Sunday Editorial- The future of Panchayati Raj in Bihar: an unavoidable hazard of intimate politics

Sunday Editorial

The future of Panchayati Raj in Bihar: an unavoidable hazard of intimate politics

By Ratnakar Tripathy

Family = Panchayat: The biggest family in the world lives in BAKTWANG, India. A man called Ziona Chana has 39 wifes and 94 children

Probably the most important thing to remember about Panchayati politics is that its human social context is radically different from state level or national politics. Unlike large scale politics, Panchayati politics is not impersonal and anonymous if we focus on the candidate-voter relation. The implications of this are immense. If this is difficult to understand, imagine the awkwardness of an election in your extended family and the fate of the electoral issues and methods of canvassing.

Given the informal, almost personal nature of the panchayat context, it is not difficult to understand its fraught nature. It allows for intense emotions somewhat like the family – strong loves, powerful hates and jealousies on the one hand but also makes possible consensus of a kind that may be difficult to achieve at a larger scale. Common topography, developmental issues and daily crises allow for both – intense conflict and intense cooperation.

Let me further illustrate what I mean by the radical difference between panchayat and other larger forms of politics in terms of human learning. Imagine an IAS officer or a CEO of a big company who are famously successful in administering their respective domains. But the same person may be a disaster as a family man with no rapport with wife, children, cousins or parents. In brief, panchayat politics is a different game – just because our voter has become mature at electing his state and national level leaders does not imply that he will make a good voter in the village. The situation in urban elections is generally quite different except in the narrow lanes of the old city where people know each other almost as intimately as in a village.

Village : the family home of Ziona Chana in BAKTWANG, India

Usually, as citizens we complain of lack of transparency in wider politics but at the Panchayat level you get an example of abundant transparency. For example, when a mukhiya, whether a distant uncle or an old family foe graduates from a bicycle to a Bullet, and thence to a Scorpio, you usually know where the money is coming from – you may even specifically know about the missing solar lights that made the buying of the Scorpio possible. Also the Mukhiya’s message to you when he passes your house in his Scorpio, unlike a secretive cabinet minister is likely to be quite brazen – ‘I know you know how I got my Bolero and dare you to challenge me. If you admire my new acquisition, you are a friend, if you criticize me, you are an enemy’. Tough dealing with such situations, isn’t it?

So if you thought that only large societies are complex, forget it. Think of your extended family and the wheels within the wheels and if that doesn’t serve the purpose, well a purely personal and reciprocal relationship with your spouse or lover before declaring large social entities necessarily more complex. However, you would be right in claiming that the nature of complexity in the two contexts is radically different.

So the next time you see corruption and misrule in your own village lanes or tolas, don’t immediately dismiss Panchayati Raj with a cynical wave of the hand. We Biharis have become quite good at cricket, if state and nation level politics are taken to be cricket, but Panchayati raj has placed us around a tiny carom board, and we need to relearn the required skill all over again. Even a Tendulkar will have to sit humbly and learn to control the striker instead of trying his glorious cover drives !

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