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Grounding the State: Devolution and Development in India's Panchayats

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00220380500155197

1743-9140

Craig Johnson, Priya Deshingkar, Daniel Start,

Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

Abstract Decentralisation is commonly defended on the grounds that it will bring government closer to people, thereby creating political structures that are more transparent and accountable to poor and marginal groups in society. However, a problem that is well recognised in the decentralisation literature is that the devolution of power will not necessarily improve the performance and accountability of local government. Indeed, in many cases, decentralisation simply empowers local elites to capture a larger share of public resources, often at the expense of the poor. Reflecting on these relatively long-standing problems, an important strand of scholarship has argued that central government can play a central role in counterbalancing the forces that tend to disfavour the poor. In this article, we aim to inform this scholarship by reflecting on the interface between local government and local people in two Indian States: Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Madhya Pradesh (MP). Drawing upon 12 months of primary research, we argue that although the government of AP did not devolve power to the extent that proponents of decentralisation would have liked, its populist approach to certain forms of poverty reduction empowered the poor in ways that the more ambitious decentralisation agenda in MP did not. This, we argue, was due in part to the fact that MP's decentralisation process failed to challenge the well-entrenched power of the village chiefs, the sarpanches. But the discrepancy can also be explained in terms of the historical evolution of ‘development populism’ in AP. In particular, we argue that the strong performance of programmes aimed at subsidising rice for low income households and providing credit to women's ‘self-help groups’ (SHGs) was part of the State government's wider political strategy of enhancing and maintaining electoral support among women, scheduled castes and the poor. Notes As fate would have it, the study on which this article is based was conducted before the incumbent parties in Madhya Pradesh (Congress-I) and Andhra Pradesh (Telugu Desam Party) were voted out of power, in 2003 and 2004 respectively. Political commentators have argued that the electoral losses reflect the failure of governments in both states to deliver on ‘core’ development issues, such as roads, electricity and water. Although we would agree that voters certainly voiced their displeasure with incumbents in both instances, we would suggest that these outcomes do not necessarily reflect the fact that the development agendas in either state were an unqualified failure. Nor would we suggest that people vote only on the basis of the success or failure of a particular development programme. Equally important, one could theorise, are the organisational abilities of the opposition parties, the resultant allocation of (probably unimplementable) promises and pay-offs, feelings of anti-incumbency, and more general feelings of anger towards the agenda of reform that was being pursued by both of the State governments. See, for instance, Alsop et al. [ 2000 Alsop R Krishna A Sjoblom D 2000 Are gram panchayats inclusive? 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As Corbridge and Harriss [ 2001 Corbridge S Harriss J 2001 Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy Delhi: Oxford University Press [Google Scholar] : 227] have argued, ‘West Bengal is not a “model” for the rest of the country’. Whether and to what extent these tactics influenced voting patterns is an interesting question, considered in some detail by Suri [ 2002 Suri KC 2002 Democratic Process and Electoral Politics in Andhra Pradesh Background report for the Livelihood Options Project, London: Overseas Development Institute [Google Scholar] ]. As Mooij [ 2002 Mooij J 2002 Welfare Policies and Politics: A Study of Three Government Interventions in Andhra Pradesh, India ODI Working Paper 181 London: Overseas Development Institute [Google Scholar] : 36] points out, the so-called ‘thrift’ element of DWCRA was not introduced until 1993, apparently in an attempt to ‘encourage bonding’ among group members. Although widely praised for its devolved administrative structure (improvements in literacy rates are linked by some to the EGS), MP's EGS has been criticised for failing to address the deeper structural issues that plague India's educational system [ Kela, 2003 Kela S 2003 Towards Elections: Disaffection and Co-option Economic and Political Weekly 5 July 2003 [Google Scholar] ; Rahul, cited in Vyasulu and Vyasulu, 1999 Vyasulu P Vyasulu V 1999 Women in Panchayati Raj: Grass Roots Democracy in Malgudi Economic and Political Weekly 25 Dec. 1999 [Google Scholar] ]. Kela [ 2003 Kela S 2003 Towards Elections: Disaffection and Co-option Economic and Political Weekly 5 July 2003 [Google Scholar] ] for instance, has argued that the EGS fails to address the fact that the schools and curriculum lack trained and (financially) motivated teachers to educate children in MP. Responding to criticisms of this kind, Vyasulu and Vyasulu [ 1999 Vyasulu P Vyasulu V 1999 Women in Panchayati Raj: Grass Roots Democracy in Malgudi Economic and Political Weekly 25 Dec. 1999 [Google Scholar] ] have argued that greater time and study are required to determine whether the EGS has led, or will lead, to improvements in primary education. In theory, the EGS provides a ‘demand-based’ mechanism by which representative institutions can initiate requests for primary education facilities within their constituencies. Under the terms of the programme, the sub-district janpad panchayat (JP) has the authority to fund and oversee the functioning of the shiksha karmi, the local schoolteacher [ Behar and Kumar, 2002 Behar A Kumar Y 2002 Process of Decentralisation in Madhya Pradesh: Panchayati Raj to Gram Swaraj (1995–2000) background report submitted to ODI Livelihood Options Project, London: Overseas Development Institute [Google Scholar] : 35]. Significantly, the gram panchayat has the ability to choose and select the site of the school and the schoolteacher [ Vyasulu and Vyasulu, 1999 Vyasulu P Vyasulu V 1999 Women in Panchayati Raj: Grass Roots Democracy in Malgudi Economic and Political Weekly 25 Dec. 1999 [Google Scholar] ]. Once a village provides the space for the school and identifies a teacher, the MP government guarantees to create and fund a school in the panchayat area within 90 days of the application [ Vyasulu and Vyasulu, 1999 Vyasulu P Vyasulu V 1999 Women in Panchayati Raj: Grass Roots Democracy in Malgudi Economic and Political Weekly 25 Dec. 1999 [Google Scholar] ]. The implications of these disturbances are tempered to a certain degree by the fact that the Government of AP was able to procure a large quantity of rice in 2002 for Food for Work programmes in the State, and that a large proportion of these were directed towards areas affected by drought. However, not all of the AP villages received FFW programmes [ Deshingkar and Johnson, 2003 Deshingkar P Johnson C 2003 State Transfers to the Poor and Back: The Case of the Food for Work Programme in Andhra Pradesh ODI Working Paper 222 London: Overseas Development Institute [Google Scholar] ]. Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (a rural wage employment scheme) was re-structured and renamed Jawahar Gram Samridhi Yojana in 1999, but many villagers still identify the programme and the works created with JRY. The only evidence we found of DWCRA manipulation in AP was a case from Medak, in which the sarpanch and a number of local notables tried to convince a self-help group to use their loan to purchase tractors, which – it appears – would have enriched the individuals in question. Significantly, the SHG in question had sufficient autonomy – created in part by the unelected bureaucracy – to withstand this pressure. Formerly the Integrated Rural Development Programme, Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (Golden Jubilee Rural Self-Employment Programme) (SGSY) targets small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers and rural artisans below the poverty line. Within this group, 50 per cent is reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, 40 per cent for women and 3 per cent for the physically handicapped [ Nayak et al., 2003 Nayak R Saxena NC Farrington J 2002 Reaching the Poor: The Influence of Policy and Administrative Processes on the Implementation of Government Poverty Schemes in India ODI Working Paper 175 London: Overseas Development Institute [Google Scholar] ]. Space restrictions preclude an extended treatment of the political and historical factors that gave rise to redistributive social movements in AP, such as the separatist movement in Telengana, and agrarian movements, such as the Naxalites and the People's War Group. Additional informationNotes on contributorsCraig JohnsonCraig Johnson, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Guelph. Priya Deshingkar, Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK. Daniel Start, Research Associate, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK. Email: cjohns06@noguelph.caThis article draws on material generated by the Livelihood Options study (www.odi.org.uk/Livelihoodoptions) led by the Overseas Development Institute and funded by the Department for International Development. The authors would like to thank Srinivas Rao, Laxman Rao, Usha Kulkarni, Raja Reddy Kalluri and B Renuka (in Andhra Pradesh), and Philip Viegas, Susanta Kumar Barik, Babul Roy, Pramod Sharma and Sushil Kumar Choubey (in Madhya Pradesh) for research assistance in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. They also wish to thank Amitabh Behar, NC Saxena, SP Ray, SP Tucker, K. Raja Reddy, K. Sivaramakrishnan, Pauline Hayes, Ben Powis, Farokh Afshar, Tim Dottridge, John Farrington, James Manor and two anonymous JDS reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. The views expressed here are those of the authors alone.