Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:33 19 May 2016opac.lib.idu.ac.id/unhan-ebook/assets/uploads/... · governance. One such move was the afﬁ rmative action for women, and

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Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

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Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

Experiences from India

Sumona DasGupta

LONDON NEW YORK NEW DELHI

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First published 2010by Routledge912–915 Tolstoy House, 15–17 Tolstoy Marg, New Delhi 110 001

Simultaneously published in the UKby Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2010 Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA)

Typeset byStar Compugraphics Private Limited D–156, Second FloorSector 7, Noida 201 301

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopyitng and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-59632-9

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Contents

List of Figures viiList of Abbreviations ixForeword xiAcknowledgements xvii

1. Campaigns for Citizen Governance: A Conceptual Overview 1

2. Vignettes from the Field: Lessons on Democratic Engagements 13

3. The 73rd Amendment Act: New Alignments, New Animosities 49

4. The Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns: An Analysis 76

5. The Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns and the State Election Commissions: Building Common Ground 107

6. Beyond Elections: Sustaining the Democratic Impulse 124

7. Deepening Democracy: Discources and Practices 141

8. Conclusions and Refl ections for the Future 160

Appendix I 173Bibliography 175Note on the Author 180Index 181

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List of Figures

2.1 A vikas rath in Bihar 184.1 Village consultations — amne samne 974.2 Poster used in Rural PEVACs 1014.3 Kalajathas in Andhra Pradesh 1056.1 The Information Flow 136

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List of Abbreviations

ADC Additional Deputy CommissionerBDPO Block Development and Panchayat Offi cerCENSORED Centre for Communication Resources

DevelopmentCOVA Confederation of Voluntary AssociationsCSO Civil Society OrganisationsCWS Centre for World SolidarityDBF Dalit Bahujan FrontDDNN Deccan Development NGO NetworkECI Election Commission of IndiaEPG Empowered Participatory GovernanceEVMs Electronic Voting MachinesFIR First Information ReportGSM Gram Sabha MobilisationIAS Indian Administrative ServicesIFCB International Forum on Capacity BuildingMKSS Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh SamitiNEW National Election WatchNGOs Non-Governmental OrganisationsNREGA National Rural Employment Guarantee ActOBCs Other Backward ClassesPCMU Procurement and Contract Management

Unit, PRIAPEVAC Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness CampaignPRI Participatory Research InstitutePRIA Society for Participatory Research in AsiaPRJA Panchayati Raj Jagrukta AbhiyanRGF Rajiv Gandhi FoundationRPSC Rajasthan Public Service CommissionSEC State Election Commission

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x Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

SEWA Society for Education and Welfare ActivitiesSP Superintendent of PoliceTOT Training of TrainersUNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund

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Foreword

It was during a discussion with local citizens in some villages of Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh in October 1995 that the suggestion was made to us at Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) that we start an exercise to inform voters and candidates about the salience of the forthcoming elections to institutions of self-government in India. These were the fi rst elections to be held following two Constitutional Amendments to the Constitution of India (the 73rd and 74th Amendments) which conferred constitutional sanctity to units of local self-government and made elections to these bodies mandatory.

The PRIA fi eld staff along with a handful of local ac-tivists made a modest attempt in 2–3 blocks of Mandi and Dharamshala districts of Himachal Pradesh to inform some citizens about their rights to elect their panchayat represen-tatives (as representatives of rural local self-governing units are called in India) in the elections held during December 1995. This small effort taught us several lessons, and suggested that a deeper engagement is necessary to support women and others from historically-disadvantaged sections to contest these elections without fear or favour. Their active participation as candidates could not be taken for granted. This was because their election to units of self-governance would clearly challenge the existing power relationships in India’s village communities across the country. The disturbance of the existing status quo that is inevitable in the processes of social transformation would necessarily bring turbulence of varying degrees in its wake. Consequently, the newly-elected representatives needed to be supported in this period of transition both during and after the election to the (now constitutionally endorsed) local institutions of self-governance.

However, by the time this idea of civil society intervention gained momentum the fi rst round of elections under the

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xii Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

new amendment acts of India that provided a constitutional sanctity to rural and urban units of local self-governance was already completed. PRIA began to discuss these ideas with its partner civil society groups in other states, and it was decided to attempt a campaign that came to be known as Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness campaigns (PEVAC) well in advance of the second round of panchayat elections beginning in 2000. The subsequent PEVAC experience taught us the value of this campaign not only for the voters and contestants, but also for election authorities.

For us, the scale of PEVAC in 2000 was immense; no such civil society engagement in formal electoral process had been attempted in India (and for that matter in any other country) before. The support from some of the State Election Com-missions (SECs) further encouraged PRIA to scale it up in the next round which began from 2004–05. Nearly half the rural population of the states where PEVAC was launched (estimated to be about 150 million voters from the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat) was covered by a coalition comprising several hundred civil society groups in each state. For the fi rst time, PEVAC was also launched in urban municipalities.

As the fourth round of panchayat elections started from January 2010, the model of civil society engagement has been substantially institutionalised. PEVAC has demonstrated the potential for inclusive democracy based on dialogue and participation of the people. Sometimes, the civil society inter-ventions have taken the form of a more institutionalised pro-gramme such as the Panchayati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan (PRJA).

This book entitled Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagements: Experiences from India by Sumona DasGupta tells the story of this campaign, and captures its excitements and constraints, its possibilities and limitations as experienced by actors in the fi eld. DasGupta anchors this story in the larger global discourses on deepening democracy and the book will consequently be of interest to all those interested in issues

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Foreword xiii

related to comparative democratisation as well as the scope of civil society initiatives in India.

The book critically assesses the strategy and methodology of this large-scale campaign and its follow ups. In explicating the strategy of the campaign it also examines the role of the SEC in initiating and sustaining democratic engagements at the grass-roots level. In fact in the course of the PEVAC experience, PRIA also learnt a great deal about the electoral system in the country, and the ways in which it needs to be further reformed, if the citizens’ faith in democracy is to be sustained and deepened.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has recently celebrated 60 years of its existence. It has acquired a strong reputation as being an independent and non-partisan regu-lator of elections to assemblies and parliament in India. Its expertise is sought internationally, and its procedures are recognised as robust. This was, however, not the case till recently. It was only during Mr T. N. Seshan’s tenure as Chief Election Commissioner (1990–96) that debates around the independence of the ECI were foregrounded and best practices institutionalised. The SECs are less than 20-years-old, and the critical question is, what are the precedents we can draw on from the experience of the ECI to ensure that the SECs remain non-partisan and impartial since the success or otherwise of local-level elections will depend on this. What has the ECI done to pass on its best practices and expertise to the various SECs? The irony is that many states in the country today continue to have two different sets of electoral rolls — one prepared by ECI, and another by SEC because ECI has not modifi ed its classifi cation of voters to bring it in line with the jurisdictions of panchayats and municipalities!

The SECs assume importance because of the radical trans-formative experiment that is sought to be brought about by the amendment acts that empowered local units of self-governance. One such move was the affi rmative action for women, and historically disadvantaged communities in India, such as members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes

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xiv Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

in panchayats and municipalities which have resulted in much deeper and broader involvement of the electorate. Thousands of daily labourers and homemakers who have not had access to formal literacy are now contesting elections to these local bodies. While this book describes and assesses several net-works of civil society organisations (CSOs) who have attempted to support these newly-elected representatives in the aftermath of the campaign to elect them, it also recognises the role of the impartial SECs in this regard.

While the initiative has come from CSOs the experiences of these PEVACs seem to suggest that election authorities have played a catalytic and supportive role in several states. Many SECs have promoted greater participation of citizens for contesting elections and for voting. Several SECs have recognised and supported civil society coalitions for election promotion, monitoring and observer roles (strictly on a non-partisan basis). These experiences have made elections to local bodies far more inclusive than assembly and parliamentary elections today. This book explores this new experiment in building synergy between the SECs and CSOs.

In some fundamental sense, elections to constitutional bodies provide the foundations to democracy. Democracy fl ourishes if the citizens have faith in electoral processes and authorities, if they have the belief in making a choice, if they respect the electoral process. Voter registrations, voting percentages, choice of candidates and options exercised all depend on informed and active citizenry. Civil society has an important role to play in this regard. Election authorities can encourage and support such engagements by civil society.

Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagements: Experiences from India is about the role of CSOs in making elections to local bodies inclusive and the challenges involved in this process. The dominant narrative is about the campaigns carried out by civil society to make such elections inclusive — for candidates, voters and citizens alike. In essence then, this book is about politics of democracy, and politicisation of civil society engagement in deepening democracy. Much more needs

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Foreword xv

to happen to scale-up civil society engagements in deepening democracy. This is all the more relevant now that the Women’s Reservation Bill is in parliament and civil society can support those women who want to contest assembly and parliament elections in a similar manner. With 50 per cent reservation for women in panchayats now, there is a greater requirement of support for them as well. And much more acknowledgement, and encouragement, needs to be provided for linking civil society with the politics of democracy.

February 2010 Rajesh TandonPresident, Society for Participatory

Research in Asia (PRIA)New Delhi

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Acknowledgements

In writing this book I have drawn extensively on the fi eld reports and case studies generated by those engaged with the Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns (PEVACS) and the Panchyati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan (PRJA) campaigns from 1995–2009 –– a period that witnessed three waves of local-level elections after the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts –– in most states across the country. I have also drawn on insights from a series of interviews and ‘conversations’ with members of the PEVAC team in Delhi and women elected representatives as well as elected representatives from the scheduled castes –– both women and men primarily from two states where PEVAC was designed intensively and was followed by capacity-building engagements, namely Rajasthan and Haryana.

I would like to record my deepest appreciation to the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) team in New Delhi for their cooperation and professionalism as I wrote this book. Even while they offered every assistance in the documentation process, allowing me unfettered use of their rich library resource and fi eld reports, PRIA provided me with complete freedom to critically engage with a campaign that had initially been designed and implemented by them and which had thereafter emerged into a multi-stakeholder civil society intervention. I am particularly grateful to Martha Farrell, Director of the PIALL (PRIA International Academy of Lifelong Learning) initiative of PRIA who fi rst suggested that I document this process and Dr Rajesh Tandon, President PRIA, for his wise counsel that I bring a critical social science perspective to this, linking it to the discourses around deepening democracy.

Warmest thanks to Namrata Jaitli who went out of her way to facilitate this research. My deep appreciation goes to Manoj Rai, Dr Kaustuv K. Bandyopadhyay, Purvi Dass, Anju Dwivedi, Priyanka Dale, Kamleshwar Singh, Alok Pandey who took time off from their busy schedules to answer questions

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and share insights on the campaign; to Saswati Barua who enthusiastically accompanied me on the fi eld trip to Haryana and to Satpal Singh who guided and facilitated that trip. I also thank Zakir Hussain for always being forthcoming in locating library resources for me.

I am grateful to all the women elected representatives, aspiring representatives and those involved in the citizen cam-paigns who unhesitatingly travelled from far-off villages to meet me at the Govindgarh panchayat house and share their insights on what PEVAC implied for them. I am indebted to those women and men, particularly from the Dalit community, from Mahendergarh district of Haryana who warmly welcomed me into their home to candidly share their challenges and expect-ations from citizen-led peoples’ campaigns in India. What I saw, heard and learnt from these visits taught me much more than what any book could. A special word of thanks again to Martha Farrell who strongly encouraged me to undertake these fi eld trips which to me made a world of difference in the way I fi nally understood the dynamics and implications of these citizen-led campaigns.

I am deeply grateful for the professionalism, support and encouragement of the editorial team at Routledge. The peer review that they initiated provided invaluable critical feedback which helped me redraft and re-imagine the manuscript substantially and their copy-editing inputs helped me tie several loose ends together.

Finally, a special word of appreciation to my family, par-ticularly my husband Ranjan and son Upamanyu who seam-lessly adjusted to the disruptions on the home front that come with travelling and writing and also served as my sounding boards after the fi eld trips, and to my parents and sister Sukanya in Kolkata who have always taken a keen interest in my research. As always my friends Swarna Rajagopalan and Sudha Ramachandran were always there for me with their invaluable feedback and moral support.

April 2010 Sumona DasGupta

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1

Campaigns for Citizen Governance: A Conceptual

Overview

In 1993 and 1994, the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts were passed in India. Hailed as pathbreaking and trans-formative in their potential to deepen democratic decentral-isation, these acts provided, for the fi rst time since Independence, a Constitutional sanctity to institutions of local self-governance at the rural level (Panchayati Raj Institutions [PRIs]) and urban local levels (municipalities). It then became mandatory for all states in India to enact their own local self-governance acts in keeping with the letter and spirit of these amendments unless they were specifi cally exempted from them.1 By 1995 many states were getting ready to initiate elections for local self-governance units under the new laws.

In the same year (1995) an ambitious and massive civil society campaign was launched in India to inculcate voters’ awareness in states that were about to go to the panchayat/municipal polls. The campaign mode was also extended to sus-tain democratic engagements in states once elections to local self-governance units had taken place. This marked the begin-ning of a new and unique experiment with democracy that looked beyond its macro-institutional, structural dimensions to

1 No amendment of the Indian Constitution extends to the state of Jammu and Kashmir unless so extended by an order of the President under article 370 (1). The provisions of these amendment acts also do not apply to some areas such as Nagaland, Meghalaya, hill districts of Mizoram and Darjeeling in West Bengal for which special hills councils are set up.

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2 Citizen Initiatives and Democratic Engagement

engage with a more dialogic, deliberative form of democracy. The fact that the campaigns were entirely citizen-led gave it yet another special characteristic.

What actually took place on the ground was a chain of interrelated campaigns. The fi rst of these was named PEVAC (Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaign), followed by PRJA (Panchayati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan) or the initiative to prepare and energise the institutes of rural local self-government and fi nally the Gram Sabha Mobilisation (GSM) campaign to equip the lowest tier of local self-government known as Gram Sabha in rural India to play a proactive role in ushering in a culture of transparency and accountability. Together, the campaigns sought to promote worthy citizen leaders and collectives to participate in local self-governance. One of the keys to deepening democracy and creating conditions for social transformation is to ensure that worthy candidates contest elections. Newly-elected members also need support to equip them with knowledge and skills to make informed choices and function as autonomous agents. These emerged as the operating guidelines of the citizen-led campaigns and programmes which were initiated and led by a civil society organisation (CSO) called Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA). PRIA worked on the premise that grass-roots intervention can be meaningful only if it is based on the lived experiences of the people and empowerment comes out of knowing and engaging with their world and catalysing their roles in social transformation. This cardinal principle informed the manner in which the campaigns were designed.

What started off as a campaign led by PRIA, however, snow-balled into a huge civil society campaign that built strategic networks with CSOs across the country. The media and the State Election Commissions (SECs) — entrusted to ensure fair and free elections for local bodies — were also part of this alliance and network which provided the collective support on which the campaign was built. Using innovative and participatory methodologies born out of years of engagement

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Campaigns for Citizen Governance 3

with participatory research at the grass-roots level, these cam-paigns were carried out around 1995, 2001 and 2005 before local-body elections across various states in India after the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts were passed making elections to the local bodies mandatory following fi ve-year intervals.

This book describes and analyses these civil society cam-paigns and interventions, with a special focus on the nationwide PEVACs and PRJAs. It is in this sense an anatomy of a citizen-led campaign or rather a series of interrelated campaigns and citizen-driven post-election participatory interventions.

In order to understand the deeper import of these interven-tions the analysis is anchored within the theoretical paradigm of deepening democracy globally and the debates around the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts in India. It seeks to break new ground by analysing the practical implications and policy imperatives of ‘deepening’ democracy beyond its institutional parameters and the role of civil society interventions in creat-ing a culture of democratic engagement, accountability and transparency. By drawing on the primary data and narratives collected from the PEVAC and PRJA experiences across the country it attempts to engage with two issues — what the broad outline of a project on democratic decentralisation and deepening democracy can look like in India and what the role of civil society can be in this process.

While the book uses the burgeoning theoretical and empir-ical work on deepening democracy and the vast literature on local self-government in India as critical anchoring points in this study, it is important to clarify that the primary purpose of this book is neither an exhaustive analysis on the fi eld of deepening democracy nor a stock-taking exercise on the state of local self-government in India over the years. Rather, the searchlights are on the promises, possibilities and challenges of a gigantic citizen-led, citizen-driven campaign and follow-up intervention designed to raise awareness of the potential of institutions of local self-government in the aftermath of two legislations — the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts — that give these institutions a new potency. The citizen intervention

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turned out to be important not just because of its intended consequences but perhaps and equally signifi cantly, for the unintended consequences that it unleashed.

As I argue in this book, the methodology of the campaign itself became an extraordinary exercise in democratic practice, and blazed a trail in terms of indicating the shape that deli-beration and dialogic practices could actually take on the fi eld. As the campaigns moved from district to district, mostly across the vast expanse of rural India, through its street plays, Kalajathas (plays based on local cultural idioms), posters, pamphlets, Jagrut yatras (awareness drives), candidate-voter dialogues, rehearsals of voting procedures, setting up of infor-mation booths and participatory workshops for newly-elected representatives, a new dialogical experiment was actually being born and shaped. This was an experiment which had as its centrepiece the idea that governance was not just the business of central (federal) governments but also of citizens outside the formal institutions of governance. It recognised that democracy cannot be deepened without the active par-ticipation of its citizens and without multiple dialogues being generated at all levels — between citizens themselves, between civil society groups and individual citizens and citizens and the government.

Arguably, for this experiment in democratic decentralisation to assume a concrete shape, the government has to take the responsibility of setting up necessary institutional mechanisms for the disbursements of functions, funds and functionaries. However, this in itself is clearly not enough. To ensure that the spirit of deepening democracy is nurtured and sustained, citi-zens outside the government and outside the pale of the formal political space have to internalise the provisions and impli-cations of this experiment with democratic decentralisation and its implications in their everyday lives. They have to come to terms with their new roles and responsibilities as citizens committed to make this process come alive.

A massive awareness and public information drive to mo-tivate and engage citizens with the new vision of deepening

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democracy through empowering local bodies at the grass-roots level had to be initiated in the aftermath of the new legislations that aimed to provide a clear impetus to local self-governance. Such an initiative in reaching out to large segments of the rural population would necessarily have to use participatory methodologies and elicitive pedagogies. This is where a new role for civil society could be envisaged, primarily for two reasons.

First, the government machinery is simply inadequate for carrying out campaigns of this scale and magnitude. Yet, without this awareness drive, the change that is sought to be brought about through the amendments will only remain on paper as the people will not have the information and under-standing to either safeguard their rights and entitlements enshrined under these legislations or get a sense of their new duties and responsibilities. A clarion call to encourage people to participate actively in local-level elections and to fi eld good candidates and thereafter to continue to participate through the deliberative mechanisms provided for in the village councils (gram sabhas) is vital. Information on the acts and their im-plications is the key to success and this information must be both demystifi ed and brought to the doorsteps of the voters before the local elections. Evidently, no CSO can do this single-handedly. Only a concerted civil society engagement marked by a gigantic effort to build networks of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the country that can reach out to as large a population segment as possible, can achieve this ambitious goal.

Second, an imaginative pedagogy that uses people’s lived experiences as resources for deepening understandings on the operational aspects of micro democracies rather than the mechanical ‘learning training packages’ periodically prepared by the government as part of its capacity-building programmes is the need of the hour. Here again, CSOs which have engaged with practical governance issues at the grass-roots levels and understand the imperatives of participatory research can fi ll the vacuum both in terms of knowledge and skill building

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and provide the much needed support to the newly-elected representatives, especially women and those belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes who have typically been excluded from decision-making processes.

The contours of a project to deepen democracy in India invariably raise a series of uncomfortable questions. The central one is about the potential of local self-governance institutions to go beyond cosmetic innovations and actually bring about transformatory structural social change. The 73rd and 74th Amendments brought into play new actors and players exercising power for the fi rst time. Their trans-formatory potential was tremendous. However, the acid test will be in their ability to go beyond a mere alteration of civic responsibilities and expectations of the villagers to being able to radically alter the class status and make dents in the existing social stratifi cation of life in rural India which has worked to the advantage of a favoured few who have formed the traditional elite.

The idea and practice of empowered participatory democ-racy as opposed to the liberal constitutional understanding of democracy is now part of an emerging global discourse. It is increasingly capturing the imagination of a rapidly globalising technocratic world, marked by citizen apathy. The impact of globalisation has been multifaceted. While globalisation has created new forms of interdependence across and within nations, the asymmetrical nature of these patterns of interdependence has resulted in certain sections of people, communities and nations feeling marginalised and without voice. It has also brought about a technocratic revolution where lawmaking and public policy has acquired an ‘exclusive’ tag, and is seen as the prerogative of a few chosen specialists, well beyond the pale of understanding of the ordinary citizen. Increasingly, governments of even the so-called mature democracies are fi nding ways to subvert democratic processes by perfecting — to a fi ne art — the illusion of consulting multiple stakeholders while actually ensuring that policy and agendas are generated in the controlled seclusion of the private anteroom. This is

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tellingly described today as the ‘greenroom effect’. Inevitably this has left a large segment of the population even in liberal democracies feeling sidelined and possibly disillusioned.

Across the world citizen apathy appears to have become the norm, refl ected in no small measure, by falling turnouts at elections even in the so-called mature liberal democracies across the world. What are the factors that are responsible for the lack of participation in the electoral process? Equally important, beyond elections what is the engagement of the citizen with the actual unfolding and process of democracy-at-work? Going beyond electoral headcounting and the importance of fair and free elections, what are the everyday inclusive dialogic and deliberative practices present in a democratic set up, to ensure that decisions are taken on the basis of open voluntary participation of its citizens? This is where the idea of empowered, participatory and deliberative forms of democracy appears particularly attractive at least in the normative sense. Participatory and deliberative forms of democracy endeavour to go beyond the procedural, institu-tional trappings of democracy, with the latter typically char-acterised by the periodic holding of elections and the emphasis on rule of law.

This is important in order to address the growing sense of alienation between those who take the decisions in a liberal democracy and those whose lives are affected by those decisions. The idea of deliberative democracy, broadly understood as ar-rangements through which political decisions can be made through a process of public reasoning, discussion and debate, forms one strand of the ‘deepening democracy’ models. It grew out of a consciousness that old power structures and op-pressions have to be challenged through democratic practices that extend beyond formal electoral processes. In that sense, the discourses around deliberative democracy entail a more holistic and transformatory vision of democracy that goes beyond the confi nes of procedural justice to elicit responses on actual practices that nurture, sustain and deepen democratic processes on an everyday basis.

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Even as India celebrates the over-six-decade-long record of democracy (with a brief interlude of the emergency in-between) it is perhaps time to look beyond the institutional edifi ces of parliamentary democracy and interrogate how deep the democratic experience has penetrated. Within this perspective the book aims to:

Refl ect on how the repertoire of people’s understandings and lived experiences of governance (as refl ected in their stories and narratives that have been documented in the course of carrying out the PEVAC process) can create new understandings of democratic processes.

Provide an overview of the development of local self-government units in India following the 73rd and 74th Amendments and analyse their implications in terms of creating new faultlines, new animosities, as well as new identities and solidarities based on caste, class and gender at the grass-roots level.

Examine the role of PEVAC — its scope, multiple formats and methodologies in various states across India where it has been attempted.

Appreciate the challenges and constraints of the PEVAC approach in the task of deepening democracy at the grass-roots level in India. In this context, it considers the role of PRJA to sustain the process of civic engagement unleashed by the PEVAC approach.

Critically engage with the existing discourses on ‘deepening democracy’ with special reference to the international debates around deliberative democracy and its application in the context of India and relate this specifi cally to the campaigns and programmes around local self-governance in India.

As this is essentially a book that maps a people’s campaign, our starting point is to attempt to capture the actual story of the campaign and the programmes associated with it. This is done by focusing directly on the narratives and interviews from

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the fi eld. The story unfolds primarily through the lens of those whose lives have been touched, one way or another, by the cam-paigns. Following the overview of the fi rst chapter, the sec-ond chapter, ‘Vignettes from the Field: Lessons on Democratic Engagements’, is based on the assumption that the broad contours and signifi cance of such a large-scale campaign risks the danger of erasing smaller details and stories from the fi eld. Yet these stories and case studies carry crucial policy lessons. It resurrects some of these narratives from the heat and dust of the campaign and supplements them with interviews con-ducted in 2009 in Haryana and Rajasthan. The purpose is to examine what insights we can draw on deepening demo-cratic processes at the grass-roots level. The searchlights are on women’s experiences, as political empowerment of women is built into the spirit of the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts.

The third chapter, ‘The 73rd Amendment Act: New Align-ments, New Animosities’, situates the programmes and narra-tives described in the second chapter in their broader context. It does this by examining how the deepening-democracy experiment has expressly taken the form of an attempt to create empowered micro democracies at the grass-roots level through a process of democratic decentralisation sanctioned by the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts. In reserving seats of local self-governance for the hitherto marginalised groups — the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and women — the 73rd and 74th Amendments have created a space for a more inclusive brand of politics to emerge. At the same time, in the shorter run, this will undoubtedly create new contestations over power and resources between the traditionally deprived sections (now potentially empowered by the amendments) and those who continue to be socially and economically advantaged. This has and will continue to unleash new types of political action and new models of coalition making that will cut across the wide array of the deprived and oppressed social strata. The struggles for gender justice will have to be woven into the struggle for emancipation of each of these oppressed groups. The purpose of this chapter is to examine and understand these dynamics

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since no legislation can operate in a political vacuum. It at-tempts to identify the type of new actors who have entered the fray and analyses the social, economic and political factors needed to ensure their genuine empowerment.

Against this backdrop of the dynamics of caste, gender and politics within which the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts unfold, the fourth chapter, ‘The Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns: An Analysis’, offers a description and analysis of the PEVACs, focusing particularly on the efforts made from 1995–2005 — a decade long experiment — when a large number of states held their third phase of elections for the constitutional panchayats. It surveys the key interventions in some of these states, in terms of their aims, strategy and meth-odologies and analyses the lessons learnt from the fi eld. Relying on qualitative data captured through a series of fi eld reports on PEVACs generated by the campaign strategists and participants, it traces the trajectory of this initiative for citizens by citizens with the explicit aim of deepening the democratic impulse among the people of India, specially those inhabiting the rural space by demystifying the local-level electoral dynamics.

One of the outcomes of the PEVACs has been the close rela-tionship that has been established between the SECs — the vanguard of the local-level election process — and the civil society campaign animators. Entrusted with the huge respon-sibility of conducting panchayat and urban local-level elections the SECs often fi nd themselves stretched, and in the absence of timely information on election malpractices, unable to take necessary action. Consequently, the fi fth chapter, ‘The Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns and the State Election Commissions: Building Common Ground’, examines how civil society initiatives can fi ll this vacuum by working closely with the SECs.

The essence of the deepening-democracy process is in sustaining citizen interest and initiative in governance even after election time is over. While chapters four and fi ve focus on the election process itself, the sixth chapter, ‘Beyond Elections: Sustaining the Democratic Impulse’, moves on to the post-election phase. It acknowledges the systemic limitation

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of PEVAC in generating a huge but essentially time-bound awareness about the signifi cance of the electoral process even as it turns the searchlights on the next logical step in creating empowered micro democracies across India through PRJA and the GSM campaigns. In order to sustain the initial awareness campaign unleashed by PEVAC, an equally large effort has to be made to support the elected representatives, especially those elected for the fi rst time and who belong to communities which have been traditionally excluded from decision making. This is where the role of PRJA comes in. PRJA took the form of capacity-building workshops for newly-elected representatives and was supported by yet another campaign — the GSM campaign. By focusing on these two citizen-driven initiatives this chapter examines the challenges in terms of keeping the democratic spirit alive in the interstices between formal elections, in terms of mobilising resources and continuing to sustain the synergy that a PEVAC may have generated in the run-up to the formal election.

The seventh chapter, ‘Deepening Democracy: Discources and Practices’, reviews aspects of the ‘deepening democracy fi eld’ as it signals a move away from an exclusive preoccupation with institutions of representative democracy and expands its domain to also include practices of empowered citizen participation as they seek to exercise ever-deepening control over their lives. This chapter links the narratives garnered from different parts across India to the broader debates in the political arena, around the world and in academia in the fi eld of deepening democracy.

The fi nal chapter titled ‘Conclusions and Refl ections for the Future’ summarises the main arguments and fi ndings from the civil society interventions conducted over a period of 10 years, and places them in a policy perspective. It also refl ects on the direction that future campaigns of this kind can take.

It is still too early to assess the impact of PEVACs, PRJA and GSMs in deepening democratic practices and ushering in a new culture of social change. However, the experience of the campaigns in states spread across India offers valuable leads

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on possible directions that a meaningful project on democratic decentralisation can take. Taken together these campaigns add up to a huge citizen-led initiative that attempts to usher in the promise of social transformation by countering the global trend of ‘hollowing out’ of democracy at the macro level with deepening democractic processes at the micro level by harnessing local initiative and citizen power. This book attempts to map and critically assess this trend towards citizen-led governance by using the narratives from the fi eld as the starting point for discussion.

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2

Vignettes from the Field: Lessons on Democratic Engagements

From 1993 it became obligatory for all state governments in India (unless an exemption was specifi cally provided for as in the hill or tribal areas) to generate their own Panchayati Raj Acts detailing the devolution of powers, functions and funds to the now constitutionally-recognised, three-tiered units of local self-government in India’s villages. This had two broad implications. First, by providing for regular elections at fi ve-year intervals it signalled that local self-government bodies have a representative character. This would suggest the beginning of a new paradigm of governance with the gram panchayats now serving as the crucial link between the community and the state. Second, the 73rd Amendment made it constitutionally incumbent upon the state government to ensure that their respective acts provide for reservation of not less than one third of the seats for women and proportionate seat reservations for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. This opened the fl oodgates for a silent revolution (Mohanty 1995: 3346) that had the potential to transform feudal and gendered roles, identities, structures and ideologies.

In many states across the country, 1995 was the turning point in the development of PRIs in that it marked the year in which elections to the panchayat bodies took place for the fi rst time under a ‘new generation’ of post-1993 Panchayati Raj Acts. Responding to the opportunities and the challenges of this moment, PRIA — a CSO that undertakes initiatives to impact the lives of the marginalised and excluded sections of society through a participatory citizen-centred approach to achieve equity and justice — decided to launch a massive

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information campaign designed to bring information on the voting process and its implications to the doorstep of the people. The campaign — PEVAC — was staggering in its magnitude and scale. This ambitious intervention has sought to reach out to at least 50 per cent of the population of the states that announce panchayat- and municipal-level elections. Following its beginnings on a more modest scale in the fi rst phase of 1995, upscaled PEVAC campaigns were later launched in the second and third phases of the panchayat elections in 2000–01 and in 2005–06 respectively.

The tentativeness that naturally characterised this cam-paign effort in 1995 gave way to a more confi dent and clear-cut strategy in the next two phases of the panchayat and municipal elections in the years 2000–01 and 2005–06. Using an array of innovative methods, building strategic alliances with other CSOs and the state administration across the length and breadth of the country, combining intensive and extensive campaigning depending on the support available, PEVAC and its follow ups in the form of PRJA and GSM campaigns snowballed into a large scale systematic inter-vention intended to facilitate the creation of meaningful micro democracies. The intervention triggered off a cascading ef-fect, that touched the lives of millions of people and involved multiple networks — between local animators at the com-munity level who made the transition from the target group to the activist group; between PRIA and different CSOs in the region following a CSO mapping exercise; between different CSOs in areas where the PRIA core team’s presence was leaner than others (see Appendix I); between the SEC, the district administration and the PRIA team; between the media and the PEVAC team. In the process of coordinating and building these linkages several new relationships and citizen-partnerships were forged simultaneously.

In such a large-scale campaign involving thousands of districts across the country and a multitude of actors, what tends to get lost are perhaps the small details and the micro outcomes of the

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Vignettes from the Field 15

campaigns and stories of personal transformation. Yet, these personal transformations can, in the long run, lead to a critical awakening and set the stage for larger social transformation. Even as we recognise that examples of personal change do not necessarily lead to large-scale and deep-rooted revolutions and the framework of the personal cannot be transposed unproblematically to the collective realm of the social and political, these are undoubtedly important in generating a larger climate for structural and institutional change. In the long run it is these seemingly insignifi cant incremental steps that could contribute to the process of deepening democracy and making it a lived reality in villages and towns across the country.

The vignettes from the fi eld are intended to draw attention to the way in which the campaign actually took off, the lives it touched, the transformations it triggered and the challenges and opportunities raised by such citizen-driven interven-tions by placing people and their narratives centrestage. It is consequently drawn from open-ended interviews conducted by the author with those involved in conceptualising and operationalising the PEVACs and subsequently the pro-gramme called PRJA which were designed to support newly-elected representatives. It also builds on the conversations the author conducted with some women citizen leaders who have contested the panchayat election in order to record their experiences after they made this decision to contest and to fi nd out how it has affected subsequent life choices and at-titudes. Finally, it draws on the media reports of the impact of PEVACs on citizen leaders since the media was involved consciously as part of the multi stakeholder approach to the campaigns.

Transforming Perceptions

In the course of these campaigns an interplay of interactions oc-curred at different levels — between campaign facilitators, local animators, voters and contestants — changing perceptions

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across the board and creating new thinking spaces that perhaps tend to get obscured in the heat and dust of the campaign pro-cess. In this section we try and resurrect some of these personal experiences that could open up new insights in the discourse on deepening democracy. We are informed by the fact that opening up of dialogic spaces — where new interactions take place between actors who have known each other but not really conversed or actors who come together as a result of the process — create opportunities for a new type of dialogic democracy where what seems like ‘everyday talk’ contains deeper political implications that can transform the way we think about and practise our democracy.

In this context one of the interesting outcomes, possibly un-intended but nevertheless extremely important, was the fl uid boundaries between the animators-citizens/target audience/campaign leaders which opened up the possibilities of a true democratic conversation not just among the members of the target audience at whom the campaign was directed but also among the PEVAC team and the members of the village community. An urban–rural dialogue and a cross national dialogic interaction was spontaneously scripted which was perhaps not part of the original strategy but nonetheless emerged as a unique dynamic of the process itself.

Purvi Dass of PRIA, for instance, recounts one such ex-perience. Associated with the first PEVAC conducted in Himachal Pradesh in 1995, Dass travelled across the state as part of the PRIA team. In Himachal Pradesh this meant traversing mountain tracts and uphill terrain to reach out to people. There was a tentativeness in the air as was to be expected in any fi rst-time campaign but soon they realised that they were dealing with a new issue — people across villages wanted to know how this campaign was different from a typical political campaign since some of the methods used by PEVAC were similar to those used for political canvassing for state/Lok Sabha elections. In other words, how was the campaign jeep that arrived in the village with posters and loudspeakers different from the ones used by the political

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parties which appear just before elections, soliciting votes for a certain party with a certain symbol? Why should they listen to what this campaign was saying? In short, what was PEVAC all about?

The PEVAC team at the outset had to make it clear to the people that the questions in this campaign centred around three issues. First, why is it important to vote in the panchayat elections (and in this context how were these elections quali-tatively different from the other elections citizens participate in such as the Lok Sabha or the state assembly elections). Second, what kind of candidates should be elected? Third, what is the exact procedure for casting a valid vote on the day of the polls? In a nutshell, the aim was to simplify the reality of the electoral process and demystify the task of casting the vote. This was a campaign for citizens, by citizens, and the campaign facilitators were not there as members of any political party. Against this backdrop Dass alluded to a particular incident in the campaign involving the driver Kalu who was from the region. Illiterate and around 30-years-of-age, Kalu saw his job as just driving the ‘vikas rath’ — the vehicle which was being used as part of the campaign strategy. But in time, he was so enthused by the process that he emerged as an active citizen animator by the end of the campaign. Dass recalls:

The vikas rath, a van decorated with posters and slogans, fi tted with a loudspeaker, packed and stacked with pamphlets, posters and handbills used to go to clusters of villages for dissemination of information. There were two clear cut messages: you must vote, and the best among you must contest so that there is good leadership at the level of local governance. This was a 12-day campaign plan. For the fi rst two days Kalu sat in the van, driving it but otherwise not showing any interest in the campaign as such (even though he was from Himachal Pradesh, the state in which the campaign was being conducted). At the end of the second day he started asking questions wanting to clarify how this was different from the political campaigns (of party candidates in state/Lok Sabha elections). The fi rst

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spark of enthusiasm was ignited once he understood what this campaign was about. From the third day onwards, he was no longer a reticent man lacking confi dence to speak because he was illiterate. A transformed Kalu would now unhesitatingly take the mike and address the people using the local language and idioms on the importance of these elections and the new opportunities it would provide to the people for addressing vital development issues. Being from the state, familiar with both the geographical and cultural terrain, he would know exactly where to stop the van to make the maximum impact on the people. By the end of the fourth day he was sitting with the PEVAC team during the debriefi ng exercise offering his sug-gestions on what worked and what did not. By the end of the PEVAC campaign Kalu was a transformed individual — ready to not just vote but also take an active interest in panchayat matters and motivate others to do so. (Interview by the author, March 2009, New Delhi)

Kalu’s story provides an example of how a citizen-led cam-paign is qualitatively different in its scope from a political party-led campaign which is by nature adversarial, including

Figure 2.1: The vikas rath in Bihar

Source: PRIA.

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and embracing some, excluding and even undermining others. A non-partisan PEVAC on the other hand, while clearly pol-itical in its scope as it carries the seeds of social and political transformation, can bring people together and bring out latent qualities of leadership and initiative which can be built upon and developed. As Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay of PRIA remarking on this qualitative difference says: ‘PEVAC opened a democratic debate that was no longer focused on individual personalities. The debate shifted to the qualities of a leader and the role of public leadership and what would be the benchmarks of such leadership’ (interview by author, March 2009, New Delhi). It is this inclusive framework and context for dialogue that carries the promise for deepening democracy in the long run.

The PEVAC campaign set in motion another process of change. Indian village society has long been vertically stratifi ed on the basis of caste and class which intersect and create a set of complex identities. Manoj Rai, who has been closely associated with providing strategic direction to the PEVACs, points to how the PEVACs challenged caste barriers that had divided villages for centuries. Recalling a personal incident which he witnessed when he arrived with a media team that was covering the campaign on one occasion, he found that during the course of a discussion a member of the higher caste and a member of the scheduled caste were sitting on the same charpoi without even being aware of it. Following the reservation of seats the village elite found it expedient to open conversations and alliances with members of the scheduled castes who would occupy some of the offi ces. A new set of interactions ensued, no doubt born of expediency but none-theless important in its potential to make a difference in the long run. In this case once the higher-caste person realised what had happened he confi ded to Rai that since now in any case his caste ‘purity’ was gone for ever (having inadvertently broken through the seating ‘barrier’) further interactions with members of the scheduled castes would be easier as he had nothing further to lose!

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It is apparent from this incident that these impulses gen-erated by the compulsions of the campaign and the new order that was sought to be established did not per se bring in a culture of interrogating demeaning caste practices as such (in this case, for instance, it was not the degrading practice of refusing to sit with a member of another caste that was being challenged — in fact at one level it was being validated). However, at the very least, it set the stage where new interactions across castes were deemed acceptable even if it was for a strategic reason. The opportunity inherent in this situation to create a larger con-text for social change by eventually questioning community practices that are detrimental to fundamental values of liberty and equality cannot be ruled out.

However, Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay implicitly introduces a note of caution when he admits that from the point of view of leadership training PEVAC was a good exercise but from the ‘change perspective’ the impact was more subtle. According to him, ‘for social transformation to take root we need to understand the community power structure and this cannot be done in the course of a short term campaign’. Evidently under-standing the community power structure is not easy but is a necessary condition before it can be subverted in any mean-ingful way.

A major ‘impact area’ of the campaign was the manner in which it sought to mobilise women and members of the historically disadvantaged communities — i.e., members of the scheduled castes and tribes. This was explicitly spelt out in the campaign aims and was motivated by the desire to fore-ground social change by creating an enabling climate for an inclusive democratic culture. PEVACs also sought to motivate women to participate in the election process by casting their votes independently besides lending support to women who were contesting on unreserved seats by way of campaigning, voting for them, and providing moral support and fi nally encouraging women to venture into new roles such as taking on the responsibility of a polling agent. The following section draws on PEVAC campaign notes and case studies from the fi eld to explicate this aspect further.

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Essaying Protest and Signifying Resistance: Women and Dalits Seek a New Order

PEVAC involved a mobilisation strategy that involved thou-sands of local animators who belonged to the area, knew the local language and customs and could communicate with others easily. They were initiated into the programme through a PEVAC orientation where the purpose and methodology of the campaign was explained and demonstrated. Several women were part of this orientation and emerged as animators in the process even if they did not contest the elections directly and in the process offered to take on new roles that broke away from the gendered division of labour. New beginnings in redefi ning gendered roles and responsibilities were seen, for instance in Fatehabad district, Ratia block in Haryana, where a woman called Neelam Rani took on the challenge of being a polling agent, a role typically performed by males. Neelam Rani, who was educated and experienced and had also run the village information centre, refusing to yield to fear and intimidation, performed her role as a polling agent, checking women who had come to vote, removing their veils to check their identity and pointing out malpractices such as a voter who had come in twice to vote. This in many ways was expected to set an example in a male-dominated society where women were not expected to perform this role. In village Rivasa in Haryana, where the seat was reserved for women, all the 14 polling agents were women — they kept a strict eye out for malpractices and were supported by a group of women constables.

A popular and convenient myth which the campaign sought to break was that unreserved seats were for men only since women were contesting from seats reserved for them. In order to counter this the campaign provided special support to women contesting unreserved seats in terms of motivating other women to campaign for them and organising meetings. For example, in Basana Gram Panchayat, in Kalanaur block of Rohtak district of Haryana, members of the mahila mandals actively campaigned for Sunita who contested the panchayat elections in Haryana in 2000.

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However, deep-seated patriarchal values continued to be a stumbling block for women contesting on unreserved seats. It was observed by the PEVAC team members in Haryana that baseless allegations were levelled against women candidates contesting from unreserved seats — these often took the form of character assassination compelling women to sometimes withdraw from the contest. Part of the same syndrome repeated itself in the fact that the women panches were known by the names of their husbands and that the level of awareness about women panches was less than about male panches. Women were not expected to function independently and the common assumption was that they would be stooges of their husbands. Educated and independent women were actively discouraged from contesting — where they did contest they preferred to contest for the post of sarpanch rather than panch as they felt that this would allow them some discretion in decision making.

The extent of the hold of patriarchy was patently obvious and developing a culture of resistance through dialogue and debate was part of the PEVAC strategy — the small group discussions, the content of the posters, the songs and jingles were part of an overall strategy to create a culture that inter-rogates patriarchal values and creates in the long run a culture of everyday resistance rather than passive acceptance as part of a larger project of deepening democracy. Democratic de-centralisation will obviously remain a theoretical construct unless women are accepted as co-partners in the project and decision making is brought out of the exclusive purview of one segment of the population.

Keeping in mind the importance of generating a culture of resistance against patriarchy and its myriad manifestations in the electoral arena, one of the posters used in the PEVAC evocatively depicts a woman contestant with ‘strings’ attached, invoking the idea of a candidate who is not autonomous and the ability of patriarchy to fi nd itself new niches. The idea was to generate a debate and to encourage independent-minded women to actively participate and also to raise awareness that

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there was now a safety net, created by the campaign, that they could draw upon to break their silence.

While it was unrealistic to expect major changes in social attitudes to emerge in the course of a brief campaign, the very fact that a culture of interrogation of patriarchal customs was set in motion in several villages across the country was itself an achievement. For instance, in the course of the 2006 campaign in Haryana, the team found that despite the fact that the sarpanch seat was reserved for a woman in Fajalpur village, the election campaign virtually rendered the woman candidate, whose name was Kamlesh, invisible. None of the posters carried her name or her photograph — instead the name and photograph of her husband Puney Ram was shown. The PEVAC volunteers brought this to the attention of the villagers and a new set of posters were put up rendering the actual candidate ‘visible’. There were similar cases elsewhere, few in themselves, isolated perhaps in their occurrence but nonetheless signalling that a dent had been made in the existing stranglehold of the patriarchal roles where the very act of contesting elections implied for a woman a breach of the private-public boundaries that had been so carefully crafted to preserve a certain order.

Sometimes even a seemingly small act carries a symbolic value and creates a ripple effect. During the PEVACs, one of the most popular strategies was Amne Samne — a voter-candidate dialogue used to create better communication between the voters and contestants. In Bhagalpur and Vajurpur villages of Jajjar district in Haryana, the Amne Samne helped break the wall of silence among women. During the dialogue a woman directly came up to the stage and took her place. Initially upset that a woman should signal that she was no longer a passive member of the audience, the villagers eventually attributed this to the fact that she was from the upper caste. Ironically, this strengthened their resolve to elect someone from the scheduled caste to break the dominance of the upper castes. At the same time the ‘demonstration effect’ of this symbolic act by a woman despite the fact that she belonged to the privileged caste blazed a new trail and simultaneously broke

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through the caste barrier to foreground a new identity based on gender. The village decided to elect not just a member of the scheduled caste but put their weight behind a scheduled-caste woman in the panchayat election and interestingly she was actually elected. Women’s networks, like the mahila mandal, were also mobilised in the campaign to actively support women candidates contesting the elections. Certain standards of public behaviour were in addition set as benchmarks by these womens’ networks. For instance, in Alisardar village of Fathebad district, the mahila mandal withdrew support to one woman candidate who was found distributing liquor among the voters and supported another woman candidate whose chief attribute was development and welfare activities — this candidate won the election with a large margin.

An act of defi ance by an elderly woman, again in Jajjar district, in the village of Hashanpur during a PEVAC inter-vention also generated a heated debate among the villagers on gendered ideologies. When male members of the village started sharing their views against women candidates this senior citi-zen stood up and opened her veil in public view and declared that if the men were not ready to support women candidates by invoking the veil, they would take it off and never put it on again! Adding to the debate, she said there was a need to collectively raise their voice against this form of discrimination and asserted that as a member of the older generation she wanted to register this dissent. It is important to note that this act was not against the veil per se which many women might well use as a matter of choice but against the invocation of the veil to deny a citizen her political rights.

Another inspiring story came from Kamina block in Mahendergarh district where the post of the sarpanch was not a reserved one. Defying the convention that unreserved seats would always be contested by a male citizen a woman, Kanta Devi, decided to fi le her candidature against four other male candidates. During the PEVAC voter–candidate dia-logue, when all contestants came on to the stage to share their manifestoes (ghoshna patras) in front of the whole village,

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Kanta Devi, far from shying away and to the complete sur-prise of the villagers, came forward and read her manifesto with confi dence identifying four major issues that concerned the village and which she would attend to if elected. This included female foeticide and health, girl-child education and construction works. Kanta Devi was supported in her breakthrough speech by PEVAC volunteers. Applauding her dream and the confi dence she showed during this interface facilitated by the campaign, Kanta Devi was elected sarpanch recording a comfortable victory. In the same block, another woman named Kamala contested for the post of sarpanch for a second time. Despite the fact that the husbands of the other women candidates (this was a reserved seat) were found distributing money and liquor to the villagers, they refused to be swayed. Impressed with Kamala’s performance record, they reelected her to the post of sarpanch.

In fact, in Haryana, more than 500 women volunteers were engaged in the campaign process. They were mainly part of networks like the Nari network, mahila mandal, self-help groups, yubti mandals, anganwadi workers, members of kirtan mandalis, and mahila chauplas. This indicates that the support of networks and collective power has a great role to play where power equations are being challenged in the fi rst instance. It is networks such as these which were galvanised during the PEVAC intervention that gave women visibility and helped break their silence.1 In western Rajasthan too, women’s collectives played a major role including supporting Dalit women.2

The PEVAC drive also sought to especially reach out to members of the Dalit community traditionally excluded from decision making and participation in governance. Women from the scheduled castes and tribes are in a sense doubly

1 Case studies from Haryana are drawn from the fi eld reports by PRIA of the Panchayat Elections Voters’ Awareness Campaigns, dated March 2000 and March–April 2005.

2 Interview with Anju Dwivedi, PRIA, March 2009.

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disadvantaged, both by their caste identity and their gender identity in the village community. This is why the campaign directed its special efforts to identify potential women leaders from this group in the course of its engagement with the community leadership project. Here too, there were stories of resistance and profi les of courage as revealed by the stories that follow of three remarkable women from the scheduled castes who assumed or aspired to assume leadership roles cutting across the gender and caste divide. These stories are indicative of the new trends and have been documented in the PRIA reports on PEVAC.

Veena, from the Baijnath Block in Bhattu Panjala Panchayat in Himachal Pradesh, belongs to the scheduled-caste commu-nity who took active part in the trainings conducted by PRIA and its partner organisations, acquiring in the process a good working knowledge of the working of the panchayats. An active member of the mahila mandal, she was persuaded by it to not just contest for the post of pradhan but to do so from an open (unreserved) seat. Predictably, this was met with great resistance from other members of the community, especially the men and the supporters of the previous pradhan who had strong political affi liations as well. The pradhan had not hesitated to use money and liquor to ensure his vic-tory and had ensured that he continued in that position for 10 years. Supported by the mahila mandal who claimed that the pradhan had done nothing for their ward, Veena stood her ground. She lost the election. However, the fact that Veena ‘dared’ to contest sent out such a strong signal that the pradhan started inviting members of the mahila mandal to play an active role in the functioning of the panchayats. The mahila mandal declared that they would fi ght to ensure that transparency was brought back into local governance matters and that the pradhan would always be placed under a scanner. The electoral defeat was consequently tempered with a very different kind of victory that perhaps signalled that the time for change had come.

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Sushma Devi of Rait Panchayat in Himachal Pradesh belongs to a village where the faultlines are clearly drawn between the members of the scheduled castes and the other backward classes (OBCs) who attempt to keep the scheduled castes out of the benefi ts within the ward, even refusing membership of scheduled-caste women into their mahila mandal. Undaunted, Sushma Devi, who belongs to the marginalised scheduled-caste group, decided to form her own mahila mandal and also participate in the self-help groups in the area. She emerged as the upa-pradhan of the mahila mandal. Her active interest in the development of the community and ward along with her increasing knowledge of PRIs motivated her to look at the forthcoming panchayat elections as an opportunity to do more. Meetings conducted as part of the PEVACs emphasised the importance of a good and active candidate and the women of her ward proposed her candidature for the post of ward panch. Despite the fact that two male scheduled-caste candi-dates had already announced their candidature, she stood her ground and went ahead and contested. Today Sushma Devi is the elected ward panch.

Another remarkable story of struggle and resistance was scripted by Saraswati Devi, a tribal women also from Rait Panchayat in Himachal Pradesh. Abandoned by her husband, this mother of two children has travelled a long way from being a domestic help who washed dishes in other people’s houses to support her children, to becoming an elected representative at the panchayat-level elections. With her keen interest in learning, she has been a part of the mahila mandal at Rait as well as a mobiliser who has encouraged other women to attend gram sabha meetings. In course of time she acquired a good understanding of the functioning of the panchayats and she decided to stand for election, overcoming her initial hesi-tation that came from the fact that she was not literate. How-ever, the support of the people and the nomination camp that was organised as part of the PEVAC reduced her fears, and she decided to fi ll up the form with the help of volunteers at the camp. Saraswati Devi went on to win the post of the

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Ward Panch and her vision is to bring about transparency and accountability in the working of the panchayat and motivate other women to actively participate in the affairs of local self-governance. Her story does not end here. Moving from strength to strength she went on to attend a leadership camp in Bangladesh where she was nominated by PRIA for her knowledge of how women’s networks work and to share with others her story of overcoming adversity to emerge as an elected representative in the now institutionalised system of local self-governance.3

The political careers of Veena, Sushma and Saraswati who battled the double disadvantage of being women in a patriarchal set-up and being of a lower caste/tribal community in a vertically-stratifi ed village community, demonstrate that the initial support came from women’s collectives. It was the mahila mandals which provided the support base for Veena, Sushma and Saraswati. The importance of the collectives in the PEVACs was also alluded to by Anju Dwivedi who was closely associated with the PEVACs in Rajasthan. Drawing on her personal experience in Rajasthan as part of the PEVAC team, Dwivedi shared her perspective:

Prior investment in strengthening the Womens’ Collective move-ments was an asset when the intensive campaigning before the panchayat election was on in full swing. In western Rajasthan the impact of these collectives was keenly felt particularly their support for the candidature of scheduled-caste women. (Interview by author, March 2009, New Delhi)

While the stories of success are heartening and several women including some women from the scheduled castes and tribes have managed to overcome the barriers and fi nd their space as decision makers in a set-up where patriarchal and feudal values still hold a powerful sway, the path has not been easy.

3 The case studies from Himachal Pradesh are drawn from two fi eld reports by PRIA and the State Resource Centre, Shimla, dated March 1996 and 2005.

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In Madhya Pradesh, the PEVAC was conducted in partnership with a CSO called Parhit Samaj Sewa Sanstha. Raghavendra Singh, who was involved in the campaign, pointed out while speaking to the Times of India that while some women have indeed come out of their shell despite severe constraints, men have found it diffi cult to accept a woman as a sarpanch. ‘The general reaction is just because she has become a sarpanch does not mean she knows everything’. The Times of India report titled ‘With Quota, MP Women Break Free’4 carried the stories of two women in an area where PEVAC was carried out who have discarded their veil and decided to sit with the village menfolk as equals. Debibai of Chitwa Dera village in Datia district and Vijayanti of Birpur village in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh had never stepped out of their homes and as per custom were behind the ghunghat (veil) at all times — the gendered division of labour in the household was clearly demarcated and they were expected to bear the sole responsibility for household chores and bringing up children. This continued till they were elected as women representatives in the panchayat elections.

What happens when these women are suddenly expected to perform new roles and responsibilities as elected rep-resentatives? It is here that PEVAC and PRJA, along with women’s collectives and self-help groups, play the important role of providing that bedrock of support — both in terms of knowledge and skills and social support — to carry out these new tasks. Another important question is what happens to these women once they assume these new roles given the possibility that many of these women may not contest a second term as the seats that are reserved are rotated? The system of rotation implies that for every election held once in fi ve years, a different cluster of seats are reserved. No seat is reserved for two consecutive terms. Typically, the total number of seats reserved are allotted by rotation by the district magistrate under the direction, control and supervision of the SEC. Though these women can contest from an ‘open’ seat as well,

4 Anita Katyal. ‘With Quota, MP Women Break Free’, Times of India.

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many of them are persuaded and pressured not to either by their own family members or the village elders or the local MLA. In the meantime the experience as panchayat member offers them a glimpse of a very different world where they too can be equal players in matters of governance. For instance, Debibai and Vijayanti, when pushed into assuming new roles, grew into these roles, choosing to deal with the offi cial machinery themselves, attending the panchayat meets, and getting work done under their direct supervision. Can they be pushed back into the kitchen after their fi ve-year term is over or will a taste of what they have seen give them a sense of confi dence that will represent not just an ambivalent time-bound period of empowerment but a real empowerment in terms of slowly but steadily revolutionising gendered roles? The possibilities remain open either way.

At the same time there are other cases which tell a different story. In sharp contrast to Debibai and Vijayanti there are the stories of Sumitra Pal, the sarpanch of Majrisuri and Meera, the sarpanch of Hamurpur, also from Madhya Pradesh. Shyamlal and Jairam, their respective husbands, call the shots and even conduct the meetings. Meera’s statement to the Times of India is not exceptional. ‘Sarpanchi is only for fi ve years but family and village relationships are forever.’5 Implicit in this statement is the willingness to allow others, including the male members of the family, to actually set the terms of engagement in order to maintain a façade of community ‘peace’.

This is precisely the kind of challenge that the PEVACs will have to address by bringing in a culture of interrogation of community norms where these are clearly detrimental to the equality of status and opportunity. An unqualifi ed accept-ance of norms in the name of tradition and culture, as clearly indicated in Meera’s statement where it is deemed acceptable to be subservient and give up one’s designated role in the name of ‘peace in the village’ can be the most important stumbling

5 Anita Katyal. ‘With Quota, MP Women Break Free’, Times of India.

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block in the path of realising the spirit of the 73rd Amendment Act. Stories of bartering and selling of reserved posts, proxy candidates and the menace of ‘sarpanch patis’ — a new tribe of power brokers who would like their duly-elected wives to remain merely fi gureheads while they strike the deals with contractors and conduct the business of governance — have been highlighted in the media. The role of the CSOs and citizen-driven campaigns like PEVAC assumes a particular salience in this regard in working towards creating the crucial mass of women and men at the panchayats who are committed to bring in a new culture of governance where people — not just some sections of it — matter.

Walking a New Road: Conversations with Elected Women Representatives

To gain a deeper understanding of some of the issues raised through these case studies and the perceptions of elected women representatives, the author conducted a series of un-structured interviews in Govindgarh district of Rajasthan and Mahendergarh in Haryana where the PEVACs had marked a strong presence. The purpose of these face-to-face interviews conducted in July 2009, a couple of months before the next set of PEVACs started for the 2010 elections, was to gain a deeper insight into the life trajectories and perceptions of some elected women representatives before and after their tenure was over. Did they think of contesting for a second term? What has been their experience as an elected member, what were their priorities, what did they do differently? What has been their learning and how are they now contributing to community life? In broader terms, how has the 73rd Amendment Act and particularly the provision on affi rmative action for women translated into lived experiences and is it emerging as a genuine tool for deepening democracy at the level of the community?

The women leaders who were interviewed were all involved with the civil society-led leadership programme and had either

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contested the panchayat elections from 1995–2005 or aspired to do so in 2010. Some of their recommendations for future PEVACs and PRJAs based on their personal experiences are shared below.

The fi rst set of interviews were conducted in Rajasthan in July 2009 in Govindgarh district where the PEVACs and PRJAs had made a signifi cant impact.

Rajkumari Natani from Rajasthan is 50 years of age, has studied till class 8, and lives with her husband, 23-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter and acknowledges that her family support has been important in enabling her to contest and win the unreserved seat from the constituency in Udaipur. In a context where unreserved seats are normally seen as being actually ‘reserved’ for men, to contest and win a seat as a ward member was in itself a big step forward in the fi ght against patriarchal domination of all aspects of family and commu-nity life. Her allotted election symbol was a water pump — for her it symbolised the critical importance of water in the household — a necessity that cuts across community faultlines.

On being asked what her fi rst priority was as an elected member she replies unhesitatingly: ‘mending the leaking pipelines in my constituency’ (interview by author, July 2009). Even before constructing new water lines it was important to maintain and repair old ones as much of the water problem would be taken care of just if that simple step was undertaken. She was candid about corruption and said every time new projects were initiated the fi eld was open for contractors, suppliers and the village elite to form alliances in order to make money. This was the rationale for her to use the mantra of ‘repair and maintain’ rather than initiate a large construction work, obviously a move that did not fi nd favour with several infl uential people in the village who benefi ted every time new projects were initiated. However, Rajkumari stood her ground on the matter even while acknowledging that in the long run new pipe lines would of course have to be provided for. The message of transparency and sensitivity to the needs of the people that this shift in emphasis denoted was an important

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fi rst step in making people’s needs central to planning. Simi-larly, she justifi ed expenses of road repair rather than new construction for identical reasons. Next on her list of priorities was the widow pension fund which as she proudly shared, she was able to operationalise within two months.

Literacy and education ranked high on her list of priorities. She encouraged women, particularly Harijan women, to follow suit, recalling with justifi able pride her feelings when Kanta the fi rst Harijan woman to use this programme learnt to write her own name. This simple act — signing of one’s own name instead of using the thumb print — was an important symbolic gesture of empowerment for her and for others as it signi-fi ed that they were now agents who could exercise their own free will. As an elected member Rajkumari also prioritised the setting up of schools for 6–13-year-olds. To begin with, 50 children were enrolled and two teachers recruited, the idea being to generate a culture whereby sending children to school was seen as natural. Promotion of self-help groups was yet another area of engagement for Rajkumari and these centred on candle making, juice making, and making of incense — these generated income besides providing dignity to the woman as a productive income-generating member of the household.

She acknowledged that caste and religious faultlines some-times generated confl icts in the village. In her opinion ‘untouch-ability’ was no longer prevalent in the way it had been in the past as there was a generational change — the very fact that everyone had to sit together for the meetings regardless of caste was also instrumental in breaking the barriers in private spaces. Confl icts between religious communities were not common in her village: she could recall only one instance of a disputed site but that was resolved by the elders of the two communities in a joint meeting. While the elected women representatives could play a role in bringing these disputing parties together in dialogue the ultimate resolution, however, would still be in the hands of the elders of the religious communities so as to ensure that it had the necessary ‘sanctity’.

On being asked what was the most important learning from her tenure as an elected representative, Rajkumari was

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prompt in her response. ‘Self-confi dence’ she replied without hesitation, ‘Himmat le ke kam karna’ (work with courage and conviction). She recalled how after sometime the ‘babuji’ (bureaucrat) would listen to her respectfully as would the sarpanch ward. It is this irreversible lesson about her ability to earn respect that will stay with Rajkumari, regardless of whether she contests another election or not.

Rekha Kumawat from Govindgarh village of Rajasthan who contested the panchayat elections of 1995 for a post in the panchayat samiti, lives with her husband and three children in her newly-constructed home which we visited. Rekha herself is educated with a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. The 1995 elections in Rajasthan was the fi rst election to be conducted after the 73rd Amendment Act and it was preceded by the PEVAC which, according to Rekha, represented an im-portant learning for her. It enabled her to meet other women through the mahila sammelans (women’s networks) that were organised as part of the campaign and this gave a sense of the common concerns and connectors across villages, caste and communities. From 1995–2000, she learnt new skills both through workshops as well as through the direct experience she gained that she believes has equipped her to fi ght future elections, should the opportunity arise.

Rekha’s greatest asset has been her education which has given her the confi dence to assert herself. She acquainted herself with the government schemes and asserted the importance of being able to fi ght for one’s rights. On being asked her priorities as an elected member she listed building of roads in the village and ensuring water in the colonies. Education was high on the list of priorities, and she tried to ensure that teacher absenteeism was addressed and temporary appointments were made where necessary so that the syllabus could be completed.

For Rekha, walking with all sections of society and involving women in decision making was a signifi cant step (‘sabko leke chalna’) as she said she herself refused to be a puppet. ‘I am a graduate’ she said confi dently, and will be not be taken for a ride. For her, training other women was a duty that she tried

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to fulfi l. The main outcome of the workshops conducted by PRIA and its partner pre-and post-elections was in enabling her to gain confi dence that women could contest not just reserved but unreserved seats as well. It is signifi cant, however, that a person with Rekha’s confi dence and convictions (I am not a puppet, she had asserted in her interview) was persuaded not to contest for a second term. Though she did not speak about this it was revealed that both male members of the village as well as the local MLA had put pressure on her not to contest a second time. This raises vital questions about the notion of empowerment and the capacity of the 73rd Amendment to make a critical difference in changing the style of governance. Is it that a elected woman representative who asserts her right to be a part of the decision-making process in the same way as her male counterparts is seen as ‘threatening’ to the old order and systematically marginalised from the electoral process?

Rekha has crafted a quiet if spirited response even while she apparently succumbed to the pressures of the village elders and the political party in question whose MLA ostensibly requested her not to contest. In continuing to engage with PRIA and the capacity-building workshop designed specifi c-ally to encourage women’s leadership, she has chosen to share her knowledge and experience of the new Panchayati Raj Act with other potential women contestants and her strong message that women must lead by their action and not shy away from learning and refuse to become subservient to feudal and patriarchal elements will no doubt percolate through her interactions at these workshops.

A visit to Rekha’s house confi rms that the transformation of gender ideologies and gender roles that started with her assuming a place in public life has slowly percolated into the inner spaces of the home as well. In a division of labour cutting across stereotypical gender roles, her college-going son and daughter both pitch in to serve us a home-cooked meal and work in the kitchen together. Their aspirations for the future too, are not bound by their consciousness of the ‘limitations’ of being born into one gender and not the other.

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Rekha’s daughter wants to travel and do an internship in Delhi — she refuses to conform to traditional forms of dressing in the village and clearly the assumption of public offi ce by her mother has played a role in charting out her aspirations. In the cases of both Rajkumari and Rekha it appears that the political has transformed the personal and the two domains interconnected intimately.

Sharda, 47, from Hasera constituency of Rajasthan con-tested the elections with the implicit support of the congress party. This party backing along with the support of her family was, as she candidly admitted, a source of strength in the panchayat elections despite the fact that she was new to politics when she started out as a contestant in the panchayat elections of 2000.

Sharda contested with the symbol of a ‘Mahal’, representa-tive of a dwelling place that identifi ed closely with the cultural ethos of Rajasthan. Though people in the village knew her because of her presence at the family stationery shop, once elected, she had to take on the tasks of public speaking and conducting public meetings and it was here that she found the capacity-building workshops and interactions with other women leaders particularly empowering. In her fi ve-year tenure as an elected representative, she prioritised the build-ing of drains and roads, and ensured that the widow pension scheme became functional. Like her other counterparts from Rajasthan, she acknowledged the importance of the culture of building and sustaining self-help groups among women as a method of economic empowerment which ultimately increases their status in society.

Detailing the slow but steady attitudinal change among the men in the village Sharda talked about how the initial scorn — what will she do (wo kya karegi) — was replaced with grudging respect when she indicated clearly that she was not afraid to admit that she needed to learn. Sharda shared another in-sight: she indicated that our socialisation process is such that for a woman to say ‘I will learn’ is more acceptable than a man to articulate this sentiment and that can be converted into

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an asset. She had no hesitation in announcing that she was not an expert but would learn and lead by action and example rather than words (karke dikhana) as she fi rmly believed that actions speak louder than words.

On being asked what she did differently from her male counterparts as an elected representative, she was crisp in her response. In every task she performed as an elected repre-sentative she combined her intuition with her learning (dil aur dimag) — whether it was in motivating other women to participate in the gram sabha meetings, ensuring that receipts are collected and accountability is maintained, ensuring that the Indira Awaas Yojana (which provides fi nancial assistance to the rural poor to build houses) is implemented, and creating a culture of showing respect across caste and creed. It was this mantra that worked for her and made what she saw as a difference in the working styles of the men and women representatives. As Sharda pointed out, in a conscious gesture to reach out to members of the Harijan community and make a public statement she made sure that she accepted the fi rst garland from them after she won the election in a constituency where 25–30 per cent of the people belonged to scheduled castes.

Asha Devi belongs to the Meena tribe of Rajasthan but aspires to contest from an unreserved seat or for a seat re-served for women rather than one reserved for members of the scheduled tribes. Though she was defeated in the 2005 elections she aspires to contest again for the post of sarpanch. Like Rekha, she too is clear that it is the post of the sarpanch from where genuine decision making can emanate. As someone who has participated in PEVAC she felt that the campaign’s greatest strength was that it created awareness that women could use their public offi ces to open the door to equality or what she termed ‘barabar ka darwaza’. She felt that the can-vassing time had been far too limited during the last election and suggested that in the new round of campaign there should be greater awareness about election malpractices and more time to connect with people. Like Rajkumari, she too felt that since in contemporary Rajasthan, and in her village, nearly

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every household was connected by the mobile network, this network could serve as a powerful tool of communication in the next round of PEVAC. Given the extent to which it has proliferated this wireless technology could be harnessed quite effectively to spread the message of the PEVAC.

Kiran who has been involved in the PEVACs is an anganwadi worker. Though she is not an elected representative yet, she aspires to be one. She shared that in the next round of PVACs there should be more awareness of proxy candidates, the detri-mental role of the new breed of ‘sarpanch patis’, and the role of social audit as a means to create more accountability.

It is perhaps important to note that Rajasthan, where these women were interviewed, has been the site of one of the most powerful movements in India in recent years — the Right to Information.6 The notion of social audit along with its associated public hearings carries a special resonance in these parts. The impact of this movement along with the leadership-training programmes has probably been instrumental in creating a mindset among women representatives that is more progressive than what might be seen in other parts of the country where the movement has not created such an impact. The infl uence of this movement which has resulted in one of the most progressive pieces of legislation, where the voices from the village councils actually reached the national legislature, can also be indirectly gleaned from the fact that among the women representatives there was a fairly high degree of awareness about the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and their rights and entitlements.

6 In Rajasthan the campaign for the People’s Right to Information began in 1996 following a 40 day dharna held in Chang Gate in Beawar, supported by 300 villages and more than 400 organisations. Led by the MKSS this dharna marked the beginning of the struggle for transparency of government functioning and people’s right to information. Based on the philosophy that the right to know is the right to live, this has been one of the most powerful people’s campaigns in contemporary India and culminated in the passing of the Right To Information Act by the Indian parliament in 2005.

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These narratives indicate that given some initial support (in these cases the women did admit that they received support from the family and in some cases from the women’s collectives such as mahila mandals and for two of the women an asso-ciation with a political party was also instrumental in their election) women appear to be able to provide a different style of leadership based on inclusiveness and the ability to walk with all sections of society. This, coupled with the conviction that there is nothing shameful about being in the learning mode, enables them to be ahead of the learning curve in many in-stances. It is interesting that for Sharda the ability to hold the ego in check and not be compelled to always appear invincible was a source of strength rather than weakness. All the women emphasised that winning respect comes gradually and from actions rather than words. Their symbols — the water pump or the mahal — were closely linked to issues of life and livelihood and implicitly revealed the value they attach to conservation and saving, values that they probably embody in their homes and extend quite naturally to the community as elected rep-resentatives. Consolidation of existing gains rather than an obsession with creating new assets seems to mark out these women from their male counterparts and all of them expressed their distress with the culture of cuts and corruption. This ‘cleaning and greening’ of politics that may come about with this emphasis on transparency (symbolised for instance by the insistence on receipts that Sharda articulated) is an important factor that can play a critical role in deepening democracy and creating a culture of accountability as well as in attracting more women to assume roles as elected representatives of the people at the grass-roots level.

In July 2009, a series of conversations were initiated in Mahendergarh district of Haryana with Beena, an elected woman representative whose term was coming to an end in 2010 and several members of the scheduled castes for whom affi rmative action had taken in the form of reserved seats at the panchayat elections.

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Beena, elected from village Gehli, Narnaul district of Haryana, with a double MA in sociology and history and completely supported by her family in her decision to contest for a seat reserved for women, candidly shared her struggles as a woman sarpanch. Pointing to the pervasiveness of patriarchy, Beena said she was exhausted by her struggles over the last fi ve years and would not contest again though she would support other women candidates. Her refusal to act as a puppet represen-tative and her questioning of the way NREGA was being implemented angered some district offi cials so much that charges against her were framed and a suspension threat was issued. The Block Development and Panchayat Offi cer (BDPO) initiated enquiries against her and confi scated the records and papers from her offi ce. Beena invoked the Right to Information to ask why the records had been removed from her offi ce by the BDPO and why it was necessary to remove these even if charges were to be initiated against her. The appeal was taken up at the level of the commissioner and a penalty of Rs 15,000 was imposed on the BDPO. Beena’s advice to elected women representatives was that they had an uphill task be-fore them and must be prepared to fi ght for their rights. As a woman ‘you cannot get anything without facing problems’ (interview by author, July 2009, Mahendragarh, Haryana). Beena was critical about the way in which NREGA was being implemented and how simple villagers were getting trapped in what she described as ‘kagazi karvai’ (paper work and red tapism) and even into giving their thumb impressions while the work and the wages went to someone else.

For Beena, literacy and education was paramount. She asked, ‘if as an educated woman I had to face so many chal-lenges as a sarpanch and the humiliation of false charges being levelled against me what would be the plight of a woman who was not able to read papers and the documents associated with holding that public offi ce?’ She also admitted candidly that despite the support from women her attempt to control the menace of drinking and the violence associated with it had not been successful due to powerful vested interests that had worked against her. The gap between her thinking

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and aspiration (meri soch) and what she could actually do was considerable. Her priority was education and providing piped water. She felt that a generational change had occurred in terms of attitudes towards the scheduled castes and caste violence, at least in its more manifest form, had come down. Her emphasis on piped water was also related to the caste factor as this would eliminate the concept of separate tanks for scheduled castes where such derogatory practices prevailed though she did insist that with time attitudes had changed.

Beena contextualised the importance of PEVAC and PRJA in the light of these personal experiences as a sarpanch. The PRJA went beyond simply providing information as the government trainings were wont to do and also provided leadership training and experiential learning opportunities. She recommended that it continue in its present form. The PEVAC needed to raise more awareness of the kind of chal-lenges that women candidates could face so that they were prepared to fi ght from the outset. Beena was clear that confl ict avoidance could not be the way out and the all pervasive culture of ‘compromise’ has to be resisted. Interestingly, Beena did not set great store by the mahila mandals in this regard as she felt that they operated best only with respect to providing support vis-à-vis domestic issues. A better support system for elected women representatives was needed and this is where PEVAC and PRJA should do a rethink.

Today Beena aspires to be an MLA and contest assembly elections in the future. As she points out members of the legis-lative assemblies are ‘imposed’ upon the people, and have very little connection with grass-root reality. A natural progression from an elected public offi ce at the panchayat level to the position of an MLA would ensure that the state legislative assembly had at least one core group of members who are able to bring grass-root voices to impact on policy.

A group of women and men from the Dalit community in Mahendergarh district shared their views on the role and impact of PEVAC and PRJA on the political and personal empowerment of women from the Dalit community. These conversations which took the form of a group discussion

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with the author were conducted at the residence of Kavita, a member of the scheduled caste, who had been particularly active in the PEVACs.

Kavita, who lives in a joint family and is the mother of two children aged nine and eight, aspires to contest in the forthcoming panchayat elections of 2010 and her interest in contesting for a public offi ce comes from her close involvement with PEVACs in the past. She feels that the civil society-led PRJA programmes following elections are more meaningful than the short-term crash trainings offered by the government. She has strong political convictions and in the assembly and other party-based elections does not hesitate to vote differently from her husband, who too was present while the conversation was on and agreed with the assessment. What are the factors behind Kavita’s confi dence, optimism and assertion? It is interesting that she attributes this independence of mind to her association with the social sector and civil society movements like PEVAC even while she acknowledges the support she receives from her husband and family. The new awakening among Dalits, says Kavita, has come from the realisation that the only way they could make a difference and overcome their historical disadvantages was through civil-society movements aimed at solidarity. A large number of women from the Dalit community in her district had participated in the PEVACs because they had seen this as a context to build this solidarity among women in general and Dalit women in particular.

According to Kavita, relations between different religious communities have not created any breach of peace in her village but casteism persists and casts a shadow over public life. Awareness and education among Dalits are the best tools which would enable them to protect their interest. She has gained in confi dence and knowledge from the PEVACs and feels that if she is elected she would work for all communities keeping the interests of women particularly in mind.

Meera, also a member of the scheduled-caste community, has studied till the matriculation level which she believes enables her to question and learn and make the best use of the opportunities for networking that PEVACs provide. She,

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like Kavita, has distributed pamphlets and carried campaign materials in a special bag designed for the campaign — simply carrying that bag gave her a new sense of identity and solidarity with others involved in this campaign. ‘Ye campaign ki bag ek alag pehchan dete hai’ (the campaign bag gives us a new identity) and once this is seen no one questions the fact that the campaign may require the presence of women till late at night. In fact, breaking with tradition, they had even come home at 1 and 2 AM on some days while involved with the PEVAC pamphlets and posters. This acceptance of the role of women in civil-society campaigns is slowly changing attitudes about gender roles in the village. For Meera, the main battle for elected representatives is to ensure that the culture of corruption comes to an end by adding to their knowledge base about the Panchayati Act and their own rights including the Right to Information. In fact, the Right to Information had already been used by them. Meera and Kavita both talked about how they had used this act to ask questions about the rations — how much they were entitled to get and the frequency of the supplies. They saw this legislation as a powerful tool to ensure accountability at the grass-roots level and it was during the PEVACs and the PRJA that they could learn more about the operational aspects of these enabling provisions.

For Shakuntala, another participant in the PEVACs who belonged to the scheduled castes, the most important out-come of the PEVACs was the confi dence which it had given them to start asking questions and to approach the concerned offi cials directly as a matter of right. The awkwardness that came from the social conditioning against members of the scheduled castes speaking out and asserting their rights, was levelled out to a great extent when they were provided a space in public life. Equipped with the knowledge of laws which they gained during the civil-society campaigns and the newly-acquired confi dence they no longer hesitated to question. She mentioned, for instance, that when their village road was left half done a group of Dalit women took the initiative to directly contact the concerned engineer and ensure that the contractor completed the allotted work. While all the women emphasised

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that the ability to listen was another skill they had acquired through these campaigns and that they were prepared to try and carry all sections of society with them, they were clear that they retained their right to resist where necessary through democratic protest and dissent and do this through forming bonds of solidarity.

Ram Singh, who accompanied us for the interviews in Mahendergarh, is a member of the scheduled castes who had lost the election but was ready to try again. This time, however, he wanted to contest for the post of sarpanch rather than contest as a member of the panchayat samiti or zila parishad (which is what he had aimed at earlier) as this is the post that comes with genuine decision-making functions. An enthusiastic participant in the PEVACs, Ram Singh is preparing to join the civil-society campaign yet again in preparation for the 2010 elections. He runs a general store and also considers himself a social worker. Though he agrees with the women that party politics at the panchayat level can be divisive, since he has contested at the level of the panchyat samiti and zila parishad, he does admit to receiving the backing of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP),7 though he is not a card-holding offi cial member of the party.

All the men and women present at this round of conversation agreed that the PEVACs must raise awareness about three issues that they felt resonated particularly for the scheduled castes though it also cut across caste lines — corruption, bogus and proxy votes and surrogate elected members. The PEVAC of 2010 must raise awareness about the recourses available against the malpractices, both during and after the elections. Corruption affected all but the poor and the Dalits were affected even more given their other social disadvantages. There was unanimity about the fact that women and Dalits must not fi eld candidates who were unable to read and understand or were

7 BSP is a national political party in India with Socialist leaning, formed chiefl y to represent the ‘Bahujans’, the majority, i.e., OBCs, Scheduled Castes and tribes, and other minorities.

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ready to abdicate responsibility in favour of their husbands or village elders after election. In a show of surprising clarity and unanimity, both men and women in this gathering agreed that the future PEVACs must raise greater awareness about a situation where women ‘carry the rifl e on their shoulders but men have their fi nger on the trigger’ (Interview by author, July 2009, Mahendergarh, Haryana).8

The challenges ahead for members of the scheduled castes as they seek their rightful place in public life was also captured when we met Roshni Devi, sarpanch, Kothal Khurd, in her home. Roshni Devi has been honoured with a national award by President Pratibha Patil in July 2009, for her ‘act of courage’ in ensuring that there would be no public consumption of liquor in her village nor would illegal liquor be sold. We met her with her family including her husband and two sons.

Casteism and patriarchy were in her opinion the two big-gest attitudinal blocks she faced in her quest to prioritise two things — to stop drinking of liquor in public spaces and to ensure drinking water for all. She shared that she has often faced humiliation on account of her caste background including taunts that scheduled-caste women were now ‘sitting on chairs’ while the upper-caste men were seated on the ground at the meetings. She had to remind people that regardless of her caste she was the sarpanch and entitled to her ‘chair’. Roshni Devi had faced a threat to her safety when a member of the upper caste Ahir community who had tried to block her work placed himself outside her house with an axe in hand and threatened her and physically assaulted her secretary. When the police was contacted over the phone there was a refusal to register a First Information Report (FIR) on the grounds that this could not be done on the phone even as she explained that the physical presence of the person threaten-ing her outside her own house made it impossible for her to

8 This was a statement that was supported and echoed by the women activists from the community who had participated in PEVAC and would like to be a part of the future campaigns as well.

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walk down to the police station. It was only much later when the matter went to the additional deputy commissioner (ADC) that a case was registered under the Atrocity Act and the culprit arrested and imprisoned for 42 days. She acknowledged the support of the ADC and Superintendent of Police (SP) who had a progressive attitude and were proactive in following up the case and ensuring the punishment of the culprit. Roshni Devi also endorsed the role of the PRJA in ensuring solidarity among elected women representatives and providing a con-text where their self-confi dence could be enhanced. She was willing to participate in the forthcoming PEVACs and felt that the message that should come through in the PEVACs and PRJAs is that women must be equipped to fi ght oppression and must never accept unjust means. The civil-society campaigns were extremely important as without awareness which comes from these campaigns and trainings civil society would be a mute spectator when injustices and atrocities are committed and the law, however progressive, would ‘remain confi ned to the pages of the book’ (Interview by author, July 2009, Mahendergarh, Haryana).

While Roshni Devi’s personal experience suggests the pervasiveness of caste in politics, Sumitra Devi, a panch from Silapur Mehta village who belongs to the upper caste, asserted that untouchability was on the wane and there had been a distinct and perceptible change in attitudes compared to the past. On being asked whether the PEVACs and civil-society movements were responsible for this she was uncertain though she did say that the fact that so many people, cutting across castes, were mobilised for these campaigns did create a sense of solidarity that could transcend caste identities. These new solidarities could be based on basic needs such as the require-ment for water, the evil of child marriage and so on.

Commenting on what the PEVACs could do differently, some of the women who had actively participated in the cam-paigns mentioned that it was necessary that a series of trainings should be organised even before the PEVACs as the campaign itself was too short in duration to raise awareness on some of the more serious issues that elected women representatives

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and members of the scheduled castes could face — both as voters and as potential elected representatives. The students of class 12 and the fi rst year of college who were eligible as voters should be looked upon as potential foot soldiers in the campaign given their high levels of energy and the fact that they could motivate their parents and other members of their household. Among the methodologies used in the campaign they pointed to the effi cacy of the Nukkad Nataks (street plays) which could appeal to both the literate and illiterate sections and initiate conversations across faultlines. They also ad-vocated ‘exposure visits’ after the PEVACs for newly-elected representatives for at least 15 days if this was to translate into a meaningful experience. Refresher courses in which knowledge regarding the laws of the panchayati raj and the other laws such as the Right to Information, as well as an understanding of the operational aspects of schemes such as NREGA, were vital for grass-roots governance to function effectively.

According to Jagdev Sharma, secretary of Society for Edu-cation and Welfare Activities (SEWA) based in Haryana, the most signifi cant impact of PEVACs was that people were now voting on the basis of work done and not just on the basis of big names and party clout. Mahendergarh in Haryana had been designated as a ‘dark zone’ due to its low social indices yet in this area at the assembly elections the people chose a young woman (Shruti Chowdhury) over a much bigger name with family clout to represent them. In this sense, the impact of PEVACs was felt not just for the panchayat elections but in a larger context of bringing about an attitudinal change where people would scrutinise a candidate’s ability to deliver and past records on that score before casting a vote. This was evidently the long term impact of the campaigns.

The PEVACs were conducted in 1995, 2000–01 and again in 2004–05 and the next one has started now in 2010. The im-portance of these campaigns has been succinctly summarised by Rajesh Tandon, President, PRIA in his opinion piece in Business Standard where he compares the awareness and mobilisation drives for the Lok Sabha elections with that of local level panchayat and municipal elections.

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The building blocks of our democracy are local governments — panchayats and municipalities. The constitution grants them enormous mandates. Most citizens vote actively in electing such representatives (panchayat voting percentages have averaged 85 per cent plus; municipalities a bit lower). Nearly 2.2 million elected representatives are governing these bodies; a good 42 per cent are women.

But media does not create the same buzz about panchayat or municipal elections; civic groups do not get so active; urban educated youth is not mobilised for municipal elections; ‘stars’ do not shine on them; corporates do not pay any heed; state election commissions are poorly resourced to launch any campaigns; professionals do not get excited about contesting elections for mayors’ posts.9

Making an appeal to all civic groups, media, corporates, and all concerned citizens to campaign for the forthcoming elections to local governments in the same way as they came forward to generate public information and awareness during the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, Tandon points out it is only when we nurture the democratic spirit of the local governments fi rst that there can be a signifi cant sustainable and durable national democratic process. It is in this context of launching a collective effort at nurturing the ‘roots of Indian democracy’ that the next PEVAC effort is to be conceptualised and executed.

In Chapter Three we turn our attention to the constitu-tional parameters within which these elections to local self-governance are conducted and the interplay of institutions, social norms and politics that create new opportunities for change and the inevitable turbulence that comes with change. As old faultlines are transcended and new alliances are forged, as the compulsions of a new politics manifest themselves, clearly the stage is set to alter the once quiescent space of the Indian village and smaller urban centres.

9 Rajesh Tandon, Nurturing Democracy’, Business Standard, 14 May 2009, p. 9.

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3

The 73rd Amendment Act: New Alignments, New Animosities

So long as we do not discover or create a representative and democractic institution, […] invest it with adequate power and assign to it appropriate fi nances, we will never be able to evoke local interest and excite local initiative in the fi eld of development. (Balwantrai Mehta Committee Report, 1957: 5)

The discourse on deepening democracy in India is largely contextualised within the parameters of creating empowered participatory governance through the establishment of in-stitutions of local self-government, particularly at the level of village India. As elections to the Lok Sabha are contested on issues that appear to be more and more remote from the daily struggles of the people the relevance of local self-governance elections have assumed greater importance. This is perhaps refl ected in the fact that in India the turnouts at elections increase as we move from the national- to the state- to the local-level elections indicating that in spite of the many systemic fl aws that stand in the way of genuine citizen empowerment, including at the local self-governance level, there is an increasing recognition that this is the starting point for deepening democracy (Yadav 2009).

The units of local self-governance in India’s village are known as Panchayati Raj, institutions harking back to a his-torical era when Indian villages existed as small republics, isolated as it were from the vicissitudes of the central regime in power. While the term ‘Panchayati Raj’ is not new in India, the fond expectations that the mere mention of this term continues to evoke in India needs to be placed in perspective. It is sobering to note that traditionally panchayats in India

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had comprised the economically-and socially-strong elements in the villages and this could not be construed as democratic in any sense of the term. The challenge is consequently not to revive these traditional panchayats but to infuse these bodies with a new spirit and ethos that would in fact challenge traditional fi efdoms and create an enabling space for social change and genuine democratic articulations. The transfer of power to panchayats must be accompanied by steps to ensure that old power holders and power brokers do not vitiate the emancipatory potential of these units of self-government and block the path towards a new deliberative democracy. This is easier said than done as the elites and patriarchs do not disappear overnight — they often reappear in a new guise or rule in absentia by creating a class of proxies who formally exercise power at their behest. This represents the biggest threat to the attempts to deepen democracy at the grass-roots level.

The trajectory of the institution of the panchayat has under-gone several ups and downs after Independence from the time it was located within the parameters of the non-justiciable Directive Principles of State Policy to its current stronger legal status within the parameters of the 73rd Amendment Act.

During the debates in the Constituent Assembly (1946–50), some Gandhian members had raised the issue of structuring Indian polity on the basis of panchayats as envisaged in the age-old concept of Panchayati Raj which Gandhi had in-voked during the freedom struggle. However, there was a contrary view on this matter echoed by B. R. Ambedkar who condemned the village as a ‘sink of localism, a den of ignor-ance, narrow mindedness and communalism’. (Rao 1968: 330). While several members like H. V. Kamath, for instance, were not prepared to go along with what they saw as a rather extreme statement, there is no doubt that the spirit in which Ambedkar made the observation could not be lost sight of. For someone struggling to put the dignity of India’s historically-disadvantaged communities on the forefront of the nation’s consciousness it was hardly surprising that the idyllic picture of the ‘little republics’ as havens of peace and development

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The 73rd Amendment Act 51

did not cut much ice. The traditional village panchayats had completely marginalised and oppressed India’s backward castes and classes and any project to revive this status quo was obviously open to challenge (Bhattacharya and Dutta 1991: 108–10).

In the Constituent Assembly Debates the question re-mained couched in terms of those who were for village panchayats as units of local self-governance and those against it. A compromise was reached when local self-governance matters found a place in Part IV of the Constitution which is unenforceable and which attracted no penalties or sanctions if the central or state governments simply chose to ignore it, as many did (Ghosh and Kumar 2003: 9). Perhaps what may have been more constructive was to have reframed the question not in terms of an either-or positioning on the issue of Panchayati Raj but in terms of identifying the factors that could completely change the structure and function of the traditional panchayat in independent India so that it could be the harbinger of change and transformation.

However, even while this reframing did not happen the inclusion in Part IV did serve to keep the idea of democractic decentralisation alive and a study team led by Balwantrai Mehta came up with the suggestion of setting up a three-tier Panchayat system in 1957. Though the rationale was conceptualised in terms of participating in programmes that were designed by the central government and not necessarily informed by voices from the grass-roots, it nevertheless it did give a lease of life to panchayats at the village, block and district levels at least at the institutional level.

However, in the post Nehruvian era (post-1964) the in-stitution stagnated again till it was revived by yet another committee — the Ashoka Mehta Committee in 1978. The Ashoka Mehta Committee Report represented a landmark in so far as it clearly acknowledged Panchayati Raj as an extension of democracy, and recommended establishment of democratic bodies below the state level suggesting in fact that a substantial quantum of powers should be transferred from

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the state government to the local level (Jha 1999: 24). This sparked off a ‘second generation’ of panchayats enthusiastic-ally endorsed by some states like West Bengal, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. However, it was also not able to live up to its promise due to lacklustre support from the central and state administration (West Bengal was an exception).

The third wave in institutionalisation of the panchayats came as late as 1986–89 when an initiative was taken by the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who recognised that ‘democracy (had) not functioned at the grass-roots in no small part due to the unresponsive even callous attitude of the district administration’.1 It is interesting to note that the rationale for decentralisation was seen in terms of providing responsive governance to the people whereas the earlier case for decentralisation had been made in terms of deepening democracy and for functional reasons. However, his attempt at passing the 64th Constitutional Amendment Bill to give constitutional status to this institution failed and it was only in 1992, in the regime headed by Narasimha Rao, that panchayats and municipalities received constitutional status through the 73rd and 74th Amendments respectively. The so-called fourth generation of PRIs came into existence in the various states once they enacted their respective state legislations which were now not a matter of choice but something they were consti-tutionally mandated to do.

The 73rd Amendment Act of 1992 which came into force on 23 April 1993 provided for the establishment of a three-tier

1 See Rajiv Gandhi 1987–91. Rajiv Gandhi: Selected Speeches and Writings, New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, Vol V, pp. 155–56. There is a continuing debate on the purpose of Panchayati Raj. Is it only for effi cient service delivery or is it (also) for developing the potential of the individual that comes from her/his involvement in democratic deliberation, decision making and functioning? This tension has never really been resolved and embeds much of the discourse around PRI even today. For example, the Sarkaria Commission on Center–State relations set up in 1983 underscored the importance of democratic decentralisation while the Eco-nomic Advisory Council pleaded for functional reasons for decentralisation.

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structure of governance in rural India in the form of the gram panchayat, panchayat samiti and zila parishad, in addition to establishing the gram sabha consisting of all persons in the electoral rolls of the village. The act contained several enabling provisions to endow panchayats with such power and authority as may be necessary to enable them to genuinely function as units of self-governance. In order to give teeth to the new provisions, the Act provided for the creation of the State Finance Commission to recommend measures to improve the fi nances of the panchayats as it was clear that without devolution of fi nancial powers PRIs would simply not be able to carry out their newly-designated functions.

The Act went further in its attempt to provide an enabling framework for change. First, it provided for regular elec-tions to the panchayats every fi ve years and for this it went on to set up a SEC to oversee the electoral process for local self-governance units in the same way as the Election Commission of India (ECI) oversees the general parliamentary elections. This marked the beginning of ensuring that the institutions of local self-government would be representative in character and invested with the moral authority to take decisions; breaking the client–patron relationship that had existed in the earlier regimes of erratic elections and nominated members and the control of the bureaucracy over the developmental schemes designed for the people. Second, it clearly specifi ed that two kinds of reservations were to be implemented — proportionate seat reservations for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes and reservation of not more than one-third of the seats for women. In doing this it created the space for communities that had been traditionally excluded from decision making to make new beginnings by carving out a niche for themselves in insti-tutions of local self-government.2

Despite this, a major lacuna exists in the very broadly-designated functions of the PRIs which are, as Videh Upadhyay

2 See text of the 73rd Amendment Act, http://india.gov.in/govt/documents/amendment/amend73.htm (accessed 21 April 2010).

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http://www.india.gov.in/govt/documents/amendment/amend73.htm



points out, more in the nature of ‘subjects’ rather than ‘activities’. The expectation was that the states would in their respective Panchayati Raj Acts fi ll in this gap. However, realising per-haps the inherent advantages of not specifying functional re-sponsibilities in too much detail, the State Acts have ensured that they retain the legal space to negate any substantial transfer of power to the PRIs. The problem has been further compounded by the creation of a large number of village level ‘user groups’ under the development programmes of the state government all of which function independently of the PRIs on the very subjects now assigned to the PRIs under the new act. These include, for example, the Village Forest Committees, the Water Users Association, The Watershed Development Committees and the Self-Help Groups among others. As Upadhyay elucidates ‘the inadequacy in legislative drafting refl ecting a defi nite absence of a holistic vision for village India, has created an overcrowded regime of paper laws for panchayats. The laws instead need to respond to the spirit of the 73rd Amendment’ (Upadhyay 2008).

Moving beyond the legal loopholes, there are other structural impediments that are violative of the spirit of the 73rd Amendment. The fi rst of this is bureaucratic opposition. Under the British system, the district had emerged as the cor-nerstone of rural administration. In the post-Independence period, bureaucratically-managed rural development was initiated in the districts rather than any form of participatory development. With the onset of special development schemes area-based, client-oriented, crop-specifi c and object-specifi c schemes became the order of the day. As specialised schemes found their own little organisational cubicle Panchayati Raj began to lose its functional relevance and this suited the fi eld bureaucracy well as it is not prepared to part with power so easily (Ghosh and Kumar 2003: 12–13).

The other source of opposition to the spirit of the 73rd Amendment naturally comes from the rural elite. For several years the gains of development had been cornered by them, and they had steadily enhanced their power and control over the rural poor who were largely landless. The rich farmer lobby

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had emerged as an invisible government assuring for them-selves cheap water, electricity tax exemption and increased output price. The absence of competitive politics in Panchayati Raj suited them well and the 73rd Amendment threatened to shake this position.

The Ashoka Mehta committee, in analysing the decline of the fi rst generation PRIs in India, had also gestured at the resistance from the bureaucracy, which did not take kindly to being controlled by the elected representatives at the district level and below, the opposition from MLAs and MPs who were equally unhappy with the prospect of the emergence of power centres at the grass-roots levels which might threaten their own positions and the implicit threat that rural power holders would perceive from this new order. What it had perhaps not adequately explained was why in spite of these multiple resistances the institution had continued in some states (like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat) while some other states allowed the death knell to be sounded. Extending this line of enquiry it is pertinent to ask why is it that even after the 73rd Amendment, states like Kerala and Madhya Pradesh have boldly taken steps to deepen decentralisation while some other states despite their constitutional obligation have lagged behind? Are there other factors at work that would explain the continuity and the zeal with which the democratic-deepening experiment was embraced by some and rejected or subverted by others? Is this a question also of political will which is present in some cases and not in others? (Ghosh and Kumar 2003: 12–13)

It is in pursuing this line of enquiry that we enter the terrain of politics, its implication and its intersection with PRIs.

Politics and Panchayati Raj: Understanding the Debate

The word politics is used so loosely that its meaning and deeper implications have almost completely dissipated. A historical overview and analysis of the core concepts of politics

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is naturally well beyond the scope of this study. Nonetheless, we outline the basic working defi nition of politics which we adopt in the course of this study. While politics has been differently understood and explicated by different thinkers and traditions and there has been considerable debate on what actually constitutes the realm of the political there is an increasing acceptance that in contemporary times the notion of politics has moved beyond the narrow confi nes of institutions and actors operating in a public sphere and as something that only concerns the art of government and the state. Instead it is being redefi ned more in terms of the collective organisation of social existence that embraces the range of power-structured relationships including those originally designated as being within the realm of the ‘private’. This is the concept of politics we embrace — politics as a quest for transforming confl ict through debate, dialogue and compromise, and the production, distribution and use of resources in the course of social exist-ence. Consequently, wherever there is any negotiation with or about power and power relations and structures, we enter the domain of the political.3

No institution and certainly no representative institution like the newly-mandated PRIs in which elections have been made compulsory can be isolated from the vicissitudes of politics. Politics in so far as it relates to power, can be divisive

3 See Adrian Leftwich. 2004. What is Politics: The Activity and its Study. Polity. Also T. J. Donahue, What is Politics, SSRN://http//ssrn.com/abstract+963511, Oxford: 14 October 2007. A classic formulation of politics that continues to resonate years after it was fi rst formulated by David Easton is that of politics as the authoritative allocation of values as it moved the at-tention away from the politics being exclusively closeted within designated institutions to its functional dimension. Important contributions from feminist writers have squarely challenged the dichotomies between the private and the public — as Carole Pateman points out feminist critique of this dichotomy is central to almost two centuries of feminist writings and struggles. See Pateman, Carole. 1989. ‘Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy’, in The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 118.

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http//www.ssrn.com/abstract+963511



and confl ict-inducing even violent and restive, but it has to be acknowledged that no change can come from a strategy of confl ict avoidance where just the fear of violence prevents strategising for change. Waging confl ict (and doing this non-violently requires a variety of strategies that has been used extensively in India through the nationalist movement) has in fact been accepted as part of the lexicon of peace building. Even where there has been no breach of peace in the form of overt violence there is no doubt that village India is today restive, disturbed and turbulent as historically and tradition-ally suppressed voices fi nd new avenues for articulation.

Indeed the everyday violence located at the interstices of caste, class and gender and combinations thereof can be denied only at our own peril. An honest acknowledgement that this violence, open and manifest in parts and frozen and latent in other parts, must be addressed and transformed in the direction of equity and inclusivity, a recognition that transformatory goals have to be encapsulated not just in terms of jobs and employment but also in terms of people’s right to live in dignity, will go a long way in imaging the form and content of deepening democracy. Such an imaging will involve struggles of varied kinds and evidently this struggle cannot be located in an anestheticised space devoid of politics. If politics is about understanding, re-imagining and re-aligning power and power struggles for transformation it is within the maelstrom of this political vortex that PRIs must squarely be located.

Conceptually, politics is by no means subsumed by the activities of political parties. Political parties are of course an important part of democracy and in India their role in the local panchayat elections has been the subject of much debate. Before we enter this terrain of political parties and their role in Panchayati Raj however, it is important to emphasise that politics also plays itself out through the activities of civil society including non-party mass movements (new social movements) and other forms of rainbow coalitions that represent forms of people’s struggles. Every site where power and values are authoritatively re-allocated creates a context for the playing

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out of politics. With this caveat in mind we fi rst turn our attention specifi cally to the debates around party politics and Panchayati Raj in India.

The debates on this issue are not new and have followed three major analytical strands. The fi rst is the Sarvodaya school exemplifi ed by Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) who came closest to the Gandhian view in arguing for a partyless Panchayati Raj which he saw as the edifi ce for building a model of com-munitarian democracy that would transcend caste, class, race, religion all of which was seen as dividing people into confl icting groups. As the village panchayats would be selected on the basis of common agreement or drawing of lots political parties need not have anything to do with this. In line with this, JP advocated that political parties should place themselves under a ‘self-denying ordinance’ and refrain from either setting up party candidates or putting pressure on the elected repre-sentatives to become party members. The tasks of the village panchayats according to this way of thinking do not warrant party intervention because each councillor represents his village community. The thesis of partyless democracy is based on the assumption that factionalism would enter the frame if political parties extended their activities to the panchayat level — it apparently assumed that no such factionalism had existed in the traditional panchayats in ancient India (Bhattacharya and Dutta 1991: 168).

It is perhaps pertinent at this conjuncture to bring in an important reality check. Caste and class inequities, factions and feuds had been very much a part of the traditional panchayats. The Indian village had always been a divided house and the forced quiescence of the masses who were silenced into subjugation is obviously not the vision of the uneasy ‘peace’ that contemporary village India would like to replicate. In fact it is as Douglas Ensminger perceptively observes only by ‘bringing village confl icts out in the open and by disturbing village tranquility and heightening political concerns’ that Panchayati Raj can demonstrate itself as a positive force for change (Ensminger 1972: 49).

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Another idea — that of non-partisan panchayats (which has been tried out) elected unanimously — has only created a ripe context for all manner of opportunistic alliances and caste factions to fl ourish in the name of unanimity. It has been realised now that this unanimity is not inherently sacrosanct and the ill-conceived notion of providing cash incentives where unanimous elections were being held has fortunately been abandoned.

The liberal pluralist school on the other hand recognises that Panchayati Raj operates within the larger structure of parliamentary democracy in India of which the political party is a vehicle. Electing leaders and holding them responsible cannot be accomplished in the absence of a political party. From the perspective of political parties too, they cannot afford to allow the political space at the village level to slip away, especially when Panchayati Raj bodies are becoming important power centres. Myron Weiner in his study of the Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh has shown that as long as the local bodies have little power little interest is evinced by the political parties in these bodies. The moment their powers increased the politicians could not abstain from participating in the elections to these bodies. This body of thought posits that to create a situation where political parties are discouraged from having a stake in rural India may not necessarily enhance the process of deepening democracy (Bhattacharya and Datta 1991: 174).

The same argument is made by the Marxist school but for a different reason. The Marxist approach, exemplifi ed in many ways by veteran communist E. M. S. Namboodripad’s argument, has argued against apolitical panchayats from a class perspective. Namboodripad’s approach has been that the Sarvodaya concept of partyless democracy in the name of non-partisanship at all costs disarms the people in their fi ght against the local gentry who would then convert the Panchayati Raj into their personal instrument (Bhattacharya and Datta 1991: 174). In his dissenting note to the Ashoka Mehta Committee, Namboodripad clearly stated his vision

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for going beyond development to self-governance. Signalling discomfi ture with the notion of democracy at the central and state levels and bureaucracy at the lower levels, he set the goal as follows: while certain defi nite fi elds of administration like defence, foreign affairs, currency and communication, should rest with the Centre, all the rest should be transferred to the states and from there to the districts and lower levels of elected administrative bodies. This set the terms of dis-course around whether panchayats are there for development functions only or for the wider purpose of self-governance (Mukarji 1999: 71–72).

The 73rd Amendment notwithstanding, Panchayati Raj re-mains a state subject and ultimately it is the state regimes who have to enact legislation and implement the Panchayati Raj Acts. What has been the attitude of the various state regimes towards the panchayats? As Ghosh and Kumar remind us the panchayat in post-independence India has essentially been a gift of the developmental state to the people and has not sprung out of a popular movement demanding local democracy and devolution of power to elected, rural, local self-government institutions. Hence, they argue if a state decides to decentralise its powers and responsibilities through democratically-elected local self-governance institutions it has to be treated by and large as an affi rmation of its political will. On the other hand, if a state decides to take an anti-decentralisation stance, there is reason to suspect that there are political compulsions behind this. In other words, the central question that is posed by them is: what are the political factors that prompt different regimes to take actions that lead to the rise or stagnation of PRIs. They hypothesise that those parties that seek to infi ltrate rural areas and expand their party base would fi nd it politically expedient to create panchayati structures — West Bengal is a case in point. Also, parties that seek to gain their political strength from a coalition of social groups to push for a radical programme initiated by the government would also not fear to create alternative power centres in the form of panchayats.

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This was the case with the Maharashtra government under Y. B. Chavan in the 1960s (Ghosh and Kumar 2003: 12–32).

On the other hand, state regimes that seek to retain power through what has come to be known as plebiscitary politics will not have a political interest in empowering either grass-roots level party organisations and, by the same logic, panchayati institutions. The Congress regime at the state level in Bihar post-1972, in pursuit of precisely this brand of plebiscitary politics where chief ministers would be ‘chosen’ by the high command of the party rather than being allowed to rise from the rank and fi les, found it politically inconvenient to encourage PRIs to take root in that state. In this scheme of things any empowerment of institutions at the grass-roots level would threaten the stability of the system.4

This raises another question. Even when a regime takes an apparent pro-panchayat stand it may be averse to genuine decentralisation of governance and direct participation of the people in decision making without the mediating infl u-ence of political or social elite. The promotion of PRI simply as a matter of political expediency rather than from a genuine conviction and belief in the idea of decentralisation does not necessarily deepen democracy. Ghosh and Kumar’s study seem to suggest that it is not the pro-poor and pro-people ideology that is the guiding principle behind even the apparently panchayat-friendly states but simply a desire to establish strict party control over the entire political space. This is dis-quieting as it does nothing to change the vocabulary of the local self-governance institutions as a ‘gift to the people from the state’ and as such the client–patron relationship between the ‘benevolent’ state and the ‘receiving’ people remain intact (Ghosh and Kumar 2003: 12–32).

4 The rise of plebiscitary politics in India under Indira Gandhi has been described in detail in Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp.134–35. 1987.

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Yet, decentralisation as part of a project to deepen democracy has to be seen as an alternative system of governance where a people-oriented approach to resolving local problems gains ascendancy in order to ensure social and economic justice. This envisions people as the basic engine of the development process, as partners in a project rather than as benefi ciaries (Kothari 1999: 48). Till such time as we are conditioned into thinking of the state solely as a service provider and citizens as customers who are out of the pale of deliberation and decision making we remain trapped in the patron–client paradigm within which the relationship between the state and its citizens is invariably conceived (Ramanathan not dated). However benignly disposed the ‘patron’ may be in the most liberal of democracies the ‘client’ — in this case the mass of citizens — will not be able to generate deep-rooted structural transformation as long as this mindscape remains intact.

If there is no consensus on the issue of decentralisation among different political ideologies and political parties and if deepening democracy is not part of the agenda of political parties, what new directions can this experiment take? Fortunately, the content and sites of political action is not just restricted to the ground covered by political parties. There is also the domain of civil society. To the extent that civil society is able to provide enabling spaces for the voices of the poor and those who lack access to the institutions of the state to safeguard their rights and entitlements, its actions are as political as those undertaken by political parties. It is this interpermeability between the civic and political space that offers hope. This is precisely where social movements enter the frame.

Social movements in India have received much scholarly attention in recent years. Broadly speaking, it can be conceived as any explicit or implicit persuasion by non-institutional groups seeking public gain by attempting to change part of the system. An analysis of the extent to which these movements are embedded into and linked with wider socio-economic pro-cesses, is however not easy to come by though descriptions

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of these movements abound. Vinod Raina delineates the fun-damental feature of these social movements as an attempt to bring about institutional change from outside the social structure — the change can either be limited to reform that leaves the basic institutional fabric intact or be more radical demanding fundamental changes in the social and institutional structures and relationships. Set apart from the traditional ‘party’ movements (which are the most common forms of movements in India with each political party invariably being associated with a trade union, a student union and a women’s caucus) these social movements are ‘independent’ or ‘new’ move-ments that distance themselves from the traditional party linkages in order to innovate in terms of organisational struc-tures, leadership roles and proximity with oppressed people and geographically-remote areas. In India, the thematic issues around which social movements have crystallised are women’s rights, labour and farm struggles and Dalit and Adivasi causes (Raina 2004).

However, as Rajni Kothari points out, social movements in India have unfortunately emerged only as correctives of maladies (such as environmental degradation or violation of the rights of women) and have not per se been transformative of the social order. This, however, does not mean that they do not have the potential to emerge as less fragmented and more coherent movements of people which can give voice to peri-pheralised communities and move beyond the framework of their current frame of reference which appears to be ‘anti’ this or that (Kothari 1994: 1589–1594).

PRIs: The Caste Factor

In India, as Rajni Kothari points out, caste as a source of both identity and animosity with its consequent ability to generate both horizontal alignments and vertical exploitation and oppression, has continued to baffl e and bewilder observers. Caste has always been an important marker of identity in Indian social and political life and, contrary to the expectations

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generated by the modernisation theorists, it has not withered away with time and modernity.5 However, we are as Kothari points out in the middle of a new debate over this age-old issue of caste. For long consciousness of caste was the preserve of the Brahminic upper castes, but in contemporary India something quite different is happening. The very sufferers from this system of rigid social stratifi cation are invoking their caste identity and claims. In an ironical twist of circumstances those who would appear to gain the most from the obliteration of the caste disparities and divisions that characterise the deeply-hierarchical caste system are the ones found to use it the most to advance their long-suppressed claims, thereby inviting at times violent backlashes by the upper castes who fi nd their trad-itional stranglehold weakening. The rise of the Ranvir Sena or the army of the upper-caste landlords in Bihar is of course a well known example.

Kothari suggests that in the Indian context a huge social and cultural canvas has been traversed as the Indian polity has moved from one extreme of pursuing a policy of consensus out of plural interests and identities to allowing the politics of polarisation to gain complete ascendancy and from mov-ing from a policy of national self-reliance to policies designed to integrate the Indian economy into the world market. This has thrown the earlier balance between traditional civil society and the modern state into jeopardy and it is within this sys-temic turmoil that we must seek to understand the politics of caste assertion. Caste identity can, under certain circum-stances, prove to be secular for the political process and can

5 Modernisation theory with its neat division of societies into traditional and modern posits the Western model of modernity as the ideal to which traditional societies must transit through use of tenchnology, trade-based agricultural production, industrialisation based on a mobile labour force, etc. Modernisation was seen as a linear process through which all countries must pass. For a critical overview of modernisation theories see Roxborough, Ian. 1988. ‘Modernization Theory Revisited. A Review Article’, Comparative Studies in History and Society. 30 (4): 753–61.

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even counter communal politics. It is in that sense a double-edged sword that can be both oppressive and provide a basis for struggle against oppression. Suggesting that caste can be both a traditionaliser as well as a moderniser, Kothari argues that caste resurfaces as a result of the democratic process but in its resurfacing it also gets transformed. This happens both structurally as new alignments and coalitions are formed as well as ideologically when, for instance, those ordained by the social order to occupy a certain place in it that did not allow for their expression now negotiate with those in power and fi nd new avenues for articulation.

The new Dalit movement in India has to be seen in the context of this background and the overall rise of social movements in India. Having broadened its base, it is no longer symbolised by the scheduled castes only and has gone on to move beyond this to symbolise a broader spectre of the oppressed and excluded social strata. It is based on the attempt to build solidarity of the poor and discriminated and is in many ways a reaction to the mainstream politics which has tried to divide the Dalit leadership or co-opt them into the establishment structures. Right Wing Hindu forces have also tried to socially marginalise them with their culturally arrogant assertions of Brahmanical identity. However, as Kothari argues, even this movement will remain weak unless its main thrust moves away from demands made on the state for jobs to undertaking truly social transfor-mations of civil society. The Dalit movement in India also raises the older debate of what to emphasise more — Western colonial domination and neo-imperialism or caste domination and the cultural violence practised by Indians on others from a different caste (Kothari 1994: 1589–1594). The shades of the older Gandhi-Ambedkar debate have evidently not yet been sorted out by contemporary India.

Be that as it may, the question we need to ask is can these new assertions and articulations of historically-disadvantaged communities and the rise of the fourth generation of PRIs intersect to begin a journey that offers glimpses, however

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sporadic and distant, towards the end of inequities and a genu-ine deepening of democracy? What are some of the political actions that we see emerging where the enabling provisions arising out of the 73rd Amendment Act has been used by scheduled castes and tribes to assert their rights of access and dignity in rural India?

It is in search for this empirical evidence that we turn our attention to Bihar. Bihar for a variety of reasons had been one of the most recalcitrant of states in terms of setting up PRIs. Despite the fact that they existed on paper no elections had been held from 1978 till the 73rd Amendment compelled it to announce elections to these bodies which it did in 2001.

In a poignant portrayal from Bihar on the eve of the 2001 panchayat election, Mukul Sharma takes us through various sites and social landscapes of this state that indicate that the new assertions and resistances are beginning to spring up in the context of the new vision of empowered participatory governance at the grass-roots level. In the small Dalit village of Udhangharari surrounded by the three rivers Ganga, Buri Gandak and Bhagmati, fear was palpable as many from the village had been beaten up during the previous panchayat election. The fact that the members of the Dalit community have to go to the neighbouring village of Khairi which is dom-inated by the Kurmi landlords and from where a member of that community was contesting had done little to allay their fears. The fact that their mobility was often restricted unless boats were available and most of the boats were owned by the landlords of Khairi had added to their woes. But in the 2001 panchayat election there was a consciousness that a new exercise was being conducted and there was a possibility that a new power may emerge. Sabo Devi, a Dalit woman from Udhangharari, symbolised this spirit of resistance and refusal to bow down to the brute power of the landlords and upper castes. She told Sharma, ‘We are holding our meeting soon to chalk out our strategy in this situation. Unlike 1978, we will make all efforts to cast our vote this time. It is very much possible that the landowners will remove the boats on the

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election day, to prevent us from voting. We are arranging our own boats.’ (Sharma 2001: 1578). Obviously, the boat in this case is a metaphor for mobility and survival and Sabo Devi’s articulations symptomatic of a new-found confi dence that essays the need to strategise collectively to assert the political rights of a historically-disadvantaged community.

In another telling example, Sharma describes the Niriyar Panchayat in Saharsa district of Bihar which was better off than Udhangharari in terms of access to infrastructure and the weaving caste (tantis) of the village are relatively free from the total stranglehold of the landowning Rajputs though the overall dependence remains. While the Tantis have the num-bers, the Rajputs have the land, money and muscle power. Pitted against one another in the 2001 panchayat elections were the land-tractor-jeep-taxi owning Rajput Babu Mahadeo Singh (also equipped with a posse of 60–70 Rajput musclemen camping in his house mandated to prevent his adversaries from casting their votes) and Amarnath Sardar, former weaver, a graduate and a sharecropper (with 2.5 bighas of land versus his opponent’s 90 bighas). What was interesting in this scenario was that the poor cutting across religious and caste faultlines supported Sardar. He had put forward his reason for contesting in a simple and stark manner. ‘We have no right to live with our heads raised. We have no right to speak out. […] I am contesting so that the poor-dispossessed can live and speak with confi dence.’ (Sharma 2001: 1578).

His articulation echoes the realisation of the rural poor that development (schemes) have to be intertwined with dignity (right to live with our heads raised). For the poor, the 73rd Amendment Act and its mandatory election provision had obviously come at an opportune time. Somewhere a quiet paradigm shift was in the offi ng. The ‘benevolent’ state was no longer able to count on the loyalty of its grateful ‘clients’ — the ‘clients’ were now asserting their rights and asking for their entitlements, defi ned as we see in this case as the right to ‘live and speak’. A new kind of politics was being redefi ned not through the direct action of any political party or on the fl oor

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of India’s Lok Sabha but in the panchayat houses, the fi elds, the polling booths and anganwadis of rural India.

This new spirit found a hospitable home in the provisions of the 73rd Amendment which made it possible to translate the new aspirations into a concrete political tool for action. Simply by making sure that that members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes would fi nd a place in the units of local self-governance, new avenues for social and political expression were opened up.

PRIs: Engendering the Discourse

The Constitution (73rd Amendment Act), 1992, Article 243D (3), reads:

Not less than one-third (including the number of seats reserved for women belonging to the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) of the total number of seats to be fi lled by direct election in every panchayat shall be reserved for women and such seats may be allotted by rotation to different constituencies in a panchayat.6

The argument for fair representation of women or quotas/reservations for women as enshrined in the above article is particularly important when democratic principles are applied to a society characterised by huge background inequities making special protection the only way to pierce through these barriers. The arguments for fair representation of women or reservations for them in governance is rooted in what Anne Phillips calls the politics of presence — the idea that our interests are best protected if we are represented by those who share our experiences and interests. The politics of presence which raises the fundamental question of who represents whom argues that ‘just as a nobleman cannot represent a

6 http://india.gov.in/govt/documents/amendment/amend73.htm (accessed 21 April 2010).

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plebian and the latter cannot represent a noblemen, so a man, no matter how honest he may be, cannot represent, a woman.’ (Phillips cited in Sharma 2004: 47–66; Phillips 1998). In other words Phillips reframes the problem of democratic equality by pointing to the separation of who is speaking and what is to be represented. The politics of ideas is replaced by the politics of presence based on shared experiences. This is part of a new search for authenticity based on the recognition that it is diffi cult to represent an experience not one’s own (Phillips 1998: 1–27).

The provisions of the 73rd Amendment has certainly paved the way for a larger number of women — estimated at 10 lakhs — to enter the village and urban local bodies for governance, creating what many have described as a silent revolution in the country. There have been studies that have argued that a threshold level or ‘critical mass’ of about 30–33 per cent ensures that women’s concerns will be ad-equately addressed. Be that as it may, it remains a fact that the effi cacy of representation will depend on a range of enabling factors — the political context, advocacy for women, choice of mechanisms and its likely outcomes, rules of procedures or how the terms of participation get determined and the need to address exclusions inherent in the political parties, packaging of ideas and the contested terrain of politics and enforced choices and preferences. Consequently, it is important to re-member that mere ‘presence’ of women does not necessarily generate the politics of presence.

Undoubtedly, the demand for political representation by women has shifted the debate on equal participation to an altogether different plane because it has become one of the avenues by which existing hierarchies of power can be challenged. It has been argued that greater representation for women is needed to infl uence the redistribution of power and resources, redefi ne political agendas and articulate women’s interests and critical issues of power distribution. As Sharma points out, democracy does not mean paternalism. Women have begun to understand why greater representation is not

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just a corrective to redress the gender imbalance in formal politics but also an instrument for redistribution of power and resources (Sharma 2004: 47–66).

Transformative politics initiated by elected women members requires two factors — equipping them to better perform their constitutionally-mandated roles in an adverse environment that is both patriarchal and anti-decentralisation and enabling them to engage in advocacy and negotiation with the state. The fi rst is not overtly political, the second is. Sometimes both these functions have been performed by initiating networks of elected women representatives which have initially worked on capacity building and then gone on to enter the political arena and developed as political recruitment grounds for political parties.

However, most of the times the forays into the political sphere have been made by building women’s capabilities — in this process women’s leadership for political roles have been strengthened. As pointed out by Amitabh Behar and Yamini Aiyar, the journey these networks have made from their apolitical capacity-building mandate to political action is extremely signifi cant, especially for the innovative process through which they have used civil-society spaces to create and expand a political space for themselves. This transition in the role of the networks of elected women representatives clearly indicate the interpermeability of civil and political society and serves as an example of civil society’s direct infl uence on the political sphere (Behar and Aiyer 2003: 4936–4940).

The nature of the support for the panchayats has come from non-governmental organisations (NGOs), research and academic institutions, donor organisations and international agencies. They have, however, tended to stay with the capacity-building strategies, often stepping aside when it comes to overtly political concerns such as that of elite capture and direct advocacy. If at all advocacy has been taken up by CSOs they have been restricted to issues related to capacity building, and focused on the lack of funds, functions and functionaries and other procedural concerns. They have assiduously tried

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to stay away from addressing central political questions of power sharing between the two tiers of government (Behar and Aiyer 2003: 4936–4940).

Evidently the primary support from the civil society came in the form of support for capacity building which was perhaps natural. The operationalisation and creation of a new tier of governance with a new set of elected leaders with little experience of governance was the primary challenge for the state government. Most responded by designating certain institutions, typically state institutes of rural development, to undertake centralised 2–3 day training sessions in a class-room setting for elected representatives. Civil-society groups were invited to help in the development of modules and a system of training for trainers and NGOs like PRIA, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF), Search and UNICEF stepped forward (Behar and Aiyar 2003). Despite the resources and energy invested by the state governments and CSOs, the gap between the needs and resources remained wide. New ideas and alternative strategies were then experimented with such as on-the-job training, learning by doing, experience sharing (Pal 2003), instead of the one-shot trainings. Another idea was to form associations of elected representatives with the aim of building the members’ capacity to undertake the role of capacity building of all elected representatives as some form of institutionalised system. It is important to note that in this idea the process of forming associations of elected representatives was itself seen as an important capacity-building exercise for members. The idea was foregrounded in the successes of the lateral learning processes often demonstrated by the technique of learning and sharing with peers.

As Behar and Aiyar point out, lessons on networking and association formation can be drawn from South and West India where organisations like Search (Karnataka), Sakhi (Kerala), Mahila Swaraj Abhiyan (Gujarat) have been active. The associations facilitated by these organisations were not one-dimensional and worked at different levels of which capacity building for elected women representatives was the primary task. The associational approach to trainings meant

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that a space was created where the members themselves were able to articulate their training needs. In addition to this primary function the formation and functioning of networks of elected women representatives triggered off several unintended consequences. First, it generated a sense of solidarity the among elected women representatives who are otherwise divided by caste, religion and geographical boundaries. The simple act of working together as a network enabled them to appreciate each other’s work and problems. The formation of these networks also set in process the task of empowering women by providing them with a glimpse of life beyond the home. For many women this represented the fi rst time that they could go out of their homes and villages to attend meetings — this in return provided a context to interrogate gendered roles and gendered division of labour.

The fallout of this was that gradually some of these net-works began to use it as a platform to raise issues directly related to women. The network of elected women repre-sentatives supported by the Mahila Swaraj Abhiyan, for in-stance, initiated a successful drinking-water campaign in fi ve districts in Gujarat. Finally, and most importantly, the network and attendant activities have been able to generate hope and optimism among women representatives for using the panchayats, a symbol of state power, for their own developmental needs and objectives. The fact that the net-works have been able to create political spaces for new leader-ship providing them with agency for political action and advocacy has been one of the most signifi cant consequences of the networking of the women elected representatives as it has invested the networks with a political signifi cance that strengthens and deepens democracy.

However, an important limitation of this networking strategy has been its failure to link it with the larger feminist movement in India and anchor it in feminist discourse. The predominant focus on governance had meant that advocacy has remained largely apolitical leaving the space for effective political action by women unused. Many of the facilitat-ing NGOs seeing this primarily as a governance issue have

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encouraged these networks to register themselves with the government — the dependence on government grants once this happens would also mean that their development into political formations would be restricted. Yet, the potential for these initiatives to strengthen democracy by opening spaces for political action by blurring the lines between civil and political society is where its greatest promise lies. Of course, in such initiatives where new political spaces are created it would be critical to link up the politics of new spaces with the world views of people-centric social transformation for truly deepening democracy (Behar and Aiyer 2003: 4936–4940).

Most general literature on women and PRIs has focused more on the fi nancial, functional and administrative impedi-ments that women in local governance face rather than turn the searchlights onto the issues of gender ideology and socio-cultural dynamics. The deradicalised agenda of the PRIs sidesteps several ideological and political questions. In an incisive analysis, Nirmala Buch suggests that that the two axes of development and governance can be married and are not irreconcilable (Sharma 2004). However, what we actually fi nd has happened is that the democratic institution versus the anxiety about development has led to an instrumentalist approach in looking at panchayats. There seems to be a blizzard of confusing expectations — should participation be foregrounded or ef-fi ciency, empowerment or just cost-effectiveness, good gov-ernance and more power to local people or simply effi cient delivery of services? How compatible are these goals? The debate seems to be between those who prioritise effi ciency and effectiveness and those who prioritise the gendering of the institutions of local governance and the political nature of the issue that come from the devolution of power (ibid.: 47–66).

This has been reflected in the ensuing debates on the approaches to capacity building for elected women repre-sentatives with trainers emphasising structured learning processes within time frames and activists prioritising em-powerment strategies and mobilisation and alliance building

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to initiate institutional changes and renegotiation of socially and culturally constructed boundaries.

Empirical fi ndings have recorded mixed stories of women’s experiences in politics at the grass-roots in the post-1993 period. Narratives of courage, assertion, participation, re-sistance and stories of women breaking through gender and caste barriers have been documented along with narratives of despair, frustration and violence against women in politics (Menon 2008). Poverty and patriarchy combine to create a state of affairs where many women face direct opposition from family, community and male politicians if they enter electoral politics or are forced to act as proxies of men opinion makers, if they are ‘allowed’ to contest in the fi rst place. The corruption and compromises required to sustain one’s pol-itical career also acts as a huge deterrent for many women (Thakkar and Gawankar 2004). For the poor and landless women workers, who depend on those who control productive assets for their survival, threats to their livelihood can be extremely intimidating. The gender-insensitive bureaucracy has been yet another barrier that women have had to face in their quest for political participation. Evidently, enabling women’s participation through reservation is an important fi rst step but it is one that has to be accompanied by more fundamental changes in democratic practices and institutions (Sharma 2004; Bahugana 2009).

There has been some introspection at another level as to whether the participation of women though reservation within traditionally-defi ned spheres of politics can really create the ‘radical politics of subversion’. While there is no consensus on this the emphasis on procedures and programmes cannot be a stand-alone approach if there is to be a qualitative change in the way in which participation of women can change politics. There has to be a simultaneous engagement with critical gen-der issues, the rights of women to occupy public spaces, and this would entail a struggle against entrenched systems that disempower them systemically. These include among others poverty, exclusive social responsibility of the domestic unit,

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growing criminalisation of political processes and interlocking of gender issues with other social relations.

Politics is ultimately about participation in the public sphere but for women the boundaries between the personal and public domain are equally political. Appeals for equal political participation by women often gloss over deeper institutional and systemic barriers that condition women’s choices, ambition and ability to represent women politically. A more nuanced understanding of gender issues is needed to explain not just the factors that undermine women’s capacities but also to explore the sites and texts of resistance and opening of new spaces through community level activism (Sharma 2004: 47–66).

These dynamic links between politics, caste and gender formed the backdrop against which the PEVAC campaigns and its follow ups were conceptualised and executed. We now turn the searchlights onto the planning and execution of the campaign and most importantly its methodology, which as we shall see, itself became an exercise in democratic dialogue.

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4

The Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns:

An Analysis

PEVAC was built on the understanding that while the act of casting a vote at the panchayat elections may be a one time, one shot, event in a fi ve year timescale, what it triggers off, however, is a process, with some intended and several un-intended consequences, in the short and long run. It was alive to the possibility that at least in the short run, the issues raised by the campaign could generate confl ict which could even turn violent as it upsets existing power equations. The way in which the new set of elected representatives responds to these confl icts would be the crucial test of democratic maturity. Much would depend on the kind of candidates elected during the crucial years of transformation at the panchayat/municipal level. Hence, the importance of exercising voters’ choice in a manner that is informed and responsible. Equally important is the support provided to the newly-elected candidates to enable them to exercise their new roles and responsibilities in the aftermath of the elections. For both these goals infor-mation holds the key. Consequently, the dissemination of information regarding voter choices and also roles and re-sponsibilities of elected members was at the heart of the PEVAC interventions.

As Manoj Rai, one of the leading campaign strategists, pointed out,

we needed a massive public education effort on matters of local self-governance, particularly on Panchayati Raj to clear misconceptions and explore possibilities of the new acts.

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The Pre Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns 77

In this effort, scale matters. The idea of PEVACs was to make the electoral process itself, which can be fairly alienating in the absence of knowledge on rules and procedures, more democratic. Demystifying the process is part of that larger democratic exercise. (Interview by author, March 2009, New Delhi)

PEVAC represented the coming together of ideas and meth-odologies that had crystallised over time in the course of par-ticipatory research at the community level and the idea of micro planning at the grass-roots level. Kaustuv Bandyopadhyay who was part of the PEVAC conceptual team pointed to the importance of participatory programmes designed to build social capital at the level of the village community that had preceded the PEVACs. As he shared, programmes such as the ‘Champions within the Community’ drive and ‘Citizen Leader-ship Programmes’ helped generate the momentum and con-fi dence for undertaking something as large as the PEVACs.

In the next section we engage with the origin of the PEVAC idea as an outcome of a need-based approach to the ground realities at the community level, particularly in rural India.

The Antecedents of PEVAC: Government where People Matter

The concept of giving power to the people to decide their own destinies is integral to the idea of deepening democracy and this has been given defi nite shape with the passing of the 73rd Amendment Act. The idea and practice of participatory research — the methodology of alternative system of knowledge based on the lived experiences of the people over generations — is also based on an identical commitment. Participatory research is premised on the belief that ordinary people are capable of understanding and transforming their reality. Its article of faith includes a commitment to collective participation, and empowerment of the ordinary people in knowing their world, in envisioning a new society and playing their collective roles in that process of transformation. In this framework people set

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the agenda of enquiry, they participate in data collection, and exercise control over outcomes. This is in sharp contrast to experts telling them what they need and how they should go about it.1

The idea of using the campaign mode was born out of a compulsion that to make a difference at least in the initial years after the 73rd Amendment Act nothing but a large-scale massive attempt involving multiple stakeholders (CSOs drawn from different areas of specialisation but interested in development and governance issues in some form or an-other, the district administration and the SEC, the media, the academia) touching at least 50 per cent of the population of those states that were conducting local elections, would work. A smaller effort would be dismissed by the government as not having an impact and it was at that point important to impress upon the government that civil-society initiatives that are citizen-driven could and would play an important role in this new era of deepening democracy that was sought to be ushered in by the 73rd Amendment Act. To the extent that the government and administration did start taking notice of this citizen campaign, so much so that the SEC in some states not only co-operated with the campaign managers but also started seeking information on the new Act from the various information centres set up as part of this campaign, this large scale intervention did achieve its immediate aim.

In order to understand the full import of PEVACs, however, we have to explore not just its scale in terms of the numbers and magnitude but also its larger signifi cance in terms of its content. The campaign has to be placed in the context of the times, the relevance of the message at that moment, the methodologies used and only then can an impact assessment be attempted.

1 Peter Park. 1999. ‘People, Knowledge and Change in Participatory Research’ Management Learning, 30(2): 141–57, available at http://miq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/30/2/141 (accessed 24 April 2010).

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http://www.miq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/30/2/141

http://www.miq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/30/2/141


The Message of Change and the Signifi cance of Timing

In popular imagination, campaigns are invariably associated with a slew of tools — slogans, jingles, posters and pamphlets — to convey messages. What exactly is the purpose of a campaign? While much would depend on the type of the campaign which is being undertaken, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Bluebook offers a simple insight. Ac-cording to this defi nition ‘[…] a campaign is an effort to bring about some change. It is not a single action but a combination of actions, reports and events put together in a sequenced plan’ (Boulle and Newton).

The message of change is at the center of any campaign. But what was the change that was sought in the case of PEVAC? Evidently, the goal was to bring about a change in the realm of ‘perceptions’, especially among the rural poor and marginalised sections, regarding the potential of the municipal/panchayat elections (under the new post-1993 Panchayati Raj/Municipal Acts) to usher in social, political and economic transformation that would have a resonance in their daily lives. The assumption was also that now that the representativeness of the local self-governing units were guaranteed through periodic elections held at regular intervals, the towns and villages could also materialise as the well spring from where a new energetic and honest breed of leaders would emerge who would no longer have to depend on privileges and favours from the district administration. This was consequently a good time to create an enabling, supportive environment for promotion of new citizen leadership and collectives to participate in local self-governance. While the constitutional amendment per se was not enough to guarantee that this would happen, it had certainly paved the way for a more democratic decentralised form of governance. Despite expected resistances from the urban and rural elite as well as the bureaucracy in actually implementing the spirit of the 73rd and 74th Amendments this was undoubtedly a positive turning point. This was the moment that had to be seized. Hence the idea of PEVACs.

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The signifi cance of the PEVAC initiative in the context of panchayat elections in particular has to be understood against the backdrop of the trajectory of the PRIs in India which had become virtually moribund over the years following Independence. In fact, prior to 1995, in the absence of a con-stitutional mandate, panchayat elections in some parts of India were simply not held for years. Malcolm Adiseshiah com-menting on the fact that Tamil Nadu had not held panchayat elections in 15 years had pointed out that in these 15 years the government of Tamil Nadu had put forward 20 reasons for the postponement of local elections and indeed this was a situation that characterised not just Tamil Nadu but other states as well (Adisheshiah 1986). The offshoot had been ram-pant corruption in all programmes affecting the lives of the people as the entire development agenda and its execution was dependant on an over-burdened and centralised bureaucracy (Mathew 1994: 30).

Several reasons have been offered for this decline in the local self-governance units one of which is the disdain with which the urban and rural elite, and the Indian bureaucracy, looked upon this institution. The fear that their stranglehold over the system of access would be weakened by a politically conscious gram sabha was enough to ensure that they would ‘gang up’ to subvert the project of democratic decentralisation. In other words, it was argued that the ruling elite deliberately ‘killed’ the PRIs. It did not require much imagination to create the pretext. The thesis that was circulated was that the benefi ts of a centralised bureaucracy to achieve development goals, particularly at the level of village India, far outweighed what ‘local elected vested interests’ could achieve. Rajni Kothari offered a crisp summation of the end result of this thesis when he commented ‘we have ended up creating an impregnable alliance of urban offi cialdom and the rural rich and have excluded the rural poor from it’ (Mathew 1994: 30).

Given the dismal trajectory of the democratic decentralisation project in India and its rapid decline, especially after 1977, it was not an easy task to impress upon millions of voters across the diverse, far-fl ung areas that constitute rural India, that

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this (the fi rst elections following the 73rd Amendment) was a moment replete with possibilities. Public information and public education had to form the pillars of any intervention that sought to bring about this attitudinal change and the success of an intervention at least at this stage would depend on the number of people it could reach out to.

Campaign as a Form of Intervention: The Rural PEVACs

The choice of the campaign format over other methods of intervention (such as stakeholder dialogue, capacity-building workshops, participatory rural appraisal, for instance) was dictated primarily by the compulsions of scale. The aim was to stretch as far as possible, covering large swathes of the population across Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh (see Appendix I). Only a campaign mode consisting of a sequenced series of actions, conducted from 1995 onwards in a phased manner (depending on when elections were held for that par-ticular state) could achieve this outreach. Moreover, the issue was one of ensuring that the campaign would be a credible one in the eyes of the people as well as the government. Only a large-scale intervention at that point could capture the attention of the SECs that were to supervise the elections at the local level: all small-scale interventions would be viewed as having only a limited impact for a vast country like India and would not be taken seriously. It was realised that without the recognition by the SEC that this was a citizen campaign with a difference and without its co-operation, the outreach and impact of this would be severely constrained. This was why engaging the SEC was seen as an important strategy of the campaign. Indeed, this strategic partnership was to yield tangible results as we shall see later.

Moreover, a campaign allows for immense adaptability — even while the basic message remains the same it provides

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the fl exibility to intertwine it with specifi c issues that carries a resonance for the people at a given time and context. For example, in Orissa linking PEVAC with the anti-liquor movement gave it a special relevance as members of the tribal communities were being repeatedly lured during election time with the use of liquor. PEVAC was also used to send out messages on literacy and education. The other development issues with which the PEVAC intervention connected related to water, girl child education, drought, health and sanitation.

By placing the development agenda of the people at the centre stage of the election the important link between democracy, politics, devolution and development was underscored. The signifi cance of this in terms of generating a paradigmatic shift cannot be underestimated. For years there had been an attempt to isolate panchayati raj from the whirlwind of politics that comes with any attempt to democratise an institution. There had been a deliberate persistent insistence that PRIs should at best be concerned with ‘development’ and be devoid of ‘politics’. Democratising these bodies changed this and brought politics back into the reckoning.

It is important to emphasise that the PEVACs assiduously stayed away from supporting any political party and in that sense remained completely ‘non-partisan’. There, however, appeared to be a lack of clarity even among the campaign animators about the scope of the political. It was clear that for them ‘political’ was synonymous with the politics of rep-resentation through political parties only. The same idea was echoed by women political representatives at the panchayat level where in most states the contest is not drawn up on party lines (though at the intermediate and upper levels of the panchayati raj echelon the contest is often clearly fought along or with the support of political parties) who opined that it was necessary to eschew what they called partybazi (divisive politicking brought on by petty rivalries among political parties in India often based on personal animosities rather than issues). However, even at the gram panchayat level the infl uence of

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political parties sometimes make its presence felt even if the seat is not directly contested by them. As Priyanka Dale who has participated in the campaign in Haryana indicated

Although the PEVAC was in principle kept distant from the political parties and their agendas the infl uence of local political leaders could not be wished away. The political parties are represented at the zila parishad level and this can perco-late to the panchayat level as well. Promises of ‘funds’ from the party stand in the way of building a transparent culture at the panchayat level and breaking the cycle of nepotism and corruption is not easy. (Interview by author, March 2009, New Delhi)

Of course, the domain of politics is not exhausted by rep-resentative politics via political parties alone. At the same time if politics is, as David Easton famously described, the ‘authoritative allocation of values’ (Easton 1953: 129), PEVAC could not by defi nition be anesthetised from the political realm. In so far as the PEVACs resulted in new contestations and interrogation of power and patronage structures it sought to redefi ne the authoritative allocation of values and from that perspective called for a redefi nition of the existing politics. Anything to the contrary would undercut its message and vision of social transformation — no change can happen without engaging with the political. It needs to be emphasised that ‘politics’ is not to be collapsed with ‘party politics’ and consequently advanced as a desirable goal that must inform campaigns of this nature.

Designing the Rural Campaigns

Envisaged as a series of activities undertaken at different levels with involvement of different stakeholders, the PEVAC intervention sought to promote awareness about the the panchayat election process, the importance of participat-ing in these elections (as voters and as candidates), how to participate, how to become eligible for voting, how to cast

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votes and who would qualify as a ‘worthy’ candidate. As such, information and education on delimitation of the consti-tuencies, nomination procedures, registration process, voters’ rolls, ballot papers, were essential inputs and this was built into the design of the campaign. In particular the immediate aims of PEVAC were:

1. To create an enabling environment and facilitate fair and free elections.

2. Ensure that voters have access to information to enable them to not only cast their ballots but also to make discerning and informed choices.

3. Launch a special drive to ensure participation of women and members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes as voters and as candidates.

4. Disseminate information on responsible electoral behav-iour thereby checking the participation of what has come to be known as ‘dummy’ or ‘proxy’ candidates.

At the fi eld level, the PEVAC team organised their infor-mation into easily understandable categories around a set of simple questions. Typically the questions centred around why people should participate (the importance of panchayat elections), the number of votes to be cast, the colour of the ballot paper, the qualities of a good leader, the importance of participation by women and Dalit communities, how to identify the proof documents, what is bogus voting, what constitutes the code of conduct, what is a dummy candidate. The intervention also sought to clear popular misconceptions based on exaggerated notions regarding the funds and powers of the pradhans by clarifying that pradhans would have limited funds and that they could be recalled by the gram sabha through a vote of no confi dence. Consequently, they had to be accountable to the people.

PEVAC’s expectations were that not only would an atmos-phere for fair and free elections be created but also that the

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process of engagement would make the act of casting a vote or contesting the elections less alienating and intimidating. PEVAC was meant to ‘demystify and democratise the electoral process’ for those participating in the panchayat election, particularly for the fi rst time.2 Accordingly, the PEVAC initiative planned different categories of intervention aimed at working with all potential voters, including potential candidates, and also facilitated interactions between the voters and the candidates. For this it used two broad categories of intervention, classifi ed as the intensive and extensive mode. The focus of the cam-paign in the extensive mode was to ensure that the voters and candidates are informed and educated at the right time and in simple and effective ways about relevant election procedures. The intensive mode of campaign, however, went beyond in-formation dissemination and education. It aimed at initiating debate and discussions on social and developmental issues among voters and candidates, creating an environment that would interrogate unfair, unethical practices during elections and generate a climate that would favour the interaction of the youth, women and Dalits with the administration, as a step towards inclusive micro democracy.

The intensive-campaign mode generated a series of inter-esting outcomes. For instance, in Haryana intensive cam-paigning by the CSO platform in the Mahendergarh district resulted in the formation of groups within the villages called Matdata Jaagrukta Mandali which as the name suggests sought to raise awareness among voters on how to cast their votes correctly and in favour of the best candidate. These groups cut across class and caste and offered an example of how a large scale intervention can set off a ripple effect within the community.

In fact, in this district, another development was the way in which the Dalit Khap Panchayat (caste panchayats who typically live in segregated areas and are dependant on the higher castes for their livelihood) emerged as associates in

2 Interview with Manoj Rai, PRIA, March 2009.

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the PEVAC intervention and cutting across caste differences among the Dalit community itself managed to identify common issues of concern. The Khap leader passed a resolution that in the next panchayat election the use of alcohol will be strictly avoided by the Dalit community and that the person elected from the community would be educated and preferably between 30–60 years of age. Given the social stratifi cation pattern of the village and the hold of the khap panchayat over community life, the effect of the resolution was expected to resonate for all those belonging to the community. Besides this the Khap leaders also assisted the process of updating voters’ list and mobilised people for the candidate-voter dialogues and performances for awareness related to the campaign.3 Of course, this kind of outcome could only be generated in areas where the intensive-campaigning mode was in operation — in areas covered by the extensive campaigns the outcome was naturally more predictable and limited in scope.

While in this case the khap panchayat appeared to have played a positive salutary role this is not always the case. On the contrary, empirical evidence shows that it some cases they can play an extraordinarily reactionary role. This is con-sequently a double-edged sword and an endorsement of khap panchayats per se is certainly not in order. Merely romanticis-ing ‘indigenous structures’ serve no purpose. The value of all structures, whether traditional or modern, will have to be placed in perspective depending on their ability to uphold the constitutional values of equality, dignity and liberty.

The campaign to generate and disseminate information on local self-governance was divided into various phases that started with the preparatory pre-campaign phase and moved on to the actual campaign phase followed by the post-campaign consolidation phase. During the pre-nomination phase, voters were mobilised to contest elections, were made aware of their right to vote, and were given information about

3 PRIA, Pre Election Voters’ Awareness Campaign (PEVAC) in Haryana, March–April 2005.

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the election process. At the community level this included gen-erating awareness about the preparation of the voters’ list and inclusion of names in the voters’ list through a community interface like meetings with community-based organisations or groups of individuals. It could also include delimitation of constituencies. At the organisational level this involved planning issues like preparation of material, detailed block-wise action, and distribution of materials to participating organisations.

During the nomination the focus was on helping candi-dates fi le their nominations, collecting information about the candidates and their future priorities if elected. Here, the support provided included demonstrating how to fi ll up a form, complying with the necessary formalities and providing certifi cates. Between the nomination phase and the election phase, the PEVAC team organised themselves into election observers intervening proactively where necessary to create an atmosphere conducive to voting. The post-election stage marked the beginning of the impact assessment which was an important part of the campaign design.4

Impact assessment of PEVACs is no easy task. Kamleshwar Singh, who was closely associated with the campaign in Himachal Pradesh, said, ‘There appeared to be a high voting turnout in areas where PEVAC was conducted with fi gures close to 80 per cent in some cases but there was no way of assessing if this was due to the impact of the campaign or a general trend of changing times, better awareness, higher literacy rates and so on’ (interview by author, March 2009, New Delhi). PEVAC is not as Anju Dwivedi who was involved with the campaign in Rajasthan points out ‘a controlled experi-ment’ (interview by author, March 2009, New Delhi). In the absence of being able to regulate the other variables at work it is diffi cult to set quantitative benchmarks regarding the success of these campaigns in ensuring high turnouts.

4 PRIA, Campaigns for Citizen Participation: A Facilitators’ Manual, New Delhi, 2004.

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Strategy of the Rural Campaigns

The strategy of the campaigns was chalked out in accordance with the overall objective and the specifi c requirements of the various phases. In a nutshell, it included the following:

1. Building and strengthening a common platform of CSOs in the state.

2. Regular interaction with the SEC and the election machinery.

3. Maintaining closes linkages with the media.4. Involving members of the academia particularly in the

fi nal phase of monitoring and assessing the impact of the campaign.

Given the aim of the campaign, the role of the PEVAC campaign partners was crucial. The PEVAC team included not just members of the PRIA team, which had conceptualised and led the campaign, but also the various civil-society campaign partners without whom the sheer outreach envisaged would simply not have been possible. In fact, integral to the strategy of PEVAC was an exercise to map the CSOs in the geographical area of focus who could be stakeholders for programmatic interventions. The network and coalition building included not just other CSOs but also members of village development organisations, academics, et al. A state collaborative effort for making PEVAC a joint effort in reforming government struc-tures was needed and accordingly the delivery mechanism for PEVAC involved linkages with the state administration as well as the media.

Consequently, the strategy of the campaign was conceptu-alised as a multi-stakeholder process with three major prongs. First, it involved building a common CSO platform with a shared perspective and a common code of action and simul-taneously building on linkages with other civil-society members outside of the formal spaces of a CSO. Individual animators and volunteers were drawn from among school teachers, university lecturers, gram sevikas/sevaks, as well as from members of the

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mahila mandals, anganwadi workers, voluntary development organisations, self-help groups, youth-club members and so on. Second, the strategy involved a close working relationship with the SEC and the district administration. Third, the media was envisioned as a major partner in the campaign given that the campaign involved a massive voter education programme where dissemination of information over large geographical area was crucial.

The selection of the CSOs in the various states was not necessarily contingent on their involvement with local self-governance issues. Rather it was based on their commitment to an idea — the PEVAC idea that believed in improving the functioning of PRIs by using the power to vote to select sound leaders who would bring in a new culture of democracy and accountability into the system of rural local self-governance. The diversity in the profi le of the CSOs across the country who were involved as campaign partners with PRIA was a mixed blessing. On the one hand it was an asset as it brought together different core competencies and expertise and demonstrated how a rainbow coalition could function across the board with an idea for change in common. On the other hand the differences in their ideologies, interests and demands as well as their different stakes in democratic processes and institu-tions sometimes impeded the process of working together and required a constant reminder of their overall common commit-ment to grass-roots democracy.

To understand the dynamics of this rainbow coalition that came together for this campaign we draw on the PEVAC experience from Andhra Pradesh. In Andhra Pradesh, six important CSOs participated as campaign partners with di-verse profi les in terms of their core expertise and program-matic engagement as well as different geographical areas of action. Among them was COVA (Confederation of Voluntary Associations) headed by a minority (in this case Muslim) group with a strong network of NGOs in eight districts of Andhra Pradesh stretching across the Telengana and Rayalseema regions. The sheer outreach of COVA with its network of 115 NGOs, made it an important partner for

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a campaign whose success hinged on its outreach potential. Two Dalit organisations in Andhra Pradesh emerged as cam-paign partners. These included Dappu, a Dalit organisation with 18 wings working on economic, social, political, judicial and legal aspects of Dalit empowerment which worked with 350 Dalit NGOs along with DBF (Dalit Bahujan Front) which worked for the social and political rights of the Dalits in coastal Andhra region. The support of these two Dalit organisations was crucial for a PEVAC campaign where a special drive to encourage participation of the Dalits as candidates and voters in the panchayat elections was part of the core aims. Another partner, DDNN (Deccan Development NGO Network) brought with it expertise on development issues which was vital in a campaign that sought to place development issues centrestage in the process of governance. The outreach of DDNN was also considerable, as it covered Warangal, Medak and Nalgonda districts. The Loksatta, another campaign partner which en-visions itself as a movement for democratic institutions and popular participation and for building a culture of transparency and accountability, emerged as a natural coalition partner given the synergy in the aims. In fact, the only organisation among this network with a direct interest in PRI programmes speci-fi cally was Centre for World Solidarity which funds PRIs in 15 districts with 15 NGOs.

However, the fact that all the organisations and networks were not directly involved in PRIs was far from disadvanta-geous as far as this campaign was concerned as it helped focus on development issues and the centrality of the marginalised Dalit population in the new imaging of local self-governance in village India. The disadvantages of working across diverse interests and different stakes in the democratic project had to be balanced by the obvious advantages of working with a vast network of CSOs that would enable a huge outreach and who were willing to come together to execute a larger com-mon vision.5

5 PRIA report on PEVAC in Andhra Pradesh, 2006.

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Similarly, in another large state, Rajasthan, in the 2004 PEVAC, as many as 238 CSOs were identifi ed who could par-ticipate as campaign partners so as to reach out to the major districts of Mewar, Marwar, Mewat and central Rajasthan. They were in turn invited to the seven consultation meetings in which the strategy to be adopted by PEVAC was discussed and as many as 278 participants from 200 CSOs participated in these consultations. In Haryana, in the PEVAC intervention of 2005, a similar move was initiated to promote participation by sections of the civil-society groups with a shared perspective to create a platform for carrying out such a huge campaign effort, targeting at least half of the population. The fi rst systematic effort in this direction was made in July 2004 with a state-level workshop of CSOs which deliberated on the broad objectives of the campaign and the possibility of forming a collective forum for carrying out the campaign.

In fact the collective network effort needed for the campaign often required the formation of a coordinating platform. In Haryana, a state steering committee was constituted under the banner of Sanjha Kadam (shared initiative) to develop an outline and framework of the campaign, outline the roles and responsibilities of such collective forums and steering com-mittees and identify a common code of conduct for all the CSOs involved in PEVAC. Similarly in Rajasthan, too, a state steering committee was formed which in turn helped identify and map other CSOs who could participate in the campaign. In Andhra Pradesh, a Forum for panchayats was created (Panchayatila Chaitanya Vedika) which co-ordinated the work of the state and district-level CSOs involved in the campaign.6

In some states the coalition partners were not part of a CSO but simply individuals who believed in the power of an idea whose time had come. For instance, in Himachal Pradesh, cam-paign animators included mahila mandal members, youth-club members, people associated with Village Information

6 PRIA reports on PEVAC in Haryana March-April 2005 and Andhra Pradesh, 2006.

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Centres, other NGOs, university lecturers, school teachers, anganwadi workers and gram sevaks, besides PRIA’s partner organisations from Himachal Pradesh and the neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

The presence of diverse individuals and organisations, all conducting the same campaign, required the codifi cation of a minimum norms of conduct to be followed by all engaged in the course of the campaign. A prototype of such a ‘code of conduct’ was in fact the kind developed by the state steering committee in Haryana. The code of conduct was based on the shared understanding that the campaign was being undertaken to strengthen PRIs and the focus was on citizen participation in governance. As such the campaign was envisioned as totally non-partisan in nature.

The fi rst code of conduct specifi ed that partners would not advocate or propagate any political party or an ideology based on religion and caste. At the same time it stated that special emphasis must be given to encouraging the participation of Dalits and women both as voters and candidates. This affi rm-ative attitude was not to be seen as a negation of the principle of equality or a dent on the notion of representativeness as it pertained to creating a level playing fi eld for those who had been historically marginalised. Another point of the code related to information, which was the key to the campaign. The code of conduct consequently laid down that the information disseminated during the campaign must be ‘authenticated, validated and most updated’. In addition, to retain the non-partisan quality of the campaign, individuals and organisations carrying out this campaign were expected to adhere to certain norms of public and private behaviour — this included no alcoholism, no socialising with individual candidates, etc. In some cases this translated itself into smaller ground rules, such as the injunction that no campaign animator was to accept a lunch invitation from any of the potential candidates. Small gestures in themselves these, nonetheless, served an important symbolic function, setting best practices for ushering in a culture of transparency and non-partisan responsible codes of

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conduct and emphasising that this campaign was also about democratising the process of election itself as much as it was about electing the right candidate.7 Finally the code of conduct issued by the SEC would have to be followed in letter and spirit. These rules were codifi ed in the Haryana PEVAC campaign in the form of the ‘Sanjha Kadam Code of Conduct’.

Apart from the common code of conduct, a common pro-gramme of training and initiation also had to be conducted for the diverse campaign partners to build on the shared perspective and provide them with the basic operational tools. Training workshops designed to equip the pool of volunteers, particularly those involved in the intensive part of the campaign, was integral to the campaign strategy. Care was taken to ensure a gender balance among the volunteers. In the Haryana PEVAC intervention of 2005, as many as 19 orientation events were organised in which 1,140 animators were trained (916 men and 524 women). Most of the women animators who took part in the campaign were members of women’s collectives such as Nari network, mahila mandals, self-help groups, anganwadi workers and mahila chauplas. The training included modules on not just the campaign outline and activities and the code of conduct but also features and provisions of the State Panchayati Acts, right to franchise, election management and the electoral process, so that the knowledge base for the campaign was set in place.

Apart from the network of the CSOs, another important prong of the PEVAC strategy was the partnerships with the SEC. On the one hand, the SEC was able to access the infor-mation easily due to the efforts of the PEVAC team who had provision and dissemination of accurate information as the cornerstone of their operation. On the other hand, the close involvement of the SEC with the PEVAC process also gave the campaign legitimacy and made it easier to freely travel to all parts of the country with the campaign message.

7 Interview with Manoj Rai, PRIA, March 2009.

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The role of the print and electronic media at the time of PEVAC is also crucial in spreading the message of democratic rights and increasing the interest of the local people in the electoral process. News articles, information related to updat-ing voters’ list, fi ling of nominations, etc., were communicated swiftly and effectively through the media. In some places radio played a crucial role. The ‘Panchayat Vani’ (the voice of the panchayat) and ‘Suno Didi’ (Listen Sister) broadcasts in Chattisgarh and election-special radio broadcasts in Madhya Pradesh played an important role in the campaign. Various methods were used to initiate a dialogue with the media. These included press conferences and fi eld trips for exposure by the national media task force and state media task force to different locations where PEVAC had been initiated and keeping an open channel of communication through letters, email or telephone. Local newspapers like Eenadu, Vaartha, Andhra Jyoti, Andhra Prabha and Prajashakti disseminated information on PEVAC in Andhra Pradesh for instance. National newspapers like the Hindu, Economic Times, Times of India, Economic and Political Weekly reported on PEVAC, carrying socially-relevant articles on the challenge of working with panchayats, highlighting issues of women and Dalit contestants, factors contributing to women’s participation including contesting on unreserved seats, as well as new methodologies such as using the so-called Kishore Panchayats at the grass-roots. In fact, a National Media Task Force was set up consisting of both national and local media personnel and a select group of journalists who would have an opportunity to deepen their understanding on local self-government before reporting on various aspects of the panchayat elections in different states across the country.

Finally, engaging with members of the academia formed another prong of the campaign strategy. Research institutes and individual academics played a crucial role in the fi nal stages and in the aftermath of the campaigns when the time came for impact assessment exercises to be conducted. This required attention and familiarity with research methodology

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including both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. While the quantitative data has focused on comparing statistics of participation of women and Dalits, for instance, in ‘intervened’ and ‘non-intervened’ areas and other similar useful data, a qualitative assessment of the changes in levels of perceptions and attitudes is yet to be done which would perhaps help register the extent to which social change has been initiated in this entire process.8

Conducting the Campaign: Methodologies and Pedagogies

An important dimension of the strategic planning was to devise a set of innovative tools and methodologies for transmitting the campaign messages through a learning environment where new ideas on micro democracy and citizen empowerment would be exchanged and debated. The campaign was at one level an exercise in democratic dialogue. In this exchange the potential voters or the so called ‘target audience’ were not just passive benefi ciaries of an urban-led information and public education blitz but were envisaged as partners in new democratic dia-logues spread across large swathes of the population. In fact, the campaign itself was a citizen-led campaign rather than a campaign mounted by agents and animators who are located outside the system. With the onus on opening up multiple channels of dialogue — between rural and urban India, between members of different CSOs, between the private and public agents — an elicitive rather than a didactic and pedantic

8 Anju Dwivedi from, PRIA, who was involved in the impact-assessment stage, shared the challenges of this process. To actually ascertain whether the increased participation was the result of PEVAC or not would remain a moot question because the fact that there was an increase in voter participation across the years could also be seen as a refl ection of the changing times. To quantify this aspect would always remain diffi cult as this human intervention cannot in a sense be a controlled experiment, though certain trends could be observed and recorded both in terms of comparisons across the states at the same time or across different times.

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approach was embraced which was in sync with the spirit of the campaign. Indeed, the spirit in which a campaign of this kind is conducted also determines its success — if the delivery mechanism has a client-patron approach rather than one that facilitates a partnership of citizens in dialogue, much of the message is lost.

The campaign process did demonstrate that the learnings were mutual — the animators who were not part of the local community also underwent an education in reframing dialogues on democracies based not on theoretical constructs from above but the lived realities and struggles of people largely from rural India. Though the PEVAC campaign also included urban areas, most of the energies were naturally directed at village India, the home of the overwhelming majority of people.

It is in this context that the composition and diversity profi le of the PEVAC team assumes importance in capturing the dynamics of the process. In looking at the composition of the PEVAC team in the last three phases of the campaign we fi nd that it cut across gender and generations. Most, however, had an urban profi le and were operating in a rural setting that was far removed from their own lived realities though the partners and animators were often drawn from among the local community. In the course of the campaign the lines between animators, participants and learners often got blurred as it created an interactive process where people moved in and out of roles. The extent to which this leader-animator-participant interface generated an elicitive interaction and how this itself created a mutual cumulative learning environment is an inter-esting area of enquiry.

In order to generate these ‘multilogues’, a number of tools were devised. These included posters, pamphlets, audio and video cassettes, padyatras (walks) and group discussions. Innovations and variations abounded, depending on the place and context. These included voter-candidate dialogues (amne-samne, literally face-to-face) setting up of information camps, the Matdata Raths (The Voters’ Vehicle), Jagrukta Raths (The Awareness Vehicle), cycle rallies, Prabhat Pheris

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(Morning Rounds), Nukkad Nataks (Neighbourhood Plays) and folk arts, door-to-door contact programme, wall writing, corner meetings, setting up helplines, sammelans (gatherings) for youth and women, mock exercises on voting process and Khet Kalyan Baithaks (Farm Welfare Meetings) in farms. Dialogue, deliberation and debate on the electoral process and what it represents for deepening micro democracy was the leitmotif that connected the messages that were transmitted in various formats.

Figure 4.1: Village consultations — amne samne

Source: PRIA.

Some of these methods worked better than others and the inter-state variations and differences in literacy rates, class and caste patterns, the level of civil-society activism and the attitude of the state administration, particularly the role of the SEC, were variables which determined the nature and methodology of engagement. For example, in Himachal Pradesh radio broadcasts were used to convey messages — a 10-minute

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programme with the PEVAC message was broadcast by All India Radio Dharamshala called ‘Trigarth Ki Awaz’ (Voices from Trigarth) — a programme on the rural life of Trigarth region. In Bihar, a unique method of spreading awareness about coloured ballot papers was adopted with volunteers wearing kurtas dyed in four colours — green (the colour of ballot papers for mukhiyas), black (for gram panchayat members), blue (for panchayat samiti members) and red (for zila parishad members). The lead partner of the PEVAC intervention in Bihar, CENSORED (Centre for Communication Resources Development), focused in publicity efforts at local fairs and melas for maximum outreach. In Haryana, the opportunity provided by Women’s Day celebrations was used to promote the message of campaigning and providing moral support to women candidates and in making conscious use of votes during elections. In Andhra Pradesh in Khillanagar a rural rally was organised at the PEVAC of 2006 where some of the slogans that were used in the local language were:

Don’t take vote lightly; it is fi ve years worth of our life! Let us make the good candidates win and chase the bad

away! Casting vote for money will destroy our life! Know the value of every vote: it will be good for our life!

The text of the slogans was designed to encourage par-ticipation and also keep alive the power of protest against malpractices that has unfortunately seeped into community life and local self-governance issues.

The information booths and help desks helped voters to gain a better understanding of the electoral process and what it entailed. In Bihar these were set up at the block level and in the course of PEVAC 2006 mobile call centres played a major role in disseminating quick and correct information. In Andhra Pradesh in the 2006 PEVAC, intervention help desks were organised to make available information on ward reservation, the code of conduct, eligibility criteria, election schedule, etc. The idea of the Panchayat Information Centre that would

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house election-related information as well as information about the ethnographic details of the village/block was also strengthened at these campaigns.

Extensive use was made of posters and pamphlets in the PEVAC interventions — this in fact was a key educational and awareness tool. Posters, which were often put up at bus and train stations and other places in the villages where people were likely to congregate, focused on themes such as increased participation of women in election, voting for elections, discouraging unfair means and practices such as distribution of money and liquor. In the fi rst phase of PEVAC interventions in Himachal Pradesh, some of the posters that were published were ‘Nari teri bari ki chunav mein bhagidari’, (Ladies it is your turn now, you are equal stakeholders in the election process) especially highlighting the role of women in panchayats. ‘Kaisa pratinidhii chunenge aap’ (What kind representatives will you elect) and ‘Hamara Umidwar Aisa Ho’ (Our representative should have these qualities) reminded the voters about the qualities of a good leader and the responsibility of the voter-citizen. Pamphlets in Hindi on delimitation and voters’ lists were also prepared. In Andhra Pradesh in 2001, for the fi rst time in a PEVAC campaign, 10 per cent of the pamphlets and posters were published in Urdu given the considerable Urdu-speaking population. The campaign managers also felt that this would be perceived as an endorsement of the secular approach as these posters would specifi cally reach out to yet another category of the marginalised population, namely the Muslim community along with other sections of the population that had been marginalised — such as women and Dalits. In Madhya Pradesh, posters were prepared keeping in view the large segment of the illiterate population — the posters had to convey the message in a way that was simple and imaginative. In Madhya Pradesh, another innovative idea was used — pamphlets were read out aloud so as to reach a larger audience and for those who could not read.

The themes of the posters varied. In Rajasthan for instance, in the PEVAC of 2004, a series of 13 posters was envisaged

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with different partner organisations like Unnati, Astha, Shanti Maitri Mission, The Hunger Project each of which took responsibility for generating and printing specifi c posters on designated themes. Posters were printed on issues such as ‘dummy’ candidates, features of a good representative, rights and duties of a voter, implications of open seats, as well as procedural issues such as how to cast votes in the correct manner so as to ensure that they are not rendered invalid. This was particularly important as in the initial phases of the PEVAC, the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) for panchayat election was not in practice. In Uttar Pradesh posters were developed in close co-operation with the SEC that depicted the internal arrangement of the polling booth. This was part of a drive to make the system less intimidating and alienating.

Audio cassettes in local languages were also prepared with the campaign messages and were done keeping the local cultural idioms in mind so as to attract attention. For instance, in Haryana, the cassettes were based on popular raginis. Sometimes the cassettes were played and pamphlets were dis-tributed through the cycle yatras led by youth groups who would cover 4–5 villages or make multiple rounds of one village. These cycle yatras were used widely in Haryana especially in Fatehabad, Rohtak and Jhajhar districts where youth groups were active.

Framing New Dialogues

While the format of posters, pamphlets and cassettes had to be on sending out short, effective messages, other formats allowed for greater fl exibility in not just sending out a message but also in eliciting responses from the people and in that sense generating a democratic dialogue. One such important tool was the use of nukkad nataks which had the advantage of going beyond just providing a template of information to starting a democratic dialogue and creating an ambience for interrogating malpractices associated with elections or

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Figure 4.2: Poster used in Rural PEVACs

(Translation — Welcome the panchayat elections; support the women and the backward castes. We will not elect a puppet candidate this time. We shall vote after considering our options. We shall elect a worthy candidate.)

Source: PRIA.

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challenging patriarchal and caste norms that were clearly antithetical to the democratic spirit and citizen engagement in issues of local self-governance.

One of the most popular methodologies of engagement in the villages across India was the creative use of local folk media such as kalajathas to convey the message of responsible citizen engagement and local self-governance. The kalajathas tell a story interlaced with a message using a situation people can identify with interspersed with song, dance and humour. Its popularity also stems from the fact that it can establish a two-way dialogue between the performers and the audience and the inputs of the latter can be improvised into the next play. This constant process of feedback and change gives this mode of communication a fl exibility and adaptability that maximises its potential to ‘speak’ to the people in a language and idiom of their own and on issues they identify with. Found to be one of the most effective tools of communication in a rural setting this methodology was extensively used in the PEVACs around the country.

Purvi Dass who was involved in the first PEVACs in Himachal Pradesh recreated a scene from the kalajathas.

In one of the kalajathas held in Himachal Pradesh in the fi rst phase of the PEVAC intervention, the storyline was scripted around the provisions of the 73rd Amendment Act, specially the sections pertaining to the reservations of seats for women and scheduled castes. This was presented in the script as a unique opportunity to empower marginalised groups. The script underscored the importance of both casting votes and fi ghting elections so that those leaders come to power who can bring social and economic change and develop the infrastructure. The actors consisted of all the NGO staff who appeared to show some fl air for dance and drama. The audience responded by sometimes articulating hope (let’s see how these new leaders can work) and sometimes skepticism (how can women and Dalits take decisions when they do not understand anything about development?). The important outcome was the discus-sions that followed the enactment on the issue of reservations and the role of the gram sabha. As someone watching the

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performance unfold, I was struck by the power of this meth-odology for generating conversations on diffi cult questions. (Interview by author, March 2009, New Delhi)

In Himachal Pradesh, kalajathas were used extensively in the campaign to spread the message of the new Panchayati Raj Act of 1994 which replaced the older one of 1968 in the three districts where the PEVAC intervention was organised — namely Mandi, Chamba and Kangra. In Kangra, the kalajatha idea was actually conceived in the aftermath of the lukewarm response to the fi lm that had been screened where it was felt that due to technical hitches and more importantly the language barrier the response had been less than expected. It was felt that plays in the local language and which required no technical equipment would have a better outreach and would also enable the people to provide a feedback regarding the content of the play which could then be adapted into future enactments. Local artistes were selected as resource persons and 13 participants from Kangra took part in the initial workshop. They would later become animators who would disseminate information regarding the PRI Act of Himachal Pradesh.

Some of the issues that were woven into the play performed by the jathas were the signifi cance of the 73rd Amendment Act and the new Act in Himachal Pradesh in keeping with this amendment, why the government had enacted it and why seats were reserved for women. Titled ‘Jan Jagriti Jatha’, the other parts of the play dealt with how political parties mislead the people, how voters get divided on issues related to caste, how voters are attracted by lucrative offers and incentives such as liquor and money, the function of the mahila mandal and new roles and responsibilities of women in the forthcoming panchayat election. The kalajatha also had three songs recorded in Himachali language based on women, society and Panchayati Raj.

In Andhra Pradesh the kalajatha form was used in 120 villages across seven districts of Nellore, West Godavari, Vishakapatnam, Vizianagaram, Guntur, Prakasham and Mahabubnagar. To raise awareness about election malpractices, as many as 110

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shows with stories scripted around the theme of distributing money and liquor to buy votes was staged. To ensure the widest impact the kalajathas were staged two to three days before elections and usually at the mandal headquarters and places where people were most likely to gather. The experiences of staging kalajathas for election awareness and Panchayati Raj issues in Pederu village of Andhra Pradesh has been recorded by the PRIA team. In Pederu people fi rst gathered at the palace where kalajathas were enacted out of curiosity, thinking there was an accident, but continued to watch as the play caught their attention. Despite the rain people could be seen holding umbrellas to watch the play being enacted — people on their way back from work stopped by as did those canvassing actively. After the show people remarked that this was the fi rst time they were seeing a kalajatha to raise voters’ awareness. The collective acknowledgement that there was indeed a problem of ‘buying votes’ in the village by the people who watched the play was the fi rst step in creating a collective resolve to fi ght this practice. The importance of people beginning to dialogue among themselves about how they can tackle this problem marks the beginning of a culture of resistance.

In Chattisgarh, PEVAC was launched in 2001 for the fi rst ever panchayat elections of 2002. Here too, nukkad nataks and folk arts proved a powerful tool of communication to raise awareness about the election and subsequent importance of continuing civic engagement. Since it was such an effective tool and limitations of resources made it diffi cult to stage live performances across the state, the PRIA team developed a CD based on a nukkad natak called ‘Sonya Abhiyan’. In two districts, Janjgir and Champa, the local cable network owners were persuaded to broadcast it free of cost.

Typically, school premises were used to stage the plays and it was staged only after permission was granted by the district commissioner and the additional district commissioner who in fact encouraged the staging of what was seen as ‘educational’ jathas in schools, colleges, villages and panchayats. Senior students of schools and college students were encouraged

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to bring along their parents. Despite the constraints of dis-tances, travel weariness, the lengthy process of developing the script, the onset of the farming season and the examination season, the kalajathas attempted to cover 11 out of the 13 blocks of Kangra, staging their act at 33 places. Received by enthusiasm, the villagers themselves suggested that kalajathas should be staged at every panchayat for mass awareness of the new PRIs, and in a testimony to the power of this medium, in many places people even asked the artistes to perform more than once.

Group discussions were another format that was used to generate debate and discussion among citizens not just about the election process but participation beyond elections in the actual work of governance. This provided a context for citi-zens to articulate their concerns and anxieties about everyday issues that would form part of the mosaic of governance after elections. Typically, to elicit widest possible participation, the meetings were held in panchayat ghars, schools, colleges, buses, bus stops, markets, shops and sarpanch and panch residences.

Figure 4.3: Kalajathas in Andhra Pradesh

Source: PRIA.

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The signifi cance of ‘everyday political talk’ (Kim and Kim 2008) in creating a culture of deliberative democracy has been acknowledged in the burgeoning literature on deliberative democracy and meetings of this kind while not completely spontaneous in terms of their setting retained the spontaneity in terms of the topics that were being discussed and as such contributed to the culture of deliberation that forms the bedrock of micro democracy projects.

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5

The Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns and the

State Election Commissions: Building Common Ground

It would be desirable to vest all responsibility for the election process in State Election Commissions (SECs) rather than splitting these up, including issues like the preparation of electoral rolls, delimitation of constituencies, reservation and rotation, qualifi cations of candidates and conduct of elections.

Excerpt from letter sent by A. N. P. Sinha, Secretary, Krishi Bhavan, New Delhi, to Chief Secretaries of all

states and union territories, dated 31 March 2009.

The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act envisioned a two-pillared institutional backup for enabling the panchayats to function as units of democratic decentralisation. The two institutions that were envisaged in this regard were the State Finance Commission to oversee aspects of fi nancial man-agement following the demarcation of subjects devolved to the panchayats, and the SEC to oversee the task of ensuring fair and free elections to the local bodies. Together the State Finance Commission and the SEC form the basic institutional framework set up by the government to facilitate and ensure that democratic decentralisation becomes a lived reality.

As we have seen, the SEC emerged as a major partner in the PEVACs. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the manner in which a synergy has and can be built between the work of CSOs and citizen campaigns and this particular government institution which can serve as a model for private-public part-nerships associated with a democratic project. To explore

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this partnership we begin by evaluating the signifi cance of the SEC as a major player for deepening democracy through ensuring that elections to the PRIs are conducted regularly and in a manner that is free and fair. We then analyse, given this primary mandate, what some of the smaller tasks involved might be and how civil society can step in at that juncture to complement the work of the SEC and ensure that the spirit of its mandate is kept alive. The recognition by the SECs that this citizen-led campaign (PEVAC) was necessary is also an endorsement of the view that deepening democracy cannot be a top-down government-driven project — it also has to resonate with citizens who must necessarily emerge as equal partners in the process.

Given the centrality of direct, free and fair elections to the local bodies for any project aimed at deepening democracy, the SEC was set up as per the provisions of article 243 K, Clause (4) of the Indian Constitution following the promulgation of the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution of India.1 It provided for the superintendence, direction and control of the preparation of electoral rolls and elections to the panchayats to be vested in a SEC, comprising a state election commissioner appointed by the governor. It was stipulated that the state election commissioner shall not be removed from his or her offi ce except in like manner as in case of the removal process of High Court judges. The governor of a state shall, when so requested by the SEC, make available to it such staff as may be necessary for the discharge of functions conferred on the SEC including elections. However, subject to the provisions of the Constitution, the legislature of a state may, by law, make provision with respect to all matters relating to elections to the panchayats (IRMA 2008c: 269–89).

The exact scope and ambit of the functions of the state election commissioner has in practice varied from state to state. Though the functions of the SEC as described in the 73rd Amendment Act has been taken almost verbatim from

1 http:/karsec.gov.in (accessed 2 May 2010).

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http://www.karsec.gov.in

PEVACs and the State Election Commissions 109

the functions of the ECI (the difference of course only being in the domain of functioning) the fact that the state legislature has been given the power to make laws related to elections in the panchayats and that the status of the SEC differs from state to state leaves room for fl exibility. As this is a fl edgling institution the state governments sometimes try to control the SEC to suit their political needs and so, placing the SEC at a commensurate level with the chief justice of the High Court rather than at par with minister of state probably sets the healthiest precedent. This has in fact been done in Andhra Pradesh. Given this leeway to decide on the rank, perquisites and tenure of the SEC (as these are not constitutionally specifi ed), the state government has considerable scope to manipulate the institution. Much will therefore depend on the personality of the incumbent and as a comparatively new single member institution the personality of the offi ce holder can also shape the institution and create precedents that can later inform best practices.2

As the Chief Election Commissioner pointed out at the conference of the State Election Commissioners at Jaipur in November 2006, the job of the State Election Commissioner was in many ways perhaps much tougher than what they in the ECI face because elections to the grass-roots level demo-cratic institutions generate that much more passion and the percentage of voter turn out is much higher than the state or the national-level elections. He opined that functionally the SEC should have the same powers as the ECI (IRMA 2008c).

Earlier in a judgment in October 2006, the Supreme Court too had reiterated the importance of the SEC when it had observed that it was necessary for the state governments to recognise the signifi cance of the SEC, which is a constitutional body and the state government should abide by its directions in the same way as the directions of the ECI are followed during parliamentary elections in India. It further clarifi ed that the

2 Interview with Madhav Rao, former State Election Commissioner, Andhra Pradesh, July 30, 2009.

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powers of the SEC concerning the conduct of elections to the panchayat and municipal bodies as laid down by Part IX and IX-A are the same as the powers of the ECI except for the difference in the domain. It went on to affi rm that the SECs are to function independently of the concerned state governments in the matter of their powers of superintendence, direction and control of all elections and preparation of electoral rolls for, and conduct of, all elections to the municipalities and panchayats (IRMA 2008c).

In short, the consensus that was emerging was that other than the more narrowly-defi ned domain within which the SEC would operate there should be no difference in its functions as compared to the ECI. Most SECs were constituted between 1993 and 1994 following the 73rd Amendment Act.

In practice, however, despite these clarifi cations the 73rd Amendment Act does leave considerable leverage with the state legislatures to make laws for the elections to the panchayats. There have been considerable differences between states not only in the rank and tenures of the State Election Commis-sioners but in the manner in which elections have been con-ducted. There is also a lack of uniformity within states as far as elections to the panchayats and municipalities are concerned. In the PEVACs for instance, one issue that was raised concerned the use of EVMs which are now routinely used for elections to the Lok Sabha. It was clarifi ed in these campaigns that these machines could be used for panchayat elections as well but the fact remained that the state legislative provisions were such that even within a state, EVMs could be used in the municipal elections but not for panchayat elections. This happens because typically in a state there are several laws pertaining to local bodies — one governing municipal bodies another panchayat bodies — and some states even have as many as six acts relating to these matters. This maze of legislation has also created con-fusion in the minds of both voters and offi cials and this was a challenge that the PEVAC animators had to factor in. The role of the information centers in the PEVACs which provided the same information to both offi cials and voters helped in demystifying the process to some extent.

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Another area of confusion was the complicated process of elections to the PRIs. Again the PEVACs had to work with the SEC to create and disseminate information to both offi cials and voters on the matter demystifying a plethora of multiple legislations that differ from state to state. In some states elections at certain levels are on the basis of multi member constituencies, at others elections to the offi ce of chairperson are direct, and in the case of PRIs a voter may be called upon to cast as many as four votes — one for the ward member, the second for the chairperson of the village panchayat, the third for the member of the intermediate panchayat and the fourth for the member of the district level panchayat. In some states all four votes are cast on one day, in others in two phases. While the supervision of the election process is the responsibility of the SEC, prior information on these matters for voters and the offi cials on the ground, is of the essence. This is where the PEVACs and the role of the Panchayat Information booth and resource centres become important. This awareness regarding rules and procedures is an important area where the SECs have in the past worked in close co-operation with the civil-society campaign.

Another instance of engagement and co-operation between the SEC and the PEVACs has been in the area of motivating voters to come out and vote in the panchayat and municipal elections. Though the elections at the local level, especially to the panchayat bodies, have witnessed an impressive turnout of 70–80 per cent — which is considerably higher than the 50–60 per cent turnout for the Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections — there is the possibility of poll fatigue that may result in lower turnouts than usual on the poll day. This is because elections to the Lok Sabha, the State Assemblies and the local bodies are held on different occasions as the fi ve-year terms for each of these bodies end at different times. Though reforms are being considered to see if simultaneous polls could be held this will require time and consideration. Special efforts, therefore, have to be made to ensure that the voters feel motivated to cast their votes for the local bodies and this

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is where a synergy has been built between the efforts of the SEC and the citizen-driven PEVACs.

The nuts and bolts of conducting the local-body elections place a heavy burden on the shoulders of the SEC. The prepara-tory steps include preparation of electoral rolls, delimitation of constituencies, reservation and rotation of seats, announce-ment of dates for election, etc. Some of these responsibilities are shared between the SEC and the state government and its functionaries but the lack of clarity regarding their respective functions creates delays and litigations in some cases. To avoid delay and confusion on all these matters powers and responsibilities on these issues should ideally be vested in the SEC. This has also been recommended by the Guwahati Roundtable of Ministers in-charge of Panchayati Raj in 2004 and the second Administrative Reforms Commission in 2007. Yet divergences at the state level persist in practice. Creating an information base on these vital matters taking into account the local variations has been part of what the PEVACs have been trying to do along with the SECs.

The electoral rolls are the most important among the docu-ments needed to conduct the election. There is an electoral roll prepared by the ECI for the conduct of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections while a separate electoral roll is prepared for the elections to the PRIs. This results in confusion as sometimes a voter fi nds her/his name in one of the rolls and not the other. In spite of the consensus that there should be a single electoral roll for elections at all levels which would not only eliminate this confusion but would also save costs, administrative burden and further confusions arising from the fact that different state commissions use different starting dates in the calendar year to decide on the qualifying date for eligibility of new voters, this is yet to be done. Till such time as the common database is evolved it will be the responsibility of the SEC and vigilant citizens organised through the PEVACs to ensure that all cases of wrong inclusion of names, non-deletion of names of voters who are dead, repetition of names of voters across two constituencies are highlighted and corrected as much as possible.

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SEC and People’s Campaigns: View from Different States

The sheer divergence in the actual practices of conducting elections for the local bodies and the fact that the state gov-ernments continue to exercise considerable leverage in this process despite the presence of the SEC leaves room for cre-ating a situation where an information gap can disrupt the healthy conduct of elections. It is here that peoples’ campaigns like the PEVAC can work along with the SEC to ensure that correct information is made available to the people before and during the election to the local bodies to enable them to make informed choices.

To gain a better understanding of the way in which the SEC and the PEVACs have developed a synergistic relationship we need to look at some of the smaller operational tasks that the conduct of elections to the local bodies entail. We do this by surveying the ground realities in some of the states in which PEVAC has been conducted — Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Bihar.

Given the variation of state laws, the status of the state elec-tion commissioner also varies. For instance, in Rajasthan it is above the Chairman of the Board of Revenue and below the Chairman of the Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC). In Andhra Pradesh the SEC has the status of a judge of the High Court while in Bihar his/her position is equivalent to that of an IAS offi cer. The State Acts also defi ne the powers of the SEC differently. In Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh it is the state governments which delimit the wards and decide on reservation of seats, whereas in Bihar it is the SEC who is entrusted with these functions. In most cases the task of an-nouncing the date of elections is with the SEC.

In the PEVAC intervention in Himachal Pradesh in 2000 the regular interface with the SEC enabled the campaign partners to contact and coordinate with the district administration as and when required. The SEC was invited to participate in various PEVAC-related sharing meetings and workshops held

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at the state and district levels. The SEC was updated on every publication related to PEVAC and sent a copy of all printed and electronic learning material. A mutual process of learning ensued and the SEC on its part provided the clarifi cation and information whenever the campaign partners asked for it. Given that correct information was the key to this campaign this constant sharing of resources and information proved mutually benefi cial.3 In Haryana, in the PEVAC intervention of 2005, the state election commissioner wrote the introduction to the educational material used for the campaign such as the brochures and the CDs. Whenever required prior permission was sought to organise rallies or use the public address system.

In Rajasthan a major operational problem regarding panchayati elections is that the candidates virtually get no time to canvass. While the elected representatives feel they should be given at least seven days to canvass, the reality accord-ing to a sarpanch is that the entire operation occurs in about 30 hours. According to this sarpanch,

on the fi rst day, at about 11 AM the polling party (the team of offi cials appointed by the SEC to conduct the elections) starts the process. Nomination forms are collected, fi lled up, and the candidates get about two or three hours to fi ll it up and submit. Then within another hour or two, withdrawal, fi nalisation of candidates and allotment of symbols is completed. By 4 PM everything is over and the next morning you have to face voting. (IRMA 2008b: 400)

This complaint was also reiterated in the fi eld interviews conducted in Govindgarh in Rajasthan where PEVAC had been intensively conducted in the past (author interviews, July 2009). We were surprised to learn that several elected women representatives were simply ‘assigned’ symbols which were mechanically matched against their names by the ‘election offi cials’ from a ‘master list of symbols’ on which they evidently

3 PRIA PEVAC reports from Andhra Pradesh 2006 and Himachal Pradesh, 2002.

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did not have any inputs. Not only were they not allowed the freedom to choose a symbol of their choice that represented their personal message and aspiration, but also the ‘offi cial allotment’ of the symbol happened so late that time for canvassing could not be creatively used to enable the voters to make the connect between the symbol and the person contesting for the post. In states where the connect between the visual symbol and the candidate is crucial for making an informed choice because of the prevailing rates of literacy may not allow voters to read the names off the list, this arbitrary and high-handed assignment of symbols does not seem to be in synchronicity with a project to deepen democratic spaces. The argument that symbols are best allotted by the election offi cials to ‘avoid fi ghts’ in case two or more contestants choose to opt for the same symbol is paternalistic and uncalled for. It undercuts the freedom of choice and expression and can easily be resolved through a draw of lots should the problem arise. In some states like Andhra Pradesh this is the method that is followed.

Given the short time span between the time of allotment of the symbol and voting day PEVACs can and have made an important contribution. It will be virtually impossible for the SEC and the offi cials to ensure that adequate support is provided to help potential candidates to fi ll up the forms in the stipulated time period and to canvass before voting. Yet the whole election process is reduced to a farce if these functions are not carried out. Candidates from historically disadvantaged communities and women who have been trad-itionally marginalised from decision making will be at a clear disadvantage when these time lines have to be adhered to. This is where the citizen campaigners of PEVAC have stepped in, working with the candidates, especially those belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes and women candidates, not only helping them to fi ll up the forms but also using pre-existing social networks in these regions to step up the canvassing in whatever time remained before the voting began. It is here that the mahila mandals and women’s collectives have played an important role as they know the candidate and the terrain.

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In this sense, the PEVACs have enabled the SEC to fulfi l the spirit of their mandate, which is to ensure the conduct of regular, fair and free elections. Without this support role the elections would not be an inclusive process where all legitimate candidates have a chance to participate.

The synergy between the SEC and the PEVAC was again evident in Andhra Pradesh where elections to the gram panchayat were held in three phases during August 2001. In all these phases PEVAC was conducted in 22 out of 23 districts and the PEVAC animators took up the task of liasoning with the SEC. The fact that the state election commissioner issued a letter to all offi cials asking them to cooperate with the citizen-led PEVAC and the press note also issued by him gave tremendous credibility and acceptance to the campaign.4 In addition to the PEVAC intervention of 2006 in Andhra Pradesh the election offi cer gave the campaign partners permission to paste posters in strategic places in the village, allowed the NGOs to take the help of the secretaries and peons if needed and allowed the cable TV network to broadcast the campaign message of fair and free elections. The SEC even sponsored the kalajathas, as mentioned earlier, to convey the awareness drive against the use of money and liquor in the electoral process. Convinced about the importance of this drive the SEC sponsored the kalajathas in seven districts of Andhra Pradesh, across 120 villages involving 110 shows.

Working to support the overall effort of the SEC to ensure that fair and free elections were held for the gram panchayat, the animators of the campaign undertook four specifi c tasks. First, they generated a sample nomination paper to demystify the entire nomination process — this process can be quite intimidating for those seeking to understand this for the fi rst time and this sample paper helped to overcome that initial hesi-tation. Second, to ensure that the Dalits vote in larger numbers despite the fear and pressures which they had in the past been subjected to, the campaign pressed for separate polling booths

4 Anil Kumar Vaddiraju, Pevac Report, March 2002.

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for them. This appeared to ensure a higher turnout. Third, they highlighted across the districts all kinds of malpractices as and when they surfaced. These included focusing on the fact that panchayat seats in parts of Andhra Pradesh were actually being auctioned — concrete cases were cited in this regard. For example, the case of a rich farmer in village Mythyalmpadu, in Guntur district buying the sarpanch post for Rs 625,000 for his mother, the cases of proxy candidates where upper-caste landlords even fi led the nomination ‘on behalf of Dalit women’, instances where money and liquor ranging from Rs 2 lakhs in minor panchayats to Rs 10 lakhs in major ones were all recorded. For a single-member SEC it is not possible to appoint offi cials to carry out on-the-spot election duties as well as meticulously record malpractices. When campaigns such as PEVACs actually step in, through a supportive role, it becomes more feasible for the SEC to take cognisance and initiate action.5

In Bihar, typically associated with massive election vio-lence, the panchayat elections held in May 2006 were almost violence free. There is reason to believe that this was possible because of the close co-operation between the SEC and the collective civil society coalition led by CENSORED that organised the PEVACs. One of the most important functions that the PEVAC performed was to generate awareness about those aspects of newly-established Bihar’s Panchayati Raj Act of 20066 pertaining to elections and the role of the SEC (IRMA 2008a).

The Bihar Panchayati Raj Act of 2006 was passed in the same year as the elections were held so there was very little time for the SEC to spread the word about the enabling provisions of this new Act which had several salient features

5 These cases have been documented in the PEVAC fi eld report from Andhra Pradesh, March 2002.

6 http://164.100.72.10/panchayatbihar/viewContentItem.do?View=viewItem&itemid=38255&ptltid=364&folderid=Subject.PRA (accessed 21 April 2010).

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http://www.164.100.72.10/panchayatbihar/viewContentItem.do?View=viewItem&itemid=38255&ptltid=364&folderid=Subject.PRA

http://www.164.100.72.10/panchayatbihar/viewContentItem.do?View=viewItem&itemid=38255&ptltid=364&folderid=Subject.PRA


pertaining to the conduct of elections. This included 50 per cent reservations to be provided for women candidates, reservations for scheduled castes and tribes in proportion to the population, 20 per cent reservations for backward classes, same pattern of reservation to be followed for reservation for the posts of chairpersons which would be on rotation. Most importantly, to ensure that all these were implemented the Act provided that all the government offi cials will be under the control of the SEC during the time of election and for the conduct of fair and independent elections, the SEC will be provided with special administrative power to punish the erring offi cials involved in election work. The power of conducting the elections was vested in the SEC, which also had the power of settling election-related disputes, delimitation of constituencies, operationalisation of reservation, allotment of election symbols and location of polling booths. The district magistrates would exercise these powers under the supervision and guidance of the SEC (IRMA 2008a: 60–63).

No doubt these provisions were made keeping in mind the charge that elections in Bihar have been traditionally associated with ‘elite capture’, rigging, booth capturing and violence. By clearly empowering the SEC, the fi rst step was taken to deal with this issue of elections conducted under the shadow of fear and intimidation.

However, the SEC needed the support of civil-society coalitions in order to carry out their mandated functions — both in letter and spirit. This is where the PEVACs made an important contribution just before the elections of May 2006. Playing a supportive role in the work of the SEC, the campaign animators started with facilitating people’s participation in revision of the electoral rolls, formation of ward peace and vigilance samities, helping the contesting candidates to fi le their nomination papers and withdraw their nominations if necessary. It generated awareness about the 50 per cent res-ervation for women and the minutiae of the operationalising of the electoral process. This included spreading information on allotment of the poll symbol, process of appointing polling

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and counting agents, the different colours of the ballot papers meant for the mukhiya, the sarpanch, the panch, and the gram sabha and zila parishad member, the documents which could be used to proove voter identity, the documents to be submitted by the candidates at the time of fi ling the nomination paper (such as proof of age, inclusion in voters list, fi nancial status, pending cases, etc).

An extremely important aspect of the PEVAC in Bihar before and during the elections was the three-tier information and support service launched just before the panchayat election. This consisted of the Chalant Soochana Kendra (mobile infor-mation centre) which provided detailed information about nomination procedures to the target groups; the panchayat information centre which was a repertoire of information which the SEC as well as the offi cials appointed by it could use to their advantage and the helpline service to help solve problems during the time of election.

The training of trainers (TOT) conducted as part of the PEVAC contained some practical exercises that yielded insights that were important for the SEC. For instance, to enable the voters to understand exactly what needed to be done on voting day for the fair and free conduct of polls, a mock exercise was conducted for casting votes. It was pointed out by some par-ticipants undertaking this exercise that a total of four minutes was being spent by each voter for casting the six votes that were required. This meant that only 40–45 per cent of the polling could be completed in the stipulated time period. This matter was brought to the notice of the SEC. Immediately thereafter the SEC came out with a directive regarding poll timing and casting of votes.7 It is really in these fi ner details, seemingly trivial, but with a tremendous signifi cance for the larger process, that the role of civil-society initiatives like these can enable the SEC to fulfi l its mandate of conducting fair and free elections.

7 Centre for Communication Resources Development (CENSORED), ‘Strengthening Panchayati Raj in Bihar’, 2006 (unpublished fi eld report).

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The close functional relationship between the SEC and the PEVACs was evident in the fact that the campaign itself was started off in Patna following a meeting which was attended by the commissioner and secretary of the SEC and the SEC was part of the strategy-building exercise when it was decided that state-level TOT would be held to orient people towards the panchayat elections. At another state level meeting the PEVAC animators and strategists, along with the SEC, endorsed the idea of democratic and voluntary endeavours for generating awareness.

Challenges Faced by the SECs and the Complementary Role of the PEVACs

A common perception regarding the work of the SEC is that it is confi ned to a one-time overseeing of operations every fi ve years during the local bodies’ election. This perception is completely misplaced. The work of the SEC is a continuous one involving regular bye elections in large numbers as the statistical chances of seats falling vacant due to the deaths of offi ce bearers is high given the millions of local level rep-resentatives in the country. The SEC also has to attend to numerous litigations regarding elections to local bodies and the results of elections. Conducting and supervising elections to local bodies, when broken down into small operational tasks, involves a range of responsibilities that calls for strengthening the staff of the SEC so that it can ensure that there is proper maintenance of records and data of past elections. Currently, the staff strength varies from 6 to 90 and even the upper limit is not enough for a large state.

There is a great need to allow administrative and fi nancial autonomy in the day-to-day functioning of SECs. As of now, the commission is entirely dependant on the state governments as the state laws vary greatly in terms of setting out the terms of engagement for the SECs. Over the last fi ve years the state election commissioners have made efforts to strengthen their functioning and in the process have taken up a dialogue with

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the ECI on the one hand and the two concerned ministries in the Government of India — namely the single Ministry of Panchayati Raj and the Ministry of Urban Development — on the other. With effect from 2003 an annual conference of the SECs is being held to evolve best practices (Khanna 2008). Also from 2005 onwards, an annual meeting is being held between the SECs and the ECI to process the database that would hopefully eventually pave the way for the preparation of the common electoral rolls which would save both time and money. At the fi rst meeting in 2005 the decision to share the EVMs was also taken.

During the 2004 Guwahati Roundtable of ministers in charge of Panchayati Raj several important decisions were taken with respect to elections. These included the recom-mendation that all functions such as the preparation of the electoral rolls, delimitation, reservation, rotation, can be vested in the SEC instead of being split; that the Union government might consider the preparation of a model code for the PRIs relating to the supervision, direction and conduct of election that a common electoral roll could be evolved for all levels of elections; that a forum of institutional action be established between the ECI and the SECs; and that the state govern-ments could consider granting to the SECs the same salary and emoluments as a judge of the High Court (Khanna 2008).

While these recommendations are being processed and a model bill on elections to panchayats has been drafted, the role and functions of the SECs continue to remain in this state of fl ux. Another round of local body elections are slotted for 2010. It is clear that in these elections, as in the earlier ones, the citizen-led civil-society campaigns will continue to have to provide support to the formal mechanism of the SEC to ensure that its mandate is carried out.

The former election commissioner of Andhra Pradesh, Madhav Rao, affi rming the importance of civil society and the PEVACs observed that particularly in circumstances where the civil service and/or the political leadership fails, the role of civil society assumes a special signifi cance. The task of motiv-ating a member of the gram sabha to vote is by and large not

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very diffi cult as she/he is convinced about the importance of this. The voter apathy is more of an urban phenomenon.8 However, providing information about the process, joining in the canvassing process, encouraging women and scheduled-caste members to both vote and stand for elections are areas where CSOs can work in tandem with the SEC. This is where PEVAC has made its most important contribution.

The culture of citizen participation to oversee elections rather than leaving it exclusively to the Election Commissions captured through the PEVAC spirit received a fi llip when the National Election Watch (NEW) began to make its pre-sence felt from 2002 onwards. NEW, too, is a nation-wide campaign comprising thousands of NGOs and other citizen-led organisations working on electoral reforms, improving democracy and governance in India and they conduct their election-watch activities during national and state assembly elections.9 The rise in such citizen-led drives to complement the work of the election commission — whether at the state or the national level — represents a new turn that invests in the idea of democracy by recognising that while deepening democracy cannot be confl ated into an election event it is nonetheless a process in which the centrality of that event cannot be denied. Consequently, it is far too important to be left to the government and state agencies alone. The SEC will be able to carry out the letter and spirit of its mandate only with the active cooperation and help from citizen collectives.

Sustaining the Process

While ensuring fair and free participatory elections and de-mystifying the electoral process by working in tandem with the SECs, was the immediate aim of the PEVAC campaign, its

8 Telephonic interview with Madhav Rao, former State Election Commissioner, Andhra Pradesh, on 30 July 2009.

9 For more on the National Election Watch see www.nationalelectionwatch.org (accessed 23 April 2010).

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http://www.nationalelectionwatch.org

http://www.nationalelectionwatch.org


long-term scope went well beyond the focus of the election as an event. Rather it sought to sow in the minds of the people an attitude that was conducive towards seeing themselves as part and parcel of an inclusive system of micro democracy that emanates from the grass-roots. The election process as such was simply the beginning of a more meaningful engagement in what was envisaged as a larger process of social and political transformation rather than a one shot event. Elections, im-portant though they were as a starting point, were positioned as one point on the matrix of a project that aimed at deepen-ing democracy. Capacity building of newly-elected members, GSM to ensure the engagement of all citizens in democractic decentralisation projects and ensuring accountability were other points that could be mapped on this matrix. The next chapter will map the subsequent phase of this new experiment with deepening democracy at the grass-roots through another initiative called PRJA. PRJA broke out of the exclusive campaign mode (though it too retained elements of the campaign mode) and took the form of capacity building to support newly-elected representatives who would form the edifi ce of what was expected to be a new form of transparent and accountable government at the grass-roots.

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6

Beyond Elections: Sustaining the Democratic Impulse

Far more than the episodic intervention at election time, the participation of the public in the week-to-week policy and law-making work of government is the real life-blood of democracy. Weak democracies exclude the poor from having a meaningful say in the decisions that affect them; strong democracies welcome and facilitate access.

Justice Kate O’Regan,Judge of the Constitutional Court, South Africa

There appear to be two common strands of the decentralisation experiment conducted by nearly 88 countries over the last decade or so. The fi rst is some form of regular election to local-level bodies with elected representative council for a village or town and the second is specifi c administrative and fi nancial devolution to these elected bodies for undertaking and managing programmes of local development. In South Asia the movement on both these counts began in the 1990s — in India it began specifi cally with the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts. (Tandon 2001: 13–17).

The PEVACs were visualised as a citizen-led initiative to realise and deepen this engagement with democratic de-centralisation. In this larger picture, elections for local self-governance were not just an event which served as an end in itself. Rather, it was part of a much deeper and broader process of building a crucial mass of people equipped with a critical consciousness to examine their current situation and equipped with the confi dence to take steps towards transforming that situation where necessary. While a large part of PEVACs were devoted to transferring information and imparting knowledge

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Beyond Elections 125

it was not limited by this template. It also sought to initiate a process of questioning and interrogation of current social realities and as such marked the beginning of a larger personal and collective journey towards ‘growth and self-discovery’. (Nambiar 2001: 10). Consequently, following the PEVACs, a series of sequential steps, which of course overlapped in parts, were designed to carry the intervention to a deeper level.

To begin with, in the post-PEVAC phase small steps were taken to address the post-election divisiveness within the village. Informal village felicitations, functions, a letter of congratulation (Abhinandan Patra) and a symbolic coming together of candidates who had contested were organised in an informal gathering to create a sense of acknowledgement and solidarity. Beyond the symbolism of these community ex-pressions of solidarity and appreciation, yet another citizen-led initiative — the PRJA — was initiated to sustain the spirit of engagement that had been unleashed by the PEVACs. PRJA, in that sense, did not mark a break from PEVAC but was simply a continuation of the PEVAC spirit beyond the immediacy of the election. If the campaign mode dominated the landscape of PEVAC, it was the smaller, quieter capacity-building workshops and meetings that were the hallmark of PRJA. If PEVAC generated an impulse, PRJA, along with the GSM drive, was designed to sustain it once the heat and dust of the pre-election campaigns had settled down.

The gram sabha is a constitutional body consisting of all the people registered in the electoral rolls of a village panchayat. As the basic unit of self-governance, it provides a political forum to people in the village to meet, discuss, debate and analyse the development and administrative actions of the elected representatives. Consequently, it is expected to ensure transparency and accountability in the functioning of the vil-lage panchayat. A vibrant gram sabha can emerge as the vital forum that can be instrumental in strengthening and deepening democracy by ensuring that the planning of developmental priorities and the day-to-day business of governance is not

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conducted in ante-rooms far removed from the lived realities of the people in village India. For the people to retain an active voice in the gram sabha it needs to be seen as a means of genuine representation, authorisation, a forum to ensure accountability, transparency, and as a focal point of empower-ment and information.1 There are two imperatives to being responsive and responsible members of the gram sabha. First, the elected representatives, especially newly-elected ones, and those who have been elected from reserved constituencies need to be provided with conceptual, logistic and moral support so that they can emerge as leaders with vision. Second, there is a need to generate awareness that even those citizens who are not elected representatives have a role to play by participating and articulating their concerns in the course of the day-to-day governance issues. PRJA sought to address the fi rst imperative and the GSM the second.

The Panchayati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan

A large number of representatives elected to the gram panchayats following the panchayat elections from 1995 to 2005 were crossing the private-public threshold for the fi rst time. This was particularly true of women and members of the scheduled castes and tribes for whom seats had been reserved in the State Panchayat Acts that followed the 73rd Amendment. For those stepping into the public arena for the fi rst time, the absence of community support and institutional backing can evidently be both intimidating and alienating. Suddenly catapulted to a position of responsibility, having to understand and negotiate complicated government rules and regulations, expected to choose the beneficiaries of the government schemes without fear or favour, to conduct meetings, keep minutes, prepare micro plans, manage funds, and more often than not counter the hostility of the village seniors for whom any change of guard arouses suspicion and anger, newly-elected representatives often found themselves virtually out

1 PRIA, Gram Sabha Mobilization: Synthesis Paper

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in the cold. In Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, for instance, it was observed that following the elections there was a marked absence of institutional delivery of capacity building. In some states like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the government did try to initiate a process to train newly-elected representatives on a large scale but after the orientation of the master trainers the actual inputs never really reached the panchayat functionaries for whom these were designed (Singh 2001). It is against this backdrop that PRJA sought to fi ll the ‘support vacuum’.

The objective of PRJA was to create awareness among the newly-elected representatives regarding two issues. These were:

1. The signifi cance of panchayats and democratic decen-tralisation. This involved functioning of the Panchayati Raj system, knowledge of law, rules and latest amend-ments regarding State Panchayati Raj Acts.

2. The roles of newly-elected representatives in the PRIs. This involved a change of mindset from thinking about them-selves as people’s representatives rather than as agents of the block or district administration.

At the core of the PRJA approach was capacity-building support to enable newly-elected members to effectively enact their roles. Indeed, capacity building has become the buzzword of the new millennium. Since capacity-building workshops are at the core of the PRJA programme it is important to analyse this term both conceptually and in terms of its prac-tical implications.

The International Forum on Capacity Building has pointed to three aspects of capacity building — intellectual, institutional and material. The intellectual aspects relate to the realm of ideas, vision and concepts; the institutional dimensions are about how organisations work, and the material part has to do with the sustainability of the project. Capacity building of a local body means an examination of its purposes at a given period of its life cycle. It is important to acknowledge that

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capacity building cannot be linear — it is context-specifi c and has to be embedded in the cultural fabric of the community if it is to be effective.2

What does this notion of capacity building actually translate into in terms of local self-governance and the global trend towards creating a decentralised democratic culture? Clearly, in the context of Indian PRIs, it goes beyond the ambit of a series of trainings for individuals through pre-determined package of inputs. The actor (in this context the members of gram sabha/panchayat samiti/zila parishad) must see the value of and take responsibility for the learning. This will be possible if the learnings are specifi cally targeted to address the felt needs of the newly-elected representatives and in a manner that is as far as possible compatible with the lived experiences of the community. Hence, the range of Frierian-inspired methodologies that start from people’s lived experi-ences eliciting and working with concepts already familiar to them, and other participatory learning and action form a rich tapestry of potential pedagogies for meaningful engagement with the newly-elected representatives. Learnings based on a participatory methodology are likely to be far more effective that those imposed from the outside (Tandon 2001: 14).

Leadership building among newly-elected representatives — especially among women, Dalits and tribals who have been traditionally excluded from decision-making processes — is one of the most signifi cant components of capacity building at the panchayat level. This involves their access to authentic information about local self-governance, their roles, responsi-bilities and the fi nancial resources available to them. Exercising new leadership also requires learning new skills such as how to conduct a meeting or keeping minutes.

2 Asia Pacifi c Regional Conference of the International Forum on Capacity building (IFCB), excerpt from the conference report, Participation and Governance, Vol. 7, No. 20, March 2001.

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For those among the newly-elected representatives who have been denied access to literacy, methodological innovations in audio visuals and use of folk arts were recognised as effective tools of communication. Like the PEVAC, nukkad nataks and role plays were also used. The training also acknowledged the need to go beyond the workshop format by embracing a variety of approaches and processes such as fi eld exposure and projects, horizontal sharing and solidarity. Most of the newly-elected women for instance have never left their homes or hamlets. Consequently, opportunities for women, Dalits and tribals to share their experiences from across different regions of the country, express solidarity and provide mutual support had to be created. It is in this context that exposure trips for groups of elected representatives, joint camps and conferences have been utilised as innovative approaches to building self-confi dence for new leaders.3 In Madhya Pradesh, an innovative method was made to bring together present and ex-elected members, through a consultation meet. The purpose of this was to build a good relationship between the two and also learn from the experiences of the ex-elected members (Singh 2001). These illustrate some of the practical on the job experiential learning processes for capacity building.

Prior to the PRJA orientation, a Training Needs Analysis was conducted which took into account factors like local language, custom, gender division, strengths of the community-based organisations (CBOs), local resource availability and other location-specifi c information. This helped design relevant and appropriate learning material. Resource persons were drawn from various sectors so that experiences from all quarters could be shared. These included pradhans/sarpanches/panchayat samiti members, block administrative offi cers (retired), retired teachers, NGO personnel and district administration such as district development offi cers (Singh 2001).

3 Asia Pacifi c Regional Conference of the IFCB, excerpt from the conference report, Participation and Governance, Vol.7, No. 20, March 2001.

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The format of PRJA was essentially formed around orientation workshops for the newly-elected representatives of the gram panchayat. This involved a slew of logistic and conceptual tasks. Logistically it involved selection of the panchayats, the venue, and the partner organisations, identi-fying resource persons, informing the district administration and block administration as they too were seen as partners in the process. Conceptually it involved designing the programme and preparing reading-learning material. While doing this, the way in which sensitive issues would be tackled had to be taken into account in an atmosphere charged with post-election divisiveness.

Due to time constraints, the training capsules had to be brief yet adequately comprehensive and sometimes separate orientations were held for women and Dalits taking into account their specifi c needs. Typically, a one day capsule for women representatives would include sessions on importance of women in panchayats, status of women, rural development programmes related to development of women, teamwork, functioning of panchayats (roles and responsibilities) and information on social-welfare schemes and self-help groups.4

The basic strategy in PRJA involved taking these orientation workshops to the actual location of the representatives and attempting maximum outreach by mobilising local partners and resources which in turn would also enable a sense of local ownership of the process. PRJA mobilised women with the help of women sarpanches, anganwadi workers, yuva mandals and the village youth. The onus was on harnessing local resources, such as using local resource persons, preparation of workshop meals by local women’s group or the local dhaba, which apart from making the workshops cost effective was also instrumental in generating a community feeling. Attempts were also made to forge linkages and involve other actors such as block development offi cer and district administration,

4 PRIA, Campaigns for Citizen Participation, New Delhi, 2004.

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the other three tiers of PRIs and local organisations/CBOs for facilitation. The purpose of engaging them was also to build better rapport between government offi cials and elected representatives and sensitise both government offi cials and CBOs to participatory methodologies so that the programme could be made self-sustaining beyond its project timeframe. These orientations also helped build bonds of solidarity across villages (Singh 2001).

Gram Sabha Mobilisation

The deepening of democracy also entails strengthening the gram sabha which consists of both elected representatives as well as all other adult members of the village. The GSM campaign targeted this lowest tier of the local self-governing structure. It was based on the assumption that in a context where communities are increasingly fractured on the basis of caste, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, a signifi cant intervention is needed to strengthen the gram sabha as a progressive civil-society formation in each hamlet and village across India.

A step in the direction of strengthening the gram sabha at the village level has been the passage of the 73rd Amendment Act and the State Panchayati Acts that have the potential to challenge traditional power structures. These acts can, however, at best play only a facilitative role and it is known that in actual practice the socio-economic and political realities of Indian villages are not such that just the passage of legislation, however progressive the content, will be enough to bring desired changes. Even today, almost two third of villagers are functionally illiterate. Their illiteracy is overlaid with prevailing caste and gender biases. The rigid caste hierarchy has traditionally excluded Dalits and other backward castes from the realm of political decision-making. Moreover, the powerful patriarchic norms still restrict women from participating in the gram sabha which is regarded as the public arena. On an average, almost three quarter of the population in every village

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has been traditionally excluded from socio-political decision-makings at local levels.5

Despite vast regional disparities and differences in the gender and caste patterns even within a cluster of villages in the same district some common challenges that stand in the way of effective gram sabhas have been identifi ed. The fi rst challenge centres around legislative and procedural issues. Taking advantage of the broad legal mandate of the 73rd Amendment Act, the various State Panchayat Acts have often desisted from spelling out the specifi c functional responsibilities of the gram sabha. For instance, the laws in most of the states prescribe that at least two meetings of the gram sabha should be held in a year. Unfortunately, as the PRIA synthesis report on GSM points out, the minimum has been interpreted as maximum. The provisions related to quorum are confusing and can be misused by persons in powerful positions. Sometimes the state governments not only decide the days of the gram sabha meetings but also its agenda. The functional relationship between gram sabha and gram panchayat has also not been clearly spelt out in most of the states. Moreover, gram sabha decisions may or may not be binding on the gram panchayat. There is also a problem of numbers. In most of the states the territorial jurisdictions of gram sabhas are too large to allow for meaningful discussions. An average gram sabha in Kerala comprises 30,000 people. Though some of states like Orissa, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh have legally divided the gram sabhas into smaller units, namely palli/ward/upa-gram sabhas, many states have yet to take this step.

Moreover, Indian villages are highly politicised, divided on caste, class and gender. Mere attendance at a meeting does not guarantee participation. In the absence of social and insti-tutional support for scheduled-caste members and women effective participation in the gram sabha will remain a challenge. There is also a huge knowledge gap with respect to the new Panchayati Acts that have been enacted following

5 PRIA report on GSM, draft document.

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the 73rd Amendment. Neither the union nor the state govern-ments has launched a public education drive to enable people to understand the scope of local self-governance following the amendment. Even government functionaries seem to be unaware of the new realities. The governments have not reached out to newly-elected representatives, including women and members of the scheduled castes, who now occupy posts in the panchayat from reserved seats by providing them necessary capacity-building support. This lack of knowledge along with the past experience of ineffective gram sabhas has also fed into a culture of apathy on the part of the citizens who naturally ask, ‘what can the gram sabha do to improve my quality of life’ It is against this backdrop that the GSM drive was launched.6

The main issues identifi ed in the course of the GSM drive were the following:

1. Encouraging and ensuring the participation of the people, especially from the weaker and marginalised sections of society in the gram sabhas.

2. Ensuring accountable and transparent local self-governance.

3. Enabling the people to articulate their priorities.4. Demanding and supporting the development of the

panchayat.7

The date of the gram sabha meeting was decided by the state government and was available in advance. Accordingly, the civil-society drive to mobilise the gram sabha was divided into three phases. In the pre-GSM phase all residents were made aware of their rights in the local governance. In the course of the GSM drive a note was made of the people who attended, from which segments of society, the level of discussion that

6 PRIA report on GSM, draft document.7 In Madhya Pradesh the partner organisation was Samarthan and in

Kerela SAHAYI, another partner organisation, took the responsibility of organising the fl oat during the Onam festival.

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prevailed and in the third phase an attempt was made at consolidation, where observation and feedback were collated and analysed for future mobilisations and specifi c issues were identifi ed that could be raised in a wider forum.

For the gram sabha to emerge as a viable unit of self-governance, a minimum critical mass of people needed to be motivated including women and marginalised sections such as Dalits and tribals. Different methods of mobilisation were used in different parts of the country where this programme had been launched. Several of the tools and methods used for this drive were similar to the ones used for the PEVACs. The GSM took forward the message of active citizen engagement through gram sabhas by preparing and distributing handbills, posters, slogans, leafl ets and pamphlets. The salient features of the gram sabha were displayed on the walls of the villages — the writing was done in words as well as pictures. In Madhya Pradesh, 80,000 copies of the booklet titled Gram Sabha Aise Hongi (This is how the gram sabha will be) were distributed and books on gram swaraj8 were published. The increasing demands for these small, easy-to-understand booklets led to the publication of more copies. Like the PEVACs, these state-level innovations were adopted to reach out to the people in a manner that was compatible with the local milieu. In some cases this included nukkad nataks, for instance, in Orissa street theatres and video shows were organised on Amne Kariba Amne Sasan (we will govern ourselves); in Kerala where the gram sabha meeting was to be held close to the festival of Onam, art forms and a fl oat were used at the Onam festival to highlight the theme of Panchayati Raj. The fact that this

8 Gram Swaraj or village self-rule, central to Gandhian thinking was based on the vision of each village being a little republic, able to make provisions for all the basic necessities of life. This vision was clearly at variance with the emphasis on heavy industries that characterised India’s post-Independence Five-Year Plans and in the Constitution the idea of villages as units of local self-governance was included only as part of the non-justiciable Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV).

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was telecast live implied that close to 10 lakh people possibly received the message sitting in their own homes. The event was also given wide coverage by the media. Video fi lms worked well in areas where literacy was low such as in Jhabua district of Himachal Pradesh.

The Panchayat Mitras (friends of panchayats) were another innovative methodology used in Himachal Pradesh whereby small groups who are well-versed on the panchayat system meet gram sabha members and mobilise them to participate in meetings more effectively. In Madhya Pradesh, the Sathi Sammelans were organised through community-based organ-isations and in 15 days 60 villages conducted such sammelans with the aim of creating a Sanchar Dal (informed group) to dis-seminate information as well as to act as a support group for the elected representatives. Small group meetings, cycle rallies, padyatras (walks), prabhat pheris (morning processions), door-to-door campaigning were also used at different points and different contexts for this drive.9

One of the pillars of the entire PEVAC-PRJA-GSM project was the creation of the Panchayat Resource Centres to main-tain the information fl ow as well as to meet the need of wider outreach. By addressing the gaps in information and know-ledge regarding electoral procedures on matters like rotation of reservation seats, reservation for OBC, the two-child norm, fi ling and fi lling nominations, the centres played a key role in demystifying electoral procedures. By continuing to function beyond the election period, these centres provided a one-stop information hub that could contribute to both the intellectual as well as the institutional aspects of capacity building for the local bodies. The Panchayat Resource Centres were linked to the District Resource Centres thereby ensuring a two-way infor-mation traffi c between the village and the districts as repre-sented in Figure 6.1.

The GSM project was conducted using a combination of the campaign mode and capacity building. The capacity

9 PRIA, Gram Sabha Mobilisation: Synthesis Paper.

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Fig

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building at this level had to build on an appreciation of the collective identity of the gram sabha. This sense of belonging on the basis of collective citizenship rights and duties come out of a shared concern with common problems at the village level and this is the plank on which the GSM was launched. A strong gram sabha also requires an institutional mechanism to function effectively and periodic meetings are an essential part of this. It is in these meetings that the idea of collective decision-making and the idea of a common public good can be forged. The mobilisation drive consequently took special care to ensure that the meetings were held.

At another level, the gram sabha is important because the gram-panchayat members are not just elected by it but are also supposed to be accountable to it. However, in practice this idea of the gram panchayat as a vehicle of representa-tive leadership with the gram sabha as the watchdog to en-sure transparency and accountability remains an ideal. For this to actually be translated into practice the gram sabha will have to acquire a distinct identity of its own, build its insti-tutional capacity by mastering the art of conducting and re-cording meetings, developing and monitoring micro plans, and maintaining transparent systems of fi nancial management. Capacity-building interventions at this level are also needed to enhance the material base of the gram panchayat to make them fi nancially autonomous and for this the interventions will need to focus on mobilising local resources from villages.

Another signifi cant aspect of the capacity building of the gram sabha is to build on the strength of those traditional and contemporary local associations which have a potential to engender change. While an unconditional embracing of all traditional groups based on kinship, religion and caste will certainly not serve the goal of social change, some of these associations can and have been used to further the goals of transformation. In recent years new associations have also become visible at the village level such as self-help groups, mahila mandals, youth groups, village education committee, forest protection committees, watershed committees and village

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education committees, to name a few. Building their capacity and using them to mobilise and energise the gram sabhas would be a step in the right direction. The civil-society interventions at this level have largely been directed to enhance their intel-lectual capacity to gain a perspective on local self-governance issues so that they can work in synergy with the gram sabha (Tandon 2001: 15).

PRJA and GSM serve as illustrations of how civil society can intervene to ensure that the spirit of democratic engagement is strengthened and sustained so that progressive legislations like the 73rd Amendment do not remain confi ned to the paper. It also suggests that the project of deepening democracy cannot be left to the government alone — civil-society groups can and indeed must emerge as active stakeholders in the process.

Changing the Paradigm of Governance: The Challenge

Prior to the 73rd and 74th Amendments, the structure and functioning of local self-governance units were differently confi gured. Heavily dependent on the whims and largesse ‘bestowed’ by the state governments and with no provision for periodic elections, decentralisation — if it can be said to have occurred at all — was far from democratic in nature. Govern-ment functionaries had an all important role in the scheme of things and the local actors largely looked upon themselves as agents of the block- or district-level administrators. The Constitutional Amendments changed this basic template of gov-ernance by establishing, among other things, that there would be three tiers of elected bodies in rural areas (gram panchayat at the village level, panchayat samiti at the block level and zila parishad at the district level), and that elections would have to be held every fi ve years. The amendments also listed a number of development areas for which the three tiers of local bodies have responsibility and to whom fi nance commissions are required to allocate budgetary resources and the power to mobilise revenues. This implied a shift in the balance of

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power and responsibility from the government offi cials to the representatives of the people at the local level and consequently redefi ning the relationship between elected functionaries and government offi cials. Within these new parameters government functionaries were actually expected to be accountable to the gram panchayat. The gram panchayat now had to assert itself as a collective body so that it could supervise the concerned government functionaries and oversee relevant government development programmes and resources.

This new redefi nition of relationships, structures and func-tions has created a need for gram panchayats and government offi cials to learn jointly through structured learning opportun-ities. Bringing about a change in the orientation and attitudes of government functionaries is a challenge. The primary delivery mechanism for capacity building are the civil-service training institutes at the district, state and national level — an improved pedagogy and better facilitators are an important require-ment here. Government functionaries will have to learn specifi c skills to work with PRIs. These include skills in micro plan-ning, budgeting, social auditing — skills that the lower-level government functionaries have had no opportunity to hone due to the earlier top-down model of development (Tandon 2001: 16). The need for capacity building is consequently not restricted to the panchayat offi cials only — it is equally a felt need for government offi cials who will interact with them.

At the heart of the rationale for capacity building of local and government actors is the need to bring about a change in attitude and long-entrenched beliefs that militate against the spirit of inclusiveness and the creation of empowered, participatory micro democracies within the macro-democratic fabric of the country. Resistance to bringing in this change can be expected from some government offi cials as well as from village seniors whose power base has been intruded upon due to the affi rmative action clauses of the Constitutional Amendment. To be able to resist and wage confl ict non-violently where necessary and to dialogue and consult where required will be the need of the hour. Testing times are ahead

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if the ‘silent revolution’ that has been unleashed is to be carried to its logical culmination. Through the programmes under the rubric of PRJA and GSM we can get a glimpse of what it is that civil society can offer as this experiment unfolds.

The experiences from PEVAC, PRJA and GSM indicate some of the important components and directions of a process that seeks to deepen democracy. Indeed, deepening democracy has emerged as a burgeoning fi eld in recent years with an increasing acknowledgement that even if democratic institutions are in place the actual practice of democracy is often subverted and the experience of democratic decision making and participation is not always a natural fallout. Having refl ected on the cases and narratives that raise questions about the actual working of democracy in India we now turn our attention to the larger global discourse on deepen-ing democracy to see how experiences from India can con-nect to similar experiments being conducted in other parts of the world.

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7

Deepening Democracy: Discourses and Practices

The PEVACs, PRJAs and GSM campaigns and programmes designed, led and conducted by an intricate network of civil society organisations in India from 1995 onwards represent part of a larger global trend towards ‘deepening democracy’ marked by greater citizen participation in matters of governance. Deepening democracy as a discourse and a set of practices has caught the imagination of policymakers in the light of the citizen apathy that is seen across the world today, representing as it does, a rather disturbing disconnect between the rulers and the ruled. Somewhat paradoxically, the academic discourse around citizen apathy and its possible causes has also been accompanied by several new experiments to make democracy more participatory. Some of the more innovative experiments in participatory democracy have emerged not necessarily from countries with a long legacy of liberal democratic institutions but from postcolonial states where democratic functioning has not had the luxury of such a long gestation period. In this chapter, we review some of the ideas and practices around deepening democracy and explore where the narratives from India — home to the most populous democracy in the world — connect with this larger global script.

The near universal acceptance of the idea of democracy in the 20th century does not imply that there has ever been a con-sensus on its intent, core values, promises and consequently its extent and performance (Jayal 2001). Part of the problem is that multiple normative justifi cations are used invariably when the democratic ideal is invoked, with each normative premise naturally yielding a different conception of democracy.

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The liberal democrats use liberty and rights as the anchoring concepts in formulating their ideas of democracy. They signal their discomfort with notions of democracy that place an emphasis on redistribution of wealth and income to overcome background inequities on the grounds that this may involve a compromise with the ideal of liberty. On the other hand, for the social democrats, the centrality of equality is at the heart of the conception of democracy. Social democracy found its complete ideational expression in the notion of the welfare state on which much has been written. Another principle — that of autonomy — along with equality provides the anchoring point for a version of democracy that has come to be known as participatory democracy. The ideals of autonomy, free-dom and equality come together in the model of deliberative democracy which interprets popular rule as a means of encour-aging free and open deliberation on issues of common concern (Jayal 2001: 1–49).

Evidently, democracy has meant different things to different people at different times. There could be two reasons for this. First, there is an absence of consensus on its basic philosophical underpinnings, with some privileging one set of ideals as its cornerstone and others underscoring another. Second, even where there is a shared understanding on the underlying ideal (be it liberty, equality, autonomy, etc.) this does not percolate down to an unequivocal endorsement of what these precepts actually imply in practice. Indeed, the actual implications of these precepts have themselves been contested by different political philosophers. Given the variations in meanings and the fact that the core terms are politically loaded, a more hermeneutical course of discourse-tracing may yield interesting insights, but this is beyond the scope of this study (Ish-Shalom 2006: 565).

Reformulating and reframing these ideational under-pinnings some have argued that the notion of ‘difference’ can help construct a more enabling framework, to discuss the co-presence of equality, justice and freedom in democratic theory. Here the basic premise is that while differences of

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Deepening Democracy 143

wealth, status, interests, functions, talents, opinions exist in every society, the particularity of democracy is that it distin-guishes between two categories of these differences — those that cause inequality, and those that nurture creativity. In trying to overcome the fi rst and protect the second, it allows for a coalition between two otherwise uneasy partners — equality and freedom (Mahajan 1998: 17–22).

In the midst of contending formulations and contestations two dominant paradigms have dominated the literature on democractic discourse. The fi rst is the formal structural, procedural approach where a regime is designated a democracy when it passes some structural threshold of free and open elections, has autonomous branches of government, division of power, checks and balances. The second paradigm — variously described as normative, cultural or participatory — demands much more of democracy by emphasising on political regime and society and not just individual citizens. It calls for adherence to democratic norms such as political rights, tolerance, participation and civic responsibility (Ish-Shalom 2006: 577).

The trajectory of these two competing strands of demo-cratic discourse can be traced to the debates around and responses to the issue of the so-called democratic defi cit. Con-sequently, we examine the notion of the democratic defi cit as a starting point towards an understanding of the discourses on deepening democracy.

Responding to the Democratic Defi cit

In democratic literature, the spread of democracy is often described in waves. One such wave commenced after World War II sweeping over West Europe and another in the 1980s in Latin America and East Europe. This brought forth a clarion call on the ‘triumph’ of democracy with the triumphalists asserting that democracy has spread like never before. At the same time another narrative was gaining ground also in the global north. In sharp contrast to the triumphalists view on

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democracy, this literature pointed to the ‘hollowing out’ of politics, the lack of public involvement in political life and the replacement of the culture of collective citizen action with much more narrowly focused interest groups in which citizens are virtually treated like customers who communicate with the elite through opinion polls and electronic market research in an increasingly globalised world. These narratives warned that democracy is in crisis mode faced by a series of ‘defi cits’ that call into question its very vitality and meaning (Gaventa 2006: 8).

It was evident that there was also a sharp difference in the way the triumphalists conceived of democracy and the way those who talked about its defi cit conceived of it. For the ‘triumphalists’, democracy-building is about creating a stand-ardised institutional design around the world whereas for those concerned with pointing to its ‘defi cits’ democracy is much more about deepening its quality and meaning in ways that are context-sensitive — that is appropriate to the settings in which it is found.

This point of difference between procedural and deeper forms of democracy is developed further by a leading historian of our times, Eric Hobsbawm, who gestures towards the inadequacy of the fi rst. Noting that power is typically exercised through political institutions, he argues that in the political discourse of our times, the word ‘democracy’ has come to connote a standard institutional model: a constitutional state offering to guarantee the rule of law, various civil and political rights, governed by authorities which must include representative assemblies elected by universal suffrage and numerical major-ities of all citizens. This must be done through elections held at regular intervals between competing organisations and candidates. While this may not have been the original meaning of democracy, this is what we now call the liberal democratic model (Hobsbawm 2007: 96).

Yet the well-being of countries does not depend on the presence or absence of any single brand of institutional arrange-ment however morally commendable. The simple act of

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expressing one’s assent to the overall legitimacy of the political system through voting remains of only symbolic value if merely a modest minority participate in the affairs of the state or mass organisation. Hobsbawm even argues that ‘we are today faced with a very obvious secession of citizens from the sphere of politics’ given the fact that participation in politics seems to be falling in most liberal democratic countries. If popular democracy is the criterion of representative democracy, he asks, then how far is it possible to speak of the democratic legitimacy of an authority elected by one third of the potential electorate (the US House of Representatives) or in the case of British local government and European parliamentary elections by something like 10 or 20 per cent of the electorate. Or indeed of the US president elected by little more than half of the 50 per cent of the Americans entitled to vote (Hobsbawm 2007: 102). The basic moral premise of democracy in that it requires the support of the bulk of its citizens seems to be under assault even in the so-called mature democracies.

This citizen apathy alluded to by Hobsbawm has been captured in the term ‘democratic defi cit’ which suggests as Mark Warren and Hillary Pearse point out, that we think of democratic malaise structurally and see it not as a crisis of democracy per se but as a set of long term problems that if left unattended could erode the legitimacy and capacities of governments. There are of course competing arguments about the sources of political disengagement — that range from poor performance of political institutions and the capacity of the younger generation of better-educated and informed citizens to see through this to the broader civic phenomenon of declining participation in groups and networks to a popular distaste for the confl ict-ridden messiness of politics (Warren and Pearse 2008).

Whatever be the cause the point is that the democratic defi cit — variously described as a crisis of power, of legitimacy, of deliberation, of effectiveness in governing in the face of de facto powers on one hand, geopolitical forces on the other and citizens’ sense of alienation from governments which are by defi nition representative — is perhaps a defi ning challenge of

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our times. This could be labelled as a structural crisis — the tension between 19th-century institutions and 21st century aspirations. Even the strongest and most effective of states have lost monopoly of coercive force because of the fl ood of small portable instruments of destruction in the hands of non-state actors and the extreme vulnerability of modern life to sudden disruption. The voluntary loyalty and service of citizens to the state cannot be taken for granted any longer. There has also been a weakening of state power due to the return of a ultra-radical laissez faire critique of the state which argues that any service the public services can provide can be better provided by the ‘market’. The ideal of market sovereignty is perhaps being seen even as an alternative to liberal democracy. Market sovereignty denies the need for any political decision making by positing that the continuous discriminating process of ascertaining what the people want and the market provides is more effi cient than any recourse to deliberative politics (Hobsbawm 2007: 103–04).

Rather than seek to deepen the democratic character of politics, much political energy has been expended on reducing the role of politics altogether through deregulation, privat-isation, curtailment of state spending. This is particularly true of the political Right who have used the decline of democratic institutions to attack the very idea of the state’s engagement in politics. The Left on the other hand has vigorously defended the affi rmative state arguing that an activist state was essen-tial to counter a host of negative effects generated by capitalist economies such as poverty, unemployment, inequality, lack of access to public health services and so on. However, they appeared uncertain that the institutions that they had defended in the past can actually defend the goals that they espouse in the form of social justice. Consequently the key question appears to be whether the problem is one of faulty institutional design or one of reordering the tasks that these institutions are expected to perform (Fung and Wright 2001: 3–5).

In responding to this crisis of democracy, the advocates of deepening/participatory democracy have chosen to walk

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a different track. They suggest that the best way to counter the crisis of democracy is to strengthen an active citizenry in more local and everyday spheres of life — to enable new ‘micro democracies’ to emerge that may in the long run replace a hierarchical representative democracy — which has obviously failed to deliver. This is perhaps one area in which democratic theory can stimulate democratic practice. It involves intro-zspecting on the contemporary tendencies to depoliticize larger questions of war, peace and security by moving these away from the arena of public debate. In India this strand of thought continues to fi nd expression by those who emphasise that units of local self-government should concentrate on development only – an area that they clearly disconnect from the winds of politics and social transformation. The deepening democracy school on the other hand posits that if indeed larger parliaments cannot function as effective forums of deliberations on larger issues of life and death, perhaps it is possible to imagine alternative forums of deliberations, more local, more a part of our daily lives, which could be more be more attractive for the mass of the citizen body. It is to this formulation to which we now turn (Blaug and Schwarzmantel 1988: 1–18).

Deepening Democracy: The Alternative Paradigm

The ‘deepening democracy fi eld’ moves away from an exclusive pre-occupation with institutions of representative democracy to also include practices of empowered citizen participation. Its approach is less about getting the institutions right and more about how citizens can exercise ever-deepening control over their lives (Gaventa 2006: 9).

The origin of the discourse on deepening democracy is not entirely new in that even in classic democratic theory the Athenian democracy was considered to be deeper than the representative democracy of Rome and later European models and there has always been a long-standing debate between

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the so-called elitist school exemplifi ed by Schumpeter and others like Mill and Cole, for instance, who have argued that democracy must be more participatory by nature.1 In any case it is a matter of empirical observation that even as democracy spread in the post-World-War-II era, it also ‘deepened’ in terms of the inclusiveness of quality of participation. Several movements were associated with this deepening — the civil-rights movement in the United States of America and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa and more recently the democratic decentralisation projects in many parts of the globe including parts of the Global South (Gaventa 2006: 9).

In fact, in the 1990s, it were these decentralisation experi-ments that were happening in the global south — in Phillipines, Brazil and India for instance — that imparted a fresh fl avour to the discourse on deepening democracy. A particularly per-suasive and instructive argument on deepening democracy has in fact emanated from Latin America through the writings of the Brazilian Political Scientist Leonardo Avritzer which illustrates this. He has evocatively argued that theories about democracy in the South must be about ‘participatory publics’ as political representation does not cover a large segment of the

1 For Joseph Schumpeter there was a fundamental problem with the classical doctrine of democracy where the ‘people’ are expected to hold a defi nite rational opinion about every individual question and where the primary purpose of the democratic arrangements is to vest the power of deciding political issues on the electorate. Instead he suggests a democratic formulation where the role of the people would simply be restricted to the legitimisation of governments through their turn outs at elections, after which their participatory role would be limited. For more on this minimalist view of democracy see Joseph Alois Schumpeter. 1992. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Routledge. In contrast to this protectionist view of democracy, the participatory school suggests that democracy is a system where we collectively deliberate over our common problems and prospects — here the criteria is not just one of effi cient delivery of services but also development of the individual. For a further development of this argument see John Stuart Mill. 1965. Essays on Politics and Culture. Toronto; Toronto University Press; and G. D. H. Cole. 1920. Social Theory. London: Methuen.

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political space. Signalling a strong unease with the exclusive focus of mainstream democratic theory on elite politics and culture that appear to carry a strong bias against non-elite politics and culture, it is Avritzer’s contention that it is in fact precisely at the level of this non-elite public sphere represented by social movements, rights-based protests and NGOs where striking democratic transitions take place. While the argument is made in the context of the authoritarian regimes against which the transitions are taking place in Latin America, the broad argument that the failure to cultivate a moral consensus prior to political competition and the diffi culties for distributing public goods in a region where poverty represents a danger to the consolidation of democracy causes the disconnect between public culture and the political culture (Avritzer 2002), is one that will fi nd a resonance in other parts of the world as well including South Asia and India.

Avritzer’s proposition of creating a model for what he calls participatory publics is based on four elements — face-to-face deliberations free expression and association at the public level to place problematic issues on the political agenda; ad-dressing contentious issues through social movements and voluntary associations committed to introducing alternative practices at the public level such as ‘non-clientelistic’ forms of claiming public goods or practices compatible with human rights; preserving a space for administrative complexity while challenging the exclusive access of technicians to decision-making by reserving the right to monitor the implementation of their decision; and, fi nally, linking the deliberation of these publics with the search for institutional forms capable of addressing the issues raised at the public level. (Avritzer 2002: 135–36).

In many ways India’s new experiments with participatory democracy following the 73rd and 74th Amendments embrace (or at least aspire to embrace) some of these elements that Avritzer has outlined so perceptively. The attempts at GSM for instance as we have seen is expressly designed to create

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discussions around issues related to development but these discussions are no longer isolated from the maelstrom of the political space anymore. At the gram sabha meetings and within the four walls of the Panchayat Ghar, new power equations are being formulated. Even the seemingly trivial issue of who ‘sits’ where, who gets to hoist the national fl ag on Republic Day, etc., provides a context for such reformulation that go beyond mere symbolic signifi cance to touch real issues of rights and dignity. This along with the mandatory elections to the institutions of local self-governance and the conse-quent limits placed on the village elite and the district admin-istration to take high-handed decisions has the potential to build a culture of what Avritzer calls non-clientalistic participatory publics.

In Brazil, one practical example of how the participatory publics has been translated into practice comes from the experi-ment with participatory budgeting that has been introduced in several Brazilian cities beginning from its fi rst appearance in Porto Alegre in 1989. This involves the constitution of a delib-erative arrangement for allocating municipal budget resources. An important element of the participatory budgeting is the way it links to issues of access and justice by incorporating the notion of ‘previous access’ to a public good and the population of a region into the deliberative process itself. It does this by creating a ranking from one to fi ve — in other words, a region with the most need for a public good (for example, paved roads) and whose population is larger will have a better chance of getting this public good than a region which has had previous access to this public good and/or a region with a smaller population. By making this intrinsic link with issues of justice this innovation offers insights into how democratic practices arising from new forms of collective action can be connected with rules for decision-making. (Avritzer 2002: 155). While this has not yet been tried out in this form in India it offers a model of how issues of justice and access can be woven into decision-making and as such has a powerful resonance.

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While the earlier focus of the discourses around deepening democracy was primarily on the importance of citizen parti-cipation, the next generation question, highlighted in the 1990s, focused on what actually takes place when citizens do participate and engage and how these forms of engagement mesh and mingle with more traditional understandings of representative democracy including those operating beyond the local level. Simply arguing for more participation begs the question of ‘participation by whom’. In a situation marked by tremendous power imbalances and background inequities simply opening up spaces for engagement is not tantamount to fi lling them with different voices. The key question is how to analyse power, engage with it, change it and understand how it opens and closes political spaces. This implies bringing in citizenship, rights, diversity, identity and exclusion issues and engaging with different sites of politics (Gaventa 2006: 24–25).

As Hannah Fenichel Pitkin and Sara M. Shumer point out, people fi nd ways of being citizens even when they are excluded from the formal political institutions of power. Drawing on historical examples they turn the searchlights on practical human enterprises that have carried the greatest political signifi cance repeatedly undertaken by ordinary people. In particular, they suggest that the history of democracy has taken place within movements strugglling to transform societies that were themselves far from democratic. The power and radical character of these movements grew specifi cally from the liberating and transforming capacity of political action. These movements also became stronger as they diversifi ed and reached out to other groups — workers, peasants, women and in the process of acquiring new allies they grew more political and more just. As the group becomes more inclusive they are also able to move towards a better understanding of the true social cause of their pain and a principled understanding of who should pay what price to relieve it (Pitkin and Shumer 1982: 48–53).

This forms our entry point into the debates around issues of affi rmative action and its specifi c manifestation in the form of

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reservations as in India. The connect between this policy and the larger project of deepening democracy has been the subject of much discussion. In India, in the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts that have paved the way for representative governments at the local level in rural and urban India, a clear provision has been made to reserve seats for the historically-disadvantaged communities such as scheduled castes and scheduled tribes as well as women who have also been traditionally excluded from the decision-making processes. This has to be seen in the light of what Pitkin and Shumer perceptively observe as a process of reaching out and empowering new groups and constituencies, particularly in the context of micro democracy and citizen governments at the local level (Pitkin and Shumer 1982: 48–53).

Clearly, empowerment is the rationale behind the affi rma-tive action and the frequency with which this term is invoked perhaps calls for some clarity on its implication. Empowerment in the broadest sense refers to creating popular knowledge questioning the monopoly of the dominant paradigm. It keeps alive the population’s resentment against the most visible aspect of political and social discrimination (Rahnema 1997).

In a more specifi c context the reference is to the provision of assured representation to the deprived groups in elected local institutions so that their participation is assured. The deprived group is often provided with protected representation in local bodies. There is a latent hope, not always misplaced, that such measures will correct the distortions in the democratic processes that are affected by the logic of a vertically-stratifi ed society. It is argued that these reservations will make the decentralised system more democratic in so far as they will refl ect the views of the wider society.

This, however, comes with an important caveat. In the context of India and the global south participatory politics intended to deepen democracy has to go beyond simply opening new spaces for engagement and also taking into cognisance social movements and acts of resistance including cultural resistance. In fact, historically, the expansion of democratic

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rights and substantive citizenship has come from these social movements and innovations from below. The key question is, as Gaventa points out, where are those movements and innovations that will construct deeper and wider forms of democracy for the future? Wherever they are is where work on deepening democracy ought also to be (Gaventa 2006: 28).

In India the future of deepening democracy would appear to be in seeking to transform the political landscape through social movements and rainbow coalitions of the kind that resulted in the Right to Information, for instance. What began as a movement culminated in an enabling piece of legislation called the Right to Information and the trajectory of this movement from the village council to the central parliament offers a vision for the way in which politics can be redefi ned and reformulated so that people’s voices and felt needs at the grass-roots fi nd a resonance in the central halls of parliament. At another level, the way in which this legislation can be leveraged by those in local self-governance to ensure transparency and accountability is also an indication of the turn that the deepening-democracy project can take.

Strands of Deepening Democracy

There are several schools within the ‘deepening strand’ which are of course not mutually exclusive. One strand is that of participatory governance which views deepening through the lens of participation of citizens in the processes of gov-ernance with the state. John Akerman has coined the term co-governance and this is particularly applicable at the local level where a host of new democratic arenas and spaces are opened up by initiatives from above or demands from below. Gaventa lists these as approaches to planning that link com-munity representatives and elected representatives in forms of authority and decision-making; new ways of authority and decision-making; new ways in which public accountability is exercised through legally empowered monitoring groups; more direct and popular forms of participation at local levels through

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village assembly; approaches which make representatives structures more inclusive through establishment of quotas for previously-excluded groups (Gaventa 2006: 16).

Evidently, participatory democracy would involve some form of decentralisation — a term that is used in different ways in the absence of a standardised defi nition. At a basic level decentralisation denotes some form of transfer of authority (legislative, judicial or administrative, fi nancial) from one level to another (White 1959). Dennis Rondinelli indicates four types of decentralisation: deconcentration (handing over some administrative authority to lower levels of government); delegation (transferring responsibility for specifi cally defi ned functions to organisations outside the regular bureaucratic structure); devolution (creation and strengthening of sub-national units of government, activities of which are outside the direct control of the central government; and privatisation (passing responsibility for functions to NGOs) (Rondinelli et al. 1984). Decentralisation has a deeper connotation vis-a-vis dele-gation. In the case of the former the government divests itself of certain duties and responsibilities whereas in delegation the government does not divest itself of the responsibilities — on the contrary the authority under delegation is very much under the control of the government. Decentralisation thereby creates a corporate sense of responsibility with local self-governance bodies with more or less independent decision-making powers (Committee on Plan Projects 1957: 7). Decentralisation, if it is a process of power sharing, has to be a continuum from cen-tralisation to full autonomy. There are three sets of ‘controls’ that have to be gradually surrendered in the genuine process of decentralisation — organisational tasks, fi nance and human resources. Tasks of control or autonomy may relate to policy-making, strategy formulation, planning and implementation whereas the fi nancial aspects relate to generation and pro-curement of resources, controlling and owning them and their utilisation (Pareek 1989: 2).

Another strand is that of deliberative democracy which builds on the philosophical foundation of Habermas as well as

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that of more recent theorists like Cohen and Dryzek to create an ambitious project of deepening democracy by reasoning together about how best to solve problems (Habermas 1998, Dryzek 2008). Habermas’s searchlights are on the quality of public talk and conditions necessary for achieving equality rather than on who participates. Joshua Cohen’s classic article (Cohen 1989) suggests that the notion of deliberative democracy is rooted in the intuitive ideal of a democratic asso-ciation in which the justifi cation of the terms and conditions of association proceeds through public argument and reasoning among equal citizens. Amartya Sen too, points to the centrality of public debates and discussions in the formation of values, in his formulation of development as freedom. The force of public discussion is valuable as democracy is a major source of social opportunity, hence the need to make it function well. In this formulation the force of public discussions is not only one of the correlates of democracy, its cultivation can also make democracy function better. (Sen 1999: 158–59)

The accepted defi nition of ‘deliberative democracy’ since the term was coined in 1980 is that of a collective decision-making system through public deliberation. In theorising dialogic deliberation, Joohan Kim and Eun Joo Kim argue that deliberative democracy involves public deliberation not only as a tool of using public reason and making collective decisions (instrumental deliberation) but also as a process of producing public reasons and reaching mutual understanding (dialogic deliberation) (Kim and Kim 2008: 51–70).

The preoccupation of many scholars with the instrumental function of deliberation concerned with promoting pure pro-cedural justice has resulted in the neglect of the dialogical di-mension of democracy. Yet, both appear to be complementary if the letter and spirit of democratic functioning is valued. Instrumental deliberation through which experts in the political system and rational citizens in the public sphere make collective decisions based on public reasons and shared values must go hand in hand with dialogic deliberation through which citizens without specifi c purposes and goals freely interact with one

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another to mutually understand the self and others, resulting in the production and reproduction of rules, shared values and public reasons for deliberation. These, of course, are not in two mutually-exclusive compartments and a public delib-eration, like a town meeting for instance, may well have ele-ments of both.

It has been seen that everyday political thought produces the ‘we’, the collective frame of action that is the gateway to dialogic moments for citizens in their daily lives (Kim and Kim 2008: 51–70). In India, the PEVAC experience clearly showed that people continued to discuss issues of representation, identity, rules, in response to the street plays and kalajathas that were staged as part of the campaign. A simple performance created politically agentive moments where new dialogues were born and old power structures and power brokers came under scrutiny.

Anthony Gidden’s theory of structuration provides useful insights here as it conceptualises democracy as structuration or rules and resources recursively drawn upon and constituted in processes of interaction. As rules and resources both constrain and enable social action, political conversation in everyday life is habit forming or basic structuration, a process by which a social practice is deemed appropriate and reinforced through repetitive habits (Giddens 1984). In order to participate in public deliberation citizens need to engage in the habit-forming basic structuration process — everyday political thought.

The fact that people talk politics everywhere — with friends, and families, at home and at work — and that this is mediated by the mass media makes it the open manifestation of what can be termed as dialogic democracy. Everyday political talk may not be ideally deliberative or reasonable but it is the only practical way through which citizens construct and reveal their identities, understand others, produce rules and resources for deliberation, enhance their opinion, transform the domestic sphere into the public sphere and link their private lives to the political world. The basic challenge of governance is to achieve consensus among multiple actors trying to simultaneously

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have an impact on the political system in decision making in a parliamentary structure where the style of decision making makes it remote from the lives of the people. In this context, dialogue is presented as a methodology for the exercise of power based on broader agreements; the occasional recourse to electoral head counting is not deemed to be a suffi cient condition to ensure genuine representativeness (Kim and Kim 2008: 51–70).

Of course, there are practical problems associated with the deliberative model — how would procedural fairness be guaranteed, will transformed structures bring about more active citizens, and how can such structures be brought about. Notwithstanding these considerations, the ideal of deliberative democracy has in fact spawned a whole range of innovative approaches such as citizen juries, e-dialogue, participatory budgeting (Fung and Wright 2001).

Deepening democracy has also recommended yet another model for what has been termed as empowered participatory governance which has been developed and elaborated by Fung and Wright. Their central argument is based on the assumption that the mechanism of political representation which is identifi ed with territorially-based competitive elections for legislative and executive offi ces is not by itself effective in accomplishing the ideal of democratic politics — facilitating active political involvement of the citizenry, forging political consensus through dialogue, devising and implementing public policies that bring about some measure of radical egalitarian transformation that address inequities of access to national wealth and services.

Drawing on the empirical responses to the challenge of democratic defi cit by countering it with a process of em-powered participatory governance, Fung and Wright point to some of the real world experiments to redesign democratic institutions. These innovations have harnessed the energy of ordinary people, including people drawn from the lowest strata of society. The neighbourhood councils of Chicago in the USA that address the fears and hopes of inner-city

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residents by turning an urban bureaucracy on its head and devolving power over policing and education; the participatory budget of Porto Alegre in Brazil that enables the residents of the city to participate directly in forging the city budget and use public monies diverted to pave their roads and electrify neighbourhoods; and the panchayat reforms in West Bengal and Kerala in India to create direct representative democratic channels that devolve administrative and fi scal power to individual villages are examples that illustrate the direction that projects on deepening democracy can take. The challenge, of course, is how to distill the distinctive features of each of these experiments into central principles and institutional design features.

All these aspire to deepen the ways in which ordinary people participate and infl uence politics that directly affect their lives and to create what is termed as empowered participatory gov-ernance (EPG). As the architects of this concept point out, they are participatory in their reliance upon the commitment of ordinary people, deliberative because they institute reason-based decision making and empowered since they attempt to tie action to discussion (Fung and Wright 2001).

Recognising the growing power of the idea and the inno-vative practices of the deepening-democracy fi eld, the Human Development Report made it the anchoring principle in 2002. In this report, deepening democracy is presented as a redefi nition of democratic politics as a set of principles and core values that allow poor people to gain power through participation while protecting them from arbitrary unaccountable actions in their lives by governments, multi-national corporations and other forces (UNDP 2002). This reformulation of politics has a special resonance for countries of the global south like India which has had a long tradition of formal democratic politics but in the 1990s sought to deepen this process by creating an enabling legislation to empower local self-governance especially in the rural areas. One of the factors that would determine the success of this new imagining of politics in India would

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be the extent to which the village council (consisting of all adult members in the village whose names are on the electoral rolls) can be energised and reinvented as a body that ensures transparency and accountability of those who are governing. The extent to which the village assembly (gram sabha) could emerge as a genuine forum for debate and discussion and for identifi cation of needs of the people would actually indicate the extent to which the process of democracy has been truly deepened in the world’s largest democracy. As Amartya Sen points out, even the identifi cation of needs cannot but be infl uenced by the nature of public participation and dialogue. (Sen 1999).

Vibrant gram sabhas spread across India carry the begin-ning of a new imagining of democracy that is measured not just by its spatial spread but also by its depth and substantiveness. Gram sabhas in dialogue with the Lok Sabha, providing it with the inputs for debate and discussion and helping to identify and articulate needs, carry the exciting seeds of a new imaging of politics.

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8

Conclusions and Refl ections for the Future

[…] as civil society actors, representation is not the basis of our legitimacy. Our values, our work, our commitment to the democratic transformation of our societies — constitute the basis of our voice.

Rajesh Tandon, President, PRIA

This concluding chapter makes some recommendations both for policy makers and for those strategising the forthcom-ing citizen campaigns and programmes that are planned in another year of nationwide local-level polls slotted for 2010. This is done against the backdrop of some refl ections on the core learnings and fi ndings from this study and how this can generate new insights on discourses and practices around deepening democracy.

Reopening the Dialogue on Deepening Democracy in India: A Critical Overview

This study was intended to examine and analyse a series of citizen-led campaign and supporting programmes for deepen-ing democracy in India conducted from 1995 onwards. These interrelated interventions generated a series of dialogues and conversations among different stakeholders spread across the country and different constituencies — rural and urban com-munities, across castes, class, religious and regional faultlines as well as between citizen groups, the media and government agencies. Whether the different stakeholders and target groups

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Conclusions and Refl ections for the Future 161

were conscious of it or not, they actually opened up multiple people-centric dialogues about the functional and operational aspects of politics and governance. As such the intervention itself and the methodologies it used can be viewed as a giant exercise in democratic praxis.

Indeed, the global south, long seen as passive recipient of democratic lessons from the global north, now appears to be breaking new ground in deepening understandings of empowered participatory democracies, simply by bringing under the arch lights, the scenario that actually unfolds when citizens in developing countries start participating in public life. Many of them do so under the provisions of affi rmative action after years of historical exclusion. As old fi efdoms and new claimants to power come into a collision course, new paths are carved out and fresh power equations are sought. All of these have a tremendous signifi cance in determining the contours of the discourses around deepening democracy.

There appears to be a growing acceptance of the fact that as far as democratic practices are concerned one size does not fi t all, and the trysts with democracies in different parts of the world may not follow the same trajectory. Nor is there any particular merit in straight-jacketing them all to ‘fall in line’ with pre-conceived notions of democratic yardsticks set out by the so-called ‘mature’ democracies. In the Global South, where background inequities remain formidable, an array of new democratic practices may emerge, as lived experiences mesh with new experiments and more and more citizens hitherto ex-cluded from decision making enter the public space. Some of these practices may blend with more traditional understandings of representative politics, others may not. Either way, it would have the potential to transform and enrich the way we think and practice democracy and infl uence our collective endeavour to deepen it and make it a part of everyday lived reality.

In this context the central issue that the campaigns and interventions have brought into sharp relief is the necessity of redefi ning the ‘political’ in Indian public discourse in the

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context of panchayati politics and the citizen campaigns around it. This also calls for greater clarity about the basic purpose of the PEVAC-PRJA-GSM interventions. Is it to further the goals of development and governance or also to bring about substantial changes in power relations? Plumbing into the depths of caste, community and kinship power structures within a village and the way gender interfaces with each of these is no mean task. Yet, without this analysis there will only be an inadequate engagement with challenging the dominant power paradigm. All changes will only be cosmetic unless this core factor is brought centrally into the campaigns.

One of the most signifi cant learnings drawn from the author’s conversations with Dalit women aspiring for the post of the sarpanch in the forthcoming elections in 2010 and those who had actively participated in the PEVACs was that in their view, a core quality of a good representative is the willingness and ability to protest, resist and take a stand against injustice and corruption. It was clear that the trappings of an apparently romanticised ‘community peace’ was bereft of meaning if it contained ‘congealed’ violence in the interstices. Equally revealing was the way in which oppressed sections of the rural society are beginning to defi ne their own security in a world where security is being broadened to include not just territorial integrity of the nation but also the security of life and livelihood of its people. For instance, the denial of piped water to members of the Dalit community was seen by them as a covert act of violence, particularly in the context of the fact that they were often debarred from using community wells/tanks/tubewells or could use them only after others had drawn water. The right to piped water would render drawing water from the commons irrelevant and several women in Haryana who had forged bonds of solidarity in the course of the citizen campaigns and workshops united to demand this right and used the Right to Information to demand accountability on public funds allocated for this purpose.

The culture of silence around issues of humiliation and subjugation is gradually being broken as the campaigns

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and post-campaign interactions had paved the way for this by helping build bonds of solidarity based on common interest. Given that confl ict avoidance can never be the path to sustainable and meaningful peace and that at some point or another village confl icts will and indeed must be brought out into the open, it is perhaps time to refl ect on how a greater synergy can be built between the contemporary discourses on and practices of governance and development on one hand and dialogue and confl ict transformation on the other. We may need to examine where these discourses and the practices associated with these intersect and how they can enrich each other. Can discourses and practices on confl ict transformation, developed and currently largely closeted within the context of violent intra-state ethno-political confl ict be taken out of that immediate context and its relevance in the context of changing power equations in village India post 73rd Amendment be assessed?

The paradigm of confl ict transformation, popularised by the work of writers like John Paul Lederach, is based on the assumption that the focus should shift from the ‘resolution’ of the confl ict which is based on what we are trying to end, to its ‘transformation’ where the searchlights are on what we are trying to begin. The basic premise of the confl ict-transformation paradigm is therefore that confl ict is per se not negative and if transformed and channelised in the right direction can be benefi cial as it provides an opportunity for social change. It does so by creating opportunities to rectify unequal relations of power, oppressive structures and relations which generated the confl ict in the fi rst place. It seeks to avoid the danger of co-optation, by (artifi cially and superfi cially) getting ‘rid’ of the confl ict even as people are beginning to articulate their views around issues of inequality and injustice (Lederach 2003: 28–33). The fi eld of confl ict transformation offers an array of practices associated with ‘waging confl ict non-violently’ — an area in which Indian thought and practice has, in any case, much to offer. In South Asian societies where sometimes a ‘peacetime war’ is constantly being waged due to

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unequal access and the battle for life and livelihood, it is perhaps this discourse that has a special resonance in village communities where caste and community violence, both old and new, continue to remain a lived reality.

In other words, if the slew of new legislations in various states following the 73rd Amendment bring in new, hitherto unempowered constituencies like women and members of the scheduled castes into the framework of decision making, it is inevitable that clashes — sometimes overt and sometimes covert — will take place in village communities. This study had asked: Is the new breed of panchayat members being prepared for this? Do they need to be sensitised to the possibilities of why such clashes of people, ideas and ideologies are likely to take place and how these can be transformed? Can a dialogue ensue between the old power holders and the new breed of aspirants or are the current power imbalances so deep-rooted that the time for dialogue is yet to come? We could not come up with clear-cut answers to these but can only conclude that as the PEVAC reinvents itself constantly in response to research questions generated from the fi eld these are perhaps some of the questions it will be left grappling with.

The signifi cance of dialogue in deepening democracy has been acknowledged. A signifi cant strand of the discourses around deepening democracy has focused around the idea of deliberative democracy which involves the act of reasoning together to arrive at decisions and solve problems. Sometimes even seemingly inconsequential ‘everyday talk’ carries within it the seeds of deliberative democracy where dialogue remains central. In this context, one of the fi ndings of this study has been the potency of the format of the nukkad natak in the Indian rural context to generate this spirit of deliberative democracy at the grass-roots levels. It has been recorded that several ‘conversations’ ensued between those watching the nataks in response to the themes of these plays. This included discussions on the ways to resist common election malpractices such as distribution of liquor and money to buy votes and the abiding problem of ‘proxy’ candidates who are not free

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agents and can never represent the people meaningfully. These discussions among citizens continued long after the plays were staged. This is dialogic democracy at work. Indeed, the fact that this methodology has the potential to generate meaningful dialogues was proved when women and men who had been a part of these campaigns referred to the issues raised in these plays even after several years had elapsed after they were staged. During 2009 in interviews conducted by the author in Haryana and Rajasthan, voters — particularly women — were able to recall issues raised by these plays and the discussions around them — that have carried on till date.

Deepening democracy is also about creating a culture of public accountability. Our study indicates that this is happen-ing gradually in a unique way in Indian villages through an increasing understanding and acceptance of the concept of social auditing in village councils which in India is associated with the notion of public hearings or Jana Sunwais. Though the idea of social audit is not per se new, the manner in which it was used during the Right to Information Campaign in India to facilitate structured and focused discussions among residents on government expenditure of public development funds through public hearings, ushered in a culture of participation and accountability and placed the conduct of public projects under the scanner of the public gaze.1 The right to conduct similar social audits in the villages is now an implied right for the gram sabha which is the appropriate institutional unit to conduct such an audit as all voters in the village are part of it. In the gram sabha the social audit through public hearings can be particularly effective because very little information can be concealed in the village given the network of caste, kinship and

1 The Right to Information movement in India, led by the Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (MKSS) has lobbied the state for more than a decade to make social audit of all state-sponsored development a statutory require-ment. In 1993, with the adoption of the 93rd Constitutional Amendment by the Government, village communities were empowered to conduct social audits of all development work.

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community bonds and lies about public expenditure can easily be identifi ed and nailed. Its increasing acceptance is defi nitely a step in the direction of deepening democracy in India and also creates a blueprint that can be successfully adapted, especially in those democracies where there are small self-suffi cient village communities and where the population may not have a high rate of formal literacy.

Against the backdrop of some of the issues that have sur-faced in the course of the citizen interventions a few recom-mendations are offered both for future civil-society campaign strategists as well as for policy makers.

Recommendations for Future CampaignsAs the campaign strategists prepare for the next round, some key recommendations are listed below:

Clarify at the outset (during the PEVAC orientation programme) what constitutes the political domain: One lacuna in the campaign appears to be the conceptual confusion in understanding the scope of the political that prevails among many of the campaign animators themselves. When in the course of interviews, several campaign animators reiterated time and time again that the campaigns were ‘apolitical’ it was clear that in their perception the political was conceived as a space exclu-sively conscripted within representative party politics. The campaign animators need to be more politically aware of how a new form of politics is being crafted in the course of the campaign itself, as well as in apparently apolitical spaces where old power equations are being challenged and redefi ned. It is only when there is a clear awareness of the domain of political action and its implications and manifestations beyond party politics that the close relationship between the personal and the political will be documented more carefully in the campaign fi eld reports. A new sensitisation on the matter

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is important and must be identifi ed as a core component of the campaign’s pre-orientation programme. This is especially relevant as several case studies highlighted among campaign participants and target groups in this study indicate that the ‘political’ is being redefi ned in the most unlikely of spaces and contexts and may well be an unintended consequence of the civil society initiatives with the decentralised development project.

Use the repertoire of experiences and fi eld studies of earlier PEVACs to generate greater awareness on spe-cifi c election malpractices such as proxy candidates, dis-tribution of liquor to buy votes, etc. The nukkad natak format to stimulate dialogue has been well-received by the target groups across rural India. Future scripts could be drawn up on real-life stories based on the case studies and narratives recorded over the last ten years. Several stories of resistance and protest have come up in the course of the process documentation of the campaign. This should form the basis of the new scripts and dialogues.

Tap into India’s rapidly proliferating wireless technology in the villages and use the fact that the mobile phone has now made an entry into nearly every rural household to make available relevant information and messages.

Offer greater support to exposure trips for newly-elected representatives as they have across the board testifi ed to the importance of using this opportunity to build new solidarities that provide them with a sense of security.

Promote the formation of support groups across villages for newly-elected representatives especially those who occupy the post as a result of affi rmative action and create a list of elected women representatives who have already served their terms by 2010 and are ready to be recruited as proactive agents in the new PEVAC initiatives.

Strike a balance between the intensive and extensive mode of campaigning. While the combination of the in-tensive and extensive campaign mode had its value when

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the campaign was fi rst launched (at that time, scale did matter), perhaps now with the experience of three rounds of PEVACs the gains could be consolidated. Instead of spreading the campaign thin, now that the credibility of these campaigns have already been recognised by various SECs, the new strategy could involve working more intensively with constituencies that had already been nurtured and where the campaigns and the follow ups already appeared to have made an impact.

Introduce refresher courses after the initial PRJAs so that the newly-elected representatives can continue to expand their understandings of the scope of the respective State Acts and exchange ideas on challenges before them.

Design a module on Responding to Confl ict as part of the training for newly-elected representatives that builds on what is clearly their intuitive understanding that confl icts can generate positive change and need not be eschewed as long as they are not violent and dysfunctional.

Invest in more systematic process documentation of the campaigns and follow up interventions. While several fi eld reports have been generated of past campaigns they have been of uneven quality and do not always demon-strate a basic familiarity with social scientifi c enquiry or sensitivity to gender analysis. As a result, seemingly trivial details which have a larger signifi cance in understanding mega trends are often lost sight of or are inadequately documented.

Support impact assessment by a group of trained experts, as one of the challenges of the awareness campaigns has been the diffi culty of conducting an impact assess-ment following each phase. This is perhaps natural for a citizen-driven campaign aimed at changing attitudes and mindsets and in creating social capital. If at all attitudinal changes are to be measured it would require a sustained engagement with the people in a certain area where PEVACs have taken off and changes have to be assessed every fi ve years since this is the frequency within which

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the elections to the panchayats will be held. At the very least it will be a long drawn out process. Despite the diffi -culties of conducting such impact assessments it is neces-sary to do so and perhaps a more systematic effort needs to be made in this direction in the context of the next PEVAC which is due.

Policy Perspectives and RecommendationsThe following recommendations drawn from the experience of the citizen-led interventions are directed at policy makers.

• Initiate a policy debate on the three-tier Panchayati Raj system and the actual role played by each of these tiers in decision making: Policy makers’ attention need to be drawn to the fact that there appears to be a clear recog-nition among those who have participated in the PEVACs as local animators or as target groups that simply contesting for ‘higher’ posts — such as the chair of the intermediate-level panchayat samiti or the highest-level zila parishad — is not of great importance. One of the fi ndings that emerged from this study is that the position of a sarpanch is easily the most coveted post in today’s village India. What matters is the seat of decision making — and that in the perception of the village resident is clearly the post of the sarpanch. This is interestingly the ‘lowest’ in the hierarchy of the three-tiered system envisaged for village India. Yet this is clearly the post that enables new entrants to public offi ce to make both substantive and procedural changes in the way develop-ment goals are prioritised and in selecting ‘benefi ciaries’ of government schemes and thereby has the potential to alter existing power equations within the village. How can this relative reluctance to contest at the level of panchayat samiti and zila parishad and the concomitant enthu-siasm to contest for the post of sarpanch be interpreted? One way is to read it as an affi rmation that in a system of

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empowered participatory governance, it is only befi tting that the so-called lowest rung in the institutional hierarchy commands the maximum respect and that those in direct touch with the grass-roots realities are the ones taking the call. This would however suggest the necessity of a policy review of the role of the intermediate and higher-level bodies in the scheme of establishing a three-tier system. In some cases, even a fi ve-tier system has been proposed to ‘dilute’ the hold of the rich and powerful segments of the rural population over local bodies for governance. There has not been enough policy debate on the institutional structure that would bring in the most inclusive form of decision making. The moot question for policy makers is: would simply increasing the number of tiers of Panchayati Raj have the desired effect?

• Standardise the mode of selection and terms of service for SECs across the country: The wide variations in the workings of the SEC are another area which policy makers perhaps need to debate. Ideally, the SEC should be appointed by a committee as otherwise the state gov-ernments can control this offi ce to suit their political needs. As a fl edgling institution that is expected to play a key role in conducting fair and free elections, it is im-portant that the terms and conditions of offi ce should be standardised and it should be able to command the same respect as the ECI. Currently the inadequacy of staff often make it diffi cult for the SEC to take timely action against all election malpractices and this is where the civil society has stepped in to play the role of a van-guard. While the the civil society can continue to support the work of the SEC, it must be adequately resourced and staffed.

• Provide adequate time to candidates to campaign for panchayat elections and familiarise voters with their election symbols: One of the complaints from those who have contested the panchayat polls — including women and members of the scheduled castes — relates to the

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inadequacy of the time span between the time they are allotted their election symbols and the time they have to face the voters. The campaign time is far too short to enable voters to identify candidates with their respective symbols — sometimes the time span given is just about one day. In some states it was also found that the can-didates were not allowed to choose their own election symbols — they were mechanically allotted these by the Election Commission based on a master list prepared by the offi cials. This authoritative ‘allocation’ of symbols by offi cials is hardly conducive to democratic practice and must be reviewed. The offi cials should step in only if two or more candidates choose identical symbols in which case a draw of lots can sort out the problem.

• Strengthen and demystify the notion and practice of social audit which has a tremendous power to ensure ac-countability, a core precept of the deepening democracy project, provide protection to the rural poor who want to speak out at the public hearings, and ensure that the gram sabha has access to inspect documents related to public works.

These recommendations to strengthen empowered parti-cipatory governance have to be placed in perspective within the larger parameters of discourses and practices on deepening democracy. Ultimately, deepening democracy is about genuine empowerment that comes from being able to take charge of one’s own life and livelihood choices in a way that synergises the need for development with the need for human dignity. One of the most important conclusions we can draw from this study is that the discourse of development cannot be placed in an anesthetised compartment which is sheltered from the maelstrom of the changing power relations and confl icts that constitute the realm of the political. The argument that panchayati raj must ‘only’ concern itself with ‘development issues’ cannot be stretched beyond a point. The discourse on development and the discourse on power, equality and dignity

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cannot run on parallel tracks — they must intersect and a newly-invigorated Panchayati Raj must be equipped to deal with both. Civil-society interventions whether in the form of mass campaigns or through building capacity through par-ticipatory engagement, must necessarily take this into account and not shy away from a more radicalised agenda with social transformation as a clearly designated goal. In the context of India and much of the global south, deepening democracy will assume meaning only if this is recognised and addressed.

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Appendix I

PEVAC Coverages

Table 1: Rural PEVAC Coverage 2004–05

StatesElection schedule

Districts covered

(out of total districts)

GPS covered

No. of CSOs who participated in PEVAC

Madhya Pradesh

2005 48 (48) 11836 (22029) 250

Chhattisgarh 2005 16 ( 16) 4621 (9139) 150Rajasthan 2005 32 ( 32) 3000 (9189) 250

Haryana 2005 19 (19) 3000 (6034) 235

Source: PRIA Annual Report on Reforming Panchayati Raj Institutions 2004–05.Note: Figures in parentheses indicate total number of districts and gram panchayats.

Table 2: Urban PEVAC Coverage 2004–05

StatesMunicipalities where

elections held

Coverage (municipalities

covered)

Madhya Pradesh 305 36Chhattisgarh 106 47Rajasthan 45 3Haryana 47 11

Source: PRIA Annual Report on Urban Governance Institutions 2004–05.

Table 3: Rural PEVAC Coverage 2005–06

StateElection schedule

Districts covered (out of total districts)

Gram panchayats

coveredCoverage

in %CSOs

participated

UP 2005 52 (70) 25440 (52027) 48.89 404Kerala 2005 14 (14) 852 (991) 85.28 160HP 2005 13 (13) 1690 (3037) 55.6 56Gujarat 2005 4 (26) 462 (13819)

Source: PRIA Annual Report on Reforming Panchayati Raj Institutions 2005–06.

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Table 4: Urban PEVAC Coverage 2005–06

StateElection Schedule

Districts covered

Total No. of Urban Bodies

Urban local

bodies covered

Coverage in %

CSOs participated

Rajasthan 2005 21 126 75 59.52 63AP 2005 17 107 67 62.62 86

Kerala 2005 11 58 14 24.14 62

HP 2005 11 46 17 36.96 56Total 60 337 173 51.34 267

Source: PRIA Annual Report on Urban Governance Institutions 2005–06.Note: Pilot PEVAC at taluka panchayat and zila parishad level. Figures in parentheses indicate total number of districts and gram panchayats.

Table 5: Rural PEVAC Coverage 2006–07 (in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat)

No. of Districts covered 75No. of CSOs linked with the platform 590No. of women candidates who were facilitated to contest elections 3650No. of Dalit candidates who were facilitated to contest elections 1536No. of Tribal candidates who were facilitated to contest elections 476

Source: PRIA Annual Progress Report 2006–07.

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Note on the Author

Sumona DasGupta was born and educated in Kolkata and Hyderabad and currently works as an independent research consultant based in New Delhi.

A Political Scientist by training, she has taught in Loreto College, Kolkata and served as Assistant Director, Women in Security Confl ict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness The Dalai Lama, New Delhi, with which she is now associated as senior research consultant. She is also consultant with Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), a member of the International Peace Commission of the Warrington-based Jonathan Ball Tim Parry Foundation for Peace, and member, Research Steering Committee of the project on Trauma, Development and Peacebuilding initiated by International Conflict Research Institute (INCORE), Ireland. She was consulting editor of Peace Prints, a South Asian journal of Peacebuilding for the Spring issue of 2010 published by WISCOMP on Gender, Peace and Confl ict, and series co-editor of Engendering and Revisioning Security in South Asia (2010). Some of her recent writings and publications relate to security, confl ict, gender, the role of civil society, dialogue and democracy — particularly in the context of South Asia.

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Index

Abhinandan Patra 125Administrative Reforms Com-

mission 112Aiyar, Yamini 70Akerman, John 153Ambedkar, B. R. 5073rd Amendment Act 9, 49,

52–3, 102, 103, 110, 131; antecedents of PEVAC and 77–8; for deepening democracy 31; and Directive Principles of State Policy 50; election provision for poor 67; establishment of three-tier structure of governance in rural India 53; for functioning of local self-governance units 138–40; functions of SEC as described in 108; legal mandate of 132; and Panchayati Raj Institutions 68–75; Rajasthan election (1995) 34; for scheduled castes and tribes 66; for women rep-resentation in governance 69

74th Amendment Act 3, 9, 10, 124, 152

Amne Samne strategy of electoral campaign 23, 96, 97

anganwadi 25, 38, 68, 89, 92, 93, 130

anti-liquor movement 82Ashoka Mehta Committee 51,

55, 59Avritzer, Leonardo 148, 149, 150

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 44Bandyopadhyay, Kaustuv 19,

20, 77Basana Gram Panchayat 21BDPO see Block Development and

Panchayat Offi cer (BDPO)Behar, Amitabh 70, 71, 73Bhattu Panjala Panchayat 26Bihar: awareness about coloured

ballot papers 98; Congress regime 61; election violence 117–18; Niriyar Panchayat 67; panchayat elections 117; Panchayati Raj Act (2006) 117; Panchayati Raj Insti-tutions in 66; Ranvir Sena 64; rural PEVACs 81, 113, 119; vikas rath in 18

Block Development and Panchayat Offi cer (BDPO) 40

BSP see Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)

Business Standard 47

capacity-building programmes 5caste barriers, for electoral cam-

paign 19, 24caste identity 26, 46, 64casteism and patriarchy 45CENSORED see Communication

Resources Development, Centre for (CENSORED)

Chalant Soochana Kendra 119‘Champions within the Com-

munity’ programme 77

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Chavan, Y. B. 61child marriage 46Chowdhury, Shruti 47citizen: campaign 18, 78, 81,

107, 115, 160, 162; Citizen Leadership Programmes 77; empowerment 49, 95

civil society 57; campaign 1, 10; interventions 138, 172; social transformations of 65

civil society organisation (CSO) 2, 13, 14, 70, 71

co-governance 153Cohen, Joshua 155communal politics 65Communication Resources

Development, Centre for (CENSORED) 98, 117, 119

community-based organisations 87, 129, 135

Confederation of Voluntary Associations (COVA) 89

confl ict transformation 163Constituent Assembly Debates 51Constitutional Amendment Bill

52COVA see Confederation of Vol-

untary Associations (COVA)CSO see civil society organisation

(CSO)cycle yatras 100

Dale, Priyanka 83Dalit Bahujan Front (DBF) 90Dalit Khap Panchayat 85, 86Dalit movement 65Dalit(s): empowerment 90; par-

ticipation in panchayat elec-tions 90; self-governance in village India 90

Dappu (Dalit organisation) 90Dass, Purvi 16, 17, 102DBF see Dalit Bahujan Front

(DBF)Deccan Development NGO

Network (DDNN) 90decision-making 6, 35, 44, 128,

131, 137, 150, 152–4deepening democracy 147–53,

157; future in India 153; models 7; and public ac-countability 165; reopening of dialogue on 160–6; strands of 153–9, 164

democracy: citizen participation 141; conception of 142; defi cits 144, 145; deliberative 7, 8, 50, 106, 142, 154, 155, 157, 164; implications of 142; participatory 154; spread of 143; ‘triumph’ of 143

democratic decentralisation 1, 3, 4, 9, 12, 22, 52, 80, 107, 124, 127, 148

democratic equality 69democratic governance 147democratic government 147Devi, Asha 37Devi, Kanta 24, 25Devi, Roshni 45–6Devi, Sabo 66Devi, Sumitra 46Devi, Sushma 27Directive Principles of State

Policy 50, 134District Resource Centres 135drinking-water campaign 72Dryzek, John 155Dwivedi, Anju 28, 87, 95

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Index 183

Easton, David 56, 83ECI see Election Commission of

India (ECI) elected women representatives

31–48, 70–3, 167election: and development

agenda of people 82; gendered roles and responsibilities 21; malpractices 164; women participation in 20

Election Commission of India (ECI) 53, 109

electoral rolls 53, 107, 108, 110, 112, 118, 121, 125, 159

electronic voting machines (EVMs) 100, 110, 121

empowered micro democracies: at grass-roots level 9; PRJA and gram sabha mobilisation campaigns and creation of 11

empowered par t i c ipa tory democracy 6, 161

empowered participatory gov-ernance (EPG) 49, 66, 157, 158, 170, 171

empowerment 33, 35, 49, 73, 126, 152, 171; of Dalits 90; economic 36; gendered roles and 30; of institutions at grass-roots level 61; micro democracy and citizen 95; of ordinary people 77; PRIA and 2; social, economic and political factors for ensuring 10; of women 9, 41

Ensminger, Douglas 58EPG see empowered participatory

governance (EPG)EVMs see electronic voting

machines (EVMs)

First Information Report (FIR) 45

Fung, Archon 146, 157, 158

Gandhi-Ambedkar debate 65Gandhi, Mahatma 50Gandhi, Rajiv 52Gaventa, John 144, 147, 148,

151, 153, 154gender imbalance, in formal

politics 70Ghoshna Patras 24Gidden, Anthony 156globalisation, impact on people

and communities 6gram panchayat 13, 53, 82,

98, 116, 130; functional relationship with gram sabha 132; Panchayati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan 126–31

Gram Sabha Mobil isat ion (GSM) campaign 2, 14, 125, 131–8, 149; and impact on democratic practices 11; in-formation fl ow chart for 136

Gram sabhas 5, 53, 84, 121, 123; functional relationship with gram panchayat 132; phases of civil-society drive to mobilise 133; salient features of 134

Gram Swaraj 134greenroom effect 7GSM campaign see Gram

Sabha Mobilisation (GSM) campaign

Guwahati Roundtable 112, 121

Habermas, Jurgen 154, 155Hobsbawm, Eric 144, 145, 146Hunger Project 100

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Indian village society 19Indira Awaas Yojana 37International Forum on Capacity

Building 127, 128

jagrut yatras 4jana sunwais 165Jan Jagriti Jatha 103jathas 103, 105

kalajathas 4, 102; in Andhra Pradesh 105; for election awareness 104; for mass awareness of new PRIs 105

Kamath, H. V. 50Khet Kalyan Baithaks 97Kim, Eun Joo 155–7Kim, Joohan 155–7kirtan mandalis 25Kishore Panchayats 94Kothari, Rajni 62–5, 80Kumawat, Rekha 34

leadership: programme 31, 77; training 20, 38, 41

Lederach, John Paul 163local self-governance institu-

tions 4, 6, 60, 61, 153; 73rd and 74th Amendments for functioning of 138–40; campaigns and programmes 8; development of 8

Lok Sabha elections 16, 17, 47, 48, 49

mahila chauplas 25, 93mahila mandals 21, 24–8, 39, 41,

89, 91, 93, 103, 115, 137Mahila Swaraj Abhiyan (Gujarat)

71, 72

male panches 22Matdata Jaagruta Mandali 85Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti

(MKSS) 165Mehta, Balwantrai 51micro democracies 147; creation

of 14, 139; at grass-roots level 9; operational aspects of 5; through PRJA and gram sabha mobilisation campaigns 11

MKSS see Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Samiti (MKSS)

municipalities 1, 48, 52, 110

Namboodripad, E. M. S. 59Narayan, Jayaprakash 58Nari network 25, 93Natani, Rajkumari 32National Election Watch (NEW)

122National Media Task Force 94National Rural Employment

Guarantee Act (NREGA) 38NEW see National Election

Watch (NEW)NGOs see non-governmental

organisations (NGOs)Niriyar Panchayat 67non-governmental organisations

(NGOs) 5, 71, 72, 89, 92, 116, 122, 149, 154; Dalit 90; support for panchayats 70

NREGA see National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)

nukkad nataks (street plays) 47, 97, 100, 129, 134; for creating awareness for panchayat elec-tions 104

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Index 185

Pal, Sumitra 30panchayat elections 32, 34; in

Bihar 117; nukkad nataks for creating awareness for 104; participation of Dalits in 90; signifi cance of PEVAC initiative in 80; use of elec-tronic voting machines for 100; vote casting 76; women representatives in 29

panchayat ghars 105, 150Panchayatila Chaitanya Vedika

91Panchayat information booth

and resource centres 111Panchayat Information Centre

98, 119Panchayati Raj 51, 54, 58;

Guwahati Roundtable 121; politics and 55–63

Panchayati Raj Acts 13, 35, 54, 60, 103, 117, 127

Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) 1, 47, 49; in Bihar 66; caste factors 63–8; elections 112; electoral rolls 112; engendering the discourse 68–75; funding by Centre for World Solidarity 90; model code for 121; women’s political representation in 74

Panchayati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan (PRJA) 2, 15, 125, 126–31; impact on democratic prac-tices 11; objectives of 127; for panchayat-level elections 14

Panchayat Mitras (friends of panchayats) 135

Panchayat Resource Centres 135panchayats: constitutional 10;

institutionalisation of 52; and

mahila mandals 21; power and authority 53; reforms in West Bengal and Kerala 158; signifi cance of 127; support by NGOs 70

panchayat samiti 34, 44, 53, 98, 128, 129, 138, 169

‘Panchayat Vani’ radio pro-gramme 94

Parhit Samaj Sewa Sanstha 29participatory governance 49, 66,

153, 154, 157, 158, 170, 171Participatory Research Institute

of Asia (PRIA) 2, 13, 16, 19, 26, 28, 47, 71, 88, 89, 92, 104, 132; Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness Campaign 14; workshops conducted by 35

partybazi 82Pateman, Carole 56Patil, Pratibha 45Pearse, Hillary 145People’s Right to Information 38PEVAC see Pre-Election Voters’

A w a r e n e s s C a m p a i g n (PEVAC)

Phillips, Anne 68, 69Pitkin, Hannah Fenichel 151,

152political discrimination 152political party-led election cam-

paign 18political representation 69, 74,

82, 148, 157politics: concept of 56; democratic

character of 146Pre-Election Voters’ Awareness

Campaign (PEVAC) 2, 10; aims for designing rural campaigns

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83–7; antecedents of 77–8; challenge to caste barriers 19; as citizen-led initiative 124; complementary role of 120–2; EVMs in elections, for use of 110; factors infl u-encing 81–3; format for rural areas 81–3; framing of new dialogues 100–6; and functional relationship with SEC 120; impact assessment of 87; impact on democratic practices 11; leadership train-ing 20; limitation of 11; meth-odologies and pedagogies for conducting 95–100; for panchayat level elections 14; policy perspectives and recommendations 169–72; recommendations for future 166–9; role of 8; signifi cance in panchayat elections 80; signifi cance of timing 79–81; slogans used in local lan-guage 98–9; social and pol-itical transformation among people 19; strategy of rural campaigns 88–95; for sus-taining process of fair and free participatory elections 122–3; training of trainers for 119; voter-candidate dialogue 24; women participation in election process 20

PRIA see Participatory Research Institute of Asia (PRIA)

PRIs see Panchayati Raj Insti-tutions (PRIs)

PRJA see Panchayati Raj Jagrukta Abhiyan (PRJA)

public leadership 19public meetings 36

Rai, Manoj 19, 76Raina, Vinod 63Rait Panchayat 27Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF)

71Rani, Neelam 21Ranvir Sena 64Rao, Narasimha 52RGF see Rajiv Gandhi Foundation

(RGF)Right to Information 38, 40, 43,

47, 153, 162, 165Right to Information Act 38Right Wing Hindu forces 65Rondinelli, Dennis 154rural local self-government 2, 60

Sakhi (Kerala) 71Sanchar Dal (informed group)

135Sanjha Kadam 91, 93Sardar, Amarnath 67‘sarpanch patis’ 31, 38Sarvodaya school 58Sathi Sammelans 135Schumpeter, Joseph 148Search (Karnataka) 71SECs see State Election Com-

missions (SECs)self-denying ordinance 58self-help groups 25, 27, 29, 33,

36, 54, 89, 93, 130, 137Sen, Amartya 155, 159SEWA see Society for Educa-

tion and Welfare Activities (SEWA)

Sharma, Jagdev 47

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Index 187

Shumer, Sara M. 151, 152silent revolution 13, 69, 140Singh, Babu Mahadeo 67Singh, Raghavendra 29Singh, Ram 44Sinha, A. N. P. 107social capital, participatory pro-

grammes for developing 77social democracy 142social discrimination 152social movements 57, 62, 63, 65,

149, 152, 153social stratifi cation 64, 86Society for Education and Welfare

Activities (SEWA) 47‘Sonya Abhiyan’ 104State Election Commissions

(SECs) 107; challenges faced by 120–2; co-operation with civil society coalition 117, 118; functional relationship with PEVACs 120; and people’s campaigns 113–20; process for fair and free participatory elections 122–3

State Finance Commission 53, 107

State Panchayat Acts 93, 126, 127, 131, 132

‘Suno Didi’ radio programme 94

Tandon, Rajesh 47–8, 124, 128, 138, 139

Times of India 29, 30, 94TOT see training of trainers

(TOT)Training Needs Analysis 129training of trainers (TOT) 119

transformative politics by elected women, factors infl uencing 70

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 79, 158

Upadhyay, Videh 53

‘vikas rath’ 17, 18Village Forest Committees 54Village Information Centres

21, 92village panchayats 51, 58, 111,

125vote casting 76voters’ list 86, 87, 94, 99

Warren, Mark 145Watershed Development Com-

mittees 54Water Users Association 54Weiner, Myron 59women empowerment 33;

and demand for political representation 69; and self-confi dence 34

women panches 22women participation in election

process 20, 25women’s leadership, for political

roles 70World Solidarity, Centre for 90Wright, Eric Olin 146, 157, 158

yubti mandals 25

zila parishad 44, 53, 83, 98, 119, 128, 138, 169

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Documents

Downloaded by [University of Defence] at 21:33 19 May 2016opac.lib.idu.ac.id/unhan-ebook/assets/uploads/... · governance. One such move was the afﬁ rmative action for women, and