ ment. Many of these studies therefore tend to locate the causes of differential effect­iveness within the under­lying structure and pro­cess of decentralization. Such studies fail to con­sider the arena where polit­ical power has been relocated as a result of decentralization – the local level – and thereby fail to account for in-­ country vari­ations in the effect­iveness of polit­ical decentralization, par­ticu­larly with regard to local gov­ern­ment implementation of social wel­fare programs. Decentralization is about redis­tribu­tion of polit­ical power, yet the realloca­tion of power does not happen in a polit­ical vacuum. If decentralization occurs in a con­text where polit­ical power is concentrated among a narrow group of village elites and in an area with little his­tory of local gov­ern­ments and polit­ical com­ peti­tion, local gov­ern­ments’ abil­ity to enact change leading to enhanced social outcomes is circumscribed; at least, results are likely to be delayed. Conversely, when local gov­ern­ments are not captured by dominant local elites, when there is a polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ment, and when there has been some ex­peri­ence with local gov­ern­ment, then decentralization is likely to lead more expeditiously to improved delivery of social ser­vices, thereby resulting in better social indic­ ators and enhanced social wellbeing. Historical con­text mat­ters. For the inhabitants of Indian villages, having a his­ tory of already functioning local gov­ern­ments is a signi­fic­ant factor influ­en­cing their aware­ness of how local gov­ern­ments should function and how they might ensure access to social ser­vices par­ticu­larly for disenfranch­ised groups. The overall nature of social cleavages, par­ticu­larly caste and religious dif­fer­ences, and dy­namics of local polit­ical mobil­iza­tion are also factors that influence the effect­iveness of local gov­ern­ments and in turn are determined by the inter­actions with local governments. I argue that a focus on national-­level factors fails to account for vari­ation within coun­tries. There is, furthermore, little ana­lysis of the wide variance – either between or within coun­tries – of effect­ive social-­service delivery after decentralization or of cit­izens’ perceptions of these ser­vices. This book examines consti­tu­tionally mandated polit­ical decentralization across India to identi­fy the circumstances under which local gov­ern­ment structures can lead to improved social ser­vices and societal wellbeing. It offers a coun­trywide ana­lysis of the decentralization pro­cess in India with village-­level case studies in three Indian states. It dem­on­strates that con­textual dif­fer­ences, par­ticu­larly the distribution of power among local elites, polit­ical com­peti­tion, and the nature of civil soci­ety activism, ser­iously affect the abil­ity of decentralized local gov­ern­ments not only to function demo­cratically, but also to pursue their mandate of alleviating pov­ erty and improving the health and education of their cit­izens. Over the next few chapters I grapple with an under-­studied issue in the field of decentralization, namely why the implementation of the same polit­ical decentralization program leads to differing degrees of success in subnational states. While polit­ical decentralization has been heralded by some as the cure for the in­abil­ity of large, bur­eau­cratic states to target social ser­vices to the poor, others have argued that it is more likely to lead to the capture of power by local vested

4   The promise of decentralization inter­ests. Nevertheless, the efforts of the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity to help root demo­cracy and improve social-­service delivery throughout the de­veloping world have been focused on sup­porting decentralization with billions of dollars of tech­ nical assistance and de­velopment aid. After three decades of decentralization programs, the record of improvements in the social wellbeing (pov­erty, health, and education indic­ators) of people in the de­veloping world is decidedly mixed. Identifying the con­text in which polit­ical decentralization is likely to succeed is key both to understanding the theor­et­ical question of why decentralization brings about social change in some situ­ations but not in others, and also to devising pol­icy tools to sup­port effect­ive decentralization. As the first sys­tematic ana­lysis of the impact of decentralization on the deliv­ ery of social ser­vices at the local level within one coun­try, this volume draws on case studies and national data to argue that decentralization is not simply a func­ tion of the structure of the decentralization program or of the relationship between higher-­tiered and local gov­ern­ments. Rather, the pos­sib­il­ity of decentralization affecting social phenomenon depends on several interacting factors: how broadly polit­ical power is distributed at the village level, dy­namics of polit­ ical com­peti­tion, and the level of social capital. This book builds on the work of eco­nom­ists and polit­ical sci­ent­ists who argue that decentralized gov­ern­ments can deliver greater bene­fits than “statist” gov­ern­ ments. While eco­nom­ists base their ad­vo­cacy of decentralization on ideas of better in­forma­tion flow and enhanced efficiency, polit­ical sci­ent­ists marshal arguments dating back to de Tocqueville, Montesquieu, and Jefferson on the bene­fits of decentralization for deepening demo­cracy and bettering social out­ comes. I draw on the work of polit­ical sci­ent­ists who argue that the corruption and ineffect­iveness of the centralized state has discredited the statist structure (Rondinelli et al. 1989). I also build on the work of scholars who have argued that greater plur­al­ism and com­petit­iveness among state structures would give voice to more cit­izens, thereby deepening demo­cracy (Lieten 1996a; Schoenwal­ der 1997; Crook and Manor 1998, 2001; Aziz 2000; Johnson 2001; Bhattach­ aryya 2002). As such, the book speaks to the question posed by a recent World Bank study, Does Decentralization Enhance Service Delivery and Poverty Reduction? (2010). Yet this book differs from the World Bank study by focusing on a single coun­try, teasing out why a single nationwide sys­tem of decentraliza­ tion might lead to differential outcomes within that state. By revealing local polit­ical dy­namics that con­dition the differential impact of decentralization for social wellbeing, this study complements recent work – such as Merilee Grin­ dle’s on Mexico (Grindle 2007) – that explains why the theor­et­ical bene­fits of decentralization are not inev­it­able in practice. While Grindle focuses on factors such as pub­lic sector modernization to explain decentralization’s differing results, this book highlights the unfolding of decentralization in unique local con­texts. As my case studies illus­trate, the degree of concentrated polit­ical power, the extent of polit­ical com­peti­tion, and the mobil­iza­tion of civil soci­ety all come to bear on the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to function demo­cratically and translate their local know­ledge into better delivery of social services.

The promise of decentralization   5 This research con­trib­utes to the theory and practice of governance in three main ways. First, it broadens our understanding of decentralization and the factors con­trib­ut­ing to its efficacy. By holding the structure of decentralization constant by focusing on one coun­try, I illus­trate that judgments about the effi­ cacy of decentralization need to take local con­texts, including cultural and insti­ tutional legacies, into account. Second, this work con­trib­utes to our understanding of demo­cracy and its depth. This research builds on Amartya Sen’s idea that demo­cracy should be thought of as being intrinsically valu­able to a person’s wellbeing, instrumentally im­port­ant in providing polit­ical incentives for greater gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity, and providing a constructive framework that forms societal values and helps prevent eco­nomic disasters – all of which improve socio­economic wellbeing (Sen 1999). The fol­low­ing chapters on each state case study illus­trate how decentralization can help demo­cracy take root and improve social outcomes at the local level – and how the local con­text of exist­ ing alloca­tion of power, polit­ical com­peti­tion, and lack of polit­ical and social mobil­iza­tion might prevent it from doing so. Finally, this work argues that schol­ ars of decentralization and demo­cracy, as well as pol­icy makers and de­velopment aid specialists, should pay closer attention to the local setting in which top-­down polit­ical decentralization takes place. Complexity of polit­ical and institutional factors might lead the designers and implementers of decentralization to rein­ force clientalistic mech­an­isms, thereby disabling decentralization from affecting people’s social wellbeing. Overall, these findings can be used to assess decen­ tralization’s merits gen­erally and to better understand the bar­riers to decentrali­ zation in coun­tries from Mexico to Ghana and Paki­stan to Indonesia. If the wave of decentralization that has swept the de­veloping world is to really mat­ter for its most vulner­able cit­izens, we need to understand the main local con­textual factors that drive successful decentralization programs.

Decentralization as a tool for reforming the state The past three decades have seen a global wave of efforts to reform the state in order to make it more effect­ive and account­able. In the liter­at­ure on transform­ ing the efficacy of the state, decentralization has become a dominant theme (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2005). It has been con­sidered or implemented in a large array of de­veloped and de­veloping coun­tries, since “out of 75 de­veloping and trans­itional coun­tries with popu­la­tions greater than five million, all but 12 claim to be embarked on some form of trans­fer of polit­ical power to local units of gov­ern­ment” (Dillinger 1994). As states are increasingly pressured by outside inter­na­tional agencies and greater pluralist pol­icies from above, as well as from do­mestic forces from below, leading scholars in polit­ical science focus their research on the inter­actions between the state and subnational gov­ern­ments. This newer focus is both the result of polit­ical events and an increasingly global de­velopment para­digm, which posits that subnational gov­ern­ments are more effi­ cient and capable than formerly as­sumed. The disillusionment with state capa­ city and the decrease in state legitimacy owing to its many failures (Bardhan

6   The promise of decentralization 2002), together with the fact that an improvement of an indi­vidual’s social well­ being requires local structures that are focused on and effect­ive at delivering social wel­fare programs, has over the past decades ushered in a trend towards decentralizing polit­ical power to local gov­ern­ments. Centralized states have been attacked in the de­velopment para­digm ad­voc­ated by aid agencies and de­velopment institutions (Parker 1995; Manor 1999; Parker and Serrano 2000; Work 2002a, 2002b; World Bank 2003), as well as the polit­ical structures that are de facto ad­voc­ated by the United States gov­ern­ment through their pub­lic pol­ icies in post-­conflict coun­tries such as Afghanistan (Mullen 2006). These critics of state planning assert that centrally admin­is­tered bur­eau­cra­cies are inefficient at allocating resources (Lal 2000; World Bank 2000a). Besides being heralded as the cure to governance prob­lems in a variety of states (Tanzi and Ahmad 2002), decentralization has been promoted by a variety of inter­est groups, including multi­lateral de­velopment banks. This case for decentralization is based on the assertion that a more decentralized state would be closer to cit­izens and thus more responsive to local needs (Crook and Sverris­ son 2001). And by being closer to the people, gov­ern­ment would be more account­able to them and more effect­ive for the local popu­la­tion (Crook and Manor 1998; Manor 1999; Blair 2000). The eco­nomic argument for decentrali­ zation is often expressed in terms of re­du­cing in­forma­tion and transaction costs (Marschak 1959) and improving alloca­tion (Cohen and Peterson 2000). While decentralization has been implemented in many coun­tries, it has meant different things in different places, and the results have rarely been ana­lyzed sys­ tematically through comparative, intra-­country case studies. Decentralization is more than mere delegation of power to lower levels of gov­ern­ment; it implies more than the de-­concentration of power to lower levels of administrative agen­ cies (Crook and Manor 1998); and it goes beyond devolution, where subnational units of gov­ern­ment are created or strengthened (Crook and Manor 1998; Blair 2000). Decentralization has been in­ter­preted as meaning fiscal decentralization, administrative decentralization and/or demo­cratic decentralization or devolution (Rondinelli 1990; Crook and Manor 1998; Manor 1999; World Bank 2000b; Johnson 2003). Clearly local gov­ern­ments, even if demo­cratically elected and representative of their constituents, will fail in the longer term without adminis­ trative, and some fin­an­cial, decentralization. Administrative decentralization provides local gov­ern­ment with specific respons­ibil­ities and bur­eau­cratic resources for implementing these new tasks, while fiscal decentralization enables local gov­ern­ments to have the fin­an­cial wherewithal (Manor 1999) to undertake more auto­nom­ous pro­jects. Yet polit­ical and administrative decentralization on their own also change the locus of power, empower people at lower levels of polit­ical engagement, and lead to a more account­able and effect­ive local government. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many coun­tries decentralized state powers to subnational gov­ern­ ments. Much of the impetus behind changing the nature of the state and decen­ tralization has been based on an understanding of the state, which locates the state

The promise of decentralization   7 at the center and attempts to improve its efficiency and account­abil­ity by shifting some of its power to the periphery. Although most ad­voc­ates of this shift agree on a gen­eral understanding of the state, not all come from the same background. Decentralization has found sup­port among a wide polit­ical spectrum. Neolib­eral thinkers have seen decentralization as a means of moving power away from ineffect­ive, overbloated, and often corrupt central states who are respons­ible for market failures to subnational gov­ern­ments where the transaction costs are lower and pub­lic ser­vice delivery can be better targeted (Manor 1999; Bardhan 2002). Civil soci­ety and social wel­fare ad­voc­ates and researchers have viewed decentralization as a pos­sible means for decreasing pov­erty and enhancing social wellbeing due to local gov­ern­ments having greater in­forma­tion to better target social and anti-­poverty programs to the poor. And some demo­cracy ad­voc­ates have promoted decentralization as a means for deepening the roots of demo­ cracy. Decentralization, according to this line of argument, brings gov­ern­ment closer to the people, thereby fostering greater cit­izen parti­cipa­tion, civic virtue, protection of civil liberties and gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity. On the other hand, critics of decentralization have pointed out that the formal pro­cess of decentrali­ zation mat­ters less than the under­lying power relationships in rural soci­eties (Slater 1989; Peterson 1997; Cross and Kutengule 2001; Harriss 2001; James et al. 2001). Other critics have pointed out that the net effect of increasing local gov­ern­ments’ share in revenue-­raising and fiscal auto­nomy is indeterminate; that greater local parti­cipa­tion in gov­ern­ment could lead to greater civic engagement or greater corruption; that it was unclear why voters would neces­sar­ily be better informed about local versus central gov­ern­ment performance; that local gov­ern­ ments that succeed in obstructing central gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tions are as likely to protect indi­vidual freedom as they are to protect local corruption (Treisman 2007). Scholars have argued that in India there needs to be a genu­ine change in power relations of dis­advant­aged groups through land reform (among other pro­ grams), before these groups can bene­fit from decentralization (Kohli 1987; Echeverri-­Gent 1992). Yet despite decentralization being ever-­present in much of the world and ad­voc­ated by a diverse group of people, sys­tematic comparative within-­country studies of decentralization are rare, and studies of decentraliza­ tion and its links with social wellbeing are rarer still.

Decentralization and development Greater demo­cratic depth (and breadth) and increased efficiency in state ser­vices and programs have been the two major arguments for decentralization. Some more recent liter­at­ure has also ad­voc­ated decentralization as leading to better de­velopment outcomes – from higher eco­nomic growth rates to better social indic­ators. This study con­trib­utes to the liter­at­ure on demo­cracy, decentralization and de­velopment, and the links between these three. Its findings show that one needs to broaden de­velopment para­digms to include local gov­ern­ments as a factor influ­en­cing overall wellbeing and that local-­level studies are needed to understand the specific factors that enable local gov­ern­ments to function most

8   The promise of decentralization effect­ively and con­trib­ute to improved wellbeing. Decentralization has been her­ alded as a means to reform the state in de­veloping coun­tries in order to improve effect­iveness of de­velopment programs and thereby speed up de­velopment. The ori­ginal source of sup­port for decentralization comes from lib­eral demo­cratic polit­ical theory, par­ticu­larly the work of John Stuart Mill. Mill and other classi­ cal thinkers ad­voc­ate decentralization as leading to both national and local bene­ fits through greater local parti­cipa­tion in polit­ical structures. In the early 1980s Rondinelli cited 14 pos­sible bene­fits arising from decentralization, including increased efficiency and speed in carrying out de­velopment programs by cutting through “red tape” (Rondinelli 1981). Indeed, the idea that decentralization leads to more effect­ive and efficient de­velopment through more account­able and responsive local gov­ern­ment struc­ tures is a main thread under­lying the decentralization and de­velopment liter­at­ure (Crook and Sverrisson 2001; Cross and Kutengule 2001; Bardhan 2002; Braun and Grote 2002). Governance, defined as the “traditions and institutions by which authority in a coun­try is exercised,” includes (1) the pro­cess of selecting, monitoring, and replacing gov­ern­ments, (2) the gov­ern­ment’s capa­city to formu­ late and implement sound pol­icies, and (3) the state’s and cit­izen’s respect for the institutions that govern eco­nomic and social inter­actions among them (Kaufmann et al. 2002). It is this link between effect­ive village-­level local gov­ ern­ments in India, known as Gram Panchayats, and social wellbeing that this research will analyze. The decentralization liter­at­ure can be divided into three broad cat­egor­ies in terms of its main bene­fits for de­velopment: (1) polit­ical stability, (2) enhanced parti­cipa­tion and demo­cracy, and (3) increased account­abil­ity and responsive­ ness (loosely based on ideas presented in Turner and Hulme 1997). The liter­at­ ure advocating decentralization as a means for increasing polit­ical stability and thus de­velopment effect­iveness is largely focused on post-­conflict coun­tries, nascent demo­cra­cies, and coun­tries experiencing separatist movements. In these settings decentralization has been regarded as a way of diffusing ten­sions. The third cat­egory is the largest and most frequently used by politicians as a justifica­ tion for decentralization. This liter­at­ure broadly argues that decentralization leads to elected gov­ern­ment representatives who are closer – both phys­ically and through better relationships – to their constituents and thus are more responsive and account­able (Rondinelli et al. 1983; Smith 1985). This argument links closely with the local demo­cracy liter­at­ure mentioned above. Common to both is the notion that local gov­ern­ments provide greater responsiveness and account­ abil­ity. Local gov­ern­ments lead to quicker and more effect­ive implementation of de­velopment pro­jects (among other things), thereby improving de­velopment outcomes. There are several theor­et­ical frameworks that fall under this third broad cat­ egory of decentralization liter­at­ure. One structure is that of the pub­lic adminis­ tration and management frameworks. This method ana­lyzes the management of de­velopment programs at the local level and finds that pro­ject plans can better adjust to local con­ditions, co­ordination at the local level is enhanced, pro­ject

The promise of decentralization   9 implementers are more motiv­ated to perform due to the greater respons­ib­ility they have, and the workload is reduced for central agencies, allowing them more time to improve the pro­ject pol­icy framework (Rondinelli et al. 1983; Turner and Hulme 1997). Essentially this liter­at­ure argues that the trans­fer from central to local agencies improves the management of pro­jects by en­ab­ling a better delivery of ser­vice resulting in better de­velopment outcomes. Economists have used pub­lic choice theories to reach sim­ilar conclusions, arguing that under demo­cratic con­ditions, defined as “con­ditions of reasonably free choice,” com­peti­tion of agencies, and close proximity of providers to recipi­ ents of programs results in greater efficiency (Rondinelli et al. 1989). Essentially the supply-­and-demand bene­fit from greater com­peti­tion promotes efficiency in gov­ern­ment ser­vices, including the delivery of social and anti-­poverty programs (Smith 1985). Greater efficiency in turn improves de­velopment. This stand­ard political-­economy argument for decentralization is argued as widely applic­able in de­veloping countries. Some of the few studies that ana­lyze decentralization’s efficacy have found that decentralization tends to help decrease pov­erty in subregions, but has little impact on in­equal­it­ies within subregions; that it can help minor­it­ies, but only if they are in the majority locally; and that it tends to enable de­velopment of pro­ jects viewed as im­port­ant by the localities (Manor 1999; Bardhan and Mookher­ jee 2005). Most studies of the de­velop­mental bene­fits of decentralization ana­lyze at the macro level, without studying specific localities, with little attention to the potential shortcomings of decentralization; al­tern­atively, such studies may focus on specific case studies without drawing larger lessons from these studies. The few researchers who have ana­lyzed coun­try studies of decentralization have found a pos­it­ive relationship between decentralized governance and better deliv­ ery of social wel­fare programs (Work 2002b; Oxhorn et al. 2004; Bardhan and Mookherjee 2005). Yet warnings of elite capture of local governance, frag­ menta­tion of respons­ibil­ities and other potential dangers still surface (Prud’homme 1995; Tanzi 1995; Tanzi and Ahmad 2002), indicating that this field requires further study in gen­eral and a deeper understanding of the local con­text in par­ticu­lar, to better judge the bene­fits of decentralization and con­texts in which it is more likely to yield intended results. With so many arguments for decentralization’s bene­fits, and with coun­tries restructuring administration and polit­ical power based on these claims, there should also be more local studies that investigate whether decentralization can enhance the de­velopment outcomes that its sup­porters have promised, and under which circumstances such outcomes are more likely.

Understanding the decentralization process The im­port­ance of better understanding the decentralization pro­cess and its bene­fits and costs is imperative because of the billions of dollars of technical assistance and de­velopment aid spent by the inter­na­tional com­mun­ity on sup­porting decentralization programs. Multilateral and bi­lat­eral aid organ­iza­tions

10   The promise of decentralization have been enthusiastic sup­porters of decentralization for years. The World Bank annually committed between $300 and $500 million for pro­jects that contained decentralization com­pon­ents during a six-­year period between 1997 and 2003 (World Bank 2004). Various UN agencies also sup­ported decentralization pro­ grams with sim­ilarly large com­mit­ments. With billions of dollars annually given by de­velopment agencies to coun­tries in sup­port of decentralization programs, it is im­port­ant to con­sider whether the largely unquestioning sup­port of decentrali­ zation is warranted. Moreover, if there is village-­level evid­ence sup­porting decentralization’s bene­fits, how might these large sums of de­velopment aid be fine-­tuned to enable better sup­port for the desired outcome?

What explains the mixed outcomes of decentralization? This book emphas­izes the im­port­ance of his­tor­ical antecedents and sociopolit­ical con­text in explaining decentralization’s varied impact in delivering social ser­ vices by studying the decentralization pro­cess in one coun­try and analyzing its varying success in villages in different parts of the coun­try. History clearly mat­ ters, with states that have ex­peri­enced working local gov­ern­ments in the past being more likely to have functioning local gov­ern­ments in the future. However, other aspects of the local con­text are also im­port­ant. In the rel­ev­ant liter­at­ure, three theories are advanced to explain why the reality and actual practice of local governance might differ even when the same decentralized governance structure is implemented within one coun­try. These theories, which center on the extent of demo­cratic depth and polit­ical com­peti­tion, the mobil­iza­tion of civil soci­ety, and elite buy-­in, highlight different aspects of local con­ditions into which decentral­ ized governance structures are placed, and which affect their impact. This research builds on all three explan­at­ory frameworks. By focusing on the unfold­ ing pro­cess of decentralization in different villages in India, it highlights why and under what con­ditions these different explanations might be more salient for explaining the better functioning of decentralized gov­ern­ment structures, which in turn enable better delivery of ser­vices that mat­ter for social wellbeing. Democracy and competition The idea that implementing decentralized governance structures leads to the rooting of demo­cracy is a common theme in the decentralization liter­at­ure. This liter­at­ure has pointed to the causal linkages working in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion, namely that the reason polit­ical decentralization might be more effect­ive in some areas compared to others is that these areas might have preexisting structures, which are more egal­it­arian and demo­cratic. This liter­at­ure takes the notion of com­peti­tion among businesses (leading to in­nova­tion, lower costs, and more sat­ isfied customers) and applies it to the polit­ical realm. Taking their cue from polit­ical philo­sophers as far back as Immanuel Kant, proponents of this view argue that if decentralized governance structures are placed in a more demo­cratic envir­on­ment where there is com­peti­tion to represent constituents, where those

The promise of decentralization   11 who are seeking to represent constituents in local gov­ern­ments are allowed to compete on the basis of polit­ical par­ties which all have a chance of winning, and where elections result in turnover of elected representatives, then increased com­ peti­tion will yield better functioning local governance structures (Rodriquez 1997; Crook and Manor 1998). While these ideas about demo­cracy and com­peti­tion have been largely applied to national level ana­lyses (Besley et al. 2005), their logic should sim­ilarly hold true at subnational levels. As at the national level, polit­ical decentralization and the institutionalization of demo­cratic local elections should yield better function­ ing local gov­ern­ments. Local elections should force can­did­ates to compete on the basis of polit­ical platforms and force account­abil­ity of local gov­ern­ment rep­ resentatives by having them submit their record in office to periodic elect­oral scrutiny. Moreover, the involvement of polit­ical par­ties at local levels of gov­ern­ ment helps focus polit­ical debate on issues rather than on personalities, helps link decentralized governance structures with higher levels of gov­ern­ment and party structures, and provides a basis for communication and conflict res­olu­tion through the use of party ma­chinery (Gibson and Hanson 1996). By corollary, decentralized local gov­ern­ments, where elections do not take place in an envir­on­ment of polit­ical com­peti­tion and where representatives are not peri­od­ic­ally subject to elect­oral scrutiny and loss of office, are more likely to rely on existing and often more traditional forms of polit­ical mobil­iza­tion. These would include patron–client and familial relationships in addition to the empow­ erment of local, traditional elites. Advocates of the demo­cracy and com­peti­tion liter­at­ure have argued that in more demo­cratic and polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­ on­ments, there are likely to be more local gov­ern­ments that follow their mandate and deliver pub­lic goods such as targeted social services. Civil society mobilization A second type of explanation that seeks to elucidate why polit­ical decentraliza­ tion of power might lead to differential functioning of local gov­ern­ments and therefore dis­par­ate abil­ity to deliver social ser­vices hinges on the nature of civil soci­ety and the extent to which local cit­izens are polit­ically aware and mobi­ lized. Building on insights by de Tocqueville (de Toqueville 1848) and, more recently, Robert Putnam (Putnam 1993, 2000), this liter­at­ure argues that local gov­ern­ments function better in envir­on­ments where cit­izens actively parti­cip­ate in the larger com­mun­ity life across ethnic, gender, socio­economic, and even caste dif­fer­ences, forming networks that bridge social cleavages and engender norms of trust and reci­pro­city. In such envir­on­ments of high “social capital,” cit­ izens are gen­erally more polit­ically mobilized, with social networks acting as conduits of in­forma­tion and awareness-­raising. The norms within these types of social networks are also more likely to yield responsive local gov­ern­ments and better delivery of social ser­vices. In these types of envir­on­ments, cit­izens are more likely to parti­cip­ate in local gov­ern­ments and actively lobby local gov­ern­ ments to be more responsive and provide pub­lic goods.

12   The promise of decentralization When polit­ical decentralization takes place in this type of envir­on­ment of active social capital and engaged civil soci­ety, proponents of this strain of liter­ at­ure argue, local gov­ern­ments are more likely to flourish, be responsive, and provide social ser­vices. Varied proponents of this view, ranging from aca­demics, com­mun­ity and nongov­ern­mental organ­iza­tions, and multi­lateral institutions such as the World Bank, have argued that higher levels of social capital lead to a range of eco­nomic and social bene­fits, as engaged cit­izenry puts pressure on local gov­ern­ments and bur­eau­crats to deliver more effect­ive social ser­vices. By corollary again, local com­munit­ies with low levels of social capital, where cit­ izens are less polit­ically and socially mobilized and aware, are less likely to see cit­izen groups engage with local gov­ern­ment representatives and exert pressure on their representatives to deliver pub­lic goods. Elites and the degree of concentrated political power One theory in the comparative polit­ical science and soci­ology liter­at­ure that seeks to explain diverse outcomes hinges on ana­lyses of local power relation­ ships. This theory argues that polit­ical elites wield power within a com­mun­ity that is inde­pend­ent of the institutionalization of new polit­ical structures. These elites might be the traditional governing elites within the com­mun­ity, or non­ governing elites who derive their polit­ical power from their social standing. Scholars of polit­ical elites have employed a loose definition of “elites” as groups that are privileged and power­ful for any reason (Higley and Burton 2006), in order to highlight the functional imperatives of organ­iza­tions and movements that give rise to this group. The different strat­egies used by these elites are key to demo­cracy and demo­crat­ization (Collier 1999). Without the formation of a “con­ sensually united elite,” lib­eral demo­cracy is not able to emerge (Higley and Burton 2006). This strand of liter­at­ure ana­lyzes the degree of concentration of polit­ical power within a given com­mun­ity, arguing that demo­cratically function­ ing local gov­ern­ments are a function of the distribution of polit­ical power which is often concentrated among a few indi­viduals who are not neces­sar­ily elected officials and who hold disproportionate power in polit­ical de­cisions (Hunter 1969). These proponents posit that when elite inter­action is such that conflicts are restrained, partisan inter­ests are moderated to a degree where they do not prevent compromise, and there is tacit agreement on protecting existing or new polit­ical institutions (Higley and Burton 2006). Building on earl­ier liter­at­ure on polit­ical elites and waves of demo­crat­ization (Huntington 1991) and applying it to the case of decentralization, this study highlights that the local con­text of the distribution of polit­ical power mat­ters for the likelihood that decentralized local gov­ern­ment structures are able to function as true representative structures. When local polit­ical power is distributed among a small socio­economic group with his­tor­ically signi­fic­ant polit­ical leverage, and when there is no consensus among elites that it is in their inter­est to yield polit­ ical power, then decentralization is less likely to result in local gov­ern­ment offi­ cials that represent their constituents and deliver social goods. A consensual

The promise of decentralization   13 relationship among the elite and elites who buy-­in to the pro­cess of polit­ical change is, according to this theory, the key to determining whether elite behavior is cooperative or antagonistic; this behavior in turn is the key to en­ab­ling polit­ ical changes, including the decentralization of polit­ical power.

Relating theories of local government to its practice These three theories for explaining why the polit­ical institutions of decentralized governance might thrive in some areas and languish in others provide the intel­ lectual lenses with which this book examines consti­tu­tionally mandated polit­ical decentralization across India. Each of these discrete explanations has advanced the understanding of different decentralization pro­cesses. However, by them­ selves, they do not explain the range of outcomes of decentralization. This study finds that these seemingly distinct theories explaining decentralization’s efficacy are interrelated, with a combination of these theories explaining outcomes in divergent settings. For example, both the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Kar­ nataka have polit­ically com­petit­ive elections and yet decentralization has been more effect­ive in Karnataka. Similarly, social cleavages and elites are less dis­ tinct in West Bengal (WB) and Karnataka compared to Uttar Pradesh, and yet decentralization has been more effect­ively able to target the poor in Karnataka than in West Bengal. Different local con­ditions make the issue of polit­ical com­ peti­tion more salient to understanding decentralization in West Bengal compared to Karnataka or Uttar Pradesh. The combination of all three explan­at­ory frame­ works is im­port­ant to comparing and understanding the overall efficacy of decentralization. This is a comparative study within one coun­try, which is rare in the liter­at­ure. Many studies have docu­mented trans­national vari­ation in decentralization’s out­ comes (Blair 2000; Crook and Manor 1998; Eaton 2004), but few have included intra-­country ana­lyses. This research is among the first sys­tematic ana­lyses of the impact of decentralization on the delivery of social ser­vices at the local level within one coun­try. The research draws on national data and state- and village-­ level case studies to argue that decentralization is not simply a function of the structure of the decentralization program or of the relationship between higher-­ tiered and local gov­ern­ments. Rather, the pos­sib­il­ity of decentralization affecting social phenomena depends on several interacting factors: the nature of elite inter­actions at the village level, the dy­namics of polit­ical com­peti­tion, and the level of social capital. A case study approach to this research has enabled collection of a wealth of qualit­at­ive and quantitative data at the national, state, and local levels, providing a nuanced answer to why decentralized local gov­ern­ment has not uniformly translated into improved delivery of social ser­vices and thereby an advancement in social wellbeing. This research employed open-­ended inter­views, informal conversations, and parti­cip­ant observation to ana­lyze the micro-­logic of larger, macro phenomena in order to obtain first hand insights into the motives of polit­ ical actors. Both qualit­at­ive and quantitative in­forma­tion was collected by a

14   The promise of decentralization small sample survey that captured views on decentralization and governance at the village level. By examining the polit­ical decentralization program of a single coun­try, India, this investigation holds the structure of decentralization and the national pol­icies sur­round­ing it constant. National- and state-­level data on gov­ ernance and social indic­ators provide an understanding of the differing levels of de­velopment among Indian states before and after consti­tu­tionally mandated decentralization in 1993. Yet in a coun­try the size of a continent, with a popu­la­ tion to match, the range of state-­level socio­economic indic­ators and pol­icy dif­ fer­ences is large. Many Indian states are indeed the size of coun­tries, with 19 of the 28 states having a popu­la­tion of at least ten million. If it were a coun­try, the state of Uttar Pradesh, with a popu­la­tion of over 166 million according to the 2001 census (Government of India 2001), would rank among the world’s ten most populous coun­tries. Analyses of decentralization in Indian states are com­ par­able to studies of medium-­to-large sized countries. The case study selection method sought to account for dif­fer­ences in size of states, as well remove states that were outliers in terms of their socio­economic levels and governance. The list of 28 Indian states was narrowed down to an initial 21, in order to exclude states with popu­la­tions under two million, which were permitted a two-­tiered decentralized structure by the consti­tu­tion instead of the three-­tiered structure for larger states. The list of 21 states was then further narrowed to large states with popu­la­tions over 50 million in the year 2001. This left a pool of ten large states that shared the same decentralization structure (see Appendix B). It also elim­in­ated the southern state of Kerala, a well-­analyzed state and an outlier in terms of consistently having outperformed all other Indian states in social indic­ators of wellbeing. Bihar, a state that has consistently ranked at the bottom of social indic­ators was also elim­in­ated as an outlier. Since polit­ ical devolution of power throughout India was mandated by a 1993 consti­tu­ tional amend­ment that estab­lished the “Panchayati Raj Institutions” of local gov­ern­ment, West Bengal, a state in eastern India and the only state that had consistent demo­cratically functioning local governance prior to 1993, was chosen as one of the case studies. Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India, and Karnataka, a state in southern India, were the other two states chosen for ana­ lysis. Social indic­ators in these three states were close to the Indian average in the early 1990s, with indic­ators in Uttar Pradesh gen­erally slightly below average and indic­ators in West Bengal and Karnataka mostly average. Twenty years later, social indic­ators in Karnataka had pulled ahead of the other two states, with West Bengal lagging behind Indian averages, par­ticu­larly in educa­ tion, and Uttar Pradesh failing to transform its eco­nomic growth rates into signi­ fic­ant social advances. The his­tory and pol­itics of decentralization in the three Indian states were ana­ lyzed and village-­level studies were conducted in districts that mirrored the respective state’s averages in terms of socio­economic indic­ators prior to 1993. Two case study villages were selected within the chosen district in each of the three states. It would be mis­taken to hope that a pair of villages in, for example, Uttar Pradesh – with a popu­la­tion of 131 million – could hope to be charac­ter­istic

The promise of decentralization   15 of the whole range of socio­economic con­ditions in the state. However, two vil­ lages in each state were chosen to most closely approximate statewide average social indic­ators. Village representativeness was enhanced by excluding villages for study if they deviated from state averages in terms of demographic indic­ators, such as female to male ratios and percentage of ethnic and caste minor­it­ies. They were also not selected if they were located in regions that were signi­fic­antly dif­ ferent agro-­economic envir­on­ments (coastal, suburban or mountainous areas, for example) than the rural norm in the state. All selected villages were located away from urban centers and were predominantly de­pend­ent on agri­cul­ture for income. Moreover, in all three states at least one of the two case study villages was chosen because it had been studied prior to the passage of the law mandating decentrali­ zation in order to provide a baseline for comparison of governance and social indicators. Each state was studied for about six weeks in 2000. Follow-­up research and inter­views during a couple of weeks in each state in 2007/2008 was carried out to ensure that the findings were not driven by the polit­ical or socio­economic idiosyncrasies of a par­ticu­lar year and that tem­poral changes in social, polit­ical, and eco­nomic dy­namics at the village level could be ana­lyzed. Focus-­group dis­ cussions with different caste and religious com­munit­ies, group discussions and indi­vidual inter­views in each village supplemented around forty in-­depth survey responses of a random sample of ordinary cit­izens in each village in 2000. (The term “respondent” is used to refer to those who responded to the small surveys, while the term “informant” is used for others who were inter­viewed using qualit­at­ive methods. Note that, along with discreet yes/no questions, applica­tion of the survey questionnaire included in-­depth inter­views on the various issues covered by the questionnaire (so that survey “respondents” were also “inform­ ants”). The survey questionnaire (see Appendix C) was based on the instru­ ments used by Crook and Manor in their study of the panchayat sys­tem in Karnataka during the late 1980s and sought to capture cit­izen perception of governance, social wellbeing, civil mobil­iza­tion and the pos­sible links between them (Crook and Manor 1998). The in­forma­tion collected from these village studies enabled my overall assessment of the level of decentralized governance and the factors that influ­ ence it, as well as how it translates into the delivery of social wel­fare programs. The personally-­conducted, in-­depth village studies provided an on-­the-ground view of how decentralization affected people’s lives, capturing the inter­action of diverse vari­ables and providing a rich account of factors driving decentraliza­ tion’s impact. During the past six decades, India has been ruled by a variety of central gov­ ern­ments that have all highlighted the need to address pov­erty through different programs but have done little to ensure that local structures and polit­ical con­ ditions exist to deliver the programs to the people. The polit­ical focus on top-­ down programs and the intellectual focus on macro­economic and polit­ical structures, have prevented greater understanding of why local structures have often been in­ad­equate to en­ab­ling improved wel­fare. Moreover, macro-­level

16   The promise of decentralization approaches are good for looking at eco­nomic growth, but not neces­sar­ily for analyzing pov­erty alleviation and social wel­fare. The pol­itics of redis­tribu­tion is about effect­ive empowerment of people, which cannot be studied from the top down. It is im­port­ant to study the con­text in which wel­fare changes occur, and doing so requires a view from the bottom up. Large-­scale surveys are by their nature fixed in structure and often do not capture variety in local perception and the complexity of inter­action among factors influ­en­cing outcomes. This study includes local surveys as well as capturing local opinions through free-­ranging inter­views and discussions. Village studies are im­port­ant for capturing a holistic understanding of the factors that enable effi­ca­cious gov­ern­ment. Data gathered by the Indian census and other large-­scale surveys are very good, yet these data are usually only gath­ ered at the district or, at best, the block level. Large-­scale quantitative surveys, while providing broad overviews and trends, depend entirely on asking the right questions, thereby often missing causal insights which living in the villages and having open-­ended conversations with a large cross-­section of village residents can more readily provide. Previous studies of the villages conducted by other researchers were also village-­based, often over extended periods of time. The research villages were chosen because of access to previous studies, since they provide an im­port­ant pre-­decentralization baseline on social wellbeing in the villages that large-­scale datasets do not include. In my pro­ject, data were gathered in two villages in each state and by conducting inter­views with villagers of different social backgrounds. The structured inter­views asked for people’s perception of changes in their well­ being, village governance, and civic mobil­iza­tion. I also asked about their per­ ception of links between these factors and the pres­ence of local gov­ern­ments. This more qualit­at­ive in­forma­tion was supplemented by data collected at the village level and from the panchayat and block offices about the actual function­ ing of Gram Panchayats (GPs) and the social wel­fare programs that they were respons­ible for implementing. All of the case study states are large Indian states, but each differs from the others with regard to the local governance con­ditions at the time when the Pan­ chayat Act was implemented in 1993, as well as the level of social wellbeing in the early 1990s. Uttar Pradesh (UP), in northern India, did not have a his­tory of demo­cratic local governance prior to 1993 and only held panchayat elections in 1995. Its social indic­ators place UP second lowest among the large Indian states. Karnataka, in southern India, also had a his­tory of panchayat gov­ern­ments prior to 1993, though a briefer one than in UP, with average to above-­average social indic­ators in the early 1990s. West Bengal, in eastern India, had a long his­tory of functioning panchayats prior to 1993 and thus is a valu­able case study in its own right. Social indic­ators in West Bengal have made con­sider­able pro­gress since the late 1970s, though in terms of overall social indic­ators, including pov­erty rates, West Bengal still fared around the Indian average in the early 1990s.2 The three case study states represent the combinations of different extremes of panchayat gov­ern­ment implementation. The ad­vant­age of a comparative study

The promise of decentralization   17 that focuses on large Indian states, rather than on mul­tiple coun­tries, is that the Indian states are all part of one federal sys­tem subject to the same laws, includ­ ing the 73rd Amendment mandating decentralization, and receiving the same centrally admin­is­tered programs, including all anti-­poverty and social wel­fare programs. Ruled by the same federal sys­tem, yet each with varying degrees of histories of panchayat rule and local con­ditions, these three states provide the ideal setting for a comparative study of local gov­ern­ments and the role govern­ ance can play in changing social welfare. The range of social outcomes pos­sible with differing levels of functioning local gov­ern­ments is illus­trated by these three states. Prior to the passage of the 73rd amend­ment, Uttar Pradesh did not have a his­tory of demo­cratically elected local gov­ern­ments or other structures providing local control over social program implementation. The lack of local governance in Uttar Pradesh’s extremely unequal soci­ety, ridden with strong caste, gender, and religious differ­enti­ation, resulted in a reaping of social program bene­fits by local elites. However, the election of new local panchayats in Uttar Pradesh has set in motion a cycle where elite dominance and theft of social wel­fare coffers is no longer as easy to maintain and indeed involves distribution of payoffs to the new local gov­ern­ ment representatives. Increasing local aware­ness that monies alloc­ated to pan­ chayats are not reaching the intended programs is causing resentment and has found an outlet in sub­sequent panchayat elections. West Bengal, on the other hand, has had a nearly 30-year his­tory of demo­ cratic panchayats instituted by a pro-­poor, communist gov­ern­ment. The pancha­ yats in West Bengal have had great auto­nomy to help carry through redistributive meas­ures and oversee local social program implementation. This has enhanced local parti­cipa­tion in decision-­making, helped to increase aware­ness, and ulti­ mately helped to improve social indic­ators. Over the years, how­ever, the lack of effect­ive polit­ical com­peti­tion has resulted in capture of local power structures and resources by Communist Party members. Leakage of social resources and anti-­poverty programs to better-­off Communist Party members has decreased the efficacy of local governance and constrained West Bengal’s social wel­fare improvements. Karnataka also had power­ful local panchayats during the 1980s. Though the sys­tem was dismantled in the late 1980s due to polit­ical and bur­eau­cratic pres­ sure, people, par­ticu­larly more vulner­able groups in rural areas, retained strong memories of the great effect­iveness of panchayats in enhancing their social wel­ fare by giving them greater control over local implementation of social wel­fare programs. The his­tory of effect­ive local panchayats and the re-­implementation of the panchayat sys­tem in the early 1990s have created a pos­it­ive cycle of enhanced understanding of the powers and possib­il­ities of panchayats. More­ over, local polit­ical com­peti­tion in an envir­on­ment of an increasingly mobilized, educated cit­izenry has resulted in increased local aware­ness and demand for social rights, thereby resulting in more demo­cratic local governance and better functioning social wel­fare programs.

18   The promise of decentralization

Overview of the book This research addresses a current shortcoming in the field of decentralization ana­lysis. It con­siders how elite power, social stratification, civil soci­ety mobil­ iza­tion, and polit­ical com­peti­tion might interact to enable local governance that improves social wel­fare. Different combinations of these key ingredients have led to varying degrees of demo­cratic rooting and efficacy of local gov­ern­ments in implementing the decentralization program in India. I contend that local gov­ern­ments can make a dif­fer­ence in local wellbeing if the gov­ern­ments are polit­ically com­petit­ive – and thus not captured by elites – if they are held account­able by a mobilized civil soci­ety, and if they have a his­tory of functioning local gov­ern­ments. Having a his­tory of already functioning gov­ ern­ment increases aware­ness of social rights, thereby engendering a more active civil soci­ety. Three mech­an­isms in par­ticu­lar enable demo­cratically functioning and account­able local gov­ern­ments to improve social wel­fare. First, in line with the decentralization liter­at­ure, the pres­ence of local gov­ern­ment brings gov­ern­ ment closer to the people, decreasing phys­ical, as well as social, bar­riers to accessing gov­ern­ment and therefore directly improving social wel­fare. Second, the pres­ence of demo­cratic local gov­ern­ments creates more com­petit­ive pol­itics. As long as no par­ticu­lar social or polit­ical elite captures the local gov­ern­ments, the increased com­peti­tion between par­ties will lead to more account­able and transparent local con­ditions. Under these more com­petit­ive con­ditions, social bene­fits will be disbursed on the basis of need rather than caste, ethnic, or polit­ ical af­fili­ation. Under more com­petit­ive con­ditions, local gov­ern­ments are more ser­vice- and results-­oriented, which causes improved social outcomes for the poor and more vulner­able popu­la­tions. Third, having a demo­cratically function­ ing local gov­ern­ment, including participatory and demo­cratic village assembly meetings, helps to build and root demo­cratic practices at the local village level. Seeing demo­cracy in action also helps raise and reinforce aware­ness of one’s rights; as aware­ness of these rights grows, indi­viduals are more likely to demand their rights through petition-­signing and other social actions that also help improve social wellbeing. These three mech­an­isms through which local gov­ern­ ments can help improve social outcome tend to reinforce each other, building more account­able and demo­cratic gov­ern­ments and thus en­ab­ling better improvements in social wellbeing. Chapter 2 de­scribes the his­tory of decentralization in India, explains the struc­ ture of decentralization and the range of respons­ibil­ities that were devolved to local gov­ern­ments in 1993, and frames the research by introducing the case studies. This chapter indicates that while the impetus for decentralization was not a desire for deepening demo­cracy, the de­cision to decentralize reflected increased polit­ical com­peti­tion and an increasingly vibrant demo­cracy at the national level, which was reflected to varying degrees at the local level. The same decentralized structure was implemented in various polit­ical con­texts in the Indian States, leading to differing results in decentralization’s effect­iveness for social wellbeing.

The promise of decentralization   19 Chapter 3 focuses on the state of Karnataka and explains the his­tory of local gov­ern­ments, power pol­itics, and socio­economic distribution prior to the national program of decentralization. It illus­trates how Karnataka’s innov­at­ive ex­peri­ence with account­able and effect­ive local gov­ern­ments during the 1980s provided for a polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ment. In addition, an aware and mobilized civil soci­ety and consensually united elites provided a fertile ground for the imple­ mentation and flourishing of local gov­ern­ments after 1993. Findings from the village studies illus­trate aware­ness of local gov­ern­ments’ rights and respons­ibil­ ities, the demo­cratic functioning of local gov­ern­ment structures, rising account­ abil­ity of local representatives, and the abil­ity of local governance to enhance social ser­vice delivery, thereby enhancing cit­izens’ wellbeing. Chapter 4 ex­plores decentralization in the state of West Bengal and argues that signi­fic­ant past ex­peri­ence with local governance is not enough to guarantee that decentralized village gov­ern­ments will more effect­ively deliver social ser­vices to their constituents. In West Bengal, three decades of Communist Party rule changed the polit­ical power structures in Bengali villages from a sys­tem based on caste and religion to one based on party mem­ber­ship and hier­archy. While village elites in West Bengal are now more broad-­based and consensual, and village cit­ izens more polit­ically aware and socially mobilized (forming an engaged civil soci­ety), party domination has become the major barrier to further rooting of demo­cracy. Findings from village studies clearly indicate that in West Bengal one of the long-­term costs of virtual single-­party rule for over three decades has been the inefficiency of local gov­ern­ment delivery of social ser­vices and the conse­ quent impact on the poorest and polit­ically disenfranch­ised villagers. In Chapter 5 the study of polit­ical decentralization in Uttar Pradesh illus­trates that decentralizing polit­ical power, in an envir­on­ment of strong social cleavages and in the absence of an active civil soci­ety, leads to further cooption of social ser­vices by the existing elite. In this con­text, demo­cratic decentralization is largely on paper only, with local governance only slowly taking root as aware­ ness of polit­ical rights grows and as polit­ical com­peti­tion increases. In this vicious circle of coopted polit­ical power, the implementation of social programs aimed at decreasing pov­erty and providing a social wel­fare net is likely to be weak, and improvements to social wellbeing incremental. The final chapter summar­izes the overall findings of the case studies with regard to the larger issue of the efficacy of decentralization for social wellbeing in India. Local con­textual factors determine the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to thrive or not, and therefore need to be understood if we are to gain a holistic understanding of the bar­riers to effect­ive decentralization. Decentralized local gov­ern­ment structures have been planted in various polit­ical soils, some rich in demo­cratic governance with little elite capture, more vibrant civil soci­eties and polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ments, and others with less fertile soil for decentralization to flourish. Local dispersion of polit­ical power and consensual elites, together with a his­tory of demo­ cratic local gov­ern­ments and the mobil­iza­tion of  polit­ical and civil soci­ety, is a more fertile ground for the flourishing of demo­cratic, local governance; and better local governance is more likely to lead to improved social wellbeing.

2 Decentralization in India – rooting the state

As with many coun­tries at the end of the twentieth century, India moved from a centralized polit­ical structure toward decentralization of polit­ical powers. Political decentralization to local gov­ern­ments in rural areas was legally mandated throughout India with the passage of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment in 1993. This law delineated a list of respons­ibil­ities that were to be trans­ferred to subnational gov­ern­ment institutions, including the implementation of poverty-­ alleviation, health, and sanitation programs, as well as pri­mary and secondary education. The rationale for trans­ferring these respons­ibil­ities to local gov­ern­ ments was that decentralized governance structures at the village level would enable greater local oversight of resources and thereby less corruption and more resources for better targeting of social programs. Nearly two decades after mandated decentralization in India, it is time to ask whether local gov­ern­ments in India have been able to impact social wellbeing.1

The importance of decentralization in the Indian context The theory that decentralized regimes are more effect­ive at improving social wellbeing is im­port­ant to examine in any con­text but it is par­ticu­larly im­port­ant in a coun­try like India. Any change that promises improved social wellbeing for a coun­try with the largest concentration of the world’s poor is worth studying (Chelliah and Sudarshan 1999; Deaton 2003). Over half a century after its inde­ pend­ence, India’s de­velopment pol­icies have failed to bring signi­fic­ant social wel­fare improvements to many of India’s cit­izens. Admittedly, the 1990s saw some signi­fic­ant pro­gress, with pov­erty rates declining between 1991 and 2001 (Deaton and Kozel 2005), and most social indic­ators at the national level have improved over the past two decades. Yet much remains to be done. A third of Indians still live below the pov­erty line and the same percentage is illit­er­ate (Government of Uttar Pradesh 2001). Moreover, there are indic­ators of widening in­equal­ity since some states have seen greater decreases in pov­erty than other states and urban pov­erty has increased in mid-sized towns. Furthermore, quality of life for the Indian poor is abysmal. Lack of access to pub­lic education inhibits Indians’ chances of upward mobility, and lack of access to good quality pub­lic health care facilities impairs their health and thereby their

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   21 abil­ity to earn a living. Often non-­functioning safety-­net programs, such as the former food-­for-work program or the widows’ pension program, subject the poor and vulner­able to further hardships. A cultural pref­er­ence for the male child and dowries paid to the groom’s family at the time of marriage reduce the quality of life for girls. The con­tinued grip of the caste sys­tem – and upper-­caste rule (par­ ticu­larly in rural areas) – subjects the lower-­caste poor to the double indignity of pov­erty and disrespect. India’s health indic­ators, such as maternal and infant mor­tal­ity rates (MMR and IMR), rank among the worst in Asia. Two-­thirds of Indian chil­dren under five years of age suffer from malnourishment, with the percentage of chil­dren who are underweight being one of the highest in the world and nearly double the rates in sub-­Saharan Africa (Granolati et al. 2005). The ratio of females to males, at 940 females per 1,000 males according to the 2011 census, also con­tinues to be one of the worst in the world. Moreover, spiraling popu­la­tion growth has created a situ­ation where the number of Indians living below the official pov­erty line today, which Planning Commission figures estim­ate to be around 28 percent of the popu­la­tion in 2005, or approximately 300 million people (Planning Commission March 2007), is greater than the entire popu­la­tion of India at the time of inde­pend­ence. India today has the dubious distinction of being the coun­try with the largest concentration of poor, malnourished and illit­er­ate people in the world. This lack of pro­gress in social wellbeing is a manifestation of the shortcomings of more than 60 years of “pro-­poor” social and eco­nomic pol­icies on the part of the Indian gov­ern­ment. Furthermore, ag­greg­ate figures mask vast regional dif­fer­ences. Faster-­growing states like Gujarat or Maharashtra have not seen the expected accom­panying large improvements of social indic­ators. On the other hand, decreasing pov­erty and improved social indic­ators (despite low growth rates) in states like West Bengal and Kerala – states which have had a com­mit­ ment to improving the lives of the poor, and which in West Bengal’s case have elected local gov­ern­ments for over 30 years to ensure the delivery of social programs at a local level – proves that relying on the trickle-­down effect of eco­ nomic growth alone will not solve Indian pov­erty. It also shows that the long-­standing decentralization experiment in a state like West Bengal deserves greater scrutiny, par­ticu­larly in light of West Bengal’s unique his­tory of con­tinu­ ously elected local gov­ern­ments stretching back 15 years before the passage of the amend­ment mandating decentralization. Moreover, despite more than six decades of demo­cracy, guided eco­nomic de­velopment, and central gov­ern­ment programs to increase social wellbeing, improvements have been well below the targets set by the gov­ern­ment for itself, and repeated promises of pov­erty alleviation and basic education for all have gone unfulfilled. The higher growth rates India has ex­peri­enced since the late 1980s and par­ticu­larly during the past two decades have resulted in improvements in social wel­fare. Yet these improvements have not been signi­fic­ant or uniform throughout India. Among large states, Haryana, for example, had the highest per capita net state do­mestic product in 2008–2009, yet also had India’s most skewed ratio of females to males in 2011. Inter- and intrastate social

22   Decentralization in India – rooting the state indic­ators have in fact been widening since the early 1990s, with social indic­ ators stagnating in Bihar and to some extent in Uttar Pradesh, while showing greater improvements in states like Kerala, and Karnataka. In fact Kerala, a his­ tor­ically low-­growth state, has the highest social indic­ators of any Indian state, while states with higher eco­nomic growth rates, such as Haryana or Gujarat, have not re­gis­tered the commensurate growth in social indic­ators. The lack of signi­fic­ant correlation between high-­growth states and states that have shown greater improvements in social indic­ators indicates that political-­economy explanations alone lack explan­at­ory power. Other promising explanations of the differential changes in social indic­ators between Indian states need to be explored. Some prominent eco­nomic and polit­ical theories fail to explain the different rates of improvement in social wellbeing between Indian states. Trickle-­down of eco­nomic growth and centrally sponsored de­velopment schemes have failed to signi­fic­antly reduce pov­erty and improve social indic­ators across the board. Although some evid­ence has shown that strong, pro-­poor state gov­ern­ments have been more effect­ive at implementing pol­icies to help the poor (Kohli 1987, 1997), in the longer term even some pro-­poor state gov­ern­ments such as West Bengal have failed to ensure con­tinued rapid improvements in social wellbeing, par­ticu­larly for the poorest segment of the popu­la­tion. Simply having good eco­ nomic growth rates, anti-­poverty programs, or a pro-­poor state pol­icy is not enough. What is needed is a sys­tem that enables the delivery of social ser­vices on the ground and that ensures account­abil­ity for pub­lic programs at the local level. India’s foray into decentralization has been heralded as the solution to this prob­lem. Over a decade into the decentralization experiment it is appropriate to ask whether these local gov­ern­ments actu­ally mat­ter for improving social wellbeing. And, if local gov­ern­ments do mat­ter for social wellbeing, what types of local gov­ern­ments are more likely to ensure account­abil­ity2 and deliver social services?

Democratic political space enabling decentralization Elected village gov­ern­ments were not new to India in the early 1990s. Political decentralization, when it did take place in India in the early 1990s, was the culmination of years of debate and a series of committees tasked to outline the neces­sary steps. What enabled a consti­tu­tional amend­ment mandating polit­ical decentralization throughout India in 1992–1993, how­ever, was a changed polit­ ical envir­on­ment within India, which also reflected the changing nature of pol­ itics globally at the end of the twentieth century. Rarely do states give up power without being pushed to do so by polit­ical circumstances or demands from their cit­izenry. Moreover, polit­ical decentralization of power away from central gov­ ern­ments during times of increased civil soci­ety activism and demands for decentralization might mask attempts by polit­ical par­ties to use local gov­ern­ ments as a source of patronage in order to serve their fin­an­cial needs (Mitra 2001). In India, as in other decentralizing states, the mandating and imple­ menting of decentralization in the early 1990s reflected the growing nature of

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   23 demo­cratic institutions and an increasingly inclusive pol­itics in India. This evolving polit­ical envir­on­ment put pressure on polit­ical institutions and gov­ern­ ment to move beyond the pro­ced­ural aspects of demo­cracy toward embracing substantive democracy. The turn toward substantive demo­cracy in the late 1990s built upon 45 years of broadening polit­ical space and a growing understanding of and demand for polit­ical rights. After inde­pend­ence in 1947 and the adoption of a consti­tu­tion in 1949, India became one of the first decol­on­ized coun­tries to adopt British-­style parlia­ment­ary demo­cracy and institutions, including full adult franch­ise. Debates during the Constituent Assembly and within the Indian par­lia­ment sub­sequent to inde­pend­ence grappled with the issue of structuring the newly inde­pend­ent state. Discussion focused on whether polit­ical power should be decentralized and vested at the village level, as envisioned by the father of the inde­pend­ence movement, Mahatma Gandhi, or whether the requirements of a newly inde­pend­ent coun­try and the need to modernize and foster de­velopment by the state required a centralized gov­ern­ment. Where the balance should lie within a federal sys­tem – with the central gov­ern­ment or the indi­vidual states – was debated in the Constituent Assembly. The majority view of the necessity of a federal structure with a strong center prevailed (Government of India Friday, Novem­ber 25, 1949). This debate reflected the tenuous relationship between a newly emerging demo­ cracy built on the Gandhian notions of indi­vidual and village empowerment, on the one hand, and the quest for modernization with its accom­panying drive toward centralization, on the other (Rodriques 2009). Debate in the Constituent Assembly focused on the location of polit­ical power in a newly inde­pend­ent federal repub­lic while also reflecting the inev­it­able gulf separating the pro­ced­ures and institutions of demo­cracy from equality and substantive demo­cracy. Recognition of this gulf was exemplified by one of the main architects of the Indian consti­tu­tion, B. R. Ambedkar, in his concluding speech to the Constituent Assembly on the eve of passing the Indian constitution: On the 26th of Janu­ary 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contra­dic­ tions. In pol­itics we will have equality and in social and eco­nomic life we will have in­equal­ity. In pol­itics we will be recognizing the prin­ciple of one man, one vote and one vote, one value. In our social and eco­nomic life, we shall, by reason of our social and eco­nomic structures, con­tinue to deny the prin­ciple of one man, one value. How long shall we con­tinue to live this life of contra­dic­tions? How long shall we con­tinue to deny equality in our social and eco­nomic life? If we con­tinue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our polit­ical demo­cracy in peril. [emphasis added] (Government of India Friday, November 25, 1949) The founda­tional debates of the nascent Indian demo­cracy thus reflected re­cog­ ni­tion that attainment of inde­pend­ence and enshrinement of elect­oral demo­cracy did not mean that substantive demo­cracy had been achieved. These debates also highlighted the existential questions Indian politicians were struggling with,

24   Decentralization in India – rooting the state par­ticu­larly whether India would be a centralized or decentralized state and what institutional mech­an­isms would best help the spread of demo­cracy. The often-­ heated debates during India’s three-­year-long Constitutional Assembly (1946–1949) reflected divergent approaches to building the new state and institutionalizing its nascent demo­cracy. While some followers of the Gandhian approach ad­voc­ated a bottom-­up approach to building demo­cracy through decentralized “village repub­lics,” others criticized this approach as likely leading to the undermining of demo­cracy. Addressing a view within the Constitutional Assembly that the new consti­tu­tion should incorp­or­ate “the ancient Hindu model of a State” based on village and district-­level gov­ern­ments rather than fol­low­ing a strictly Western approach, B. R. Ambedkar reflected: That [village communties] have survived through all vicissitudes may be a fact. But mere survival has no value. The question is on what plane they have survived. Surely on a low, on a selfish level. I hold that these village repub­lics have been the ruina­tion of India. I am therefore surprised that those who condemn Provincialism and com­munalism should come forward as champions of the village. What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-­mindedness and com­munalism? I am glad that the Draft Constitution has discarded the village and adopted the indi­vidual as its unit. (Government of India 1948a) Eventually, India was estab­lished as a federal repub­lic in 1950 with the framers of the consti­tu­tion intending a central, national gov­ern­ment but also self-­ governing sub-­national units. Yet despite the federal framework, the trans­fer of power from the center to the states and sub-­state level, and with it the broadening of polit­ical space, proceeded only gradually. The slow trans­fer of power to Indian states is evid­enced by the misuse of central gov­ern­ment power with regard to Article 356 of the Indian consti­tu­tion. This art­icle, which governs relations between the union and state gov­ern­ments, is located in the part of the consti­tu­tion dealing with “Emergency Provisions.” Also known as the President’s Rule or Central Rule, Article 356 allows the pres­ id­ent to dismiss the gov­ern­ment of a state (based on the advice of the governor of that state) if the pres­id­ent is convinced that the administration of the state can no longer be carried out in accordance with the pro­vi­sions of the consti­tu­tion. Once the gov­ern­ment is dismissed, the pres­id­ent of India becomes the executive of the state. However, since Indian pres­id­ents have no dis­cre­tionary powers, they have to act in accordance with the advice of the central gov­ern­ment, de facto en­ab­ling the ruling party or co­ali­tion to rule the state’s affairs – hence Central Rule. Between 1950 and the early 1990s, Central Rule was invoked more than 100 times to dismiss state gov­ern­ments. In the majority of these cases, par­ties or co­ali­tions in opposi­tion to the central gov­ern­ment headed the state. While the purpose of the consti­tu­tional art­icle was to address polit­ical in­stability and maintain national unity, the frequent abuse of this art­icle exposed how the balance of

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   25 power tilted toward the central gov­ern­ment. It was not until the 1994 Supreme Court ruling in Bommai v. Union of India that abuse of Article 356 was reined in, thereby strengthening the federal nature of the Indian state and rebalancing the relationship between the central gov­ern­ment and the states. The unitary nature of the Indian state during the first few decades after inde­ pend­ence was also evid­ent in the percentage of votes won by the main party. After inde­pend­ence, the movement that had spearheaded Indian inde­pend­ence, the Indian National Congress (INC), transformed itself into India’s governing polit­ical party, the Congress Party, with Jawaharlal Nehru as prime min­is­ter. The legitimacy bestowed on the Congress Party by virtue of it inheriting the mantle of freedom fighters and the charismatic rule of its first prime min­is­ter enabled the Congress Party to firmly entrench itself in national as well as subnational pol­itics in India. While a variety of polit­ical par­ties representing national and subnational constituencies competed for power in parlia­ment­ary elections, the Congress Party repeatedly received the largest number of votes in the 50 years post-­independence and thus formed India’s gov­ern­ments until 1999, with the notable exception of 1977–1980, when post-­emergency rule elections ushered in a brief Janata Party gov­ern­ment. In parlia­ment­ary elections from 1951 to 1991 the Congress Party con­tinu­ally received 35 to 50 percent of votes, typ­ic­ally 20 percentage points more than the second most pop­ular party. Moreover, from 1951 to 1989, again with the exception of 1977–1980, the Congress Party won an abso­lute majority of seats in par­lia­ment. The continual governance of the Congress party for the first five decades of inde­pend­ence firmly entrenched Congress as the singular governing polit­ical party. It ruled through its network of party structures and sys­tem of polit­ical patronage down to the village level, and was dominated by wealthy landowners, entre­pren­eurs and social elites. The pro­ced­ural and centralized nature of Indian demo­cracy was reflected in the solid grip on Indian pol­itics by the Congress party and its leaders up until the early 1990s. The Congress Party dominated the polit­ical landscape not only in terms of the percentage of votes it received nearly con­tinu­ously for 40 post-­ independence years, but also in terms of their virtual mono­poly on repres­enta­ tion of an extremely hetero­geneous popu­la­tion, with social cleavages ranging from ethnic, linguistic, and regional, to caste and religious. As seen in Figure 2.1, the number of national par­ties (having constituencies and a polit­ical base in more than one state) remained rel­at­ively constant, at around seven. However, when tallying the total number of polit­ical par­ties competing in national parlia­ ment­ary elections in the post-­independence period, the combined number of national par­ties as well as state par­ties that only had a base in one state remained at 50 or below until 1989 when the number increased dramatically, tripling from 34 par­ties competing in 1984 to 114 par­ties in the parlia­ment­ary elections of 1989 and rising further sub­sequently. The entrance of increased numbers of polit­ical par­ties representing diverse constituencies repres­ented a loosening of the hold of the Congress Party and the widening of repres­enta­tion of diverse groups in India’s national pol­itics towards the end of the 1980s. Moreover, since the elections of 1989, every Indian gov­ern­ment, re­gard­less of whether it was led

26   Decentralization in India – rooting the state 400

Number of parties

350 300 250

Number of national parties in general elections Total number of parties (national, state and independant) in general elections

200 150 100 50 0

1951 1957 1962 1967 1971 1977 1980 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009 Election year

Figure 2.1 Number of national versus total (national, state and independent) parties competing in parliamentary elections, 1951–2009 (source: Election Commission of India. Various years).

by the Congress Party, has been a co­ali­tion gov­ern­ment and has not been able to form without the help of several subnational par­ties. The con­sequence has been greater interdependency between national par­ties and state gov­ern­ments, and in turn a less dismissive attitude toward state gov­ern­ments by the national par­ties. Since the late 1980s, polit­ical space at the national level in India has widened to include a greater repres­enta­tion of India’s diverse popu­la­tion. As these diverse inter­ests increasingly found repres­enta­tion and voice at the national level, they con­trib­uted to a deepening of demo­cracy and leveraged greater rights and repres­ enta­tion for subnational governments. The broadening of polit­ical space at the national level in India during the late 1980s and early 1990s was reflected as well in an opening of India’s formerly closed eco­nomy, a gradual shift in the balance of power from the central gov­ern­ ments to the states, and resulting changes to India’s federal sys­tem. Yet, while conventional wisdom has focused on the rise of polit­ical par­ties in India as reflecting a change in locus of power to the subnational level (Chhibber and Kollman 2004), the dy­namics of the increasing number of subnational polit­ical par­ties and the increased polit­ical power of Indian states from the late 1980s were reflective of a fluid and cyclical pro­cess. After 1989, states attained greater bargaining power through co­ali­tion gov­ern­ments, where state-­level polit­ical par­ ties were increasingly key partners in forming national co­ali­tions (Nikolenyi 2010). The demise of majoritarian national gov­ern­ments led by the Congress Party, a concomitant rise in the number of state-­level polit­ical par­ties, and their increased power in national co­ali­tion gov­ern­ments, led to growing pressures for decentralization of polit­ical power to the states. The dy­namics of increasingly consolidated co­ali­tional pol­itics (Chakrabarty 2008) in turn empowered nascent

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   27 subnational polit­ical par­ties, leading to a shift in the balance of power in the center–state relationship from centralized gov­ern­ment toward the states. The consti­tu­tional assignment of some statutory powers to the states, while retaining other powers at the center, is the essence of Indian fed­eral­ism. Yet while the balance within this federal sys­tem favored the central gov­ern­ment up to the late 1980s, a rising parti­cipa­tion of par­ties representing increasingly diverse constituents (Rao 2009) and demanding greater polit­ical rights for states changed this balance so that the center–state relationship became one of interdependence of equals. Moreover, an eco­nomic crisis in 1991 and the gov­ern­ment’s sub­sequent response ushered in the lib­eralization of the Indian eco­nomy. Economic lib­ eralization restored some eco­nomic decision-­making powers to the states, powers that had remained in the hands of the central gov­ern­ment since inde­pend­ ence. Increasing demands for state auto­nomy in eco­nomic and polit­ical decision-­ making were countered by the signi­fic­ant leverage the central gov­ern­ment maintained through the trans­fer of rev­enues to states. Thus, in the eco­nomic as well as the polit­ical sphere the relationship between the central gov­ern­ment and states was, by the early 1990s, increasingly characterized by growing demands and increased leverage of the states, thereby turning center–state relations into a more pluralistic federal sys­tem. This opening of polit­ical space and strengthening of federal structures by the early 1990s in turn created an envir­on­ment friendly to polit­ical decentralization.

Historical background of decentralization in India India has a long his­tory of local gov­ern­ments dating back to pre-­colonial times, with evid­ence of panchayats (assemblies of five elders who adju­dic­ated village affairs) well before the advent of British India. Members of these village panchayats were almost exclusively from eco­nomic­ally and socially privileged backgrounds and almost exclusively male and upper-­caste. During the British period, local self-­governments were formalized and given greater weight. In 1882 under the Viceroy of India, Lord Ripon, the Ripon Resolution called for institutionalization of elected local gov­ern­ments, from muni­cipal gov­ern­ments in urban areas to the block level (administratively just above the village level and below the district level) in rural areas. Despite the fact that the Ripon Resolution is today con­ sidered the “Magna Carta of local demo­cracy in India,” implementation of its re­com­mendations at the turn of the previous century proceeded slowly (Mathew and Mathew 2003). However, the ideal of local self-­governance was incorp­or­ated by India’s inde­pend­ence movement, and par­ticu­larly its chief champion, Mahatma Gandhi (Mathew and Mathew 2003). The idea of decentralized gov­ern­ ments in the form of Gram Panchayats (village gov­ern­ments) was central to the ideo­logical framework of the nationalist movement in India. Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of an inde­pend­ent India focused on the notion of village self-­rule (“Panchayat Swaraj”) as the basic building block of demo­cracy. His vision of local self-­governance focused not only on the structures and institutions of gov­ern­ment,

28   Decentralization in India – rooting the state but also on egal­it­arian com­mun­ity building (Parel 1997). India’s first prime min­ is­ter, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote an entire book on the subject of com­mun­ity de­velopment and coined the term “panchayat raj,” stating that local gov­ern­ments were the founda­tion of gov­ern­ment institutions and that unless local gov­ern­ment structures were “sound[,] the upper structure would be weak” (Nehru 1965). After inde­pend­ence, the drafters of the consti­tu­tion engaged in lively debate about local governance. Those who ad­voc­ated enshrining Gandhi’s ideas about decentralized power to Indian villages were countered by those who insisted that Indian villages were the strongholds of con­ser­vat­ive caste-­ridden social mores and therefore, could not be entrusted as agents of sociopolit­ical change. Local gov­ern­ments were finally included in Part IV, Article 40 of the consti­tu­tion (which forms part of the Directive Principles of State Policy): “The state should take steps to organ­ise village panchayats and endow them with such power and authority as may be neces­sary to enable them to function as units of self-­ government” (Government of India 1948b). In fact, local panchayats were estab­ lished by most state gov­ern­ments in India after inde­pend­ence. Yet without sup­port at the national level, the implementation of panchayats languished. During the four intervening decades between the writing of the consti­tu­tion and the 1993 amend­ment enshrining decentralization, the discussion on decentralization was punctuated by a series of committees on the issue. The debates sur­round­ ing decentralization and lack of concrete action up to 1993 reflected the greater power of the central gov­ern­ment in the federal relationship until the early 1990s. Recognition that utilization of local gov­ern­ment structures was not pro­gressing led in 1957 to the estab­lishment of the Balwantrai Mehta Committee. Charged with evaluating the extent to which the national program of com­mun­ity de­velopment pro­jects had worked together with decentralized gov­ern­ment structures, the committee pointed to a greater need to involve rural com­munit­ies, and re­com­mended the organ­iza­tion of “statutory representative bodies” by the states (Government of India 1957). It also made a range of re­com­mendations to strengthen local gov­ern­ ments, including programs to de­velop local agri­cul­ture and the delivery of ser­vices such as drinking water (Singh 1994). However, the Balwantrai Mehta Committee’s suggestions did not have the power of law, which left it up to indi­vidual states to enact legis­la­tion to institutionalize local governments. Over the next two years all states passed panchayat legis­la­tion and by the early 1960s, local gov­ern­ments had been elected in most parts of India. In 1963 another committee, under the leadership of K. Santhanam, was appointed to investigate how to provide greater fin­an­cial auto­nomy to local gov­ern­ments. The committee provided re­com­mendations a few months later, yet the gov­ern­ment did not institutionalize any of them. Due to elite domination of village pol­itics, local elections turned out local gov­ern­ments that were demo­cratic in name only. As with pol­itics at the national level, where the Congress Party ruled with hege­ monic power, the same elites who had tradi­tion­ally gov­erned India were elected. Furthermore, without any enforcement of local elections by the central gov­ern­ment and opposi­tion to decentralization by vested inter­ests ranging from state gov­ern­ments and civil ser­vants to local polit­ical party bosses, the

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   29 sub­sequent elections were dropped in most states and local governance structures soon reverted to the previous rule by pat­ri­archical caste-­based elites. By the early 1970s panchayat elections were basically defunct in all Indian states, while the virtual one-­party rule of the Congress Party under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appeared to have solidified Congress’ hold at the national and state level. However, by the mid-­1970s the calculus between the states and the federal gov­ern­ment started to change. Prime Minister Gandhi’s strong-­arm tactics, which were aimed at bypassing the old-­guard-dominated, clientalistic structure of the Congress Party to directly appeal to voters, started to backfire. The con­text of the 1975–1977 Emergency Rule declared by Indira Gandhi and the groundswell of anti-­Indira Gandhi and anti-­Congress sentiment in the wake of the Emergency, led to the first national elect­oral defeat for the Congress Party in 1977 by the Janata Party. The Emergency Period not only led to the ousting of the Congress Party at the national level, it also changed the federal bargain between the states and the center. Henceforth any attempt by the center to consolidate or even expand power at the expense of the states was going to be perceived as an illegitimate undermining of state authority. When the Janata Party briefly came to power it sought to estab­lish itself at the state and local levels as well as nationally. It is likely that it was Janata’s need to break the polit­ical patronage network that was so firmly controlled by the entrenched Congress Party that led to its focus on decentralization. Under the national Janata gov­ern­ment, the Ashok Mehta Committee was appointed in 1977 to suggest avenues for rekindling local gov­ern­ment structures and thereby eliciting greater grassroots parti­cipa­tion in de­velopment (Singh 1994). The Ashok Mehta Committee suggested a two-­tiered local gov­ern­ment structure, with one sub-­state gov­ern­ment at the district level and another at the block level below the district. The Committee was also notable for linking local gov­ern­ments and de­velopment efforts. In its 1978 report on local gov­ern­ments, or Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs), it suggested ways of strengthening local gov­ern­ments in order to make them agents for furthering social de­velopment, re­com­mending that they parti­cip­ate in the fields of agri­cul­ture, forestry, cottage industries, and wel­fare ac­tiv­ities (Singh 1994). Many of the suggestions made by the Ashok Mehta Committee, from repres­ enta­tion of lower castes in local gov­ern­ment elections (on the basis of their popu­la­tion) and parti­cipa­tion of polit­ical par­ties in PRI elections to devolution of de­velopment functions to local gov­ern­ments, would later become institutionalized in the 1993 consti­tu­tional amend­ment. At the time, how­ever, the Ashok Mehta Committee’s re­com­mendations were accepted and implemented only by the four non-­Congress state gov­ern­ments of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, and Jammu and Kashmir. These states took the committee’s re­com­ mendations as a mandate to change their state laws to strengthen their panchayat sys­tem, thereby also en­ab­ling their ruling party’s abil­ity to build a patronage network down to the village level. However, as the power of the Janata gov­ern­ment at the national level started to wane, leading to a return of the Congress Party in 1980, central gov­ern­ment sup­port for decentralization ebbed

30   Decentralization in India – rooting the state again. This left the impetus for decentralization with the indi­vidual states. The states, other than Karnataka for a brief period in the late 1980s and West Bengal under Communist Party rule since 1977, had little incentive to give away polit­ ical power to local gov­ern­ments. The re­com­mendations of the Ashok Mehta Committee thus languished, as those of such committees had before. During the 1980s the Congress Party appointed various commissions and studies that reaffirmed the Ashok Mehta Committee re­com­mendations, but without any polit­ical incentive to decentralize, no re­com­mendations were implemented. In 1985 yet another committee, the G.  V. K. Rao Committee, re­com­ mended revitalizing the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem in order to enhance rural de­velopment, but its re­com­mendations were also not enacted. A year later the L. M. Singhvi Committee and sub­sequently a committee under the chairmanship of P.  K. Thungon again studied the panchayat sys­tem and re­com­mended that local gov­ern­ments be institutionalized through a consti­tu­tional amend­ment. During the late 1980s Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi championed the idea of a consti­tu­tional amend­ment to strengthen local gov­ern­ments. The 1989 L.  M. Singhvi Committee ad­voc­ated for enshrinement of polit­ical decentralization. In May 1989 the 64th Amendment Bill, based largely on the Ashok Mehta Committee’s re­com­mendations but also seeking to bypass state gov­ern­ments and estab­lish a direct link between the central and local gov­ern­ments, was introduced to par­lia­ment. While the bill received the required two-­thirds majority in the lower house of par­lia­ment, it fell two votes shy of the required numbers in the upper house. At the same time the gov­ern­ment of Rajiv Gandhi was defeated in 1989 and a co­ali­tion gov­ern­ment under the banner of the “National Front” came to power. In 1990 the National Front gov­ern­ment introduced a revamped 64th Amendment, known as the 74th Amendment, which included urban and rural local gov­ern­ments. This amend­ment also languished in par­lia­ment, while the National Front focused on trying to keep together its coalition. The National Front gov­ern­ment was short-­lived and soon replaced by the Congress Party in 1991. Yet despite the in­abil­ity of the National Front to push adoption of the 74th Amendment through par­lia­ment, both the incoming Congress Party as well as opposi­tion leaders pub­licly voiced sup­port for legally enshrining elected local gov­ern­ments. The increased com­mit­ment of all polit­ical par­ties to decentralization was a reflection of the changing nature of pol­itics in India by the early 1990s, espe­cially the demise of Congress Party hege­mony and the entrance of a variety of new polit­ical par­ties, many with regional, linguistic and caste-­based constituencies. Decentralization presented the perfect vehicle for these newer par­ties to estab­lish links at the grassroots level and thereby counter the entrenched Congress Party ma­chinery. For the Congress Party, the increased challenges to its authority at the national, as well as the state and subnational levels, presented by the increasingly crowded field of polit­ical par­ties, necessitated a reigniting of its polit­ical base and party ma­chinery at the subnational levels. Decentralization of power to subnational institutions sim­ilarly presented an oppor­tun­ity for the Congress Party to use its estab­lished subnational party structures to ward off the challenges presented by the increased competition.

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   31 By the early 1990s the polit­ical envir­on­ment at the national level had therefore changed to one where the polit­ical par­ties that were new entrants to national rule as well as the formerly dominant Congress Party saw sup­port for subnational polit­ical institutions to be in their long-­term inter­est. The stage was thus set for passage of decentralization.

The 73rd Constitutional Amendment With increased sup­port in par­lia­ment for polit­ical decentralization, the Congress­led gov­ern­ment of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao introduced two bills seeking consti­tu­tional amend­ments to enshrine rural and urban panchayats in 1991. A year later, in late 1992, both amend­ments were passed by the Indian par­lia­ment, and in early 1993 the required two-­thirds majority of state assemblies ratified the amend­ments, thereby legally mandating decentralization in rural and muni­cipal areas throughout India. These consti­tu­tional amend­ments, the 73rd Amendment for rural panchayats and the 74th for urban ones, made India one of the most polit­ically decentralized coun­tries in the world (World Bank 2004). The final impetus for decentralization among India’s main polit­ical par­ties was a response to pressure from an increasingly com­petit­ive array of polit­ical par­ties at the national and subnational levels. Democratic pressure to bring gov­ ern­ment closer to cit­izens, including poorer and mar­ginal groups, and to create more account­able and transparent polit­ical institutions at the local level, finally pushed legislators to pass the consti­tu­tional amend­ment. After 45 years of sover­ eignty, years of parlia­ment­ary debate, and a series of special commissions, the Indian par­lia­ment finally passed a consti­tu­tional amend­ment to decentralize that was far-­reaching in its potential im­plica­tions for participatory demo­cracy and improvements in peoples’ social wellbeing. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment set the framework for the structure of local gov­ern­ment and required every state to enact legis­la­tion or amend its own panchayat laws by April 1994 in conformity with the consti­tu­tion, to delegate polit­ical powers to local gov­ern­ments in rural areas, and to hold local gov­ern­ ment elections by April 1995. Political powers as well as fiscal trans­fers were intended to make up the decentralization package. The wording of the amend­ ment also clearly conveyed its intent: local gov­ern­ments were to become institutions of self-­government, where the parti­cipa­tion of cit­izens in direct and repres­enta­tional demo­cracy at the village level would lead to greater cit­izen involvement in the pro­cess of planning for de­velopment as well as greater social justice. Direct cit­izen parti­cipa­tion in the selection of beneficiaries for anti-­ poverty programs was to ground demo­cracy at the village level. The 73rd Amendment, known as the Panchayat Raj Amendment, was envisioned as a means for estab­lishing demo­cracy at the village level (Thomas Isaac and Franke 2002). By ordering local gov­ern­ment elections in every village, the amend­ment repres­ented a top-­down approach to instilling local governance in the hopes of deepening demo­cracy, furthering local gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity through village-­level social audit, and en­ab­ling better delivery of pub­lic social

32   Decentralization in India – rooting the state ser­vices to improve cit­izen’s social wellbeing. It mandated a uniform, three-­ tiered structure of subnational gov­ern­ments throughout India’s large states (see Figure 2.2), a two-­tiered structure in small states, and left to state gov­ern­ments the changing of state laws in order to conform to the consti­tu­tional amend­ment as well as the implementation of these structures. The uniform three-­tiered local gov­ern­ment structure in all states was to include elected representatives at the district level (the level right below each Indian state in rural areas), village or Gram Panchayat level (or a group of villages if so speci­fied by the governor of the respective state), and an inter­medi­ate level “between the village and district levels speci­fied by the Governor of a State by pub­lic notification to be the inter­ medi­ate level” (Government of India 1992). All local gov­ern­ments were to have uniform five-­year terms, with direct elections to constitute new panchayats to be held before the expiry of the five-­year term. An inde­pend­ent Election Commission was mandated for each state to supervise and direct local gov­ern­ment elections. Of par­ticu­lar note was the 73rd Amendment’s defining of the Gram Sabha as constituting all re­gis­tered voters within the Gram Panchayat. These Gram Sabhas were to meet regu­larly and were seen as the main mech­an­ism for providing account­abil­ity and cit­izen feedback in the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem. By being entrusted with reviewing Gram Panchayat accounts and reports, the Gram Sabha was essentially given an auditing function. Importantly, the Gram Sabha meetings were to identi­fy the village beneficiaries of anti-­poverty programs. Though some researchers of decentralization in India have argued that the wording of the 73rd Amendment was vague and did not devolve substantial powers to local gov­ern­ments (Oommen 1995; Jha 1999; Manor 2004), the polit­ ical powers entrusted to village gov­ern­ments and the quotas to ensure the parti­ cipa­tion of dis­advant­aged groups repres­ented a decisive break from the past District-level Panchayat Representatives are directly elected. Chairpersons of block-level panchayats, as well as members of parliament, MLAs, and MLCs, can be representatives.

Taluk/Block-level Panchayat Representatives are directly elected. Chairpersons of Gram Panchayats, as well as members of parliament, MLAs, and MLCs, can be representatives of this intermediate panchayat.

Village/Gram-level Panchayat Gram Panchayat representatives, including the head of the Gram Panchayat, are directly elected by voters within the panchayat’s jurisdiction.

Figure 2.2  The three-tiered panchayat structure.

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   33 top-­down approach to gov­ern­ment in India. Prior to the passage of the amend­ ment, the election of local gov­ern­ments had been at the dis­cre­tion of the indi­ vidual state gov­ern­ments. This meant that with a few exceptions, local gov­ern­ment elections had not taken place for several decades and that rural de­velopment was managed by state government-­appointed officials charged with implementing the various pub­lic rural de­velopment and anti-­poverty programs. Political and administrative power, oversight and account­abil­ity rested at the district or state level. Before implementation of the PRIs there was also no institutional mech­an­ism for cit­izens of a village to com­munic­ate with the gov­ern­ ment, nor any mech­an­ism for holding account­able the civil ser­vants who managed rural de­velopment programs. The passing of the 73rd Amendment changed this, providing village residents with a direct role in managing rural de­velopment programs, ranging from anti-­poverty schemes to education and health ser­vice delivery, and institutionalized channels of communication from the villages up through the block and district and state levels. It also encouraged fiscal decentralization to increase the resources avail­able at the village level for social and eco­nomic development. One of the most path-­breaking aspects of the 73rd Amendment was its attempt at social engineering by mandating quotas or “reserved seats” for formerly disenfranch­ised groups. One-­third of all panchayat seats, urban and rural, at all tiers of local gov­ern­ment, including the seats for the chairperson of the respective panchayats, were reserved for women. Moreover, among these positions reserved for women, there was to be a rotation of caste backgrounds in the reserved seats. Furthermore, a percentage of panchayat seats that reflected the percentage of Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the local district’s popu­la­ tion were reserved for SC and ST, including seats for the chairperson of the panchayats. Of the seats reserved for the SC/ST popu­la­tion, one-­third had to be reserved for SC/ST women (Government of India 1992). The reserved position of chairperson of the panchayats was also to be rotated among different panchayats within a district. State legislatures were given additional powers to further reserve panchayat seats for vulner­able or “backward groups” within their state. Moreover, in 1996 the Panchayat Act was extended to cover tribal areas of states, designated as “Scheduled Areas.” The Provisions of the Panchayats (Exten­sion to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996, was added to ensure that local gov­ ern­ment structures would respect the customary law, social and religious practices, and traditional com­mun­ity resources management of the respective tribal com­munit­ies. This Act also took the oppor­tun­ity to more specifically define the duties of the local gov­ern­ments across India, the Gram Panchayat in par­ticu­lar. The Act stated that in Scheduled Areas, the Gram Sabha was to function as a cultural storehouse in order “to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the people, their cultural identity, com­mun­ity resources and the customary mode of disputes res­olu­tion” (Government of India 1996). Yet this Act also further defined the role of the Gram Sabha as being the key institution through which participatory demo­cracy would be enabled. The Gram Sabha was given the respons­ib­ility of approving all pub­lic socio­economic de­velopment programs and

34   Decentralization in India – rooting the state pro­jects for their village before they were implemented. Gram Sabhas were also to identi­fy or select the beneficiaries of these de­velopment programs. By reiterating that the power to give final approval to social and anti-­poverty programs and select beneficiaries for these programs rested not with Gram Panchayat representatives, but instead with the village electorate, this Act further clarified that the local village electorate were to play an in­teg­ral part in the delivery and targeting of pub­lic programs aimed at improving social wellbeing. The linking of local gov­ern­ments and pub­lic programs aimed at improving de­velopment in rural areas was for the first time legally enshrined in the 73rd Amendment. Article 243G of the 73rd Amendment stated that states should trans­fer “powers and authority” in order to enable panchayats “to function as institutions of self-­governance” (Government of India 1992). The same Article also suggested the devolution of respons­ibil­ities and powers to local gov­ern­ ments for the pre­para­tion of plans and implementation of programs with regards to two overall respons­ibil­ities, eco­nomic de­velopment and social justice. Article 243G further stated that the broad cat­egory of eco­nomic de­velopment and social justice is speci­fied in the 11th Schedule to the 73rd Amendment. This schedule devolved a wide-­ranging list of 29 subject areas to the village panchayats (see Appendix A), from implementation of land reforms and pov­erty and social wel­ fare programs, to delivery of education and health ser­vices, and investment in phys­ical infrastructure (Government of India 1992). This trans­fer of respons­ib­ ility to local gov­ern­ments in such a wide range of areas was signi­fic­ant because the central gov­ern­ment had had extensive anti-­poverty programs in place for • Panchayats, or local governments, were to be institutions of self-government. • A three-tiered structure of local governments at the sub-state levels of district, block and village levels for all states with populations over two million. States with smaller populations were to have a two-tiered structure of local governments. • One-third of seats at all levels of local governments were to be reserved for women, including the seat of the chairperson. • Seats at all levels of local government were to be reserved for members of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in proportion to their percentage of the local population, including the seat of the chairperson. • Direct elections every five years of local government representatives at all levels. • The village electorate, or Gram Sabha, was to deliberate and approve socioeconomic development programs of the Gram Panchayat, or village government, and be responsible for the selection of beneficiaries of anti-poverty programs. • A State Finance Commission was to be created in each state to review panchayat finances every five years and to decide on allocation of State funds to the different layers of the panchayats. • A State Electoral Commission was to be created to prepare for and conduct all panchayat elections.

Figure 2.3 Key provisions of the 73rd Amendment mandating rural decentralization (source: Government of India 1992). Note Emphasis added.

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   35 several decades, yet the efficiency and effect­iveness of these programs had been low. The 1993 Panchayat Act was a conscious move to an­chor at the local level a wide range of central government-­funded programs aimed at decreasing pov­ erty, which included a rural employment guarantee program, a food-­for-work program, a rural housing program, and a national microenterprise program. Statutory re­cog­ni­tion of local gov­ern­ments was a vehicle for furthering self-­ governance at the village level (Jha 2000a) and ensuring that self-­governance would help improve social wel­fare. By involving local cit­izens in the planning, targeting, monitoring, and evalu­ation of pub­lic social programs and pol­icies, this decentralization of polit­ical powers to village cit­izens had an expli­cit focus on improving social wellbeing. In addition to laying out the trans­fer of powers and functions to the lower tiers of gov­ern­ment as part of the overall decentralization pro­cess, the Amendment included a vague statement about local gov­ern­ments receiving adequate funds in order to carry out their respons­ibil­ities. Thus, the trans­fer of funds to panchayat institutions, though suggested, was not mandated, making the Indian decentralization program one of polit­ical, not fiscal, decentralization. All states were to pass legis­la­tion in order to conform with the 73rd Amendment and schedule elections to panchayats every five years. Since the passage of the 73rd Amendment and its implementation throughout India, there have been various studies on the panchayat sys­tem (Webster 1992a, 1992b; Singh 1999; World Bank 2000b, 2000c, 2000d; Crook and Manor 2001; Bhattacharya 2002). Other studies focus on specific aspects of decentralization (Blair 2000; Besley et al. 2004a, 2004b; Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004). Though most of the studies of decentralization in India focus on a par­ticu­lar state or issue, there are emerging data and research on how indi­vidual local gov­ern­ ments and aspects of governance have fared during the nearly two decades since the passage of the decentralization law. The larger debate on the impact of Panchayat Raj Institutions in India since the consti­tu­tional changes of 1992/1993 mirrors the gen­eral debate about the nature and extent of decentralization. In India as in most decentralizing coun­tries, polit­ical decentralization has been legally mandated, though administrative and fin­an­cial decentralization to local gov­ern­ments have lagged behind. Political decentralization was accomplished through the legal institutionalization of three tiers of elected local gov­ern­ments in all rural areas of large Indian states and the trans­fer of respons­ibil­ities of socio­economic de­velopment to village governments.

Administrative decentralization Administrative decentralization aims to redistribute respons­ib­ility, authority, and fin­an­cial resources for the pro­vi­sion of pub­lic ser­vices to subnational, and in the Indian case sub-­state, levels of gov­ern­ment. It involves the trans­fer of respons­ ib­ility of speci­fied pub­lic functions from central gov­ern­ments, ministries, and agencies to field units of these agencies, so that local civil ser­vants come under the jurisdiction of local gov­ern­ments. The 73rd Amendment did not entail any

36   Decentralization in India – rooting the state specific meas­ures for administrative decentralization, and sub­sequent attention to this aspect of decentralization has been minimal. Yet the 73rd Amendment implied that decentralization should include the trans­fer of jurisdiction over local civil ser­vants to local gov­ern­ments. Article 243G of the Amendment states that state legislatures may endow panchayats with the power to enable their functioning as “institutions of self-­government” and that the devolution of powers to panchayats would include the pre­para­tion and implementation of programs to address eco­nomic de­velopment and social justice (Government of India 1992). Public programs to address socio­economic de­velopment and justice were all admin­is­ tered by civil ser­vants, and if local gov­ern­ments were to act as institutions of self-­ government and be respons­ible for socio­economic de­velopment in their area, they would need authority over those civil ser­vants. Thus, administrative decentralization was implied, but remained a weak aspect of decentralization in the Indian con­text. A series of World Bank studies commend India for being among the top performers among de­veloping coun­tries in terms of polit­ical decentralization, though in terms of administrative decentralization – the delegation of “agents of higher levels of gov­ern­ments into lower level arenas” (Manor 1999) – India is found to perform poorly (World Bank 2000b, 2000c, 2000d).

Fiscal decentralization In contrast to the weak focus on administrative decentralization in the 73rd Amendment, the law did entail some guidelines on fiscal decentralization and sub­sequent meas­ures have tried to deepen it. Overall, compared to other de­veloping coun­tries, India has a greater degree of fiscal decentralization due to its federal structure. The new nature of Indian fiscal decentralization, or the trans­fer of respons­ib­ility for expenditure and/or rev­enues to subnational gov­ern­ ments, was laid out in Article 243H of the 73rd Amendment. It states that “. . . the Legislature of a State may, by law, a) authorize a Panchayat to levy, collect and appropriate such taxes, duties, tolls and fees . . . b) assign to a Panchayat such taxes, duties, tolls and fees levied and collected by the State Government . . .” and “provide for making such grants-­in-aid to the Panchayats . . .” (Government of India 1992). The areas crucial to fiscal decentralization – auto­nomy to determine alloca­tion of expenditures and abil­ity to raise rev­enue – are mentioned, but sub-­ state delegation of these authorities is not mandatory. However, Article 243I of the Amendment required the cre­ation of State Finance Commissions within a year of passage of the 73rd Amendment, and every five years there­after, in order to review the fin­an­cial alloca­tions to and fin­an­cial positions of panchayats. Fiscal decentralization also needs to be viewed in the con­text of market-­oriented reforms that were adopted in 1991 in the wake of India’s eco­nomic crisis. The post-­1991 opening of the Indian eco­nomy redefined the role of gov­ern­ment in the eco­nomy and the fiscal relationship between the central gov­ern­ment and the states. Opposing forces have since been at work with the trans­ition from a rel­at­ively closed eco­nomy with centralized planning to resource alloca­tion increasingly based on market signals. On the one hand this eco­nomic trans­ition and parallel

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   37 polit­ical decentralization have led to greater flex­ib­il­ity and oppor­tun­ities for states and local gov­ern­ments to alloc­ate resources and deliver social ser­vices according to their pri­or­ities; on the other hand increasing in­equal­it­ies between regions and states requires a greater role for the center (Rao, Shand et al. 1998). Transfers from central to state gov­ern­ments and on to local gov­ern­ments increased in the post-­1993 period, in both rel­at­ive and abso­lute terms. With the coun­try’s increased prosperity, and as the states and local polit­ical leaders became more vocal and the parti­cipa­tion of polit­ical par­ties became more pluralistic, greater demands for subnational and local resources were met with increased resource flows. The past two decades since the 73rd Amendment con­ tinued to see an increased trans­fer of resources from central to local gov­ern­ ments, though resource mobil­iza­tion by local gov­ern­ments con­tinued to be limited and many de­cisions about alloca­tions of funds con­tinue to remain within the purview of the district and state gov­ern­ments (Vinod Vyasulu 2007). Fiscal trans­fers between the central gov­ern­ment and the states, as a percentage of central gov­ern­ment GDP at market prices during the respective Finance Commission periods, saw an overall rise over the past 60 years, with a decrease in trans­fers during the fin­an­cial crisis of 1989–1995, and a rise since then (see Figure 2.4). Data on fiscal trans­fers from the central and state gov­ern­ments to 6

5

Percentage

4

3

Center–state transfers as a percentage of central government GDP (at market prices) during different Finance Commission (FC) periods

2

1

3r

d

FC

2n d

1s t

FC

(1 95 2

–1

95 (1 7) 95 7 FC –1 96 (1 2) 4t 96 h 2 FC –1 96 (1 6) 5t 96 h 6 FC –1 96 (1 9) 6t 96 h 9 FC –1 97 (1 4) 7t 97 h 4– FC 19 (1 79 8t 97 ) h 9 FC –1 9 (1 84 9t 98 ) h 4 FC –1 9 (1 89 10 98 ) th 9– FC 19 (1 95 11 99 ) th 5– FC 20 (2 00 12 00 ) th 0– FC 20 (2 05 00 ) 5– 20 10 )

0

Figure 2.4 Center–state financial transfers as a percentage of central government GDP, at market prices during the respective Finance Commission (FC) periods (source: Srivastava and Rao 2009).

38   Decentralization in India – rooting the state 10,000 9,000 8,000

Other revenue Grants-in-aid from state government Transfers from central government

Rupees (million)

7,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0

2002–2003 2003–2004 2004–2005 2005–2006 2006–2007 2007–2008 Period

Figure 2.5 Local government revenue, 2002–2008 (million rupees) (source: Finance Commission of India 2010).

local gov­ern­ments has only been collected since 2002. However, as highlighted in Figure 2.5, trans­fers from central and state gov­ern­ments to local gov­ern­ments have increased during the period 2002–2008, while the total rev­enue of local gov­ern­ments has also increased. Fiscal decentralization, in terms of local gov­ ern­ments receiving increased funds at their disposal, has clearly occurred over the past two decades in India. Yet the increased flow of grants and overall trans­ fers of funds to local bodies are largely earmarked for par­ticu­lar ac­tiv­ities or targeted to par­ticu­lar groups. The auto­nomy of the panchayats over alloca­tion of this increased flow of money remains low (Jha 2000b). With an increase in resources flowing to local gov­ern­ments but little auto­nomy of local gov­ern­ments over alloca­tion of these resources, the Indian gov­ern­ment made attempts to ensure that Gram Panchayats, and Gram Sabhas  in  par­ticu­lar, played an increased role in resource management. While the federal structure left it up to each state to determine the extent and pace of decentralization, within the framework of the 73rd Amendment, the central gov­ ern­ment sought to provide guidelines and increased incentives to state gov­ern­ ments to deepen decentralization. Various committees were estab­lished, par­ticu­larly since the late 1990s, to re­com­mend strat­egies for ensuring local

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   39 gov­ern­ment input into the channeling and implementation of central government­sponsored programs. Policy makers have encouraged states to trans­fer greater resources to the panchayats. For example, the 11th Finance Commission was constituted in 1998 to make re­com­mendations, among other tasks, on transforming panchayats into “functionally, fin­an­cially, and administratively viable institutions” (Pal 2000). Incentives were provided to encourage the states to follow up with the central gov­ern­ment re­com­mendations. In a 1999/2000 budget speech, the Finance Minister announced that in order to ensure that resources of the central gov­ern­ ment’s wage employment programs were spent with the “active involvement of the elected PRIs,” the central gov­ern­ment would only release the dis­cre­tionary 20 percent of these funds if the state gov­ern­ment had legislated “elected and empowered PRIs” (Task Force on Panchayati Raj Institutions 2001). In order to determine the extent to which states had devolved powers and empowered local gov­ern­ments, a Panchayat Raj Devolution Index was constructed, based on five indic­ators: (1) consti­tu­tional and polit­ical devolution; (2) administrative devolution; (3) fin­an­cial devolution; (4) functional devolution; and (5) devolution of funds, functionaries and functions to Gram Sabhas (Task Force on Panchayati Raj Institutions 2001). While rankings of states based on this Devolution Index had not been done ten years later, the Indian gov­ern­ment con­tinued its attempts to cajole the states to further trans­fer funds, to devolve the 29 functions listed in the 11th Schedule to the 73rd Amendment, and to institute functionaries at the Gram Panchayat level charged with overseeing specific functions. The central gov­ern­ment also turned to publishing avail­able in­forma­tion on the degree of state com­pliance with the 11th Schedule. As seen in Table 2.1, states varied in their speed of delegating resources and trans­ferring specific tasks to panchayat-­level functionaries, with very few states fol­low­ing the spirit of the 73rd Amendment by delegating respons­ib­ility and funding for all 29 subject areas. The 73rd Amendment left it up to States to decide the extent of rev­enue collection they would delegate to panchayat institutions. The Amendment also mandated the setting up of State Finance Commissions (SFCs). All states complied and set up SFCs, yet most left the revenue-­raising abil­it­ies of local gov­ern­ments unchanged. Local gov­ern­ment institutions were assigned increased respons­ibil­ ities under the 73rd Amendment for social and eco­nomic de­velopment, but there was no cor­res­ponding increase in their revenue-­raising powers to match these increased respons­ibil­ities (Government of India: Ministry of Rural Development 2001). The central gov­ern­ment raises two-­thirds of total pub­lic rev­enue, but controls and spends only one-­third, while the state gov­ern­ments raise about one-­ third, yet control two-­thirds of overall rev­enues (Rao 2000). The asymmetry in rev­enue raising is much more pronounced at the local gov­ern­ment level. Financial powers of Gram Panchayats have increased in terms of the tied resources allotted to them, but are constrained in terms of their abil­ity to raise taxes. Gram Panchayats have some powers to directly levy taxes, but they rarely impose taxes. International ex­peri­ence has shown that the capa­city to raise local

Andhra Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh Assam Bihar Jharkhand Goa Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Karnataka Kerala Madhya Pradesh Chattisgarh Maharashtra Manipur Orissa

States/UTs

 5  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  2 29 15 10 10 18  –  5

13  –  –  –  –  –  – 16 23 29 29 23 23 18 22 25

 2  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  7 29 15  9  9 18  4  3

24 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 27  – 14 19 19 11 29 24

16 29 29 29 29 29 29 13  6  –  –  6  6 11  7  4

Function

27 29 29 29 29 29 29 29 22  – 14 20 20 11 25 26

Functionary

Fund

Functionary

Fund

Function

Nr. of departments/subjects yet to be transferred to Panchayats

Nr. of departments/subjects transferred to Panchayats

Table 2.1 Status of devolution of departments/subjects with funds, functions and functionaries to Panchayat Raj Institutions, by state, 2000 (research states in bold)

 –  7  – 29 29 29  – 29  – 12 12 13 12 13 12 29  –  –  –  –  –  3  – 29 Panchayat system yet to be revived  –  6  –  –

Source: Task Force on Panchayati Raj Institutions 2001.

Punjab Rajasthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttaranchal West Bengal A&N Islands Chandigarh D&N Haveli Daman & Diu Delhi Lakshadweep Pondicherry

29 29  – 29 29 17 17 17 29 29 29 29 29 29

 –  – 29  –  –  9  9 12  –  –  3  –  –  –

23 29

22  –  –  – 17 16 16  – 29 29 26  –

29 29

29 29  – 29 29 20 20 17 29 29 26 29

42   Decentralization in India – rooting the state resources is greatly constrained by the local rev­enue base as well as the willingness to impose taxes on local constituents (Jha 2000b). In the Indian con­text, the issue of revenue-­raising by Gram Panchayats is controversial. While some have argued that fiscal auto­nomy cannot be based on trans­fers alone (Oommen and Datta 1995), others have argued that local gov­ern­ments do not neces­sar­ily need their own rev­enues to operate effect­ively, as long as they have some auto­nomy over how they spend the trans­fers (Johnson 2003). The degree of actual auto­ nomy and fin­an­cial needs at the village level, how­ever, remains largely unknown, reflecting the dearth of village-­level studies of panchayat functioning.

Political decentralization Beyond these gen­eral observations on administrative and fiscal decentralization, research findings on Indian polit­ical decentralization can be characterized as dichotomous, with both lines of argument found amongst pol­icy makers, civil soci­ety, eco­nom­ists as well as polit­ical sci­ent­ists. There is gen­eral agreement that since com­pliance with the 73rd Amendment in 1995, at least two rounds of panchayat elections have taken place, and reser­va­tions for SC/ST, as well as women, have been respected. All data, including the findings from this study, indicate that voter parti­cipa­tion rates, which at around 60 percent in national elections are already high, are even higher in local elections, in some areas over 90 percent (Oommen 1995; Alsop and Kurey 2005). Yet gen­eral assessments of decentralization vary, largely based on ideo­logy. One branch of findings, which is more firmly based in the lib­eral demo­cratic tradition, argues that the meas­ures taken by Indian states to conform to the 73rd Amendment have led towards effect­ive decentralization and that the changes that have come in the wake of local gov­ern­ment elections have had an overall pos­it­ ive effect. While there are dif­fer­ences within this branch of ana­lysis of Indian decentralization with regard to the extent of polit­ical, administrative, and fiscal decentralization, as well as with regard to the demo­cratic depth of the reform and degree to which different aspects of the 73rd Amendment have been implemented, the liter­at­ure is unified in arguing that the passage of the Panchayat Raj Amendment was overall a pos­it­ive de­velopment. The other branch of research is more crit­ical of the 73rd Amendment and the outcomes of decentralization in India. While divided on why they find decentralization in India to be prob­ lematic, those advancing this line of argument stress that while all Indian states have passed legis­la­tion to conform to the 73rd Amendment and now have legally mandated elected local gov­ern­ments, these changes have been largely super­fi­cial and have not led to substantial changes in local powers over bur­eau­crats, social hier­archy, elite capture, or mech­an­isms that allow for greater account­abil­ity and demo­cratic deepening. The findings of this book illus­trate that the impact of the panchayat legis­la­tion has not been uniform. While the overall result has been pos­it­ive, even in states like Uttar Pradesh where panchayats largely are not empowered, the efficacy of local gov­ern­ments ranges widely from state to state. A state’s his­tory of

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   43 decentralization, polit­ical com­peti­tion, and social mobil­iza­tion are key factors in determining the abil­ity of village gov­ern­ments to improve their cit­izens’ wellbeing. Three areas that have the potential for changing local governance in India are the impact of reser­va­tions of seats for SC/ST and women, the inter­action between panchayats and the bur­eau­cracy, and the issue of social hier­archy and elite capture. Quantitative studies of the effect of quotas for socio­economic­ally vulner­able groups on their social wellbeing are encouraging. For example, Chattopadhaya and Duflo have studied the impact of quotas for women and SC panchayat leaders in village gov­ern­ments in West Bengal and Rajasthan. Their study finds that both women and SC heads of Gram Panchayats were more likely to make de­cisions that bene­fited women and the SC popu­la­tion, and that the panchayat sys­tem, with its quotas, represents an im­port­ant vehicle for women’s empowerment in rural India (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004). Their findings underscore the im­port­ant potential social im­plica­tions of the 73rd Amendment, with its meas­ures to provide access to repres­enta­tion and polit­ical power for groups gen­erally disenfranch­ised in the Indian polit­ical sys­tem. Their findings that quotas may improve targeting of social ser­vices suggest that the correction of imbalanced polit­ical agency might also help correct inequities in other areas (Sen 1999; Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004). Though reser­va­tions for women and SC/ST might only be en­ab­ling con­ditions for the larger pro­ject of empowerment (Hust 2007), and outcomes might not be uniform, guaranteed or imme­diate, these initial studies never­the­less point to their potential for improving the social impact of the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem. Nevertheless, studies of the impact of reser­va­tions in India are few and the causal mech­an­isms that account for greater impact of reser­va­tions in some areas compared to others remain poorly understood. Many critics of the local gov­ern­ment reform have pointed to the Indian civil ser­vice sys­tem and the hold it retains on local distribution of resources and polit­ ical power as a barrier to functioning local gov­ern­ments (Jha 1999; Mukarji 1999; World Bank 2000b, 2000d). The Indian administrative structure has played an im­port­ant role since inde­pend­ence – a role it is not keen to relinquish. With inde­pend­ence, the roles of the civil ser­vice changed from collecting local rev­enue and maintaining law and order for the British Empire, to con­trib­ut­ing toward India’s extensive planning requirements as well as implementing pov­erty reduction and de­velopment plans (Jha 1999). While the post-­independence consti­tu­tion paid lip-­service to the im­port­ance of local gov­ern­ments in furthering de­velopment, the merit-­based and prestigious Indian Administrative Service (IAS) was charged with managing the bur­eau­cracy and implementing central and state gov­ern­ment programs at the subnational levels. As the powers entrusted to the IAS grew, its size grew exponentially (Frankel 1990) and with it also the incentives to retain powers for program implementation rather than devolve these to local governments. The ten­sion was evid­ent between the rhet­oric of local gov­ern­ments as agents of self-­governance and de­velopment and the reality of non-­elected district and

44   Decentralization in India – rooting the state block-­level civil ser­vants charged with admin­is­tering anti-­poverty and other rural de­velopment programs. When in the 1970s, under the tenure of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) was created to admin­is­ter national pov­erty reduction programs in rural areas, rural de­velopment came under the administrative control of state gov­ern­ments and was gen­erally admin­is­tered by District Collectors (Jha 1999; Johnson 2003). From the 1970s until the passage of the 73rd Amendment, the official locus of rev­enue and rural de­velopment program distribution and thereby polit­ical power was largely in the hands of district-­level administrators (who are Indian Administrative Service officers). In response to the 73rd Amendment, the central gov­ern­ment in 1995 decided to bring the DRDA under the purview of the district-­level panchayat sys­tem (Jha 2000b), but the ten­sions between the civil ser­vice and panchayats remained. Most im­port­antly, the idea that decentralization would lead to increased local transparency in the financing and implementation of rural de­velopment programs and an overall increase in account­abil­ity stood in contra­dic­tion to the kind of institution the Indian bur­eau­cracy had become by the early 1990s. As several ob­ser­vers of the Indian civil ser­vice have pointed out, the incentive structure within the ser­vice had led to widespread charges of corruption, lack of transparency, and little account­abil­ity to the cit­izens whom they were supposed to serve (Wade 1994; Crook and Manor 1998; Johnson 2003). This bur­eau­cracy was obviously likely to resist decentralization of powers to local gov­ern­ments. This ten­sion between the ideals behind the 73rd Amendment and the local structures and institutions likely to resist its implementation was recog­nized by a 2001 gov­ern­ment task force report on panchayats. This task force re­com­mended greater auto­nomy and a greater role for panchayats in furthering local de­velopment and encouraged closer coopera­tion between local, state, and central gov­ern­ment and the civil ser­vice sys­tem (Government of India: Ministry of Rural Development 2001). Another main issue that recurs in the decentralization liter­at­ure, and par­ticu­ larly the debate about decentralization in India, is whether decentralization of polit­ical and fin­an­cial authority to local gov­ern­ments can lead to new oppor­tun­ ities for local elite capture of these new resources and powers (Echeverri-­Gent 1992; Jha 1999; Government of India: Ministry of Rural Development 2001; Johnson 2003; Krishna 2003; Mathew and Mathew 2003). In the Indian con­text, par­ticu­larly in village settings where caste, class, gender, and religious cleavages still dominate, Gram Panchayats and their new polit­ical powers and resources presented an oppor­tun­ity for locally dominant groups to capture the resources at the local gov­ern­ment’s disposal. Decentralization, with its focus on empowerment, demo­crat­ization, and social improvement, might be hijacked in situ­ations where social and cultural hierarchies enable local capture of polit­ical power structures. A series of World Bank studies of decentralization in India have pointed out that instead of furthering equity, decentralization can actu­ally “bolster the power of elites” (World Bank 2000b, 2000c, 2000d). The 73rd Amendment aimed at increased account­abil­ity by reserv­ing the seats of representatives and panchayat heads for women and SC/ST, endowing the

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   45 village electorate in the Gram Sabha with deliberative and audit powers, and instituting mandatory elections every five years. These meas­ures repres­ented an attempt to bring greater demo­cratic depth into village pol­itics, by bringing in groups formerly largely excluded from village pol­itics and building in safeguards to ensure that elected representatives fulfilled their obli­ga­tions to represent their com­munit­ies. In the past, studies of attempted decentralization in India have consistently shown that elites, largely men from upper-­caste backgrounds, con­tinued to capture polit­ical offices and the resources associated with those offices (Slater 1989; Echeverri-­Gent 1992; Singh 1993; Jha 1999; World Bank 2000b, 2000c, 2000d; T. N. Srivastava 2002). Post-­1993, with the quotas and the Gram Sabha in place to increase account­abil­ity, initial reports highlight a persistent lack of account­abil­ity and a failure to de­cisively break elite stranglehold on local power. Observers have pointed to the persistence of “informal patterns of domination and power” at the village level where, for example, reser­va­tions for women are usurped by male rel­at­ives, and reser­va­tions for SC/ST are coopted by local elites (Johnson 2003). Yet the causal mech­an­isms that enable persistence of elite capture in some areas while allowing other local gov­ern­ments to be more inclusive and demo­cratic remain under-­studied. There is increased re­cog­ni­tion that the abil­ity of women and SC/ST to parti­cip­ate in local gov­ern­ments depends on the under­lying power structures in the village. However, whether the inter­ action of local power structures with elected and formal local polit­ical institutions in turn changes those power structures, and whether top-­down mandated decentralization has the abil­ity to change local social hierarchies and sys­tems of domination and exclusion in the Indian con­text, remain questions. Some recent research (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004) points out that demo­cratic empowerment of groups tradi­tion­ally excluded from local polit­ical power can lead to Gram Panchayats acting as agents of change and undermining traditional hierarchies of power. While sup­porters of Indian decentralization have focused on the potential for local gov­ern­ments to root demo­cracy, to include groups tradi­tion­ally excluded from social and polit­ical power, and to improve local social de­velopment, detractors have pointed to the remaining bar­riers to decentralization and de­velopment such as bur­eau­cratic unwillingness to share power and elite capture. Initial assessments of decentralization in India have pointed to both successes and failures, highlighting the complexity with which a uniformly mandated local gov­ ern­ment structure interacts with local con­ditions to produce differing outcomes. Unequivocal changes to the demo­cratic nature, power structure, and local resources of local gov­ern­ments have taken place in the wake of the 1993 ratification of India’s 73rd Amendment. This study sets out to highlight the complex inter­actions with local gov­ern­ment of Gram Panchayat structures having differing state-­level histories, social mobil­iza­tion, and polit­ical com­peti­tion, to bring about diverse outcomes in social wellbeing.

46   Decentralization in India – rooting the state

Village studies in three states: the local nature of Gram Panchayats This study will examine decentralization in six villages across three Indian states over the nearly two decades since the 73rd Amendment. The findings highlight how the combination of state and local factors enable good local governance and more effect­ive delivery of social wel­fare programs through local gov­ern­ments. Decentralization was intended to go beyond the mere election of local gov­ern­ ment representatives to manage local affairs and help implement central and state gov­ern­ment programs. Decentralization in India was to provide an institutionalized arena where the local popu­la­tion could parti­cip­ate in local gov­ern­ment decision-­making. Through increased parti­cipa­tion in the selection of wel­fare program beneficiaries and alloca­tion of local gov­ern­ment resources, local popu­ la­tions were to exert greater direct influence on their de­velopment. Nearly two decades after legally mandating decentralization in India, the emerging results are mixed, with panchayats in some states functioning more in the spirit of the 73rd Amendment than panchayats in other states. The his­tory of decentralization within a state, polit­ical com­peti­tion, social cleavages (including whether socio­ economic elites capture gov­ern­ment institutions), and social mobil­iza­tion, are key ingredients in determining the abil­ity of village gov­ern­ments to deepen demo­cracy and have an impact on their cit­izens’ wellbeing. Different combinations of these factors have led to varying degrees of demo­cratic rooting and efficacy of local governments. Using the literal definition of demo­cracy as “rule of the people,” this study ana­lyzes whether decentralized local gov­ern­ments do function as set out in India’s 73rd Constitutional Amendment, thereby “rooting” demo­cracy at the village level. The study is a comparative ana­lysis of decentralization focusing on local, village-­level gov­ern­ments’ abil­ity to mat­ter for the social wellbeing of indi­viduals in rural India. Decentralization is defined in this case to be the polit­ ical trans­fer of power down to the local, village level as set forth in the 73rd Amendment to India’s consti­tu­tion. At the same time, the definition of decentralization used here goes beyond the delegation of powers set forth in the 73rd Amendment to include the qualit­at­ive nature of demo­cracy. Decentralization is taken to mean demo­cratic decentralization where the functioning of local gov­ ern­ments mat­ters – for example, in terms of elite capture versus com­petit­ive demo­cracy, or deliberative aspects of village electorate meetings. The case studies look at the arguments behind decentralization relating to enhancing demo­cracy and improving the functioning of gov­ern­ment. Looking at demo­cratic depth as an indic­ator for successful decentralization follows Amartya Sen’s notion that demo­cracy should be thought of as having direct, instrumental and constructive roles in improving socio­economic wellbeing (Sen 1999). Social wellbeing in this research con­text is defined to include not only pov­erty status, but also other social indic­ators such education and health.

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   47

The argument The main argument of this study is that demo­cratically functioning local gov­ern­ ments are able to effect­ively oversee the equit­able implementation of social programs, thereby con­trib­ut­ing to cit­izen wel­fare. The key determinants of their capa­city to have an impact on social wellbeing, besides the his­tory of decentralization in the state, are the extent of local polit­ical com­peti­tion, and the pres­ence of a mobilized civil soci­ety that engages with local gov­ern­ments and holds them account­able, thereby preventing capture of panchayats by local social or polit­ical elites. When these gov­ern­ments are genu­inely representative, account­able, and demo­cratic, they function as they were intended by the 73rd Amendment. They are able to achieve the intended goal of local implementation of social programs, par­ticu­larly anti-­poverty and social wel­fare schemes (see Figure 2.3). Yet the specific con­ditions and local dy­namics that enable panchayats to function as agents of self-­government and bring about improvements in social wellbeing are complex and dynamic. Local governance exhibits some path-­dependent tendencies that can be overcome with signi­fic­ant polit­ical realignment. Governance outcomes also depend on local factors, from local distribution of social and polit­ ical power to mobil­iza­tion of civil soci­ety – both of which are partially path-­ dependent but are also driven by dynamic inter­actions and pro­cesses at the village level. Understanding the local con­texts in which local gov­ern­ments are more likely to function as agents of change is crucial to understanding decentralization’s likely impact on and the mech­an­isms by which it affects the rooting of demo­ cracy and improvement of social wellbeing. Moreover, key to understanding why local gov­ern­ments work better in some con­texts are the perceptions of cit­ izens. Findings from this research’s surveys qualit­at­ive inter­views and focus group discussions conducted during months living in the case study villages yielded that panchayats can con­trib­ute towards better-­functioning schools, targeting of pov­erty programs to those in need, and delivery of health care ser­vices by local health care workers. When local gov­ern­ments select beneficiaries for social programs based on need and are able to implement these social wel­fare programs, they are able to boost social wel­fare through raising aware­ness, bringing gov­ern­ment closer to the people, cementing social capital, and improving accountability. Recent eco­nomic growth has led to a growing middle class in India, but overall the socio­economic wel­fare of the poor has not improved greatly. Moreover, the conventional wisdom advocating increasing eco­nomic growth rates under strong central and state gov­ern­ments has not always provided the answer in India, where higher growth-­rate states have not done better than others in improving the wel­fare of the poor. For example, as seen in Table 2.2, pov­erty rates decreased most dramatically in Karnataka during the period from 1993/1994 to 1999/2000, as well as between 1993/1994 and 2004/2005.3 Moreover, the rates of pov­erty decrease for Karnataka over both time periods were signi­fic­antly higher than the Indian average. By contrast, reductions in pov­erty

48   Decentralization in India – rooting the state Table 2.2  Poverty rates for selected states and all-India average Poverty rate Poverty rate Poverty rate 1993/1994 1999/2000 2004/2005 (% population) (% population) (% population; mixed recall period)

% change between 1993/1994 and 1999/2000

% change between 1993/1994 and 2004/2005

Karnataka 33 Uttar Pradesh 41 West Bengal 36

20 31 27

17 26 21

39 24 25

48 37 42

All-India

26

22

28

39

36

Source: Planning Commission 2011.

rates in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal for the same time periods were at or below the Indian average. These lower than average pov­erty rate reductions in West Bengal during the earl­ier time period (1993/1994 to 1999/2000) came despite the fact that per capita growth in net state do­mestic product (NSDP) was com­par­able to Karnataka (both around 5.5 percent) and was above the Indian average of 4.6 percent (see Table 2.3) (Bhandari and Kale 2007a). Above average eco­nomic growth rates in West Bengal during the 1990s therefore did not lead to above average pov­erty rate reductions. Similar patterns are found in other Indian states. States with high eco­nomic growth rates have not always been able to translate the growth into better social wellbeing for their citizens. Increased in­equal­it­ies between Indian states over the past two decades since eco­nomic lib­eralization are evid­ent in the widening of inter-­state eco­nomic disparities (Ahluwalia 2000) as well as disparities in social indic­ators. The last two decades of increased eco­nomic growth and market-­oriented reforms, along with India’s demo­cratic structure and his­tory, have buttressed the legitimacy of the eco­nomic and polit­ical structure while providing rewards largely to the upper and middle classes. Pro-­poor gov­ern­ments in indi­vidual states have not provided the answer, since some of these states – notably West Bengal – have not achieved the large improvements in social outcomes that were expected. Moreover, increased social in­equal­it­ies have led to a rise in social ten­sions. States, such as communist-­ruled West Bengal, have witnessed the rebirth of an increasingly violent Maoist insurgency, which has now spread to 20 states and a third of the coun­try’s districts (Ghosh and Das 2010). Furthermore, another line of reasoning has argued that Indian states with a high degree of subnational cohesive com­mun­ity have better social ser­vice pro­vi­sion (Singh 2008). Yet a large Indian state with argu­ably the highest level of subnational cohesion, West Bengal, is not among the leading states in social ser­vice pro­vi­sion or indic­ators. Conventional theories do not explain the range of social wel­fare outcomes among Indian states. Since a top-­down focus on federal and state structures and pol­icies has not yielded the anticipated improvements in pov­erty, it is neces­sary to evalu­ate the delivery of social programs to intended beneficiaries at the local level. Key to

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   49 understanding why eco­nomic growth and top-­down pol­icies have not provided adequate solutions to pov­erty alleviation is the fact that those left out by the pro­ cess of socio­economic de­velopment have often not had a vehicle for expressing their grievances. Existing polit­ical institutions provide the poor with few choices for parti­cipa­tion or dissent. The his­tory of centralized governance in India, combined with deep in­equal­it­ies, has resulted in a shortage of account­able local polit­ical structures in most Indian states. Lack of participatory local demo­cracy has meant that large parts of redistributive schemes have been captured by local bur­eau­cra­cies, often in conjunction with local elites. The fol­low­ing chapters illus­trate that decentralization is a complex pro­cess. In the long run, as lit­er­acy and aware­ness of rights in India increases, top-­down decentralization will lead to better targeted social and anti-­poverty programs and enhanced social wellbeing. Over the shorter term, how­ever, state-­level dif­fer­ ences mat­ter. A state’s his­tory of decentralization and empowerment of local gov­ern­ments mat­ters, yet it is not a sufficient con­dition on its own. As seen with a comparison of West Bengal and Karnataka, a longer his­tory of functioning local gov­ern­ments in the case of West Bengal does not equate with better social outcomes. Beyond having a his­tory of decentralization, polit­ical com­peti­tion in local elections, a mobilized and aware civil soci­ety, as well as the nature and dominance of local elites, will influence the structure, pro­cess, and pace of local gov­ern­ment efficacy. Social ser­vices in the pre-­1993 period were often mar­ginally functional at best in Indian villages because control over these ser­vices was located in far-­ away district, state or central gov­ern­ment administrations. At great distance from admin­is­tering agencies and without any local structures to provide for feedback mech­an­isms and account­abil­ity, the delivery of social programs often becomes coopted by local elites in conjunction with admin­is­tering bur­eau­crats. Without local structures of authority, the poor who cannot access the social ser­vices to which they are entitled are left without recourse. They are forced to accept a situ­ation in which local elites and bur­eau­crats absorb social sector resources intended for them, and where polit­ical com­peti­tion, which might provide them with access to power (or at least repres­enta­tion), is circumscribed. Since this has been the status quo for decades in the majority of Indian states, the most disempowered are left without an avenue for expressing their needs and grievances. It is the lack of effect­ive social ser­vice delivery mech­an­isms in many regions in India, along with widening social disparities, that lends urgency to ex­plora­ tions of new gov­ern­ment structures, such as decentralization, which might counter this trend. Advocates believe that a demo­cratically functioning panchayat sys­tem allows people to voice their grievances (Mathew 1994b). Through neigh­bor­hood repres­enta­tion and village meetings, these demo­cratic local gov­ ern­ments increase aware­ness of rights, which in turn augment the likelihood of people demanding delivery of ser­vices. It also leads to greater aware­ness and pride through enhanced social inter­action within the com­mun­ity and greater aware­ness of the needs and concerns of more vulner­able groups such as women (Cadwell 1986; Drèze et al. 1995). Moreover, one of the most innov­at­ive aspects

42 41 31 33 26 16.2 0.314

Poverty Headcount ratio, 1987/1988 (e) Headcount ratio, 1993/1994 (e) Headcount ratio, 1999/2000 (e) Headcount ratio, 2004/2005 based on uniform recall period (e) Headcount ratio, 2004/2005 based on mixed recall period (e) Sen’s Welfare Index, rural areas, 1987/1988 (c) Human Development Index, 2001 (d)

45 36 27 25 21 20.1 0.404

917 934 947 58 69 77 55 48 0.404 0.472

20 66

6,756 36,322 2.5 5.5 5.1

West Bengal

38 33 20 25 17 15.3 0.412

960 965 968 56 67 76 53 43 0.412 0.478

72 57

7,838 40,998 3.7 5.7 5.2

Karnataka

39 36 26 28 22 15.5 0.381

927 933 940 52 65 74 71 – 0.381 –

– –

7,690 37,490 – 4.6 5.4

All-India

Sources: (a) Reserve Bank of India 2011a; (b) Government of India 2001; (c) Drèze and Sen 2002; (d) Government of Karnataka 1999; (e) Planning Commission 2011; (f) Centre for Economic and Social Studies 2008; (g) Roy and Bhattacharjee 2009; (h) Government of India 2011.

876 898 908 42 56 70 85 73 0.314 0.388

20 78

Physical infrastructure % rural households with electricity, 2001 (b) % rural households with any assets listed by census (TV, radio, telephone, bike, etc.), 2001 (b)

Human development Sex ratio (females/1,000 males), 1991 (c) Sex ratio (females/1,000 males), 2001 (b) Sex ratio (females/1,000 males), 2011 provisional (j) Adult literacy rate, 1991 (d) Adult literacy rate, 2001 (b) Adult literacy rate, 2011, provisional (h) Infant mortality rate (IMR), 1995 (d) IMR, 2005 (f) Human Development Index (HDI), 1991 (b) HDI, 2001 (g)

5,066 18,214 1.9 2.0 2.8

Uttar Pradesh

Per capita net state domestic product (NSDP), 1993/1994 (in current prices) (rupees) (a) Per capita NSDP, 2008/2009 (in current prices) (rupees) (a) Average annual per capita NSDP growth, 1980/1981 to 1993/1994 (at constant prices) (%) (a) Average annual per capita NSDP growth, 1993/1994 to 1999/2000 (at constant prices) (%) (a) Average annual per capita NSDP growth, 1999/2000 to 2008/2009 (at constant prices) (%) (a)

Table 2.3  Interstate and all-India comparison of key indicators in research states

Decentralization in India – rooting the state   51 of the panchayat sys­tem in India today is that it reserves a third of all panchayat seats for women and a further percentage for scheduled castes and tribes. The panchayat sys­tem gives voice and repres­enta­tion to poorer and gen­erally more vulner­able groups, thereby instituting a sys­tem of affirmative action that is intended to improve the wel­fare of more vulner­able groups over the long term. The ana­lysis set forth in sub­sequent chapters will illus­trate that if pov­erty in India is to be substantially reduced, and social indic­ators greatly improved, pol­icy must improve the institutionalization of local gov­ern­ments, while recognizing that structural con­ditions at the village level will determine the pace at which local gov­ern­ments are empowered and able to function as cata­lysts for improving social wellbeing. These local gov­ern­ments should be encouraged to function in a demo­cratic manner that allows for parti­cipa­tion of all cit­izens re­gard­less of caste, gender, religion or polit­ical background. Moreover, these local gov­ern­ments must be empowered to oversee implementation of social wel­ fare programs, including anti-­poverty schemes, and ensure account­abil­ity of local civil ser­vants employed in the delivery of social ser­vices, such as schoolteachers. Building up effect­ive local governance sys­tems, which empower disenfranch­ised groups and increase their control over resources designated to improve their wel­fare, is essential to improving social wel­fare in India. The major con­tri­bu­tion of this research will be to present a comparative study of decentralization within one coun­try, analyzing the con­ditions that are conducive towards effi­ca­cious local gov­ern­ments that help improve the social wellbeing of their constituents.

3 Karnataka – advances with the help of competitive local governments

Local gov­ern­ments in Karnataka were found to be high-­functioning at the time of the research. In May 1993, Karnataka became the first Indian state to enact new legis­la­tion in conformity with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, estab­ lishing the three-­tiered panchayat sys­tem. At the end of 1993 it also became the first state to hold new panchayat elections. Since then, Karnataka has held four rounds of local gov­ern­ment elections and has amended its panchayat law 15 times, making it in 2011 one of the most pro­gressive local gov­ern­ment laws in the coun­try. How did one of the most pro­gressive decentralization laws affect the functioning of local gov­ern­ments on the ground? As seen in Table 2.3, social and pov­erty indic­ators in Karnataka prior to the 1993 Panchayat Act compared favor­ably to indic­ators in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh and were in most cases above India’s average around 1990. Twenty years later, average social indic­ators and pov­erty rates in par­ticu­lar were even better in Karnataka, having in many cases improved at a higher rate than in the two other states. While many socio­economic and polit­ical changes have taken place in Karnataka since the early 1990s, par­ticu­larly in urban areas, social indic­ators also improved in rural areas. These improved social indic­ators in rural areas raise the question of whether decentralization during the 1990s enabled Gram Panchayats in Karnataka to actively target and implement de­velopment programs, con­trib­ut­ing to increased social wellbeing in Karnataka. Karnataka, in southern India, is a large Indian state like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, with a popu­la­tion of over 60 million. Yet that is where, for the most part, simil­ar­ities end. At the turn of the twenty-­first century Karnataka’s socio­economic indic­ators, such as lit­er­acy and infant mor­tal­ity rates (IMRs), were better than those in Uttar Pradesh and equal to or better than indic­ators in West Bengal, as seen in Table 2.3. With regards to pov­erty rates in par­ticu­lar by 2011, Karnataka’s rates as well as improvement of these rates since the early 1990s were among the lowest of states in the coun­try. Overall social indic­ators were not as impressive as those found in the well-­studied state of Kerala, Karnataka’s southern neigh­bor, though by 2011 they were above the national average. The late 1980s and the 1990s brought improvements in socio­economic indic­ators in Karnataka, improvements that gen­erally have been ascribed to the growth of the ser­vice sector in urban areas and the state capital of Bangalore in par­ticu­lar.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   53 However, Karnataka’s net state do­mestic product growth rates, averaging 5.7 percent annually between 1993/1994 and 1999/2000 and 5.2 percent between 1999/2000 and 2008/2009, were com­par­able to those of West Bengal (see Table 2.3). While eco­nomic growth in urban areas has certainly helped to improve social wellbeing, it alone cannot explain Karnataka’s improving social indic­ators since other high-­growth states such as Punjab, Haryana, and Gujarat have not seen the same rates of improvement. This research investigates an explanation for improving social wellbeing in Karnataka that has not been ex­plored; namely, the state’s more com­petit­ive and functioning local gov­ern­ments compared to Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. While eco­nomic growth in the state has undoubtedly helped Karnataka’s fortunes, increased rev­enues alone do not improve the implementation and targeting of anti-­poverty programs. Karnataka had favor­able eco­nomic con­ditions and com­petit­ive pol­itics in the state capital that were complemented by dynamic and com­petit­ive local gov­ern­ments in rural areas to promote socio­economic de­velopment. Local gov­ern­ment structures were placed in an envir­on­ment more conducive to en­ab­ling social improvements – a rural fabric of more com­petit­ive pol­itics where village elites did not obstruct or under­mine local governance while civil soci­ety was largely self-­aware. Karnataka differs from both of the other two case study states in that it has a his­tory of experimenting with one of the most innov­at­ive forms of local gov­ern­ ment in the 1980s – although only for one election term. It ex­peri­enced functioning and innov­at­ive local gov­ern­ments, in contrast to Uttar Pradesh, and yet this experiment only lasted for a five-­year period, in contrast to the three decades of functioning local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal. However, Karnataka’s panchayat sys­tem of the 1980s and its current panchayat sys­tem differ from the sys­tem in West Bengal in one im­port­ant aspect: in Karnataka, local gov­ern­ments have functioned in an envir­on­ment of com­petit­ive party pol­itics and elections. Local gov­ern­ments in Karnataka, though far from the ideal set forth by local gov­ern­ ment proponents and not fully in line with the spirit of the Karnataka Panchayat Amendment Act of 1993, are functioning and com­petit­ive. No single leading group or party dominates state or local pol­itics. Local gov­ern­ments implement social wel­fare programs in a way that is less likely to be driven by local elites or party politics.

Socioeconomic and political context Before investigating the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem that Karnataka pioneered in the 1980s, it is im­port­ant to understand the socio­economic as well as the polit­ ical con­text. Social in­equal­it­ies between people of different caste backgrounds in Karnataka have not been as extreme or oppressive, which in turn makes caste in Karnataka more resilient, but also more legitimate in the per­spect­ive of those who are dominated (as quoted in Manor 1997). Key to understanding the less divisive socio­economic divisions in Karnataka is the fact that numerically large and dominant groups are not at the top of the caste hier­archy and that much of

54   Karnataka – competitive local governments the popu­la­tion of agricultural laborers have at least some access to land (Manor 1989). Unlike many other states, par­ticu­larly in northern India, Karnataka has ex­peri­enced extensive agricultural reforms, including land reforms, which like those in the neigh­boring state of Kerala have followed the more rad­ical “land to the tiller” legis­la­tion, though they were slow in the implementation (Herring in Kadekodi et al. 2007). Most of those who belong to the socio­economic­ally most dis­advant­aged groups are therefore not landless and are able to eke out a living. Unlike Uttar Pradesh – where pol­itics at the local level have been dominated by socio­economic elites – and unlike West Bengal – where local pol­itics have for three decades been dominated by polit­ical elites – local and state-­level pol­ itics in Karnataka have been more com­petit­ive for the last two decades. The Congress party, under the power of Devraj Urs, dominated much of Karnataka state pol­itics during the 1970s, with pol­itics working largely through on a patron–client sys­tem rather than com­petit­ive elections.1 Yet even during the 1970s, pol­itics were dominated not by one large sociopolit­ical elite, as in Uttar Pradesh or West Bengal, but rather by three groups: the upper-­caste Brahmins and two non-­Brahmin caste groups, the Vokkaligas of mostly southern Karnataka and the Lingayats of northern Karnataka. These latter two caste groups, though they make up roughly only a quarter of the state’s popu­la­tion, own much of the cultivated land and thus have great influence over state pol­itics (Thimmaiah and Aziz 1983). Although the Vokkaligas and Lingayats have regional bases, at the state level they compete for power, creating a situ­ation that necessitates power sharing within larger co­ali­tions, making for more stable and demo­ cratic power pol­itics in Karnataka. The polit­ical com­peti­tion between the Vokkaligas and Lingayats has created an envir­on­ment where personalities are less im­port­ant than group alli­ances and institutions, so that despite the cycling of power between different caste groups and polit­ical par­ties, no single indi­vidual, caste-­group, or polit­ical party has been able to dominate pol­itics in Karnataka over the last three decades. The com­peti­tion among social groups is mirrored in the com­peti­tion among polit­ical par­ties. Since 1983, when the Janata Dal Party (JD) came to power in Karnataka, breaking the Congress Party’s hold on power and introducing an innov­at­ive new panchayat sys­tem, alternation of ruling par­ties in state elections has become the norm. Since par­ties alternate in power, no politician or party has been able to dominate state pol­itics or preside over an entrenched patron–client network. Though at times politicians have been power­ful polit­ical actors – H. D. Deve Gowda was Chief Minister of Karnataka (1994–1996), went on to become Prime Minister of India, and then presided as head of the Janata Dal Secular Party (JD(S)) – the nearly con­tinu­ous change of par­ties at state elections acts as a brake on any indi­vidual’s, and indeed any party’s, consolidation of power. The lack of a dominant party over the past two decades of state pol­itics in Karnataka, along with the lack of dominant politicians and the pref­er­ence for “rainbow co­ali­tions,” has changed pol­itics in Karnataka to where institutions mat­ter more than indi­viduals and the shifting polit­ical landscape displays remark­able pol­icy con­tinu­ity (Manor 2006), despite at times volatile state-­level politics.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   55 Policy con­tinu­ity and institutional stability through polit­ical alteration are key ingredients for understanding polit­ical and social de­velopments in Karnataka. In contrast to Uttar Pradesh, where personalized patronage networks still dominate and local gov­ern­ments have little auto­nomy and in contrast to West Bengal, where three decades of virtual one-­party rule largely dominated by a party leader have subordinated all pol­itics and bur­eau­cracy to party rule – the bur­eau­cracy in Karnataka has been able to retain greater con­tinu­ity and capa­city. This has enabled successive state gov­ern­ments in Karnataka to produce more well-­ designed pol­icies than in most other gov­ern­ments (along with the institutional capa­city for implementing these pol­icies), though it has also made them more reluct­ant to give up power, as seen in the late 1980s.2 The abil­ity to retain pol­icy and institutional con­tinu­ity in an envir­on­ment of frequently changing state gov­ ern­ments needs to be understood against the background of a tend­ency of the ruling polit­ical par­ties to appeal to the same social base (Wood 1984). This has led new gov­ern­ments to retain most of the pol­icies introduced by their predecessors, par­ticu­larly since the early 1990s (Manor 2006). By the early 1990s the statewide increase in polit­ical com­peti­tion (discussed below) was starting to bear fruit in increased investments in social and anti-­ poverty programs. Karnataka since the early 1990s invested above national average expenditures on de­velopment: the state’s disbursements to the education sector as well as health and family wel­fare throughout the 1990s (and up to 2010) consistently ranked among the highest of Indian states (Reserve Bank of India 2011b). While previous studies of the 1990s found Karnataka to have made only average pro­gress in the pov­erty and social sectors (Herring in Kadekodi et al. 2006; Kohli 1987) this state of affairs clearly began to change by the turn of the century, with Karnataka making par­ticu­lar pro­gress in re­du­cing the pov­erty rate from 30 percent in 1993/1994 to 17 percent in 1999/2000, as seen in Table 2.3 (Planning Commission 2011). Moreover, in 2001 Karnataka’s ratio of females per 1,000 males improved to 965 compared to the national average of 933, lit­er­acy rates were at 67 percent compared to the national average of 65, and 88 percent of households had electricity in 2006 compared to the national average of 64 percent (Bhandari and Kale 2007c). By 2011 Karnataka’s social indic­ators were above the national average and signi­fic­antly ahead of those in Uttar Pradesh.

Karnataka’s innovative Panchayat system of the 1980s: a product of national and state politics The Janata Party came to power in Karnataka in 1983, breaking the Congress Party’s hold over state pol­itics since inde­pend­ence for the first time. However, by the time the Janata Party won in Karnataka in 1983, in­ternal bickering had torn the fragile Janata-­led co­ali­tion apart at the national level and the Congress Party was again in power at the center. The national Janata Party was or­gan­ized by Jayprakash Narayan to unite all  anti-­Congress par­ties for the 1977 national elections, at the end of Indira

56   Karnataka – competitive local governments Gandhi’s imposition of martial law. In 1977 it presented a unified front as the main opposi­tion to Emergency rule and to the Congress Party led by Indira Gandhi. After succeeding in ousting Indira Gandhi in a landslide victory, from 1977 to 1980, it headed national pol­itics under the leadership of Prime Minister Morarji Desai. It was a populist, leftist party that was an amalgamation of a variety of personalities and polit­ical movements. To dem­on­strate that it was the true Gandhian party of demo­cracy and anti-­poverty, the Janata Party, upon coming to power in 1977, appointed a committee on Panchayat Raj institutions under the chairmanship of Ashok Mehta. The Ashok Mehta Committee, as it became known, submitted a report a year later. The findings included 132 re­com­ mendations aimed at reviving the declining Panchayat Raj sys­tem in the coun­try. Specific re­com­mendations included en­ab­ling official parti­cipa­tion of polit­ical par­ties at all levels of panchayat elections and setting quotas for panchayat seats for SC and ST members, based on their percentage in the respective popu­la­tion. The Committee’s re­com­mendations led to revision of panchayat legis­la­tion in the three states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal, with many of the Committee’s re­com­mendations later incorp­or­ated into the 73rd Amendment. Though it can be credited with preventing the corrosion of demo­cracy at the national level, signi­fic­ant ideo­logical and polit­ical divisions soon emerged within the Janata Party, hampering its abil­ity to rule. When its key charismatic and pop­ ular leader Jayaprakash Narayan died in 1979, the glue that helped unify the party weakened further. By 1980, the Janata Party’s in­abil­ity to rule effect­ively led to its ousting at the national level and the tri­umph­ant return of an Indira Gandhi-­ruled Congress Party. The Janata Party’s brief foray onto the national polit­ical stage and its quick fall from power a few years later laid bare its lack of polit­ical reach at the subnational and par­ticu­larly substate levels. Mindful that they did not have the same party structure as the Congress Party (which had networks reaching down to the village level), upon coming to power in Karnataka in 1983 the Janata Party introduced a radic­ally new decentralization. A report issued by the Ashok Mehta Committee while the Janata Party was in power at the national level, which provided re­com­mendations for making panchayats part of the demo­cratic fabric of the coun­try, also provided the basis for the Janata Party’s new decentralization program in Karnataka. The Karnataka “Zilla Parishads, Taluk Panchayat Samitis, Mandal Panchayats and Nyaya Panchayats Act” was drafted by the new gov­ern­ment in 1983 and came into effect in 1987 (Karnataka 1987). The new decentralized gov­ern­ment mandated by the Act had a two-­tiered structure with local gov­ern­ment structures known as Zilla Parishads (ZP) at the district level, block-­level Taluk Panchayats (TP) as co­ordinating bodies, and Mandal Panchayats (MP) covering groups of villages with popu­la­tion sizes between 8,000 and 12,000 at the local level (Institute of Social Sciences 1995). The local gov­ern­ments at the Zilla and Mandal Panchayat levels were both directly elected, with most of the polit­ical power residing with the Zilla Panchayats, the district level. This landmark panchayat legis­la­tion in Karnataka helped form the basis for the 73rd Constitutional Amendment (Besley et al. 2004a). The new act in

Karnataka – competitive local governments   57 Karnataka was revolu­tionary because it devolved real powers and resources to local gov­ern­ments with the district-­level gov­ern­ments supervising and even controlling bur­eau­crats deputed to the district level (Crook and Manor 1998). This trans­fer of power and resources to the Zilla Panchayats in Karnataka was much more rad­ical than in any other Indian state, including West Bengal, because the district-­level local gov­ern­ments were given control over de-­concentrated state ministries. This meant that the elected pres­id­ents of Zilla Panchayats, who were given the status of junior min­is­ters in the state gov­ern­ment, were in charge of more than half of the state’s civil ser­vants, controlled nearly 40 percent of the state budget, and were respons­ible for most of the main de­velopment functions (Crook and Sverrisson 1999). Moreover, Karnataka’s decentralization act also built on its his­tory of reser­va­tions for women, which had been in place since 1959, by continuing to promote affirmative action and reserv­ing 25 percent of local gov­ern­ment seats at the Zilla and Mandal Panchayat level for women and 18 percent of seats for SCs/STs (Pur 2006). The Gram Sabha, the meeting of all eli­gible voters in the village, was seen as the basic tier of the decentralized sys­tem and was mandated by law to meet twice a year to review de­velopment plans submitted by the Mandal Panchayats and select beneficiaries for social wel­fare programs (Raghavulu and Narayana 1999). Karnataka’s new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem did not last long. In 1988, a year after implementation of the newly decentralized sys­tem, factions within the Janata Party and the bur­eau­cracy started fighting about the powers of the local gov­ern­ments, leading to a decrease in the powers and functions of the Zilla Parishad level (Mathew 2000). The fol­low­ing year, in 1989, the national gov­ern­ ment imposed President’s rule on Karnataka and started further curtailing the powers of local gov­ern­ments. At the end of 1989 the Congress Party came back to power by winning the Karnataka state elections and right away started undermining the panchayat sys­tem through fin­an­cial cuts and the recentralization of power. With sup­port from many in the bur­eau­cracy who had seen their power under­mined through decentralization, the Congress party chipped away at local gov­ern­ment power to the point that when the next round of local elections were due in 1992 the gov­ern­ment did not hold them and instead appointed administrators. With these final steps, Karnataka’s short-­lived experiment in decentralization was over. Before the 73rd Amendment and the sub­sequent new sys­tem that arose in Karnataka, it is im­port­ant to understand how innov­at­ive Karnataka’s 1980s experiment in decentralization was. James Manor, in his comparisons of decentralization in Karnataka, other Indian states, and other de­veloping coun­tries, has argued that the 1980s decentralization in Karnataka was one of the most intensive in the world (Crook and Manor 1998; Manor 1999). Not only did the decentralized structure trans­fer signi­fic­ant power, functions, and finances to local gov­ern­ments, but local gov­ern­ments also attained some control over civil ser­vice administrators charged with implementing de­velopment pro­jects at the local level. The state gov­ern­ment did not reserve any powers of control or supervision for itself. In addition, poorer and more vulner­able groups such as the landless

58   Karnataka – competitive local governments were repres­ented in local gov­ern­ments. The results included improvement in the pro­vi­sion of social ser­vices and local gov­ern­ments that were more responsive than before to their constituents’ demands (Institute of Social Sciences 1995; Crook and Manor 1998). There are also some negat­ive observations about the earl­ier panchayat sys­ tem, such as village meetings rarely taking place, over-­representation of dominant groups, and lack of active parti­cipa­tion of female local gov­ern­ment officeholders. Gram Sabha meetings were held when they were initially introduced, but within a couple of years such meetings became rare despite a legal requirement that they be held twice a year. Moreover, the polit­ically dominant groups, the Vokkaliga and Linggayat castes, were found to occupy 51 percent of Panchayat seats after the 1987 Panchayat elections, despite only accounting for 27 percent of the popu­la­tion (Crook and Sverrisson 1999). At the district level, richer land-­owning indi­viduals were over-­represented. Overall assessments of the decentralization program in Karnataka during the late 1980s, how­ever, are highly pos­it­ive. The sys­tem provided local gov­ern­ments the power and resources to implement de­velopment programs at the local level and influence de­velopment planning at the state level. It created pos­it­ive spillover effects such as catalyzing decreased corruption, more timely warnings of potential disasters, and more proactive parti­cipa­tion among villagers once they realized their improved access to gov­ern­ment and their abil­ity to bring about change (Crook and Manor 1998). Even though the panchayat sys­tem in Karnataka was dismantled by the end of its first term, it set the precedent for the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem that was to follow and illus­trated the power of local gov­ern­ ments to improve gov­ern­ment functioning and ser­vice delivery at the local level.

The 1993 Karnataka Panchayat Act The polit­ical winds had shifted toward the end of 1992 in Karnataka and at the central gov­ern­ment level. For much of 1992 Karnataka was under direct rule, with civil ser­vants and polit­ical appointees in charge rather than elected politicians. At the end of 1992, state elections brought in a Congress Party gov­ern­ ment. Meanwhile a Congress-­led gov­ern­ment had also come to power at the national level a year earl­ier. The new Congress gov­ern­ment in Karnataka was composed of new leaders and stated its com­mit­ment to revive the panchayat sys­tem once in office, coinciding with pro-­panchayat moves at the national level. After decades of talk about com­mit­ment to local governance, the 73rd and 74th consti­tu­tional amend­ment bills came into force in April 1993. In order to conform to these consti­tu­tional amend­ments, Karnataka instituted several changes, most notably revising the local governance structure to a three-­ tiered sys­tem, which included the Gram Panchayats (GP) at the village level. Instead of passing amend­ments to the Karnataka Panchayat law, the state gov­ ern­ment crafted a new “Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act.” In May 1993, only a month after the national-­level 73rd Amendment, Karnataka’s new act was in force, making it the first state to comply with the new national legal framework.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   59 The Act required the estab­lishment of Gram Panchayats to cover a group of villages with a total popu­la­tion ranging from five to seven thou­sand and one representative for approximately every 400 constituents (Government of Karnataka 2007). The Act also mandated the devolution of all 29 subjects listed in the schedule to the 73rd Constitutional Amendment. Until 2005, Karnataka was the only state to have devolved all 29 subjects to panchayats (Ghorpade 2002); and by 2010 it was still one of only two states. Since 1993 the state legis­la­tion has been amended numerous times, most recently in 2006. After the passage of the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act of 1993 the renamed Janata Dal party came to power again in 1994 and set up a committee known as the Nayak Committee. The Committee re­com­mended changes to the Act in order to make it more account­able to the people. Several amend­ments implemented since then have improved the potential impact of the panchayat legis­la­tion. These include trans­ferring panchayat supervision powers from civil ser­vants to district-­level or block-­level panchayat officers and spelling out the obligatory functions of the Gram Panchayats, including maintaining water supply infrastructure, achieving uni­ver­sal immunization and pri­mary school enrollment, and providing latrines to the com­mun­ity (Mathew 2000). They have also given more fin­an­cial clout to the Gram Panchayats, par­ticu­larly since 2005, by increasing the amount of tied and untied money they receive directly from the state gov­ern­ment and through increasing their taxation powers. The Gram Panchayats have been given increased authority to manage implementation of social wel­fare schemes in the villages, and training has been provided to all panchayat members (Government of Karnataka 2006). By 2008 the average annual resources trans­ferred to Gram Panchayats in Karnataka was about 3.8 million rupees (approximately US$86,000 in 2010 dollars), a signi­fic­ant sum in the Indian con­text (Government of Karnataka 2007). Karnataka has been at the forefront of Indian states in devolving polit­ical, fin­an­ cial, and managerial powers to local governments. Unlike local gov­ern­ments at the district and block levels, Karnataka’s Gram Panchayats were given the right to raise rev­enue, including the abil­ity to raise taxes on buildings, markets, and water, in addition to trans­fers from the state and central gov­ern­ments. However, the Gram Panchayats in Karnataka have not been proactive in raising local resources in order to supplement fiscal trans­fers, as has been the case elsewhere in India. Local resource mobil­iza­tion was low throughout the 1990s and con­tinued to remain low at the turn of the century. In 2000/2001, the rev­enues raised by Gram Panchayats in Karnataka on average constituted only 22 percent of their total rev­enue (Government of Karnataka 2006), which was com­par­able to the percentage of rev­enues raised by the GPs in the 1990s. This is sim­ilar to other states. Gram Panchayats in Karnataka con­ tinued to be reluct­ant to raise their own rev­enue, so that the amount of resources avail­able to GPs was sim­ilar across the state. Karnataka was quick to act in implementing a local gov­ern­ment sys­tem that has been revised several times to make it more demo­cratic, power­ful, and account­able. The sys­tem set up in Karnataka was in congruence with the 73rd Amendment (Government of Karnataka 1993), with the Karnataka Panchayat

60   Karnataka – competitive local governments Raj Act of 1993 instituting a three-­tiered local gov­ern­ment structure. The Gram Sabha forms the backbone of the local gov­ern­ment structure and elects the members of the Gram Panchayat. It is required to meet at least twice a year by law in order to enable villagers to identi­fy beneficiaries for social wel­fare programs and enable account­abil­ity of the Gram Panchayat (Subha 1996). The Taluk Panchayat (TP) is at the block level and the Zilla Panchayat (ZP) is at the district level. The Karnataka Act also conforms with the national consti­tu­tion in reserv­ing seats at all three levels, with one-­third of all seats reserved for women and reserved seats for SC/ST in proportion to population. The Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act went beyond national legal requirements by mandating a min­imum of 15 percent of seats for Scheduled Castes and 3 percent for Scheduled Tribes. Later, a reser­va­tion of one-­third of all seats for members of other backward castes (OBC) was added (Mathew 2000). Furthermore, the new legis­la­tion included reser­va­tions for the head of the Gram Panchayat as well as the deputy-­head of the GP and mandated that these two positions be held for 30 months, in order to enable a rotation of reserved seats once during the five-­year term of the GP (Government of Karnataka 2007). Karnataka Gram Panchayats also include administrative staff headed by a Secretary, and these staff are civil ser­vants paid by the gov­ern­ment. Moreover, the state law mandated all Gram Panchayats to have three standing committees with reserved seats in each committee: a production committee to oversee agricultural and rural de­velopment, including pov­erty alleviation programs; a social justice committee tasked with managing village education programs and furthering the inter­ ests of minor­ity groups such as SC/STs; and an amenities committee to cover health, education and pub­lic work ac­tiv­ities (Government of Karnataka 2007). Some ob­ser­vers of local gov­ern­ments in Karnataka have criticized the depth of the panchayat sys­tem, saying that the basic structure of the new sys­tem as set forth in 1993 was less innov­at­ive than the 1987 version where much of the bur­ eau­cracy at the local level was under the control of the panchayats (Aziz 2000). However, soon after the elections of new panchayat members, local gov­ern­ment representatives started lobbying for increased powers. The Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act of 1993 was then amended several times. For example, in Octo­ber 2003, 47 amend­ments to the Panchayat Raj Act were unanimously adopted by the legislature. The ob­ject­ive of these amend­ments was to facilitate people’s parti­ cipa­tion and make the panchayats more account­able to them, through the inclusion of innov­at­ive mech­an­isms such as social audits of local gov­ern­ments. The amend­ments passed despite some wrangling between politicians, local gov­ern­ ments, and civil ser­vants on how much power and resources should be devolved to the local gov­ern­ments. The 2005 Right to Information Act (RTI), which guaranteed every cit­izen the right to request in­forma­tion from pub­lic institutions, which were required to answer the request within 30 days, was also legislated with instructions being issued to all Karnataka panchayats, including Gram Panchayats, that in­forma­tion pertaining to the areas devolved to them, including details of works undertaken, estim­ates, and the like, should be made clearly avail­able to all cit­izens through the maintenance of display boards.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   61 The end result of the evolving in­nova­tions was that despite polit­ical attempts to roll back the power of local gov­ern­ments, of Gram Panchayats in par­ticu­lar, by 2011 most of the in­nova­tions of the 1987 decentralization sys­tem were back in state law. For example, the District Rural Development Agency, charged with implementing anti-­poverty programs of the Ministry of Rural Development, was merged with the Zilla Panchayats, putting its civil ser­vants under the control of the ZP (World Bank 2000b). Thirty percent of state rev­enues are now regu­larly released to the panchayats (Rao et al. 2004); the Karnataka state gov­ern­ment in 2005 legislated disbursements of 30 billion rupees of untied money directly to the Gram Panchayat (Government of Karnataka 2006); and Karnataka became the first state to provide training for its panchayat members in 2006. Furthermore, in 2006 the World Bank provided a concessional loan to the Karnataka gov­ern­ment to fund a “Karnataka Panchayat Strengthening Project,” which further increased the unmarked funds at the disposal of Gram Panchayats (World Bank 2006). The Government of Karnataka was at the forefront of not only devolving respons­ibil­ities for socio­economic de­velopment to the Gram Panchayats, but also in trans­ferring funding and personnel to village level gov­ern­ments. Karnataka was the first state to enact an amend­ment in order to bring its law in line with the 73rd Amendment, the first state to hold local gov­ern­ment elections on the basis of the rules set forth in the 73rd Amendment, and the only state for over a decade that legally trans­ferred the respons­ib­ility for and financing of all 29 subjects mentioned in the 73rd Amendment (see Appendix A and Table 2.1). Since 1993 Karnataka has been at the van­guard of Indian states in decentralizing powers to local gov­ern­ments. This has created an envir­on­ment conducive to further in­nova­tions in decentralization and re­cog­ni­tion at the grassroots of the increasing power of local gov­ern­ments. For example, in 2006 the gov­ern­ment of India along with the National Commission for Women started organ­izing a series of state conferences for women panchayat members to share their ex­peri­ences and lessons learned (Ministry of Panchayats, Government of India 2007). Known as Panchayat Mahila Shakti Abhiyan, one of the first such conferences was held in Karnataka and sim­ilar conferences were sub­sequently held in other states. Also, in 2007 the Karnataka Panchayat Ministry initiated a program to provide every Gram Panchayat with a com­puter, to train a com­puter oper­ator for Gram Panchayats throughout the state, and to mandate the pub­lic posting at the GP office of a monthly com­puter printout of rev­enue and expenses. In early 2008 each Gram Panchayat was directed to open a bank account, and with the aid of com­puters, funding from the state gov­ern­ment was, “at the stroke of a key,” directly trans­fered each month to Gram Panchayats throughout the state (inter­ view with Director of Panchayat Raj, Ashraful Hasan, Janu­ary 3, 2008). These efforts to empower local gov­ern­ments did not go un­no­ticed. The gov­ern­ment of India recog­nized Karnataka for paving the path to empowering panchayats while increasing their account­abil­ity and effect­iveness. In April 2010, the states of Karnataka and Kerala shared the 2009–2010 top prize given by the gov­ern­ment of India for “Panchayat Empowerment and Accountabil­ity” (DHNS 2010).

62   Karnataka – competitive local governments In contrast to panchayat elections in both West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, the Karnataka Act expli­citly states that Gram Panchayat elections are not to be contested on the basis of polit­ical par­ties, though in local gov­ern­ment elections above the village level, elect­oral can­did­ates are allowed to officially disclose their party af­fili­ation and compete on a party basis (Government of Karnataka 1993). According to Karnataka’s Panchayat law, elections to the state’s 5,476 Gram Panchayats are to be conducted strictly on apolit­ical lines. Yet as the village studies below highlight, polit­ically com­petit­ive elections are less a result of legis­la­tion and instead have more to do with the actual workings of elections in the respective state. Gram Panchayat elections in Karnataka are de facto waged on a party basis. Though no party symbols are printed on the ballots, the local electorate knows the party af­fili­ation of can­did­ates, and major par­ties often invest substantial resources to back their candidates. The fact that polit­ical par­ties bankroll the elections of Gram Panchayat members, and an increase in expenditure on Gram Panchayat election cam­paigns gen­erally, reflect how Gram Panchayat members wield con­sider­able polit­ical, and increasingly eco­nomic, power in Karnataka. Gram Panchayat members play a signi­fic­ant role in electing block- and district-­level panchayats, as well as electing members to the state legis­lat­ive assembly (MLAs) where elections are contested on a party basis. As the central and state gov­ern­ments have con­tinued to increase trans­fers to Gram Panchayats, the power exercised by Gram Panchayat representatives has also increased. For example, the funds distributed through the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, a central gov­ern­ ment program started in 2008 that guarantees 100 days of work paid at a min­ imum wage to every family, are directly trans­ferred to local gov­ern­ments for selection of beneficiaries and distribution. In 2010, the funds to be trans­ferred to local gov­ern­ments in Karnataka under this scheme alone are estim­ated at 3.5 billion rupees. Gram Panchayat members increasingly hold polit­ically and eco­ nomic­ally im­port­ant positions, leading to de facto cam­paigning on a polit­ical party basis and com­petit­ive pol­itics in local governance. By 2010, the decentralized gov­ern­ment sys­tem in Karnataka was once again one of the more innov­at­ive and polit­ically and fin­an­cially devolved local gov­ern­ ment sys­tems in India. In order to investigate how the state’s local gov­ern­ment legis­la­tion translated into the functioning of village-­level local gov­ern­ments and the pro­cesses that enabled local gov­ern­ments to target and deliver social and anti-­poverty programs, village-­level studies were conducted in Karnataka. The fol­low­ing section sets forth the village studies and findings from these studies.

Overview and choice of village case studies in Karnataka Karnataka’s socio­economic background and his­tory of local gov­ern­ment is quite different from both Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Karnataka cit­izens on average ex­peri­enced less in­equal­ity, both socially and eco­nomic­ally, during the 1980s than did their counterparts in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Since this study compares how villagers in these three states fared before and after the

Karnataka – competitive local governments   63 introduction of the 1993 Panchayat Amendment to understand whether the exist­ ence of local gov­ern­ments improved their socio­economic wellbeing, it is im­port­ ant to note that Karnataka residents had a slightly better starting point in the early 1990s. There was also more polit­ical volatility at the state level, with par­ ties alternating in office par­ticu­larly since the 1980s. Karnataka, unlike West Bengal, was not ruled by a party with a pro-­poor orientation that had been in charge since 1977, with an organ­iza­tion that reached down to the village level. As discussed in the next chapter, this rule by a co­ali­tion of leftist par­ties in West Bengal has been heralded by some researchers as the key to that state’s successful improvements in social wel­fare of the past decades. However, less social welfare-­oriented state gov­ern­ments in Karnataka have never­the­less overseen improvements in socio­economic indic­ators that exceed those in West Bengal, par­ticu­larly in recent years. Nor are other macro or state-­level factors sufficient by themselves to explain improvements in social indic­ators in the state. For example, spectacular growth of the ser­vice sector in and around the city of Bangalore has not led to signi­fic­antly greater social improvements in Bangalore Rural District. State-­level studies explain state-­level eco­nomic or polit­ical factors, but do not provide an understanding of the dy­namics at the local level, where the delivery of pub­lic social and eco­nomic ser­vices mat­ters most for people’s wellbeing. This study of two villages in Karnataka aims to understand local dy­namics and ana­lyze whether having elected local gov­ern­ments for most of the 1990s mat­tered for people’s wellbeing. To this end, Bangalore Rural District was chosen because it does not have the geographic and socio­economic anomalies of the coastal or hilly regions, and because it most closely approximates average socio­economic indic­ators for Karnataka. For example, in 2001 lit­er­acy rates for Bangalore Rural District were 65 percent compared to a 67 percent state average, the ratio of females to 1,000 males was 956 for the district compared to 965 for the state, and 90 percent of the district’s households had electricity compared to 88 percent in the state (Bhandari and Kale 2007c). The obvious dif­fer­ence between Bangalore Rural District and the districts chosen for study in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal is that it borders the large metropolitan area of Bangalore. The city of Bangalore is the state capital and the center of eco­nomic growth in the state (due in large meas­ure to the ser­vices sector boom from multi­national corporations moving their “back-­offices” to Bangalore city). To minimize comparabil­ity prob­lems arising from a district being close to a thriving metropolis, the block or taluk chosen for study and the two villages within it were located a three-­hour bus and scooter drive from Bangalore city. As with the village studies in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the two villages here, Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal (both located in the Magadi Taluk), were also selected because they had been studied prior to the passage of the 73rd Amendment. Though not as formal a study as those that provided the baseline in the other two case studies, and despite little socio­economic data being collected, Dr. G.  K. Karanth’s studies of the villages in the late 1980s and again in the early 1990s provide an understanding of socio­economic wellbeing in both villages (Karanth 1987,

64   Karnataka – competitive local governments 1994). There is therefore a baseline for comparison of social wellbeing before and after implementation of the Panchayat Raj Amendment in these villages.

Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal in the early 1990s While the villages of Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal in the Bangalore Rural District of Karnataka are both in closer proximity to a large metropolitan area than are the villages in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, both Karnataka villages are less access­ible and appear more remote. No scheduled pub­lic transport runs by either of these villages, making the time needed to cover the distance to Bangalore too long to enable commuting into the metropolis. The high fuel cost of driving into Bangalore (for the one person in the village who owned a car in 1990–2000) did not make commuting to Bangalore city a viable option. Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal in 1990 were essentially rural villages where the majority of the popu­la­tion was engaged in agri­cul­ture and agriculture-­related work. In the late 1980s most households in Gavi Nagamangala owned some land, with the average per household ranging from less than an acre for an SC Kumbara family to over six acres for a dominant Vokkaliga family (Karanth 1987). According to the 1991 census, Gavi Nagamangala had a popu­la­tion of 1,066 persons, and the caste with the largest number of people was the Vokkoligas (Karanth 1994). Only 51 percent of the land was arable, with most of the land being used to grow “ragi” (a crop frequently grown in dry areas), while only a few dozen farmers with access to irrigation facilities cultivated rice, mostly for their own household consumption (Karanth 1994). During the 1980s poor and landless households saw a gradual improvement in their livelihoods, due to increased availabil­ity of anti-­poverty programs, increased access to sal­ar­ ied jobs through affirmative action programs, and increased demand for labor within the village. Unlike the villages studied in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, even in 1991 there was not much evid­ence of underemployment in the village of Gavi Nagamangala. The demand for labor and shortage of workers had by the early 1990s resulted in an improved livelihood situ­ation for the agricultural laborer in Gavi Nagamangala and had also led to mutual labor exchange ar­range­ ments. In order to lure wage labor to work agricultural land, land owners had begun to restart a practice which had virtually disappeared during the 1970s: sharecropping and land tenancy, albeit under much better fin­an­cial con­ditions for the laborer (Karanth 1994). Some new eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities were arising by the early 1990s in the villages – mainly sericulture (silk-­farming) – but most villagers remained agriculturalists. Both villages had pri­mary schools, which were functioning in the early 1990s and where most chil­dren in both villages were enrolled. Yet the proximity to Bangalore and its educational facilities had not spilled over into lit­er­acy rates, which, at 65 percent for the Bangalore Rural District, were slightly below the Karnataka average of 67 in 2001 (Bhandari and Kale 2007c). Overall, the socio­ economic pic­ture of Gavi Nagamangala in the early 1990s was one of slowly

Karnataka – competitive local governments   65 improving socio­economic indic­ators that were close to the district and state averages. Changes on the eco­nomic front mirrored changes on the polit­ical front. The frequent changes in par­ties in power at the state gov­ern­ment level during the late 1980s and early 1990s were also reflected at the village level, where social cleavages ran not only along caste lines, but also along polit­ical ones. The tumultuous state power struggle between the Congress Party and Janata Party during the 1980s was palpable in the villages studied, where most people knew who was affiliated with which party (inter­view with G. K. Karanth 2000). Echoing the lack of con­tinu­ity on the polit­ical front was the change in local gov­ern­ment structures that took place in Karnataka (and in these villages) in 1987. The new and innov­at­ive local gov­ern­ment sys­tem enacted in 1987 was starting to be dismantled in the early 1990s. In-­depth inter­views conducted in both villages about whether village residents had felt a sense of empowerment and voice with the 1987 Karnataka Panchayat Act yielded no straight­forward answers. On the one hand, people were aware that they had elected representatives at the Mandal Panchayat level under the 1987 sys­tem, which repres­ented a group of villages in their area with a popu­la­tion of 8,000 to 12,000. Interviewees were aware that these GP representatives brought gov­ern­ment closer to the village level, reporting that they were more likely by the early 1990s to contact their local representatives than in the early 1980s – and in some cases they indeed did contact their representative if they had a concern. Having elected representatives at the national level for several decades, villagers had an aware­ness of what it meant to have an elected representative for a grouping of villages. Many informants also reported a sense that increased de­velop­mental resources were flowing to the villages by the early 1990s, espe­cially for anti-­poverty programs. This feedback on life in these villages around 1990 compared to the previous decade mirrors findings in other village-­level studies of the panchayat sys­tem in Karnataka of that time (Crook and Manor 2001). On the other hand, several people inter­viewed in both Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal recounted incidents where they had tried, albeit in some cases for the first time in their lives, to contact their Mandal Panchayat representatives in Mudabal in the early 1990s, only to face difficulty in getting responses from them. This also makes sense if one takes into account that under the panchayat sys­tem of the late 1980s, most of the power resided at the district-­level Zilla Panchayat. The residents of Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal were aware that by the late 1980s a shift in power had occurred at the state level with gov­ern­ment representatives now being closer to the village level and a notice­able improvement in access to anti-­poverty programs. People recounted that “it seemed like almost every­one turned out for the first panchayat elections in 1987” and that there was excitement about this first round of elections. A few years later, there was disappointment when direct rule was imposed by the central gov­ern­ment and panchayat elections were postponed. It is also clear both from discussions with villagers in Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal, as well as from other village- and state-­level studies of Karnataka

66   Karnataka – competitive local governments during its late 1980s experiment with local gov­ern­ments, that while the previous panchayat sys­tem empowered the Zilla Panchayat level, the base of local gov­ ern­ment, the Gram Sabha, did not function as envisioned (Aziz 1993; Crook and Manor 1998; Umapathy 1998; Mathew 2000). The Gram Sabha of the pre-­1993 era, by all accounts, rarely met in Gavi Nagamangala, Mudabal or any other village in Karnataka (inter­view with G.  K. Karanth 2000; Crook and Manor 1998). It was not able to provide the kind of village level check on the actions of panchayat members that the 1987 legis­la­tion on panchayats required. While that legis­la­tion had enabled greater account­abil­ity of bur­eau­crats at the district level with commensurate improvements in account­abil­ity and flow of funds to the local level (Crook and Manor 1998), inter­views from these village studies indicate that most people at the village level were not empowered and involved in local governance before 1993.

Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal in 2000 and 2008 The passage of the 1993 national Panchayat Act once again changed the pro­ spects for local governance in Karnataka. The basic two-­tiered sys­tem from 1987 was changed to three tiers, including Gram Panchayats at the village level. Since passage of the Karnataka Act, Gram Panchayat elections have taken place four times, in 1993, 2000, 2005, and 2010. The village studies in Karnataka were conducted in 2000 with a follow-­up visit in 2008. During the 1990s social indic­ators in the two study villages, like in Bangalore Rural District and in Karnataka as a whole, con­tinued to improve (see Table 3.1), and this trend con­tinued in the decade after the turn of the century. The largest improvements were seen in the pov­erty rate, where Karnataka was a leader among Indian states. These large social gains throughout the 1990s and up to 2008 were evid­ent in the villages studied, despite growth in eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities that was not obviously greater than in the villages studied in West Bengal or Uttar Pradesh. Annual growth in Karnataka’s per capita net state do­mestic product between 1993/1994 and 2008/2009 was com­par­able to the growth re­gis­tered over the same time period in West Bengal. However, pov­erty rates decreased more substantially in Karnataka (see Table 2.3). As with the other empirical chapters, the fol­low­ing ana­lysis of the village studies is based largely on qualit­at­ive data, namely inter­views with key Table 3.1  Social indicators in Bangalore Rural District, 1990/1991 and 2000/2001 Indicators

Bangalore Rural District, 1990/1991

Bangalore Rural District, 2000/2001

Sex ratio (females/1,000 males) Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 live births) Life expectancy (years) Adult literacy rate (%)

945 67 65.8 73.5

955 43 70.2 89.1

Source: Bhandari and Kale 2007c.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   67 informants and survey respondents, focus group discussions, and cross-­ referencing, both in 2000 and in 2008. Quantitative data (from yes/no questions) and qualit­at­ive in­forma­tion from in-­depth inter­views were collected by a small survey of a random sample in each village. Results for selected survey questions are provided in Table 3.3 at the end of the chapter. The rest of the chapter is structured as follows. First is an ana­lysis of pop­ular parti­cipa­tion in Gram Panchayat elections and Gram Sabha meetings, and responsiveness of local gov­ern­ment representatives. Next is an examination of whether the quality of gov­ern­ment has changed according to the villagers and whether there is any link to be made between changes in governance and the new Gram Panchayat sys­tem. The ana­lysis then turns to the overarching question of whether there is evid­ence, in terms of feedback from villagers and also from other sources, that wellbeing has improved in the villages, and whether such changes can be attributed to the exist­ence of local Gram Panchayats. By providing in­forma­tion on these changes in two villages in Karnataka the chapter details how increased power trans­ferred to local gov­ern­ments, and the functioning of these local gov­ern­ments in a polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ment, have helped to further root demo­cracy in Karnataka and have improved the social wellbeing of village residents, despite imperfect implementation of the Karnataka Panchayat Act.

Perception of the new Panchayat system: high participation, low agency Since institutionalization of local gov­ern­ments in 1994 and until 2011, state elections took place in Karnataka in 1994, 1999, 2004, and 2008, while Gram Panchayat elections were held in 1993, 2000, 2005, and 2010. Over 80,000 Gram Panchayat representatives were elected to 5,675 Gram Panchayats throughout the state. Statewide breakdowns of the backgrounds of Gram Panchayat representatives from the first two Gram Panchayat elections show that more Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and female Gram Panchayat representatives were elected than the percentage of seats reserved for them in both elections (see Table 3.2). Similarly, in Bangalore Rural District, the percentage of women, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes elected to GP office in 2000, as well as in 2005, was higher than their quota of reserved seats. Interviews in 2000 and again in 2008 with female Gram Panchayat members in both villages showed an aware­ness of the functioning of local gov­ern­ments and their rights and respons­ibil­ities as representatives that stood in marked contrast to their counterparts in the villages of Uttar Pradesh. Furthermore, in both the Gram Panchayats to which the villages belonged, the women who were elected to office in non-­reserved seats in 2000 and 2005 were young, lit­er­ate indi­viduals who were witnessed talking to female teachers and local female healthcare workers to find out their concerns with the social ser­vices in the com­ mun­ity. These women had not been elected to rubber-­stamp local gov­ern­ment de­cisions as token female representatives. They were actively engaged in

68   Karnataka – competitive local governments Table 3.2 Breakdown of election results in Karnataka for 5,675 Gram Panchayats, by social background of elected representative (percentages)

% seats reserved for respective population in Karnataka’s GP elections(a) Gram Panchayats, 1993(b) Gram Panchayats, 2000(b) Gram Panchayats, 2005(b) GP for the village of Gavi Nagamangala, 2005(c) GP for the village of Madabal, 2005(c)

SC (%)

ST (%)

Women (%)

16.2

 5

33

22.2  – 19 20 (3 out of 15)

 9  – 11 13 (2 out of 15)

21 (3 out of 14)

44 44.7 43 40 (6 out of  15)   7 (1 out of  14) 50 (7 out of 14)

Sources: (a) (2006) Government of Karnataka 2005; (b) various news sources; (c) information given by the Panchayat Secretary of Gavi Nagamangala and Madabal during an interview on January 3, 2008.

determining the desires of their constituents and in advancing women’s concerns and requests for phys­ical and social infrastructure during their local gov­ern­ment meetings. Similar observations were made of the representative of Scheduled Tribe background from Gavi Nagamangala who was elected to a non-­reserved seat by the GP elections in 2000. This indi­vidual was a polit­ical entrepreneur who knew his ST constituents and had active Congress Party sup­port. His polit­ ical party af­fili­ation, more­over, gave him a basis for meeting with other Congress Party-­affiliated village residents, thus offering a forum for bridging caste cleavages. Interviews with several villagers in 2000 and 2008 in both villages on the question of whether the reser­va­tion of seats has encouraged broader and more demo­cratic repres­enta­tion of village residents, yielded an un­equi­vocal yes. While opinions differed on the extent to which female representatives were vocal and active at local gov­ern­ment meetings and on the efficacy of their work, there was broad consensus that many who were elected to local gov­ern­ ment office for the first time, through reserved seats, repres­ented the com­mun­ ity well and in some cases were re-­elected in their own right. Numerous informants shared the view that women’s position of power had changed by 2008, compared to 1993, through their work in the Gram Panchayats. There was an increased pref­er­ence for female representatives because they gen­erally did not “drink, smoke or have other bad habits” and were thought to be more likely to be honest. Repre­senta­tion in local gov­ern­ments in Karnataka has become more inclusive and representative of the gen­eral popu­la­tion since 1993, which in turn has helped decrease the polit­ical power of formerly dominant local caste groups and elites. The entrance of new polit­ical actors through Gram Panchayat elections has also mobilized polit­ical com­peti­tion, with increased polit­ical party af­fili­ation. Together these factors have helped root demo­cracy at the village level.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   69 Participation in national, state, and panchayat elections in Karnataka is gen­ erally high. Since Gram Panchayat elections are held separately from upper-­level panchayat elections, turnout rates are a direct in­dica­tion of people’s inter­est in village-­level gov­ern­ments. State-­level ana­lysis of Gram Panchayat election turnout shows high parti­cipa­tion rates with two-­thirds of voters turning out for Gram Panchayat elections in 2000, with voter turnout well over 80 percent in some districts (staff reporter 2005b). Generally, the village studies showed that inter­est in local elections remained high through 2008, as the small-­scale survey, focus group discussions and inter­views yielded a perception that the sys­tem of Gram Panchayats brought gov­ern­ment power much closer to the village. With a higher percentage of seats reserved for SC/ST and women, there was high inter­est amongst these groups in the local elections. This excitement was palpable in the small survey and inter­ views conducted in the villages of Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal. When asked whether they had voted in the last national and Gram Panchayat elections, all 80 respondents of the survey indicated that they had. Though this figure seems high, they point to the fact that voters in these villages, as throughout Karnataka, were enthusiastic at the pro­spect of electing village governments. All key informants as well as all 80 survey respondents in 2000 thought that the village-­level local gov­ern­ment elections were fair. Once again these figures seem very high, but they indicate enthusiasm and sup­port for local gov­ern­ments in these villages. If one takes into account that Gram Panchayat elections in Karnataka were not legally to be contested on a party basis, it is clear that vote-­ rigging and other forms of election corruption through or­gan­ized party inter­ests were less likely to happen in the early stages of local elections, where the power of the Gram Panchayats was still unclear and resources flowing to these local gov­ern­ments were not as high as they were by 2011. Moreover, the high level of perception of elections as being fair is in line with previous studies by Crook and Manor and others, which found that 95 percent of respondents thought local gov­ ern­ment elections were fair (Subha 1997; Crook and Manor 1998). In both Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal, key informants recounted that some of the contenders for Gram Panchayat seats that were more heavily contested distributed liquor before elections in the hopes of influ­en­cing results. Key informants as well as focus groups were unanimous in the view that while some people accepted the liquor, they then voted for whomever they wanted and that balloting was secret, so that this incentive did not influence the outcome of the election. Several respondents also stated that on the day of both the 1993 and 2000 Gram Panchayat elections in the village, police were stationed outside voting booths to prevent fraud and violence. The new Karnataka Panchayat laws engendered high elect­oral parti­cipa­tion rates in Gram Panchayat elections. Not only did all of the 80 villagers surveyed in 2000 vote during the Gram Panchayat elections, 22 of them (27 percent) also cam­paigned for a person running for a panchayat seat. Similar parti­cipa­tion rates were found by previous studies in Karnataka (Crook and Manor 1998). In contrast to the high parti­cipa­tion rates in election cam­paigning and voting, fewer villagers seemed to understand the full functioning of the new panchayat

70   Karnataka – competitive local governments sys­tem or know all panchayat members, even though at the time of the 2000 study the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem had been in place for seven years. From in-­depth inter­views conducted in both villages during 2000 and 2008, it was clear that indi­viduals gen­erally knew that the new Gram Panchayats had polit­ical powers devolved to them, but not a single person out of the ten inter­viewed on this question in 2000 and the ten inter­viewed in 2008 knew the full extent of powers legally devolved to the panchayats. When asked specifically whether they knew the names of their Gram Panchayat members, most responded that they knew the names of at least three members; how­ever, only about half knew the name of the Gram Panchayat pres­id­ent. The most likely explanation for this is the distance between villagers and the Gram Panchayats. Karnataka Gram Panchayats, like those in West Bengal and unlike those in Uttar Pradesh, gen­ erally represent a grouping of villages rather than an indi­vidual village. This greater distance between village residents and the Gram Panchayat might account for the likelihood of knowing the names of representatives from one’s own village but not knowing the head of the Gram Panchayat, who was not from either of the villages studied. Participation rates in Gram Sabha meetings, while higher than in some other studies (Deshpande and Murthy 2002), were also lower than intended. When asked about participating in these village level meetings, 23 out of 80 respondents (29 percent) to the small-­scale survey said that they had taken part in one or more of these meetings since the estab­lishment of the new panchayat sys­tem in 1993 and none said that they had attended more than one Gram Sabha (GS) meeting every year. Furthermore, according to the respondents, none of the GS meetings was videotaped as stipulated by the Karnataka Panchayat Act. On a more pos­it­ive note, of the 23 respondents who attended Gram Sabha meetings, 16 (70 percent) said that they were active parti­cip­ants at the meetings. When those survey respondents who said that they had not attended Gram Sabha meetings were asked why not, most said that the meetings are held without informing villagers of the date and the result was that most of those who went to these meetings were Gram Panchayat representatives or people associated with them through family ties or friendship. This might explain why a high proportion of those who did go to meetings were active at the meetings. On the other hand, while parti­cipa­tion at first glance might appear low, it is still higher than what was observed in the Uttar Pradesh villages. It is also higher than Gram Sabha parti­cipa­tion rates under the previous panchayat sys­tem in Karnataka, where it was found that only 17 percent of all villagers attended such meetings (Crook and Manor 1998). The evid­ence from these two village studies in Bangalore Rural District shows that parti­cipa­tion in and aware­ness of local gov­ern­ment, though far from ideal, is never­the­less rel­at­ively high. Given this, it was surprising to find that most villagers did not have frequent inter­actions or show high agency with their panchayat representative. Only 15 survey respondents (19 percent) reported having contacted their local representative for help in 2000. This is less than what was observed in Uttar Pradesh, and seems at odds with the high level of elect­oral parti­cipa­tion. On the

Karnataka – competitive local governments   71 other hand, of the 15 respondents who contacted their representative, 13 (87 percent) found their representative to be responsive. Moreover, several survey respondents who said that they had not had any formal contact with representatives volunteered that local gov­ern­ment representatives seem access­ible and that they would contact them if they needed to. This overall low level of inter­action and agency vis-­à-vis Gram Panchayat members in Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal contrasts unfavor­ably with the high mobil­iza­tion of voters in the West Bengal villages, but compares favor­ably with the villages in Uttar Pradesh in terms of a sense among villagers that local gov­ern­ment representatives were accessible. To further understand why in par­ticu­lar poorer village residents and the Scheduled Tribes do not make greater use of the increased availabil­ity of gov­ ern­ment officers at the village level, several in-­depth group discussions and individual inter­views were held in both villages. These discussions revealed that despite being vis­ibly the poorest members of the village, the social and eco­nomic distance between the ST villagers and other village residents in 2000 was not as great as that found in West Bengal, nor as great as between upper caste and SC or Muslims in the villages studied in Uttar Pradesh. The ST villagers lived together in a separate part of the village, but their residences were not phys­ically located outside the village as in the West Bengali villages, and they lived in better-­built and larger houses than their counterparts in the villages in the other two case study states. There was a strong sense of com­mun­ity among the ST villagers in the Karnataka villages, and life was less a mat­ter of survival, since between agricultural work and functioning social wel­fare programs, villagers managed reasonably well and did not have any grievances against the village or village gov­ern­ment. The well from which they drew their water was shared with other, non-­ST members of the com­mun­ity; at religious festivals they cel­eb­rated with other villagers; and at crop planting and harvesting time they worked the fields alongside other villagers. When asked specifically why they did not lobby the local gov­ern­ment for more social programs for their com­mun­ity, the unanimous answer was that they were receiving social bene­fits and their life in gen­eral was better than a decade ago. While the low agency rates are still surprising given the easier access to local gov­ern­ments, and though these findings differ from higher agency findings in village studies conducted on the earl­ier panchayat sys­tem by Crook and Manor, social wel­fare programs appear to be working in these villages and the village poor do not appear or think of themselves as destitute or disenfranchised. These findings on the short social distance between tradi­tion­ally mar­ginalized groups in Karnataka (such as the ST) and upper-­caste village residents mirror statewide ana­lysis of social groups in Karnataka (inter­view with G. K. Karanth 2000). In Karnataka, the caste hier­archy is not a deep social cleavage and the frequency of inter­actions between cit­izens belonging to different caste backgrounds reflects the more horizontal hier­archy of social inter­actions. In the two village studies in Karnataka, village elites were not easily identi­fi­able by their high caste background or their polit­ical party af­fili­ation. Conversations with groups of villagers in 2000 as well as 2008 to identi­fy village residents with

72   Karnataka – competitive local governments signi­fic­ant polit­ical influence repeatedly indicated that the elite in these villages were spread across the spectrum of caste and religious cleavages, as well as across the spectrum of polit­ical party af­fili­ation. “Elites” as identified by respondents in these Karnataka villages have a variety of caste and polit­ical backgrounds, making caste and polit­ical af­fili­ation an im­port­ant identity marker rather than a hierarchical marker. Also, neither caste nor polit­ical af­fili­ation was identified as being a signi­fic­ant factor in determining access to polit­ical power or “elite” status, findings that echo other research in Karnataka (Besley et al. 2008; Manor 2008). The wide social distribution of indi­viduals identified as village elites indicates that these elites are not an easily identi­fi­able, cohesive group, making their resistance to demo­cratic deepening and their cooption of local gov­ ern­ment resources less likely.

Work of the Gram Panchayats Discussions with vulner­able and poorer groups in both villages highlighted that key government-­financed social wel­fare programs were working in both villages. And while in-­depth inter­views with key informers in both villages showed that few know the exact extent of devolution of powers to their Gram Panchayats, there was a gen­eral understanding that the Gram Panchayats received resources from higher levels of gov­ern­ment and were in charge of managing social wel­fare programs at the village level. One of the most impressive findings of the village studies in Karnataka is the near unanimity about functioning social programs. All 80 survey respondents said that some type of social wel­fare program was being delivered in their village while 24 (30 percent) said that the Gram Panchayat was the key implementer of these programs. Also, 70 of the 80 respondents (88 percent) thought that there were functioning anti-­poverty programs in the village, but only 13 (16 percent) thought that the GP was instrumental in providing these ser­vices. These responses as well as follow-­up inter­views confirm observations in these villages during 2000 and again in 2008: the social programs in these villages were opera­tional and know­ ledge of social program delivery was widespread. The village-­level healthcare worker was observed delivering pre- and postnatal care to women; school teachers show up and teach in the pri­mary schools; distribution of subsidized goods under the pub­lic distribution sys­tem (PDS)3 takes place; toilets had been built through a central-­government grant program; and central gov­ern­ment anti-­poverty schemes such as the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY)4 pub­lic works program and the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY)5 self-­employment program were also in evid­ence in both villages. Moreover, perceptions of functioning ser­ vices are signi­fic­antly higher than those found in the other two state case studies and point to a rel­at­ively high-­functioning social wel­fare sys­tem at the village level. Survey respondents perceived that the delivery of central and state gov­ern­ment programs aimed at improving social wel­fare was taking place in their villages, though most did not perceive the Gram Panchayat as the instrumental body in the delivery of these social services.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   73 While programs aimed at improving social wellbeing were clearly functioning in Karnataka, the questions of whether they were targeting their intended beneficiaries or whether power­ful inter­ests were able to corrupt the pro­cess was more difficult to answer conclusively. Though the social distance between locally power­ful socio­economic groups and poorer groups is not as great in Karnataka as in some northern Indian states such as Uttar Pradesh, some castes never­the­less still dominate the polit­ical eco­nomy of rural Karnataka, raising concerns about whether beneficiaries tended to be of the dominant caste background. In order to assess whether pov­erty programs were reaching intended beneficiaries, names of three Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) beneficiaries and two SGSY beneficiaries in Gavi Nagamangala, as well as two recipients of each program from Mudabal, were obtained from their respective Gram Panchayats, and inter­ views were conducted with them in 2000. Similar cross-­checks were conducted in 2008. In all of the inter­views, recipients confirmed receiving the respective anti-­poverty scheme during the last five years. None of the recipients was from an OBC or upper-­caste background, and visual assessments as well as recipient feedback on assets owned confirmed that these were indeed poorer members of the village. To understand perceptions of corruption in the social wel­fare alloca­tion pro­ cess, the survey of 80 villagers in these two villages were asked whether, if two people were equally poor but one of them had some asso­ci­ation (caste or polit­ ical) with the person determining the bene­fits, this asso­ci­ation would determine who would get the bene­fit. Unlike in West Bengal where the majority of survey respondents said that polit­ical background and connections would influence the de­cision, in the Karnataka villages only 22 of the 80 respondents (28 percent) hought connections would influence beneficiary selection. Moreover, 11 respondents (14 percent) said – without being asked – that one person alone would not be making the de­cision under the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem. There was clearly a group of people in the village who understood the workings of the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem well enough to make this type of statement. If these social wel­fare programs are clearly functioning in the two villages and the Gram Panchayats parti­cip­ate in their implementation (by identi­fying the beneficiaries and releasing funds to beneficiaries or program implementers), the question remains why so few villagers see the Gram Panchayat as being instrumental in the delivery of these programs. Linked to this question is the gen­eral issue of aware­ness and also agency and involvement of villagers in beneficiary-­ identification through Gram Sabhas. Villagers are aware that there is a new panchayat sys­tem in place and that a local gov­ern­ment structure closer to the village has been instituted, yet only 23 of 80 survey respondents (29 percent) reported participating in any Gram Sabha meetings over the past years and those who did parti­cip­ate seemed to be more polit­ically aware and often from the polit­ically connected groups of the village. From the per­spect­ive of local gov­ern­ment representatives, the amount of de­velopment work that they can undertake is limited. Several panchayat members who were inter­viewed complained about the fact that the funds that are

74   Karnataka – competitive local governments devolved to Gram Panchayats are in large part tied to specific programs. Most of the untied funds are used for sal­ar­ies and administrative costs, and there is therefore little leeway for Gram Panchayat members to alloc­ate funds toward areas they deem im­port­ant – findings that have also been echoed by other studies of the Karnataka panchayat sys­tem (Besley et al. 2004a; World Bank 2004). Interviews with Gram Panchayat members and review of the logbook of rev­enues and expenditures of both villages’ Gram Panchayats in 2008 confirmed that the vast majority of funding received by the local gov­ern­ments is intended for specific programs or costs rather than untied. While the new panchayat sys­tem appears to have spurred the deepening of demo­cracy through greater elect­oral parti­cipa­tion, this deepening did not extend all the way to the roots of local gov­ern­ments, the Gram Sabha. Moreover, while there was evid­ence that social wel­fare programs are working well in the villages and are gen­erally reaching their intended audience, how well these programs are targeted versus what percentage of funds are either pocketed or mis-­targeted by locally power­ful groups and indi­viduals remains unclear. The influence of dominant groups in these villages in Karnataka is clearly still present, yet most social programs do function at the village level and only a quarter of the survey respondents thought that polit­ical or socio­economic connections influence program targeting, in contrast to the higher perception of polit­ical corruption in the West Bengal case study villages.

Overall perception of Gram Panchayats While the new panchayat sys­tem was already in place for seven years at the time of the first round of village studies in 2000, the field research and ana­lysis of the changing nature of Gram Panchayats since the turn of the century reveal that the sys­tem in Karnataka is still evolving. Since 1993 several amend­ments have been added to the Panchayat Act, gen­erally to increase the power and fin­an­cial resources of the Gram Panchayats as outlined above. The Gram Panchayats in Karnataka are increasingly structured to empower villagers and change the power balance at the local level to be more demo­cratic. Information from villagers and observation of the social ser­vices provided through the Gram Panchayat make clear that local gov­ern­ments are making a dif­fer­ence in these villages in Karnataka. Villagers were enthusiastic about the Gram Panchayat elections and by all accounts have turned out in record numbers. Social wel­fare programs, in all of which the Gram Panchayat is now involved in delivering, were vis­ibly working in both villages. Of the 80 villagers surveyed, 45 (56 percent) thought that their Gram Panchayat representatives were good, and involved in satisfying the most im­port­ ant needs of the village, with only seven (nine percent) stating that they did not address the village’s needs. However, the majority of survey respondents as well as key informant inter­viewees who held the GP representatives in high esteem, were lit­er­ate, older, more affluent and higher-­caste villagers. Other village studies in Karnataka have found that the more polit­ically power­ful members within each

Karnataka – competitive local governments   75 group bene­fiting from quotas are the ones who tend to be elected to local gov­ern­ ments. While this may be so, it is evid­ent that the newly instituted Gram Panchayat sys­tem is bringing about changes to the distribution of power. Though the two Gram Panchayat members from Gavi Nagamangala and two from Mudabal who occupied reserved seats in 2000 were all lit­er­ate, one was a younger woman and one sometimes worked as a laborer in the fields. The GP representatives from these villages are not all from the tradi­tion­ally power­ful groups in the village. Even though many villagers do not attribute the functioning social ser­vices to the GP, and even though the GS are not fully functioning as they are mandated, the new panchayat sys­tem – with its quotas – has changed power dy­namics at the village level. Women and SC/ST groups are being elected in record numbers. In the GPs for the villages studied, over 40 percent of GP members were women, 20 percent were of SC and nearly 15 percent were of ST backgrounds. These proportions are sim­ilar to statewide patterns in 2007, where 41 percent of all GP members were women, 18 percent were of SC background and nine percent were of ST background (Government of Karnataka 2007). The overall perception of the Gram Panchayats at the village level is one of sup­port for the GPs, where women and people of SC/ST background are increasingly repres­ented, and one where GP-­managed social ser­vices are being provided.

Quality of governance This section will ana­lyze the quality and perception of governance in Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal in order to better understand whether the Gram Panchayats have improved social wellbeing in the villages. As with the other two case study chapters, governance will be ana­lyzed by assessing changes in parti­cipa­ tion, account­abil­ity, and polit­ical stability; gov­ern­ment effect­iveness and regu­ latory quality; and rule of law and control of corruption. Governance, defined as the “traditions and institutions by which authority in a coun­try is exercised” includes (1) the pro­cess of selecting, monitoring, and replacing gov­ern­ments, (2) the gov­ern­ment’s capa­city to formulate and implement sound pol­icies, and (3) the state’s and cit­izen’s respect for the institutions that govern eco­nomic and social inter­actions among them (Kaufmann et al. 2002). Villagers were asked about the extent to which they perceived others as abiding by the rules of law and soci­ety, as well as their perceptions of corruption – defined as the exercise of pub­lic power for private gain (Kaufmann et al. 2002: 4). In par­ticu­lar, they were asked whether there was a change in viol­ence, rule of law, and corruption since the implementation of the new panchayat sys­tem. Advocates of decentralization have often cited increased voice for formerly disenfranch­ised groups, increased account­abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments and bur­eau­crats, and greater polit­ ical stability, as bene­fic­ ial outcomes. The village surveys, key informant inter­ views and focus group discussions, collected in­forma­tion on whether or not villagers in Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal shared this view. Since implementation of the 73rd Amendment, un­equi­vocal changes in village-­level power dy­namics have taken place just through the election of more

76   Karnataka – competitive local governments women and lower castes to local gov­ern­ment office. Even if some of these are “token representatives” who do not actively engage in local gov­ern­ments, as some studies suggest, there are other studies that show the changing dy­namics and empowerment of groups that have arisen as a result of the panchayat reser­ va­tions, including implementation of more social pro­jects that are highly prioritized by women and SC/ST as opposed to upper castes (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2003, 2004). This rise in “voice” of villagers as a result of the new Gram Panchayat sys­tem is reflected in the villages studied in Bangalore Rural District. Among 80 villagers in the two com­munit­ies who were surveyed, 30 (38 percent) said they felt they had more voice since the implementation of the new panchayat sys­tem. 24 respondents (30 percent) said that their sense of voice was the same, 8 (10 percent) stated that it was worse, and 18 (23 percent) did not express an opinion. However, when looking at the background of the 30 who said that their voice had increased, 20 (67 percent) were of lower caste background and/or women. Clearly, there was some change in sense of voice, and the change was mostly among groups who had been more disenfranch­ised under the previous sys­tem. This finding is borne out by the fact that in the Gram Panchayat that Mudabal belongs to, one female Gram Panchayat representative won a seat that was not reserved for a woman. Quotas for women encouraged more women to run for office, and in the 2000 as well as the 2005 Gram Panchayat elections in these villages, at least a couple of women contested – and won – seats that were not reserved. Several amend­ments to the Karnataka Panchayat Act have been passed since 1993 that aimed at improving Gram Panchayat control over the bur­eau­cracy in order to enhance account­abil­ity. Gram Panchayat records showing disbursed versus received funds for these villages showed a high disbursement rate. Survey responses on this issue showed a sim­ilar pattern to the question about voice, as 32 out of the 80 respondents (40 percent) answered that account­abil­ity had increased, 24 (30 percent) said it had decreased, and 24 (30 percent) did not answer or said that they did not know. Interviews with four Gram Panchayat representatives as well a dozen key informants presented a mixed pic­ture. Some said that they now knew better what funds were being alloc­ated to the village and that they had some leverage through feedback to upper-­level panchayats to get work done by bur­eau­crats. Others thought that the panchayat did not have enough power over local-­level civil ser­vants such as schoolteachers or those engaged in dis­trib­uting pub­lic rations through the PDS system. Comparisons of account­abil­ity perceptions before and after implementation of the 73rd consti­tu­tional amend­ment need to keep in mind that the sys­tem that existed in Karnataka up to 1992 was hailed by many for its in­nova­tion in empowering panchayats and thereby increasing gov­ern­ment and civil ser­vant account­abil­ity (Crook and Manor 2001). However, most respondents, when comparing the new sys­tem to the sys­tem that was in place up to 1992, found that the new sys­tem was about the same as the old in enhancing the account­abil­ity of gov­ern­ments and civil ser­vants. Moreover, the Karnataka panchayat sys­tem was still in flux, with many of the amend­ments to the state law, which aimed at

Karnataka – competitive local governments   77 empowering Gram Panchayats both in terms of resources and polit­ical power, not being implemented until 2004–2005. Since 2001, complaints from panchayats over lack of power over funding and over the bur­eau­cracy also resulted in the state gov­ern­ment taking specific meas­ures to improve account­abil­ity, including a sys­tem of social audits, cit­izen report cards, and user group monitoring by inde­ pend­ent, professional agencies (Government of Karnataka 2005). Measures were also taken by the gov­ern­ment of Karnataka to enable feedback from local gov­ern­ments on how to improve the panchayat sys­tem. For example, in 2006 the state revived the idea of a State Panchayat Council, which was to meet twice a year to discuss the functioning of Panchayats in Karnataka. This Council consisted of polit­ical representatives and appointees from the state level, as well as representatives from each local gov­ern­ment level within each district (Government of Karnataka 2007), and met “as a forum for elected representatives to voice their as­pira­tions and offer their suggestions to improve the Panchayat Raj sys­tem and make it more responsive to the people’s needs” (Government of Karnataka 1993). Though this Council has only met four times since its resuscita­tion – which some experts see as an indic­ator that the state gov­ ern­ment is not fol­low­ing the spirit of its decentralization law – the fact that Karnataka has instituted such a council suggests a strengthening of the en­ab­ling envir­on­ment for local gov­ern­ment. These meas­ures, together with an increasing focus on linking panchayats and their fin­an­cial records electronically, are improving the transparency of Gram Panchayat accounts, and will help improve account­abil­ity in the longer term. In trying to understand whether Gram Panchayats have mat­tered for governance and hence social wellbeing in these villages, it is also im­port­ant to assess gov­ern­ment effect­iveness and administrative quality. As in the fol­low­ing chapters, gov­ern­ment effect­iveness is taken to mean the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to implement programs they are charged with implementing or overseeing by their mandate, as well as their abil­ity to improve implementation of ser­vices by civil ser­vants so as to decrease the administrative burden faced by citizens. When assessing gov­ern­ment effect­iveness, the results of field research in these villages again provide a mixed pic­ture. On the one hand, social ser­vices and programs are evid­ently functioning in the village with Gram Panchayat sup­ port. On the other hand, the survey in 2000 found that only 15 of 80 respondents (19 percent) thought that gov­ern­ment effect­iveness had improved since institutionalization of the Gram Panchayats, while 24 (30 percent) respondents thought that it had worsened, and the rest did not know or did not respond. When asked to discuss why account­abil­ity worsened, the most frequent answer was that the representatives under the previous panchayat sys­tem were more educated and thus, more aware of notions of governance and also more likely to enforce them. The feedback on changes in administrative burden was even less encouraging. When asked if the administrative burden that villagers faced when trying to get goods or ser­vices from the gov­ern­ment had increased or decreased since implementation of the new Panchayat sys­tem, 38 of the 80 survey respondents (48 percent) in 2000 said that the burden had worsened, while only 21 (26 percent) thought it had

78   Karnataka – competitive local governments improved. Moreover, these opinions did not seem to differ by gender or caste background. Follow-­up inter­views with key informants and focus groups discussions on why people thought that the regu­latory burden might have increased revealed a myriad of answers, including an increase in bribes that must be paid to get work done; a di­min­ished understanding of who should be approached to get something done; more layers of gov­ern­ment; and lack of know­ledge of some Gram Panchayat members about how to deal with various issues. At the same time, those informants who thought that the administrative burden had worsened, as well as those who thought it had improved, ac­know­ledged that gov­ern­ment was closer to them now than under the previous panchayat sys­tem. Follow-­up inter­views and focus group discussions in 2000 and again in 2008 revealed that by having gov­ern­ment representatives who now lived in their village, many villagers had a sense that they at least had a person living phys­ically close to them to whom they could turn if they had questions or needed some ser­vices from the gov­ern­ment. But having local gov­ ern­ment representatives did not appear to have improved the transaction costs associated with availing oneself of gov­ern­ment services. The feedback from the 2000 survey on viol­ence and rule of law was also not encouraging. Only 23 survey respondents (29 percent) thought that viol­ence had decreased and only five stated that rule of law had improved, while the majority of respondents though there had been no change in the rule of law. Yet in-depth discussions with survey respondents and key informants, both in 2000 and 2007/2008, provided a more detailed understanding of these perceptions of change. The observations of increased viol­ence were largely attrib­ut­able to intergenerational change and increased party com­peti­tion. Many survey respondents stated that the younger generation had less respect for elders and were more engaged in party pol­itics, leading to increased polit­ical viol­ence. Many of those who stated that viol­ence had increased stated that viol­ence only increased around elections. The entrance of an increased number of polit­ical par­ties vying for votes at elections and the new pres­ence of party pol­itics at the village level led to an increased politicization of local governance. Several key informants stated that newer par­ties had emerged and these now clashed with the Congress Party – a phenomenon that emerged in the early 1990s The mixed pic­ture of changing governance in the villages of Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal is also reflected in perceptions of corruption. When asked directly whether corruption had changed over the past decade, respondents were more pos­it­ ive. Of the 80 survey respondents, 54 (68 percent) said that corruption had decreased between 1990 (before the Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act had been legislated) and 2000. Furthermore, when these 54 villagers were asked whether the decrease in corruption was due to the Gram Panchayats, 30 (56 percent) thought so, while 10 (19 percent) thought that decreased corruption was due to other factors. However, focus group discussions and individual inter­views found that while there was a perception that the rule of law had deteriorated between 1990 and 2000, Gram Panchayats were not seen as being respons­ible for the change. Follow-­up inter­views in 2000 and discussions in 2008 to understand why there was such a perception of worsening rule of law, indicated that while violations of the

Karnataka – competitive local governments   79 law in the past were usually dealt with within the village, there has been an increasing move to refer mat­ters to the nearest police station. Operations of justice thus appear now to be more removed than formerly, when village elders and caste panchayats dealt with breaches of the law. The perception of how the rule of law has changed in these villages thus might not be directly related to the pres­ence of the new panchayat system.

The general quality of governance Decentralization in Karnataka has brought gov­ern­ment closer to the village level – and while the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem is one of the most innov­at­ive among Indian states, the previous panchayat sys­tem, although it lasted only five years, was more rad­ical and empowering of local gov­ern­ments. When villagers were asked to compare changes in governance in the year 2000 to the sys­tem in place before institutionalization of the new panchayat sys­tem, they were often comparing it to a sys­tem that, according to most studies, was the most decentralized in India, one that assigned much power to local gov­ern­ments. This partially explains why, in the case of Karnataka, the pres­ence of Gram Panchayats has not un­equi­ voc­ally improved governance from the per­spect­ive of most villagers. Rather, the perceived quality of governance has improved in some areas while remaining the same or worsening in others. According to the village surveys results, 30 of the 80 (38 percent) respondents thought that they were more likely to be listened to under the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem. Also, 35 survey respondents (44 percent) thought that account­abil­ity had improved under the new sys­tem, but 26 (33 percent) also thought that the new sys­tem was no different in account­abil­ity from the old one. Most thought that gov­ern­ment was less effect­ive, that the administrative burden had increased, and that there was less vis­ible rule of law in 2000 compared to 1990. Yet 54 of the 80 survey respondents (68 percent) in 2000 thought that corruption had decreased and the majority thought the decrease was attrib­ut­ able to the Gram Panchayats. Interviews with key informants conducted in 2008 yielded a sim­ilarly mixed perception of account­abil­ity and governance. There is further evid­ence about this mixed pic­ture of changes in governance. With the institutionalization of Gram Panchayats more in­forma­tion was made avail­able to villagers on the amounts of funding alloc­ated to their local gov­ern­ ment for socio­economic programs. The greater visibility of gov­ern­ment transactions at the village level was a direct result of the pres­ence of Gram Panchayats at the local level, as well as the recent in­nova­tions to enhance the fin­an­cial transparency of local gov­ern­ments, for example through social audits. In both the village Gram Panchayats, the ledgers keeping accounts of funds received from the central and state gov­ern­ments and disbursed through different programs were avail­able to the pub­lic – which was not the case in any of the villages studied in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. It is this increased transparency that has likely had an impact on the perception of decreased corruption in these villages, because when corruption occurs it is likely to be more vis­ible – in itself an  effect­ive deterrent. Two panchayat members candidly stated in 2000 that

80   Karnataka – competitive local governments corruption was less likely to occur now, because their fam­il­ies and neigh­bors would be more likely to know if a Gram Panchayat member were involved in corruption. Group discussion in 2008 yielded sim­ilar findings. These findings are backed by other village studies in Karnataka indicating that while the number of people involved in corruption might have increased with decentralization (as quoted in Crook and Manor 1998; Kadekodi et al. 2006) – which in itself might be thought of as “demo­crat­ization of corruption” – the amount of overall funds misappropriated very likely declined. Corruption was also held in check by the spor­adic­ally functioning Gram Sabhas (GS), where representatives are supposed to present and discuss Gram Panchayat ledgers. All respondents to the 2000 survey, as well as those who had attended Gram Sabha meetings who were inter­viewed in 2000 and 2008, said that panchayat finances and beneficiary selection were discussed, although the extent of these discussions is not clear. Moreover, as more in­forma­tion becomes avail­able through electronic linking of Gram Panchayats to block- and district-­ level panchayats, as well as to the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj at the state level, and with increased requirements for disseminating these records, corruption is likely to be further averted. The overall findings of the 2000 and 2008 village studies were one of improved governance as a result of having local gov­ern­ment officials at the village level. While many complained about the increase in administrative burden during the 1990s, few attributed this to the panchayats. Several respondents, including one panchayat member, pointed to increased transparency and empowerment of formerly mar­ginalized groups and said that these changes exemplified the slowly evolving power dy­namics within the village. The majority of respondents, more­over, stated that corruption had decreased since institutionalization of the new sys­tem. Many conversations, par­ticu­larly in 2008, attested to a common perception that the increased resources for de­velopment flowing to the Gram Panchayats, together with having local gov­ern­ment representatives from their villages, had made corrupt transactions more difficult to hide – thereby decreasing corruption overall. Interviews with village elites also revealed that the formerly dominant caste groups in the villages were realizing that the Gram Panchayat sys­tem with its reser­va­tions is now a permanent sys­ tem. Having female and lower-­caste representatives in local gov­ern­ment, together with greater transparency of local gov­ern­ment transactions, are ensuring that not only do social ser­vices function, but also that those resources have a greater likelihood of reaching their intended beneficiaries. Together with increasing aware­ness of local gov­ern­ment structures and how they ought to function, including the biannual gath­er­ing of the Gram Sabha, these factors are improving demo­cratic inclusion and governance in the villages in Karnataka.

Civil society and elites Key to understanding local gov­ern­ment functioning in these two villages was also the social inter­actions among the villagers and the attitude of social elites

Karnataka – competitive local governments   81 towards the new panchayat sys­tem. Understanding relations between different religious and caste groups in a coun­try and state where social norms of inter­ action are still con­ser­vat­ive is essential to understanding the dy­namics in the village and within the Gram Panchayat. Building on Robert Putnam’s thesis that civic organ­iza­tions that bridge social cleavages are key to building social capital, which in turn undergirds the founda­tions of demo­cracy (Putnam 1993, 2000), the survey in 2000 and focus group discussions in 2000 and again in 2008, asked questions about the pres­ence of religious and caste group bridging asso­ci­ations in the village and about social inter­actions among villagers. In contrast to both of the other state case studies, 59 of the 80 survey respondents (74 percent) in these villages stated that there were such asso­ci­ations in their village and 31 respondents (39 percent) stated that they had parti­cip­ated in such asso­ci­ations. Examples given included an asso­ci­ation to market raw silk, a temple maintenance asso­ci­ ation (across different caste groups), and a farmers’ asso­ci­ation. By 2008 there were many more examples of such asso­ci­ations, including a women’s cooperative in each village that bought and prepared school meals, a government-­ financed rabbit-­raising cooperative, and a group of parents who or­gan­ized to clean and paint the local elementary school. Not only were there increasing examples of villagers interacting across caste divisions by 2008, but responses given during inter­views with key informants in that year showed that increasing pub­lic funding distributed through the GP directly led to the formation of some of these organ­iza­tions, such as the women’s cooperative that cooked lunch for the local elementary school children. Social and eco­nomic elites in both villages also furthered the demo­cratic workings of the local Gram Panchayat. Elites in these villages belonged to the dominant castes in Karnataka and were viewed as elites due to their social and  eco­nomic standing in the village. After identi­fying such socio­economic elites in each village with the help of key informants, inter­views with three leaders in each village were conducted in 2000, with follow-­up inter­views in 2008. These inter­views backed the in­forma­tion given by other key informants: the elites in these villages are sup­portive of the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem. Two out of the three leaders in each of the villages had run successfully for office either at the local or district level and all talked about the sys­tem in pos­it­ ive terms.

Did social wellbeing improve? The main question of these village studies is whether the Gram Panchayats have mat­tered by con­trib­ut­ing to improved social wellbeing. General social and eco­ nomic wellbeing improved in Karnataka between 1990 and 2011 and this section ana­lyzes whether this improvement held true for the villages of Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal, and whether any of the changes can be linked to the pres­ence of Gram Panchayats. While eco­nomic growth rates for Karnataka as a whole since the early 1990s were high, this was largely driven by the very high growth rates of

82   Karnataka – competitive local governments urban areas, Bangalore city in par­ticu­lar. Bangalore Rural District performed better than some other districts, as it moved between 1991 and 2001 from twelfth to sixth in rankings of the state’s districts by gross do­mestic income (Government of Karnataka 2006). It is also clear from pro­gress in social indic­ators, from discussions with researchers of changes in socio­economic wellbeing in Bangalore Rural District,6 and from inter­views with villagers on the changing eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities and wage ates within their village and outside, that socio­economic indic­ators within the district improved since the early 1990s. Yet these changes were modest and no­where com­par­able to the high statewide eco­nomic growth rates that were driven by urban Bangalore. Among the 80 survey respondents in the two villages in 2000, 46 (58 percent) stated that socio­economic wellbeing had improved in Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal during the 1990s. This perception was confirmed by inter­views in 2008. Moreover, village observations in 2008 clearly attested to improved social and phys­ical infrastructure, as well as new eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities, most of which were provided by anti-­poverty programs such as micro-­loans to women’s groups. However, perceptions of the role that the local gov­ern­ment has played in improving that wellbeing are mixed. On the one hand, of the 46 respondents who said in the 2000 survey that they were better off, 29 (63 percent) came from lower caste background – evid­ence that those of tradi­tion­ally poorer backgrounds made socio­economic gains during the 1990s (no dif­fer­ence in answers was found between men and women). On the other hand, of the 46 respondents who said they were better off in the 2000 survey, only 19 (41 percent) thought that the local gov­ ern­ment had played any role in improving their social wellbeing. The majority of respondents did not think that their local panchayats had made any dif­fer­ence in their wellbeing. These findings are congruent with the evid­ence of functioning social wel­fare programs in the village. Observations in 2000 and again in 2008 revealed that social wel­fare programs were working in both villages, as were anti-­poverty programs, with 70 of the 80 survey respondents (88 percent) attesting to this in 2000. Moreover, selected follow-­up of these survey respondents in 2000 indicated that these programs appear to be reaching their targeted beneficiaries. However, despite all 80 survey respondents stating that there were social wel­fare programs working in their village, only 24 (30 percent) thought that their local gov­ern­ments were respons­ible for delivering the social ser­vices. In sum, although there is a perception that well­being has improved, most do not perceive the Gram Panchayat as having played a role in those improvements. Knowledgeable key informants confirmed that wellbeing improved in these villages and in the district during the 1990s.7 Evidence that people living in Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal were better off at the turn of the century than a decade earl­ier is also borne out by the earl­ier studies of these villages, which found that lit­er­acy rates and laborer wages had increased between the late 1980s and late 1990s (Karanth 1987, 1994; inter­view with G.  K. Karanth on May 4, 2000). In addition, inter­views with selected village-­level officials such as village

Karnataka – competitive local governments   83 health workers, schoolteachers, and Gram Panchayat members in 2000 and again in 2008 all attested to these village-­level improvements in social wellbeing during the 1990s and up to 2008. Yet, although the Gram Panchayats were instrumental in drawing up the lists of beneficiaries of social wel­fare programs and in releasing funds, and despite these programs working in both the villages, the majority of respondents did not think that their Gram Panchayat was involved in delivering these programs. This seeming contra­dic­tion can be explained by perceptions of the funding of social wel­fare programs and of the weakly functioning Gram Sabhas. Several rounds of group inter­views and in-­ depth inter­views with key informants were conducted in 2000 and again in 2008 to resolve this paradox. They yielded that since the central or state gov­ern­ments have tradi­tion­ally funded and con­tinue to fund anti-­poverty programs, the continuance of their implementation was not credited to Gram Panchayats but rather to higher levels of gov­ern­ment. Evidently, many villagers were not aware of the structure and respons­ibil­ities of the new panchayat sys­tem. The lack of well-­ functioning Gram Sabhas is closely related to this issue. If Gram Sabhas had taken place at least twice a year as mandated, if villagers had been actively involved in social wel­fare program beneficiary selection, and if there had been wide dissemination of Gram Panchayat fin­an­cial accounts, then the beneficiary selection pro­cess would have been more demo­cratic, more likely to be targeted, and more illustrative of the Gram Panchayats’ role in social wel­fare program implementation. In the absence of frequent Gram Sabhas, social program delivery was attributed to upper levels of gov­ern­ment, rather than local gov­ern­ments, despite the functioning local gov­ern­ments in these villages.

Have local governments contributed to improved wellbeing? Before turning to an overall assessment of local gov­ern­ments’ role in improving social wellbeing in Karnataka, we should keep in mind that the social and polit­ ical dy­namics in Karnataka are different from those of the other two case study states. Civil soci­ety in Karnataka is lively and civic asso­ci­ations that bridge religious and caste cleavages abound, as witnessed by 59 of the 80 survey respondents (74 percent) in 2000 who stated that such asso­ci­ations exist in their village. Interviews and focus group discussions in 2008 confirmed that a rise in such civic asso­ci­ations has occurred in these villages over the past decade. Organized civic asso­ci­ations are not limited to upper caste and other dominant groups, and are not all based on caste or religious cleavages. Moreover, polit­ical par­ties de facto compete in Gram Panchayat elections. Unlike Uttar Pradesh, where the same landed, upper-­caste groups have dominated state and local pol­itics, and unlike West Bengal, where one-­party dominance has resulted in a situ­ation where access to the state and state-­distributed social goods is largely de­pend­ent on party mem­ber­ship, Karnataka has been much less marked by socio­economic and polit­ical in­equal­it­ies. Less in­equal­ity, a lively his­tory of multi-­party com­ peti­tion, civic asso­ci­ations that bridge social cleavages, and village elites who work with the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem, have bolstered the demo­cratic nature of

84   Karnataka – competitive local governments local gov­ern­ments. These were already quite transparent and com­petit­ive in the early 1990s, and con­tinued to improve in transparency in the nearly two decades since the passage of the 73rd Amendment. Competi­tion between polit­ical par­ties at the state level increased par­ticu­larly since the early 1990s, with a more frequent turnover of power between different par­ties. It was also a sys­tem where social forces by the turn of the century were used to working with and through the estab­lished polit­ical and bur­eau­cratic sys­tem. Decentralization in Karnataka was placed in more fertile polit­ical soil, increasing the likelihood that functioning local gov­ern­ments would further help improve social wel­fare. But it was the social dy­namics in these villages – where current elites were not a clearly identi­ fi­able group and traditional elites of dominant caste background did not capture the resources distributed by the Gram Panchayat, and where polit­ical com­peti­ tion in local elections crossed caste and socio­economic cleavages – that provided for an envir­on­ment where village-­level gov­ern­ments were more likely to function as intended. Residents of Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal were clearly better off at the turn of the century compared to 1990. Yet can these improvements in social wellbeing be attributed to the newly functioning Gram Panchayats? Or would these villagers have been just as well off if the 1993 Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act had not been passed and village gov­ern­ments had been allowed to remain dysfunctional? Other than West Bengal, Karnataka is the only other example of an Indian state that had innov­at­ive and functioning local gov­ern­ments prior to the 73rd consti­tu­tional amend­ment. Yet while West Bengal has had con­tinu­ously functioning local gov­ern­ments since 1977, the previous local gov­ern­ment experiment in Karnataka lasted only five years (from 1987 to 1992) and there was no functioning local gov­ern­ment sys­tem in place at the time of the passage of the 1993 Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act. This intermission complicates ana­lysis of the Karnataka case. Interviews with key informants in 2000 and again in 2008 were aimed at ascertaining con­ditions before and after implementation of the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem, and yet respondents in­vari­ably compared the current sys­tem with the previous sys­tem – a sys­tem that Crook and Manor have already docu­mented as being one of the most innov­at­ive and respons­ible local gov­ern­ ments (Crook and Manor 1998). Under the 1987 local gov­ern­ment sys­tem, corruption declined, the responsiveness of gov­ern­ment officials improved, and delivery of pro­jects by local gov­ern­ments increased – due in large meas­ure to the large degree of polit­ical and fin­an­cial power given to local gov­ern­ments (Crook and Manor 1998). In comparison, the Karnataka panchayat sys­tem implemented in 1993 was at first modest in its devolution of powers, though it went much further than the previous sys­tem in reserv­ing seats for SC/ST, women, and later the OBC. The tepid response of many villagers to questions about the role of local gov­ern­ment in delivering social ser­vices in the late 1990s thus needs to be understood in the his­tor­ical con­text of a previous sys­tem that was quite revolu­tionary and had already brought about signi­fic­ant changes in wellbeing at the local level.

Karnataka – competitive local governments   85 Social wellbeing increased in the villages that were studied, and social wel­ fare programs were helping their poorer beneficiaries to improve their wellbeing. Yet for villagers these improvements were not attributed to the Gram Panchayats, even though Gram Panchayats were evid­ently involved in program implementation. A lack of aware­ness of Gram Panchayat functioning and the fact that Gram Sabhas were not functioning as they were mandated, are likely explanations for this incongruence. Recent de­velopments in Karnataka are strengthening the capa­city of local gov­ern­ments to help improve social wellbeing. Since implementation of the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem in 1993, an outcry among panchayat representatives about their lack of power has led to increasing devolution of polit­ical and fin­an­ cial powers over the past years. Some of these – for example, reser­va­tions for the other backward castes (OBC) and term limits for Gram Panchayat chairpersons – were implemented before the village research was conducted in 2000. Other changes designed to improve the functioning of local gov­ern­ments, such as a doub­ling of the funds allotted to each Gram Panchayat, an increase of the proportion of untied funds at the Gram Panchayat level, training of all panchayat members, and linking of all Gram Panchayat fin­an­cial records via electronic databases, are recent changes, many of them implemented between 2004 and 2011. The local gov­ern­ment sys­tem that was ana­lyzed through village studies in 2000 and again in 2008 has had more polit­ical and fin­an­cial powers devolved to it since then, and the sys­tem itself is being made more transparent and account­ able. This makes the likelihood of Karnataka’s local gov­ern­ments con­trib­ut­ing towards better delivery of social ser­vices and improved social wellbeing even greater today.

The story emerging from the Karnataka village studies An enabling environment in the early 1990s The emerging story from the village studies in Karnataka is that the envir­on­ment into which decentralized structures were placed was conducive to functioning local gov­ern­ments, which in turn made them better able to deliver pub­lic programs aimed at increasing social wellbeing. The three cases of states in India researched in this book do not provide one specific answer as the key to understanding the link between local gov­ern­ments and the targeted delivery of social ser­vices that ultimately help improve social wellbeing. Decentralization is a complicated pro­cess, with interlinking local con­ditions – of elite structure and polit­ical buy-­in to the decentralization pro­cess, polit­ical com­peti­tion, and social mobil­iza­tion – determining the envir­on­ment in which local gov­ern­ments function. The pro­cess of decentralization and social ser­vice delivery in Gavi Nagamangala and Mudabal is a par­ticu­larly dynamic and multifaceted one. Having a functioning local gov­ern­ment sys­tem during the late 1980s mat­tered, espe­cially since local gov­ern­ment officials held substantial powers over bur­eau­crats.

86   Karnataka – competitive local governments As highlighted in Crook and Manor’s study of decentralization in Karnataka in the late 1980s under the previous sys­tem, bur­eau­crats at all levels were made more account­able to elected politicians than ever before (Crook and Manor 1998: 45). Moreover, Crook and Manor found that corruption declined and transparency increased during the previous panchayat sys­tem. The examples that these short years of decentralized governance provided were crucial for demonstrating the bene­fits of local gov­ern­ments to the cit­izens of Karnataka. However, contrary to Crook and Manor’s findings, discussions with villagers repeatedly yielded a sense that the previous sys­tem of local gov­ern­ments was removed from the daily life of villagers. The new Gram Panchayat sys­tem, on the other hand, has brought gov­ern­ment closer to the village level by decreasing the popu­la­tion size to be covered by the Gram Panchayat. The majority of respondents knew the name of several local representatives in the Gram Panchayat, while few even among the older popu­la­tion could recall the names of representatives under the previous sys­tem. At the same time, the previous sys­tem only functioned for a few years – not long enough for most villagers to notice a dif­fer­ence in their personal wellbeing. Yet his­tor­ical antecedents by themselves are not a sufficient guarantee for functioning local gov­ern­ments, as is seen in the fol­low­ing chapter on West Bengal. In Karnataka, the his­tor­ical legacy of a working sys­tem of local governance together with a state gov­ern­ment in the early 1990s that was committed to decentralization provided the con­ditions for successful implementation of decentralized governance. In addition to this en­ab­ling framework, an aware and mobilized civil soci­ety and a polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ment forestalled “capturing” of local demo­cracy by elites in the villages of Karnataka, in marked contrast to West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. The village studies provide a microcosm of state-­level polit­ical and social dy­namics that led village elites to work with the local gov­ern­ment structures, rather than undermining them. Previous state-­level and village-­level research indicates that, after a divisive period during the 1980s, sociopolit­ical cleavages had become less salient. While upper- and middle-­caste groups had earl­ier dominated state and subnational pol­ itics (Kohli 1987; Crook and Manor 1998), by the early 1990s lower-­caste groups had become more or­gan­ized and assertive, leading to better polit­ical repres­enta­tion at each level of state and subnational gov­ern­ment. Increased demo­cratic com­peti­tion between polit­ical par­ties at the national and state levels also meant that all polit­ical par­ties needed to appeal to the numerically im­port­ant middle- and lower-­caste groups. The gen­eral increase in polit­ical com­peti­tion in Karnataka was reflected in the villages in the early 1990s, where party af­fili­ ations crossed caste cleavages and traditional social elites saw their power di­min­ish. Sociopolit­ical inter­action at the village level was based less on caste hierarchies or polit­ical dominance, and more on social or polit­ical issues facing the village. Taken together, all these factors made for an envir­on­ment conducive to the flourishing of local gov­ern­ment structures when the first Gram Panchayat elections took place in 1993. Decentralization in turn accelerated polit­ical repres­ enta­tion of women and SC/ST, while polit­ical com­peti­tion increased as par­ties

Karnataka – competitive local governments   87 sought to estab­lish ma­chineries at the national, state and village levels. All these factors helped root demo­cracy by decreasing the power of traditional caste elites, and those former elites in turn sought to remain influ­en­tial by joining com­petit­ ive polit­ical parties. Functioning Gram Panchayats Given the en­ab­ling envir­on­ment for local governance at the state as well as village levels, how did the Gram Panchayats function in these Karnataka villages? First, perceptions of Gram Panchayat elections were virtually unanimous that they were devoid of corruption. Respondents stated that they would have “seen” any corruption occurring, and that they were confident that local elections were free of fraud. In the eyes of the villagers, elections at the village level, with people they knew cam­paigning for polit­ical office, made the whole polit­ical pro­ cess more transparent than before. The 2000 village surveys found that 54 of the 80 respondents (68 percent) perceived corruption to have decreased since 1991. Follow-­up research in 2008 indicated that villagers from different social backgrounds were aware of the increased meas­ures mandated to improve transparency of GP workings, such as the newly installed GP com­puters and the requirement to post their balance sheets, as well as social audits. The changes made by the Karnataka gov­ern­ment to improve local gov­ern­ment transparency were trickling down to the villages, and village residents were noticing the implementation of these changes. Having Gram Panchayata set aside seats for women and SC/ST also con­trib­ uted to a sense of empowerment and “equalization” of social inter­action. In the villages studied, as well as in Karnataka overall, the average percentages of SC/ ST and women elected per GP exceeded the percentages of seats reserved for each group, as seen in Table 3.2. Not only did the quotas directly lead to greater repres­enta­tion for women and SC/ST, but also women as well as members of the SC/ST popu­la­tion were elected to office in their own right in numbers that went beyond the reserved seats. In the 2005 elections, 43 percent of all GP representatives were women, the second highest figure in India (Government of Karnataka 2007). Interviews of women GP members in 2000 and 2008 in the villages studied repeatedly revealed a sense of pride and accomplishment in being able to parti­cip­ate in local pol­itics. Mirroring findings by researchers in other states (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2003, 2004) as well as in Karnataka (Kadekodi et al. 2007), the reserved seats for women and SC/ST yielded notice­able results. Women and people of SC/ST background stated that they were more likely to contact a GP representative if needed because having women and SC/ST representatives made gov­ern­ment more access­ible. While women were observed during GP and focus-­group meetings to be less assertive than their male counterparts, there was an ob­serv­able increase in female assertiveness in the Gram Panchayat meetings observed in 2008 compared to 2000. Women representatives in these two Gram Panchayats were increasingly able to act as a conduit of in­forma­tion between the GP and female pub­lic em­ployees, such as the female

88   Karnataka – competitive local governments village healthcare workers tasked with mobilizing the village popu­la­tion for immunization drives. They also became ad­voc­ates for women’s and chil­dren’s issues ranging from health care to education. In contrast to findings from the late 1980s (Crook and Manor 1998; Karanth 1987), women representatives in these villages were initiating and con­trib­ut­ing to improved pol­icies to bene­fit their constituents. Improved social wellbeing By the early 1990s the polit­ical and social envir­on­ment in Karnataka had become increasingly dynamic. Social and eco­nomic distances between different caste groups were no longer as large as in decades past, and the state gov­ern­ment was pro­gressive not only in quickly implementing decentralization in 1993 but also in allocating increasingly larger percentages of expenditure to the social sectors and to pri­mary education and basic health within those respective sectors. The decreasing social distance between different castes changed the social dynamic in villages. Previous studies of these villages in the late 1980s and early 1990s revealed increased polit­ical activism among and social inter­action between people of different caste backgrounds, as exemplified by a dispute over the site of a new temple, with the two sides in the dispute bridging caste cleavages (Karanth 1994; inter­view with G. K. Karanth, May 2000). Disputes in these villages were issue-­based, rather than motiv­ated by religion, caste, or other social divisions. By the early 1990s, these villages were already exhibiting increased polit­ical com­peti­tion between par­ties that crossed caste cleavages. By 2000 the decreasing social distance between castes had made for improved inter­action between groups of different socio­economic backgrounds. Coupled with rapidly improving lit­er­acy rates, aware­ness of rights, and polit­ical com­peti­tion, it made for an envir­on­ment where villagers mobilized around social issues that cut across social and eco­nomic cleavages. As the survey results, key informant inter­views, focus group discussions, and observation of dy­namics between different socio­ economic groups in the village, all attest, social cleavage-­bridging civil asso­ci­ ations, in an envir­on­ment of polit­ical com­peti­tion, provided a check on former caste elites capturing local polit­ical structures. In this envir­on­ment, there were increasingly fewer caste, social, or polit­ical elites who would have been likely to capture social bene­fits, a trend that con­tinued through 2008. Decentralization in Karnataka occurred in a com­petit­ive and dynamic envir­on­ment, one that was likely to yield results for social wellbeing. This en­ab­ling envir­on­ment for decentralization was present in Karnataka well into the twenty-­first century. Decentralization was guided by state law and the state gov­ern­ment in Karnataka through 2011 was at the forefront of implementing decentralization and allocating increased resources to local gov­ern­ments. The residents of the villages studied did not engage extensively in local polit­ical life and very few contacted or protested against their GP representatives for any reason. Yet the vast majority of survey respondents and key informants, re­gard­ less of caste, religious or gender background, pointed out that they could easily

Karnataka – competitive local governments   89 Table 3.3 Karnataka: Results of selected questions from small sample survey in each village in 2000, number responding positively (percentages in parentheses)

Voted in last national elections Thought last national elections were fair Voted in last GP elections Thought last GP elections were fair Campaigned for the election of a GP member Knew the name of GP representative(s) Have participated in a meeting of the village electorate There are working social welfare programs in the village GP instrumental in delivering these social services There are working anti-poverty programs in village GP instrumental in delivering these antipoverty programs GP been able to satisfy the most important needs in the village If two poor people applied for an antipoverty scheme to the GP and one had political connections while the other did not, the GP would give the scheme to the politically connected person (additional question) More voice under new GP system Less violence in 2000 compared to 1990 Rule of law has improved between 1990 and 2000 Government has become more effective Administrative burden has decreased Accountability has improved Corruption decreased over past ten years Was better off in 2000 compared to 1990 Of those who said they were better off, those who said they were better off due to the GP There are associations (religion and caste bridging) in this village Have participated in associations during last 5 years Have contacted their GP representative in the last 5 years for help

Gavi Nagamangala Mudabal (n = 40) (n = 40)

Total (n = 80)

38 40 40 40 12

40 40 40 40 10

78 (98%) 80 (100%) 80 (100%) 80(100%) 22 (27%)

38 12

38 11

76 (95%) 23 (29%)

40

40

80 (100%)

12

12

24 (30%)

34

36

70 (88%)

7

6

13 (16%)

22

23

45 (56%)

10

12

22 (28%)

15 11 2

15 12 3

30 (38%) 23 (29%) 5 (6%)

9 10 15 26 22 10

6 11 17 28 24 9

15 (19%) 21 (26%) 32 (40%) 54 (68%) 46 (58%) 19 (41%)

31

28

59 (74%)

15

16

31 (39%)

7

8

15 (19%)

90   Karnataka – competitive local governments contact their local gov­ern­ment representative should the need arise. Moreover, increased polit­ical com­peti­tion between a greater number of polit­ical par­ties and the decrease in power of caste-­based, traditional elites, led Gram Panchayats to be more transparent and held more account­able by the villages of Gavi Nagamangala and Madabal. Decentralization in this polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ment created oppor­tun­ ities at the village level for greater parti­cipa­tion in local governance, par­ticu­larly among women and people of SC/ST background. This in turn created new oppor­tun­ities for emerging local politicians from a variety of social backgrounds, and members of an increasing number of polit­ical par­ties to engage in local gov­ ern­ments, thereby rooting gov­ern­ments at the village level and launching local bases of sup­port for increasingly dynamic and polit­ically com­petit­ive pol­itics in Karnataka. In this envir­on­ment, the Gram Panchayats for the villages of Gavi Nagamangala and Madabal were notable for the lack of cooption by elites and the perception of decreased corruption. They were able to target and deliver poverty-­alleviation programs, ensure that students were taught at local schools, and foster the delivery of basic healthcare. Gram Panchayat representatives in these villages were increasingly functioning as agents of “eco­nomic de­velopment and social justice” as origin­ally envisioned in the consti­tu­tional amend­ment (Government of India 1992). Into this fertile ground of Gram Panchayats that were helping to improve social wellbeing in Karnataka, recent in­nova­tions have further increased the transparency of gov­ern­ment. These include com­puterizing all Gram Panchayats and requiring pub­lic posting of fin­an­cial rev­enues and expenditures, directly trans­ferring fin­an­cial resources to GPs from the state through local banks, conducting training programs for GP members, and instituting “Ward Sabhas” for each constituency within the GPs. With such meas­ures, local gov­ern­ments are more likely to be held account­able, graft is likely to decrease, and the Gram Panchayat’s abil­ity to act as an agent of social wellbeing is enhanced. In Karnataka, civil soci­ety mobil­iza­tion, a lack of elite capture of local resources, and a polit­ ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ment helped enable the growth of well-­functioning local gov­ern­ments. This was a virtuous and reinforcing dynamic of factors that were ab­sent in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.

4 West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost

If (the) Panchayat fails, CPI(M)’s experiment fails. – Dr. Ashok Mitra, former Finance Minister, West Bengal Power tends to corrupt, and abso­lute power corrupts absolutely. – Lord John Acton

When the 73rd Amendment mandating local gov­ern­ments throughout India was passed in 1993, West Bengal had the distinction of being the only state that made changes to its state consti­tu­tion in anticipation of the 73rd Amendment (ISS 2000). West Bengal already had elected functioning local gov­ern­ments when the amend­ment was introduced and thus only had to make changes relating to the percentage of seats reserved for women and people of SC/ST background. West Bengal also has the longest his­tory of functioning local gov­ern­ments in India: Gram Panchayat (GP) elections have been taking place regu­larly, every five years, for over 30 years. Local gov­ern­ments were mandated by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)-dominated Left Front Government (LFG)) when they first came to power in 1977 and were seen as the backbone of the gov­ern­ment’s efforts to carry through its eco­nomic and social reform agenda at the local level. They were essential to the LFG’s famous land reform program and without the panchayats, effect­ive implementation of land reforms would have been unlikely. A study of West Bengal’s local gov­ern­ments and their abil­ ity to improve social wel­fare is therefore an ideal case to test the main question of this overall study: Do functioning local gov­ern­ments really mat­ter for improving social wellbeing? The answer is that the his­tor­ical, social, and polit­ical power con­text in which these local gov­ern­ment structures are placed is crucial to understanding the differing functionality and capa­city of local gov­ern­ments to implement social programs, thus leading to different social outcomes. West Bengal’s social indic­ators in 2010 and their improvements over the previous two decades were not as dramatic as sup­porters of the LFG or ad­voc­ates of local gov­ern­ment reform would have hoped. West Bengal represents a “middling case scen­ario” of the three cases studied here, because the long his­tory of

92   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost elected local gov­ern­ments and a mobilized civil soci­ety have been offset by the lack of effect­ive polit­ical com­peti­tion under 34 years of uninterrupted domination of the LFG. This party domination has created new elites in West Bengal’s villages, elites who have largely captured social bene­fits intended for the indigent, thereby hampering the abil­ity of the local gov­ern­ments to improve social indic­ators and overall wellbeing. Social outcomes in West Bengal have lagged behind the advances made since the early 1990s in Karnataka and, in the case of pov­erty rates, even lagged behind the average for all Indian states. Understanding the nexus between West Bengal’s local gov­ern­ments and changes in social wellbeing will provide insight into the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to influence wellbeing and the factors that prevent local governance. The lack of signi­fic­ant social pro­gress in West Bengal is puzz­ling because the state has ingredients that have been argued (Kohli 1987; Lieten 1996a) to be key to improved social outcomes, such as a pro-­poor state gov­ern­ment and elected local gov­ern­ments for the past three decades. Indeed, 34 years of a con­tinu­ously elected communist state gov­ern­ment, whose expli­cit goal has been pov­erty reduction and social wel­fare improvement through the election of village-­level local gov­ern­ments, led researchers to argue that a pro-­poor gov­ern­ment, such as that of West Bengal, was the key ingredient for effect­ive ser­vice delivery and improved social wellbeing. West Bengal’s social indic­ators are also not as good as predicted by a theory that posits states with a more highly de­veloped subnational identity, such as West Bengal, are better at delivering social ser­vices to their constituents (Singh 2008). By 2010 pov­erty rates in West Bengal were higher than the Indian average with areas of the state, such as Jamboni block, re­gis­tering extremely high pov­erty rates. The case of West Bengal is an enigma and deserving of research in its own right. It is an essential case to better understand why the pres­ence of elected local gov­ern­ments, in a con­text of a state gov­ ern­ment whose stated aim it is to decrease pov­erty and a state with a strong subnational identity, is by itself insufficient for attaining signi­fic­ant improvements in social wellbeing. The key to understanding local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal is the his­tor­ical con­text in which the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem was implemented in comparison to the other case study states. Karnataka had a brief, though pivotal, his­tory of demo­cratically elected and power­ful local gov­ern­ments during the 1980s, while in Uttar Pradesh there was no signi­fic­ant his­tory of demo­cratically elected and functioning village gov­ern­ments. By contrast, West Bengal in 1993 had more than 15 years of con­tinu­ously elected and empowered local gov­ern­ments, which had achieved note­worthy accomplishments by the early 1990s, including land reforms. The West Bengali village gov­ern­ments studied here were opera­ tional and delivering social and anti-­poverty ser­vices to their constituents at the time of the 73rd Amendment’s passage. While net state do­mestic product growth rates between 1993/1994 and 2008/2009 were sim­ilar in West Bengal and Karnataka, rural pov­erty rates in 2006/2007, for example, remained higher in West Bengal than in Karnataka,

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   93 around the national average of 21 percent (see Table 2.3). West Bengal’s improvements in social indic­ators since the early 1990s has not matched the pro­gress made in Karnataka. The unique polit­ical con­ditions in West Bengal, where the CPI(M)-dominated LFG has been in power for over 30 years, has meant that local gov­ern­ments are also controlled by CPI(M) members and are much more likely to distribute social wel­fare bene­fits to party members, who are often not the poorest. Local gov­ern­ments in many instances have been coopted by the CPI(M) with the party becoming the new patronage network in both the villages studied. It is the lack of com­peti­tion with CPI(M)-dominated local gov­ern­ments that leads to alloca­tion of anti-­poverty and social wel­fare programs often being made on the basis of party af­fili­ation rather than greatest need. Local gov­ern­ments in these West Bengali villages are not fully “demo­cratic” in the sense that they do not practice the pursuit of one of their mandates: that of improving social equality through directing anti-­poverty and social wel­fare programs to the poorest. Decentralizing polit­ical power to village gov­ern­ments in West Bengal has not led to the anticipated better targeting and delivery of social programs for the most indigent. By studying two villages in a Bengali district with near state average indic­ators, this study will delve into the links between pres­ence of functioning local gov­ern­ments and changes in social wellbeing, as well as ex­plor­ing whether it is only the pres­ ence of local demo­cracy that mat­ters or also the quality and nature of the government. This chapter is structured as follows: After providing background in­forma­ tion, the first section gives an overview of the rise of the LFG during the late 1970s and social reforms achieved under their tenure, including the implementation of functioning Gram Panchayats as a tool for social reform. It then details the structure and workings of local gov­ern­ments and social indic­ators in West Bengal and in the district where the two village studies are located before implementation of the 73rd Amendment in the early 1990s. Subsequently, findings from the village studies are presented, including changes in social wellbeing and local gov­ern­ment’s actions to improve social wel­fare. The chapter then concludes with an ana­lysis of whether the Gram Panchayats in the village studies and in West Bengal in gen­eral can be shown to have improved social wellbeing, whether this has changed with implementation of 73rd Amendment, and what con­ditions would con­trib­ute towards greater improvements in social wellbeing.

Decentralized government in West Bengal Decentralization in West Bengal in the early 1990s took place in an envir­on­ment that already had ex­peri­ence with local gov­ern­ments. Indeed the extent of land reforms and decentralization carried out in West Bengal were the highest of any Indian states with several studies linking the degree of land reform in West Bengal with the pres­ence and effect­iveness of local gov­ern­ments (Lieten 1996a, 1996b; Bhattacharya 2002). The ex­peri­ence with and perceived success

94   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost of polit­ical decentralization in West Bengal created an envir­on­ment for implementing the 73rd Amendment that was quite different from that in Uttar Pradesh or Karnataka. Major amend­ments to the West Bengal Panchayat Act were undertaken in 1992 and 1994 in order to bring the act in congruity with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, including increasing the repres­enta­tion of women, who were also among the chairpersons of panchayats, and mandating repres­enta­ tion of SC and ST groups. The decentralized structure in West Bengal is now sim­ilar to that in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka in that it is a three-­tiered structure as mandated by the consti­tu­tion. Unlike in Uttar Pradesh, how­ever, the lowest level of decentralized gov­ern­ment, the Gram Panchayat, represents a group of villages rather than one village, with the average Gram Panchayat representing a popu­la­tion of 15,000 (Mathew 2000). Since periodic meetings of the entire voting constituency of a Gram Panchayat would be too unwieldy to reach de­cisions such as village-­level selection of social program beneficiaries, the West Bengali gov­ern­ment decided to create biannual meetings of a village’s voting popu­la­tion, called Gram Sansad (lit­er­ally meaning village par­lia­ment), along with the annual meetings of voters of a Gram Panchayat, called Gram Sabha (GS). This structure of decentralized gov­ern­ment, as laid out in Figure 4.1, was devised in order to be congruent with the consti­tu­tional amend­ment while also en­ab­ling village-­level issues to be addressed in a two-­ way feedback loop. Zilla Parishad � district-level government

Panchayat Samiti � block-level government

Gram Panchayat � local government for a group of villages

Gram Sansad � village voters

Gram Sansad � village voters

Gram Sabha � all voters within a Gram Panchayat

Gram Sansad � village voters

Figure 4.1  The structure of decentralized governments in West Bengal.

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   95 The new village gov­ern­ment structures provided greater potential for transparent local governance. Proposals and questions brought up at the Gram Sabha meetings were to be taken up and answered by the Gram Panchayat. Moreover, as envisioned in the 73rd Amendment, the meetings of the GS were institutionalized as the forum for identi­fying anti-­poverty program beneficiaries and prioritizing social wel­fare works in the village. The GPs were then supposed to draw up lists of social program beneficiaries, based on the discussions and de­cisions made during the GS meetings. In theory this sys­tem had the potential to enable active parti­cipa­tion in demo­cratic governance by all villagers and provided signi­ fic­ant village control over the functioning of the Gram Panchayats. On the polit­ical front, unlike most other Indian states, West Bengal has ex­peri­enced remark­able polit­ical con­tinu­ity over the past three decades. Since its initial victory in 1977, the co­ali­tion comprising the Left Front Government has won every state election in West Bengal. This con­tinu­ity of power has enabled the state gov­ern­ment the time and legitimacy to carry through much of its pro-­ poor de­velop­mental agenda, including the 1978 implementation of local gov­ern­ ments in order to carry through their reform agenda at the local level. However, despite the long tenure of the LFG and its many notable pro-­poor achievements, from land reform to the rapid decrease in pov­erty rates during the 1980s, the level of social indic­ators in the state as well as their rate of change over the last three decades has not matched those achieved in Karnataka, and certainly not those achieved in Kerala. As with Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, social wellbeing in West Bengal, in terms of pov­erty rate and social indic­ators, is not simply a function of its eco­ nomic growth rates or the polit­ical party in power – two of the more common explanations given for the level of social improvements in Indian states. Social de­velopment in West Bengal is clearly not only a deriv­at­ive of the state’s growth rate. West Bengal’s overall eco­nomic growth rates during the 1980s were below the Indian average and yet improvements in social indic­ators, including decreasing pov­erty rates and improving health and educational indic­ators, were above the Indian average. During the 1990s per capita income and eco­nomic growth rates in West Bengal increased, largely as a result of agricultural growth, and were above the Indian average, com­par­able to those of Karnataka and better than those of Kerala (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation 2008). Nevertheless, West Bengal con­tinued to lag behind Karnataka in some of its social indic­ators, including pov­erty incidence, and infant mor­tal­ity, both in terms of the abso­lute rates as well as the rate of change of these indic­ators (see Table 2.3). West Bengal has not exhibited the dramatic improvements in social indic­ ators that one might have expected given the pro-­poor orientation of the LFG, the durabil­ity of the party’s power in West Bengal, and the above average eco­ nomic growth rates in the state since the early 1990s. It remains a conundrum in the polit­ical science, eco­nom­ics and de­velopment liter­at­ure: one where conventional explanations do not hold. Yet it is im­port­ant to understand the ingredients influ­en­cing changes in social wellbeing in the third largest state eco­nomy in India in 2010 with a popu­la­tion over 80 million in 2001. Why has West Bengal

96   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost not been able to translate its seemingly favor­able framework for social pro­gress into signi­fic­ant improvements to social wellbeing? West Bengal presents a par­ ticu­lar conundrum to the ad­voc­ates of local gov­ern­ment and is therefore crucial to any understanding of local gov­ern­ments and the mech­an­isms and bar­riers to their capa­city to improve indic­ators of social wellbeing. Moreover, in the larger his­tory of socio­economic de­velopment, West Bengal has tradi­tion­ally been known as a rich and pro­gressive state with above national average social indic­ators such as lit­er­acy rates. Over the past two decades, West Bengal has lost this position of preeminence. While eco­nomic growth rates in West Bengal as well as in India overall were low during the 1970s and 1980s, social sector improvements exhibited signi­fic­ant gains. Then, in the 1990s, eco­ nomic growth rates picked up and from 1993/1994 through 2008/2009 the net state do­mestic product grew at an average rate of over 5 percent (see Table 2.3) (Bhandari and Kale 2007b). Yet improvements in social indic­ators of wellbeing were mixed. For example, while lit­er­acy rates in West Bengal grew from 58 percent in 1991 to 69 percent in 2001, putting the state above the Indian average of 65 percent in 2001, the school dropout rate, at 71 percent in 2002, was substantially higher than the national average of 41 percent (Bhandari and Kale 2007b). Similarly, while West Bengal’s infant mor­tal­ity rate and maternal mor­ tal­ity ratio were better than the Indian averages in 2004/2005, an annual household survey by the National Sample Survey Organisation that same year found that West Bengal had the highest prevalence among Indian states of rural households who were not getting enough adequate food during some months of the year (National Sample Survey Organisation 2005). In a state that was the site of the first wave of industrialization in India, the state gov­ern­ment in 2005/2006 spent only 1.6 percent of its ag­greg­ate disbursement on health and family wel­ fare, compared to the Indian average of 2.1, and only 5 percent on the education sector, compared to the national average of 7.2 percent (Bhandari and Kale 2007b). Similarly, only 12 percent of rural households in West Bengal have drinking water in their households, compared to the national average of 13 percent and in a state with surplus electricity only 48 percent of households have electricity compared to 64 percent national-­wide in 2006 (Bhandari and Kale 2007b). Studying West Bengal is im­port­ant not only because of its unique his­tory of a stable pro-­poor left-­wing gov­ern­ment over the past three decades, but also because it provides lessons about the state gov­ern­ment’s attempt at social reform. Like Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, West Bengal is one of the more populous Indian states and is the state with the highest popu­la­tion density. As with the other case study states, the size of West Bengal, in terms of area and popu­la­ tion, makes it com­par­able to many other coun­tries and therefore worthy of study in its own right. And as with the other state chapters and coun­try studies, gen­ eralizations about West Bengal hide large disparities within the state. Agro-­ climates vary greatly from the southern delta of the Hugli River at Calcutta, to the alluvial tracts of Medinipur, to the undulating, dry terrain of Birbhum dis-

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   97 trict, and the mountainous terrain of Darjeeling district in the north, as do the social and eco­nomic con­ditions in these areas. While there are large vari­ations between districts, the district where the villages chosen for case study are located most closely approximated average social, eco­nomic, and agro-­climatic con­ditions. Previous studies of these villages in the early 1990s provide a baseline for comparison. Moreover, given that the local gov­ern­ment structure and his­tory is the same throughout West Bengal, findings from these village studies again provide an insight into the micro-­logic undergirding state-­level phenomena.

Political context Political and social stability has not always been a hallmark of West Bengal pol­ itics. At inde­pend­ence, the trauma of the division of Bengal, with the accom­ panying com­munal riots, famine, and high pov­erty rates, caused widespread suffering. In addition to these crises, the state gov­ern­ment had to provide relief to the steady influx of Hindu refu­gees from East Paki­stan (formerly East Bengal and now Bangladesh), thereby further straining the eco­nomy. The in­abil­ity of the Congress Party-­led West Bengal gov­ern­ment to address the widespread misery led to a strengthening of leftist par­ties throughout the 1950s and 1960s, increasing polit­ical rad­icalization and turbulence. In 1967 a peasant uprising, called the Naxalites, which de­veloped into a rad­ical leftist movement that increased their sup­port among disillusioned youth, broke out in Naxalbari, an area in northern West Bengal (Singh 2006). The Naxalites in West Bengal were violently repressed by a Congress-­led gov­ern­ment called the United Front (UF ), a co­ali­tion in which the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) was a major ally (Roy 2010). In the midst of these polit­ical conflicts within the state, ten­sions between the central and West Bengal gov­ern­ments increased, thereby furthering polit­ical volatility in the state. These rising ten­sions between the West Bengal state and central gov­ern­ment, led to the dismissal of the West Bengal gov­ern­ment by the central gov­ern­ment in Febru­ary 1968 and a year of President’s Rule. In Febru­ary 1969 a short-­lived, year-­long minor­ity gov­ern­ment known as the Bangla-­Congress-led United Front gov­ern­ment ruled. However, in March 1970, President’s Rule was imposed again, this time for a year, and was then followed by a three-­month rule of the Indian National Congress Party-­led co­ali­tion. In June 1971 President’s rule was imposed again for ten months, followed again by a Congress Party gov­ern­ment, which ruled until the election victory and take-­over of gov­ern­ment by the CPI(M)-led Left Front Government in June 1977. During the late 1960s and early 1970s leftist par­ties, building on the growing resentment against the Congress Party within the state, made large elect­oral gains in West Bengal, though splits within the leftist par­ties led them to be junior partners in Congress-­led co­ali­tion gov­ern­ments in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The inde­pend­ence movement of East Paki­stan in 1971 and its winning of inde­pend­ence with the help of Congress-­governed India, helped the fortunes of

98   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost the Congress Party in West Bengal for a few years, with a strengthened Congress gov­ern­ment ruling West Bengal from 1972 to 1977. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s imposition of emergency laws in 1975 and the West Bengal gov­ern­ ment’s heavy-­handed response toward leftists only served to cause resentment amongst the lower and middle classes in West Bengal. By the time the federal gov­ern­ment was forced to withdraw the emergency and call for national elections in 1977, resentment against the Congress Party was high throughout India and West Bengal in particular. In addition to the polit­ical turmoil of the 1970s, socio­economic in­equal­ity in rural West Bengal throughout the 1970s was steep, both in terms of the disparity between large landowners and the landless and also in terms of caste rigid­it­ies. These larger socio­economic divisions in West Bengal, as still in Uttar Pradesh today, led to more divisive pol­itics in these states. While in Uttar Pradesh these socio­economic dif­fer­ences resulted in caste pol­itics and ali­ena­tion of the poor, in West Bengal they led to the explosive class pol­itics of the early 1970s and the sub­sequent extreme politicization of West Bengal today. Against this background of social misery and upheaval and the polit­ical turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s, it was not surprising that a CPI(M)-led Left Front Government (LFG) co­ali­tion emerged the winner of the 1977 West Bengal elections. With Jyoti Basu as chief min­is­ter, the leader of the CPI(M), the largest party in the co­ali­tion, the LFG ushered in an era of remark­able polit­ical stability. As seen in Figure 4.2, the CPI(M)-led LFG co­ali­tion con­tinued to win every 45 40 CPM

Percentage of vote

35 30 Trinamul

25 20 15

Congress

10 Forward bloc

5 0

Revolutionary Socialist CPI

1977

1982

1987

1991 1996 Election year

2001

2006

Figure 4.2 Electoral outcomes in West Bengal elections, 1977–2001 (percentage of vote) (source: Electoral Commission of India 1977–2006).

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   99 election held since 1977 and still forms the ruling co­ali­tion in West Bengal in 2011. After their 1977 elect­oral victory the LFG imme­diately set out to address the social misery and discon­tent that fermented during the polit­ical volatility of the previous decades. Radical land and tenancy reforms were initiated with the help of newly or­gan­ized local gov­ern­ments and increased expenditures were devoted to the social sectors. As detailed in other studies, the Left Front Government was able to maintain party unity and implement social change by staffing gov­ern­ment bodies with party cadres and setting about an ambitious and much-­needed social agenda (Kohli 1987: see par­ticu­larly chapter 3). Their abil­ity to address some of the prob­lems of widespread pov­erty and social misery con­trib­uted to their elect­ oral success. The CPI(M)-led Left Front Government’s continual elect­oral success between 1977 and 2010 provided West Bengal with polit­ical stability, but this stability has to be seen against the turbulent and agonizing polit­ical upheavals the state ex­peri­enced during the 1960s and 1970s which wrought havoc on the eco­nomy and rad­icalized the polit­ical par­ties and populace. It is against this background that the LFG’s promises of increased social justice met the expectation and willingness of the people to implement more rad­ical changes, and together enabled real change, par­ticu­larly during the early years of this gov­ern­ment (Lieten 1996b). Land reforms were implemented with zeal by local panchayats during the late 1970s and the 1980s, along with the building of schools and health care infrastructure. While pov­erty rate estim­ates differ for the period after 2001, due to a change in data collection and calculation methods, most estim­ates show a remark­able decrease in pov­erty rates in West Bengal, from around three-­quarters of the popu­la­tion living below the pov­erty line in the early 1970s to about 35 percent by the early 1990s (Chatterjee 1998). Similarly, in the early 1970s, West Bengal’s growth rate for agricultural production was one of the slowest in the coun­try, while by the late 1980s its rates were among the fastest, with an annual growth rate of 6.5 percent for food-­grains production (Banerjee et al. 2002). By the 1980s West Bengal’s CPI(M)-led gov­ern­ment was re­gis­tering improved social indic­ators and social wel­fare in the state. Yet while the improvements in social indic­ators were good in most areas and dramatic in some sectors during the tenure of the LFG, they were not uniformly so throughout the sectors or over the 30 years of LFG tenure. In par­ticu­lar, pov­ erty rates over the past decade appear to have stagnated at best. Table 4.1 illus­ trates that the LFG’s anti-­poverty rhet­oric in the early part of the twenty-­first century was certainly not matched by the actual share of expenditures accounted for by the social sectors, which remained below Indian averages.

Overview and choice of case studies in West Bengal This study of local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal ana­lyzes the link between the long tenure of local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal and improvements in social outcomes, as well as assessing what might account for the social improvements

100   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost Table 4.1 Share of expenditure on education and public health in West Bengal versus allIndia averages, 2005 West Bengal

All-India average

Share of expenditure on education to total disbursements, 2005

5.0

7.2

Share of expenditure on medical, public health and family welfare as ratio to total disbursements, 2005/2006

1.6

2.1

Source: Bhandari and Kale 2007a.

not being as spectacular as anticipated. The theory and empirical studies of decentralization suggest that if decentralization is carried out so as to shift control over polit­ical and fin­an­cial resources to the local level, and if it is done in a manner to enable increased account­abil­ity, voice, and responsiveness, then the functioning of local social wel­fare programs can improve. Additionally, some authors have posited that in order for local gov­ern­ments to really decrease pov­ erty and improve social wel­fare of the poorer and most vulner­able groups, the whole decentralized sys­tem needs to be dominated by a leftist party that has pov­ erty alleviation as a central goal of its polit­ical agenda (Kohli 1987; Crook and Manor 2001). Since West Bengal is the only Indian state that has been dominated by a leftist co­ali­tion for a signi­fic­ant length of time, as well as being the only one with long-­functioning local gov­ern­ments, it is an ideal state to study whether local gov­ern­ments can make a signi­fic­ant dif­fer­ence in improving social wellbeing. West Bengal, unlike Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, has had a state-­supported and state-­implemented panchayat sys­tem since 1977. Thus, it is a different type of case study from the other two states in that the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem has been sup­ported by the state gov­ern­ment from its inception and in fact was seen as a crit­ical tool for implementing the state gov­ern­ment’s polit­ical agenda at the local level. Another factor that sets the panchayat sys­tem in West Bengal apart is the close nexus between the Left Front Government and the panchayat sys­tem at every level. Since 1977, the West Bengal panchayat law has allowed for local gov­ern­ment can­did­ates to cam­paign on a party basis. Moreover, it is likely that when the CPI(M)-led gov­ern­ment was elected in 1977, it set about implementing local gov­ern­ment structures as a way of building a rural base for its party (Bandyopadhyay 2008). The strat­egy worked, leading to a close, sometimes indistinguishable, nexus between the party and local gov­ern­ment. State-­level party pol­itics and pri­or­ities con­tinue to play a large role in Bengali local gov­ern­ment, making it difficult to distinguish what role the Gram Panchayats play in implementing social programs versus what role the party plays. Furthermore, West Bengal is also a test of the state-­centered argument that all meaningful improvements in social wellbeing of the popu­la­tion, from decreasing pov­erty to increasing lit­er­acy, can and should only be brought about from the top, through a state gov­ern­ment that is ideo­logically committed to pov­erty

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   101 eradication and social change. The LFG’s rhet­oric and actions par­ticu­larly during the first decade and a half of its rule portrayed a com­mit­ment to pov­erty reduction, and the LFG’s class and power alli­ances are with the poor and lower castes. As the co­ali­tion LFG’s main party, the CPI(M)’s party structure and organ­iza­tion with the help of local gov­ern­ments now allow it to reach down from the state capital to the village level to implement these anti-­poverty programs. The West Bengal case study represents a “middling” scen­ario in that improvements in social wel­fare have slowed since the turn of the century and because current social indic­ators place it in the middle or slightly above the middle rank of Indian states. For example, West Bengal has high lit­er­acy rates, low infant mor­tal­ity rates, and above average life expectancy, and its rate of rural pov­erty and pri­mary school dropout rates are below the Indian average (see Table 2.3). (Government of West Bengal – Development and Planning Department 2005). Gains in social wel­fare since the 1990s have not been spectacular, yet it is the state with the longest his­tory of functioning local governments. As with the other two states studied in this research, in the case study of West Bengal’s panchayats, the selected research district was chosen because it was closest to the state’s average indic­ators for social wel­fare (see Table 4.2), as this allowed for village findings to be more representative of decentralization within the state. Birbhum district, one of West Bengal’s 18 districts and located in the center of the state, met this cri­terion. Moreover, this district does not have the unusual geographical setting of some of the northern districts, which include eco­nom­ies based on hill stations and tea plantations. Nor is Birbhum district overshadowed by any large metropolitan area or the uniqueness of coastal eco­ nom­ies, like the districts in the southern part of the state around Kolkata. Within Birbhum district, two villages in the same administrative block were selected. These villages were studied in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the United Nations-­sponsored WIDER study.1 The WIDER study provides insight into social and eco­nomic de­velopment in these villages after 13 years of functioning local gov­ern­ments and prior to the implementation of the Panchayat Raj Amendment in 1993. Kuchli and Sahahajapur, the two villages studied in West Bengal, are each about ten kilo­meters from Santiniketan, the block head­quar­ters. The mainstay of the village popu­la­tion was agri­cul­ture, with 86 percent of the Kuchli households and 63 percent of the households in Sahahajapur working in agri­cul­ture in Table 4.2 Selected socioeconomic indicators, Birbhum District versus West Bengal averages

Population growth, 1991–2001 (%) Sex ratio, 2001 (females per 1,000 males) Adult literacy rate, 2001 (%) Household access to electricity, 2006 (%) Source: www. Indiastat.com. Accessed February 2007.

West Bengal

Birbhum District

17.8 934 69.2 48

17.9 950 63.2 42

102   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost 1987–1989 (Sunil Sengupta et al. 1991). Poverty rates in these villages in the late 1980s were 40 and 52 percent respectively, compared to the West Bengal rural pov­erty rate at that time of 48 percent (Sunil Sengupta et al. 1991). Over 50 percent of villagers were lit­er­ate in both villages in the early 1990s and the sex ratio was around 95 females per 100 males, sim­ilar to the average for Birbhum district (Government of India 1991). In gen­eral indic­ators for both villages around 1990 indicate con­tinued social depri­va­tion, though gov­ern­ment anti-­poverty programs appeared to be reaching a large percentage of their target beneficiaries according to earl­ier studies (Sunil Sengupta et al. 1991).

Kuchli and Sahahajapur around 1990 By 1990, West Bengal’s Gram Panchayats had already been functioning for 13 years, going through three rounds of elections. And in contrast to village gov­ern­ ments elsewhere in India, elections were contested on the basis of par­ties. In Kuchli and Sahahajapur, as in most of West Bengal villages, leftist par­ties led by the CPI(M) swept to power, forming the backbone of the CPI(M)-led LFG at the state level. In 1990, 89.5 percent of the panchayat seats in Kuchli and 100 percent of the seats in Sahahajapur were held by members of the CPI(M) and other Left Front par­ties (Sengupta 1991). The LFG’s estab­lishment of the new panchayat sys­tem along with the massive land distribution and tenancy cam­ paign of the 1980s paid elect­oral dividends in local as well as state elections. Revitalizing the panchayat sys­tem was one of the first initiatives undertaken by the Left Front Government after it was elected in 1977. Panchayats were given the power to carry out local gov­ern­ment planning and 50 percent of all rural de­velopment funds were marked for spending and distribution through the panchayats. The panchayat sys­tem and par­ticu­larly the Gram Panchayats were essential to the land reform program. In the villages of Kuchli and Sahahajapur, land reforms were undertaken as the major focus of the newly constituted panchayats, starting in the late 1970s and picking up speed in the 1980s. Land reforms in these two villages as in most others focused on land redis­tribu­tion and tenancy reform. While no official record was avail­able for the total amount of land and number of beneficiaries in these villages, inter­views indicated that in each of the villages at least a dozen households (out of 142 in Kuchli and 227 in Sahahajapur) were beneficiaries of the land redis­tribu­tion programs of the 1980s (Sunil Sengupta et al. 1991). In addition to land redis­tribu­tion, land reforms included tenancy reform. All tenancy agreements were re­corded by the local gov­ern­ments. Here again there were no village-­specific data avail­able, but inter­ views indicated that of those who were sharecroppers in 2000 and 2007/2008, most did receive the mandated two-­thirds share of harvested crops, though there were a few incidents of people not getting their entitled share.2 A pos­it­ive byproduct of the land reforms and grass-­roots organ­iza­tion of the Left Front Government through the panchayats was that agricultural laborers became more unified and or­gan­ized, thereby increasing their bargaining power. In Kuchli and Sahahajapur, the rice equi­val­ent in kilograms of labor wages went up from a

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   103 stagnant 2.6 in the 1960s through early 1980s to 3.42 for Kuchli and 3.3 for Sahahajapur in 1988 (Sengupta 1991). By 1990, landless and agricultural laborers were notice­ably better off in terms of income than before the 1977 election of the LFG and the revitalization of the panchayats. Although the WIDER study of these villages did not ana­lyze causal linkages between the pres­ence of panchayats and improvements in eco­nomic wellbeing of the poor in West Bengal, other studies have pointed to the gen­eral bene­fits accrued to the poor under LFG rule par­ticu­larly through land reform (Westergaard 1986; Lieten 1992; Webster 1992b; Datta 1993). During the 1980s great improvements were made in Kuchli and Sahahajapur, as well as most other West Bengali villages, in terms of breaking the power of the Zamindari (landlord) sys­tem and implementing gen­eral land reforms. However, given that one of the main aims of the Left Front Government had been to decrease pov­erty and improve the gen­eral wellbeing of the impoverished, it is notice­able that social indic­ators for these two villages, as for West Bengal in gen­eral, did not improve greatly. By 1990 the lit­er­acy rate was 47.2 percent for Kuchli and 40.8 percent for Sahahajapur, slightly below the West Bengal average and around the Indian average (Sengupta 1991). While both villages had access to electricity for those who could afford it, neither had an Anganwadi worker (female health care worker who provides pre- and post-­natal advice and care), only Kuchli had a pub­lic tubewell for potable water, both villages were located more than four kilo­meters from the nearest pri­mary health care center, and distribution of subsidized goods under the Public Distribution System actu­ally declined during the 1980s (Sengupta 1991). By the 1990s, these social indic­ators were notice­ably lower than those achieved in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala – even though West Bengal’s social indic­ators in the 1950s and 1960s had been higher than in these other states. Thus, the pic­ture of social wellbeing of the villagers of Kuchli and Sahahajapur that emerges by 1990 is mixed, reflecting West Bengal’s middling performance compared to other large Indian states. On the one hand, social indic­ators for the villages of Kuchli and Sahahajapur, like the indic­ators for West Bengal in gen­eral, had fallen behind states it had surpassed a few decades earl­ier. These figures are par­ticu­larly notice­able with regard to lit­er­acy and pri­mary education rates, where West Bengal fell behind its ranking of the 1980s. On the other hand, pov­erty rates had gone down (though still not as dramatically as expected), social indic­ators had improved, and land reforms, including those affecting the farmers’ organ­iza­tions that resulted in higher agricultural labor wages, helped improve the lives of the poorer and more vulner­able landless and mar­ginal farmers.

Findings from the West Bengal village studies in 2000 Having had a functioning local gov­ern­ment sys­tem in place for well over a decade, the gov­ern­ment of West Bengal only had to make few adjustments to its Panchayat Act to bring it in line with the Constitutional Amendment in 1993. These adjustments can be divided into two cat­egor­ies: those of a cosmetic or

104   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost technical nature and those that had more substantial im­plica­tions. On the more technical end, changes to the West Bengal Panchayat (Amendment) Act of 1994 included changes such as an increase in the max­imum number of Gram Panchayat members from 25 to 30. Of the more substantive changes made, one-­third of all panchayat seats at every level was reserved for women and the percentage of seats reserved for members of the SC/ST popu­la­tion was equi­val­ent to their percentage in the given district. One-­third of the seats of chairpersons and vice-­ chairpersons from the local-­level Gram Panchayat to the district-­level Zilla Parishad Panchayat was also reserved for women, and sim­ilarly the position of chairpersons and vice-­chairpersons were reserved for SC and ST in the same proportion as their popu­la­tion within the given district. The changes to the West Bengal Panchayat Act brought it in line with the 73rd amend­ment, and in the con­text of an already functioning panchayat sys­tem, this new structure made the Gram Panchayat potentially more demo­cratic, transparent, and account­able to the electorate. West Bengal’s Gram Panchayats have been able to accomplish much in improving social wel­fare during the past decades. Due to the gen­eral state-­level sup­port for social programs and the actual functioning of Gram Panchayats at the local level at the time of implementation of the new Gram Panchayat sys­tem in 1992/1993, bene­fits from these programs largely flowed to more vulner­able groups. On the other hand, West Bengal’s pro­gress in social wel­fare has not been nearly as large as expected and the village studies show that the reasons for  this are the “undemo­cratic” elements of panchayat functioning – the new village elites and lack of effect­ive party com­peti­tion in par­ticu­lar. Three decades of the LFG and control of the bur­eau­cracy from the state level to the villages has had an effect on the efficacy of demo­cratic functioning. Despite elections and other institutions designed to ensure plurality, most West Bengal villages in par­ticu­lar have become one-­party run. This has enabled corruption and reduced the effect­iveness of the Gram Panchayat in improving social wellbeing because alloca­tion of social wel­fare bene­fits – one of the main powers entrusted to Gram Panchayats under the 73rd Constitutional Amendment – is conducted according to party af­fili­ation rather than pov­erty and the needs of the recipient. The 1992 changes to West Bengal’s Gram Panchayat sys­tem increased the repres­enta­tion of vulner­able groups, but did nothing to change the corruption of one-­party rule. The fol­low­ing section first ex­plores how villagers in the case studies viewed the panchayat sys­tem – in this case both the pre-­1992 sys­tem and the sys­tem that has been in place since then. Next, the issue of whether perceptions of the quality of governance have changed since the introduction of the new panchayat law is ana­lyzed. The third section ex­plores whether having asso­ci­ations in the village has led to better functioning of the Gram Panchayat. The final section details villagers’ perceptions of changes in wellbeing, both since the initial implementation of the panchayat sys­tem, and since the 73rd Amendment-­induced changes to the panchayat sys­tem in 1993. It also ex­plores their perception of links between changes in wellbeing and changes in wel­fare. The findings illus­trate that any

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   105 ana­lysis of panchayats in West Bengal has to involve discussion of the influence of the CPI(M). It was through the 1977 election of the CPI(M)-led Left-­Front Government that state sup­port for decentralization of polit­ical power in rural areas first emerged. It was also the CPI(M)-dominated gov­ern­ment that instituted the PRI sys­tem in West Bengal and or­gan­ized the first PRI elections, along with a variety of other reforms such as government-­organized land reform, various mass organ­iza­tions of the party such as Kisan Sabhas (party-­organized peasant asso­ci­ations), and district cooperative movements. It was indeed through the party’s simultaneous domination of these various reforms that the CPI(M) was able to penetrate deep into rural soci­ety, as argued by many scholars of West Bengal and CPI(M) pol­itics (Mallick 1993; Lieten 1996a). As with the other case studies, the village research was mainly based on qualit­at­ive data, including a small, stratified sample survey in both villages conducted in 2000 that collected both quantitative and qualit­at­ive in­forma­tion. A total of 80 villagers were inter­viewed in the two villages of Kuchli and Shahajapur. See Table 4.4 at the end of the chapter for results on selected survey questions. Interviews with key informants and focus group discussions were held in 2000 and again in 2007/2008.

How is the Panchayat system perceived? Effective demo­cratic institutions are central to governance and legitimacy in a demo­cracy. However altruistic the demo­cratic ideals, prin­ciples, and aims of a gov­ern­ment may be, it is only through the demo­cratic and opera­tional functioning of gov­ern­ments in pursuit of social goals at the local level that ser­ious and sustained change is pos­sible. From de Tocqueville to Anthony Giddens, writers have emphas­ized the im­port­ance of strong local gov­ern­ments and functioning deliberative institutions for strengthening demo­cracy. Assessing the perceived and actual functioning of local demo­cracy is the first step towards analyzing whether the West Bengal Gram Panchayats were delivering on their goals of improving local social welfare. The fol­low­ing section ana­lyzes how villagers in the villages of Kuchli and Shahajapur perceive the functioning of their Gram Panchayats. Only when local gov­ern­ments function as mandated – by holding Gram Sabha and Gram Sansad meetings to demo­cratically identi­fy the indigent popu­la­tion for bene­fit distribution, and by overseeing and facilitating the delivery of social wel­fare programs to those most in need – can local gov­ern­ments hope to improve indic­ators of pov­erty and social wellbeing. For villagers to assess whether the local gov­ern­ ments have changed their social wel­fare, they need not only to have witnessed implementation of the social wel­fare programs, or to have been a passive recipient of a program, but they need to have an active understanding of the local gov­ ern­ment sys­tem and its functioning. They need to be able to make informed and free de­cisions on who will best represent their inter­ests, parti­cip­ate in the functioning of the local gov­ern­ment (at village assembly meetings for example), have approachable and responsive local representatives, and have the abil­ity to hold

106   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost them account­able. Villagers also need to perceive alloca­tion of social bene­fits by the local gov­ern­ment as targeted and equit­able, free from undue extraneous influences.

Popular participation in local elections Since the 1978 panchayat elections, elections have been held regu­larly every five years throughout the West Bengal, including in the villages of Kuchli and Shahajapur. In 2000, villagers in Kuchli and Shahajapur had already ex­peri­enced two rounds of Gram Panchayat elections and nearly ten years of local gov­ern­ ment functioning under the revised Gram Panchayat sys­tem. Election turnout was high throughout the state in 1993 and 1998, with a turnout of over 85 percent in 1993 (Kumar and Ghosh 1996). Turnout was at least as high in Kuchli and Shahajapur, with all but two of the 80 survey respondents to a small sample survey in 2000 saying that they voted in the last national elections and all but three stating that they had voted in the last Gram Panchayat elections. Though these voter turnout rates seem high, they are in line with other studies on voter parti­cipa­tion in West Bengal, which indicate rates of around 90 percent in local gov­ern­ment elections (Westergaard 1986; Webster 1992a; Kumar and Ghosh 1996). For the first time, the Gram Panchayat elections in 1993 had seats reserved for women and Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, including reserv­ing for a woman the position of head of the Kuchli Gram Panachayat. This led to an even greater than usual turnout. During the 1993 and 1998 elections voter parti­cipa­tion was high amongst women and Scheduled Tribes – those groups that had had lower rates of repres­enta­tion prior to the passage of the 73rd Amendment. Furthermore, a greater percentage of tradi­tion­ally dis­advant­aged groups were elected to Gram Panchayat offices. During the 1990s, parti­cipa­tion in and election to local gov­ern­ment offices was high amongst groups who tradi­tion­ally were also poorer and more vulner­able, and thus, were more likely to be beneficiaries of social wel­fare programs. However, follow-­up inter­views in 2007/2008, as well as corres­pond­ence with key informers between 2008 and 2010 suggest that turnout rates at sub­sequent panchayat elections in 2003 and 2008 were lower overall, par­ticu­larly lower among the Scheduled Tribes. In inter­views and focus group discussions in 2000 on why voter turnout was so high during the 1990s, responses indicated that pol­itics also played a dominant role. Candidates of the Left Front Government and the CPI(M) in par­ticu­lar had the majority of seats in both villages’ Gram Panchayats in both the 1993 and 1998 local elections. These findings are in line with the previous studies of these villages, which found that the CPI(M) and other LFG par­ties held 89.5 percent of the seats in the Gram Panchayat to which Kuchli belonged and 100 percent of the seats in Shahajapur in the late 1980s (Sengupta 1991). Moreover, this trend con­tinued in sub­sequent elections with 16 out of the 17 Gram Panchayat members of the GP to which the village of Kuchli belonged being CPI(M) members in 2008. Responses from key informants and focus group discussions

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   107 indicated a high degree of parti­cipa­tion in the local gov­ern­ment elections despite a belief among some that elections were not fairly conducted. The residents of these two villages were highly mobilized along polit­ical lines. Wanting to represent or see the implementation of a par­ticu­lar party agenda was one of the main explanations given by key informants for the high elect­oral parti­cipa­tion rates. Informants who were ideo­logically close to the Left Front Government often stated that they wanted to see more party programs implemented. Those ideo­logically aligned with opposi­tion par­ties largely criticized the efficacy of the Left Front-­dominated Gram Panchayats in their village. Several also gave the aim of routing the Left Front-­dominated Gram Panchayats from local gov­ern­ment as their main mo­tiva­tion for voting in the elections. Rarely did informants give personalized pol­itics, i.e., the wish to remove or elect a par­ticu­lar person from or to office, as their reason for voting. Over 30 years of local elections based on party repres­enta­tion and pol­itics have changed the nature of local pol­itics in these West Bengali villages. Unlike local pol­itics in Uttar Pradesh, and most other Indian states, pol­itics based on religion, caste, com­munal, or feudal inter­ests have been replaced by party-­based pol­itics. This has enabled greater inter­action of groups across socio­economic, religious, and ethnic cleavages through the vehicle of local gov­ern­ment. However, while the LFG is a co­ali­tion of leftist par­ties aimed at representing and bene­fiting more dis­advant­aged groups, studies show that people of ST background and landless agricultural workers, who his­tor­ically have the lowest social indic­ators of any social group in West Bengal, are underrepres­ented in both the par­ties that constitute the LFG, as well as in local gov­ern­ments (Bandyopadhyay 2008). The dominance of the Left Front has seeped into all aspects of gov­ern­ment functioning, to the point that those who are not party members find it difficult to get gov­ern­ ment jobs, even at the local level. Being a party member has become an entry ticket to the more lucrative pub­lic sector jobs. In addition, the opportunism of those who were not part of the LFG’s initial base of sup­porters has attracted people of all backgrounds to the party. For example, during a conversation with a gen­eral caste cit­izen of Shahajapur village in 2000 the person confided that neither he nor any members of his family were CPI(M) members. Moreover, his family refused to join the party both because their caste had suffered under LFG tenure in the village by having land expropriated during land reform and because they had witnessed the corruption associated with CPI(M)-dominated Gram Panchayats. Particularly where access to social programs such as subsidized loans or the location of new tubewells and the legal pun­ishment of criminals, was based on party mem­ber­ship rather than actual need or crimes committed. In a conversation with the same indi­vidual eight years later he and his brother confided that they had now joined the CPI(M) not due to ideo­logical conviction, but because some of their family land had been identified as being above the land holding ceiling and therefore eli­gible for land seizure and redis­tribu­tion by the Gram Panchayat. In a move designed to prevent the seizure of their lands, both brothers joined the CPI(M) party in 2003. Seven other cit­izens of Shahajapur and Kuchli villages, all of

108   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost whom were gen­eral caste members, stated in 2008 that they had joined the CPI(M) party over the past decade for instrumental reasons ranging from wanting to avoid land seizure to needing help with administrative issues from the Gram Panchayat and its CPI(M) members. CPI(M) party mem­ber­ship enabled access to ser­vices that were controlled by the local gov­ern­ments, including social services. However, when key informants were asked why people voted and why the elect­oral turnout in the late 1990s was so high even by West Bengal’s high average stand­ards, the explanations given point to a faith in the elect­oral and local gov­ern­ ment sys­tem to represent people’s as­pira­tions, despite allegations of corruption. Similarly, while 77 out of 80 survey respondents (96 percent) said they voted in the 1998 Gram Panchayat elections, only 50 respondents (62 percent) thought that the elections were fair. These responses were corroborated through key informant inter­views and are consistent with other empirical studies conducted over the past two decades in West Bengal which show that villagers believed that there was some elect­oral corruption even at the local gov­ern­ment level, but are never­the­less motiv­ated to con­tinue to parti­cip­ate in high numbers in local gov­ern­ment workings (Westergaard 1986; Webster 1992a; Wiley 2000). In Kuchli and Shahajapur, several informants gave concrete details of corrupt or rigged local elections, including distribution of alcohol or other “presents” on the day before elections by par­ties in order to “buy votes,” election booths being manned by CPI(M) party sup­porters, and cases where the police, who were known to be partial to the Left Front Government, intimidated polit­ical can­did­ates of non-­LFG par­ties. However, belief in the fairness of elections was related to charac­ter­istics gen­erally associated with the LFG. Of the 50 survey respondents who thought that local gov­ern­ment elections (which elected mostly LFG-­associated can­did­ates) were fair in the 2000 survey, 28 (56 percent) came from a SC/ST/OBC background, 18 (36 percent) were laborers as opposed to landowners or sal­ar­ied em­ployees, and 33 (66 percent) were categorized as not having many assets – all traits tradi­tion­ally associated with the base of sup­port for the Left Front Government. Despite the belief of some respondents to the 2000 survey that the Gram Panchayat elections were not fairly conducted, even these skep­tical respondents turned out to vote in the elections. In follow-­up inter­views in 2000 and again in 2007/2008 on why they voted if they thought that elections were not going to be fair, several stated that voting was still the main avenue for influ­en­cing change. Over three decades of voting and seeing change brought about through elections, even if the changes were not to the extent or of the type wanted by the voter, has given the villagers in Kuchli and Shahajapur a faith in the basic efficacy of local gov­ern­ment as an instrument of change. It has also mobilized civil soci­ety by rallying groups around polit­ical par­ties, prim­arily the CPI(M). Interestingly, the increased pres­ence of female and Scheduled Caste and Tribe Gram Panchayat can­did­ates after 1993 was not given as a mo­tiva­tion for voting by any respondent, although several people offered the view that having more women in the Gram Panchayats is helping combat corruption. A  couple of decades of local elections and some improvements in social and eco­nomic infrastructure in the

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   109 villages have helped deepen the villagers’ understanding of elections as an instrument of change. Not only did the vast majority of respondents in these villages portray an under­lying faith in the demo­cratic workings of local demo­cracy, they also showed a higher level of aware­ness of the polit­ical structure and greater parti­cipa­tion in the workings of their Gram Panchayat than either of their counter-­part case studies in Uttar Pradesh or Karnataka. The 2000 survey of the two villages found that 16 out of 80 respondents (20 percent) attested to having cam­paigned for a member of the local gov­ern­ment and ten out of 80 (13 percent) had cam­paigned for a local gov­ern­ment candidate at the block or district level. When questioned about the village electorate meeting, 26 of the 80 respondents (33 percent) said that they attended and actively parti­cip­ated in Gram Sabha or Gram Sansad meetings. And 65 of the 80 survey respondents (81 percent) knew the name of their local panchayat representative and the name of the head of the panchayat and therefore knew who to turn to in order to represent their inter­ests, or who was respons­ible if their inter­ests were not well repres­ented in the local gov­ern­ment. Such high aware­ness and social and polit­ical mobil­iza­tion rates were corroborated through key informant inter­views in 2000 and again in 2007/2008. The rates of attendance and parti­cipa­tion in Gram Sabha meetings are high by any stand­ard of parti­cipa­tion in local pol­itics, but may be misleading without closer inspection. In 2000, 26 out of 80 of survey respondents (33 percent) said that they had attended one or more meetings within the last few years. This figure represents an increase over the late 1980s where 22 out of 114 respondents (20 percent) in the same villages stated that they had attended a Gram Sabha meeting in these villages (Sengupta 1991). When those survey respondents (20 percent) who said that they did not attend local electorate meetings were asked why, 25 percent said that they did not attend because the outcome of the meetings were pre-­determined by the CPI(M) party, and that only party members were active parti­cip­ants in these meetings (Sengupta 1991). In 2000, of the 54 survey respondents who did not attend meetings, 26 (48 percent) said that they did not know about the meetings and/or that they were not invited to the meetings. Follow-­up conversations with key informants and focus group discussions in 2000 and 2007/2008 confirmed that voter apathy was related to perceptions that outcomes of village electorate meetings were pre-­determined by the CPI(M). The low percentage of the electorate attending Gram Sabha and Gram Sansad meetings was corroborated by observation of the panchayat meetings for 2000 and 2007/2008 in both villages. It is also in line with the previous study of these two villages (Sengupta 1991), and others that point to a low level of cit­izen parti­ cipa­tion in the workings of village demo­cracy. The main arena in which villagers are able to parti­cip­ate and con­trib­ute towards direct demo­cracy appears not to be functioning in the manner in which it was envisioned. Studies of the 1993 changes to the panchayat law, requiring mandatory Gram Sansad village constituency meetings, have been crit­ical of the abil­ity of this new law to address the prob­lem of perceived lack of control among villagers over Gram Panchayat de­cisions (Narayana 2005). The lack of attendance at these village electorate

110   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost meetings indicates that one of the few avenues for cit­izen parti­cipa­tion and input into local gov­ern­ments, and the method mandated for determining social wel­fare program beneficiaries, was largely not functioning. The village studies point to a prevailing perception of a lack of control over the panchayat institutions – that despite demo­cratic elections, functioning of their local gov­ern­ment is not demo­cratic, but rather pre-­determined by CPI(M) party members. These findings mirror those of other studies, which have found that a prominent feature of these village constituency meetings is that those who are active at the meetings are largely members, or at least sup­porters, of the dominant polit­ical party – which are the Left Front par­ties in a majority of the cases (Ghatak and Ghatak 2002). Moreover, of 26 survey respondents who said that they do attend the Gram Sabha meetings, 7 (27 percent) said that they attend because they were told they must go by CPI(M) members. In addition, of those 26 who said they attended Gram Sabha meetings, 10 (38 percent) voluntarily pro­claimed their polit­ical affinity with the Left Front Government. These findings point to some degree of ali­ena­tion from local gov­ern­ment institutions among villagers, par­ticu­larly those who are not party members. Nonetheless, the results also attest to a high level of cit­izen aware­ness about the local gov­ern­ments in these villages as well as a high degree of parti­cipa­tion in the workings of the local gov­ern­ments, albeit more among those who are LFG party members. Awareness of local gov­ern­ment functioning is a signi­fic­ant indic­ ator of a working local gov­ern­ment. In contrast to the lack of aware­ness and parti­ cipa­tion in the Uttar Pradesh case studies and sim­ilar to aware­ness in Karnataka, respondents in these West Bengal villages were clearly aware of not only the structural set-­up of the local gov­ern­ments, but also of their rights and obli­ga­tions in making local gov­ern­ment work in their inter­est. Certainly, having 26 out of 80 eli­gible voters (33 percent) parti­cip­ate in local gov­ern­ment meetings are rates that any well-­functioning local gov­ern­ment in any part of the world could only hope to achieve, even if many of those attending are members of the ruling party. These findings of high cit­izen aware­ness and parti­cipa­tion rates in West Bengal are docu­mented in other case studies of local gov­ern­ments in rural West Bengal and indicate that the Gram Panchayat sys­tem has led to high parti­cipa­ tion rates in the elections of local gov­ern­ment and to increased cit­izen aware­ness of their polit­ical rights under local gov­ern­ment. Of the 80 survey respondents in Kuchli and Shahajapur, 77 (96 percent) con­tinued to vote in the elections for their local gov­ern­ments and 50 out of 80 of them (62 percent) believe these elections to be fair. As we will see later, they also believe that the Gram Panchayats have improved the quality of life in their villages. Yet, at the same time, two-­thirds of the respondents do not attend local gov­ern­ment meetings and many who do not attend, do so out of a belief that their pres­ence and vote at these meetings does not mat­ter because most de­cisions have been pre-­determined by the ruling CPI(M) party. The CPI(M) and other par­ties of the Left Front Government largely influence the agenda and outcomes, thereby undermining the demo­ cratic pro­cess of local governance. On the other hand, the im­port­ance of cit­izenry aware­ness of their local gov­ern­ment structure and functioning cannot be

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   111 overstated. Three decades of functioning and active gov­ern­ments in West Bengal have yielded an im­port­ant increase in aware­ness of demo­cracy and rights. This mobil­iza­tion of civil soci­ety has spilled over into a gen­eral increased aware­ness of rights and demand for one’s rights, including the abil­ity to vote out of office Gram Panchayat members who do not perform as expected.

Responsiveness of local government The high aware­ness of and parti­cipa­tion in local gov­ern­ment functioning, meas­ured by survey responses and follow-­up inter­views in 2000 and 2007/2008, was also a result of a high level of inter­action with Gram Panchayat representatives. Belief in the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem, as seen in the high level of voter turnout and rel­at­ ively high belief in the fairness of elections, was based not only on an understanding of the sys­tem but also on personal inter­action with panchayat members. Of the 80 survey respondents in 2000, 38 (48 percent) said that they had interacted with their local panchayat representative over the course of the past couple of years in their capa­city as a panchayat member and 43 of the respondents (54 percent) said that they had contacted their local representative at some point for help in dealing with an issue. More signi­fic­antly, over half of those who had not contacted their Gram Panchayat for help, volunteered that they would if they needed to, despite this not being a question on the questionnaire! And this included respondents who had identified themselves as having polit­ical af­fili­ations that were not part of the LFG co­ali­tion. Clearly, most villagers feel comfortable contacting their local representatives for help when they need it. Furthermore, of those 43 survey respondents who contacted their local panchayat representative, 22 (51 percent) said that the representative was responsive and helpful. Examples of issues that panchayat members were helpful with included securing gov­ern­ment docu­ments such as birth certificates and ration cards for accessing goods from the Public Distribution System (PDS), helping access government-­subsidized programs, such as loans and health care, and resolving disputes with gov­ern­ment officials. Compared with villagers in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, residents in these West Bengali villages in gen­eral showed much greater engagement with panchayat members in 2000 and this remained evid­ent in 2008. A surprisingly high number of survey respondents, 38 out of 80 (48 percent), said that between 1995 and 2000 they had parti­cip­ated in some activity directed at their local gov­ern­ ment such as signing a peti­tion to give to a panchayat member on some issue or requested holding a formal meeting with a Gram Panchayat member on a par­ ticu­lar issue. The high level of inter­action with local panchayat members con­ tinued through 2008 and underscores the belief of most respondents that when they need to get something done that involves inter­action with gov­ern­ment officials or accessing gov­ern­ment programs, Gram Panchayat members are usually their first point of contact. These pos­it­ive ex­peri­ences with local representatives over several decades have cemented people’s appreciation of the Gram Panchayat sys­tem. Older informants with memories of the gov­ern­ment before 1977, par­ticu­larly those of

112   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost less privileged backgrounds, recounted numerous stories attesting to the difficulty in accessing gov­ern­ment ser­vices and officials in the pre-­panchayat days. Informants of lower caste backgrounds told stories of trying to insist on rights as sharecroppers or farm workers and being humiliated, subjected to pun­ishments such as withholding of wages and food, and in some severe cases even beatings and loss of employment. Now, people in these West Bengali villages depend on their local panchayat representatives to access gov­ern­ment ser­vices and officials. The Gram Panchayats are viewed as an essential aspect of village life: delivering social ser­vices and facilitating villagers’ access to their rights. The village studies suggest that Gram Panchayats have taken deep roots in these West Bengali villages, leading to institutionalization of local gov­ern­ments over the past decades, even if questions re­gard­ing equit­able treatment of their constituents remain.

Work done by Gram Panchayats When asked specifically about different pub­lic pro­jects aimed at social wel­fare improvements and whether their Gram Panchayat had been instrumental the functioning of these pro­jects, all 80 survey respondents in 2000 thought that there had been some pub­lic pro­jects in their village during the last year, ranging from phys­ical construction on classrooms to water supply and sanitation pro­ jects. Moreover, 66 out of 80 survey respondents (82 percent) thought that the Gram Panchayat was the implementing force behind these pro­jects, with a small minor­ity thinking that upper levels of the panchayat sys­tem and different inter­ na­tional aid organ­iza­tions were the main implementing forces. Opinions on this issue did not vary much by village. Similarly in 2008, during qualit­at­ive inter­ views many informants stated that their local gov­ern­ment was behind social wel­ fare programs in their village. Appreciation of the role that Gram Panchayats have played in villagers’ lives is based not only on personal ex­peri­ences, but also on evid­ence of panchayat work in the village. In stark contrast to the social infrastructure of the villages studied in Uttar Pradesh and sim­ilar to Karnataka, these West Bengali villages in 2000 had functioning pri­mary schools and a village health care worker who regu­larly held meetings with mothers and dispensed pre- and ante-­natal care. Much of village infrastructure, such as wells, ponds and roads, had been built using village labor and pub­lic work funds, and the villages had a working pub­lic distribution sys­tem. All of these ser­vices were managed by or with the assistance of the local Gram Panchayat. During research visits in 2000 and again in 2008 the village pri­mary schools were always functioning: teachers showed up every school day and classes were held. However, in 2008 at repeated visits to both village pri­mary schools, the nutritional scheme providing free midday meals to all school chil­dren was only functioning spor­adic­ally, despite funds alloc­ated to this scheme at the block level. Moreover, teachers confirmed in 2000 and again in 2008 that student ab­sentee­ism was high and that not a single child of Scheduled Tribe background – which in the case of both these villages largely

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   113 repres­ented the eco­nomic­ally poorest group – was in attendance at the time of visits. Also, adult education classes or­gan­ized by a Gram Panchayat subgroup were held in one of the villages, though not in the other in 2000, and by 2008, such classes had ceased in both villages. Health care pro­vi­sion functioned better in both villages. The female village health worker (Anganwadi) kept records of which village women were pregnant or had recently had a child, whom she had met with and when, and what types of goods, such as vitamins, she had dispensed, or referrals she had given in 2000. Follow-­up with some of the pregnant or lactating mothers in 2000 and again in 2008 confirmed that the Anganwadi had indeed met with these women, offered advice, dispensed vitamins or medications, and/or given referrals to the district hos­pital. Furthermore, there were vis­ible signs in both villages of infrastructure pro­jects, funded by central gov­ern­ment programs and implemented or monitored by the Gram Panchayat. Shahajapur even has functioning a two-­room, brick-­ construction village library with four shelves of books and young and older readers present on the five random visits made to the library in 2000 and the two visits during 2008. This type of daily evid­ence of the local panchayats in action was evid­ent throughout the village. There is, how­ever, a caveat to these signs of a high level of Gram Panchayat involvement in village governance and social pro­ject management: in 2000, many survey respondents as well as key informants used the terms “Gram Panchayat” and “the party” (meaning CPI(M)) in­ter­change­ably. When the 66 out of 80 respondents (82 percent) who stated that the Gram Panchayat is instrumental in the delivery of social ser­vices were asked who specifically was respons­ible for implementing social programs in the village, the Party or the Gram Panchayat, 62 (94 percent) said that they were one and the same, including those who had identified themselves as CPI(M) members as well as both the Gram Panchayat representatives from these villages. Similar questioning of key informants in 2007/2008 yielded com­par­able answers. These findings are sim­ilar to those of earl­ier studies of these two villages, which found that the most villagers did not appear to distinguish between the CPI(M) and the Gram Panchayats (Sengupta 1991). The feedback from these villages underscores how entrenched the CPI(M) party is in West Bengal after nearly three decades in power and that any ana­lysis of panchayats in West Bengal is incomplete without discussion of the nexus between the panchayat sys­tem and the CPI(M).

Local government accountability The idea that local popu­la­tions are more likely to hold local gov­ern­ments account­able, as opposed to a distantly located district or state gov­ern­ment, has been cited as one of the main rationales for decentralization of power to the local level. It also was one of the main reasons the Left Front Government cited for the cre­ation of local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal in 1977. Whether the village gov­ern­ments of Shahjapur and Kuchli have been held account­able by the villagers needs to be understood against the background of

114   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost village gov­ern­ments that have been ruled for over three decades by the pro-­poor Left Front Government par­ties, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in par­ticu­lar. In the past decade other par­ties, par­ticu­larly the All-­India Trinamul Congress Party (AITC), a party formed largely by defectors from the Congress Party in West Bengal, and to a lesser extent the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have started to challenge the stronghold of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. This introduction of polit­ical com­peti­tion in a de facto one-­party state was vis­ ible in Kuchli and Shahajapur in 2007/2008, though the CPI(M) still con­tinued to dominate the polit­ical landscape. Thus, the Gram Panchayat officials elected, often running unopposed, have over­whelm­ingly been CPI(M) members, reflecting a statewide trend as seen in Table 4.3. This did not change with the implementation of quotas for women and SC/ST members mandated by the 73rd Amendment. Most of the can­did­ates fielded at local gov­ern­ment elections were CPI(M) members, as were virtually all of those who won Gram Panchayat positions in the 1998, 2003, and 2008 village gov­ern­ment elections in Kuchli and Shahajapur (Adhikary 2009). Moreover, while the percentage of statewide Gram Panchayat seats won by the LFG in 2008 dropped dramatically as a result of several highly pub­licized land-­evictions by the state gov­ern­ment, it remained ques­tion­able whether the 2008 local election results indicated a signi­fic­ant threat to the LFG’s dominance of pol­itics in West Bengal. The prob­lem of local gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity in West Bengali villages is different from that in Uttar Pradesh or Karnataka. Monies sent from the district and block offices to the villages of Kuchli and Shahajapur were re­corded at the village panchayat level as having arrived and been disbursed. The record of funds alloc­ated and disbursed was clear in district, block, and village-­level docu­ ments in 2000 and 2008. In addition, talks with Gram Panchayat members and key informants in both villages as well as focus group discussions (with villagers from different social backgrounds and polit­ical leanings) on size and alloca­tions of indi­vidual social and anti-­poverty programs disbursed by the Gram Panchayat, confirm that the monies alloc­ated to villages gen­erally flow to the villages. Moreover, the amount and percentage of resources flowing to local gov­ern­ments has increased markedly since the turn of the century. Corruption and leakages of pub­lic funds from the center down to the village level is less of a prob­lem in these West Bengali villages than in Uttar Pradesh. The more im­port­ant questions are whether local gov­ern­ment representatives are disbursing the funds received in accordance with the guidelines for distribution of these funds and whether, if Table 4.3 Percentage of seats won by parties of the Left Front Government (LFG) and opposition in Gram Panchayat elections, 1978–2008 Party

1978

1983

1988

1993

1998

2003

2008

LFG Opposition

69 31

60 40

73 27

64 36

56 44

72 28

51 49

Sources: Ghatak and Ghatak 2002; Government of West Bengal 2011.

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   115 the pro­cess was corrupted, representatives were being held account­able for it. To try to address these polit­ically sensitive issues, survey inter­viewees were asked to answer a more gen­eral question on their sense of Gram Panchayat members’ account­abil­ity. Specifically, they were asked whether, if there were prob­lems of corruption within the Gram Panchayat, local gov­ern­ment representatives were more likely to be held account­able in the year 2000 compared to 1990, only 16 out of 80 survey respondents thought that account­abil­ity had improved by 2000. This compared with 26 who thought that they would be less likely to be held account­able in 2000 and 38 of the survey respondents who stated that they were not sure or did not give an answer to this question. Interviews with key informants in 2000 and again in 2007/2008 yielded a sim­ilar perception of deteriorating account­abil­ity in the villages of Kuchli and Shahajapur. It appears puzz­ling that there is a perception of decreased account­abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments while at the same time the local gov­ern­ments in these villages are functioning and producing vis­ible improvement in social infrastructure and ser­vices. Closer ex­plora­tion of this issue, mainly through focus group discussions and with key informants in 2000 and again in 2008, yielded a more complete pic­ture. Importantly, unlike with other Indian states, the changes in state law in com­pliance with the 73rd Amendment did not change the in­ternal workings of the Gram Panchayats in West Bengal. The only notice­able dif­fer­ence was the increase in female and Scheduled Tribe representatives. Overall, respondents stated that while the Gram Panchayats have con­tinued to function and perform, account­abil­ity of the Gram Panchayats, mostly composed of CPI(M) members, has decreased since the early 1990s. An exception to this overall sense was the case of the pradhan or head of the panchayat in Shahajapur in 2000. Some informants suggested that because the Shahjapur pradhan was a woman, she was less corrupt and more likely to be empathetic. This qualit­at­ive finding is in line with a quantitative study of the district within which both the villages are located. This study finds that women and SC pradhans are more likely to invest in goods and ser­vices that are more rel­ev­ant to the needs of women and SC respectively, such as water for women and goods and ser­vices for SC-­populated areas, and that in gen­eral having a female pradhan makes a dif­fer­ence to ser­vice delivery (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004). If, during the 1990s, goods and ser­vices con­tinued to be effect­ively delivered within the villages through the Gram Panchayats and yet the overall perception of villagers was one of deterioration in account­abil­ity of local gov­ern­ment representatives, then something in the nature and functioning of the Gram Panchayats must explain this inconsistency. Interviews with key informants during 2000 and follow-­ups in 2008 provided much of the basis for providing an answer to this question. After the changes made to the West Bengal panchayat sys­tem in line with the 73rd Amendment, the Gram Panchayats in both Kuchli and Shahajapur con­tinued to function as before. Since local gov­ern­ment elections at all pan­ chayat levels in West Bengal were held on the basis of polit­ical par­ties, there con­tinued to be close linkage between the panchayats and CPI(M), with party  members (and often the same party member) gen­erally being elected to

116   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost panchayat positions. In fact after the 1998 panchayat elections, three out of the four Gram Panchayat representatives from Kuchli and Shahajapur were CPI(M) party members. And the one representative who was not a member of the CPI(M) party, the female pradhan, had a husband who was a party member and active in the CPI(M). After hearing much qualit­at­ive evid­ence that the close linkage between the CPI(M) party and panchayat members over two decades was at the root of the overall perception of decreased account­abil­ity of Gram Panchayat members, a new question was added to the West Bengal questionnaire in 2000, before the survey was implemented. In this question, the inter­ viewee was told to ima­gine a hypo­thet­ical scen­ario in their village where the panchayat had received money for an anti-­poverty scheme that they could only give to one person. However, two people applied for this scheme. Both appeared to be equally poor, but one was a CPI(M) and the other was not. The inter­viewee was asked who would receive the bene­fit scheme. Out of the 80 survey respondents, 59 stated that the CPI(M) member would receive the bene­fits. All panchayat members inter­viewed also stated that the party member would more likely receive benefits. That nearly three-­fourths of survey respondents found a pos­it­ive correlation between party af­fili­ation and receipt of social wel­fare programs by local gov­ern­ ments is one of the most telling findings from the 2000 survey of these West Bengal villages. It captures the fact that social ser­vice programs do function and bene­fits are distributed by the panchayats in the villages, but that the pro­cess of dis­trib­uting social ser­vice bene­fits is perceived to be corrupt, due to CPI(M) members having a greater likelihood of receiving these schemes. Moreover, the fact that such a large percentage of survey respondents said that the Communist Party member would be more likely to bene­fit from the anti-­poverty scheme indicates not only that the beneficiary alloca­tion sys­tem is corrupt, but also that the corruption is widely accepted as a mat­ter of fact and is not something requiring concealment. Key informant inter­views conducted in the villages in 2007/2008 yielded sim­ilar results. The fact that some panchayat members themselves admitted to a pref­er­ence for party members in the alloca­tion of anti-­poverty schemes is evid­ence that this pref­er­ence is socially accepted and is indic­at­ive of the power relationships in the Kuchli and Shahajapur. It is also confirms the findings of recent household surveys in rural West Bengal (Bardhan et al. 2008). To investigate this widespread perception of corruption in the Gram Pancha­ yat’s alloca­tion of social wel­fare bene­fits, inter­views were conducted in 2007/2008 with five people who had parti­cip­ated in pub­lic infrastructure pro­jects under the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY) and five recipients of the microfinance program Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) in both villages. In none of these cases were the beneficiaries ST or females (which are the more vulner­able groups in these two villages) and visual assessments of the homes of these beneficiaries indicated that while they were not well-­off, they were also not amongst the poorest. Moreover, five of the eight social wel­fare program recipients inter­viewed in 2000, and all of the recipients inter­viewed eight years later, reported that they were CPI(M) party members.

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   117 In holding power in West Bengal for more than three decades, the CPI(M) has become the dominant polit­ical player and through the pro­cess it has also become corrupted. There was widespread perception among villagers both in 2000 and in 2007/2008 that poorer CPI(M) party members were more likely to get access to pro-­poor pub­lic programs than non-­members who were equally poor. In this case, account­abil­ity prob­lems derive from capture not by a socio­ economic elite, but by a new polit­ical elite. These findings are somewhat at odds with a quantitative study of local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal that finds that account­abil­ity prob­lems stem from polit­ical dis­cre­tion at higher levels of the panchayat sys­tem, concerning inter- rather than intra-­village targeting (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2004a). Several stories shared by informants indicate that the perception that local gov­ern­ment members are less account­able derives not only from their official work as Gram Panchayat representatives, but also the influence that the representatives who are also party members exert in other village happenings. In Kuchli in 2000 one informant told of an incident that he thought exemplified how the CPI(M) works in the village. His brother had a house in the village that he wanted to sell since he had gained employment outside the village. The pro­ spective buyer was a CPI(M) member who offered half the market value, which his brother did not want to accept. However, CPI(M) members, two of whom were Gram Panchayat members, then started blocking other potential buyers and forced his brother into accepting the low offer by telling him that they would not other­wise allow the land trans­fer registration. In the end his brother accepted the low offer for his house because he had no other choice. Another informant who lived alone with her mother in Shahajapur in 2000 told of getting beaten in her home by CPI(M) party members after she pub­licly complained at a village meeting about corruption among the CPI(M) and said that people should vote for the Congress Party. Several other villagers corroborated this incident, as well as two other sim­ilar accounts of polit­ical viol­ence. Numerous villagers recounted incidents of applying for social or anti-­poverty programs but not receiving them, they thought, because they were not CPI(M) party members, since others who were party members received these bene­fits. Similar stories were recounted by key informants in 2007/2008. Other accounts of corruption within the Gram Panchayat in 2007/2008 included the redis­tribu­tion of a gov­ern­ment collection of surplus land through the Gram Panchayat to Scheduled Caste members, but not the poorest among them or the gen­erally poorer Scheduled Tribe members; not getting gov­ern­ment jobs in the village owing to not being a party member; many accounts of distribution of larger quantities of goods under the Public Distribution System (PDS) to influ­en­tial party members; distribution of anti-­poverty micro-­loans through the Gram Panchayat only to party members; pub­lic wells being built by the panchayat with foreign donor money not being located as pre­scribed among the poorest and most neediest res­id­en­tial area, such as that of the Scheduled Tribes, but among the Scheduled Caste neigh­bor­hoods, close to houses of party members.

118   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost These types of accounts were numerous and though not all could be corroborated, there were enough of them to sup­port the view that there was a gen­eral sense of corruption among CPI(M) members who have dominated pol­itics in these villages for over three decades. More specifically with regard to this study, corruption among Gram Panchayat members in Kuchli and Shahajapur was associated with corruption of the CPI(M), since panchayat members in these villages have over­whelm­ingly been CPI(M) members. Overall the sense of preferential treatment given by CPI(M) members to others who are also members of their party in Kuchli and Shahajapur is intrinsically linked with a lower abil­ity to hold Gram Panchayat members accountable. Nevertheless, in these West Bengali villages, and in West Bengal in gen­eral, introducing the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem in the late 1970s helped improve social wel­fare and social indic­ators. This is clear when looking at the land reform and tenancy reform programs known as “Operation Bargha,” both of which were implemented by the local village panchayats and gen­erally bene­fited the poorer and more vulner­able popu­la­tions. Previous studies of Kuchli and Shahajapur also indicate an improvement in socio­economic indic­ators between 1983 and 1990, including daily wage rates for male agricultural laborers, gen­eral lit­er­acy rates, infant mor­tal­ity rates, nutritional status of chil­dren, and the proportion of households below the pov­erty line (Sengupta and Gazdar 1996). Gram Panchayats have con­trib­uted substantially towards the wellbeing of people living in rural West Bengal. Social programs reached the village and by having a local gov­ern­ ment, the gov­ern­ment in gen­eral became more access­ible and more account­able to local people. Yet 30 years of CPI(M)-dominated local gov­ern­ments has led to an increased perception of corruption among Gram Panchayat members. An im­port­ant finding of these villages studies in West Bengal is that the lack of polit­ical com­peti­tion in these villages has led to worsened targeting of social wel­fare programs – a finding that is sim­ilar to a quantitative study which found improved pov­erty alleviation efforts in West Bengali villages that had more contested local elections between 1979 and 1998 (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2004b). The account­abil­ity of gov­ern­ment to its cit­izens, which was one of the main stated reasons behind the implementation of the panchayat sys­tem in West Bengal in the late 1970s, declined between 1990 and 2008. The lack of checks and balances on the dominant polit­ical party in Bengali villages such as Shahajapur and Kuchli has created a situ­ation where local gov­ern­ment representatives, who are also Communist Party members, are increasingly seen as favoring party members and in some cases, putting themselves beyond the reach of law.

Overall perception of local government Despite issues of account­abil­ity, how­ever, most respondents still viewed the Gram Panachayats in a pos­it­ive light overall. The majority of residents of Kuchli and Shahajapur in West Bengal are con­tent with their local gov­ern­ment members and the ser­vices that they have rendered. Functioning local government-­managed

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   119 social programs have instilled gen­eral confidence in the Gram Panchayat sys­tem in these West Bengal villages. Villagers regarded their local gov­ern­ment as providing them with much needed social and anti-­poverty programs despite prob­ lems of Communist Party-­associated corruption. In the post-­73rd Amendment elections, villagers have witnessed greater numbers of women and SC/ST members elected to the village gov­ern­ment, reinforcing their view that GP members were now more access­ible than under the pre-­1993 panchayat sys­tem. Moreover, with the panchayat sys­tem now a national phenomenon, rather than only a West Bengali one, there was a sense of permanence to the local gov­ern­ ment sys­tem. With the sys­tem enshrined in the national consti­tu­tion and nearly two decades of sub­sequent panchayat elections, the residents of Kuchli and Shahajapur view local panchayats as part of their daily village life and institutions that they can depend on when needed. In 2000, 66 out of 80 survey respondents thought that their Gram Panchayat played an active role in implementing social programs in their village while 73 stated that their panchayat played an active role in implementing anti-­poverty programs. Moreover, 48 out of 80 survey respondents thought that their local gov­ern­ment had tried to satisfy what they thought were the most im­port­ant needs within the village, despite prob­lems of corruption. Responses from inter­views and focus group discussions both in 2000 and 2007/2008 confirmed these views, though confidential inter­views with seven key informants in 2007/2008 yielded increasingly crit­ical views of their local governments. Since 1993, gen­eral satis­fac­tion with the performance of the local panchayat is extremely high when compared with the dashed high hopes for Gram Panchayats in Uttar Pradesh and even higher than perceptions of local panchayats in Karnataka. In these West Bengali villages the Gram Panchayat implements and oversees social programs, anti-­poverty programs, and most of the other im­port­ ant eco­nomic or infrastructure needs of the village. Despite 59 out of 80 survey respondents stating that Gram Panchayat members privilege CPI(M) party members in their targeting of beneficiaries of social wel­fare programs, respondents never­the­less thought that they were gen­erally good and tried to do their best to improve the overall wel­fare of the villagers.

Quality of governance Accountabil­ity mat­ters greatly for the quality of governance, but governance is not influenced by account­abil­ity alone. This section begins by addressing the overall issue of local governance and its links with social wel­fare within these two Bengali villages. As in the previous chapter, Kaufmann and Kraay’s definition of governance is used and applied to the local level. Governance is defined as the “traditions and institutions by which authority in a coun­try is exercised” including (1) the pro­cess of selecting, monitoring and replacing gov­ern­ments, (2) the gov­ern­ment’s capa­city to formulate and implement sound pol­icies, and (3) the state’s and cit­izens’ respect for the institutions that govern eco­nomic and social inter­actions among them (Kaufmann et al. 2002). To better understand the

120   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost quality of governance in Kuchli and Shahajapur this section ana­lyzes the issues of voice and account­abil­ity, as well as polit­ical stability in these villages. The second section applies the second part of Kaufmann and Kraay’s definition and builds on the discussion of account­abil­ity above to look at panchayat effect­ iveness and administrative quality. The third section uses the third part of the definition by looking at the rule of law and control of corruption under the Gram Panchayats in Kuchli and Shahajapur. Voice, accountability, and political stability: the changing locus of power Local gov­ern­ment elections in West Bengal since 1978 have been contested on a polit­ical party basis. According to a previous study of these villages (Sengupta 1991) and accounts from survey respondents and focus group members in 2000 as well as 2007/2008, the majority of the Gram Panchayat positions in both villages were filled by CPI(M) members both before and after the 1993 elections. These findings are in line with statewide trends in West Bengal where the CPI(M)-led LFG has won the majority seats in GP gov­ern­ments since the late 1970s. Another unique feature of West Bengal panchayats is that since the first elections in 1978, people from the lower and middle classes of rural soci­ety, such as sharecroppers, agricultural laborers, and poorer peasants, have been elected as Gram Panchayat representatives. Sample surveys conducted after the 1978 elections found that three-­quarters of Gram Panchayat representatives came from households owning less than two acres of land (Ghatak and Ghatak 2002). An ana­lysis of caste background of Gram Panchayat members in Kuchli and Shahajapur prior to the 1993 elections found that a large majority were of SC background (Sunil Sengupta et al. 1991). However, prior to 1993, none of the Gram Panchayat representatives from these two villages were of ST background and there was only one female representative in the Gram Panchayat to which Shahajapur belonged, and none in the Gram Panchayat to which the village of Kuchli belonged. Before the introduction of the 73rd Amendment, these West Bengali Gram Panchayats, like most of the state, were male-­dominated institutions, with women holding less than 2 percent of all Gram Panchayat seats (Ghatak and Ghatak 2002). Male domination of Gram Panchayats changed drastically after 1993. The change in West Bengal’s panchayat law resulted in one-­third of all seats in the Gram Panchayats for Kuchli and Shahajapur being filled by women, and several Gram Panchayat seats being reserved for and filled by ST members, with the seat of pradhan (head of the Gram Panchayat) in Kuchli reserved for a woman. By virtue of these quotas, the voices of people previously less involved in local pol­itics were now at least present in the Gram Panchayat. Moreover, during the 1998, 2003, and 2008 local gov­ern­ment elections were com­petit­ive in the sense that more than one candidate contested three out of four seats for the Gram Panchayats of these two villages, including the position reserved for a female head of the Gram Panchayat. However, the elections were not polit­ically com­petit­ive

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   121 since the four local gov­ern­ments seats for these two villages were largely contested and consistently won by CPI(M) party members until 2008, when two of the contestants and one of the elected representatives was a member of an opposi­tion party. Focus group discussions also highlighted that, unlike other states with less ex­peri­ence with functioning local gov­ern­ments such as Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal has seen active parti­cipa­tion of formerly powerless groups since 1977. Scheduled Castes and agricultural laborers, sharecroppers, small peasants, and artisans, have played active parts in local pol­itics. The 1994 changes to West Bengal’s Panchayat law and the sub­sequent increased number of women and ST members elected to the Gram Panchayats has only heightened this sense of increased voice for people who had his­tor­ically been excluded from local governing of villages. Yet the increase in voices of formerly disenfranch­ised groups through the Gram Panchayats needs to be quali­fied. As docu­mented by several studies of West Bengal, males of SC background who were gen­erally excluded from power before the LFG came to power, have now been part of the local power and gov­ ern­ment structure for several decades and can no longer be seen as a disenfranch­ ised group (Westergaard 1986; Kumar and Ghosh 1996; Lieten 1996a; Ghatak and Ghatak 2002). This point was repeatedly made in focus group meetings in 2000 and in 2007/2008 par­ticu­larly by ST members who still are the poorest in both the villages studied. While the ST popu­la­tion is now repres­ented in their Gram Panchayats, almost all inter­viewees of ST background spoke of their in­abil­ity to be heard at local electorate meetings or of discrimination in getting access to social wel­fare programs. Political power in these villages, which prior to 1977 was held by upper castes and large land-­owning fam­il­ies, shifted in the sub­sequent decades to lower castes and agricultural labor. By the 1990s polit­ical power in these villages was firmly in the hands of male, CPI(M) party members, largely of SC background. Upper caste and larger landowners were conspicuously missing from the local polit­ical life of these villages in 2000. By 2007/2008, how­ever, key informant inter­views provided evid­ence that some larger landowners and upper-­caste members were seeking to retain or regain polit­ical and eco­nomic power by joining the CPI(M) party. The elites in these villages by 2008 were not village elites based on traditional socio­economic cat­ egor­ies of caste or wealth. Instead their power derived from their af­fili­ation with the party that dominated the polit­ical landscape. Another meas­ure of voice under the new sys­tem was people’s perception of whether they were more likely to be heard by the new Gram Panchayat. When asked this question, an over­whelm­ing 73 out of the 80 survey respondents said that they were more likely to be heard in 2000, compared to under the pre-­1993 panchayat sys­tem. And of those 73 who felt that their voice was more likely to be heard under the sys­tem, 66 thought that their increased voice was due to the structure of the panchayat, rather than other factors such as increased lit­er­acy rates or an increased demand for repres­enta­tion. Overall, the newly revised local gov­ern­ment sys­tem un­equi­voc­ally led to an increase in repres­enta­tion and

122   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost perception of increased voice of people less likely to be heard under the pre-­ 1977 local gov­ern­ment sys­tem. Moroever, while the panchayat sys­tem instituted in 1977 brought formerly disenfranch­ised groups and people of SC background in par­ticu­lar into pol­itics and power, the post-­1993 panchayat sys­tem was notable for increasing the repres­enta­tion of women and people of ST backgrounds. Feedback from respondents in these two Bengali villages indicated a gen­eral sense that repres­enta­tion of all village residents had indeed improved since the changes laid out by the 73rd amend­ment were enacted, par­ticu­larly for women. In West Bengal alleged elect­oral fraud was associated with representatives of par­ties rather than with indi­viduals and, like in Karnataka but unlike in Uttar Pradesh, it spanned the caste and class divide. Accounts from qualit­at­ive inter­ views in 2000 and 2008 tell of the par­ties providing gifts and liquor to villagers on the eve of panchayat elections (a practice in which all contesting par­ties purportedly engage), party members rounding up and escorting indi­viduals to the booths, and a few accounts of known CPI(M) party members being in the voting room and being seen with election officials when ballot boxes were taken away for counting. While these indi­vidual accounts could not be verified, they point to a widespread belief of some fraud in the local gov­ern­ment elect­oral pro­cess associated with polit­ical par­ties, the CPI(M) in particular. Yet elect­oral turnout in the 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008 Gram Panchayat elections was extremely high in Kuchli and Shahajapur, with 50 out of 80 survey respondents in both villages in 2000 stating that the 1998 local elections were fair. Of the 20 survey respondents who reported the 1998 elections to be unfair, all of them stated that corruption was related to polit­ical par­ties trying to influence election outcome. Most incidents recounted in 2000 related to fraud by the CPI(M), but reported incidents also included Congress/Trinamul and BJP party members. By 2007/2008 the perception of elect­oral fraud had changed. In inter­ views with key informants all specific incidents of fraud involved CPI(M) members, while those key informants who were CPI(M) members refrained from comment on the issue. The respondents’ overall sense of Gram Panachayat account­abil­ity, how­ever, is not based only on specific incidents of alleged elect­oral fraud, but also on the broader fact that local gov­ern­ment elections regu­larly take place. In contrast to Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, where local gov­ern­ment elections have been irregu­lar, West Bengal has held panchayat elections regu­larly since 1978 and villagers have had a chance to observe the effect­iveness and bene­fits of working local gov­ern­ments. These dif­fer­ences in his­tory and functioning of local gov­ern­ ments are also reflected in the different overall perceptions of whether local gov­ ern­ment members are good and likely to be held account­able. While the vast majority of local gov­ern­ment representatives were CPI(M) members, the occasional win of local gov­ern­ment seats by a member of one of the opposi­tion par­ ties was repeatedly brought up by informants as an illustration of elect­oral com­peti­tion. Regular elections with some change in Gram Panchayat mem­ber­ ship after each election have given the majority of villagers a sense that, despite

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   123 some fraud mostly associated with the CPI(M), local elections are largely fair and that they can vote for other can­did­ates if the local gov­ern­ment’s workings are not to their liking – thereby exercising their greatest tool for holding local representatives accountable. Government effectiveness and administrative burden The abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to improve social wellbeing is largely determined by their effect­iveness in terms of planning and carrying through sound anti-­poverty and social pol­icies. If local panchayats function well their constituents can use them to enable improved access to gov­ern­ment ser­vices. If this happens then the administrative burden that the indi­vidual faces in accessing these ser­vices will have decreased for that indi­vidual, adding to the bene­fits of having a functioning local government. When survey respondents were asked whether they thought that gov­ern­ment was more effect­ive in 2000 compared to the pre-­1993 panchayat sys­tem, 48 out of 80 respondents (60 percent) answered in the affirmative. Of those 48 survey respondents who thought the new panchayat sys­tem was more effect­ive, 34 (71 percent) thought it was due to the exist­ence of their local panchayat. These sentiments were echoed in the focus group meetings during 2000 and again in 2007/2008. For the majority of cit­izens in Kuchli and Shahajapur, having a representative and elected local gov­ern­ment has meant that the central and state gov­ern­ ments are more present in their village. Most social ser­vices and infrastructure programs, par­ticu­larly in education and health, are central or state gov­ern­ment schemes. Those employed in these programs are civil ser­vants receiving a regu­lar gov­ern­ment sal­ary. However, the local panchayats exert some control over these gov­ern­ment em­ployees in order to ensure their effect­iveness in delivering ser­vices. Seeing successfully operating central and state gov­ern­ment programs in the villages, from basic health care ser­vices to the pub­lic distribution sys­tem for subsidized goods, has meant that villagers have a gen­erally favor­able image of the local, state, and central gov­ern­ments and their gen­eral effectiveness. The majority view that gov­ern­ment and its ser­vices are more effect­ive under the newer Gram Panchayat sys­tem in West Bengal is based not only on the supply and delivery of these ser­vices, but also on the ease of accessing these ser­ vices. When survey respondents were asked in 2000 how bur­eau­cratic hurdles to getting paperwork completed (from food ration cards to birth certificates) or to accessing gov­ern­ment ser­vices and bene­fits (from health care to food-­for-work programs) had changed over the past decade, 33 out of 80 respondents (41 percent) thought that such hurdles had decreased, with the rest not being sure either way. Of the 33 who thought there was less red tape, 22 (67 percent) thought that the decrease in bur­eau­cratic hurdles was due to the exist­ence of their Gram Panchayat. These findings were again sup­ported by inter­views with key informants in 2000 and again in 2007/2008. Having a local gov­ern­ment representative in their village, and often in their neigh­bor­hood, meant that villagers could ask the representative for advice and

124   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost help on gov­ern­ment ser­vices. In addition to going directly to a representative, both villages had functioning Gram Panchayat subcommittees which villagers could access for help in areas ranging from education to a farmers’ asso­ci­ation, Informants old enough to remember the 1970s and the pre-­panchayat days recounted how they had to make the journey to gov­ern­ment offices at the district head­quar­ters to get simple gov­ern­ment docu­ments such as birth certificates or ration cards. For people living in Indian villages, par­ticu­larly the less educated and vulner­able groups, such as women and people of lower-­caste background, this was often a hurdle too difficult to overcome, resulting in non-­access to these ser­vices. In the decades since the election of the first Gram Panchayats in 1978, with functioning local gov­ern­ments and their subcommittees, the bur­eau­cratic hurdles faced by the villagers have decreased. In follow-­up qualit­at­ive inter­views conducted in 2000 and 2007/2008 on why some respondents did not think the gov­ern­ment was any more effect­ive than previously, key informants and two focus group discussions in 2007/2008 pointed to corruption by CPI(M) members, par­ticu­larly with regard to access to social ser­vices and phys­ical infrastructure by the Scheduled Tribe members. Those cit­izens whose polit­ical allegiances were not with par­ties of the LFG or who were of either socio­economic­ally mar­ginalized or more affluent backgrounds, reported dif­ficult­ies in accessing ser­vices managed by their local governments. Rule of law and control of corruption Effective and somewhat account­able Gram Panchayats have coexisted with deterioration in the rule of law and stagnation in the fight against corruption. In 2000, although 64 of 80 survey respondents (80 percent) thought that viol­ence had decreased between 1990 and 2000, only 18 (23 percent) thought that rule of law had improved between 1990 and 2000. This seemingly contra­dict­ory pic­ture was further elucidated in several inter­views, focus groups meetings, and in personal conversations with some villagers, again both in 2000 and 2007/2008. According to this feedback, there was some viol­ence in the com­mun­ity during the 1990s, but the incidence of viol­ence was low and not as extreme as the viol­ence that characterized the decade before the Left Front Government came to power. In follow-­up inter­views in 2007/2008, how­ever, informants noted an increase in viol­ence associated with polit­ical events such as elections, a further deterioration of the rule of law, and an increase in corruption in comparison to the 1990s. The village studies point to little change in the gen­eral level of corruption in the 1990s and an increase in corruption since 2000, which many informants associated with members of the CPI(M)-dominated LFG. Many anecdotes were recounted in both 2000 and 2007/2008 of transgressions of the law remaining unpun­ished if the perpetrator was a member of the LFG. Other informants corroborated many of these incidents. Despite functioning and account­able Gram Panchayats, viol­ence, the rule of law, and corruption have become increasingly salient issues in these West Bengali villages.

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   125 When asked in 2000 whether changes in viol­ence, rule of law or corruption were in any way linked to the local Gram Panchayats, only 19 of the 80 survey respondents (24 percent) thought that the panchayat was respons­ible for the increase in corruption while 31 (39 percent) thought that the Gram Panchayats were respons­ible for deterioration in the rule of law. Qualitative inter­views in 2000 and 2008 revealed that informants associated changes in viol­ence, rule of law or corruption more frequently with the local CPI(M) members rather than the local gov­ern­ment, though in most cases they were the same people and many informants did use the terms in­ter­change­ably. In indi­vidual conversations non-­ CPI(M) members pointed out that the main cause behind the decline in the rule of law was the dominant polit­ical party, the CPI(M), but most informants were not willing to provide an answer to this question when anyone other than family members were around. Many eye­wit­ness accounts of CPI(M) party obstructing the rule of law or abiding corruption made it clear that the long reign of power enjoyed by the LFG in West Bengal has created an envir­on­ment where their party members can obstruct the demo­cratic workings of local gov­ern­ments in Kuchli and Shahajapur. Rather than encouraging local gov­ern­ments to work together with police to combat corruption and improve the rule of law, the LFG and its members in these two villages often interfered and in some cases obstructed the workings of demo­cratic gov­ern­ment and the rule of law. When a conflict arose between the inter­ests of the CPI(M) party in the village and the local panchayat or law enforcement, the CPI(M) party prevailed. Moreover, between 2000 and 2008, the prob­lem of corruption, rule of law and viol­ence appeared on the increase. By 2011 it was clear that local gov­ern­ments in these two villages no longer functioned as inde­pend­ent, demo­cratic organ­iza­tions of governance, but as an exten­sion of the LFG (Adhikary 2009).

General quality of governance Perceptions of the overall quality of governance and its links with the local gov­ ern­ment in these two West Bengali villages are mixed – with a gen­eral perception of improved governance during the 1990s and a decrease in governance since the turn of the century. One of the main reasons for slow pro­gress on local governance in the past decade is that the LFG par­ties have coopted the Gram Panchayat structures in Kuchli and Shahajapur. The CPI(M)-led LFG deserves credit for virtually elim­in­ating the sys­tem of patronage and clientelism based on religion, caste, and com­munal inter­ests which existed in West Bengal prior to 1977. The grassroots nature of the CPI(M) party structure (Kohli 1987) and its close linkage with the panchayats, have meant that respondents often used the terms Gram Panchayat and CPI(M) party in­ter­change­ably. It is also this dominance that has affected whose voice is heard within the Gram Panchayat and the Gram Sabha meetings and which members of the panchayat are more likely to be held account­able. It even extends to who is more likely to evade the rule of law in Kuchli and Shahajapur. The sys­tem of patronage of the past has now been replaced with one based along party lines in West Bengal. The polit­ical par­ties

126   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost that have formed the Left Front Government and ruled West Bengal for the past three decades are so entrenched and have dominated the villages for so long, that it is difficult to separate out the local Gram Panchayat’s quality of governance from that of the par­ties in the LFG. Kuchli and Shahajapur’s Gram Panchayats have achieved improvements in social wel­fare over the past decades, but their inde­pend­ence and thus their capa­city to function as impartial bodies of governance, have been compromised by the dominance of the CPI(M) party. Particularly fol­low­ing the 2003 and 2008  panchayat elections with the level of viol­ence and reports of corruption that they entailed, local governance hit a low point in the three-­decade reign of the LFG.

Did social wellbeing change? The main impetus behind the 73rd Amendment and panchayat sys­tem implementation in West Bengal was to apply the notions that self-­government at the village level strengthens demo­cracy, functioning local gov­ern­ments are better able to judge the needs of people in their com­munit­ies, and they are thus better able to decrease local pov­erty and improve social wellbeing. Since West Bengal has often been touted as the role model for decentralization, local demo­cracy and governance-­building, it is par­ticu­larly vital to assess whether social wellbeing did indeed improve in villages such as Kuchli and Shahajapur and if so, whether this can be attributed to functioning Gram Panchayats. General trends in social indic­ators for West Bengal as a whole show improvement from the early 1990s into the twenty-­first century (see in Table 2.3). These improvements were mirrored in the self-­reported changes in wellbeing in both the small-­sample survey of 2000 and qualit­at­ive key informant inter­views in 2007/2008. Furthermore, 32 out of 80 survey respondents (40 percent) inter­ viewed in 2000 and a majority of the key informants inter­viewed in 2000 and again in 2007/2008 thought that the local gov­ern­ments gen­erally con­trib­uted towards improved social wel­fare. However, these overall perceptions mask complicated links between local gov­ern­ments and social wellbeing in these West Bengali villages. Over the course of their exist­ence, Gram Panchayats have much to show in terms of improvement in the lives of the com­munit­ies they repres­ented and served. From land reforms to recording of sharecroppers’ rights and 30 years of implementing the central gov­ern­ment’s social and anti-­poverty programs, these changes could not have been brought about without functioning local gov­ern­ ments on the ground. As many studies of West Bengal since the 1970s have pointed out (Kohli 1987; Mallick 1993; Lieten 1996a), these changes have led to a quantitatively and qualit­at­ively better quality of life for most people in West Bengal. The majority of West Bengalis lead a life that is no longer dominated by the caste-­based patronage sys­tem and the feudal inter­ests that dominated life prior to the reign of the LFG. However, since 1993 West Bengal has been less pro­gressive in empowering local gov­ern­ments with the functions, funding and institutional sup­port to carry

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   127 out their respons­ibil­ities, including those of improving local social well­being. As discussed in Chapter 2 (see Table 2.1), as of 2010 West Bengal had not fully empowered their Gram Panchayats by devolving the funding of all 29 subjects listed in the schedule to the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, while in contrast Karnataka had. Furthermore, while life today is better for most West Bengalis compared to the mid-­1970s, the results from the two village studies indicate that gen­eral improvements in social wellbeing have not bene­fited all socio­economic groups equally. Those groups reporting in 2000 that they had not bene­fited from local government-­managed social wel­fare programs were even more likely to report lack of access to social ser­vices eight years later. Perception of changed wellbeing One way to assess whether people are better off, and whether the improvement in wellbeing is due to the help they have received from their local gov­ern­ment, is to ask them. When 80 villagers in Kuchli and Shahajapur were asked whether they were better off in the year 2000 compared to a decade earl­ier, 54 out of 80 (68 percent) stated that they were better off. Of the 54 who said that their wellbeing had improved over the 1990s, 32 (59 percent) said that it was due to inter­ven­tions from their respective Gram Panchayat. This proportion is high when con­sidering the rel­at­ively small amounts of funding for social programs that were alloc­ated to each village during the 1990s. For example, over the 1990s, less than two dozen people in each of the villages had been the recipient of Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP) loans, which were small government-­subsidized loans to poor fam­il­ies to help them become self-­employed. Similarly, in 1999 the Jawahar Gram Samridhi Youjana (JGSY), which paid a daily wage to below-­the-poverty-­ line (BPL) beneficiaries to work on Gram Sabha-­determined village infrastructure pro­jects, provided less than a dozen people in each of the respective villages with ten or less days of daily wages per person. And between 1995 and 2000 there was no recipient of Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY), the rural housing program, which provides signi­fic­ant sub­sidies for housing for the rural poor. Focus group discussions and inter­views with key informants in 2007/2008 yielded sim­ilar findings of improved social wellbeing but with only a minor­ity of informants attributing improved wellbeing to their local governments. Qualitative discussions were conducted in 2000 and again in 2007/2008 to understand why some informants thought that the Gram Panchayats had con­trib­ uted to their social wellbeing when the actual number of programs and funds disbursed through the programs were not high. These discussions revealed three reasons for the high attribution of improved wel­fare to local gov­ern­ments. First, informants pointed out that since many villagers in Kuchli and Shahajapur used the terms Gram Panchayat and CPI(M) in­ter­change­ably, many had therefore included work done CPI(M)-backed organ­iza­tions such as the farmers’ coop­ erative that provides subsidized seeds to its members. A second reason was that  while the questionnaire conducted in 2000 asked about improvements over  the ten-­year period between 1990 and 2000, people also referred to local

128   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost gov­ern­ment actions prior to 1990, including land reforms and institution of better sharecropping rights. A third reason was that the local gov­ern­ments had indeed helped some residents to improve their social wellbeing during that decade. Follow-­up discussions and visits in 2007/2008 with a total of 15 people in both villages identified as being beneficiaries of anti-­poverty programs since 2000 yielded further insights. Fourteen out of the 15 social wel­fare program beneficiaries were of lower-­caste background. However, only two out of these 14 beneficiaries were of ST background, while all others were of SC background. Furthermore, while none of the recipients was an owner of large tracts of land or had regu­lar non-­agricultural employment, none of the anti-­poverty program beneficiaries was among the most destitute cit­izens of the village. This was confirmed visually by visiting the informants in their homes and seeing that none of the pov­erty program recipients lived in the poorest part of the village and most of them had some assets such as a bicycle. Thus, while the beneficiaries of the social wel­fare programs were not the richest members of the village com­munit­ ies in 2000 or in 2008, they were also not the poorest. Another way of assessing perceptions of changed social wellbeing was to ask whether anti-­poverty and social wel­fare programs were functioning in the villages and what role the Gram Panchayat played in delivering these ser­vices. In 2000 all 80 survey respondents in both villages stated that some social wel­fare programs had been implemented in the village during the late 1990s and 77 out of 80 respondents (96 percent) reported functioning anti-­poverty programs. Interviews, focus-­group discussions and observations in 2008 yielded sim­ilar findings. The vast majority of Kuchli and Shahajapur’s residents felt that the Gram Panchayats were directly involved in the delivery of programs aimed at improving social wellbeing. However, a majority stated that there was corruption in the delivery of anti-­poverty programs in terms of how the beneficiaries were selected and whether the targeted audience received the benefits. One of the most signi­fic­ant findings of the 2007/2008 follow-­up research visit was that of the 15 social wel­fare recipients, every single recipient was a self-­ identified member of the CPI(M) party. Moreover, inter­views in 2008 with three households in each village that were identified as the poorest residents of the village by village informants (a couple of whom were CPI(M) members), found that none of the six poorest household heads was a CPI(M) party member! Moreover, in addition to the prob­lem of in­ad­equate targeting of social wel­fare programs to the most indigent, checks on specific programs found evid­ence that the alloc­ated funding was not being fully disbursed. For example, in an inter­view in 2008 with the Block Development Officer (BDO) respons­ible for releasing de­velopment expenditures to the Gram Panchayats for both villages, she stated that Kuchli village had received funds over the past year for building dugout toilets for poorer residents at the cost of 500 rupees per toilet (Arundhati Bhaumik 2008). Follow-­up at the village level brought to light that out of the 25 toilets built, only ten had been for fam­il­ies below the pov­erty line and only 300 rupees were allotted for the construction of each toilet. When asked, neither of

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   129 the GP members knew what had happened to the remaining 200 rupees or why only ten poorer fam­il­ies had been the beneficiaries of this program. Due to the politicized nature of panchayats in West Bengal and the fact that in both these villages the CPI(M) con­tinued to dominate the Gram Panchayats, party pri­or­ities and party mem­ber­ship determined what types of anti-­poverty programs are distributed, in what amounts, and to whom. Evidence of changed wellbeing State-­level data show that social indic­ators for West Bengal improved throughout the 1980s and 1990s, up to 2010, and other studies of Gram Panchayats in West Bengal have shown the GPs to have been essential in the delivery of social programs and improvement in social wellbeing (Dasgupta 1995; Roy 1995). The findings of this research in Kuchli and Shahajapur were sim­ilar. The previous study of both these villages in 1991 found that social indic­ators in gen­eral, from undernourishment to lit­er­acy rates, improved from 1981 to 1991 (Sengupta 1991). This gen­eral trend con­tinued into the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-­first century. Interviews conducted in 2000 and 2007/2008 with a cross-­section of people, ranging from farm laborers and village health care workers to schoolteachers and rev­enue inspectors in each village (a civil ser­vant in charge of overseeing de­velopment and finances in the respective village), all attested to an improvement in social wellbeing. These inter­views were followed-­up with unannounced visits to the local pri­mary school and visits during the local health workers’ working hours. As in Karnataka but unlike in the village studies of Uttar Pradesh, these visits in Kuchli and Shahajapur found functioning schools and health ser­vices. In gen­eral most residents in these two villages were better off at the beginning of the twenty-­first century than they had been in the early 1990s. However, reported perceptions of changes in wellbeing indicated that while respondents thought that social wellbeing in gen­eral had improved, they also thought that there was some corruption in the alloca­tion of social programs. It is therefore im­port­ant to ana­lyze how polit­ical pref­er­ences in the alloca­tion of social ser­vices might have had an impact on social wel­fare in these villages. Here again it is use­ful to refer back to the previous WIDER study of these two villages. The study conducted during the late 1980s ana­lyzed the effect­iveness and targeting of different anti-­poverty programs in Kuchli and Shahajapur, including the IRDP in par­ticu­lar. It found that during the 1980s the panchayats were actively involved in implementing the IRDP scheme and that the bene­fits “mostly went to the intended beneficiaries” (Sengupta 1991). However, the WIDER study also found that 7.5 percent of those who were not eli­gible for the IRDP loans due to not being poor never­the­less received loans and that these ineli­gible receipts constituted 22 percent of total loan disbursements (Sengupta 1991). In other words, those who were not eli­gible for these loans actu­ally received larger loan amounts. The findings of signi­fic­ant leakage in anti-­poverty programs con­tinued into the twenty-­first century. While this study did not do a sys­tematic review of all

130   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost IRDP loan recipients in these villages, inter­views and follow-­up with people who were identified as IRDP loan recipients in 2000 indicated that the proportion of ineli­gible people receiving IRDP loans during the 1990s was at least as high as during the 1980s. Moreover, as stated above, random follow-­up visits to social wel­fare program recipients in 2008 found that none of the recipients was amongst the poorest in the village. Well into the twenty-­first century there is dis­cre­tion in the alloca­tion of anti-­ poverty funds used by Gram Panchayat members who are also members of the CPI(M) party. In both villages party mem­ber­ship was rewarded through disbursement of anti-­poverty and other social programs to party loyalists. These findings are slightly at odds with the study of West Bengal by Bardhan and Mookherjee, which finds that pro-­poor programs are well targeted toward the poor in gen­eral and that any distortions are due to polit­ical dis­cre­tion used to determine inter-­village alloca­tion of resources rather than to elite capture (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2004b). In contrast, this study found that there was some elite capture of social wel­fare programs, but the definition of elites in these villages no longer refers to the traditional landowning class, but rather to a polit­ ical elite of largely SC and OBC members of the CPI(M) party. The lack of ser­ious com­peti­tion in local gov­ern­ment elections in Kuchli and Shahajapur, as in the rest of West Bengal, has affected the quality of social ser­ vice delivery. While anti-­poverty and social ser­vice delivery programs gen­erally function well, the influence on targeting by Gram Panchayat members who belong to the CPI(M) party has meant that the programs are not as effect­ive as they could have been under more polit­ically com­petit­ive con­ditions. For example, in the village of Shahajapur, the poorest residents are from the Scheduled Tribe cat­egory, who live in a separate part of the village. In this part of the village the soil is less well suited to agri­cul­ture, the houses and courtyards are smaller, with fewer windows, each house has fewer vis­ible assets, and the residents are dressed more poorly. None of the residents here owns enough land to be self-­sufficient and most are agricultural laborers. The pov­erty in this part of the village is evid­ent also in its infrastructure – no pond, pub­lic well, or electricity reaches this part of the village. When asked about this lack of infrastructure, residents agreed that they are not as well off as most other parts of the village. Several recounted in 2000 that in 1999 a German de­velopment agency announced it would fund the building of a pub­lic water well in the village. The funding for this well came to the panchayat in 1999 and its location was supposed to be discussed in the Gram Sabha. But one ST member who had been to all the Gram Sabha meetings noted in 2000 that the location of the well had never been discussed at these meetings and the well was being built in the center of the village, close to the house of an SC Gram Panchayat member who was also a CPI(M) member. Cross-­checking found this account to be true. These and other sim­ilar accounts during 2000 and 2007/2008 showed that the ST popu­la­tion in Shahajapur is still dis­advant­aged compared to the rest of the village popu­la­tion, with higher pov­erty and lower lit­er­acy rates among this popu­ la­tion. Moreover, while many among the ST popu­la­tion had received the title to

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   131 their homestead during the land reforms undertaken by their panchayat during the late 1970s and early 1980s, few had received agricultural land, and none had received enough agricultural land or land that was rich enough to sup­port a livelihood. These findings echo another study on West Bengal, which finds that the alloca­tion of resources for pov­erty alleviation varied greatly between villages and tended to be higher when there was a more equal distribution of land, when the people were more lit­er­ate, when there were fewer SC/ST households in the village, and when local elections were more contested (Bardhan and Mookherjee 2004b). Social wellbeing under the Gram Panchayat sys­tem gen­erally improved in both villages during the 1980s and through the turn of the century, thereby mirroring trends in other rural areas of West Bengal. However, these improvements were not as good as they might have been if the local gov­ern­ment had functioned fully demo­cratically, free from polit­ical capture and the polit­ical pressures of the LFG-­affiliated par­ties. By the twenty-­first century the domination by CPI(M) of the Gram Panchayats serving the villages of Kuchli and Shahajapur has resulted in inefficiencies in targeting of the poor. Despite the 1993/1994 changes to the West Bengal panchayat sys­tem to improve repres­enta­tion and voice of the most dis­advant­aged groups, there were no signi­fic­ant changes in the wel­fare of women and ST attrib­ut­able to local gov­ern­ment efforts. The new village elites – those with access to upper levels of polit­ical power through their mem­ber­ship in the CPI(M) – have been able to solidify their power and social standing in the village due to the lack of polit­ical com­peti­tion and to their control over the distribution of pub­lic bene­fits. Moreover, since these new village elites derive their power and social standing from the very lack of polit­ical com­peti­tion, they have no incentive to sup­port improvements to the sys­tem of demo­cratic local governance, thereby undermining the rooting of local gov­ern­ments in these villages of West Bengal.

The changing political landscape in West Bengal By the early part of the twenty-­first century the polit­ical landscape in West Bengal became increasingly volatile, with negat­ive con­sequences for social indic­ators. After declining winning margins over several elections, the LFG won an apparent landslide victory in the 2003 Gram Panchayat elections. These elections also saw a record 80 percent voter turnout (Chaudhuri 2003) but also high levels of viol­ence. Violence in the 2003 elections included accounts of intimidation and coercion and the killing of dozens of indi­viduals. These panchayat elections were also notable for having 11 percent of all panchayat seats at the three levels of panchayats not being contested (Ghosh 2003). Members of the LFG par­ties won most of these uncontested seats. Moreover, there were allegations that as many as 80 percent of the nomination papers filed by the CPI(M) on the last day for filing nominations were false can­did­ates (Ghosh 2003). Given that the LFG had seen a decrease of 17 percent of the number of local gov­ern­ment seats won between 1993 and 1998 and given that feedback from villagers in

132   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost Kuchli and Shahajapur indicated that in these and other villages the CPI(M) knew that people were increasingly less likely to vote for LFG party members, the large increase in votes for LFG par­ties in the 2003 panchayat elections is suspicious. Editorials on this issue in the wake of the 2003 panchayat election results, including ones by authors known to have polit­ically leftist leanings, questioned the vera­city of these elections and pondered what this depth of fraud heralded for local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal. Changes in the nature of polit­ical com­peti­tion and functioning of Gram Panchayats witnessed over the past decades in both Kuchli and Shahajapur are a microcosm of the changes in local governance and polit­ical stability in West Bengal. Responses from the 80 survey inter­views in 2000 differed from in­forma­ tion collected through qualit­at­ive means in 2007/2008. When asked in 2000 whether viol­ence had increased or decreased since the 1994 institutionalization of local gov­ern­ments in their village up to the year 2000, 64 of 80 survey respondents (80 percent) said that it had decreased. Though only 13 of these 64 respondents (20 percent) attributed the decreased viol­ence to the Gram Panchayats, most, when asked what they thought might have led to the decrease, answered that it was the overall polit­ical stability, including the long tenure of the CPI(M) in West Bengal of the past decades, that had per­meated down to their villages. The increased voice of people and improved delivery of social ser­vices in the villages during the 1990s, combined with a party that had been in power for several decades and had provided con­tinu­ity and order, creating a gen­eral sense of stability in 2000. This sense of stability in 2000 contrasted greatly with West Bengal’s tumultuous his­tory and social and polit­ical in­stability of the 1970s. However, the sense of polit­ical stability changed during the decade up to 2011. In 2000, Jyoti Basu, the charismatic leader of the West Bengal CPI(M) party and Chief Minister of West Bengal since 1977, resigned his post. This created turmoil in party leadership at the same time that it enabled space for greater polit­ical com­peti­tion. Though fellow CPI(M) politician Buddhadeb Bhattacharya quickly took over the reins, this change of leadership occurred at a time when the party was grappling with its ideo­logical response to the eco­nomic lib­ eralization India had embarked upon in the early 1990s. The polit­ical platform of the LFG was keenly debated at the state and sub-­national levels as it struggled with de­cisions on the degree of market-­oriented reforms it was willing to initiate. At the state level, several CPI(M) party leaders were suspended from the party due to their opposi­tion to market-­oriented reforms initiated by Chief Minister Bhattacharya in the middle of the decade. At the same time, the eco­nomic reforms and change in polit­ical leadership at the state level as well as within the CPI(M) reinvigorated the grassroots base of the LFG by providing hope for increased eco­nomic growth and social wel­fare improvements. The 2003 panchayat elections took place in the midst of this identity crisis of the LFG and were accompanied by the highest degree of election-­related viol­ ence seen in West Bengal since the late 1970s. Political space initially narrowed in the wake of these elections. According to local accounts, local poll viol­ence in 2003 was largely associated with CPI(M) party members determined to retain

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   133 their hold on power (Jagdish Chatterjee 2007; Sudipto Bhattacharya 2008). In Kuchli and Shahajapur, several upper-­caste cit­izens who belonged to the polit­ ical opposi­tion in­ter­preted the strong-­arm tactics of the CPI(M) during the 2003 election as leaving them little choice for official polit­ical contestation against the CPI(M). When polit­ical contestation, which for the first time since 1977 might have unseated the LFG, was met with viol­ence in 2003 village residents switched allegiance to the CPI(M) party (Sudipto Bhattacharya 2008; Adhikary 2009), leading to the largest LFG win in panchayat elections since 1988 (see Table 4.3). Public attention to the 2003 election viol­ence and the changing LFG eco­nomic platform spotlighted the turmoil within the CPI(M) and increasing opposi­tion to its changing platform. For example, the LFG de­cision in 2007 to actively court large industries by, for example, forcibly buying up land from farmers in the town of Nandigram and offering special tax concessions in order to attract private capital to set up a chem­ical manufacturing plant, spotlighted the local as well as state-­level CPI(M)’s dis­regard for local demo­cracy and human rights. Opposition par­ties took Nandigram as an oppor­tun­ity to rally and or­gan­ize the farmers who were about to be dispossessed, eventually prevailing. Another well-­publicized attempt by the LFG to offer confiscated land in Singur at a concessional rate to Tata auto­mo­bile manufacturing in 2006 backfired in the face of large-­scale or­gan­ ized demonstration. The fight within the LFG for a new ideo­logical identity and cases such as Nandigram and Singur galvanized the polit­ical opposition. The 2008 panchayat elections were conducted against this polit­ically polarized and volatile background. The par­ties of the LFG lost East Midnapore and South 24-Parganas districts, both centers of opposi­tion to the LFG’s new industrialization pol­icy, in addition to two other districts. Of the 18 districts in West Bengal, the Left Front retained 13 district-­level Zilla Panchayats, and the opposi­ tion, including the Congress and Trinamul Congress, won five. At the block and Gram Panchayat levels, the losses for the Left were even higher. In response to the large local election loss the LFG decided to reevalu­ate its industrial pol­icy and approach to luring large industries to West Bengal. However, it is doubtful that the 2008 local gov­ern­ment election spells the end of the era of LFG-­dominated state pol­itics, even though the par­ties of the LFG won with the lowest margin since 1978 The Trinamul Congress Party increased the number of district-­level local gov­ern­ment seats that it won from 38 in 1998 to 122 in the 2008 election, making it the largest opposi­tion party to gain seats, ahead of the 97 district-­level seats gained by the Congress Party (which also tripled its repres­enta­tion compared to the 1998 elections), and well ahead of the third-­largest opposi­tion party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which won two seats at the same local gov­ern­ment level (Government of West Bengal 2011). The AITC and the Congress Party made large gains during the 2008 elections, par­ticu­larly at the village level, yet at the district level the LFG par­ties retained almost 70 percent of local gov­ern­ment seats (Chattopadhyay 2008). Whether the Trinamul Congress and the Congress Party will con­tinue to wrest votes away from the par­ties of the LFG over the longer term, how­ever, will depend on their abil­ity to build a party network down from the state level to the

134   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost villages and Gram Panchayats. While the Congress Party has been the traditional opposi­tion party in West Bengal, the Trinamul Congress was able to ascend rapidly during the 2008 panchayat elections by effect­ively capitalizing on the pop­ular discon­tent sur­round­ing the Nandigram and Singur cases. However, unlike the Congress Party, which has a grassroots polit­ical structure down to the village levels dating back to the freedom movement, and unlike the CPI(M) and other par­ties of the LFG, which in many villages of West Bengal are viewed as syn­onym­ous with local gov­ern­ment structures, the AITC by 2011 still lacked the grassroots pres­ence and network needed for longer-­term elect­oral gains. A key lesson from the three decades of LFG rule in the villages of West Bengal is that a strong party pres­ence at the grassroots, along with vis­ible results such as the delivery of social ser­vices and land reform, mat­ters for a party’s elect­oral gains, from the village to the state level. While the 2008 elect­oral gains at the panchayat level for opposi­tion par­ties in West Bengal do not yet point to the demise of the LFG, West Bengal pol­itics by 2011 was increasingly characterized by polit­ical turmoil. This is also evid­ent by the growth of the Maoist guerilla movement in the state. That the ranks of the growing Maoist movement were largely filled with the poor and ST in par­ticu­lar is evid­ent from their high pres­ence in West Bengal’s tribal and heavily forested areas of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts. Some areas of these districts also have extraordinarily high pov­erty rates – in West Midnapore’s Jamboni block for example over 90 percent of the popu­la­tion live below the official pov­erty line (Ghosh 1998). Moreover, the West Bengali Maoists have repeatedly stated that they represent the rights of landless laborers and tribal com­munit­ies. Researchers of this movement conclude that the grievances of the Maoists in Birbhum District and other parts of West Bengal center on their mar­ ginalized social and eco­nomic status, including lack of adequate access to social programs and the fact that they were allotted unfertile lands during land reforms (Sudipto Bhattacharya 2008). Despite the increasingly politicized nature of local gov­ern­ment pol­itics, the overall ana­lysis of the revamped local gov­ern­ment institutions in Kuchli and Shahajapur by 2011 is a mixed yet pos­it­ive one. According to the respondents, the local gov­ern­ments have gen­erally helped improve the lives of most cit­izens and this in turn has brought some prosperity and stability compared to the pre-­ 1978 period. Yet the pos­it­ive view of the CPI(M)-dominated Gram Panchayats was in flux after the 2008 local gov­ern­ment elections. Villagers are now more aware of their rights, from their right to vote with a secret ballot for a person of their choosing to the right to have access to locally delivered central gov­ern­ment ser­vices. The increased aware­ness of rights is leading to an increased insistence on those rights, even if it leads to increased viol­ence and polit­ical instability.

Conclusion: the cost of long-­term domination Has the pres­ence of Gram Panchayats in these West Bengali villages mat­tered for the social wellbeing of their residents? Or would the residents of Kuchli and

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   135 Shahajapur be just as well off if there had not been any functioning local gov­ern­ ments over the past decades or if no changes to the panchayat sys­tem had been made in the wake of the 73rd amendment? Analyzing case studies in West Bengal is crucial to understanding the dif­fer­ ence that Gram Panchayats make in improving social wellbeing in rural India. It is the only state that had functioning panchayats before the passage of the 73rd amend­ment and is im­port­ant to understanding whether the quotas for women and SC/ST groups that were introduced after the amend­ment can make a longer-­term dif­fer­ence in further improving social welfare. This research suggests four findings. First, the Gram Panchayats have provided a forum which cuts across social cleavages and since 1993 also across gender divides, thereby decreasing these cleavages and making inter­actions with local gov­ern­ment more demo­cratic. However, since panchayat members in West Bengal cam­paign and are elected based on party mem­ber­ship, the cleavages in these villages are now along party lines. The polit­ical as well as socio­economic polarization between party and nonparty members is high and signi­fic­antly higher than in the villages studied in Karnataka. Second, having functioning local gov­ern­ments in these villages for nearly three decades has resulted in a greater aware­ness of rights and increased willingness to act to ensure these rights. Citizens in these villages reported a high aware­ness of panchayat functioning and peti­tioning of local gov­ern­ments, even higher than in the study villages in Karnataka. Third, greater politicization and growing aware­ness of rights together with functioning local gov­ern­ments have helped improve social wellbeing between 1993 and 2010. And fourth, the domination of local gov­ern­ments by one party has decreased demo­cratic efficiency of these Gram Panchayats and worsened the targeting and impact of programs aimed at improving social wellbeing. West Bengal in the 1960s and 1970s was a state polarized along social cleavages. With the election of the CPI(M)-led LFG in 1977 and each sub­sequent election, the social cleavages have decreased. The long tenure in West Bengal of the CPI(M), a party founded on a class-­based ideo­logy, has helped reduce the social space between the landowners and the sharecroppers, the higher and lower castes, between the poorer and richer, by working through local gov­ern­ments to implement pro-­poor reforms (par­ticu­larly land reform) and improve social ser­ vice delivery. Functioning Gram Panchayats and the twice-­yearly meetings of the village electorate through the Gram Sabha (when they do take place) have meant that people who would not previously have interacted, now have to work together to run the local gov­ern­ments. Moreover, since 1993 the increased pres­ ence of women and ST groups in local gov­ern­ments has further enhanced the demo­cratic repres­enta­tion of disenfranch­ised groups, and to a lesser extent access to social ser­vices. Studies of increased female and SC/ST repres­enta­tion in local gov­ern­ments (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004), as well as feedback from respondents to this research, indicate that increased repres­enta­tion of these groups in the Gram Panchayats has improved social wellbeing in gen­eral. Thus Gram Panchayats in West Bengal have helped local com­munit­ies to overcome

136   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost social cleavages, increase social mobil­iza­tion, and thereby improve social wellbeing. The domination of pol­itics by the CPI(M), how­ever, has come at a cost. Since Gram Panchayat members in West Bengal are elected based on polit­ical par­ties, social cleavages have been replaced with polit­ical cleavages. By the turn of the century, the CPI(M)-dominated Left Front Government faced little com­peti­tion and con­tinued to dominate most village gov­ern­ments in West Bengal. This domination led to allegations of corruption, election fraud, and a gen­eral sense that those who are LFG-­affiliated party members are above the law and not subject to demo­cratic com­peti­tion. After experiencing the smallest margin of elect­oral victory since West Bengal’s local gov­ern­ment election of 1978, an increased spotlight on charges of corruption within the LFG, a more or­gan­ized polit­ical opposi­tion, and a reinvigorated Maoist guerilla movement were challenging the Left Front on its own ideo­logical turf. This might have increased polit­ical com­ peti­tion at the panchayat level. However, despite these challenges, by the end of 2011 the LFG still controlled a majority of Gram Panchayats, though their lead was no longer as commanding as in the past. One of the key con­tri­bu­tions of 30 years of functioning local gov­ern­ments has been to increase local cit­izens’ aware­ness of their rights. As those who were formerly disenfranch­ised started to parti­cip­ate in local gov­ern­ments and become more lit­er­ate, their aware­ness of their rights – for example, to access social ser­ vices or receive the official daily wage for laborers – has also increased. This growing aware­ness is evid­ent not only in the increased percentage of laborers receiving the official min­imum daily rate (Sunil Sengupta et al. 1991), but also in the increased willingness to act in order to demand one’s rights, the incidence of col­lect­ive actions, the di­min­ished elect­oral majorities of the LFG, and the growth of the Maoist movement. When Gram Panchayats were first elected in 1978, they were given the respons­ib­ility of carrying out land reform and sharecropper registration by the newly elected LFG. Over the sub­sequent decades, additional respons­ibil­ities for implementing social programs were given to the panchayats. Local panchayats who are peri­od­ic­ally elected and who implement social wel­fare programs, together with the growing aware­ness of rights and demands of cit­izens, have helped root demo­cracy in West Bengali villages and changed people’s lives by improving social wellbeing. Many of the improvements in wel­fare are directly attrib­ut­able to local gov­ern­ments in the respective villages. The Gram Panchayats carried out land reforms, which re­gis­tered the homesteads of many landless people and re­gis­tered tenancy rights. They implemented central government-­ funded anti-­poverty programs in the villages. After the 73rd Amendment they have increasingly been charged with forming subgroups to oversee the implementation of social sector programs, from delivering pri­mary education and adult-­literacy ser­vices to building local infrastructure. Without local gov­ern­ ments respons­ible for each village and without local gov­ern­ment representatives who were family, neigh­bors, and fellow village residents, there would not have been a “face” that villagers could associate with the State. When state programs

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   137 did or did not deliver, residents knew who was to praise or blame. Having a local face to associate with the State has meant that local residents have been more likely to hold local gov­ern­ments account­able and in turn the local gov­ern­ments, unlike in Uttar Pradesh, have been more likely to deliver the goods and ser­vices aimed at improving social welfare. Overall, having had functioning local gov­ern­ments in Kuchli and Shahajapur has made a dif­fer­ence in people’s lives, improving their social wel­fare directly through implementation of anti-­poverty programs, and indirectly through decreasing the socio­economic cleavages between people of different religions, caste, and gender, thereby, increasing people’s sense of their self-­worth. But there is a caveat to the pos­it­ive relationship between functioning local gov­ern­ ments in West Bengal and improving social wel­fare. The domination of the Gram Panchayats in most of West Bengal by CPI(M) and other LFG associated par­ties initially had a large pos­it­ive impact on fighting pov­erty, as pointed out by Kohli and Lieten (Kohli 1987; Lieten 1996a). However, the lack of com­peti­tion in CPI(M)-dominated Gram Panchayat elections over the past three decades has decreased the reformist capacities of local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal, including the targeting of anti-­poverty programs. Furthermore, domination of the polit­ ical landscape by LFG-­affiliated par­ties has by 2011 nurtured a new village elite that has little incentive to nurture demo­cratic panchayat institutions, thereby leading to a weakening of local demo­cracy’s roots. Despite an engaged and active civil soci­ety, the lack of com­petit­ive local gov­ern­ments and new village elites whose base of polit­ical power is contingent on their undemo­cratic control of Gram Panchayats, under­mine local demo­cracy in West Bengal, in par­ticu­lar preventing the targeting of social ser­vices to the most indigent. Active CPI(M) members are gen­erally not the poorest in both villages, but rather, are now the polit­ical elite in both villages – an elite that has captured many of the social wel­fare programs and resources meant for the indigent popu­ la­tion. As the follow-­up with past recipients of some social wel­fare programs alloc­ated through the GP in 2000 and 2008 indicated, most recipients of social wel­fare programs in recent years were not the poorest, but CPI(M) members who had received social bene­fits based on their party affiliation. Corruption, leakages, and a gen­eral loss of zeal in carrying out land reforms and in targeting anti-­poverty programs to the most vulner­able popu­la­tions in these West Bengali villages, have under­mined the very premise by which the LFG first rose to power in the 1970s. Low turnout rates at Gram Sabha meetings attest to the increasing sense among villagers in Kuchli and Shahajapur that their opinions mat­ter less than those of CPI(M) party leaders and GP members, who are usually the same people. The anti-­poverty successes of CPI(M)-led local gov­ern­ments during the 1980s, the very reason that Gram Panchayat members of the CPI(M) have been con­tinu­ously reelected over the past decades, has led local gov­ern­ments to lose their zeal in carrying out these programs thereby decreasing their impact on improving social wel­fare. West Bengal is the middling case in this research because the lack of polit­ical com­peti­tion, the accom­panying strong social cleavages between party members and those who are not CPI(M) party

138   West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost Table 4.4 West Bengal: results of selected questions from sample survey in each village, 2000, numbers responding positively (percentages in parentheses)

Voted in last national elections Thought last national elections were fair Voted in last GP elections Thought last GP elections were fair Campaigned for the election of a GP member Knew the name of GP representative(s) Have participated in a meeting of the village electorate There are working social welfare programs in the village GP is instrumental in delivering these social services There are working anti-poverty programs in village GP is instrumental in delivering these anti-poverty programs GP been able to satisfy the most important needs in the village If two poor people applied for an anti-poverty scheme to the GP and one was a CPI(M) member and the other not, and the panchayat could only give the scheme to one person, the GP would give it to the CPI(M) member (additional question) More voice under new GP system Less violence in 2000 compared to 1990 Rule of law has improved between 1990 and 2000 Government has become more effective Administrative burden has decreased Accountability has improved Corruption decreased over past 10 years (comparing 2000 to 1990) Were better off in 2000 compared to 1990 Of those who were better off, those who said they were better off due to the GP There are associations (bridging religion and caste) in this village Have participated in associations in last five years Have had contact with their GP member Have contacted their GP representative for help in the last five years

Kuchli (n = 41)

Shahajapur (n = 39)

Total (n = 80)

40 25 38 26 8 33 14

38 26 39 24 8 32 12

78 (97%) 51 (64%) 77 (96%) 50 (62%) 16 (20%) 65 (81%) 26 (33%)

41

39

80 (100%)

31

35

66 (82%)

40 37

37 36

77 (96%) 73 (91%)

24

24

48 (60%)

32

27

59 (74%)

37 31 9 25 17 8 14

36 33 9 23 16 8 14

73 (91%) 64 (80%) 18 (23%) 48 (60%) 33 (41%) 16 (20%) 28 (35%)

26 18

28 14

54 (68%) 32(40%)

41

39

80 (100%)

21 20 23

17 18 20

38 (48%) 38 (48%) 43 (54%)

members, and elite capture of socio­economic bene­fits intended for the indigent, have offset the effects of a socially aware and mobilized popu­la­tion, diminising local gov­ern­ment efficacy in delivering pub­lic programs intended to improve the wellbeing of the poorest. Promoting greater resource alloca­tion to Gram Panchayats or greater manpower to implement panchayat programs, as ad­voc­ated by a

West Bengal – continuity and domination at a cost   139 conference report devoted to the lessons of decentralization in West Bengal (Ghosh 2008) therefore misunderstands the causal underpinnings of the panchayats’ middling performance. The inefficiency of West Bengal’s panchayats is not due to lack of resources, but rather to the lack of polit­ical com­peti­tion and the resulting elite capture of social programs. Channeling additional resources to Gram Panchayats under the current structural con­ditions is therefore unlikely to yield better results in terms of efficiency and improvements in social wellbeing. These village studies in West Bengal indicate that there is not a straight­ forward pos­it­ive correlation between decentralized local gov­ern­ment and improving social wel­fare. Functioning local gov­ern­ments actively implementing social wel­fare programs are a neces­sary, but not sufficient, con­dition for success in re­du­cing pov­erty and improving social wellbeing. The extent to which local gov­ern­ments are demo­cratic and account­able mat­ters greatly. The impact of decentralized gov­ern­ments on social wellbeing depends on the nature of local governance and how well people are able to actively parti­cip­ate and demand their social rights. Periodic local gov­ern­ment elections, diverse socio­economic repres­enta­tion and local gov­ern­ment implementation of social wel­fare programs, are not sufficient in themselves to guarantee account­able local gov­ern­ments that target the poorest. In West Bengal the majority of local gov­ern­ments have been dominated by LFG-­affiliated par­ties for over three decades. This has led to local gov­ern­ments that are not fully polit­ically representative of and thus less account­ able to their constituents, thereby weakening the efficacy of Gram Panchayats in improving social wellbeing.

5 Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power and local governments

Since 1950, a consti­tu­tional right to education and decades of central gov­ern­ ment funding for pri­mary education has meant that the village of Palanpur today has a cement, two-­room pri­mary school; the building has a recently added out­ house and three government-­employed, full-­time teachers for the nearly 140 enrolled students. On those rare days when the school is in session and at least one of the teachers shows up to teach all chil­dren grades one through five, at most a dozen chil­dren are present, sitting down on the verandah, without a black­ board, books, or any other type of school supplies often whiling the time away while the teacher attends to “other duties.” Parents, who long ago gave up pushing their kids to go to a school that is rarely in session, never­the­less keep their chil­dren enrolled in the school in the hope that they might have access to the free “midday meals.” The Integrated Child Development Program (ICDS), which among other respons­ibil­ities, is supposed to provide pre- and post-­natal care to pregnant women and infants through the local Anganwadi (village health worker), has not been heard of by most women inter­viewed in Palanpur. In addition, the absence of access to national health programs such as the tuberculosis (TB) program, which is supposed to provide a full treatment course at no charge, or the anti-­ malaria program, which is supposed to distribute heavily subsidized insecticide-­ impregnated bednets, has resulted in at least six confirmed cases of tuberculosis in 2008 in Palanpur and dozens of cases of malaria annually. A nine-­year old boy, Viresh, suffers from TB. His parents barely earn enough to feed their small family of four, let alone buy the expensive TB medication that their child requires. Life would be easier if they would receive their monthly allotment of pub­licly distributed goods, thereby freeing up money to cover other basic needs. Viresh is enrolled in the local pri­mary school, but does not know how to read or write because the main teacher seldom shows up and even when he is there, he rarely teaches. Because he is not able to regu­larly get the medication to cure his TB, his small body is not strong enough to help con­trib­ute to the family earnings. Viresh is a boy – his chances of improved wel­fare are much better than that of most girls his age. Viresh’s mother is atypical because she is lit­er­ate and

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   141 understands what the officer dis­trib­uting pub­lic goods stamps in her booklet when rations are distributed. What can she do to complain about the total ineffect­iveness of anti-­poverty programs in Palanpur? From whom can she demand the health care to cure her son? To whom could she go and who would listen to her? (Notes from field research in Palanpur 2000) Viresh died in 2005 of suspected TB. He was 14 years old and could neither read or write. Nor was he able to demand access to the free gov­ern­ment health care that might have saved his life. When Viresh’s mother asked the local gov­ern­ment representatives for help, they did not respond. (Notes from field research in Palanpur 2008) Of the three case studies in this book, the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) represents the low-­functioning case. Unlike both Karnataka and West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh had no his­tory of demo­cratically functioning local gov­ ern­ments prior to the passage of the 73rd Amendment. Moreover, despite large socio­economic potential, social indic­ators before and after mandatory decentrali­ zation remain well below the Indian average (see Table 2.3). The in­abil­ity to effect­ively deliver pub­lic social ser­vices in Uttar Pradesh, ranging from health care to anti-­poverty programs, is due to virtually defunct local gov­ern­ments in many parts of the state. Local gov­ern­ments are captured by old and new local elites, while the lack of a mobilized civil soci­ety in the pres­ence of polit­ical par­ ties that appeal to and reinforce stark social cleavages, hamper spor­adic local efforts at increasing Gram Panchayat (GP) governance and account­abil­ity. In this infertile soil for demo­cratic local gov­ern­ment structures, Gram Panchayats do not function as envisioned by the Indian consti­tu­tion and do not help deliver social ser­vices that would improve the social wellbeing of their constituents. As seen in the villages studied, Uttar Pradesh’s decentralized governance structures do not select the poorest as beneficiaries of anti-­poverty programs, nor do they effect­ively deliver social wel­fare programs to the targeted beneficiaries – both key aspects of local gov­ern­ments’ abil­ity to influence social wellbeing. In 2011, the situ­ation in UP remains dire, with little com­mit­ment by the state gov­ern­ment to decentralization and social change. The in­nova­tions to the pan­ chayat sys­tem that were implemented by the state were only those that were mandated by the federal law. The panchayat sys­tem in UP con­tinues to delegate respons­ibil­ities to the panchayat, without the neces­sary polit­ical and legal means nor the fin­an­cial wherewithal to enable real social improvements. The gov­ern­ ment of UP had no prior his­tory of effect­ive decentralization prior to 1993, nor a state-­level com­mit­ment to social improvement. Indeed, social indic­ators are only slowly improving. Without a functioning local gov­ern­ment sys­tem, social well­ being in Uttar Pradesh is likely to fall further behind states with high-­functioning local governance like Karnataka, thereby also exacerbating in­equal­ity. However, despite this dismal situ­ation, there are some in­dica­tions that having directly elected local representatives, even if they are corrupt and unaccount­able, is

142   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power helping increase aware­ness of rights – the first step towards demanding rights and access to gov­ern­ment programs and improving social conditions.

Background Uttar Pradesh, like the other two case study states of West Bengal and Karna­ taka, is a large Indian state. Beyond this cat­egor­ization, how­ever, there are few simil­ar­ities. Even after the northern part of the state separated to form the new state of Uttaranchal in 2001, Uttar Pradesh was still the most populous Indian state with over 166 million inhabitants (UP Government 2001). Its size and popu­la­tion have given it the distinction of being the most populous subnational division in the world. UP’s popu­la­tion is larger than that of many of India’s neigh­bors, including Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Uttar Pradesh is an im­port­ant case study because it is an enigma to theories of socio­economic de­velopment. At the time of inde­pend­ence, and indeed into the 1970s, UP was thought to have the potential to lead India in social and eco­nomic de­velopment. Much of the state lies in the fertile Indo-­Gangetic Plain and has nat­urally high soil fertility that allows for triple-­cropping in many parts of the state, en­ab­ling UP to be one of the leading states in India’s Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. New tech­no­logy and increased irrigation have translated into higher grain yields per hec­tare than in most of the other Indian states; this region is part of India’s breadbasket. Despite these ad­vant­ages, the state of UP has remained one of India’s most backward areas in terms of social indic­ators. By 1993 when the 73rd Amend­ ment was enacted, social and eco­nomic indic­ators in UP were well behind West Bengal and Karnataka, as well as most other Indian states. The proportion of people living below the pov­erty line in rural UP in the early 1990s was 42 percent – signi­fic­antly higher than the Indian average of 37 percent. Moreover, over the past decades, UP’s pov­erty rates have shown only slow improvements. In 2005 nearly a third of UP’s popu­la­tion was still living below the pov­erty line, only half the popu­la­tion was lit­er­ate, and there were still under 900 females per 1,000 males (Bhandari and Kale 2007b) – which put Uttar Pradesh behind Kar­ nataka and West Bengal, as well as the national average, in terms of social indic­ ators (see Table 2.3). Uttar Pradesh contradicts the conventional wisdom that eco­nomic, and par­ticu­larly agricultural, growth should translate into greatly improving social indic­ators. Advances in agri­cul­ture, the mainstay occupation and income source in rural UP, have not translated into improved social wellbe­ ing, raising the question “why not?” This case study of Uttar Pradesh investigates what happens when decentrali­ zation of administrative and polit­ical powers down to the village level is man­ dated in a state that, despite eco­nomic potential, has been unable to show commensurate improvements in social and pov­erty indic­ators. It is the test case for staunch sup­porters of decentralization who argue that having local gov­ern­ ments is likely to produce better socio­economic results in any socio­economic con­text. In contrast to the findings on West Bengal and Karnataka, constituting

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   143 village-­level local gov­ern­ments seems to have made little dif­fer­ence to the indic­ ators of social wellbeing. Nearly two decades after the implementation of local gov­ern­ments in the wake of the 73rd Amendment, pov­erty rates and social indic­ ators in UP remained among the worst of Indian states, with the gap between UP and Karnataka’s social indic­ators growing by 2011.

Socioeconomic and political context Neglect of UP’s polit­ical, eco­nomic, and social nexus at the local level in the liter­at­ure is glaring because, polit­ically, Uttar Pradesh has been an im­port­ant state for national pol­itics – more so than either West Bengal or Karnataka. Several Indian prime min­is­ters started their careers in this state. Until 1977 all three prime min­is­ters of India came from UP and of the 14 prime min­is­ters to date, eight have come from UP. Of the 540 members of the Indian par­lia­ment, 85 come from UP, making it the largest group of state representatives in the par­ lia­ment. Trying to understand the linkages between local gov­ern­ments and indic­ ators of social wellbeing in such a large and im­port­ant state is im­port­ant in its own right as well as for the impact it has on India. At the same time, any study aiming to gen­eralize about an area this size faces many dif­ficult­ies. Uttar Pradesh is not only a large and populous state, its average indic­ators mask great diversity from the gen­erally more prosperous western part to the less well-­off eastern part. Different castes dominate different parts of the state, while the state’s sizable Muslim popu­la­tion is concentrated in the western region. Western Uttar Pradesh is also agriculturally more prosper­ ous, more industrialized and is more urbanized than the eastern part of the state. The eastern section of the state is characterized by lower agricultural growth and a lower level of industrial activity. However, it is im­port­ant to bear in mind that all parts of the state, as with West Bengal and Karnataka, have had the same polit­ical his­tory over the past half-­century and all districts are gov­erned by the same administrative structure, covered by the same pub­lic programs. Moreover, while the villages ana­lyzed in this study are located in the more affluent western part of the state, social indic­ ators in this area are com­par­able to state averages. Given some gen­eral baseline indic­ators, it is therefore pos­sible to understand and make gen­eralizations about the pro­cesses through which local gov­ern­ments interact (or fail to interact) with their respective popu­la­tions in order to change social welfare. It is im­port­ant to understand the larger statewide polit­ical con­text in which local gov­ern­ments in UP function. From inde­pend­ence through the late 1960s UP pol­itics was dominated by the Congress Party and the socio­economic elite: the upper castes and Ashraf Muslims. The Brahmins, in par­ticu­lar, dominated the state’s polit­ical landscape, and by implication also Indian pol­itics, into the early 1990s. The formation of the Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) in 1967 and the short-­lived Janata Party gov­ern­ment of 1977 signified the entrance of rich and middle-­class peasants as a new contending force in UP pol­itics. The refurbish­ ment of the Janata Party in 1990 as the Janata Dal and the swearing in of

144   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh’s first Dalit (scheduled caste) chief min­is­ter and head of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a party standing largely for the rights of sched­ uled castes (SC), in April of 1995 further changed the polit­ical landscape (Pai 2002). Increasingly greater numbers of SCs and other backward castes (OBCs) entered the center-­stage of UP pol­itics and polit­ical leadership. The expectations built up by the ‘garibi hatao’ (remove pov­erty) cam­paign of the Congress Party, the social improvement slogans of the Janata Dal, and the polit­ical entrance of par­ties claiming to represent the inter­ests of the lower castes led to increased mobil­iza­tion around questions of identity and empowerment (Hasan 1996). By the 1990s, new identity-­based par­ties were capturing votes of distinct castes and Muslims, leading to a more de­veloped form of cleavage pol­itics in UP than in any other state (Heath and Yadav 2002). The traditional dominance of the Congress Party and the new national party, the BJP, was by the 1990s, being replaced with the BSP. In addition, the Samajwadi Party (SP; lit­er­ally Socialist Party), a state-­based rather than national party whose main base of sup­port lies with the OBCs, also made elect­oral gains in Uttar Pradesh. This combination of increased mobil­iza­tion around religious and caste identity and identity-­based par­ties making elect­oral gains, together with constantly shifting alli­ances between the main polit­ical par­ties, has led to increased volatility in UP pol­itics since the late 1980s. While UP pol­itics at the turn to the twenty-­first century were characterized by identity-­based pol­itics and polit­ical par­ties that appealed directly to the numeri­ cally large lower castes, social issues con­tinued to receive scarce attention and resources. Successive gov­ern­ments did not focus on pov­erty alleviation, in­equal­ ity, or empowerment of the poor. Only in the past decade has the state gov­ern­ ment increased funding to the social sectors. Taken together, the state’s his­tory of not actively pursuing pro-­poor pol­icies and the pres­ence of strong caste and class cleavages since the 1970s (Kohli 1987; Lerche 1999) have resulted in low social mobility in an envir­on­ment of slowly growing aware­ness and slowly rising expectations. In addition to a soci­ety divided along caste lines and strong cleavage pol­itics, failure of the Uttar Pradesh state gov­ern­ment to actively pursue land reforms and the low pri­or­ity accorded to improving the wel­fare of the rural poor in what is a largely rural, agricultural state has con­trib­uted to the failure to produce pro-­poor change (Kohli 1987). The dominance of con­ser­vat­ive social structures in the state has also inhibited inter-­caste and class alli­ances aimed at improving social wellbeing at both the national and local levels. This was the case in the 1980s, before the implementation of the nation-­wide decentralized sys­tem, and it was still the case well into the twenty-­first century. Mandating the elections of local gov­ern­ments in this statewide and local envir­on­ment was unlikely to achieve the desired results of improved social indic­ators at the local level. This research finds that the pres­ence of a new local gov­ern­ment structure with increased repres­enta­tion of women and SC/ST is slowly leading to increased aware­ness of rights and questioning of engrained social cleavages. However, in an envir­on­ ment where state pol­itics and polit­ical mobil­iza­tion still revolve around religious

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   145 and caste-­based pol­itics, local gov­ern­ments are unable to supersede estab­lished social hierarchies and patronage networks in the villages of UP. In this polit­ical envir­on­ment, newly emerging and traditional local elites stymie the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to help improve pov­erty rates and social indicators.

1994 amended acts in UP in response to the 73rd Amendment Before the introduction of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act in 1993, there were local gov­ern­ments in Uttar Pradesh, but they were largely in name only and elections to the Gram Panchayat were spor­adic in the 47 years between the initial Panchayat Raj Act of 1947 and its amend­ment in UP in 1994. More­ over, despite a Gram Panchayat structure which on paper had all the ingredients to deliver the fruits of village demo­cracy and social de­velopment, panchayats formed in the wake of the 1947 Act failed to deliver. Instead, local power-­ holders and caste elites occupied panchayat positions and acted as the local contact persons for the gov­ern­ment. By the early 1990s, demo­cratically elected and demo­cratically functioning Gram Panchayats in the study villages of Palan­ pur and Pipli, as in most of Uttar Pradesh, were rare. Panchayats were de facto understood to mean an informal gath­er­ing of village elders, usually headed by a person recog­nized as the “pradhan” (headman), convened for the purpose of resolving a specific village dispute.1 These village elders were the traditional landowning upper castes with their estab­lished patronage networks, which oper­ ated in an envir­on­ment of deep social cleavages amongst people of different caste, religious, gender and ethnic backgrounds. It is in this envir­on­ment of a largely pat­ri­archal soci­ety with deep social cleavages and firmly rooted patronage structures that Uttar Pradesh changed its  laws to be in congruence with the 73rd Amendment. Rather than enacting new local gov­ern­ment legis­la­tion as in Karnataka, the Government of Uttar  Pradesh chose to amend the two existing acts on local gov­ern­ments, the United Provinces Panchayat Raj Act of 1947 and the Uttar Pradesh Kshetra Pan­ chayat and Zilla Panchayat Adhiniyam of 1961. The amended acts, which con­ tinued the three-­tiered local gov­ern­ment sys­tem that UP had until then had on paper, came into force in April 1994. Innovations to the old local gov­ern­ment sys­tem were the mandating of one-­third of local gov­ern­ment seats in all three tiers for women, and seats reserved for other backward castes (OBC) and the SC/ST popu­la­tion according to their proportion in the popu­la­tion of the district (with a limit of 27 percent for the OBC). This decentralized sys­tem has a Zilla Panchayat at the district level, a Kshetra Panchayat at the block level, and a Gram Panchayat at the village level. A Gram Panchayat is formed for each village or group of villages with a popu­la­tion of about 1,000 people, with the stipulation that no rev­enue village is to be divided for the purposes of forming a Gram Panchayat. Since the panchayat amend­ment acts in UP provided for a wide range of ac­tiv­ities that were to be devolved to the local gov­ern­ments, the state appointed a commission to suggest changes required at the state level to plan and

146   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power implement de­velopment programs in conjunction with the local gov­ern­ments. This commission suggested sharing functions between 32 de­part­ments of the state gov­ern­ment and the different levels of panchayats. These re­com­mendations were reviewed by the state gov­ern­ment with orders for 28 de­part­ments to trans­ fer some power and functions to local gov­ern­ments (Mathew 2000). Ultimately, how­ever, most im­port­ant decision-­making con­tinued to remain in the hands of the bur­eau­crats at the state level. Gram Panchayats in UP have never­the­less had the resources and the power to implement de­velopment programs. Moreover, the control over works that fell under the jurisdiction of the de­part­ments of pri­mary education, non-­formal edu­ cation, rural drinking water, social wel­fare, youth affairs, women’s wel­fare and child de­velopment, agri­cul­ture, medical and health, animal husbandry, sugar­ cane, land de­velopment and water resources, village de­velopment and farming, was given to Gram Panchayats (Mathew 2000). The Gram Panchayats were to carry out the works related to these areas, including management of Gram Pan­ chayat funds – for example, to ensure the repair of hand-­pumps, maintain pri­ mary schools and sub-­health centers, and implement anti-­poverty programs. While Gram Panchayats in UP had fewer fin­an­cial powers devolved to them than in either West Bengal or Karnataka, they had sim­ilar levels of respons­ib­ility for implementing and managing socio­economic programs and sim­ilar jurisdiction to target programs aimed at improving social indicators.

Case studies The two villages studied, Palanpur and Pipli, are located in the northwestern region of Uttar Pradesh. This part of the state has social indic­ators that are around the state average and agro-­climatic con­ditions that are sim­ilar to most parts of the state. The region also exemplifies the conundrum of UP: owing to the quality of land, irrigation facilities, and avail­able agricultural tech­no­logy, it is con­sidered to be part of the breadbasket area of India. Yet, despite these ad­vant­ages, eco­nomic and social indic­ators for UP’s Moradabad District were around UP state averages (see Table 5.1). The ratio of females to males in

Table 5.1 Selected socioeconomic indicators, Moradabad District versus Uttar Pradesh averages Moradabad District Uttar Pradesh Population growth rate, 1991–2001 (%) Households with electricity connection, 2006 (%) Sex ratio, 2001 (females/1,000 males) Adult literacy rate, 2001 Infant mortality rate, 1998–1999 (per 1,000) % Scheduled Castes, 2001

27 39 875 45 95 19

26 35 898 56 87 21

Sources: Government of Uttar Pradesh 2001; Government of India 2001; Bhandari and Kale 2007b.

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   147 Moradabad was 875 compared to the state average of 898 in 2001 and 39 percent of households had access to electricity in the Moradabad District, compared to a 35 percent average in Uttar Pradesh (Bhandari and Kale 2007b). Each case study village is small, with a popu­la­tion under 2,000 according to the 1991 and 2001 census. They are only a couple of kilo­meters from each other, and about 30 kilo­meters south of Moradabad, the district head­quar­ters. In 1993, the number of females to 100 males in Palanpur was 85, compared to the state rural average of 88, popu­la­tion growth rate was estim­ated at 1.9 percent, the same as the average for rural UP, while the estim­ated infant mor­tal­ity rate at 160 was higher than the state average of 139 (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). In the case study villages, as in Moradabad District and statewide averages, pov­erty remained a persistent prob­lem with at least 20 percent of the popu­la­tion barely making ends meet during the mid 1990s (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). Within this region of the state, the two villages of Palanpur and Pipli were chosen for study because of data availabil­ity and because their socio­economic indic­ators are sim­ilar to those of northwestern UP. In par­ticu­lar, these villages were good cases for study because one of the villages, Palanpur, has been exten­ sively studied over the past five decades and its de­velopment has been docu­ mented in two major research works (Bliss and Stern 1982; Lanjouw and Stern 1998; Bandyopadhyay 2002). These previous studies of Palanpur provide insights into village life, social, and eco­nomic de­velopment, and local gov­ern­ ment structures prior to the implementation of the Gram Panchayats. As such they provide a basis for comparing life before and after institution of the new panchayat system.

Palanpur and Pipli in the early 1990s: village self-­government in name only2 The lack of demo­cratically functioning local gov­ern­ments prior to implementa­ tion of the 73rd Amendment meant that the reach of the state did not extend to the majority of the village popu­la­tion. Government-­sponsored social programs, such as the Public Distribution System (PDS), which aims to distribute subsi­ dized essential goods like wheat and cooking oil to indigent people, as well as food-­for-work programs, reached the villagers through gov­ern­ment bur­eau­crats at the block or district level. However, many of these programs functioned only minimally. The villagers’ only recourse, if indeed they were aware of the fact that something they were entitled to was not given to them, was to phys­ically go to the Block Development Officer (BDO) or Chief Development Officer (CDO) at the district head­quar­ters in order to lodge a complaint. Going to the district offices was something which, given the distance of travel and lack of ex­peri­ence in dealing with these mat­ters, was unima­gin­able to most villagers. This meant that the state, and with it its social de­velopment programs, only minimally affected the lives of villagers in Palanpur and Pipli. What pro­gress indi­viduals in these villages had achieved was usually entirely of their own doing, rather than through state pro­vi­sion of education, safety nets, and eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities.

148   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power The absence of elected and representative village gov­ern­ments meant that the state did not reach down to the village level and, conversely, that village cit­izens could not access government-­sponsored programs, much less make their own de­cisions on how to best distribute gov­ern­ment programs to the needy. There was no demo­cratically functioning local gov­ern­ment in the villages of UP in the early 1990s.

Social and economic wellbeing in the early 1990s In the early 1990s, both Palanpur and Pipli were still largely agriculture-­based villages, with a small but increasing percentage of the labor force having non-­agricultural jobs as their main source of income. Agricultural in­nova­tions brought about through the Green Revolution, together with the region’s fertile  soil and increased irrigation, meant that agricultural productivity was rel­at­ively high by Indian stand­ards. Although increased productivity was also  accompanied by large decreases in real prices of the main agricultural outputs, it never­the­less con­trib­uted to overall eco­nomic growth in these villages. Yet the increase in eco­nomic wel­fare was not accompanied by sim­ilar gains in  the social sectors, as education and health indic­ators in the early 1990s had not kept pace with eco­nomic improvements. In fact, some indic­ators, such as a decreasing female-­to-male ratio and little upward mobility among the lowest  caste residents, highlight the failure of gov­ern­ment sponsored health, education, and anti-­poverty programs to reach the most vulner­able members of the society.

No forum for overcoming social cleavages and inequalities Caste dominated inter­action between indi­viduals and groups in Palanpur and Pipli in the early 1990s. It also determined the norms of social inter­action, par­ ticu­larly for women, and coopera­tion (or the lack thereof ) between indi­viduals. Women from one caste might see women from other castes at religious festivals or temples, but would be unlikely to interact. Accounts from the early 1990s, as well as maps drawn of Palanpur showing res­id­en­tial segregation of different castes, dem­on­strate that these were not tranquil rural soci­eties (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). Both villages were structured according to rigid norms of caste and class and also according to gender, degree of education, and kinship. Interactions occurred along these familial and socio­economic divisions. There were no clubs, asso­ci­ations, or informal groups of any kind that provided a venue for people from different castes or class to interact. This was despite the fact that, for example, Muslim and Jatab (the lowest in Palanpur’s caste hier­archy) agricul­ tural workers had sim­ilar socio­economic charac­ter­istics and would have bene­ fited from cooperating with each other in lobbying for better labor con­ditions. These great social in­equal­it­ies between people and the deep cleavages they produced among the villagers, along with the lack of any formal or informal asso­ci­ations, were not an envir­on­ment conducive to col­lect­ive action. Indeed

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   149 villagers and the researchers who had previously studied these villages could remember very few instances of col­lect­ive action. This meant a perpetuation of the status quo of a highly unequal and divided soci­ety in Palanpur and Pipli in the 1990s. The resultant social cleavages, coupled with the lack of a his­tory of demo­cratically functioning local gov­ern­ ment, and the largely ineffect­ive reach of pub­lic social programs, made for a situ­ation in which the already abysmally low social indic­ators and poor gen­eral social wel­fare were unlikely to improve rapidly. Palanpur and Pipli were caught up in a situ­ation where improved eco­nomic wel­fare had only slowly trickled down into gains in social wel­fare. Life for the most vulner­able people in Palan­ pur and Pipli – the lowest caste, many of the Muslim fam­il­ies par­ticu­larly in Pal­ anpur, poorer girls and women – had not improved significantly.

Findings from the village studies a decade later The fol­low­ing section ex­plores the perception of the new panchayat sys­tem among the villagers. By analyzing pop­ular parti­cipa­tion in elections, the work of the Gram Panchayat, account­abil­ity in the new panchayat sys­tem and the overall perception of the panchayat sys­tem, the subtle ways in which having an elected village gov­ern­ment might have changed the villagers’ lives are ex­plored. Second, whether the quality of governance changed since 1993 and whether the Gram Panchayat played any role is ana­lyzed. Third, the villagers’ own percep­ tion of changes in wellbeing and its links with the panchayat sys­tem are evalu­ ated. As with the other case studies, the village research presented is mainly based on qualit­at­ive in­forma­tion, supplemented with a small, stratified sample survey in both villages conducted in 2000 that collected both qualit­at­ive and quantitative data. A total of 80 villagers were inter­viewed in the two villages of Palanpur and Pipli, 40 in each village. See Table 5.3 at the end of the chapter for results on selected survey questions. Interviews with key informants and focus group discussions were held in 2000 and again in 2007/2008.

Perceptions of the new Panchayat system The first statewide panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh were held on April 1995. Over 50,000 Gram Panchayats were elected and turnout was high throughout the state. People also turned out to vote in high numbers in Palanpur and Pipli. In Palanpur, the position of the pradhan (head of the Gram Panchayat) was for the first time reserved for a person from an OBC background, while in Pipli it was the first time that the position was reserved for a woman of SC background.3 Many villagers who were not part of the village elite and who had tradi­tion­ally been excluded from positions of gov­ern­ment now had a chance to stand for elec­ tion and be repres­ented in the local gov­ern­ment for the first time. In response to questions about whether they parti­cip­ated in the last national and village elections, an over­whelm­ing majority of people surveyed in 2000 answered that they had voted. Of the total of 80 people inter­viewed in Palanpur

150   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power and Pipli, 70 (88 percent) stated that they voted in the national elections, while 78 (98 percent) stated that they had voted in the last Gram Panchayat elections – sim­ilar to the high proportion found in the village studies in Karnataka and West Bengal. High voter turnout con­tinued into the twenty-­first century with the 2005 local gov­ern­ment elections leading to a 85 percent voter turnout in Uttar Pradesh, which was also reflected in discussions in follow-­up research in the villages in 2007/2008 (PTI 2010). Voting was an action that was perceived by most villagers as a duty, even when people were sure that there was some fraud in the elections such as “booth capturing,” miscounting of the votes, or intimidation of voters. The most frequent rationale given by survey respondents as well as by key informants in 2000 for the extremely high turnout at the Gram Panchayat elec­ tions of 1995 and 2000 (and during follow-­up research about the 2005 elections in 2007/2008) was that many were excited about being able to directly elect their panchayat members, from the pradhan (head of the Gram Panchayat) to their ward representatives. Some genu­inely hoped that having a panchayat representa­ tive from their own caste, religion, class, or gender would help improve their lives. When pressed further for how specifically they envisioned that the election of Gram Panchayat members would help improve their lives, the answers given ranged from gen­eral hopes of better roads, schools, and water access in the village, to specifics such as hoping to get the widow’s pension that they had not been receiving. Many key informants who voted stated that they did so because by having people they knew as their elected representatives and their interlocu­ tors with the gov­ern­ment officials in charge of dispensing social programs and bene­fits, they would gain access to these programs. Several key informants shared that by becoming themselves or having someone they knew become part of the upward chain in gov­ern­ment bur­eau­cracy, they would gain access to resources they knew were being alloc­ated to the village but not being disbursed.4 In addition to a high voter turnout for the first post-­1993 Gram Panchayat elec­ tions, 58 out of 80 of those surveyed in 2000 (73 percent) felt the elections were fair, compared to 41 of the respondents (51 percent) who thought that national elections were fair. Several people insisted that the elections were rigged, but this was not the opinion of the majority of those surveyed in 2000, nor of the key informants inter­viewed in 2007/2008.5 In striking contrast to the high voter parti­cipa­tion rates in the elections and the widespread sense of these elections being fair, a lower proportion of the 80 indi­viduals who were surveyed in 2000 and inter­viewed in 2007/2008 was aware of the structure and workings of their Gram Panchayat. Almost every­one knew the name of their pradhan and 51 out of 80 surveyed (64 percent) could supply the names of their panchayat representative. Yet only 24 out of those surveyed in 2000 (30 percent) had attended any meeting held by the panchayat and of those who said that they had attended a meeting, the majority were panchayat members or close rel­at­ives of members.6 When the survey respondents in 2000 who stated that they did not attend Gram Sabha meetings were asked why they did not attend, most of them replied that these meetings did not actu­ally take place.7

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   151 None of those who stated that they did not attend the Gram Sabhas or any other Gram Panchayat meeting was aware that these meetings were a requirement under the new panchayat law, much less that Gram Sabhas were the forum for determining the beneficiaries of gov­ern­ment de­velopment programs.8 Most of those who did not attend these meetings also did not know that the Gram Pan­ chayat was supposed to form committees on social justice, de­velopment, village education and pub­lic inter­est to help it perform its functions.9 Thus, most of the villagers surveyed and the key informants inter­viewed in 2000 did not know how the Gram Panchayat was structured, how de­cisions re­gard­ing de­velopment pro­ jects were arrived at, or that they were supposed to be an in­teg­ral part of the decision-­making pro­cess.10 This lack of know­ledge about the local gov­ern­ment sys­tems was mirrored in key informant inter­views and focus group discussions conducted in 2007/2008. In addition, most voters in Palanpur and Pipli did not have frequent inter­action with their panchayat representative. This was despite the fact that most castes, both religious groups in the two villages (Hindus and Muslims), and both genders were repres­ented in each Gram Panchayat. In the 2000 survey, only 16 of the 80 survey respondents in both villages (20 percent) said that they had had contact with their GP member. While 20 out of 80 (25 percent) had contacted a panchayat member for help, for example, in resolving a bur­eau­cratic mat­ter or getting access to gov­ern­ment ser­vices, only 9 of these 20 (45 percent) felt that the member was helpful in any way. Not only was the quantity of responses from panchayat members low, the quality of responses was usually also low. Follow-­up inter­ views with survey respondents who indicated that they had contacted a member and received a response, found that the issue had not been resolved expeditiously. Interviews nearly eight years later with the same indi­viduals as well as with key informants yielded sim­ilar feedback. This lack of local gov­ern­ment responsive­ ness differs markedly from the village findings in Karnataka and West Bengal. Not only were panchayat members largely unresponsive when contacted by their constituents, one should also note the lack of agency among many villag­ ers in contacting, lobbying, or protesting actions of members of the Gram Pan­ chayat. The responses among the villagers clearly showed that very few villagers actu­ally took some indi­vidual or col­lect­ive action on behalf of or against their Gram Panchayat, again in contrast espe­cially with the findings in West Bengal but also with those in Karnataka. Moreover, only 14 of the 80 survey respondents (18 percent) stated had parti­cip­ated in different types of actions with the GP, from signing peti­tions, requesting to meet with the pan­ chayat on an issue of concern, or protesting or thanking the panchayat for its actions. The number of survey respondents who stated that they had engaged in such ac­tiv­ities with Gram Panchayat members was signi­fic­antly higher in the village of Palanpur compared to Pipli, since there had been a col­lect­ive action in 1999 to try to remove the head of the GP through peti­tion signing. However, inter­views with key informants in both villages in 2007/2008 found that in gen­eral there was no dif­fer­ence in level of activism and engagement between the residents of Palanpur and Pipli.

152   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power In gen­eral, inter­views with key informants in 2007/2008 revealed that the cit­ izens of Palanapur and Pipli over­whelm­ingly did not resort to their local gov­ern­ ments. This is striking when con­sidering the geo­graphy and structure of the village: the res­id­en­tial area of Palanpur consists of a tight cluster of about two hundred houses sitting on approximately 20 acres, with households of the same caste tending to live close to each other, and an overall popu­la­tion of about 2,000 (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). The density of the village popu­la­tion and dwelling construction in these villages in UP was higher than in the villages studies in West Bengal and Karnataka. Given the phys­ically close construction of the village and the largely caste-­segregated neigh­bor­hoods, it is difficult for resi­ dents going about their daily work ac­tiv­ities not to at least see a panchayat member in their village. However, despite deep caste and religious cleavages in these villages as in the rest of Uttar Pradesh, there were some attempts at social engagement and civic action. While conducting the village studies in 2000 several examples of civic engagement across caste lines were evid­ent. In Palanpur in 2000, some of the poorer or lower-­caste residents were troubled by what they perceived as an in­act­ive and corrupt pradhan of OBC background, who channeled social wel­ fare bene­fits to himself and his extended family and some traditional village power-­holders of upper-­caste background. Several Gram Panchayat members and a young Scheduled Caste man, who had initially sup­ported the pradhan and cam­paigned on his behalf in the village, had heard that one needed a written peti­tion of 20 residents to ask district officials for the removal of a pan­ chayat member. They drew up a statement asking for the removal of the pradhan due to corruption charges and at least two dozen villagers signed the docu­ment, before taking it to the Chief Development Officer’s office. There they were told that they needed a majority of the panchayat representatives to sign the complaint before it could officially be accepted – something they were unable to do because not enough representatives were willing to sign it. While the attempt to remove the pradhan in 2000 was ultimately not successful, it never­the­less repres­ented a vis­ible attempt of civic action that crossed social cleavages. Ironically, this same Scheduled Caste man was elected as pradhan of the Palanpur Gram Panchayat in 2005 (when the office of the pradhan was reserved for a person of SC background) and, according to more than a dozen different sources, was sim­ilarly pilfering the local gov­ern­ment’s resources for the bene­fit of his extended family. While a civic action to remove this pradhan succeeded in 2010, incidents such as this furthered the perception among vil­ lagers that election to local gov­ern­ment office was a new venue for self-­ enrichment and, in some cases, pro­vi­sion of kickbacks to others within the candidate’s respective caste or religious com­mun­ity.11 At the same time there were a few other instances of benevolent civic inter­action in these villages. In one instance a former teacher’s mobil­iza­tion of villagers facilitated a meeting with the pradhani (female pradhan) to discuss the construction of a new pri­ mary school in the village. In another instance, when the drainage in one dirt road alley of the village became par­ticu­larly bad, people living along that alley

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   153 got the panchayat to alloc­ate some money towards its cleaning and they came up with the funds to build a drainage sys­tem. These three instances were, how­ ever, among the few examples of col­lect­ive action by villagers towards their panchayats between 2000 and 2011. Despite high voter parti­cipa­tion rates in the Gram Panchayat elections and despite high hopes and expectations among the inhabitants of Palanpur and Pipli, the survey responses and follow-­up inter­views indicate that there was little know­ledge of the functioning of the panchayat sys­tem among the villagers, infrequent contact between the members and their constituents, and a low level of agency among villagers with regard to protesting or sup­porting Gram Pancha­ yat actions. Several key informants in 2000 and in 2007/2008 indicated that there was little in­forma­tion avail­able on the resources avail­able to the panchayats or what kinds of assistance different groups of indigent were eli­gible for. Without transparency on the functioning of the Gram Panchayat and on the resources avail­able to it for different programs, it was difficult for people to know how to inquire, protest, or sup­port panchayat members. Yet, detailed know­ledge of the panchayat and its workings were not required to judge whether the Gram Panchayat had played a role in delivering key government-­financed programs. While the majority of key informants in 2000 and again in 2007/2008 did not know that Gram Panchayats were vested with the respons­ib­ility of implementing all government-­financed social and anti-­ poverty programs, most appeared to have a gen­eral sense that the Gram Pancha­ yat was meant to be “somehow” involved in the pro­cess and whether they had in fact been involved. Yet when asked whether there were functioning anti-­poverty programs in the village, only 19 out of 80 survey respondents (24 percent) stated that there were such programs in the village and of those 19 only 5 (26 percent) thought that their Gram Panchayats were respons­ible for targeting and delivering those anti-­poverty programs. Similarly, only 16 of the survey respondents (20 percent) stated that there were functioning social wel­fare programs in the village. Moreover, only 21 out of 80 survey respondents (26 percent) thought that the Gram Panchayat had been involved in delivering any of the most im­port­ant social and infrastructure needs of the village.12 In fact one panchayat member in Palanpur stated that she thought gov­ern­ment was no more effect­ive now than earl­ier – thereby implicating herself. While a lower number of survey respond­ ents from Palanpur thought that the GP was involved in addressing these needs than from Pipli (6 versus 15), such a divergence in perception of survey respond­ ents was not found on other questions relating to ser­vice delivery. Moreover, responses from key informants and focus group discussions in 2007/2008 yielded a sim­ilarly dismal pic­ture of the delivery of social programs through the Gram Panchayat of both villages. Overall, the majority of the villagers questioned in the 2000 survey, and in focus group meetings and key informant inter­views in 2000 and 2007/2008, thought that most anti-­poverty and social pro­jects were not functioning in their village and a majority believed that their Gram Panchayat was not active in implementing such pro­jects. In contrast to the time before the implementation of

154   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power the 1994 UP Constitutional Amendment Act when the disbursement of funds for most social programs rested with bur­eau­crats such as the block de­velopment officer, key informant inter­views in 2000 and again in 2007/2008 found that there was a gen­eral sense that some funds now went to the Gram Panchayat for disbursement. Even those residents of Palanpur and Pipli who were not part of the lit­er­ate social elite, and were not aware of how exactly the panchayat func­ tioned, knew that after 1995 most of the funds for social programs came to the Gram Panchayat. They knew who was respons­ible for implementing various de­velop­mental programs and disbursing the funds to the intended beneficiaries. Villagers knew whom they could praise or blame for the implementation of rural de­velopment programs, or the lack thereof.

Changes in accountability? The account­abil­ity of the Gram Panchayats in these villages was low. By spring of 2000, Uttar Pradesh had held only one round of local panchayat elections, with two further elections by the spring of 2008. Focus group sessions in 2000 and 2008 yielded sim­ilar in­forma­tion: informants stated that they knew that their panchayat representative and their pradhan in par­ticu­lar had not disbursed the de­velop­mental funds that they were supposed to. Many stated that they were not going to vote for these members. A few informants in both villages also stated that the members knew that they were not performing their job prop­erly and that they would not be reelected. As a result, the members had even less incentive to perform effect­ively and more incentive to enrich themselves while they could. Several informants in 2008 pointed out that very few Gram Panchayat seats at any one election were not reserved for a person of a par­ticu­lar gender or caste background. Moreover, they explained that due to the rotational sys­tem of reserved seats, where the power­ful position of the pradhan was rotated amongst people of different caste and gender at each local gov­ern­ment election, the indi­ vidual elected as pradhan was unlikely to be able to run for reelection – no mat­ter what her or his record might be. Individuals elected to that office know this and in the elections in 1995, 2000, and 2005 enriched themselves and their family members. The perception of dis­advant­ages to the sys­tem of reserved seats was also shared by illit­er­ate and lower-­caste members in both villages in 2008 and indicates a perception that there are built-­in disincentives in the GP structure for those representatives who might other­wise be inter­ested in doing a good job in order to get reelected. These perceptions mirror the local his­tory of the GP leaders. In both these villages where for the first time a female pradhan and a pradhan from an OBC background were elected in the 1995 election, both prad­ hans were corrupt in 2000. As seen in Table 5.2, a large portion of central gov­ ern­ment funds, which had been released to the local panchayats for several social programs, did not reach the intended beneficiaries. Stories of the extent of the pradhan’s corruption in 2000, par­ticu­larly in Palanpur, abounded in formal inter­ views as well and indi­vidual discussions and focus-­group meetings. The same responses were given about the pradhan in 2008 in both villages. A sys­tem that

10,000 10,000 N/A N/A N/A N/A

10,000 10,000 13,500 (9 × 1,500) 10,000 12,000 (2 × 6,000) 10,000

Support for pregnant women (Rs.500 for each pregnant woman below Funds released the poverty line) Funds received c Funds released Funds received c Funds released Funds received c

Old age pension for indigent people (Rs.1,500 for each person above 60 years of age living below the poverty line)

Money for marriage of daughter (Rs.6,000 for families living below the poverty line and where there is no father)

Notes a From the 10th Finance Commission, JRY, and the State Finance Commission b For SC/ST households only c Funds received by eligible beneficiaries.

Sources: From the Chandausi Block Development Office Records and Moradabad District Welfare Office Records, 2000. Figures cross-checked at village level.

10,000 10,000

10,000 10,000

Funds released Funds received c

Birth of female baby to parents below poverty line (Rs.500 for each female child)

Pipli 84,146 Approx. 55,000

Funds released Funds received c

General fundingsa for roads, drainage, school building repairsa, grain storageb, and household handpumpsb

Palanpur 61,365 Approx. 20,000

Funds (rupees)

Type of social program

Table 5.2  Funds released versus received for selected programs for Palanpur and Pipli, Chandausi Block, Uttar Pradesh, 2000 (rupees)

156   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power was designed as a sys­tem of affirmative action for dis­advant­aged groups has had the negat­ive impact of lowering incentives for account­abil­ity. Reserving the positions of the local gov­ern­ment head for women or people of lower caste back­ grounds had not changed the main structures of account­abil­ity or reduced cor­ ruption. Moreover, in contrast to the findings from the village studies in Karnataka and West Bengal, findings from these village studies in UP yielded a perception that reserv­ing local gov­ern­ment seats by caste in an envir­on­ment of strong caste cleavages resulted in GP members appropriating GP funds for them­ selves or channeling funds to their respective religious or caste groups. Corruption in the Gram Panchayats of both villages appeared per­vas­ive through the early part of the twenty-­first century, par­ticu­larly among the heads of the local gov­ern­ments. However, what has changed in these local gov­ern­ ments is that the people formerly excluded from patronage and kickbacks were now, through the reser­va­tion sys­tem, able to partake in the corruption. Towards the end of a long inter­view in the fields of Palanpur in 2000 with an illit­er­ate female Muslim Gram Panchayat member about the lack of social funds reaching the target audience, the inter­viewee stopped her work of making cow-­dung patties and exasperatedly stated “The upper-­class men of this village and upper levels of gov­ern­ment have been eating up the gov­ern­ment money for centuries. So what if I now take my share too?” Similar comments in 2008 from several informants of SC background about the corrupt GP pradhan of SC background yielded the perception that while levels of corruption con­tinued to remain high the reser­va­tion of local gov­ern­ment seats has led to a “demo­crat­ization of local gov­ern­ment corruption” in these UP villages since 1993. Most of the villagers surveyed in 2000 were unsure if corrupt Gram Pancha­ yat members under the new panchayat sys­tem were more likely to be held account­able than under the previous panchayat sys­tem. In 2000 the vast majority of survey respondents in both villages thought that account­abil­ity of the pancha­ yat members had not changed or were unsure whether it had changed when com­ paring the new sys­tem to the pre-­73rd Amendment sys­tem, with only seven out of 80 respondents (9 percent) thinking that Gram Panchayat members were more likely to be held account­able under the new sys­tem. When key informants were asked in 2000 why panchayat members were not held account­able under the new sys­tem, they recounted the instance where a group of people tried unsuccessfully to have the pradhan of Palanpur removed. Focus group discussions and inter­views with key informants in 2007/2008 yielded sim­ilar responses. Key informants cited the corrupt pradhan in 2007 and the previous corrupt pradhan, indicating that there was no sys­tem for directly holding panchayat members, and the pradhan in par­ticu­lar, account­able. The only “tool” avail­able to cit­izens for rewarding or pun­ishing the members was their vote at election time, and even that was usually limited in the case of the election of the pradhan due to that position being reserved for people of different backgrounds on an rotational basis. The pro­ced­ures put in place by the UP Con­ stitutional Amendment Act to remove a pradhan required a high percentage of panchayat members to sign a peti­tion, something many were unwilling to do.

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   157 Other than trying to remove the pradhan or waiting until the next elections, the voters have no way of ensuring account­abil­ity. Moreover, there is no legal requirement for panchayat members to report the panchayat’s budget expendi­ tures to the village com­mun­ity in a sys­tematic way. The Gram Sabha, the village council meetings which the UP Act states should be called by the pradhan twice a year to con­sider de­velopment programs, accounts and audit reports, programs for adult education, mobil­iza­tion of voluntary labor, and identification of benefi­ ciaries for government-­funded social programs, rarely took place in 2000 and almost never took place by 2008. Focus group meetings yielded that there was no disclosure of Gram Panchayat accounts at any Gram Sabha meetings and vil­ lagers did not know how to get definitive in­forma­tion about resources alloc­ated to their village. With no required, regu­lar mech­an­ism for informing villagers of panchayat finances, villagers have no concrete proof of corruption, just hearsay and sus­pi­cions. The lack of meetings added to gov­ern­ment dysfunction and in­abil­ity to hold panchayat members accountable. On the other hand, villagers knew under the post-­1993 sys­tem who was involved in the corruption. Under the earl­ier sys­tem, villagers also knew that corruption took place, but they could only as­sume that the bur­eau­crats involved in delivering ser­vices to their village were corrupt and that perhaps some of the “village elders” who constituted the Gram Panchayat were involved in malfea­ sance. Under the new panchayat sys­tem, most villagers were aware that many de­velopment funds came directly to the village pradhan and that if the funds did not reach the beneficiaries, then their own representatives, people who were their neigh­bors and com­mun­ity members, were to blame. While this meant a growth in the number of people engaged in corruption, it also suggested that even the poorest and least educated villager was now able to put a face to the corruption. The dispersion of power to Gram Panchayats had led to an increase of the number of people with influence to peddle; it had also given a face to those involved in corrupt practices. Overall, the survey results, along with the focus group discussions and key informant inter­views in 2000, revealed that many hoped the new Gram Pancha­ yat sys­tem would improve their social wel­fare, through the direct election of panchayat representatives from different caste, class, and gender backgrounds. They had also hoped to improve their wel­fare through increased account­abil­ity in delivering social programs. Few key informants knew exactly how the pan­ chayat was going to be structured or what their rights were with regard to the Gram Panchayat. But they did know what the Gram Panchayat was supposed to do and that representatives of all different com­munit­ies were now elected as local gov­ern­ment members. By 2008 the villagers were even less op­tim­istic about the abil­ity of the GP to help improve their lives. Key informant inter­views and focus group discussions found that villagers had seen what the Gram Panchayat had done or had failed to do since 1995. Disillusionment with the various pradhans in Palanpur and the failure of an effort to remove the pradhan in 1999 meant that many villagers were not sure that the new sys­tem was much different from the previous panchayat

158   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power sys­tem. The structure of the panchayat sys­tem, with the regu­larity of elections and formerly excluded groups accessing panchayat positions, had changed. The overall sense that leaders were corrupt and that the sys­tem was unable to deliver social programs remained largely unchanged.

Quality of governance The envir­on­ment in which local gov­ern­ments operate was assessed by several Indian gov­ern­ment officials as being a key issue in determining the effect­ive implementation of central gov­ern­ment funded anti-­poverty and social de­velopment programs.13 A meas­ure of parti­cipa­tion under the new sys­tem was people’s own perception of whether they were more likely to be heard by the new Gram Panchayat. When asked this question in 2000, 18 of the 80 survey respondents in Palanpur and Pipli (23 percent) replied that, if they directed a question or complaint to the village Gram Panchayat, they felt that their voice was more likely to be heard today than before the implementation of the new panchayat sys­tem. Five years after the first Gram Panchayat elections under the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem, the vast majority of survey respondents in both villages thought that there was no dif­fer­ence between the likelihood of being heard under the previous Gram Panchayat sys­tem versus the new sys­tem. This widespread perception of the local gov­ern­ment sys­tem not making a large dif­fer­ ence in whether an indi­vidual was going to be heard by the local gov­ern­ment con­tinued through 2007/2008 as evid­enced by focus group discussions and key informant interviews. At the same time the attempt to remove the Palanpur pradhan in 2000 was an in­dica­tion of increased aware­ness and hope among some villagers that the new sys­tem had created the pos­sib­il­ity of their voice being heard. While the failure to remove the pradhan left some of those involved feeling despondent about their abil­ity to affect change under the new sys­tem, others involved noted that the very pro­cess of trying to have a pradhan removed was unthinkable under the previous sys­tem. Having a local gov­ern­ment sys­tem in place where villagers could attempt to remove the pradhan meant an increasing aware­ness of among villagers of their rights and abil­it­ies under the new sys­tem, even if this had not translated into a perception of increased voice. Resorting to petition-­signing in order to attempt removal of the Palanpur pradhan was an in­dica­tion of the belief that under the new sys­tem there might be legal al­tern­atives to unconsti­tu­tional or even violent means of local gov­ern­ment change. The fact that Gram Panchayat members are now elected, and might not be reelected, con­trib­uted to an increasing aware­ness that under the new sys­tem one had the abil­ity to peacefully select and replace those in power at the local level. Most villagers understood that the days where the same fam­il­ies domi­ nated local gov­ern­ment are on the wane, par­ticu­larly because an institutional mech­an­ism for changing the people at the helm of local gov­ern­ments now exists, even if in practice it is still difficult to do. At the same time, examples of attempts to hold local gov­ern­ment representatives account­able were few,

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   159 combined with a widespread perception that there were few mech­an­isms for holding local gov­ern­ments accountable. Accountabil­ity of civil ser­vants also did not appear to have improved with the advent of the new Gram Panchayat sys­tem. Feedback from several villagers and observation of the work of civil ser­vants in the village in 2000 and 2007/2008 indicated that the Gram Panchayat had not used its powers to enhance account­ abil­ity of these civil ser­vants. For example, the targeted Public Distribution System (PDS) is supposed to ensure food secur­ity through monthly distribution of goods at a subsidized cost to indigent people, as well as several other related programs. In Palanpur and Pipli, how­ever, the distributors of PDS goods in 2000 as well as in 2008 only came a few times a year and did not even distribute a fraction of what they were supposed to. Similarly, the “Anganwadi worker” (female health worker for a village) was not performing her duties in either one of the villages in 2000 or 2008. None of the people inter­viewed had heard of the worker dis­trib­uting vitamin biscuits as part of a post-­natal care program spon­ sored by the gov­ern­ment.14 Moreover, the “Midday Meals Scheme” which was to provide free lunch to all chil­dren attending elementary school was rarely func­ tioning in 2008. Civil ser­vants were not performing their duties in these villages and yet the Gram Panchayats had made no attempt to call them to account for their performance. Another aspect of the quality of local governance, and thereby its capa­city to improve wellbeing, is its effect­iveness – its abil­ity to plan and implement sound pol­icies. This includes the abil­ity of the local gov­ern­ment to implement pro­ grams entrusted to it by the central and state gov­ern­ments, to devise and imple­ ment its own pol­icies, and to interact with and oversee the local implementation of social programs by civil ser­vants. The abil­ity to implement pol­icies also includes an aware­ness of regu­latory quality – the perception by the villagers of whether local gov­ern­ment and its pol­icies have led to a decrease in regu­latory burden, thereby improving access to gov­ern­ment programs and the bur­eau­crats respons­ible for implementing them. Survey respondents were asked whether they thought that the administrative burden they faced when they needed to obtain ser­vices or goods from the gov­ ern­ment in 2000 had decreased since the implementation of the new panchayat sys­tem. Again, only 10 out of 80 respondents (13 percent) thought that the administrative burden had decreased since the election of the new Gram Pancha­ yat. Excluding responses from panchayat representatives and their imme­diate fam­il­ies, there was only one respondent who thought that the administrative burden had improved. For the vast majority of villagers, having an elected local gov­ern­ment that often included local gov­ern­ment representatives who were from their own caste, class, or gender background, did not translate into less bur­eau­ cracy in their daily lives. Focus group discussions and key informant inter­views in 2000 as well as 2007/2008 yielded sim­ilar results. On the whole, Gram Panchayat effect­iveness and abil­ity to ease the adminis­ trative burden faced by villagers in their inter­actions with gov­ern­ment officials did not improve with the implementation of the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem.

160   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power When asked in focus group discussions why this was the case, villagers replied that panchayat members did not have any incentive to be effect­ive in their imple­ mentation of pol­icies and in their oversight with civil ser­vants. Despite a pro­vi­ sion in the 73rd Constitutional Amendment that encourages the formation of committees in order to help Gram Panchayats perform their social de­velopment duties, not a single committee had been formed in either village. This lack of panchayat oversight of social ser­vice delivery meant that there was no enforce­ ment mech­an­ism to ensure the performance of civil ser­vants. Similarly, pancha­ yat members themselves had no incentive to perform since, other than their reelection and a distant pos­sib­il­ity of removal by panchayat majority consensus, there was no mech­an­ism for oversight and accountability. Two female panchayat members from Palanpur stated in 2000, and three members from each of both villages stated in 2007/2008, that it was very diffi­ cult for them to find out the exact amount of funds received by the pradhan for various programs, let alone try to enforce ser­vice pro­vi­sion by civil ser­vants. They indicated that there was little communication amongst Gram Panchayat members on what their rights and obli­ga­tions were. They also stated that there was a gen­eral sense that committees were not set up because the panchayat had no enforcement mech­an­ism vis-­à-vis the bur­eau­cracy. In neither Palanpur nor Pipli were there mech­an­isms and incentives to ensure local gov­ern­ment effect­ iveness or quality ser­vice delivery by civil servants. Villagers, how­ever, placed some of the blame for lack of improvements in governance on the representatives themselves. In par­ticu­lar, when the small-­ scale survey respondents were asked in the 2000 whether there was a change in viol­ence, rule of law, and corruption, since the implementation of the new pan­ chayat sys­tem, few gave pos­it­ive answers. Only ten of the 80 survey respondents in 2000 (13 percent) believed that there was less gen­eral viol­ence in their village; 12 out of 80 (15 percent) believed that there had been an improvement in the rule of law; 10 (13 percent) believed that there had been an improvement in the administrative burden they faced; 7 (9 percent) believed that account­abil­ity had improved; and only two out of 80 (3 percent) believed that corruption had decreased. Several focus group discussions on the issue of governance in 2000 (3 percent) as well as in 2007/2008 confirmed a widespread view that govern­ ance throughout the 1990s and up through 2008 had not improved. Significantly, only two of the small-­scale survey respondents in 2000 believed that any improvements in governance had been achieved through the panchayat sys­tem. In fact the oppos­ite was true: four respondents shared that the Gram Panchayat might have been respons­ible for an increase in corruption and decrease in the rule of law, even though this was not a direct question asked by the survey.15 Corruption and poor governance have been widespread and there have been well-­documented prob­lems in Uttar Pradesh (Mishra 1997). Yet with decentrali­ zation of power and respons­ib­ility for implementation of rural de­velopment pro­ grams to the village level, the abil­ity to or­gan­ize sub-­committees under the Gram Panchayat to oversee the functioning of social ser­vices in the village, and with some fin­an­cial resources avail­able to accomplish these tasks, there was hope that

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   161 increased local oversight would improve governance. Several villagers indicated that they had shared these hopes. However, as seen in the above sections, this was not the case. For the most part, villagers did not ex­peri­ence an increase in voice, gov­ern­ment effect­iveness, regulation, rule of law or corruption in their village. In addition to the survey responses in 2000, several indi­vidual accounts in 2000 and 2007/2008 corroborated that corruption was still rampant and the overall quality of governance low. Information obtained in 2000 from the Block Development Office (BDO) in Chandausi, UP, showed that in 2000, the Palan­ pur Gram Panchayat had distributed – on paper – 500 rupees to each of 20 preg­ nant women who were living below the pov­erty line and to 20 fam­il­ies below the pov­erty line who had had a female baby born within the last year.16 Yet only one of the six pregnant or recently pregnant women questioned had received 100 rupees through the pradhan and none of the five fam­il­ies questioned who had had a female baby born in the past year had received any money. Of the funds alloc­ated towards beneficiaries under four specific social programs at the block level, virtually none had reached the beneficiaries through the Gram Panchayat in 2000. The Gram Panchayat was party to the corruption in the sys­tem. Further­ more, there were in­dica­tions that bribery was not only rampant at the Gram Pan­ chayat level, but also at the block level and above.17 Follow-­up inter­views with people listed as social wel­fare program recipients at the block level in 2007/2008 yielded sim­ilar results. Overall, the evid­ence indicates that implementation of the new Gram Pancha­ yat gov­ern­ment in Uttar Pradesh and sub­sequent election of Gram Panchayats in Palanpur and Pipli did not change the real incentive structure. People who for­ merly were excluded from the realms of village gov­ern­ment were elected as Gram Panchayat representatives. Yet without functioning village assemblies, sub-­committees to oversee social ser­vice delivery, or Gram Panchayat meetings, and without a sys­tem that provided transparent accounting of receipts and expen­ ditures by the Gram Panchayat to the villagers, there was no cred­ible threat to panchayat members to dissuade them from partaking in the sys­tem of corruption. Similar to the findings in West Bengal and in contrast to the village findings in Karnataka, local gov­ern­ments in these villages of UP were unlikely to be held account­able for pilfering of social funds intended for the indigent and there are no mech­an­isms in place for the village popu­la­tion to gain in­forma­tion on the flow of pub­lic funds to the village in order to hold their local representatives accountable.

Enduring social inequality What is striking when comparing the social settings and inter­actions in the vil­ lages studied in UP with those of the villages studied in West Bengal and Karna­ taka is the lack of social change and the persistence of social cleavages. One of the main in­nova­tions of the new panchayat sys­tem in 1993 was the reser­va­tion of seats for women and people of SC/ST background, thereby providing them

162   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power access to polit­ical and perhaps social power. In UP it was hoped that this reser­ va­tion sys­tem could enable women and SC/ST people to gain greater access to gov­ern­ment and provide the basis for social change. However, in the two vil­ lages studied in UP, the panchayat reser­va­tion sys­tem has not provided a basis for social change. In Pipli the pradhan elected in 1995 was a women for the first time in village his­tory, but she appeared to be in the position largely on paper. In 2000, most key informants stated that her late husband had been the pradhan and that her brother-­in-law had now taken over the position. When she was inter­ viewed, her brother-­in-law sat next to her and, since she was unable to, answered most of the detailed questions re­gard­ing the functioning of the Gram Panchayat and its budget receipts and alloca­tions. In Palanpur informants who were of the same OBC caste background as the pradhan elected in 1995, attested that they had voted for him because they thought that he would advance their caste com­ mun­ity’s cause, only to find that he was corrupt and intent on enriching himself and some of his kin. In both villages female Gram Panchayat members and members of scheduled caste background appeared to be members largely on paper. While some admitted to now also having access to the sys­tem of kick­ backs, these members have been largely unable to assert their rights as repre­ sentatives. Relationships between people of different castes, class, and gender con­tinued to remain inequit­able in Palanpur and Pipli through 2008. Social in­equal­it­ies are so stark in this part of India that they are phys­ically and geographically vis­ible. When walking through Palanpur or Pipli one is struck by the narrow alleyways, bordered on both sides by high walls. Even the poorest resident of Palanpur, with an entire family living together in a one room, windowless mud hut, is protected by a mud wall and a small door demarcating the homestead from the alley and from the neigh­bors. When dusk falls on the village, fam­il­ies convene in their homes, behind closed doors, and seldom venture out into the darkness of the night. Rarely are large groups of chil­dren seen playing together at the few pub­lic spaces in the villages, and even more rarely do chil­dren of different social or religious backgrounds play together. Men are sometimes seen sitting on charpoys in front of their homes or in pub­lic places chatting with rel­at­ives, but rarely with people outside their caste, class, or gender. Women are usually only seen in groups at religious holidays or births, marriages, or deaths, but again, very rarely with women outside their caste, while women of upper castes con­tinue to remain largely within the confines of their homes. These impressions are symptomatic of the structure of social inter­action in Palanpur and Pipli. As amply docu­mented elsewhere, the dominance of the upper castes in UP soci­ety has remained largely unchanged over the past decades (Kohli 1987; Hasan 1989, 2000; Hasan et al. 1989). Caste and class con­tinue to be the dominant cleavages determining polit­ical and social inter­action. Electoral cam­paigning by polit­ical par­ties that appeal to the ascriptive identity of caste and class has further cemented these social cleavages. That people should get together with rel­at­ives for holidays or at informal social occasions is not surpris­ ing. What is surprising is that this appears to be largely the only forum of social

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   163 inter­action and that these forms of inter­action in these villages are largely intra-­ caste instead of inter-­caste gatherings. Observations from walking around the villages create an impression of people whose social inter­action is largely limited to people from their own caste and class background. For example, access to drinking water is just as difficult for the poor Muslims who live on an alley in the southwestern part of Palanpur, as it is for the dis­advant­aged Jatabs, a group of scheduled castes living on the north­ ern edge of the village. Yet people from these two com­munit­ies have not been able to bridge their religious–caste division and mobilize to ensure better drink­ ing water access, despite their obvious common need. It is this enduring struc­ ture of social cleavages despite the election of local gov­ern­ments, its perpetuation by the major polit­ical par­ties which have been elected over the past two decades in UP, and a lack of inter-­caste and religious group based civil soci­ ety, which enable the traditional caste elite and new temporary local gov­ern­ment elite to con­tinue siphoning off local gov­ern­ment funds. When indi­viduals from both villages were asked in focus group sessions, and further discussions with key informants in 2000 and 2007/2008, whether they thought that the lack of informal and formal asso­ci­ations in the villages was in any way linked with Gram Panchayat functioning, none of the informants thought so. Inter-­caste and inter-­class inter­actions were so far removed from the daily lives of most villagers that the idea that their structure of social inter­actions might be related to their social wellbeing had not occurred to them. None saw a direct link between the ingrained social cleavages and the failure of the Gram Panchayat to help improve their wellbeing. The rigid social structure in Palanpur and Pipli is mirrored in the many needs for col­lect­ive action and the very few instances where such action takes place. Collective action occurs when people of different backgrounds come together for the purpose of accomplishing something for the good of all involved and sometimes even the greater pub­lic good. There were only few examples of col­ lect­ive action in either village. Before the implementation of the 73rd amend­ ment, the previous study of Palanpur illus­trated that there was plenty of need but virtually no col­lect­ive action (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). Since the implementa­ tion of the amend­ment in UP in the early 1990s, a few instances of col­lect­ive action occurred, but they remain the exception rather than the rule. In one example, under the guidance of a local man but with sup­port from several high-­ caste fam­il­ies, a private pri­mary school was set up in Palanpur in 1997, yet by 2008 this school was disbanded. The pub­lic school in both villages had teachers who only come spor­adic­ally. Moreover, despite over one hundred chil­dren being enrolled at each school, on any given day no more than a dozen chil­dren are actu­ally to be found. In contrast, the private school teachers came every day during the field research stay in 2000 and at least three-­dozen chil­dren usually attend, dressed in uniforms and with school supplies. While the teaching methods at the private school certainly could have been improved, the school functioned every day until mid-­2007. On the other hand, since parents had to pay tuition in addition to uniform and school supply costs, only the chil­dren of

164   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power better-­off fam­il­ies were able attend the private school. Initially the private school seemed open to all until the upper-­caste fam­il­ies exerted pressure until a teacher who was a Scheduled Caste member was dismissed from the school. Further­ more, no Muslim chil­dren attended the private school, Hindu religion was taught at the school, and Hindu festivals were cel­eb­rated there. What initially appeared as a col­lect­ive action for the greater good of providing functioning pri­mary edu­ cation for all chil­dren, turned out to be a school for middle- and upper-­caste Hindu children. In another example, after years of unsuccessfully trying to tap into a main electrical grid line running close to the village, several affluent fam­il­ies in Palan­ pur con­trib­uted to a pool of money that was used to officially pay for an electric­ ity line to the village. At the end of 1998 electricity finally arrived at the village and those fam­il­ies who had con­trib­uted money towards the fund for the electric­ ity line could now avail themselves of electricity. Electricity could have been brought to the village many years ago but in previous years there was little sense that this kind of col­lect­ive action was pos­sible. A third example of recent col­ lect­ive action was the 1999 incident mentioned earl­ier where, after frustration with how corrupt the pradhan had been over the last years, a group of young village men collected signatures on a peti­tion to have the pradhan removed by district-­level officials. Muslims and Hindus, Scheduled Caste members as well as a few upper castes signed the initial peti­tion. While this action was ultimately unsuccessful, it was the clearest example of villagers overcoming their caste dif­ fer­ences in order to perform an action they believed would bene­fit the entire village. Organizations that could help bridge the tre­mend­ous social in­equal­ity and lack of trust between groups, including local gov­ern­ments, do not function suffi­ ciently in the villages of Palanpur and Pipli. Social inter­action gen­erally still occurs along the exclusionary lines of caste, class, and gender. Despite ample oppor­tun­ities for participating in col­lect­ive action that would bene­fit all, few vil­ lagers do in fact parti­cip­ate. While villagers admit that, for example, the lack of a drainage sys­tem in the village creates dif­ficult­ies for all villagers trying to walk anywhere in the village during the monsoon season, none sees the feas­ib­ility of getting even the people living in their alley to cooperate in order to dig a drain­ age sys­tem. With only a few examples of successful coopera­tion among villag­ ers, most villagers do not even try to initiate col­lect­ive actions. In both the villages studied in UP, the villagers were caught in a vicious cycle of lack of trust and rare examples of coopera­tion reinforcing non-­cooperation in the villages. Moreover, none of the villagers surveyed in 2000 or inter­viewed in 2000 and 2007/2008 saw any relationship between social cleavages, the pres­ence of the new Gram Panchayat, and their social wel­fare. Having a Gram Panchayat that is largely perceived as not functioning as mandated by law, ineffect­ive at the work with which it is charged, and lacking governance, has not provided the cit­ izens of Palanpur and Pipli with an example of how col­lect­ive action by elected officials could help improve their wel­fare or provide a forum for organ­izing col­ lect­ive action. In addition, the elect­oral cam­paigning for GP elections by par­ties

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   165 that largely appealed to the ascriptive identity of caste furthered these social cleavages. The hope that local gov­ern­ments would provide an avenue for helping to decrease social in­equal­it­ies through increased inter­action and col­lect­ive action among groups of differing social backgrounds has not mater­ialized in the case of Palanpur and Pipli in Uttar Pradesh. However, the prognosis is not entirely bleak. The one incident where a couple of young men of different caste back­ grounds collected signatures for a peti­tion to have the pradhan of Palanpur removed gives some hope. Tenuous as these links between Gram Panchayat, social cleavages, and improved social wel­fare might be, this incident helped increase aware­ness among those who parti­cip­ated, and in the village in gen­eral, of the possib­il­ities and pitfalls of col­lect­ive action. It was a reminder that in order to succeed, these types of actions require broad-­based sup­port. It illus­trated that there are legal, demo­cratic, and nonviolent avenues for removing corrupt panchayat members, of which even the least educated and lowest-­caste villager can avail him or herself. It also dem­on­strated that by reaching across religious, caste, and gender cleavages, one could potentially accomplish goals that would not be pos­sible in smaller groups. The ex­peri­ence taught the parti­cip­ants about demo­cracy in action and increased their aware­ness of their rights and potential to use these rights to effect change. It was an example of increased aware­ness of rights being used to question estab­lished patterns of corruption and domination. In doing so, it provided hope to some villagers that growing aware­ness of their rights would enable villagers to press panchayat members to implement social programs more effect­ively and thus help improve social wel­fare of the villagers. However, even these weak hopes were largely dashed by 2008 when three GP elections had taken place without changes in the GP’s delivery of social wel­fare programs and a con­tinu­ously abysmal rate of social ser­vice delivery in these villages.

Slowly improving social wellbeing – no thanks to the Gram Panchayats Between 1993 and 2011 the overall social wellbeing of Palanpur and Pipli resi­ dents improved slightly, largely due to new eco­nomic oppor­tun­ities. There was over­whelm­ing consensus among respondents that local gov­ern­ments had not helped in any way to deliver social ser­vices that would have improved their social wellbeing. These findings are mirrored in the previous study of Palanpur which docu­mented a few improvements seen in 1997, such as the new private school and a better functioning gov­ern­ment school, yet found that overall there was little in­dica­tion of improved wel­fare (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). However, by most villagers’ accounts, residents of Palanpur and Pipli were slightly better off in 2008 compared to 1995 – before the election of the new Gram Panchayat. When asked in the 2000 survey whether their overall wellbeing – in terms of such tan­gibles as the health and education ser­vices they can afford, the food they eat, and the housing they can afford – was better in 2000 than in the early 1990s,

166   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power 50 out of 80 surveyed (63 percent) said that they were better off due to the better quality of their housing, better and greater variety of educational facilities, the arrival of electricity in Palanpur, more hand-­pumps for accessing drinking water, and better quality and variety of food in both villages. These views were sup­ ported by inter­views with key informants and focus group discussions in 2000 and again in 2007/2008. Yet while most cit­izens of Palanpur and Pipli perceived themselves as being better off, only two out of 80 survey respondents in 2000 (3 percent) thought that the Gram Panchayat con­trib­uted in any direct or meas­ur­able way to their change in wellbeing. The rest, 78 out of 80 survey respondents (98 percent), including Gram Panchayat members themselves, did not think that the Gram Panchayat had helped improve their lives, or were not sure. Almost all the key informants in 2000 and again in 2007/2008 stated that if there had been a change in their wellbeing, it was entirely due to their own work and their own fortunes or misfortunes. While there is some in­dica­tion of social wel­fare improvements in Palanpur and Pipli, the pro­gress has not been great nor nearly what it could have been had the gov­ern­ment’s social programs functioned in the manner intended. Government-­provided health ser­vices were virtually non-­existent. The in-­village Anganwadi (female health care worker) did not provide ser­vices in either village, gov­ern­ment immunization programs in the villages were spor­adic, and referrals to gov­ern­ment health care ser­vices, such as the anti-­malaria and TB programs, were non-­existent. Untrained private “doctors” provided health care and the tra­ ditional village midwife did not use any sterilization methods during deliveries. The pub­lic distribution sys­tem delivered only a few of the goods and then for only about a fourth of the time it was scheduled to deliver. The pub­lic education program was doing little to teach chil­dren in either village, had high teacher ab­sentee­ism, and a low attendance rate. Moreover, the gov­ern­ment’s Midday Meals Scheme for chil­dren at pub­lic pri­mary schools was also essentially defunct in 2007/2008.18 Most of the pub­lic programs aimed at protecting and improving the lives of indigent cit­izens were not functioning. The respons­ib­ility for overseeing the implementation and efficiency of these programs rested with the Gram Panchayat, which was blamed by the villagers for non-­delivery of these services. It is this lack of tan­gible improvement in the delivery of social ser­vices meant for the poor of Palanpur and Pipli’s that is the local Gram Panchayat’s biggest failure. There was no perceived dif­fer­ence between the implementation of de­velopment pro­jects before versus after the institutionalization of the new Gram Panchayats in both villages. While the local pres­ence of those respons­ible for pro­ject implementation in the aftermath of the 1995 elections made the absence of functioning social de­velopment pro­jects more notice­able, this did not affect survey respondents’, key informants’, or focus groups’ perceptions – most pro­ jects were simply not implemented before or after 1993. Contrary to what one might expect, the few programs that were spor­adic­ally functioning were no more focused on beneficiary needs than they were prior to elections. The types of pro­ jects implemented, for example under the former Integrated Rural Development

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   167 Program (IRDP), did not change in nature, sim­ilarly to what was found by other case studies in UP (Crook and Manor 1998) and in contrast to the village studies in Karnataka. The stagnation in social de­velopment pro­jects in these villages occurred despite a real increase in funding for many of these programs at the national level and slight increased alloca­tions for the villages at the district and block levels. Development funds con­tinued to be pocketed by gov­ern­ment and local officials before and after the implementation of the new panchayat system.

The vicious circle of nonfunctioning local governments and stagnating wellbeing Nearly two decades after the passage of the Panchayat Raj Amendment and 16 years after the first constitutionally mandated Gram Panchayat elections were held in Uttar Pradesh, there is little in­dica­tion that the Gram Panchayats have helped to improve social wellbeing in Palanpur and Pipli. Stark social cleavages and an envir­on­ment where polit­ical par­ties appeal to caste and religious identi­ ties have made for local elections, which – though com­petit­ive because elections are contested by mul­tiple par­ties and mul­tiple indi­viduals running for the same seat – reinforce caste and religious cleavages (Pai 2001). A local gov­ern­ment seat won in the villages is used as a mech­an­ism for enriching the elected repre­ sentatives and their caste or religious constituents, hampering the targeted deliv­ ery of social ser­vices in these com­munit­ies. Popular parti­cipa­tion in local elections con­tinued to remain high, but there were in­dica­tions of fraud in the selection of the pradhan, and once elected, demo­cratic GPs were essentially defunct in both villages. The village councils (Gram Sabhas) and GP meetings rarely took place. Most panchayat members were unaware of Gram Panchayat budgets or alloca­tions and none had convened any of the social de­velopment committees they were urged to do by law. While groups formerly excluded from the realm of local gov­ern­ment now had panchayat seats reserved for them and thereby gained access to the domain of local power, these newly included groups did not wield any real power. In some instances they gained access to the kick­ backs within the sys­tem, but formally they did not parti­cip­ate in the management of local gov­ern­ment in any demo­cratic sense. The already low quality of governance was essentially unchanged among local gov­ern­ment representatives as well as civil ser­vants delivering social ser­ vices to the villages. From pub­lic school teachers to village health workers and distributors of PDS goods, no one became more account­able as a result of the elected Gram Panchayat. Virtually no asso­ci­ational activity or examples of col­ lect­ive action existed in these villages before the election of the new Gram Pan­ chayats and this did not change after the elections. When survey respondents were asked if there were asso­ci­ations in the village where people of different caste and religious backgrounds would meet, none of the 80 respondents answered affirmatively. The lack of asso­ci­ations that could have provided a meeting forum for villagers of different caste backgrounds meant that there was little inter­action between members of different religious groups or caste

168   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power backgrounds, even if they had common socio­economic inter­ests. Political par­ties did not have any village-­level pres­ence in either village studied. Moreover, the absence of asso­ci­ations in these UP villages in addition to the deep and persist­ ent social cleavages meant there were no co­ali­tions that formed around social wel­fare issues, which could have provided a check against the dominance of tra­ ditional upper-­caste village elites. While women and people of SC/ST background in Palanpur and Pipli can now parti­cip­ate in local gov­ern­ment that was formerly the realm of the upper castes, there is little evid­ence that this access to positions of power has changed the dy­namics of power and corruption or gen­eral social inter­actions in the village. There is no in­dica­tion that Gram Panchayats have improved social infra­ structure or implementation of social programs. Moreover, since the findings in these two villages in western UP mirror findings about the overall functioning of local gov­ern­ments in UP (Lieten and Srivastava 1999), there is little hope that the mere exist­ence of Gram Panchayats will improve social wellbeing in this part of India. A clear lesson which emerges from these village studies is that mandating the election and formation of local gov­ern­ments per se does not lead to improved social wellbeing, par­ticu­larly not when it takes place in an envir­on­ment of deep social cleavages, polit­ical par­ties and social mobil­iza­tion along religious and caste lines rather than across social cleavages. In this envir­on­ment there is no sociopolit­ical counterweight to traditional and newly emerging village elites such as local gov­ern­ment leaders. Without structural, social or polit­ical incen­ tives to cooperate with elected local gov­ern­ments, the village elite con­tinued to dominate pub­lic resource alloca­tion and pilfer pub­lic funds. Even having a pro­ gressive composition of local gov­ern­ment representatives through the implemen­ tation of quotas, does not by itself led to improved social indic­ators. As seen in Pipli and Palanpur, implementation of the 73rd Amendment has changed the fea­ tures of local gov­ern­ment, but not how it functions. Local gov­ern­ments in these villages are essentially nom­inal. They do not function in the demo­cratic and par­ ticipatory manner mandated and have therefore do not lead to increasing social wellbeing. Moreover, in the traditional social envir­on­ment of UP with enduring social cleavages and a civil soci­ety that is unlikely to hold the local gov­ern­ment account­able, just mandating the elections of local gov­ern­ments at the village level, without commensurate awareness-­raising of how the Gram Panchayats are to function and what their powers are, is unlikely to lead to local gov­ern­ments that are able to function and ensure better social wellbeing of the poorer villagers. However, while the overall findings are pess­im­istic re­gard­ing the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to improve social wel­fare in these villages, even in such a highly inequit­able and socially stagnant situ­ation, there is never­the­less some in­dica­tion that local gov­ern­ments may in the longer run con­trib­ute to gen­eral social wel­fare in a number of subtle ways. First, decentralization of power to local gov­ern­ments can help “root” demo­cracy. The extent to which the imple­ mentation of the panchayat raj amend­ment results in the actual practice of local

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   169 demo­cracy depends on existing social structures, the local village elites, and asso­ci­ational life in the village. Even in villages such as Palanpur and Pipli, with a highly structured caste and class sys­tem, no his­tory of demo­cratic local gov­ ern­ments, and little asso­ci­ational life, villagers turned out in record numbers to vote in the Gram Panchayat elections. For the first time, seats were reserved for women and members of SC/ST/OBC backgrounds. Groups often excluded from the realm of power now practiced demo­cracy by voting and, at least nom­inally, by being Gram Panchayat members. Although parti­cipa­tion by vulner­able groups is still far from ideal, the very pro­cess of selecting, cam­paigning, and voting for local representatives was demo­cracy in action, as was the attempt to remove the pradhan. Ironically, cor­ ruption was “demo­cratized” by providing social groups and women who had been formerly excluded from power, access to pub­lic funds previously pocketed by upper caste men. Leakages of funds from the anti-­poverty and social pol­icy programs were obviously taking place since many of the programs investigated were at best only minimally opera­tional, yet some of these funds were now flowing into the pockets of local gov­ern­ment officials who were formerly excluded from local power: women, Muslims, or people of OBC/SC/ST background. Second, while the new Gram Panchayat sys­tem has provided a base for improving account­abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments and local delivery of pub­lic ser­ vices, there were no respons­ible local gov­ern­ments in place in these villages in 2000 or 2007/2008. The findings indicate that local gov­ern­ment’s abil­ity to bring about improvements in social wel­fare in these UP villages is not evid­ent. However, enforcing account­abil­ity of gov­ern­ment and social ser­vices can best be accomplished by those who interact with these officials and by the beneficiar­ ies of these ser­vices. When residents of Palanpur and Pipli elected local gov­ern­ ment representatives who were neigh­bors as well as members of their caste, gender, or religious group, they were able to “put a face” on gov­ern­ment. When these members did not perform the duties they were elected to, or were dishon­ est, villagers knew who was involved in the corruption and who was to blame. Similarly, when the pri­mary pub­lic school teacher did not come to school, when chil­dren did not get food through the Midday Meals Scheme, when goods were not distributed through the PDS sys­tem, or the village health care worker did not provide any health ser­vices, villagers knew, at a min­imum, that the delivery of these pub­lic social ser­vices could have been improved by the Gram Panchayat. This slowly increasing aware­ness is the first step towards demanding greater account­abil­ity. One of the few examples of col­lect­ive action in these villages – the peti­tion to have the pradhan of Palanpur removed – failed, but attempting his removal would have been im­pos­sible before 1993. This was a small step taken towards increasing accountability Finally, the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem has started to change social inter­ actions among villagers living in a highly structured com­mun­ity, albeit very slowly. The reser­va­tion of seats in the new Gram Panchayat sys­tem gave often-­ excluded groups nom­inal access to a domain of power that was his­tor­ically the

170   Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power realm of upper caste members. Voting for panchayat members who were of SC background, Muslims or women, even if they were only token representatives, provided younger people from dis­advant­aged backgrounds with new role models. Because the traditional elite now had to cam­paign for the vote of for­ merly excluded cit­izens and also had to vote for representatives who were from dis­advant­aged backgrounds, inter­actions are slowly changing between the tradi­ tional elite, the newly emerging elites in the form of GP members and the pradhan in par­ticu­lar, and members of dis­advant­aged com­munit­ies. The tradi­ tional village elites can no longer regard village gov­ern­ment as their inherited domain. Changing caste, class, and gender perceptions provide oppor­tun­ities for col­lect­ive mobil­iza­tion and action. Very slowly, the groundwork for demo­ cratizing social inter­actions and thereby improving social wel­fare is being laid. Table 5.3 Uttar Pradesh: results of selected questions from sample survey in each village, 2000, numbers responding positively (percentages in parentheses)

Voted in last national elections Thought last national elections were fair Voted in last GP elections Thought last GP elections were fair Campaigned for the election of a GP member Knew the name of GP representative(s) Have participated in a meeting of the village electorate There are working social welfare programs in village GP is instrumental in delivering these social services There are working anti-poverty programs in village GP is instrumental in delivering these anti-poverty programs GP has been able to satisfy the most important needs in the village More voice under new GP system Less violence in 2000 compared to 1990 Rule of law has improved between 1990 and 2000 Government has become more effective Administrative burden has decreased Accountability has improved Corruption has decreased Was better off in 2000 compared to 1990 Of those who were better off, those who said they were better off due to the GP There are associations (bridging religion and caste) in this village Have participated in associations in last five years Have had any contact with their GP member Have contacted their GP representative for help in the last five years

Palanpur (n = 40)

Pipli (n = 40)

Total (n = 80)

34 20 40 28 9 26 11

36 21 38 30 4 25 13

70 (88%) 41 (51%) 78 (98%) 58 (73%) 13 (16%) 51 (64%) 24 (30%)

8 4 9 3

8 7 10 10

16 (20%) 11 (14%) 19 (24%) 13 (16%)

6

15

21 (26%)

6 7 7 2 3 2 0 25 2

12 3 5 2 7 5 2 25 0

18 (23%) 10 (13%) 12 (15%)   4 (5%) 10 (13%)   7 (9%)   2 (3%) 50 (63%)   2 (2%)

0

0

  0 (0%)

0 6 7

0 10 13

  0 (0%) 16 (20%) 20 (25%)

Uttar Pradesh – fractionalized power   171 Despite these few glim­mers of hope, the overall lesson on decentralization in an envir­on­ment of deep and enduring social cleavages is evid­ent: Decentraliza­ tion of administrative and polit­ical power in settings such as those found in the villages of Uttar Palanpur and Pipli in Uttar Pradesh is unlikely to bring about better targeting and decreased corruption in the distribution of social programs in the short or even medium term. In this type of envir­on­ment of locally domi­ nant groups and rigid social cleavages, it is only in the long term that the elec­ tion of village gov­ern­ments will be able to break through estab­lished patronage and power networks.

6 Political power, local governments, and social welfare

In India, the exten­sion of demo­cratic pol­itics and elect­oral parti­cipa­tion to village gov­ern­ments in 1993 broadened the scope and depth of Indian demo­ cracy. Village-­level demo­cratic structures rooted and flourished in some states of the coun­try, engaging women and lower castes, delivering social ser­vices and anti-­poverty programs to those in need, and con­trib­ut­ing to the improved wellbe­ ing of their constituents. In other Indian states, how­ever, the very same local gov­ern­ment structure is only nom­inally demo­cratic. In these states, socio­ economic or polit­ical elites capture ser­vices intended for the indigent while a disengaged civil soci­ety is unable to demand account­abil­ity from their local gov­ ern­ments. These differing depths of local governance in each Indian state are due to the unique state-­level polit­ical soil in which each decentralized local gov­ern­ ment structure has been planted. Some have a his­tory of functioning local gov­ ern­ments, rich in bridging social cleavages, and polit­ically com­petit­ive envir­on­ments that in turn prevent the capture of pub­lic ser­vices by local elites, and a mobilized civil soci­ety that holds their gov­ern­ment more account­able. Other states have less fertile soil for decentralization to grow. State-­level factors determine the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to thrive or not, and therefore need to be understood if we are to gain a holistic understanding of the bar­riers to effect­ive decentralization and improved targeting of pub­lic ser­ vices. Sole re­li­ance on top-­down, central government-­funded anti-­poverty inter­ ven­tions alone will not help lift the masses out of pov­erty. India has a plethora of anti-­poverty programs, pub­lic education, and health care initiatives, yet the actual amount of these programs reaching their intended beneficiaries is often quite low, with some studies finding that malpractice amongst local gov­ern­ment administrators led to no more than 25 percent of the enti­tle­ment actu­ally reach­ ing the poor (Nayak et al. 2002). Rajiv Gandhi, a former Indian prime min­is­ter, is supposed to have said that only 15 percent of pub­lic spending on the poor actu­ally reached them, with the rest being siphoned off (Polgreen 2010). Targeting of resources to indigent groups is par­ticu­larly low in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and conventional explanations of differential eco­nomic growth or reformist state-­level gov­ern­ments are insufficient for explaining diver­ gent social outcomes. Economic growth creates the resources for financing social wel­fare programs and there is some evid­ence showing that strong and pro-­poor

Political power, local governments, social welfare   173 state gov­ern­ments have been more effect­ive at implementing pro-­poor pol­icies (Kohli 1987). Yet in the longer term even a number of Indian states that have high growth rates, such as Uttaranchal between 2001 and 2005, or have pro-­poor gov­ern­ments, such as West Bengal, have failed to ensure equit­able and success­ ful implementation of social programs at the local level. Just having the resources and/or a pro-­poor polit­ical orientation is not enough. What is needed in addition to an eco­nomic and polit­ically ad­vant­ageous envir­on­ment are account­able local gov­ern­ments that are engaged in the targeted delivery of social ser­vices at the local level – the level where inter­ven­tions mat­ter for changing people’s lives. Decentralization ad­voc­ates have heralded the devolution of powers to the local level as en­ab­ling more efficient implementation of local programs. It is this promise of decentralization’s abil­ity to influence changes in indic­ators of social wellbeing – from pov­erty rates to education and health indic­ators – that lends urgency to research aimed at understanding the remaining bar­riers to effect­ive local gov­ern­ments. India’s consti­tu­tionally mandated sys­tem of local gov­ern­ ment, the panchayat sys­tem, was heralded as a means for furthering social well­ being. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment, which directed the uniform institutionalization of panchayats throughout the coun­try, instructs: . . . devolution by the State Legislature of powers and respons­ibil­ities upon the Panchayats with respect to the pre­para­tion of plans for eco­nomic de­velopments and social justice and for the implementation of de­velopment schemes . . . (Government of India 1992) Nearly two decades after the 1993 passage of the 73rd Amendment, this village-­ level research in three Indian states has provided evid­ence that local gov­ern­ ments mat­ter for improving wellbeing. As repres­ented by Figure 6.1, having a polit­ically com­petit­ive local envir­on­ment, a mobilized civil soci­ety that is able to hold local gov­ern­ments account­able, and local elites who work within the demo­ cratic framework rather than coopting pub­lic bene­fits for themselves, are three factors crucial to the successful functioning of Gram Panchayats. When these sociopolit­ical elements are in place, local gov­ern­ments function according to their mandate. They are also able to better target anti-­poverty programs and ensure the functioning of social programs such as health and education ser­vices at the village level, as seen in the study villages in Karnataka. Village studies in West Bengal, where elected local gov­ern­ments have been operating for over three decades, are par­ticu­larly illustrative of the necessity of a polit­ically com­ petit­ive envir­on­ment for ensuring that social wel­fare programs reach the targeted audience. In the case of West Bengal, the new village elite are those who belong to the CPI(M) and other par­ties of the LFG, which has ruled the state since 1977. As seen in the villages studies in Uttar Pradesh, the absence of all these factors led to local gov­ern­ments which, although elected and inclusive of more social groups, were used as vehicles for self-­enrichment of elected local officials.

174   Political power, local governments, social welfare These studies highlight that the nature of sociopolit­ical con­ditions under which local gov­ern­ments function mat­ter to social wellbeing. When Gram Pan­ chayats function as the 73rd Constitutional Amendment intended, they enable better targeting and delivery of pub­lic ser­vices and this in turn leads to increased social wellbeing. This occurs through three overlapping paths. First, a function­ ing local gov­ern­ment puts a “face” on gov­ern­ments, making contact with gov­ ern­ment and the bur­eau­cracy more access­ible and improving account­abil­ity and governance within local gov­ern­ments. Second, the pro­cess of having local elec­ tions, village-­level meetings to determine beneficiaries of social wel­fare pro­ grams, and a functioning local gov­ern­ment with its sub-­committees on different aspects of village wel­fare, makes for a more representative local gov­ern­ment. This gov­ern­ment is more likely to target social wel­fare programs to those in greatest need if the local gov­ern­ments are not captured by local polit­ical, social or eco­nomic elites. Finally, a functioning local gov­ern­ment helps to “root demo­ cracy” by increasing demo­cratic behavior and demo­cratic expectations, height­ ening aware­ness of indi­vidual rights and increasing the demand for and accessibility of social services.

Specific findings from the village studies How is the local Panchayat system perceived? By the mid-­1990s panchayat elections had been held in all three case study states and by 2011 all case study states had held at least three panchayat elections. Voter turnout in the first round of elections was extremely high in all three states, as in the six villages studied. In West Bengal the popu­la­tion was accustomed to voting in regu­lar panchayat elections and the turnout was slightly lower than in

Politically competitive local environment, including elections

Mobilized civil society

Local elites who are constrained by cleavagebridging political competition and an active civil society to “buy into” the local government system

Democratically functioning and accountable local governments

Improved social wellbeing

Figure 6.1 Factors that enable local governments to contribute to improved social wellbeing.

Political power, local governments, social welfare   175 the other two states, while in Karnataka the popu­la­tion had some ex­peri­ence with voting for local gov­ern­ments, yet never­the­less turned out in high numbers. The post-­1993 elections were the first time in all three states that one-­third of all panchayat seats were reserved for female representatives and a percentage of seats were reserved for SC/ST members. Many villagers who were not part of the village social or polit­ical elite and who had tradi­tion­ally been excluded from positions of local power now had a chance to stand for election for the first time. The most frequent rationale given by inter­viewees and survey respondents for the extremely high turnout at the first local elections after adoption of the 73rd Amendment was that many were excited to directly elect their panchayat members. This was par­ticu­larly the case in the two villages in Uttar Pradesh where voting in local elections for women or SC/ST was a nov­elty. Some informants genu­inely hoped that having a panchayat representative from their own caste, religion, class, or gender would help improve their lives. When pressed further on how specifically they envisioned the election of Gram Pan­ chayat members improving their lives, the answers ranged from gen­eral hopes of better schools and pri­mary health care pro­vi­sion in the village to specifics such as hoping to get the widow’s pension that they had not been receiving. Villagers explained that the excitement of being able to vote for female repre­ sentatives or representatives of their religious or caste com­mun­ity galvanized voters to turn out in large numbers. They believed that having people they know represent them and be their interlocutors with gov­ern­ment officials in charge of dispensing social programs would gain them access to resources that they knew were being alloc­ated to the village but either were not being distributed or were not being distributed to the correct demographic. Moreover, after more than six decades of functioning demo­cracy, most informants perceived voting as a duty, even when people were sure that there was some fraud in the elections. In addition, local gov­ern­ment elections in India are held in the respective vil­ lages or in a neigh­boring village, which increased election booth accessibility and decreased secur­ity concerns, furthering panchayat election turnout. Research at the block and district level for all three states yielded in­forma­tion that local elections in all six villages in the mid-­1990s were peaceful. High voter turnout for Gram Panchayat elections in the mid-­1990s is corroborated by other studies (Kumar and Ghosh 1996; Subha 1997). By 2011 the nov­elty of local gov­ern­ment elections started to wear off, although elect­oral turnout for these elections remained about 60 percent in all three states. Electoral parti­cipa­tion in local gov­ern­ment elections still con­tinued to be high, despite increasing disillusionment with the pos­sib­il­ity that local gov­ ern­ment representatives would change their wellbeing, par­ticu­larly in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. While at the turn of the century the vast majority of respondents in all case studies thought that the local elections had been fair, by 2007/2008 differential trends in perceptions of local gov­ern­ment election fraud were found between the three states. In West Bengal in par­ticu­lar the majority of key informants inter­viewed in 2008 thought that the local elections had been rigged by local polit­ical elites.

176   Political power, local governments, social welfare In Karnataka most of those inter­viewed in 2008 responded with examples of the local gov­ern­ment in action. Villagers in Karnataka saw their panchayat’s involvement in nutritious Midday Meals, the local health worker center that pro­ vided a crêche, and the microfinance programs that enabled a women’s group to start a rabbit- and poultry-­raising business. By contrast, in the West Bengali vil­ lages those affiliated with the CPI(M) party were likely to dominate the local gov­ern­ment and pass out bene­fits to people based on party af­fili­ation rather than need. In private inter­views, some informants even talked about their instrumen­ tal joining of the CPI(M) party, in order to access pub­lic resources, or fend off land seizure for redistribution. In sharp contrast to the uniformly high rates of voter parti­cipa­tion in villages in all three states and the widespread sense of these elections being fair, a signi­ fic­antly lower percentage of those inter­viewed were aware of their local pancha­ yat structure and its workings in 2000 and in 2007/2008. As expected, the understanding of local gov­ern­ments was highest in West Bengal and lowest in Uttar Pradesh. While many knew the name of their pradhan (head of local gov­ ern­ment) and the majority of the survey respondents in all six villages could name some of their panchayat members, the percentage of people attending village assembly meetings was low in all three states.1 Most respondents seemed unaware that these meetings were a requirement under the new panchayat law or that parti­cipa­tion in the selection of beneficiaries for government-­sponsored de­velopment programs was their right. The majority of respondents in all three  states were also not aware that their Gram Panchayats were supposed to form committees on issues such as social justice, de­velopment and village edu­ cation. In Uttar Pradesh the majority of respondents were not aware of the law mandating these committees, while in West Bengal most respondents thought that these committees were something that the local Communist Party members organized. Interaction with panchayat members also differed by state. Most voters in the Uttar Pradesh villages did not have inter­actions with their own panchayat repre­ sentative, in contrast to voters in West Bengal and Karnataka. Of those people who contacted their representative for help, the majority of survey respondents in West Bengal and Karnataka expressed that they had received a response, again in contrast to Uttar Pradesh. However, in West Bengal many of the respondents thought that the speed and outcome of responses from local gov­ern­ ment representatives were de­pend­ent upon whether or not the person asking for help was a Communist Party member. Civil soci­ety engagement also clearly differed by state, with villagers in Uttar Pradesh being least engaged in contacting, lobbying, or protesting actions of panchayat members, compared to villagers in West Bengal and in Karnataka, which by 2008 showed the most engagement of villagers with their local gov­ern­ ments. Villagers in West Bengal and Karnataka also showed a greater under­ standing of the workings of local gov­ern­ment, which was not the norm in the Uttar Pradesh villages. Moreover, while at the turn of the century there were a few examples of col­lect­ive action detailed in the UP chapter, there were no such

Political power, local governments, social welfare   177 examples a decade later, providing less hope that the local gov­ern­ment in UP would lead to social wel­fare improvements. The villages in the three states also differed greatly in terms of pop­ular parti­ cipa­tion in local gov­ern­ments. In West Bengal, which has had functioning Gram Panchayats for over two decades, the understanding of and inter­action with local gov­ern­ments was highest, while it was lowest in Uttar Pradesh. Yet pop­ular parti­cipa­tion and responsiveness of local gov­ern­ments were not only a function of the length of their exist­ence. Of those who did contact their local gov­ern­ment representative for help, villagers in Karnataka were most likely to receive help re­gard­less of their personal background or af­fili­ation. By contrast, in West Bengal Communist Party mem­ber­ship influenced local gov­ern­ment responsive­ ness and in Uttar Pradesh there was little inter­action between the panchayat members and villagers and few distributed social benefits. Work done by Gram Panchayats In Uttar Pradesh the perception and evid­ence of work done by the Gram Pancha­ yats were minimal in 2000 and almost non-­existent in 2008. This contrasts greatly with West Bengal and par­ticu­larly Karnataka, where there is widespread evid­ence that Gram Panchayats are active in the delivery of social wel­fare program to the villagers. However, in the West Bengali villages there was a per­ vas­ive perception that Communist Party members were more likely to be program beneficiaries than the poor. In UP the lack of functioning local gov­ern­ ments was evid­enced everywhere, while in West Bengal follow-­up with the recipients of social wel­fare pro­jects showed not only clear linkages between those who were CPI(M) party members and pro­ject recipients but also that the pro­ject recipients, while poor, were not the neediest in the village. In Karnataka, by contrast, social wel­fare pro­jects were functioning and targeted to the indigent with little evid­ence of any other sociopolit­ical group capturing these bene­fits. Moreover, unlike in the Uttar Pradesh and West Bengali villages, there was little evid­ence in the villages studied in Karnataka that GP representatives who were members of a par­ticu­lar social or polit­ical background had captured bene­fits. Whether local gov­ern­ments were functioning and were captured by local elites clearly mat­tered for the implementation and targeting of social wel­fare pro­jects to the village indigent. Local gov­ern­ment elections have helped increase a sense of inclusion in all three states studied. In all three states, no group had a sense of being excluded from the Gram Panchayat candidate selection and election pro­cess. This is par­ ticu­larly note­worthy since one would have expected the village elites (social elites in the Uttar Pradesh villages, polit­ical elites in the West Bengali villages and socio­economic elites in the villages in Karnataka) to have been resentful of the encroachment on their traditional realm of power and therefore be more likely to be involved in fraudulent elections. The feedback from the villagers indicates that if the elections were unfair, the corruption was not due to village elites or a par­ticu­lar caste, but rather due to indi­viduals keen on securing their

178   Political power, local governments, social welfare position in the local gov­ern­ment or, in the case of West Bengal, the Communist Party using its well-­established local patronage networks to retain power. The local gov­ern­ment sys­tem had the most “demo­cratizing” impact in Karnataka, where women and lower castes were actively participating in local governments. The overall changes in governance as a result of Gram Panchayats present mixed results. In Uttar Pradesh there has been little change in voice, account­abil­ ity, or polit­ical stability since 1993. In West Bengal the dominance of the Com­ munist Party with its com­mit­ment to pov­erty alleviation and local governance has shown tan­gible results in helping improve the voice of groups formerly disenfranch­ised. At the same time, the abso­lute power that the par­ties of the LFG wield in many areas of West Bengal after decades of setting up patronage net­ works at the village level, has resulted in panchayat members who are also party members and are perceived as being less account­able than non-­party members. Another aspect of the quality of local governance, and thereby its capa­city to improve wellbeing, is its abil­ity to plan and implement sound pol­icies. This includes the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ment to implement programs entrusted to it by the central and state gov­ern­ments, to devise and implement its own pol­icies, and to interact with and oversee the local implementation of social programs by civil ser­vants. Local gov­ern­ment effect­iveness, in terms of quality of ser­vices provided and the abil­ity to do the things that they were mandated to do, did not change in the Uttar Pradesh or West Bengal villages, but improved in the Karna­ taka villages. The quality and frequency of social ser­vice delivery in Uttar Pradesh con­tinued to be low in 2010. In West Bengal and Karnataka these same social programs are functioning, though only in Karnataka did they appear to have improved from the early 1990s. The absence of Gram Panchayat account­abil­ity and effect­iveness in the two Uttar Pradesh and two West Bengali villages and their pres­ence in the two Kar­ nataka villages can be largely trace­able to the exist­ence of enforcement meas­ures and the level of polit­ical corruption in the sys­tem. The inter­views conducted in the villages abound with examples of socio­economic status (caste in par­ticu­lar) being associated with the degree of exemption under the law in Uttar Pradesh, while in West Bengal it is mem­ber­ship in a LFG party that correlated with the degree of exemption from the law. Social cleavages in UP remain strong, and caste cleavages par­ticu­larly so. Similarly in the West Bengali villages, those who were CPI(M) members and part of the well-­established polit­ical patronage network were more likely to receive social and mater­ial bene­fits through gov­ern­ ment programs, get gov­ern­ment jobs, and have criminal cases against them waived. Entrenched patronage networks, whether caste-­based or polit­ical, meant that those who were part of that network were less likely to be subject to the rule of law. General quality of governance The overall quality of village governance differed greatly by state. In Uttar Pradesh, there were low levels of governance before the implementation of the

Political power, local governments, social welfare   179 73rd Amendment, along with persistent social cleavages and a polit­ical sys­tem that focused on patronage. Institutionalizing local gov­ern­ments in this envir­on­ ment did not result in an overall improvement in governance quality. There was a lack of transparency with regard to how Gram Panchayats functioned and little sense of institutional recourse to hold the panchayats account­able. Most respond­ ents did not ex­peri­ence an improvement in voice, gov­ern­ment effect­iveness, level of regulation, rule of law or corruption in their village. Information obtained at the block and district level in each of the states corroborated that leakages from anti-­poverty programs were highest in UP. It was unclear whether most of these leakages of funds occurred at the state, district, block, or village level. All accounts, perceptions, an­ec­dotal evid­ence, as well as specific findings from this and other studies (Lieten and Srivastava 1999; P. Srivastava 2002), show that the gen­eral quality of governance did not change in villages studied in UP as a result of the election of new local governments. In West Bengal there was a signi­fic­ant sense of increased voice, par­ticu­larly among formerly disenfranch­ised groups throughout the 1990s. Local gov­ern­ ments were seen as being effect­ive and the regu­latory burden appeared to have decreased over the past decades with functioning local gov­ern­ments. Nearly 30 years of working local gov­ern­ment sys­tems had changed the way villagers inter­ acted with gov­ern­ment. Gram Panchayats were now usually the first stop for help on bur­eau­cratic issues. However, Gram Panchayat members who were also CPI(M) members were often seen as being above the law by informants. Find­ ings in Karnataka show that there was no one group that was seen as being above the law or respons­ible for the change in corruption. By contrast, implementation of the new Gram Panchayat gov­ern­ment in Uttar Pradesh and the sub­sequent election of local gov­ern­ments in the villages did not change the incentive structure to decrease corruption and implement social ser­ vices. But it did change the access to power. People who formerly were excluded from the realms of village gov­ern­ment were elected as local gov­ern­ment repre­ sentatives. Yet without functioning village assemblies, sub-­committees to oversee social ser­vice delivery, or Gram Panchayat meetings, and without a sys­tem that provided transparent accounting of receipts and expenditures by the Gram Panchayat to the villagers, there was no cred­ible threat to panchayat members to dissuade them from partaking in the sys­tem of corruption. In West Bengal over two decades of functioning Gram Panchayats has led to formerly disenfranch­ised groups becoming actively involved in local gov­ern­ ments. Yet, the very same dominance of the Left Front Government for over three decades, which enabled a focus on pov­erty and other social programs, also meant a concentration of power. Increasingly this one-­party rule means that local gov­ern­ment members who are also LFG co­ali­tion party members are seen as being above the law and engaged in corrupt practices. In Karnataka the short but pos­it­ive ex­peri­ence with local gov­ern­ments during the 1980s increased the per­ ception that village gov­ern­ments could bring about great change. Not only are the formerly disenfranch­ised included in the village gov­ern­ment but they actively parti­cip­ate in the functioning of their local gov­ern­ments. Moreover,

180   Political power, local governments, social welfare com­peti­tion among various groups in running the village gov­ern­ments also con­ trib­utes to an envir­on­ment in which corruption is less likely to happen. Overall, the findings indicate that the pres­ence of the new panchayat sys­tem at the local level did not deter panchayat members or cit­izens directly from engaging in corrupt practices. Corruption, practices that led to personal enrich­ ment or the enrichment of people affiliated with Gram Panchayat members by being members of the same familial or polit­ical background, did not disappear because there were locally elected gov­ern­ments in any of the three states. However, since local representatives were directly involved in management and distribution of social wel­fare programs, villagers could link a “face” to who is respons­ible for a certain program’s functioning, or lack thereof. ‘Putting this face’ on gov­ern­ment and governance meant that praise as well as dissatis­fac­tion with local gov­ern­ment representatives could be channeled towards specific people, as in fact it was in a couple of instances in the villages studied in UP. Local government ability to cut across social cleavages Differential de­velopment and social inter­action in the three states are also due to differing functioning of local gov­ern­ments and their abil­ity to or­gan­ize meeting fora that cut across social cleavages. There are two ways in which this can take place. One is through more institutionalized meeting space. Gram Panchayats are mandated to have meetings of the representatives to run the local gov­ern­ment. In addition, sub-­committees are supposed to be formed to more closely ana­lyze how to improve various aspects of village life, and twice a year all villagers of voting age are supposed to gather to discuss pri­or­ities for the local gov­ern­ment’s de­velopment agenda. In all three types of institutionalized meeting fora, groups of different caste, class, gender, and religion meet and work together. The other way in which greater inter­action amongst people of different social backgrounds can take place is more informal, but the Gram Panchayat can also facilitate it. The very exist­ence of local gov­ern­ments can lead to formations of social cleavage-­ bridging groups and aids the inter­actions among people of different backgrounds. In the Uttar Pradesh villages, where the panchayats themselves rarely met, sub-­committees did not form and village-­level meetings of the voting popu­la­tion rarely took place; there was no institutionalized meeting space that provided a forum for inter­action that cut across social cleavages. The local gov­ern­ments also did not facilitate the cre­ation of informal meeting space for people of differ­ ent backgrounds and examples of col­lect­ive action across social groups were few. Established patterns of inter­action were not broken and inter­actions among people of different caste, religion, gender, or class remained limited, resulting in less gen­eral understanding of pov­erty and social prob­lems among the villagers and less resolve across groups to work col­lect­ively to improve gen­eral social wel­fare. Village civil soci­ety was also less likely to gather across caste divides to hold their local gov­ern­ments accountable. In West Bengal, Gram Panchayat and Sabha meetings took place regu­larly and most Gram Panchayat sub-­committees were functioning. People of different

Political power, local governments, social welfare   181 socio­economic backgrounds had venues for interacting across religious and caste divides, in turn encouraging more civic and demo­cratic behavior, including a greater willingness to improve social wel­fare for all villagers. However, the increasing dominance of the LFG over the last decades and the associated increase in corruption and lack of account­abil­ity has eroded some of these gains. Groups who have not bene­fited as much as others and who con­tinue to be amongst the poorest groups in the villages, such as the scheduled tribes in par­ ticu­lar, con­tinue to bene­fit less from social wel­fare programs. This has led to increased resentment, straining the more pos­it­ive vehicles of cross-­cleavage inter­action and exacerbating polit­ical volatility and extremism. In both the vil­ lages studied in West Bengal, CPI(M) members dominated the local gov­ern­ment with little polit­ical contestation in Gram Panchayat elections and a leakage of social wel­fare programs to CPI(M) members, who were not the poorest. These findings mirror sim­ilar findings in a recent quantitative study of local gov­ern­ ments and the targeting of social wel­fare programs in West Bengal (Bardhan and Mokherjee 2006). In Karnataka, Gram Panchayat and Sabha meetings did take place. Villagers there had a brief recent his­tory of well-­functioning Gram Panchayats, which were able to accomplish many improvements in social wel­fare in the short time they were functioning during the 1980s (Crook and Manor 1998; Manor 2006). After implementing the new local gov­ern­ment sys­tem in 1993, respondents expressed an aware­ness of the ad­vant­ages of functioning local gov­ern­ments and institutionalized meetings that cut across social cleavages. The results from the villages studied in Karnataka differed notably from the findings in UP and West Bengal in that no one par­ticu­lar polit­ical or social group was seen as dispropor­ tionately reaping the gains from social wel­fare programs. In Karnataka, villagers attend village-­level meetings without a sense that meeting outcomes were prede­ termined. Social wel­fare programs were functioning as in West Bengal, but with the dif­fer­ence that the programs in Karnataka appeared to be better targeted to the poorest, rather than to those who had a par­ticu­lar party affiliation.

Did social wellbeing change as a result of Panchayats? Changes in the local polit­ical structure through the election of Gram Panchayats set in motion the pos­sib­il­ity for improving social wellbeing through increased oppor­tun­ities for oversight, implementation, and account­abil­ity of social pro­ grams. The new sys­tem also brought the pos­sib­il­ity of oversight of these pro­ grams closer to their intended beneficiaries. In the village studies in Uttar Pradesh, there was no direct evid­ence of improved social wellbeing as a result of local gov­ern­ments’ inter­ven­tions. The previous study of one of the villages in Uttar Pradesh docu­ments a few improve­ ments in the village seen in 1997, such as the new private school and a better functioning gov­ern­ment school, yet finds that overall there was little in­dica­tion of improved wel­fare (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). The vast majority of villagers inter­viewed for the UP case studies said that they were better off in 2000 and

182   Political power, local governments, social welfare better again in 2008. Moreover, visual assessment of inter­viewees’ homes and the village overall sup­ported these findings: more houses were built out of bricks as opposed to mud, more people owned televisions, bicycles, and radios. Yet there was no change in the pro­vi­sion of pub­lic ser­vices such as pri­mary educa­ tion or basic health care and the poorest residents of both villages still lived in mud huts, received a fraction of the subsidized grains that they were entitled to, and had not had access to most anti-­poverty programs. Significantly, virtually none of them thought that the Gram Panchayat con­trib­uted to changes in their wellbeing. Almost no respondents in 2000, or key informants in 2008 (including Gram Panchayat members themselves), thought that their local gov­ern­ment had helped improve their lives. Most of the informants stated that if there was a change in their wellbeing, it was entirely due to their own work or misfortune. Respondents in West Bengal, in 2000 and again in 2008, also thought they were better off, but in contrast to Uttar Pradesh, many attributed the changes in wellbeing directly to the work done by local gov­ern­ments. The his­tor­ical evid­ ence for local gov­ern­ments improving wellbeing is abundant in studies in West Bengal, where the Gram Panchayats were the implementers of land reforms as well as the driving force behind the distribution of social wel­fare bene­fits since their institutionalization in 1977 (Lieten 1992; Harriss 1993). Gram Panchayats in the two villages studied started adult lit­er­acy programs, hired poorer residents to build pub­lic dirt roads and dig wells, and built up a good pri­mary health care sys­tem. The pres­ence of functioning local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal was directly respons­ible for helping to improve social wellbeing in the villages. However, those who were clearly identi­fi­able as the poorest in both villages, people of ST background in par­ticu­lar, were not the main beneficiaries of these programs. In Karnataka the majority of people inter­viewed in both village studies reported being better off in 2000 and again in 2008. Moreover, in 2000, while the proportion of respondents attributing their changed wel­fare to local gov­ern­ ment work was not as high as in West Bengal, this changed markedly only eight years later. In the Karnataka villages local gov­ern­ments were functioning and the social wel­fare programs they managed showed greater evid­ence of targeting than in the other two case study states. Functioning local gov­ern­ments were active in improving the social wellbeing of their constituents, the poor in par­ ticu­lar. By 2008 the poorer residents in both villages in Karnataka were sending their chil­dren to the local pub­lic school where the teachers were present and the Midday Meals program provided the chil­dren with nutritious meals. A women’s group in the poorer part of one village received a pub­lic micro-­finance loan through their local panchayat and was raising poultry and rabbits. Several indi­ gent residents in one of the villages had built one-­room brick houses with pub­lic funds received through their local gov­ern­ments and many people of Scheduled Tribe background had been able to build toilets in their homes with pub­lic funding distributed through their local panchayat. A decade after their reinstitu­ tion, the panchayats in Karnataka were able to improve the social wel­fare of some people in their villages.

Political power, local governments, social welfare   183

What enables functioning local governments? Local gov­ern­ments can enable better functioning pub­lic ser­vices and target anti-­ poverty programs to improve social wellbeing espe­cially of the indigent – or local gov­ern­ments can prevent pub­lic programs from being delivered. These are two divergent outcomes and yet they were the result of the same decentralized structure mandated in India in 1993. As seen in the case studies of villages in Karnataka, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh, the outcomes predicted by conven­ tional polit­ical science and eco­nomic growth theories are in reality not uniform. Conventional theories of decentralization and the causal linkages they imply are not as robust as earl­ier, national-­level studies imply. Decentralization can result in enhanced governance, delivery of social ser­vices and improved social wellbe­ ing – but it need not. The theor­et­ical models that explain divergent social outcomes at subnational levels are contested. Scholars of polit­ical science have argued that pov­erty reduc­ tion and social improvements have been most successful in states run by gov­ern­ ments with a pro-­poor orientation and a strong subnational identity, while eco­nom­ists have argued that states with a higher eco­nomic growth rate should see greater reductions in pov­erty and improvements in social wellbeing. In India, none of these theories explains divergent social outcomes. Pro-­poor state gov­ ern­ments with strong subnational identities in West Bengal have not led to large reductions in pov­erty or improvements in social indic­ators, while medium-­ growth states like Karnataka have surpassed some higher growth states like Punjab over the past two decades. This ten­sion between the promise of decen­ tralization and conventional explanations of divergent social outcomes on the one hand, and the reality in different parts of India on the other hand, is evid­ent in this study. Constitutionally mandated decentralization became the law with the adoption of the 73rd Amendment in India in 1993. The respons­ib­ility for socio­economic de­velopment had been given to local gov­ern­ments who received increased pub­lic resources from their states and the central gov­ern­ment, and the implementation of anti-­poverty and social wel­fare programs came under the purview of local gov­ern­ments. Increased powers and fin­an­cial wherewithal in a demo­cratic frame­ work provided local gov­ern­ments in India with the basis for more targeted deliv­ ery of social programs. Moreover, a uniform structure of decentralized gov­ern­ments in large states, mandated quotas for inclusion of women, tribal groups and lower castes, and local gov­ern­ment respons­ib­ility for the social and eco­nomic advancement of their constituents, had raised hopes that decentralized local gov­ern­ments would not only help deepen demo­cracy, but also improve social wellbeing, par­ticu­larly of the poorest. Yet social indic­ators in 2011 dif­ fered widely between Indian states, as did the rate of changes in these indic­ators between 1993 and 2011. Village studies in the states of Karnataka, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh found that local gov­ern­ments varied in their efficacy and therefore delivery of social ser­vices and anti-­poverty programs. Specifically, the extent of polit­ical

184   Political power, local governments, social welfare com­peti­tion, the mobil­iza­tion of civil soci­ety, and elite buy-­in enabled varying degrees of functioning of these decentralized structures. These three explan­at­ory frameworks for understanding differential outcomes presented in the introduc­ tory chapter and in Table 6.1, when taken together, provide a holistic framework for understanding the varying impact of decentralization on social wellbeing. Political competition is important . . . Decentralized governance structures that function in an envir­on­ment of com­ petit­ive local elections, where the people who are seeking to represent constitu­ ents in local gov­ern­ments are allowed to compete on the basis of polit­ical par­ties which all have a chance of winning, and where elections result in a turnover of elected representatives, should yield better functioning local governance struc­ tures, according to the theory outlined in Chapter 1. At the subnational level in India, states with more com­petit­ive elections that resulted in a turnover of par­ties at the state and local levels would see larger improvements in social wellbeing. Village studies in the three states indicate that this hypo­thesis best explains the middling case of West Bengal’s panchayats. In West Bengal, where the CPI(M) party-­led Left Front Government (LFG) has ruled the state and has won the vast majority of local gov­ern­ment elections since 1977, the lack of polit­ical com­peti­ tion over three decades has counteracted the Left Front Government’s pro-­poor polit­ical platform. While pov­erty reduction, land reform, and social improve­ ments for the indigent were the platform that catapulted them to power, the lack of polit­ical par­ties that have been able to pose a cred­ible challenge to the Left Front Government decreased the party-­dominated local gov­ern­ments’ account­ abil­ity and impetus for delivering on elect­oral promises. Public programs intended for the poor and vulner­able are being distributed by CPI(M)-run local gov­ern­ments based on party af­fili­ation rather than need. Under these circum­ stances, the new West Bengal panchayat law did not lead to signi­fic­ant improve­ ments in social wellbeing, with pub­lic resources intended for the indigent leaking to those belonging to the party in power. In contrast to West Bengal, polit­ically com­petit­ive elections took place in Karnataka and to a large degree in Uttar Pradesh. However, efficacy of local gov­ern­ments in these two states differed greatly, highlighting that polit­ical com­ peti­tion on its own lacked explan­at­ory power in causing these differential out­ comes. Local gov­ern­ment elections that were ostens­ibly fought on a non-­party Table 6.1  Enabling conditions in the three case study states History of democratically elected PRIs Yes Yes No

Karnataka West Bengal Uttar Pradesh

Politically competitive environment

Mobilized Civil Society

Socio-political elites, which are able to capture benefits

Yes No Somewhat

Yes Yes No

No Yes Yes

Political power, local governments, social welfare   185 basis in Karnataka, but where village residents knew the candidate’s polit­ical views through their cam­paign platform, led to issue-­focused local elect­oral cam­ paigns, mirroring statewide election cam­paigns and results. In Uttar Pradesh, where polit­ical par­ties appealed to the numerically large Scheduled Castes, local gov­ern­ment elections were com­petit­ive yet elect­oral platforms were often dominated by divisive social cleavages rather than a focus on polit­ical issues and  social cleavage-­bridging social issues, with con­sequences for social wellbeing. A mobilized civil society can improve local government accountability . . . There was a greater level of civil soci­ety mobil­iza­tion among residents of the Karnataka and West Bengali villages compared to the village residents in Uttar Pradesh. Citizens in the villages in Karnataka were more know­ledge­able about their gov­ern­ments, more likely to contact their local gov­ern­ment representatives when needed, and more likely to work across religious and caste lines to rally for a cause. Residents of the villages in Karnataka and West Bengal were also more likely to parti­cip­ate in their local gov­ern­ment meetings. The more engaged civil soci­ety had led to a mobilized electorate in West Bengal, espe­cially in the early 1980s. However, while in Karnataka civil soci­ety functioned in an envir­on­ ment of polit­ical com­peti­tion and the combination of these two factors produced more account­able local gov­ern­ments, the mobilized civil soci­ety in West Bengal had very few avenues for dissent or complaint. Local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal were less account­able than their counterparts in Karnataka, since local as well as upper levels of gov­ern­ment in West Bengal were captured by CPI(M) party members, leaving civil soci­ety little recourse for complaint. Many civil soci­ety organ­iza­tions in the West Bengali villages studied, ranging from farmers’ asso­ci­ations to women’s asso­ci­ations, were in fact set up by the CPI(M). The highly engaged civil soci­ety in West Bengal was mobilized by the dominant party and was not differentiated from the new polit­ical elites in these West Bengal villages. The civil soci­ety organ­iza­tions in these villages were therefore also not able to provide an inde­pend­ent counterweight to village elites. By con­ trast, in Karnataka an active social capital and engaged civil soci­ety, in an envir­ on­ment of polit­ical com­peti­tion, led local gov­ern­ments to be more responsive and to effect­ively provide pub­lic programs and social ser­vices. A more aware cit­izenry put pressure on local gov­ern­ments and bur­eau­crats to deliver more effect­ive social ser­vices or face the signi­fic­ant threat of loss at the next local gov­ern­ment elections. . . . And the buy-­in of sociopolitical elites matters Sociopolit­ical elites, par­ticu­larly upper castes, have his­tor­ically wielded signi­fic­ ant power within India’s villages and this con­tinued to be the case in Uttar Pradesh, despite the implementation of elected local gov­ern­ments in 1993. With

186   Political power, local governments, social welfare the advent of elected local gov­ern­ments and the access to power of women and lower castes, upper castes in the villages of Uttar Pradesh saw their traditional sociopolit­ical power and dominance over pub­lic resources threatened. They fought to retain their access to pub­lic resources by con­tinued dominance in access to gov­ern­ment resources, including employment oppor­tun­ities ranging from schoolteacher to the local distributor of subsidized grains in the Public Dis­ tribution System, and tried to use their privileged background of lit­er­acy and social standing to con­tinue to retain access to pub­lic programs distributed by the elected local gov­ern­ments. Moreover, Gram Panchayat elections brought for­ merly disenfranch­ised indi­viduals to power, which had no model of governance except for the elite-­capture of pub­lic funds that they had witnessed over the pre­ vious decades. When these new local gov­ern­ment representatives accessed polit­ ical power, traditional elites were forced to share some of their captured pub­lic resources with them as bribes for acquiescence. Though this has led to a “demo­ crat­ization of corruption” in the villages studied in Uttar Pradesh, it has also hampered the efficacy of local gov­ern­ments. Furthermore, in the Uttar Pradesh envir­on­ment, where polit­ical platforms con­tinue to be focused on social cleav­ ages and civil soci­ety does not or­gan­ize across social divisions to pressure local gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity, traditional elites are able to retain some of their his­ toric power and capture pub­lic resources. In Uttar Pradesh the lack of traditional elite buy-­in to the panchayat structures has further ex­acer­bated cleavages in a civil soci­ety already fraught with religious and caste divisions and local elections that focus on socials cleavages rather than polit­ical issues. The lack of any of the three factors shown in Table 6.1 that sup­port the formation of demo­cratic and effi­ca­cious local gov­ern­ments has created an envir­on­ment that has not been con­ ducive to the rooting of demo­cratic local governance, and has hampered the abil­ ity of Gram Panchayats to improve social wellbeing. By contrast, the traditional upper-­caste, large landowning social elites of West Bengal have given way during three decades of LFG rule to new elites who are LFG co­ali­tion party members. Party mem­ber­ship provides access to positions of local power and pub­lic resources, since LFG-­dominated Gram Panchayats provide pub­lic resources meant for the indigent to their party comrades. In West Bengal, as in Uttar Pradesh, there is no elite buy-­in to the new demo­cratic pan­ chayat structures – instead, the new local elites capture bene­fits to distribute amongst themselves. In Karnataka, a virtuous circle has been created by the combination of a polit­ ically com­petit­ive local envir­on­ment, an aware and mobilized civil soci­ety that keeps its local gov­ern­ments more account­able, and traditional elites who buy-­in and sup­port their local gov­ern­ments rather than seeking to capture them. The three factors reinforce each other, creating an envir­on­ment in Karnataka that is more conducive to the flourishing of effect­ive local gov­ern­ments, which in turn is better able to deliver social ser­vices and pub­lic anti-­poverty programs. In con­ trast, in Uttar Pradesh, traditional social elites connive to retain their hold on power, working against the local gov­ern­ments and in some instances bribing newly elected officials in order to con­tinue to pilfer pub­lic resources.

Political power, local governments, social welfare   187 In villages in Karnataka, cit­izens had an en­ab­ling envir­on­ment, which led to quicker “rooting” of local governance structures as local gov­ern­ment representa­ tives actively engaged with their constituents and cit­izens demanded the pub­lic ser­vices and programs to which they were entitled. With greater resources flowing to local gov­ern­ments and the state gov­ern­ment taking meas­ures to increase transparency and account­abil­ity of Gram Panchayats, more resources were avail­able for investments in social and eco­nomic infrastructure. As cit­izens interacted with local pub­lic officials, they became more aware of the growing resources and powers now located in the village gov­ern­ments, which provided further incentives to interact with local gov­ern­ment representatives in order to access pub­lic resources. The lack of effect­ive Gram Panchayats in Uttar Pradesh, how­ever, did not mean that electing local gov­ern­ment representatives was for naught. Once the de­cision to decentralize had been legislated by the Indian federal gov­ern­ment and Uttar Pradesh had to change its laws to conform to the decentralization amend­ment, a pro­cess of access to local power by formerly disenfranch­ised groups was set in motion. Even though the traditional elite still tried to pilfer pub­lic resources, they were not able to bypass local gov­ern­ment representatives, which gave local representatives un­pre­ced­en­ted power and access to patronage networks. Even in states like Uttar Pradesh, which have a weak his­tory of local governance and deep social cleavages that deter col­lect­ive action, the pro­cess of electing local gov­ern­ments has changed social inter­action at the village level. Village cit­izens now know who is stealing pub­lic resources and are more likely to protest. The links between local gov­ern­ments, pub­lic ser­vices, and improve­ ments in social wellbeing, are much more tenuous in Uttar Pradesh than in Kar­ nataka, but the bar­riers to more effi­ca­cious local gov­ern­ments in Uttar Pradesh may be surmountable.

Enhancing local government’s capacity to improve social wellbeing Having a his­tory of elected local gov­ern­ments provided for an en­ab­ling envir­on­ ment in which elected local gov­ern­ments, after 1993, were more likely to flour­ ish. Yet as the his­tor­ical case of West Bengal during the early 1970s illus­trates, deep social cleavages, traditional elites who capture pub­lic resources and are not inter­ested in furthering local demo­cracy, and a civil soci­ety wracked by dissen­ sion and antagonism are not insurmountable bar­riers to demo­cratic local gov­ern­ ments that can help improve social wellbeing. With the institutionalization of local gov­ern­ments in West Bengal in 1977, great improvements in pov­erty reduction and social wellbeing were made during the 1980s. Decentralization can con­trib­ute towards more account­able local gov­ern­ments; it can provide avenues for increasing inter­action between cit­izens and gov­ern­ ment representatives; and it can lead to more targeted delivery of social wel­fare programs that improve the lives of poor and vulner­able groups. Yet, in some cases it does not lead to these desir­able outcomes. Decentralization’s impact on

188   Political power, local governments, social welfare social wellbeing is vari­able. Having a past his­tory of functioning local gov­ern­ ments mat­ters, since it provides cit­izens with a basis for understanding the pos­ sible bene­fits and engaging local gov­ern­ments. However, past legacies are not a guarantee for future success, since local gov­ern­ment structures can be coopted by traditional or newly emerging elites, espe­cially in an envir­on­ment lacking in polit­ical com­peti­tion. How then can the promises of decentralization predicted by the polit­ical sci­ent­ists, eco­nom­ists, pub­lic management experts and realized in places like the Indian state of Karnataka become more likely than the failure of local gov­ern­ments in Uttar Pradesh? Improving awareness of rights Throughout the village studies, a glaringly reoccurring theme was the lack of cit­ izens’ know­ledge of decentralized structures and their local gov­ern­ments’ respons­ibil­ities, as well as cit­izens’ rights. This is perhaps surprising in a coun­try that has had elected national gov­ern­ments for over 60 years. However, low levels of lit­er­acy and deep social and gender cleavages have per­petu­ated tradi­ tional social mores in rural India that have inhibited account­able local gov­ern­ ments in some parts of the coun­try. The Indian consti­tu­tion guarantees a right to education, but very few villagers inter­viewed were aware of this right and fewer still knew that they had legal avenues for demanding it from their gov­ern­ment. The Indian central gov­ern­ment has a plethora of anti-­poverty and social wel­fare programs, but only a few of those inter­viewed knew specifics of the programs or that they were entitled to help the village gov­ern­ment select the program beneficiaries. A large barrier to the effect­ive institutionalization of demo­cratic local gov­ern­ ments is that cit­izens are not aware of their rights and how to demand these rights, and do not know the extent of rights and obli­ga­tions of decentralized gov­ ern­ments. Improving aware­ness of cit­izens’ rights and what they can expect from their local gov­ern­ments is key to breaking the vicious cycle of non-­ functioning local gov­ern­ments that do not deliver social ser­vices. Methods of increasing aware­ness of rights could include disseminating local gov­ern­ment functions and obli­ga­tions at election time and other pub­lic gath­er­ings, gov­ern­ ment broadcasting of its obli­ga­tions via radio and television, pub­lic posting of the decentralization law at local gov­ern­ment offices, and a national drive to educate cit­izens about the obli­ga­tions of their local gov­ern­ments. Understanding the functioning, rights, and obli­ga­tions of local gov­ern­ments is the starting point for increasing local gov­ern­ment functioning, yet to date no pub­lic cam­paign to educate cit­izens in India has been undertaken. When cit­izens are aware of the obli­ga­tions of local gov­ern­ments, they are more likely to demand these rights and hold gov­ern­ments account­able when they trespass on these rights. Building better aware­ness of cit­izens’ rights vis-­à-vis local gov­ern­ments – as West Bengal did in the late 1970s and early 1980s – will increase civil soci­ety inter­actions, improve local gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity, and lead to better delivery of social ser­vices and programs.

Political power, local governments, social welfare   189 Institutionalizing accountability mechanisms Well-­functioning local gov­ern­ments are gov­ern­ments that are answerable to their cit­izens. They have institutionalized account­abil­ity mech­an­isms that require elected representatives to provide explanations on the workings of local gov­ern­ ments. In places like Uttar Pradesh, where local gov­ern­ments do not function as laid out by the law and do not con­trib­ute towards improving their constituents’ wellbeing, institutionalizing mech­an­isms to increase account­abil­ity would jump-­start the building of more responsive local gov­ern­ments. The state gov­ern­ ment of Karnataka has been at the forefront in trying to increase local gov­ern­ment transparency through mech­an­isms such as the electronic trans­fer of pub­lic funds directly to Gram Panchayats and posting of panchayat finances at the local gov­ern­ment offices. There are other pos­sible avenues for institutional­ izing responsive and account­able local gov­ern­ments, including requiring village-­ level cam­paigning even for reserved seats, institutionalizing mech­an­isms for cit­izen auditing of local gov­ern­ment finances, mandating pub­lic posting of all local gov­ern­ment finances as well as social program beneficiaries, providing local gov­ern­ment majorities with powers to hire and fire village-­level civil ser­ vants such as teachers and local health care workers, and facilitating oppor­tun­ ities for regu­lar and open dialogue between gov­ern­ment representatives and citizens. A signi­fic­ant breakthrough in building gov­ern­ment account­abil­ity at all levels of gov­ern­ment has been the Right to Information (RTI) cam­paign in India, which resulted in the Right to Information Act of 2005. This Act gives all cit­izens the right to request in­forma­tion from any pub­lic authority, which then has a max­ imum of 30 days to respond. Moreover, the act requires com­puterization of pub­lic records in order to increase pub­lic access, and requires gov­ern­ment authorities to be proactive in publishing im­port­ant in­forma­tion. Though RTI is now the law of the coun­try most inter­viewees had never heard of it – again high­ lighting the need for a pub­lic cam­paign to disseminate in­forma­tion on cit­izens rights. Increasing local resources When decentralization leads to an engaged civil soci­ety and account­able gov­ern­ ments, local gov­ern­ments can more effect­ively target social ser­vices and pro­ grams to those most in need. India has many central government-­financed programs aimed at improving social and eco­nomic wellbeing, yet effect­ive deliv­ ery of these programs has been weak in large parts of the coun­try. Moreover, trans­fers of resources to local gov­ern­ments for these various social programs have increased since the mid-­1990s, as discussed in Chapter 2. Decentralization of power and resources in India was in part driven by the premise that the elected local gov­ern­ments with more wherewithal would be better able to deliver these social programs to their intended beneficiaries. However, the majority of local gov­ern­ment resources is earmarked for use in specific programs. Only a small

190   Political power, local governments, social welfare fraction of local gov­ern­ments resources in India today is given to or raised by local gov­ern­ments to use for pro­jects requested by their citizens. Clearly, trans­ferring large amounts of resources to local gov­ern­ments that are corrupt would further ex­acer­bate account­abil­ity prob­lems. However, channeling greater “untied” resources to local gov­ern­ments that have functioning account­ abil­ity mech­an­isms and where civil soci­ety is mobilized and aware of its rights would help better target pub­lic funds to local needs and the indigent. Further resources to alloc­ate according to needs in the village would in turn increase the likelihood of local gov­ern­ments improving social wellbeing. Greater resources at the village level are neces­sary, but should only be alloc­ated in envir­on­ments where there are structures of account­abil­ity and where civil soci­ety is mobilized and aware of its rights. Another im­port­ant and related issue is the need to improve local rev­enue raising. There is little incentive for local gov­ern­ments to tax their cit­izens in order to increase their resource base in rural India, since all pub­lic ser­vices are paid for by the central or state gov­ern­ments. It is easier to con­tinue to rely on federal and state resources, rather than make locally unpop­ular moves to imple­ ment their legal powers of taxation. Yet since emerging liter­at­ure on taxation and account­abil­ity in de­veloping coun­tries suggests that gov­ern­ment account­ abil­ity is more likely to occur when states tax their cit­izens par­ticu­larly through pro­gressive tax sys­tems (Brautigam 2002; Moore and Rakner 2002), more avenues for pro­gressive, local resource raising should be ex­plored by states. Interlinkages between a mobilized and aware civil soci­ety, functioning struc­ tures of account­abil­ity, and increased resources at the local level so as to better select and target social programs, further point to the need to holistically ana­lyze the determinants of decentralization’s successes and failures. With a better understanding of different factors influ­en­cing successful decentralization pro­ grams, better pol­icies can be designed to root demo­cracy and improve cit­izen wellbeing. Improving aware­ness of cit­izens’ rights and institutionalizing mech­ an­isms to hold gov­ern­ments more account­able are two main ways to help quicken the abil­ity of local gov­ern­ments to improve social wellbeing. When local gov­ern­ments are likely to be account­able, increasing the resources avail­ able to them through increased federal and state trans­fers, as local rev­enue raising, will further improve local gov­ern­ment functioning. While polit­ical com­ peti­tion, civil soci­ety mobil­iza­tion, and elite reactions to local gov­ern­ments determine the abil­ity of village gov­ern­ments to mat­ter for the wellbeing for their cit­izens, decentralization is not a one-­time event. Decentralization can be fine-­ tuned, or in the more severe cases, jump-­started. Decentralization in Karnataka lagged behind West Bengal in the early 1990s, but by 2010 local gov­ern­ments in Karnataka had surpassed West Bengal in its abil­ity to deliver targeted social pro­ grams and help improve social wellbeing. The high-­functioning local gov­ern­ ments in Karnataka were a function of state-­level con­ditions, but also of attempts since 1993 by the Government of Karnataka to increase the account­abil­ity and fin­an­cial means of local gov­ern­ments. Local con­ditions in Karnataka were more conducive to local gov­ern­ment functioning than in Uttar Pradesh, but steps taken

Political power, local governments, social welfare   191 to increase account­abil­ity within the sys­tem also led to higher functioning local gov­ern­ments in Karnataka than in West Bengal. Understanding remaining local bar­riers to effect­ive decentralization should be the first step towards fine-­tuning of pub­lic pol­icies in order to increase the efficacy of local gov­ern­ments and their delivery of social ser­vices in India.

Appendix A Powers to be delegated to Panchayats by state governments

The writers of the 73rd Amendment envisioned local gov­ern­ments as agents of socio­economic de­velopment and enabled Indian states to devolve signi­fic­ant respons­ibil­ities to local gov­ern­ments as the fol­low­ing sections of the Amendment highlight.

Powers, authority and responsibilities of Panchayats “Subject to the pro­vi­sions of this Constitution, the Legislature of a State may, by law, endow the Panchayats with such powers and authority as may be neces­sary to enable them to function as institutions of self-­government and such law may contain pro­vi­sions for the devolution of powers and respons­ibil­ities upon Panchayats at the appropriate level, subject to such con­ditions as may be speci­fied therein, with respect to – a b

the pre­para­tion of plans for eco­nomic de­velopment and social justice, the implementation of schemes for eco­nomic de­velopment and social justice as may be entrusted to them including those in relation to the mat­ters listed in the Eleventh Schedule.”

Eleventh Schedule (Article 243g)   1 Agriculture, including agricultural extension.   2 Land improvement, implementation of land reforms, land consolidation and soil conservation.   3 Minor irrigation, water management and watershed development.   4 Animal husbandry, dairying and poultry.   5 Fisheries.   6 Social forestry and farm forestry.   7 Minor forest produce.   8 Small scale industries, including food pro­cessing industries.   9 Khadi, village and cotton industries. 10 Rural housing. 11 Drinking water.

Appendix A   193 12 Fuel and fooder. 13 Roads, culverts, bridges, ferries, water­ways and other means of com­muni­ cation. 14 Rural electrification, including distribution of electricity. 15 Non-­conventional energy sources. 16 Poverty alleviation programme. 17 Education including pri­mary and secondary schools. 18 Technical training and vocational education. 19 Adult and non-­formal education. 20 Libraries. 21 Cultural activities. 22 Markets and fairs. 23 Health and sanitation, including hos­pitals, pri­mary health centers and dispensaries. 24 Family welfare. 25 Women and child development. 26 Social wel­fare, include wel­fare of the handicapped and mentally retarded. 27 Welfare of the weaker sections, and in par­ticu­lar, of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. 28 Public distribution system. 29 Maintenance of com­mun­ity assets. Source: Government of India 1992: Constitution (73rd Amendment) Act.

Appendix B Methodology

This is prim­arily a qualit­at­ive study. Faced with an ambitious research question in a challenging con­text, there were essentially two basic methodo­logical choices: (1) quantitative: try to answer the question using quantitative data from large-­ sample representative surveys in the states; or (2) qualit­at­ive: use purposive selection of state and village cases along with qualit­at­ive data collection methods. The first option was not pos­sible because population-­representative data on the rel­ev­ ant issues were not avail­able, it was far beyond the avail­able means to attempt to collect it, and the complex pro­cesses to be meas­ured were in any case unlikely to be adequately captured by discrete quantitative survey questions. Qualitative methods were applied, starting with purposive selection of states on the basis of several cri­teria (i.e., state size and im­port­ance as well as differing ex­peri­ences with decentralization), and then purposive selection of village case studies on the basis of sim­ilarly clear cri­teria (i.e., located in a district that approximates state averages in socio­economic indic­ators, villages that approximate district averages, and at least one village with a study previous to the decentralization reform). I spent substantial time doing field research in each village in both 2000 and 2008, applying qualit­at­ive methods (i.e., inter­views of informants and focus groups). In addition, in 2000 I did small quantitative surveys (with sample sizes of around 40 in each village) that are representative of each village (respondents were randomly selected from a list of all households, stratified by caste and religious group). Along with yes/no questions, survey respondents were also inter­viewed in-­depth in a qualit­at­ive fashion. Both the qualit­at­ive methods and quantitative surveys provide evid­ence about con­ditions and perceptions in each village, and the main use of this evid­ence is to sup­port conclusions about decentralization in each of the states as a whole. For each state, conclusions are based on: (1) secondary ana­lysis of the liter­at­ure as well as avail­able data that are representative of the state as a whole; (2) qualit­at­ive information-­gathering from key informants at the national, state and district levels; (3) qualit­at­ive information-­gathering in the two villages; and (4) small quantitative surveys in each village. Quantitative data derived from discrete (yes/no) questions asked during the village surveys essentially supplement the qualit­at­ive methods – any stat­ist­ical ana­lysis beyond numbers and proportions would not have been use­ful to my ana­lysis as there was no intention for these surveys to be representative of the states as a whole.

Appendix B   195

Case selection The initial list of 28 states was narrowed down by excluding small and medium-­ sized states (those with popu­la­tions under 50 million). Among the final ten large states, Karnataka, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh were selected for study with the ob­ject­ive of contrasting different ex­peri­ences with the pres­ence and duration of functioning local gov­ern­ments prior to the adoption of the 73rd consti­tu­tional amend­ment at the beginning of 1994. In the case of Uttar Pradesh, there were no con­tinu­ously elected local gov­ern­ments. Karnataka had a brief ex­peri­ence with demo­cratically elected and innov­at­ive local gov­ern­ments prior to 1993. And West Bengal has had elected local gov­ern­ments since 1977. In order to construct the background his­tory and baseline for each state from the early 1990s to 2010, I drew on socio­economic surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation in India (http://mospi.gov.in/nsso_4aug 2008/web/nsso.htm), census reports (http://www.censusindia.gov.in) and other socio­economic surveys conducted by the Indian gov­ern­ment such as the National Table B.1 Population and geographic location of Indian states (ten large states in bold) Indian State

Population (2001)

Geographic region

  1  Andhra Pradesh   2  Arunachal Pradesh   3  Assam   4  Bihar   5  Chhattisgarh   6  Goa   7  Gujarat   8  Haryana   9  Himachal Pradesh 10  Jammu and Kashmir 11  Jharkhand 12  Karnataka 13  Kerala 14  Madhya Pradesh 15  Maharashtra 16  Manipur 17  Meghalaya 18  Mizoram 19  Nagaland 20  Orissa 21  Punjab 22  Rajasthan 23  Sikkim 24  amil Nadu 25  Tripura 26  Uttar Pradesh 27  Uttaranchal 28  West Bengal

76,210,007 1,097,968 26,655,528 82,998,509 20,833,803 1,347,668 50,671,017 21,144,564 6,077,900 10,143,700 26,945,829 52,850,562 31,841,374 60,348,023 96,878,627 2,293,896 2,318,822 888,573 1,990,036 36,804,660 24,358,999 56,507,188 540,851 62,405,679 3,199,203 166,197,921 8,489,349 80,176,197

S NE NE N N S NW N N N N S S N S NE NE NE NE N N NW NE S NE N N NE

Source: Census information in Government of India 2001.

196   Appendix B Family Health Survey (www.nfhsindia.org/). Together these data provided a wealth of population-­representative data on indic­ators of social and eco­nomic wellbeing in these three states, down to the district level, and over the period studied, from pre-­1993 to 2010.

Selection of villages within states For each selected state, census as well as social and eco­nomic data were ana­ lyzed to build a profile of the state around 1990, before the passage of the 73rd amend­ment, and at the end of the 1990s, near the time of the first round of research. Within each state, the district that most closely approximated average statewide socio­economic indic­ators was chosen. Within each selected district, villages were chosen based on whether there had been a study of the village around 1990. In each of these districts, at least one village was found that had been studied extensively prior to passage of the 73rd Amendment. Prior village studies in different districts of the state were avail­able in all three of the states. Selection of the villages could therefore be made based on district-­level socio­economic indic­ators most closely approximating state-­level averages. While it would be illusionary to expect that a pair of villages in Uttar Pradesh for example – a state with a popu­la­tion of 166 million – could hope to be charac­ter­istic of the whole range of socio­economic con­ditions in the state, the selection cri­teria were intended to minimize the pos­sib­il­ity of selecting cases that were obvious outliers on im­port­ant socio­economic charac­ter­istics. Villages were excluded if they signi­fic­antly deviated from state averages in terms of demographic indic­ators, such as female-­to-male ratio and proportions of castes and religious groups. Villages were also excluded if they were located in regions that presented signi­fic­antly different agro-­economic envir­on­ments than the rural norm in the state, such as coastal, suburban or mountainous areas. All selected villages were at least ten kilo­meters away from towns and were predominantly de­pend­ent on agri­cul­ture for their incomes.

Previous village research and initial key informants In the case of Karnataka, Professor G.  K. Karanth from the Institute of Social and Economic Change in Bangalore, Karnataka, had studied the villages of Madbal and Gavi Nagamangala in Bangalore Rural District yearly between 1987 and 1994. He had also been involved in James Manor’s study of decentralization in Karnataka (Crook and Manor 1998). While G.  K. Karanth studied labor organ­iza­tion, agricultural changes and rural de­velopment more gen­erally in these two selected villages, he also published in­forma­tion on numbers of households in each village as well as their caste and socio­economic backgrounds. In addition, during his years of studying these two villages, he learned the polit­ical af­fili­ation of every household and the polit­ical his­tory of the villages, in­forma­ tion he generously shared with me. G.  K. Karanth was my main initial key informant for the study of the villages of Madbal and Gavi Nagamangala and

Appendix B   197 shared his insights into the local polit­ical his­tory of the villages during several background discussions. He also suggested people in the villages who could be potential key informants on the ground. Once I had been living in the villages for ten days, I supplemented his list with my own list of key informants. Information on the types of castes and minor­ity religious groups within both villages and number of households within each caste was obtained with the assistance of my initial list of local informants and double-­checked with members of the respective groups. The local key informants in the villages studied in Karnataka as well as those in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh were and remain my “sounding board” for understanding the pro­cesses and relationships that undergird social, eco­nomic and polit­ical de­velopments in their respective villages. In the case of West Bengal, both villages of Shahajapur and Kuchli in the selected district of Birbhum had been studied in the late 1980s by Professor Sunil Sengupta of the World Institute for Development Economic Research (WIDER), based at the Visva Barathi University in Shantiniketan, Birbhum District. Professor Sengupta published a summary ana­lysis of his research on socio­ economic de­velopment in these villages in a volume edited by Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze (Drèze and Sen 1996). He also studied health and eco­nomic indic­ ators in these two villages in the early 1980s with Amartya Sen and was a research collaborator for over 30 years. Sunil Sengupta made all data from his studies of the two villages avail­able to me, thereby providing me with a wealth of insight into the social, eco­nomic and polit­ical de­velopment of the selected villages up to the early 1990s. Extensive discussions with him and his research collaborators provided me with detailed background on local polit­ical his­tory. Sunil Sengupta was my main initial key informant for the study of these villages. He and his collaborators provided me with a list of potential key informants in the villages and here too I supplemented their list with my own key informants after having spent about ten days of research in the villages. In the case of Uttar Pradesh, one of my research advisors, Jean Drèze, had studied one village in the selected district of Moradabad with several other well-­ respected scholars. Their findings were published in Economic Development in Palanpur Over Five Decades (Lanjouw and Stern 1998). This book de­scribes socio­economic changes in the village of Palanpur from 1957 to 1993, and provides an abundance of background in­forma­tion for my study, including detailed village-­level data on demographic and social indic­ators such as the number of households in each caste, infant mor­tal­ity and lit­er­acy rates. In addition to Palanpur, I chose the neigh­boring village of Pipli, which is of about the same size as Palanpur and therefore has the same structure of Gram Panchayat (local village gov­ern­ment). Jean Drèze was my initial key informant for the study of Palanpur and Pipli in Uttar Pradesh and provided me with in­valu­able background in­forma­ tion on Palanpur as well as introductions to the dir­ector of a non-­governmental organ­iza­tion living close to the village and a potential list of local key informants, which I later supplemented after an initial period of living in the village. Once two villages for study had been selected in each state, the initial key informants provided me with introductions to non-­governmental organ­iza­tions

198   Appendix B or a university (in the case of West Bengal) located close to the villages to use as an initial base until I found accommodation in the villages. My key informants helped identi­fy the polit­ical, social, and eco­nomic elites in the villages.

Data collection While care was taken in village selection to maximize their proximity to statewide averages in socio­economic charac­ter­istics, it is im­port­ant to emphas­ize that the purpose of data collection in the villages was not to make gen­eralizations about the state as a whole, but to illuminate phenomena and pro­cesses evid­ent at both the village and state levels. An example is the question of why local gov­ ern­ments in West Bengal have been less successful than those in Karnataka at delivering social ser­vices such as pri­mary education and anti-­poverty programs to those most in need, despite what many leading aca­demics have argued are more favor­able state-­level con­ditions in West Bengal. Population-­representative surveys depend heavily on asking the right questions and can miss out on the social pro­cesses in action that influence outcomes. For example, quantitative census and large-­scale survey data, as well as other larger state-­level surveys (Drèze and De 1999) in Uttar Pradesh, indicate weak delivery of pri­mary education in both villages studied, as well as at the overall state-­level in Uttar Pradesh, but do not illuminate the pro­cesses that prevent more efficient delivery of basic education. However, living in the village of Palanpur and seeing the head teacher of the pri­mary school, who rarely came to the school to teach and when he came rarely taught, and finding out that he was related to one of the polit­ically most power­ful fam­il­ies in the village, provided understanding of why village residents were powerless to speak out about this specific corruption. Similarly, living in the villages studied in West Bengal provided me with a keen understanding of the deep-­rooted power of the Communist Party and enabled me to follow up with pov­erty program recipients to better understand the relationship between polit­ical af­fili­ation and receipt of social bene­fits. Interviews and parti­cip­ant observations were thus the most in­teg­ral and im­port­ant aspect of this research, en­ab­ling a deeper understanding of the polit­ical, social, eco­nomic and cultural underpinnings of local governance in three Indian states. The aim of this study was to understand the complex pro­cesses set in motion by the 1993 consti­tu­tional amend­ment on decentralization in India and its impact on the social and eco­nomic wellbeing of rural com­munit­ies. Qualitative research was required to provide insights into the pro­cesses and causal inter­actions between factors such as state-­level histories of functioning local gov­ern­ments, social mobil­ iza­tion, and polit­ical par­ties. Understanding polit­ical and social inter­actions and pro­cesses, such as the links between local elites and local gov­ern­ments that enable governance, required qualit­at­ive in­forma­tion. My main method of qualit­at­ive research was parti­cip­ant observation, a stand­ard method used by a variety of fieldwork-­based comparative pol­itics scholars. Among the virtues of this method is that it allows one to assess the micro-­logic of macro phenomena, con­trib­ut­ing to understanding the motives of polit­ical actors first hand.

Appendix B   199

Qualitative data collection The bulk of my research was based on qualit­at­ive data collection. Two villages within each of the three states were studied for about six weeks in 2000. I was based in or close to each village. Data collection methods included inter­views with village elites, which involved identi­fying local opinion-­makers of both genders, within all castes, and among the minor­ity religious com­munit­ies with the help of the initial and local key informants. I conducted inter­views with other key informants identified by previous researchers as well as from in­forma­tion I obtained while living in the villages. I convened focus group discussions (which were conducted with all major caste groups and religious minor­it­ies). Additional qualit­at­ive data included informal inter­views when villagers asked to be inter­ viewed or stopped by my village living quarters for tea and to chat. In addition, as elaborated below, a random sample of villagers (stratified by caste and religious group) was selected for a structured inter­view fol­low­ing the questionnaire provided in Appendix B. Along with yes/no questions, in-­depth inter­views with each survey respondent were done, along with open discussion of issues as they came up. The main topics of the qualit­at­ive inter­views included structures of local gov­ern­ment, patterns of inter­action between the panchayats and local social forces, and the inter­actions associated with improved social wel­fare outcomes. For each village study, I engaged a translator who accompanied me on all inter­views. I gained in­forma­tion from direct observation (i.e., of the functioning of social ser­vices, village con­ditions, etc.) while living in the villages. I also conducted inter­views at the district and state levels with gov­ern­ment officials charged with different aspects of administrating local gov­ern­ments as well with local researchers on this subject in each state. In 2008, I returned to the six villages for a week in each one and conducted inter­views with a number of key informants from the social and eco­nomic leadership/elites and from the various caste and religious groups. I also inter­ viewed indi­viduals that I had known during the previous round of research and had numerous informal discussions with village residents.

Small village surveys to collect both qualitative and quantitative data Small sample surveys in each village were done to both collect quantitative data (from yes/no questions) and qualit­at­ive in­forma­tion from structured inter­views. The quantitative data supplements the in­forma­tion collected through qualit­at­ive methods. Although random sample selection meant that survey findings could be con­sidered representative of each village popu­la­tion, as noted above the focus was on understanding patterns and pro­cesses within each village that could illuminate larger state-­level patterns. Census data, cross-­referenced with data collected by previous researchers and in­forma­tion from local key informants, were used to construct district- and village-­level demographic profiles. Village profiles included the popu­la­tion and total number of households, as well as the

200   Appendix B percentage of popu­la­tion by caste and religious group. These “quota” groups were defined by the cat­egor­ies with reserved seats in local gov­ern­ments. The sampling frame was a list of households that I had compiled from local leaders and from mapping. Households were randomly selected from mutually exclusive caste and religious groups, with the proportion of the sample selected from each group the same as their proportion of the village popu­la­tion. This was to ensure repres­enta­tion in the sample from each caste and religious group. Systematic random sampling from the list (i.e., selection of households at a randomly-­ determined interval on the list within each stratum) was used to select the sample. This self-­weighted sample provided estim­ates that are con­sidered representative of the village popu­la­tion as a whole. All villages studied contained 100–200 households, with an overall popu­la­ tion size of approximately 1,000. The sample size for each village in all three states was approximately 40 respondents, for a total of 240 indi­viduals. Table B.2 provides details on the village popu­la­tions and sample sizes by caste and religious group. All inter­views were conducted using a questionnaire based on the instrument used by Richard Crook and James Manor in their seminal study of decentralization in South Asia and West Africa (Crook and Manor 1998) (see Appendix C). The questionnaire was modified on the basis of input from previous researchers and a pre-­test in the first studied village. The questionnaire was supplemented by open-­ended discussions with each respondent, adding to the qualit­at­ive in­forma­tion collected in each village. Results for the yes/no questions, as well as summaries of the qualit­at­ive discussions were input into a database. Table B.3 presents results for selected yes/no questions posed by the survey.

1,027

685 0 186 123 0 33 1,062

40

40

28 0 7 3 2 0

743 0 186 80 53 0

27 0 7 5 0 1 823

345 51 330 97 0 0

Sample Pop.

41

17 3 16 5 0 0 899

248 107 286 245 13 0 39

11 5 12 11 0 0

1,133

576 171 195 0 141 50

40

20 6 7 0 5 2

1,195

595 135 211 0 209 45

Sample Pop.

40

20 5 7 0 7 1

Sample

Uttar Pradesh Uttar Pradesh: Palanpur village Pipli village

Sample Pop.

West Bengal: Shahajapur village

Sample Pop.

West Bengal: Kuchli village

Sample Pop.

Karnataka: Madabal village

Note The village population is based on the 1991 census data. Demographic data for each village was cross-checked with previous researchers of the case studies, local government officials, and local key informants.

Total

General Caste (GC) Other Backward Castes (OBC) Scheduled Castes (SC) Scheduled Tribes (ST) Muslims Other

Pop.

Karnataka: Nagamangala village

Table B.2 Village case study surveys: quota categories, percentage of quotas in selected district, and percentage of quotas in sample

Voted in last national elections Thought last national elections were fair Voted in last GP elections Thought last GP elections were fair Campaigned for the election of a GP member Knew the name of GP representative(s) Have participated in a meeting of the village electorate There are working social welfare programs in the village GP is instrumental in delivering these social services There are working anti-poverty programs in village GP is instrumental in delivering these anti-poverty programs GP been able to satisfy the most important needs in the village If two poor people applied for an anti-poverty scheme to the GP and one had political connections while the other did not, the GP would give the scheme to the politically connected persona   30 (21%, 41%)   88 (78%, 93%)   16 (10%, 26%)   56 (45%, 67%)   28 (19%, 38%)

24 70 13 45 22

59

48

66 77 73

100 (95%, 100%) 80

78 51 77 50 16 65 26

80

(91%, 99%) (95%, 100%) (95%, 100%) (95%, 100%) (19%, 38%) (88%, 98%) (20%, 39%)

  98 100 100 100   28   95   29

78 80 80 80 22 76 23

(91%, 99%) (53%, 73%) (90%, 99%) (52%, 72%) (13%, 30%) (71%, 88%) (23%, 43%)

95% CI 70 41 78 58 13 51 24

74 (63%, 82%)

60 (49%, 70%)

83 (73%, 89%) 96 (90%, 99%) 91 (83%, 96%)

21

11 19 13

–

Number

26

14 24 16

20

88 51 98 73 16 64 30

%

–

 –

(18%, 37%)

  (8%, 23%) (16%, 34%) (10%, 26%)

(13%, 30%)

(78%, 93%) (40%, 62%) (91%, 99%) (62%, 81%) (10%, 26%) (53%, 73%) (21%, 41%)

95% CI

2 villages in Uttar Pradesh (n = 80)

100 (95%, 100%) 16

98 64 96 63 20 81 33

%

Number

95% CI

Number

%

2 villages in West Bengal (n = 80)

2 villages in Karnataka (n = 80)

Table B.3 Selected results of village surveys, number responding positively, percentages, and 95% confidence intervals (CI)

  74 (63%, 82%)   39 (29%, 50%)    –   –   19 (12%, 29%)

59 31  – 15

(28%, 48%) (20%, 39%)   (3%, 14%) (12%, 29%) (18%, 37%) (30%, 51%) (57%, 77%) (47%, 68%) (16%, 34%)

  38   29  6   19   26   40   68   58   24

30 23  5 15 21 32 54 46 19

38 38 43

80

73 64 18 48 33 16 28 54 32

(83%, 96%) (70%, 87%) (15%, 33%) (49%, 70%) (31%, 52%) (13%, 30%) (25%, 40%) (57%, 77%) (30%, 51%)

48 (37%, 58%) 48 (37%, 58%) 54 (43%, 64%)

100 (95%, 100%)

91 80 23 60 41 20 35 68 40

0 16 20

0

18 10 12 4 10 7 2 50 2

0 20 25

0

23 13 15 5 13 9 3 63 3

  (0%, 5%) (13%, 30%) (17%, 35%)

  (0%, 5%)

(15%, 33%)   (7%, 22%)   (9%, 24%)   (2%, 12%)   (7%, 22%)   (4%, 17%)   (1%, 9%) (52%, 72%)   (1%, 9%)

Note a For West Bengal “had political connections” is replaced with “was a CPI(M) member.” Confidence intervals of the proportions are estimated using Stata SE 10.1 for Windows (2008), assuming a binomial distribution and applying the Wilson method, which is appropriate for extreme proportions (i.e. less than or equal to 5% or greater than or equal to 95%). (This calculation does not take in account stratification of the sample, which would be expected to reduce the variance and thus narrow the confidence interval.)

More voice under new GP system Less violence in 2000 compared to 1990 Rule of law has improved between 1990 and 2000 Government has become more effective Administrative burden has decreased Accountability has improved Corruption decreased over past ten years Was better off in 2000 compared to 1990 Of those who said they were better off, those who said they were better off due to the GP There are associations (bridging religion and caste) in this village Participated in associations during last five years Have had contact with their GP member Have contacted their GP representative in the last five years for help

Appendix C Field research questionnaire

Introduction: Explain the nature of this research and that answering any and all parts of this questionnaire are voluntary. If they agree to answer the questionnaire, explain that they are welcome to stop at any time.

Section A: General background 1 2 3

Name: Gender: (Male/Female) How old are you? a b

4

What is your level of education? a b c d e f g

5 6 7 8

35 years old or less or over 35 years old specific age None Some primary Completed primary Completed junior secondary Completed senior secondary or technical school College, university or polytechnic Other professional

What is your main occupation? Where were you born? How long have you lived here? (Last ten years?). How many people are in your household? a b c d e

Person Age Gender Education Health

Appendix C   205

Section B-­1: Wellbeing today   9 Describe what life is like today in terms of your wellbeing: a b c d e f

Assets: What do you own in terms of assets (house, land, savings, jewelry, animals, etc.)? Luxury Goods: Do you own things that you con­sider luxury goods (tv, radio, bike, etc.)? Nutrition: Do you and your family have at least three full meals a day? Education: Do you and your family have enough money so that you have been able to afford and will be able to afford the education you wanted/want for all your family members? Health: Do you and your family have enough money so that in the past and future, if someone falls sick, you will be able to get medical help? Other: Are there other examples that illus­trate what your life is like today?

10 What was your life like ten years ago in terms of wellbeing: a b c d e f

Assets: What did you own in terms of assets (house, land, savings, jewelry, animals, etc.)? Luxury Goods: Did you own things that you con­sider luxury goods (tv, radio, bike, etc.)? Nutrition: Did you and your family have at least three full meals a day? Education: Did you and your family have enough money so that you were able to afford the education you wanted for all your family members? Health: Did you and your family have enough money so that if someone fell sick you were able to get medical help? Other: Are there other examples that illus­trate what your life was like?

11 Do you think that you are better or worse off today than ten years ago? Why?

Section C: Perception of PRIs 12 Did you vote in the last national elections? Were they fair? (Completely fair; fair but with some prob­lems; very unfair; do not know) 13 Did you vote in the last gram panchayat elections? Were they fair? (Completely fair; fair but with some prob­lems; very unfair; do not know) 14 Did you cam­paign or work for the election of any par­ticu­lar panchayat member in your village? Did you cam­paign or work for the election of any par­ticu­lar panchayat member at the block or district level? 15 Have you ever attended a GS meeting? If so, did you speak at the meeting? Why or why not? 16 What are the names of your present panchayat members? 17 Who is the pradhan/sarpanch?

206   Appendix C 18 Do you think that the panchayat members are good representatives of their com­munit­ies (SC, ST, OBC, or women)? 19 Can you tell me about any pro­ject or ser­vices that have been provided for your village or locality during the past five years, including those that have stopped functioning or have been abandoned? a b c d e f g h i j k l

Schools/classrooms Health clinic Water (piped, well, etc.) Latrines Sanitary Communal lands Roads Transportation Agricultural projects Any other (specify) None Do not know

20 Do you know who brought the pro­jects or ser­vices that you mentioned to your village? (GS, GP, nongov­ern­mental organ­iza­tions (NGOs), social groups within village, etc.). If not from the gram panchayat, was any help received from them? 21 Are there any other programs (anti-­poverty programs such as JRY, IRDP, etc.) that you are aware of, where the panchayat played a role (i.e., helping target groups, select beneficiaries, etc.). 22 Since the GP elections, have you noticed any changes in the attendance of gov­ern­ment em­ployees in the village (teachers, health workers, rev­enue collectors, etc.)? 23 If there was a change in attendance, why do you think this happened? 24 Since the GP elections, have you noticed any changes in the number of trans­fers or dismissals of the gov­ern­ment em­ployees we have been talking about? 25 If there was a change, why do you think this happened? 26 In gen­eral, what do you think are the most im­port­ant needs of the people in this area? What are the pro­jects that you think are most needed in order to improve people’s wellbeing? 27 In your view, has the GP been able to satisfy any of these needs with its pro­ jects or ser­vices? If yes, in what way? 28 In your view, has this GP done any better than what village gov­ern­ment did here before these last local gov­ern­ment elections? 29 What do you think needs to be done with regard to the powers of the GP so that they could help you make your life better? 30 If there were some prob­lems in the GP (did something illegal or incorrect), do you think that someone would be likely to hold them account­able? Do you think that the account­abil­ity has changed as compared to before the elections?

Appendix C   207

Section D: Quality of governance 31 Do you think that your voice is more likely to be heard now as compared to before the GP elections? If so, why? 32 Do you think that in­stability/viol­ence in the village has changed? 33 Do you think that gov­ern­ment effect­iveness has changed? If so, why? 34 Do you think that the regu­latory burden (for example, in terms of number of people who have to agree before a pro­ject can go ahead) has changed? If so, why? 35 Do you think that the rule of law (in terms of the likelihood that someone who has done something wrong/illegal will be pun­ished by law) has changed any? If so, why? 36 Do you think that corruption, bribery, etc. has changed any? If so, why?

Section E: Social capital 37 Are there any asso­ci­ations in this village? 38 If yes, have you taken part in the ac­tiv­ities of any asso­ci­ation in the past five years (for example village de­velopment asso­ci­ation, youth asso­ci­ation, women’s asso­ci­ation, farmer’s asso­ci­ation, cultural associations)? 39 If yes, were you active in this asso­ci­ation before the last GP elections? 40 During the last five years, have you engaged in any of the fol­low­ing kinds of ac­tiv­ities either on behalf of your village or through your association? a b

c d e

Have you signed any kind of peti­tion, raised an issue, or sent a letter/ taken an issue to the GP? Or to the next level of panchayat? Or district or state government? Have you held a meeting to raise an issue or take action about an issue with the GP, next level of panchayat or state gov­ern­ment? If yes, what kind of issue was it and would you have done anything like this before the GP elections? Have you taken part in a protest or demonstration over an issue affecting your com­mun­ity or asso­ci­ation? If yes, what kind and would you have done anything like this before the GP elections? Have you met with the GP or its members to thank them for their work? If yes, what kind of work were you thanking them for and would you have done anything like this before the GP elections? Have you or­gan­ized any refusals to cooperate with the GP or other types of gov­ern­ment? If yes, what kind of work were you thanking them for and would you have done anything like this before the GP elections?

41 Have you personally parti­cip­ated in any officially or­gan­ized local GP or GS meetings, committees, or consultative groups since the GP elections? If yes, were you able to say anything at the meeting? Did you parti­cip­ate in any sim­ilar meeting before the elections? If so, did you speak up at the meeting?

208   Appendix A 42 How frequently does your GP representative come to meet you and your constituency now? How does that differ from ten years ago? 43 Have you personally ever contacted any GP representative about any prob­ lem in your com­mun­ity in the last four years? If yes, what kind of prob­lem was it? Did you find the representative helpful? And would it have been the same ten years ago? Thank you very much for your time and cooperation!

Glossary

Below the pov­erty line (BPL)  A designation of pov­erty set by the central Government of India. Individuals meeting the definition are issued BPL cards, which make them eli­gible to access social wel­fare programs. Corruption  The abuse of pub­lic, polit­ical power for personal gain or for the gain of people who are affiliated through polit­ical or familial networks. Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS)  A former program for the cre­ation of additional employment oppor­tun­ities for the rural poor during times of acute shortage of manual wage employment, now replaced by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Gram Panchayat (GP)  Local gov­ern­ment institutions at the village or village­cluster level (depending on state law). Gram Sabha (GS)  A meeting of all voting-­eligible members of a village. Human Development Index (HDI)  A summary composite index measuring a coun­try’s average achievements in three basic aspects of human de­velopment  longevity, know­ledge, and stand­ard of living. Longevity is meas­ured by life expectancy at birth (LEB); know­ledge is meas­ured by a combination of the adult lit­er­acy rate and the combined pri­mary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrolment ratio; and stand­ard of living by GDP per capita (PPP US$). Indira Awaas Yojana program (IAY)  A program for the rural poor providing grants to assist in the construction and upgrading of housing. Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP)  A former program that provides assistance to rural poor in the form of subsidy and bank credit for productive employment opportunities. Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana program (JGSY)  Program launched in April 1999 to replace the former Jawahar Rozgar Yojana program (JRY) and now replaced by MGNREGA. It was essentially a pub­lic works program where demand-­driven village infrastructure was built by laborers selected by the Gram Sabha and Gram Panchayat. Laborers were supposed to be people living below the pov­erty line, with a pref­er­ence given to SC/ST fam­ il­ies, and were paid through the Gram Panchayats. The program intended to improve the quality of life for the rural poor and provide employment oppor­tun­ities in times of need.

210   Glossary Jawahar Rozgar Yojana program (JRY)  A former rural de­velopment program which aimed to generate employment oppor­tun­ities in rural areas. Kshetra Panchayat (KP)  Block-­level Panchayats in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Mandal Panchayats (MP)  Block-­level Panchayats under the 1987 Panchayat sys­tem in the state of Karnataka. Public Distribution System (PDS)  A program that distributes essential items such as sugar, cereals, and kerosene at subsidized prices to those who have a ration card identi­fying them as living below the official pov­erty line. Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRI)  The decentralized sys­tem of local gov­ern­ ments set up by the 73rd and 74th amend­ments to the Indian constitution. Scheduled Caste (SC)  The lowest caste group in India, previously known as untouchables. Scheduled castes are accorded special status by the Constitution of India. Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozagar Yojana program (SGSY)  A self-­ employment program for the rural poor, which replaced the former IRDP in April 1999. This program is for the rural poor, with at least 50 percent of its beneficiaries being SC/ST, 40 percent being women and 3 percent dis­abled. While the selection of ac­tiv­ities under this program takes place at the district-­level Panchayat, the Gram Sabha of each village is respons­ible for providing a list of beneficiaries taken from the list of people living under the pov­erty line. Though this was the program in opera­tion in 2000, most people con­tinued to refer to the program as “IRDP,” and therefore this convention is used in this research. Scheduled Tribe (ST)  Original inhabitants or indi­gen­ous peoples in India who are accorded special status by the Constitution of India. Taluk Panchayat (TP)  Block-­level local gov­ern­ment institution. Zilla Panchayat (ZP)  District-­level local gov­ern­ment institution.

Notes

Chapter 1 1 Poverty rates refer to the head-­count ratio: the proportion of the popu­la­tion living below the official Indian pov­erty line. The official pov­erty line is based on a nutritional norm of 2,400 calories per person per day and is defined as the level of average per capita expenditure at which this norm is typ­ic­ally attained. It is set at a per capita monthly expenditure of Rs.49 at Octo­ber 1973–June 1974 all-­India prices. 2 There is much con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the exact percentage of people living below the official pov­erty line in India in 1999–2000, as well as the percentage of poor in the indi­vidual Indian states. Estimates of the overall pov­erty rate in India vary from between 23 to 28 percent, depending on which survey and institute are being quoted. The official incidence of pov­erty at the national and state levels has been estim­ated by the Planning Commission based on the large sample surveys on consumer expenditure conducted peri­od­ic­ally by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO). The 55th round of the NSS was conducted between July 1999 and June 2000. Earlier surveys had calculated monthly per capita consumption based on responses utilizing a 30-day recall period for all items. In this round of the NSS, all consumption expenditures on clothing, footwear, medical and durable goods were meas­ured using a 365-day recall period, while the 30-day recall period was used for all other non-­food items. Data on food consumption were collected using a 30-day recall period as well as a seven-­day recall. Poverty rates calculated using these different recall periods nat­urally yielded different pov­erty rates. Moreover, while the new methods of estimating expenditures on non-­food items were introduced to improve the quality of the data, since the method of calculation changed, the latest round of pov­erty estim­ates are not strictly com­par­able to pov­erty estim­ates for previous years. This needs to be kept in mind when con­sidering pov­erty estimates. Chapter 2 1 Social wellbeing is defined as the rate of pov­erty and basic health and education indicators. 2 Accountabil­ity in the con­text of local gov­ern­ments in India is defined as the willingness to take respons­ib­ility for initiating, planning, implementing and delivering on those tasks entrusted to local gov­ern­ments by the 73rd Constitutional Amendment. 3 The methods of collecting and calculating pov­erty data were changed in 2002/2003, making comparisons with previous estim­ates difficult. Nevertheless, the same trends in pov­erty rate reductions con­tinued to hold for the three states of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal up to 2010.

212   Notes Chapter 3 1 See for example Kohli (1987) pp.  145–187 for a more complete discussion of state-­ level pol­itics in Karnataka during the 1970s. 2 See Manor (2006) pp. 10–17 on this ana­lysis, as well as his description of inter­action between the Karnataka gov­ern­ment and World Bank officials in 2002. I also worked for the World Bank in the mid-­1990s and had sim­ilar ex­peri­ences when working on state health pro­jects in Karnataka, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Punjab. My ex­peri­ences echo those found by Manor seven years later: compared to West Bengal and other states, the bur­eau­cracy in Karnataka displayed more con­tinu­ity and capa­city – with obvious bene­fits for de­velopment in the state. 3 The Public Distribution System (PDS) in India is a pub­lic program managed jointly by the central and state gov­ern­ments to distribute essential commodities (wheat, rice, sugar, and kerosene) to the poor in order to ensure food secur­ity and provide a mech­an­ ism for pov­erty alleviation. 4 Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY) is a central gov­ern­ment program initiated in April 1999 (replacing two sim­ilar previous programs) ded­ic­ated to the de­velopment of rural infrastructure at the village level. 5 The Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) is also a central gov­ern­ment program started in 1999 (replacing the previous IRDP program) targeting the rural poor for self-­employment ac­tiv­ities through a subsidized micro-­credit. The program aims to estab­lish a large number of micro-­enterprises in rural areas. Within this target group of rural poor, special safeguards have been provided to vulner­able sections, by reserv­ing 50 percent bene­fits for SCs/STs, 40 percent for women and 3 percent for dis­abled persons. The Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) was launched in 1993 for certain areas of the coun­try, and then extended to the entire coun­try in 1999. It was sub­ sequently replaced by the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in 2008, which guarantees 100 days of wage employment in a fiscal year to a rural household whose adult members are willing to work as unskilled laborers at a min­imum wage. The selection of people eli­gible to work under this program is supposed to be decided by the Gram Sabha of each village. The Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) program is a housing subsidy for the rural poor. 6 Interview with Professor Abdul Aziz on May 3, 2000, ISEC campus, Bangalore and Dr. G. K. Karanth on May 4, 2000, ISEC campus, Bangalore. 7 Interview with Dr. G. K. Karanth on May 4, 2000, ISEC campus, Bangalore; inter­view with M. Rangaswamaiah, retired teacher, on May 16, 2000 in Mudabal; inter­view with Mr. Shivanna, Panchayat Exten­sion Officer, Magadi Taluk, on May 16, 2000. Chapter 4 1 The World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) conducted a research pro­ject between 1987 and 1990 based at the Visva-­Bharati University at Santiniketan, West Bengal. This pro­ject on “Rural Poverty, Social Change and Public Policy” was started at the behest of Dr. Amartya Sen. It collected and ana­lyzed data on a wide range of social and eco­nomic issues in six West Bengal villages. Two of these villages, Kuchli and Sahahajapur, are the ones selected for my research work. Since the detailed findings from this research pro­ject were not published, I am very grateful to Dr. Sunil Sengupta, one of the key planners, implementers and dir­ector of this pro­ject for giving me access to the findings of their research work. 2 One sharecropper inter­viewed in Sahahajapur said that despite having his sharecropping re­gis­tered during the early 1980s, he still con­tinued to sharecrop on a 50–50 basis in order to “keep good relations with the landlord” since he had several members of his household working for the landlord and his household “wellbeing” depended on the good relations with the landlord. The persistence of these ori­ginal sharecropping ratios has been noted by other researchers (Lieten 1994).

Notes   213 Chapter 5   1 Information on the his­tor­ical overview was gathered through several conversations with key informants in Palanpur. Similar impressions were noted by Jean Drèze in Lanjouw and Stern (1998).   2 Unless other­wise noted, in­forma­tion in this section is largely based on the previous studies of Palanpur and in­forma­tion received through conversations with Jean Drèze.   3 When seats are reserved for people from a par­ticu­lar background (SC/ST, OBC or female) in UP as well as West Bengal and Karnataka, this is made known before the GP elections by the gov­ern­ment officials overseeing the election and at each election the officials ensure that at a min­imum the required number of people from each reserved cat­egory are standing for elections.   4 Some of those inter­viewed were quite frank in expressing their views that the village elite had been corrupt and taken much of the money that was to be disbursed for specific social programs during the past for their own pockets and that now it was their turn to get access to these gov­ern­ment monies and do the same.   5 For example, a resident of Palanpur, who had even cam­paigned for the eventual winner of the election for pradhan of Palanpur, recounted that he found out a month after the elections that they had indeed been unfair. He recounted how he had found out from the Assistant District Officer (ADO) that the counting of votes at the Block head­quar­ters in Chandausi was not going in favor of the eventual winner. When he heard of this, he apparently bribed the Block Development Officers to change the vote tally in his favor. The ADO apparently shared this in­forma­tion since he was disgruntled with the fact that he had not received a bribe!   6 The UP Panchayat Act states that each village (defined as either a rev­enue village or a group of villages) will have these Gram Sabha (village assembly of all eli­gible voters) meetings twice a year. Meetings are called by the pradhan and require a one-­fifth quorum. The Gram Sabha con­siders de­velopment programs, accounts and audit reports, and programs for adult education presented by the Gram Panchayat, the mobil­iza­tion of voluntary labor, and the identification of beneficiaries for the implementation of de­velopment schemes.   7 This in­forma­tion re­gard­ing Gram Sabha meetings not actu­ally taking place was higher among the responses for Palanpur than for Pipli.   8 In fact most of those inter­viewed did not understand the dif­fer­ence between Gram Sabha meetings (village assembly) and Gram Panchayat meetings (meeting of the elected panchayat officials), including some of the panchayat members themselves!   9 The UP Panchayati Raj Act of 1994 “encourages” each GP to form committees on: social justice, de­velopment, village education, and pub­lic inter­est in order to help it perform its functions. It also states that the social justice and village education committees should each have at least one female member and one SC/ST member. 10 One of the female, SC panchayat members in Palanpur did not know anything about the structure of Gram Sabha meetings or even the panchayat meetings and had never attended a meeting. She stated that she was illit­er­ate and that she put her thumbprint on docu­ments whenever the pradhan asked her to do so. 11 Of the 16 private inter­views conducted in 2008 with key informants of different caste backgrounds in both villages, all informants confirmed that this was the accepted view among local representatives. 12 These figures hardly differed between Palanpur and Pipli, with 27 of the 40 respondents in Palanpur and 23 of the 40 respondents in Pipli stating that social infrastructure was the most im­port­ant need in the village, while only three respondents in Palanpur and two in Pipli stated that the Gram Panchayat had attempted to address these needs. 13 For example, inter­views with Dr. Rohini Nayyar, (Advisor on Rural Development, Planning Commission of India) on March 2, 2000 and Dr. S. P. Gupta (Member, Planning Commission of India), June 24, 1999.

214   Notes 14 Yet when I visited one of these Anganwadi workers in Pipli in March 2000, I was offered these clearly marked biscuits along with tea! 15 My findings sup­port Crook and Manor’s assertion that when power is dispersed into the hands of more people through decentralization, the number of people with influence to peddle rises, though its overall scale might decline (Crook and Manor 1998: 61). 16 Information obtained from accounting records kept by the Block Development Officer Chandausi on March 23, 2000. 17 In an example of the per­vas­iveness of corruption from the top levels of gov­ern­ment down to the Gram Panchayat level, during an inter­view with the BDO in Chandausi, an assistant came in asking the BDO to sign some docu­ments for the inspection of the District Magistrate’s visit the next day. The BDO looked through the papers and told the assistant to change a figure on spending in one Gram Panchayat from 9,000 to 11,000 “because it would not look good to have such a low figure.” (Interview with Block Development Officer in Chandausi, UP on March 23, 2000). 18 The National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education is commonly called the Midday Meals Scheme. It was launched in Au­gust 1995 with the aim of increasing enrollment, attendance, and re­ten­tion at pri­mary schools, while also improving the nutritional status of students. The program provides cooked meals for chil­dren in classes one to four in all gov­ern­ment schools. When pro­vi­sions for cooked meals have not been made, three kilograms of foodgrains (rice and wheat) per child per month are to be given to the child. Chapter 6 1 While the specifics of the Panchayat Act in each of the three states differs slightly, all have in common that they mandate that the Gram Sabha meet twice a year to con­sider de­velopment programs, accounts and audit reports, identification of beneficiaries for de­velopment schemes, etc.

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Index

Page numbers in italics denote tables, those in bold denote figures. 11th Finance Commission 39 11th Schedule 34 64th Amendment Bill 30 73rd Constitutional Amendment 20, 31–6, 43, 56–7, 173, 192–3 74th Constitutional Amendment 30, 31 2003 elections 131, 133 2008 elections 133 absolute poverty 2 accountability: comparison 178; and decentralization 8, 44; Karnataka Panchayat Act 76–7; and local elections 11; of local governments 18; and local taxation 190; Uttar Pradesh 154–8, 159, 169; West Bengal 113–18, 122–3 accountability mechanisms 189 administrative burden 77–8, 79, 123, 159–60 administrative decentralization 35–6 administrative quality 77–8, 123–4 adult education 113 agency 151 agricultural laborers 102–3 agricultural reforms 54 agriculture 143 AITC (All-India Trinamul Congress Party) 114, 133, 134 Ambedkar, B. R. 23, 24 Andhra Pradesh 29 anti-malaria program 140, 166 anti-poverty program beneficiaries 128–9, 130 anti-poverty programs 72, 129–30, 153–4, 172 Article 243G 34, 36, 192 Article 243H 36

Article 243I 36 Article 356 24–5 Ashok Mehta Committee 29, 30, 56 Ashraf Muslims 143 associations 81, 83 Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) see BSP Balwantrai Mehta Committee 28 Bangalore Rural District 63, 64–6, 66–74, 82 Bangla-Congress-led United Front government 97 Bankura 134 Bardhan, P. 130 Basu, Jyoti 98, 132 below the poverty line (BPL) 209 Bhattacharya, Buddhadeb 132 Bihar 14, 22, 172 Birbhum District 101, 134 BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) 133 BLD (Bharatiya Lok Dal) 143 book overview 18–19 Brahmins 143 “bridging” associations 81, 83 British period 27 BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) 144 bureaucracy 55, 123–4 case study: argument 47–51; and decentralization 46; methodology 15, 194–200, 201–3; selection method 14, 195–6; village selection 14–15, 16 caste system 21, 53, 71, 148, 162–3 center–state relationship 27 Central Rule 24–5 Chattopadhyay, R. 43 citizen participation 109

230   Index civic action 152–3 civil service system 43 civil society: and elites 80–1; Karnataka 83; West Bengal 137; Uttar Pradesh 141 civil society advocates 7 civil society engagement 176 civil society mobilization 11–12, 18, 185 class 162–3 class politics 98 clientelism 125 coalition politics 26–7 collective action 148–9, 151–2, 163–5, 176–7 committees 60, 124, 151, 160, 167, 176, 213n9 Communist Party of India (Marxist) see CPI(M) competition 10–11, 137, 139 competitive politics 54, 55–7 conferences: Panchayat Mahila Shakti Abhiyan 61 Congress Party 25, 28, 29, 30, 54, 56, 97–8, 133–4, 143 Constituent Assembly 23, 24 context, historical 3 corruption 209; and civil service 44; comparison 179–80; decreased 58; Gram Panchayat elections 87; Karnataka 73, 78; local elections 108; perceptions of 73, 78; and transparency 79–80; Uttar Pradesh 154–8, 161, 167, 186; West Bengal 114–18 CPI(M) (Communist Party of India (Marxist)) 91, 93, 97, 105, 110, 113, 131, 133 CPI(M) (Communist Party of India (Marxist)) members 114, 115–16, 120, 121, 125, 128–9, 130 Crook, Richard C. 84 data collection: methodology 198–9 de Tocqueville, A. 11 decentralization: 73rd Constitutional Amendment 31–5; administrative 35–6; background 1–2; benefits 4, 8–9; case study 46; definition 46; and development 7–9; fiscal 36–42; historical background 27–31; implementation 22–7; importance 20–2; literature 8–9; meaning of 6; mixed outcomes 10–13; political 42–5; rationale 20; and state reform 5–7; supporters 7, 173

decentralization process: understanding 9–10 decentralization programs: studies on 2–3 democracy 8, 10–11, 12, 18, 22–7, 46, 74, 168–9 democratization 12 Desai, Morarji 56 development: and decentralization 7–9 District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) see DRDA domestic product growth rates: Karnataka 53; West Bengal 93 DRDA (District Rural Development Agency) 44 Duflo, E. 43 economic crisis (1991) 27 economic growth rates 47, 53, 172–3, 183 economic liberalization 27 education 163–4 elections 11, 67, 68, 69, 106–11, 131–4, 149–51, 175 electoral fraud 131–2, 150 elite capture 43, 46, 47, 49, 130, 138–9, 186 elite power 3, 11, 12–13, 18 elites 12–13, 28, 80–1, 145, 185–7; see also village elites emergency laws 98 Emergency Rule 29 Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) 209 enhanced participation 8 familial relationships 11 federal structure 23, 24, 27 female to male ratios 21, 55, 63, 102, 146–7, 196 field research questionnaire 204–8 fiscal decentralization 36–42 food-for-work program 35 G. V. K. Rao Committee 30 Gandhi, Indira 29, 44, 56, 98 Gandhi, Mahatma 23, 27 Gandhi, Rajiv 30, 172 Gavi Nagamangala 63, 64–6, 66–74, 81–5, 88–90; see also Karnataka gender divides 135 gender inequality 21 girls: quality of life 21 governance: quality of 75–83, 167

Index   231 government effectiveness 77, 123–4, 159–60, 178, 183–7 government structure 94–5 Gowda, H. D. Deve 54 Gram Panchayat elections 67, 69, 106–11 Gram Panchayat representatives 67, 120, 151 Gram Panchayats 209; functions of 59; Karnataka 59–62, 87–8, 90; nationalist movement 27; and social wellbeing 181–3; structure 32; successful functioning 173–4; Uttar Pradesh 145, 149–51; West Bengal 94; work done 177–8 Gram Sabha meetings 109–10, 137, 150–1 Gram Sabhas 32, 33–4, 57, 70, 83, 209 Gram Sansad meetings 109–10 Green Revolution 142 Grindle, Merilee 4 growth rates: and social indicators 21–2 Gujarat 21, 22 Haryana 21, 22 health care provision 112, 113 health indicators 21 health services 166 historical context 3 Human Development Index (HDI) 209 IAS (Indian Administrative Service) 43, 44 IAY (Indira Awaas Yojana) see Indira Awaas Yojana ICDS (Integrated Child Development Program) 140 illiteracy 1, 20, 21, 188; see also literacy IMRs (infant mortality rates) 21, 52, 96, 147 independence movement 27 Indian Administrative Service (IAS) see IAS Indian National Congress (INC) 25 Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) 73, 127, 209 inequality 20, 48 infant mortality rates (IMRs) see IMRs “informants” 15 infrastructure 112 Integrated Child Development Program (ICDS) see ICDS Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP) loans see IRDP (Integrated Rural Development Program) loans intra-country analyses 13–14 IRDP (Integrated Rural Development

Program) loans 127, 129–30, 166–7, 209 Jamboni block 134 Jammu 29 Janata Dal Party (JD) 54, 55–6, 59, 143, 144 Janata Party government 25, 29 Jatabs 148, 163 Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY) 72, 127, 209 Jawahar Rozgar Yojana program (JRY) 210 JD (Janata Dal Party) see Janata Dal Party JGSY (Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana) see Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana Karanth, G. K. 63 Karnataka: administrative burden 77–8, 79; Ashok Mehta Committee’s recommendations 29; background 52–3; bureaucracy 55; caste hierarchy 71; civil society 83; civil society mobilization 185; government quality 179–80; Gram Panchayats 72–5; improved wellbeing 83–5; local elites 186–7; new panchayat system 67–72; panchayat governments 16, 17, 55–8; participation 69; political competition 17, 184–5; political context 53–5; poverty reduction rates 47, 48; quality of governance 75–9; selection for case study 14; social indicators 16, 22, 55; social wellbeing 182; social wellbeing improvement 81–5, 88–90; socioeconomic context 53–5; village case studies 62–7, 85–90 Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act 58–62 Kashmir 29 Kerala 14, 21, 22, 52, 103 key indicators: in research states 50, 52 Kohli, Atul 137 Kshetra Panchayat (KP) 210 Kuchli 101–3, 105–6; see also West Bengal L. M. Singhvi Committee 30 land redistribution 102, 117 land reforms 102, 137, 144 large-scale studies 15–16 Left Front Government (LFG) see LFG legitimacy 5–6 LFG (Left Front Government) 91, 93, 95, 98–9, 100–1, 102–3, 125, 131–2, 133, 178 Lieten, G. K. 137

232   Index Lingayats 54, 58 literacy 49, 52, 100; see also illiteracy literacy rates: Bangalore Rural District 63, 64; Birbhum District 101; Gavi Nagamangala 82; Karnataka 52, 55, 88; Kuchli 103; Moradabad District 146; Mudabal 82; Sahahajapur 103; Uttar Pradesh 142; West Bengal 96, 101, 103, 118 literature: on decentralization 8–9 local democracy 105 local elections see elections local elite capture 44, 49 local elites: and political power 3, 11, 12–13; see also village elites local governance: differing depths of 172; history 27–31; path dependency 47; quality of 178–80; theories 10–13 local governments: and competition 18; effectiveness 3, 178, 183–7; enabling factors 183–7; and improved wellbeing 83–5; perception of 118–19; responsiveness 111–12; revenue 36–42; and social wellbeing 47, 83–5, 187–91; sociopolitical factors 173–4 local revenue raising 190 Maharashtra 21, 103 Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act 62 malaria 140 malnourishment 21 management frameworks 8–9 Mandal Panchayats (MP) 56, 210 Manor, James 57, 84 Maoist guerilla movement 134, 136 market-oriented reforms 36 maternal mortality rates (MMRs) see MMRs meetings 109, 137, 150–1, 180–1 methodology: case selection 195–6; data collection 198–9; overview 15, 194; previous village research 196–8; village selection 196; village surveys 199–200, 201–3 “Midday Meals Scheme” 159, 166, 214n18 MMRs (maternal mortality rates) 21, 96 Mookherjee, D. 130 Moradabad District 146 MP (Mandal Panchayats) see Mandal Panchayats Mudabal: 2000 and 2008 66–74; early 1990s 64–6; selection 63; social

wellbeing improvement 81–5, 88–90; see also Karnataka Muslims 143, 144, 148, 163 Nandigram 133 Narayan, Jayaprakash 55 National Front government 30 national health programs 140 national microenterprise program 35 national parties 25–7 National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education see “Midday Meals Scheme” Naxalites 97 Nehru, Jawaharlal 25, 28 neoliberalism 7 OBCs (other backward castes) 60, 85, 144, 145, 149, 162, 169 “Operation Bargha” 118 other backward castes (OBCs) see OBCs overview of book 18–19 Palanpur 1, 140, 146, 147; see also Uttar Pradesh Panchayat Act 16 panchayat elections 28–9, 42 panchayat government implementation 16–17 Panchayat Mahila Shakti Abhiyan 61 panchayat members 111–12, 176 “panchayat raj” 28 Panchayat Raj Amendment see 73rd Constitutional Amendment Panchayat Raj Devolution Index 39 Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) see PRIs Panchayat Raj system 56 panchayat structure 32; awareness of 150–1, 176 panchayat system: perception of 174–7 panchayats 27–8, 181–3; see also Gram Panchayats parliamentary elections 25 participation: enhanced 8, 69; in local elections 106–11; in local government 177 participation rates 70 Party (BJP (Bharatiya Janat) see BJP party affiliation: and welfare programs 115–17 party competition 104 party politics 107–9, 125–6 path dependency: local governance 18, 47 patriarchical caste-based elites 27, 28

Index   233 patronage 22, 29, 125, 178 patronage networks 145, 178 patron–client relationships 11 PDS (Public Distribution System) 1, 72, 159, 210 Pipli 146, 147; see also Uttar Pradesh political competition 17, 18, 46, 54, 55–7, 120–1, 130, 137, 139, 184–5 political decentralization 42–5 political elite 130 political landscape: Karnataka 53–5; Uttar Pradesh 143–5; West Bengal 131–4 political mobilization 11 political parties 25–7, 62, 83, 125–6 political power: and elites 12–13; location of 23; redistribution 3; West Bengal 121 political stability 8, 97, 98, 178 poverty line 21 poverty rates: decline of 20; definition 211n1.2; India 2; Karnataka 52; Uttar Pradesh 142–3, 147; West Bengal 99, 103 poverty reduction 183 poverty reduction programs 15–16, 35, 44, 48–9 poverty reduction rates 47–8 power relationships 12–13 President’s Rule 24–5 primary schools 112–13 prime ministers: and Uttar Pradesh 143 PRIs (Panchayat Raj Institutions) 29, 35, 39, 40–1, 210 pro-poor governments 48, 172–3, 183 pro-poor policies 21 pro-poor programs 130 Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 33–4 public administration 8–9 public choice theories 9 Public Distribution System (PDS) see PDS public projects 112 Putnam, Robert 11, 81 quality of life 20–1 questionnaire, field research 204–8 Rao, Narasimha 30 regional differences: social wellbeing 21, 22 research contribution 5 reserved seats: 73rd Amendment 33, 44–5; and accountability 156; and corruption 156; Karnataka 68–9, 87; Karnataka Act 60; panchayat system 51; studies of 43;

Uttar Pradesh 154, 161–2, 213n3; West Bengal 120 resource management 38–9 resources: at local level 189–90 “respondents” 15 responsiveness 8 Right to Information Act (RTI) 60, 189 Right to Information (RTI) campaign 189 rights: awareness of 134, 135, 136, 142, 158, 188 Ripon Resolution 27 RTI (Right to Information Act) see Right to Information Act rule of law: Karnataka 78–9; Uttar Pradesh 160; West Bengal 124–5 rural employment guarantee program 35 rural housing program 35 rural poverty 20 safety-net programs 21 Samajwadi Party (SP) see SP Santhanam, K. 28 “Scheduled Areas” 33 Scheduled Castes (SCs) see SCs Scheduled Tribes (STs) see STs schools 163–4 SCs (Scheduled Castes) 210; 73rd Amendment 33, 44–5; Gram Panchayat representatives 120; Karnataka 57, 67, 87, 121; Karnataka Panchayat Raj Act 60; panchayat system 51; Pipli 149; studies 43; Uttar Pradesh 144, 161–2; West Bengal 106 Sen, Amartya 5, 46 sex ratio see female to male ratios SFCs (State Finance Commissions) 39 SGSY (Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana) see Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana Shahajapur 101–3, 105–6; see also West Bengal sharecroppers 102 Singur 133 social capital 11–12 social cleavages 46, 135, 145, 148–9, 162–3, 178, 180–1 social elites 80–1 social engineering 33 social hierarchy 43 social indicators 14, 20, 21–2, 52, 66, 95, 99, 118, 142–3 social inequality 161–5 social interaction 162–3, 169–70, 180–1 social mobilization 46

234   Index social programs 153–4, 189 social reform 96 social services: delivery mechanisms 49; pre-1993 49 social stratification 18 social welfare 119–20 social welfare advocates 7 social welfare programs 71, 72–3 social welfare recipients 128–9, 130 social wellbeing: definition 46, 211n2.1; factors for improvement 174; impact of panchayats 181–3; improvements 2, 4, 88–90; in Karnataka 81–5; lack of progress 21; and local government 187–91; regional differences 21; Uttar Pradesh 165–71; West Bengal 126–31 socioeconomic indicators 146 socioeconomic welfare 47 sociopolitical conditions: importance of 173–4 sociopolitical elites 185–7 SP (Samajwadi Party) 144 state elections 67 State Finance Commissions (SFCs) see SFCs state parties 25–7 state reform: and decentralization 5–7 STs (Scheduled Tribes) 210; 73rd Amendment 33, 44–5; disadvantaged 130–1; Gram Panchayat representatives 120; Karnataka 57, 67, 68, 87, 121; Karnataka Panchayat Act 60; panchayat system 51; studies 43; Uttar Pradesh 161–2; West Bengal 106 studies: on decentralization programs 2–3, 35; on panchayat system 35; STs and SCs 43 subnational cohesion 48 subnational parties 26–7 substantive democracy 23 survey results 67 Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) 72, 210 Taluk Panchayats (TP) 56, 210 Tamil Nadu 103 Tata automobile manufacturing 133 taxation, local 190 tenancy reform 102 Thungon, P. K. 30 Tocqueville, A. de 11 top-down interventions 172 TP (Taluk Panchayats) see Taluk Panchayats

transparency 44, 79, 90 Trinamul Congress Party 133–4 tuberculosis (TB) program 140, 166 UF (United Front) 97 United Provinces Panchayat Raj Act of 194 145 urban poverty 20 Urs, Devraj 54 Uttar Pradesh: 1994 amendment acts 145–6; accountability 154–8, 159, 169; administrative burden 159–60; agency 151; anti-poverty programs 153–4; background 142–3; civic action 152–3; collective action 148–9, 151–2, 163–5; corruption 154–8, 161, 167; decentralization amendment 187; early 1990s 147–8; education 140, 163–4, 166; elections 149–51; government quality 167, 178–9; Gram Panchayats 149–51; Gram Sabha meetings 150–1; health services 166; identity-based parties 144; land reforms 144; literacy 142; local elites 145, 170, 185–6, 187; local governance conditions 16, 17; low-functioning case 141; new panchayat system 149–54; panchayat system 141; panchayats 42, 145; political competition 185; population 14, 142; poverty 147; poverty rates 142–3; poverty reduction rates 48; quality of governance 158–61; reserved seats 154, 161–2; resource targeting 172; rule of law 160; schools 163–4; SCs (Scheduled Castes) 161–2; selection for case study 14; selection of villages 146–7; social engagement 152–3; social indicators 16, 22, 142–3, 146–7; social inequality 161–5; social interaction 169–70; social issues before 2000 144; social programs 153–4; social wellbeing 165–71, 181–2; socioeconomic and political context 143–5; socioeconomic indicators 146; STs (Scheduled Tribes) 161–2; survey question results 170; violence 160; voice 161 Uttar Pradesh Kshetra Panchayat and Zilla Panchayat Adhiniyam of 1961 145 Uttaranchal 173 village elites 71–2, 104, 130, 131, 170, 177–8; see also local elites village governments 22 village research, previous: methodology 196–8

Index   235 village selection: case study 14–15, 16; methodology 196 village studies: value of 15–16 village surveys: methodology 199–200, 201–3 violence: 2003 elections 131, 132–3; Karnataka 78; perception of 78, 124–5; Uttar Pradesh 160; West Bengal 117, 124–6, 131–4, 138 voice 76, 120–2, 161, 178 Vokkaligas 54, 57, 64 voter participation 106–11, 149–50 voter turnout 106–7, 149–50, 174–5 West Bengal: 73rd Amendment 91; accountability 113–18, 122–3; administrative burden 123; Ashok Mehta Committee’s recommendations 29; case studies 102–5; case studies overview 99–101; case studies selection 101–2; civil society 91–2; civil society mobilization 185; class politics 98; corruption 114–18, 124–6; decentralized government 93–7; elections 98–9, 131–4; functioning local government 91–2; government quality 179; government structure 94–5; Gram Panchayat elections 106–11; Gram Panchayats 104, 105–6, 112–13; historical context 92; infrastructure 112; land reform program 102; leftist parties 97–8; local elections 106–11; local elites 186; panchayat governments 16,

17; participation in local elections 106–11; party competition 104; perception of local government 118–19; perception of Panchayat system 105–6; political competition 17, 184; political context 97–9; political landscape 131–4; poverty rates 99; poverty reduction rates 48; public projects 112; quality of governance 119–26; responsiveness of local governments 111–12; selection for case study 14; size 96–7; social improvements 99, 137; social indicators 16, 21, 92–3, 95, 99, 103, 118, 126, 129; social reform 96; social wellbeing 126–31, 134–9, 182; stability 132; survey question results 138; village elites 104; voter participation 106–11 West Bengal Panchayat Act 94 West Bengal Panchayat (Amendment) Act 104 West Midnapore 134 WIDER study 101, 103, 129 women: Gram Panchayat representatives 67–8; Karnataka 87–8; reserved seats 33, 43, 44–5, 51, 57, 60, 106, 120 World Bank studies 4, 44 Zilla Panchayats 57, 210 Zilla Parishads (ZP) 56 “Zilla Parishads, Taluk Panchayat Samitis, Mandal Panchayats and Nyaya Panchayats Act” 56 ZP (Zilla Parishads) see Zilla Parishads