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REVIEW OF RURAL AFFAIRS

Economic & Political Weekly EPW decEMBER 26, 2015 vol l no 52 37

Rural Elites and the Limits of Scheduled CasteAssertiveness in Rural Malwa, Punjab

Nicolas Martin

The decline of caste-based territorial dominance is

widely reported to have given Scheduled Castes more

autonomy, but also allowed them more space for

political assertion. This paper, drawing on ethnographic

fieldwork in the predominantly agrarian region of Malwa

in Punjab, illustrates how SCs are often loudly pressing

demands upon political leaders and bureaucrats.

However, the paper also illustrates how they still do not

wield meaningful power in village panchayats. A

wealthy class of farmers that is increasingly involved in

urban business uses a combination of party connections,

cash and coercion to capture and maintain power at

their expense. Such farmers frequently use their political

influence to bolster their business interests and to

appropriate state resources such as village common

lands. The evidence presented here suggests that when

SCs mobilise to demand their rights, they are still careful

not to challenge dominant interests.

With 29% of its population belonging to the Scheduled

Castes (SCs), Punjab has the highest proportion of

SCs in any Indian state. Nevertheless, neither the

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) nor any other SC political party

wields significant power at state level, and it is parties dominated

by farming and trading communities—the Congress Party and

the incumbent Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)—that control poli-

tics in Punjab. The ruling SAD—a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)

ally in power since 2007—is dominated by sections of theagrarian and industrial bourgeoisie, and has in recent years

reached out and given government posts to sectors of the

Hindu urban bourgeoisie traditionally associated with the Con-

gress (Gill 2014). The BSP’s inability to become a significant

political force in the state has been broadly explained with ref-

erence to divisions within the SCs between Ad Dharmis, Mazh-

bi’s and Ravidasias. Moreover, Kumar (2007) has argued that

the BSP’s ideological discourse against issues of purity/pollu-

tion has found little resonance in a state where Brahminical

values were never particularly dominant.1

Unable to gain a share of political power, Sharma (2009)

argues that SCs increasingly assert themselves through “grass-

roots” mobilisation. The SCs may not be capturing politicalpower, but they are often asserting their cultural distinctiveness

in a variety of ways and resisting Jat dominance in panchayats

and in gurdwara management committees. It is not uncommon

to see cars with stickers proudly proclaiming their owner to be

the son of a Chamar (Chamar ka puttar), and many SCs are

flocking to religious institutions known as Deras (Sacha Sauda,

Nirankari, Radhasoami, Divya Jyoti, Bhaniarawala) that

promise the equality and inclusion that the Jat-dominated Sikh

panth has reportedly failed to foster. SCs are also increasingly

asserting themselves in rural areas at the village level, and

Jodhka and Louis (2003) have argued that the rising incidence

of caste conflict in Punjab is symptomatic of this trend. Most

famously the Ad Dharmi attempt to wrest a share of control

over the management of a popular, revenue-generating shrine

in Talhan resulted in violent conflict. In this case—as in the

case of Jethumajra where conflict erupted because SCs wanted to

drain their water into the village pond against the wishes of the

Jats—the SCs’ demands were fulfilled.

In the more “backward” agrarian region of Malwa it is less

clear that they are gaining a meaningful share of power at the

local level, but it is nevertheless the case that all major political

parties are now assiduously courting different SC communities

for their votes. Up until around 1980, the SCs in Punjab tended

Nicolas Martin ([email protected]) is senior research associate

at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. He has

recently published a book titled Politics , Landlords and Islam in Pakistan

(2015).




decEMBER 26, 2015 vol l no 52 EPW Economic & Political Weekly38

to support the Congress because, unlike the Jat Sikh-dominated

Akali Dal, it was ostensibly committed to secularism, the

removal of untouchability, and to the implementation of pro-poor

policies. However, the subsequent rise of the BSP in the Doaba

region eroded SC support for the Congress Party. This support

was further undermined when the Akali Dal subsequently

obtained a share of the SC vote through an alliance with the

BSP and by shifting its agenda away from communal concerns

and towards issues of development.

Akali leaders and party workers told me that their party’s

electoral success over the past decade was partly due to its

increasing attention to the SC vote. This involved the creation

of new schemes such as the Atta Dal scheme, 400 instead of

200 free units of electricity for SCs, the Shagun scheme for

poor brides from all communities, and old age pensions

ranging from Rs 250 to Rs 400 per month. Additionally, Akali

politicians throughout the Punjab have been disbursing grants

for SCs to build gurdwaras, cremation grounds, and also to

improve roads and drains in their neighbourhoods.

On the ground in rural areas it is clear that SCs are, broadlyspeaking, benefiting from this profusion of schemes, and that

they are more likely than ever to press demands upon the state

and its representatives. An influential Congress Party worker

from the Jat Sikh farming community in Patiala District even

claimed that SCs were becoming so demanding and assertive

that he foresaw a revolution. During one of many conversa-

tions, he told me a story about how he had found some Ravidasia

women cutting mustard ( saag) in his fields without having

ever asked him for permission to do so. When he had asked

them what they were doing, they allegedly answered: “If we

don’t take from those who have, who can we take from?” He

said that such behaviour would have been unthinkable 20

years ago. However the reason they had chosen his fields, andno one else’s, was that the women knew he would one day

approach them for his votes, and that he risked losing these if

he refused them this one little favour. This was effectively a

demand for patronage, rather than a form of revolutionary

assertion.

The claim, frequently voiced by Jat farmers, that an SC

revolution has taken place is arguably a way of neutralising SC

critiques of caste and class inequality (Jeffrey, Jeffery and

Jeffery 2008). While SCs are undoubtedly pressing for more

patronage, and have become less submissive, they are not

doing much to challenge growing political and economic

inequalities, exploitative labour relations, and to improve edu-

cation and healthcare. In fact the SCs in the chairman’s village,

as in most of the villages I visited, had never exercised meaningful

political power at panchayat level despite constituting more than

half of the village population. In this article—drawing on

roughly 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, case studies and

interviews around the topic of local politics in villages

surrounding a tehsil in the Patiala District of the Malwa—I

show how while traditional forms of caste dominance have

been eroded, wealthy and enterprising Jat farmers now con-

trol local politics and state resources at the expense of SCs. My

examples show elite reassertion in rural areas affects most SC

communities, regardless of their sometimes starkly different

socio-economic statuses.2

Agrarian Change in Rural Malwa

Whereas agriculture accounted for 58% of Punjab’s gross

domestic produt (GDP) in 1971 it accounted for only 24% in 2011

(Gill 2014). Moreover, between 1991 and 2001 agriculture’s

share of employment fell from 39.36% to 30.02%. In Punjab,

as in neighbouring Haryana (Jodhka 2014), this means that

people across all socio-economic strata increasingly engage in

off-farm work. This has undoubtedly eroded the territorial

dominance of traditionally dominant castes, but new, spatially

expanded, patterns of domination have emerged. However,

these new patterns of domination are now contingent upon

elite access to state-based networks of power.

High levels of urbanisation in Punjab mean that many

villages are within commuting distance from medium and

large towns where there are employment opportunities in small-

and medium-scale industries, services and construction, and that

rural Punjabis can for the most part permanently reside in theirhome villages without resorting to circular migration (Breman

2011). This is even true of Malwa, a region that is considered

backwards in comparison to even more industrialised and

urbanised regions of Punjab. However, unlike in Doaba where a

number of SCs—Chamars in particular—have prospered in the

leather industry and thanks to international migration, many

SCs—those who have not set up independent businesses—in

rural Malwa still engage in both agricultural and non-agricul-

tural wage labour. They frequently engage in a combination of

seasonal agricultural work in both the fields and in grain mar-

kets (loading gunnysacks during the wheat or rice harvest), fac-

tory work in agro-industries wherever available, and in services

at restaurants and wedding halls. By and large, SCs do not mi-grate to other Indian states for work; with the notable exception of

when they accompany combine harvesters as far afield as

Chhattisgarh for the wheat and rice harvests. Since 2009 work

under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gur-

antee Act (MGNREGA) has also become an option, particularly

during periods when no better paid employment is available.3

Overall, despite the fact that less than 5% of the Punjab’sSCs

own any land, most of them now have access to amenities and

consumer goods—including televisions, refrigerators, washing

machines and motorcycles—that were far beyond their reach

30 years ago. According to the State Development Report on

Punjab (2002), in 1981 31.28% of all households in Punjab were

kaccha, whereas in 1993–94 the number had come down to

12.40%.4 In 2014, in tehsil X of Patiala District I was unable to

find a single SC who still lived in a mud house. Of course Jat

houses are much larger, better located, have better drainage

and well paved alleyways than SC households, and much more

likely to be equipped with running water, bathrooms and

latrines. Nevertheless a number of SC households now have

latrines and access to some form of communal running water

supply. Moreover, while the SC literacy rate in 1991 was 41.1%,

this had risen to 56.2% in 2001, and is likely to have risen even

more since then (Sharma 2009: 30).5





The picture for the predominantly Jat farmers is one of

increased class differentiation. Gill (2014) argues that while a

number of small farmers have undergone a process of down-

ward social mobility and of growing indebtedness, those with

more than four acres have diversified their incomes and

prospered by setting up commission agent businesses, shops and

real estate agencies. While their farm incomes may be stagnat-

ing, astronomically high land prices—up to Rs 4,00,000 per

acre—also mean that they own a significant amount of capital.

They are also the ones to benefit the most from free electricity

to run tube wells for irrigation and free canal water. Gill

calculates that such farmers receive 94% of state subsidies

meant for farmers. The wealthiest, with over 10 acres, also

tend to add politics to their various business activities. They

are people who spend their days supervising their rural

and urban business, and travel all around Punjab to cultivate

their networks of influence by attending weddings, funerals

and friendly drinking sessions. To host distinguished guests

and to project their social standing, they build large mansions

with a vast array of modern household appliances. Theirchildren go to private English medium schools where they

cultivate contacts and prepare for a future in business,

politics or even migration to preferred destinations such as

Canada or Australia.

However, even Jat farmers who have prospered far more

than most SCs in significant measure thanks to state policies

and connections, claim that it is SCs who now rule Punjab and

as evidence point to the multitude of government schemes

being implemented for them. They also complain about how

they demand increasingly costly liquor and growing amounts

of cash for their votes during elections. Many even claim that

SCs are soon going to take over completely because they have

higher birth rates than the Jats.It nevertheless seems undeniable that Jats can no longer

command corvee labour, and that they face difficulties finding

both temporary and permanent labourers. All the farmers that

I spoke to complained about rising wages and the scarcity of

labour, and many blamed the mgNREGA scheme for this.

Wealthy farmers with over 10 acres of land complained about

the difficulty, and rising cost of obtaining reliable attached

farm servants.6 They claim that good farm servants are no

longer available, but also that they are likelier than ever to

take their advances and then run away or even take them to

court on the basis that they are practising slavery. While these

claims clearly indicate that Jats no longer take their control

over SC labourers for granted, it is nevertheless the case that

Jat cultivators still get away with exploitative practices, such

as arbitrarily deducting daily wages. Moreover, the extent to

which farm servants escape and default is probably highly

exaggerated.

Both SCs and Jats told me that few labourers would escape

without paying their debts because farmers in their home

village would subsequently refuse to hire them. Jats can also

still deny SCs access to their fields to go to the toilet or for

access to fodder, although these traditional sanctions seem

likely to become less effective with time. Many SCs still do not

have access to latrines, but these are slowly becoming more

common—partly thanks to government schemes—and they

are likewise less reliant on gifts of fodder because many of

them no longer own any livestock. Perhaps more importantly

nowadays, members of the dominant castes can often make it

difficult for SCs to gain access to state benefits such as mgNREGA,

pensions and subsidised grain and pulses. In some extreme

cases it is even possible for influential Jats to use police

contacts to entangle labourers (and also anyone else who

opposes them) in fake and spurious police charges.

Between 2013 and 2014 I did nevertheless find out about

three cases in which attached farm servants had indeed taken

their employers to court for practising “debt slavery.” The only

one of the three that I was able to locate was a Ravidasia who

was unwilling to discuss the matter with me—possibly because

he feared sanctions from the Jats in his village. But my discus-

sions with their ex-employers indicate that their labourers had

in fact exploited elite factional struggles to take them to court.

Many villages I visited were riven by acrimonious, and some-

times violent, factional rivalries between competing villageleaders. In order to harm each other’s interests, rivals some-

times encouraged each other’s farm servants to not only escape

and default, but also to take their employers to court for prac-

tising debt bondage/slavery. They aimed to make their rivals

lose money, and also to entangle them in lengthy and poten-

tially costly court cases. The wealthiest landowner and busi-

nessman in tehsil X, who owned 200 acres, a paddy processing

plant and a commission agent business, had lost five out of

seven farm servants and had five court cases registered against

him by his factional rival who also happened to be a lawyer.

Another wealthy farmer lost three of five farm servants in this

way, and yet another lost his only attached farm servant also

in this manner. Perhaps this indicates that political competitionincreasingly allows SCs to exploit factional rivalries within the

dominant caste, but it also indicates that they still lack the

means or the organisation necessary to independently challenge

rural elites.

Panchayat Politics and the Dominant Caste

The Panchayati Raj Act of 1993 has been described as part of a

broad neo-liberal trend whereby the role of governance was

taken away from the state and given to society (Mathur 2013).

Its goal was de-bureaucratisation and greater public sector

efficiency, and the idea was that empowering citizens to make

local government more responsive and accountable would

achieve this. Crucially, it was hoped that reserved panchayat

seats would play a crucial role in empowering the SCs /STs as

well as women. Here I argue that while rural elites were

always likely to capture panchayati raj institutions, SAD political

interference in panchayats is currently playing a decisive role in

EPW is grateful to Surinder Jodhka who has been Guest Editor of

this issue of the Review of Rural Affairs. The members of the

advisory group of editors for the biannual Review of Rural Affairs

are Ramesh Chand, Surinder Jodhka, Duvurry Narasimha Reddy

and P S Vijayshankar.





allowing them to do so. I show how this has facilitated corrup-

tion, and thereby helped further bolster the dominance of the

more privileged sectors of the farming community.

Jats may no longer directly control SC livelihoods, but in the

majority of the 10 villages that I studied sarpanches belonged

to the class of wealthy farmer/businessmen described above.

In a setting where contesting panchayat elections often cost

upwards of Rs 10 lakh it is not surprising that these wealthy

Jats-dominated panchayats. In the weeks just prior to elections,

they spent large sums of money hosting drinking parties in

their courtyards, but also sending bottles of whisky out to sup-

porters. Right up to polling day, people, particularly SC labourers,

turned up to their houses and assertively demanded gifts of

liquor. Some voters demanded illegal poppy husk (Bhukki),

and candidates discretely sent them kilo packages worth

around Rs 1,000 via local motorcycle couriers. In addition to

receiving grants from politicians, many candidates spent their

own money in order to fix gurdwaras, temples, cremation

grounds, gutters and village alleyways. Several sarpanches

also told me that they had to continue spending significantamounts of money organising political rallies for their party

once elections were over.

Very few if any SCs, or even poorer farmers, could afford to

spend so much money. Just as importantly, very few SCs had

the contacts, the mobility, or even the knowledge to act as effective

sarpanches. The wealthy Jats who dominated panchayats spent

their days in town socialising with businessmen, bureaucrats

and politicians, and frequently travelled long distances to

attend, among other things, weddings and funerals. This allowed

them to cultivate the contacts and friendships necessary to get

things done: it not only increased their ability to secure grants

and other favours for villagers, but also their ability to further

their own business interests. Contacts and friendships in highplaces made it easier for them to obtain the various licences

necessary to run their businesses, but also keep the authorities

from prying into their business practices. As I will discuss

below, it also allowed a number of sarpanches and their

supporters to capture village common lands.

Few SCs had the time or the money necessary to build such

networks, and many claimed that this meant they could never

be effective sarpanches. As a result SCs only rarely controlled

panchayats, even in cases where they constituted the over-

whelming majority of the vi llage population. In general, they

only became sarpanches when the law reserved the seat for

SCs, and even then they tended to act as proxies and rubber

stamps for Jat patrons. I found about four clear cases in which

SC sarpanches were or had been the attached farm servants of

Jat farmers who actually held the reigns of power. As such

they were easier to control, and ready at hand to sign documents

necessary to run the panchayat. I also found out about several

cases in which panchayats had been nominated through consen-

sus ( sahmati) in order to avoid wasteful expense on elections and

to prevent the escalation of factional conflict.7 SCs told me that

although they were consulted, it was wealthy and politically

connected farmers who had ultimately decided matters. Finally,

just as SC sarpanches tended to wield limited political power, SC

panchayat members ( panches) also tended to act as rubber stamps

for the decisions of Jat sarpanches. Nor did SCs have the chance to

vote on key panchayat decisions during gram sabhas because

few, if any, villages ever held them. Several sarpanches, and

two panchayat secretaries, told me that they were pointless

exercises but that since they were compulsory they created fake

entries in panchayat registers claiming that they had taken place.

In light of the above it is clear that by virtue of their wealth,

education and connections, the dominant Jats were in a

particularly strong position to capture panchayati raj institutions

(see, for example, Jeffrey 2001). In what follows, however, I

suggest that political interference in panchayats further

facilitated this process, and thus bolstered the political and the

economic power of rural elites at the expense of the SCs.

Panchayats in Punjab are highly susceptible to meddling by

the political party in power, as they are in many other states

(Mathur 2013: 43). Governments here use panchayats to

secure votes during provincial and national elections, and

tend to direct development projects towards loyal party

supporters, and even to help them harass rivals or unrulysubjects. Moreover, there is a widespread perception that

corruption and the use of intimidation and violence is on the

rise. My informants, but also vernacular and English language

newspapers, frequently claimed that the Punjab was under

“goonda raj.” Gill’s (2013) work suggests that this perception is

founded on concrete developments. He argues that state

repression during the counter-insurgency period in Punjab

decimated farmer and labour unions and reduced politics to

the exercise of raw power through money and muscle power.

In particular, he shows how the ruling SAD has sought to

secure both political power and its members’ significant

business interests by issuing gun licences to supporters, pro-

tecting goondas, and intimidating and harassing opponents.

Ruling Parties and Control over Panchayats

My research on panchayats likewise indicates that ruling SAD

politicians use harassment and intimidation when they seek to

secure their party’s stranglehold over particular panchayats, or

when they are determined to give power to a particular village

leader. If, for example, a panchayat is equally divided between

Congress and Akali panches, and is unable to obtain the

majority necessary to pass resolutions, I found widespread

allegations but also concrete evidence that incumbent Akali

politicians use the police to coerce opposition panchayat

members who cannot be bought. This method is most likely to

be used against SC opposition panches who lack the party and

police connections, and the money, necessary to defend

themselves. In one village a Jat sarpanch told me that the local

Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) had told him to first

try and persuade a Mazbhi Sikh panchayat member to join his

faction with a bribe, and that if this did not work he would

either threaten him with fake police charges, or get him

roughed up by some local goondas.

While I never found out what happened to this particular

panchayat member—because my fieldwork came to an end, I

discovered another case during the 2013 panchayat elections





in which a Sainsi sarpanch was successfully threatened into

resigning from his post. Balwant8 Singh, the previous incumbent,

had been sarpanch for eight consecutive five-year terms and his

son had become one of the personal assistants of the powerful

local MLA. Balwant owned 12 acres of land, had captured and

cultivated more than half of the 12 acres of village common

land, and ran a commission agent and pesticide shop in town.

The reason he had reigned supreme for so long was that thanks

to his high-level contacts he had created a captive vote bank by

providing the Sainsis, who constituted slightly more than half

of the village population, with the police protection necessary

for them to distill and sel l alcohol, as well as to trade in poppy

husk.9 In 2013, however, he had decided to move on and agreed

to hand over the panchayat to the family who owned the most

land in the vil lage and who had controlled the panchayat until

Balwant had taken over 40 years earlier.10

However, things took an unexpected turn after the position

of the village sarpanch became reserved for an SC candidate.

At this point both Balwant and the prospective sarpanch

decided to hand over the panchayat to a Sainsi named Goggi who was expected to subsequently resign and hand the

panchayat back to the Jats. The Sainsi community agreed to

this arrangement. While many in this community complained

about how Balwant had prospered on their backs and at their

expense,11 they thought that a Sainsi sarpanch would lack both

the knowledge and the contacts necessary to be effective, and

to protect their illegal business activities. However, the Sainsi

who was selected proved less malleable than expected. He and

some of his followers decided that it was the Sainsis’ turn to

control the panchayat and that he would not resign as agreed.

The prospective Jat sarpanch suspected that the opposition

Congress leader in the vi llage, who controlled about a fifth of

village votes, had something to do with this change of heart. Tomake him step down he first tried persuasion, but when this

failed he asked Balwant, whose connections were well

known, to threaten him with fabricated police charges. And

then, two days after the threat was made, the SC sarpanch

resigned and the seat was handed over through village con-

sensus without holding elections. While the Sainsi sarpanch’s

refusal to bow to the upper castes may suggest increasing

assertiveness on the part of the SCs, the whole event illus-

trates how rural elites can counter this through their control

over the state apparatus.

Admittedly the latter case involved no more than a threat.

However, it is important to emphasise that such threats were

entirely credible and that there were cases in which even

wealthy and influential opposition Congress politicians had

been embroiled in fake police cases. For example, during the

block samiti elections of 2012, Rajinder Singh, a wealthy

Congress Party leader with close ties to the Patiala royal family

was badly wounded and subsequently embroiled in attempted

murder charges after he and his followers attempted to resist

the capture of a rural polling station by a leading Youth Akali

Dal goonda. Rajinder Singh had been campaigning on behalf

of a Ravidasia candidate for the position of block chairman,

who was too scared to campaign himself. The latter told me

that the leading Akali goonda in tehsil X had threatened to

beat him and his brother up if he dared to campaign. He said

that he was a poor man with a family to protect, and that he

did not have the resources to resist the SAD.

The fact that Rajinder Singh ended up badly beaten and had

to face fabricated police charges after confronting Akalis who

had captured a polling station clearly indicates that the

Ravidasia candidate had good reason to be afraid. When I

reached the polling station in question, the few police officers

present appeared indifferent to the fact that SAD party workers

had prevented Congress supporters from voting, and that they

were inside generously feeding the polling officers. Eventually,

after gathering a critical mass, the Congress workers started

protesting. Shortly thereafter, young SAD supporters, armed

with iron rods and Sikh ceremonial swords, attacked the pro-

testers. Rajinder Singh received a blow to his head with a

metal rod and spent the subsequent night in a hospital in

Patiala. While he was in hospital, SAD supporters placed

attempted murder charges against him, and later boasted to

me about how the local SAD MLA had helped them do this.

Panchayat Capture, Accountability, and

Village Commons

As already indicated, SCs are now entitled to a large number of

government schemes and resources. However by virtue of their

control over panchayats—buttressed by political interference—

dominant castes are able to appropriate a significant share of

these resources and to subvert or block certain schemes. Here I

will first focus on the issue of village common lands, and then

explore some aspects related to SC access to the mgNREGA

scheme. I choose to focus on the mgNREGA scheme in particu-

lar because SCs in tehsil X have mobilised to secure their access

to the scheme. This mobilisation, I suggest, clearly illustratesboth increased SC assertion and its limits.

Most villages own some shamlaat zameen which villagers

are entitled to rent from the panchayat on a yearly basis.

Approximately a third of this land is reserved for members of

the SCs, and the money generated from its lease is meant to go

to the panchayat and spent on village development. However

most villages appear to generate little income from their

common lands, and few SCs ever get their allotted share in it

because most of it has been under the kabza of upper caste

Jats, who in some instances do not even pay the usual nominal

fee to cultivate it. The Jat families who have effectively been

encroaching upon this land for up to half a century often feel

entitled to it because they often improved it by levelling it and

by placing tube wells upon it, and some farmer unions, such as

the left leaning Daconda Union, demand that this land be

permanently handed over to the farmers who possess it.

In the majority of cases it appears that Jats are paying

something to cultivate the land, but this fee is far below going

market prices for the lease of land. I found that in a number of

villages people were paying no more than Rs 8,000 per year

while rental prices for irrigated agricultural land in parts of

Malwa had now reached an unprecedented Rs 40,000. Moreover

I found that a black market in shamlaat zameen had developed





in at least one village I visited. Shamlaat zameen was being

traded, but at rates far below the market rate for private land

since it was not possible to obtain legal ownership over it.

These things can happen because panchayats, in collusion

with panchayat secretaries, never hold the open auctions (kulli

boli) mandated by the Panchayati Raj Act for the lease of village

common lands.12 I also heard about sarpanches violating

regulations by holding the auctions in their houses without no-

tifying everyone in the village. I also learnt that sarpanches

often used proxies to outbid other villagers during open auc-

tions and subsequently cultivated the land themselves while pay-

ing a rent that was far below the bid initially made. They could

get away with this because they controlled village accounts

and because few people ever took the trouble of going through

them and potentially antagonising the sarpanch.

Gaining control over the village commons was one of economic

incentives for becoming a sarpanch. The village of Fatehpur in

tehsil X, for example, possessed 186 acres of land and a single

politically connected family controlled 86 acres of it for 50 years

until 1986. Khem’s family only owned four acres of land, but itscontrol over the panchayat had allowed it to capture this land

and become one of the wealthiest in the village. In 2013–14

Khem’s family had a large three-storey mansion equipped

with all the newest appliances including a large flat screen

television, two new four-wheel drive cars and a new tractor. In

1986 the family lost control over much of this land because a

rival—Nirmal Singh—had become sarpanch and had obtained

a court order to clear the land of encroachers. Nirmal Singh

allegedly went on to redistribute the land among his own

dominant caste allies. However, Khem Singh had good

connections with the powerful local MLA and when he came

back to power as sarpanch in 2008, he, in turn, managed to evict

Nirmal Singh and his allies from this land and to subsequentlyrecapture some of it and the revenues it started generating.

Khem effectively took advantage of the fact that the ruling

SAD was attempting to boost both village and state revenues

by clearing common lands of encroachers and by installing

tube wells on it. During my fieldwork, this policy had only been

implemented in a couple of villages. After it was implemented

in Fatehpur, land rents rose from Rs 8,000 per acre to Rs 40,000

per acre. This yielded yearly revenue worth Rs 4,80,000 and

Khem used a large part of it to fix all the village gutters, and to

pave its alleyways with cement bricks. Nevertheless, both

opponents and supporters grumbled about how he had neverthe-

less managed to capture 10 acres of common land. He had done

so by ensuring that no tube wells were placed on village lands

adjacent to his own. This meant that only he could irrigate this

land—thanks to a tube well on his own adjacent land—and

that he could pay a much lower rent because the land was not,

technically speaking, equipped with tube wells. Many also

claimed that Khem was appropriating a share of the new reve-

nue stream but that there was no way of holding him to

account. They told me that he kept the village records at

home—as most sarpanches did—and that people were too

scared to file a right to information (RTI) request to find out about

village finances because Khem was well connected in theSAD.13

A number of Ravidasias in Khem’s village claimed that even

if the Jats allowed them a share of village common lands, it

had now become too expensive for them to rent. However, in

other villages where the government had not cleared village

common lands, they also claimed that even if they obtained some

they would not have the agricultural implements, or even the

knowledge, necessary to cultivate it. It is nevertheless clearly

the case that they were deprived of a potentially significant

income supplement. Until about 20 years ago a lot of village

common land was uncultivated and SCs used it to graze their

livestock, but the scramble for the village commons—as for

land of any type—had deprived them of the possibility of owning

any livestock (Jodhka 2014). The dwindling number of SCs who

now owned livestock either depended on gifts of fodder from

Jats, or needed to purchase it. On this score, I also found that

wealthy sarpanches used gifts of free fodder to attract votes,

particularly in the run-up to elections. The capture of the

village commons thereby contributed to SCs having to depend

on dominant caste charity—charity that was frequently politi-

cally motivated.

MGNREGA and SC Assertion

As elsewhere throughout India, farmers were broadly opposed

to the mgNREGA scheme because they claimed it raised the

cost of labour by reducing its supply. Most Jat farmers also

opposed it because they claimed that it failed to produce any-

thing of value and allegedly made SCs “lazy.” Why, they asked

rhetorically, should SCs work in our fields if they can obtain

Rs 184 for doing nothing? So Jat farmers who controlled

panchayats frequently failed to facilitate the implementation

of mgNREGA. In many cases Jat sarpanches could afford to

merely ignore the scheme’s existence becauseSCs could not get

organised to enrol themselves independently, or because they were only vaguely aware of how to gain access to the scheme.

SCs often believed that Jats were opposed to the scheme be-

cause they wanted SCs to continue “collecting cow dung” for

them, and so that they could continue lending them money

on interest.

When panchayats did make the effort to facilitate the mgNREGA

scheme they sometimes did so in order to derive political and

monetary benefits. It was widely claimed that during the brief

period before direct bank payments to mgNREGA workers were

instituted, sarpanches used to steal a significant proportion of

the mgNREGA funds put in their care. With the advent of direct

bank payments this was no longer possible, but some

sarpanches nevertheless found new ways to obtain both

monetary and political benefit from the scheme. SCs in several

villages told me that sarpanches made access to mgNREGA

contingent on political loyalty, and that some even put their

farm servants on it in order to save money on wages. Others

told me that sarpanches would only accept to sign them up if

they agreed to pay them half of the money that had been

disbursed into their bank accounts. In other cases the deal was

that the sarpanch would get half the money in exchange for

listing mgNREGA workers as present when they were in fact work-

ing elsewhere, or at home resting.





The most visible SC political organisation in tehsil X did not

have more than 500 members and was set up by two literate

and middle class Ravidasias in order to fight such abuses.

Despite being a relatively small union, it was highly visible

because of its vociferous leader Sukhbir Singh who claimed to

lead over 50,000 SCs in the state.

Sukhbir Singh claimed to have left a comfortable police post

in order to do service ( seva) for the poor. He claimed that he

could have easily made lots of money and spent his days in

air-conditioned rooms socialising with big people (bare log),

but that he had opted to brave the heat and the dust because he

could not stand the sight of little children going hungry.

During his various rallies, Sukhbir Singh grandly claimed that

his aim was to assist the needy and the poor in all aspects of

their lives. He exaggeratedly claimed that the police knew that

if they raised even a single finger against an SC, 50,000 of his

followers would start pelting stones at the local police station.

However despite his rhetoric, Sukhbir focused almost exclu-

sively on the mgNREGA scheme, and never seriously raised the

key issue of elite control over panchayats, or even elite controlof village common lands. Moreover, despite his claims neither

the police nor the local SAD nor Congress leaders felt threat-

ened by him, and frequently dismissed him as a fraud, a trou-

blemaker and even a clown. This probably worked to Sukhbir’s

advantage because the powerful did not appear compelled to

take action to rein him in.

To gain followers Sukhbir Singh greatly exaggerated the

extent of his influence and contacts, and even claimed to know

Rahul Gandhi and addressed him by his first name. He was,

however, careful not to claim ties to influential provincial leaders

because it would have been easier for people to verify such

claims. Rahul Gandhi, he alleged, had agreed to raise mgNREGA

payments from Rs 184 to Rs 1,000 per day, and to pay Rs1,00,000 to everyone who had not been given mgNREGA work

between 2008 and 2012. He also claimed that he would ensure

that mgNREGA workers received pensions of Rs 3,000 per

month, and that rural SCs would obtain government jobs and five

marla plots of land to build houses on. Sukhbir frequently organ-

ised rallies, and roadblocks, where he voiced these unrealistic

demands mixed in with the occasional more realistic one. He

even frequently took up to 400 union members with him to

Delhi to voice these demands.

There was a great deal of bluster and bluffing in what Sukhbir

did and said, but he did nevertheless provide SCs with a valued

service. Sukhbir undeniably played a role in raising his followers’

awareness about their rights under the mgNREGA scheme, and

also in helping them secure these by helping with paperwork

and intimidating bureaucratic procedures. Some SCs told me

that if it had not been for him, the mgNREGA scheme would

never have been implemented in their village.

However, many people quit the union because they felt that

Sukhbir Singh was leading people astray, because they

believed that he used the Rs 200 union membership fee that he

charged to lead a lavish lifestyle, and because in exchange for

enrolling people onto the mgNREGA scheme he had asked some

of them to hand over half of the money when they went to pick

it up at the bank. They claimed that his Delhi protests

were also moneymaking schemes and that he took a Rs 20

commission on every passenger that travelled with him

(meaning that he could make Rs 8,000 with 400 passengers).

Perhaps most importantly, during the 2014 national elections

he was widely alleged to have taken a Rs 6,00,000 payment

from the local Congress in exchange for the votes of the

members of the union. This was despite the fact that he

repeatedly told his supporters that he was not involved in

party politics because it was dirty. A couple of days before

polling, however, he told his followers that voting for the

Congress constituted the lesser evil because the SAD /

BJP alliance threatened to withdraw their various state

benefits.

Conclusions

The breakdown of traditional patterns of upper caste territorial

domination, and deepening electoral competition mean that SC

voters can no longer be taken for granted. SCs are arguably

receiving more from the state than they ever have. Nevertheless, while rural elites may no longer control SC livelihoods, they

have reproduced their power through state-connected networks

of influence, and that they continue to control provincial

politics. The latter has allowed them to use political party

interference to marginalise SCs at the panchayat level. This

does not mean that SCs never occupy elected posts at local

level, but as Jan Breman’s (2007) work on Gujarat illustrates,

even if they do it is still likely to be members of the rural elite

who ultimately wield power. What this means is that SC access

to state resources, to justice and even to personal security

often remains contingent upon political loyalty to their dominant

caste patrons. In turn, this means that well-positioned members

of dominant castes in Malwa continue to prosper at the expenseof many SCs. Not only do they receive a disproportionate share

of state resources through official policies—including free

electricity for irrigation and subsidised grain prices—but also

unofficially through corruption and, among other things, the

capture of village commons.

It is nevertheless true that SCs have become more assertive

in pressing for entitlements and patronage, but the case of

Sukhbir Singh illustrates the limits of their political assertiveness.

It shows how while SCs are often loudly pressing their demands

on government, the scope of these demands appears to be

rather limited. Sukhbir Singh, besides his unrealistic demands,

merely pressed for the proper implementation of the MGNREGA

scheme, but did not address broader labour issues, continued

Jat dominance of panchayats, pressing issues in education and

healthcare, or even the capture of the village commons. Given

that local politicians backed by the ruling SAD frequently

harassed political opponents and insubordinate SCs it is

perhaps not surprising that SC leaders like Sukhbir Singh kept

their demands narrow. Had Sukhbir Singh sought to challenge

elite control over panchayats, or even their appropriation of

the village commons, he would probably have had to face

significant harassment at the hands of the police or of SAD

goondas. While Jats were broadly opposed to the MGNREGA





scheme, its implementation was more of an inconvenience

than a grave threat to their interests. When the scheme was

implemented, it was implemented outside periods of peak

demand for labour and therefore did not affect the number of

labourers available to Jat farmers when they needed them.

Moreover, the SAD leadership actually wanted the scheme

implemented in order to attract the SC vote, and was there-

fore unlikely to help sarpanches in any bid to block it. Finally

the fact that local politicians dismissed Sukhbir as a fraud

and a clown probably worked in his favour, and it is conceiv-

able that Sukhbir was happy with this image precisely be-

cause it neutralised the extent to which he was perceived as

a threat.

To get things done then, Sukhbir Singh could not afford to

threaten the existing balance of political and economic power.

In fact he even had to cooperate with the very political system

that he decried as corrupt. There was clearly an element of mon-

etary self-interest in his delivery of votes to the opposition Con-

gress, but this was also arguably a strategy that could help him

eventually secure access to the political patronage of influential

Congress leaders. Other SC leaders who were far less prone to

bombast than Sukhbir Singh were also accused of taking money

in exchange for votes. The fact that the same was also allegedly

true for various farmer union leaders seems to indicate that most

local political leaders were constrained to work within a system

that was increasingly dominated by money and muscle power.

notes

[The author is a co-investigator in a project

funded by the European Research Council and

UK Economic and Social Research Council

(ERC–2011-StG - N° 284080—AISMA and the

UK Economic and Social Research Council)

entitled “Democratic Cultures in South Asia”

based at the University College London An-

thropology Department. The research for this

paper was carried out as a part of this project,

and took place in the Indian Punjab between

February 2013 and May 2014.]

1 See Jodhka (2004) for a discussion on Sikhismand the relative absence of Brahminical valuesin Punjab.

2 Throughout Punjab Mazhbi Sikhs, formerscavengers, continue to be the poorest andthe most marginal, whereas Ravidasia and Ad Dharmi Chamars have prospered to agreater extent, as have Tarkhans, Lohars andBarbers who have managed to set up privatebusinesses.

3 MGNREGA paid Rs 184 daily, which was lessthan the Rs 250 male labourers could make onother jobs.

4 It is reasonable to assume that the majority ofkaccha houses in 1981 belonged to SCs andtherefore that the increase in pakka housinghas disproportionately benefited them.

5 There are, however, large differences in the liter-acy rates of different SC communities: in 2001 the Adh Dharmis had a literacy rate of 76.4% whereas the Mazhbis had a literacy rate of42.3%.

6 Between 2013 and 2014, advances for at-tached farm servants ranged between Rs50,000 and Rs 1,00,000. Moreover farmersclaim that it has even become difficult to ob-tain Bihari labourers because MGNREGA hasallegedly makes it possible for them to stay in

their home in Bihar for longer stretches of the year.

7 Gill (2014) found that in the 2013 panchayatelections 16.78% of panchayats were electedthrough “consensus.”

8 Both characters and the names of villages havebeen changed to anonymise my informants.

9 The Sainsis told me that he warned them offorthcoming police raids—of which he was noti-fied in advance by friendly police officers—andallowed them to hide their poppy husk stocksin his fields and even in hi s house.

10 The prospective sarpanch owned 40 acres.

11 They claimed that in exchange for protectingthem from the police they had turned a blind eyeto his capture of the village commons, and to his

personal appropriation of funds meant for village development.

12 In recent years, however, the cash-strappedPunjab government has started the process ofclearing the land of encroachers. The idea is toproduce more income from village commonlands, and thus reduce the need for the provin-cial government to provide grants, but also toprovide the cash-strapped provincial govern-ment with money since approximately 20% ofthe income from these lands will go to thegovernment.

13 According to the panchayat act, village records was meant to be accessible to the public butthis was rarely the case. Furthermore manypeople did not want to file RTIs because theycannot be filed anonymously and people fearedretribution on the part of the person they wereinvestigating.

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Embracing Feminism – Sibaji Bandyopadhyay

Disrupting Coherence: Self Reflections of a Male Ethnographer – Pushpesh Kumar

Doing and Undoing Feminism: A Jurisdictional Journey – Oishik Sircar

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Rural Elites and the Limits of Scheduled Caste Assertiveness in Rural Malwa, Punjab 0