Panchayati Raj in West Bengal: A Synthesis of Existing Research

Debraj Bhattacharya

Institute of Social Sciences

Kolkata

The Panchayati Raj system of West Bengal has quite justifiably attracted a significant

number of scholars. As almost all of them are administrators, economists, political

scientists, sociologists or anthropologists, and not historians, most of the studies are

therefore snapshots of a particular point in time rather than studies of changes over time.

Thus we have a large number of micro studies on specific issues mostly capturing a

particular aspect of the system at a particular point in time. It is perhaps now necessary to

bring them together to create the ‘big picture’. This essay shall try on the basis of existing

research, published and unpublished, completed till end of 2009, to develop a historical

narrative and also point out some of the gaps in the literature.

I. Colonial Period: 1885-1947

In spite of a vast literature on colonial Bengal, the history of Local Self-Government in

colonial Bengal is still waiting for a full-length study by a historian. We may point out

here some of the major landmarks. The Bengali Chowkidari Act of 1870 for the first time

established statutorily constituted Panchayats in Bengal. These panchayats were not

democratic in nature and the members were nominated by the district Collector or any

subordinate officer chosen by him. Their functions were limited to collection of

chowkidari tax for the maintenance of the village watchman or the chowkidar.

The viceroyalty of Lord Ripon resulted in a new enthusiasm for local self-

government in India, which was partly inspired by ideological/intellectual motivations

and partly because of the realizations of the problems of governance caused by the revolt

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of 1857. Ripon issued a resolution in 1882 encouraging the setting up of local self-

government in India. Designed to make use of ‘intelligent class of public-spirited men

whom it is not only bad policy but sheer waste of power to fail to utilize’, the Resolution

proposed for the formation of local rural boards, two-thirds of whose membership would

be composed of non-official representatives, elected where possible. This was however

not liked by the existing colonial bureaucracy who wanted to ensure that their firm grip

on rural governance did not slip away. As a result, the Bengal Local Self-Government

Act of 1885 (the same year in which Indian National Congress was formed) was a diluted

version of the original intentions of Lord Ripon’s Resolution. This Act envisioned a

three-tier structure for colonial rural Bengal – at the district level there shall be a District

Board, at the sub-division level a local board and a union committee for a group of

villages. A limited electorate, selected on the basis of age, place of residence, taxation

and education were to elect 9 or 10 members to the district board which would look after

primary education, water supply and a number of similar public services through standing

committees. These local boards had no fixed roles as such and they soon became

redundant because of their limited powers and finances. The District Boards lost their

powers to increasingly more specific boards such as the District School Board. Neil

Webster has rightly pointed out that ‘While the idea might have been to establish self-

governing bodies with an element of democracy in their constitution, in reality they were

little more than minor appendages to the administration, a limited extension of the

colonial state into the district with an aim of appeasing the nascent nationalism of an elite

capable of mobilizing local political power.’1 The real power at the district level was

retained by the District Collector and the officials who were members of the district and

local boards.2 The institutions were not democratic in nature as the District Board

members were indirectly elected by the local boards. Members of the local boards and

union committees were elected by a restricted electorate. Moreover the District Boards

were made units of local governance and the local boards and union committees were

1 Neil Webster, Panchayati Raj and the Decentralisation of Development Planning in West Bengal: A Case Study, CDR Project Paper 90.7. Copenhagen, 1990, p.22.2 The other important source of power was of course the zamindars, the rentier class created by the colonial government through the Permanent Settlement of 1793. There is a vast literature on the zamindars of Bengal; for a convenient short introduction and extensive bibliography see Sugata Bose, Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital: Rural Bengal Since 1770, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993.

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made agents of the District Boards with no autonomy of their own. What made matters

even more complicated was the fact that the union committees and the chowkidari

panchayats continued to co-exist for a long time. The villages were thus, as Ghosh has

commented, ‘denied any kind of self-government and, as a result, some of the basic needs

of the people like sanitation, roads or drinking water remained unattended.’3

In 1919, as part of the larger attempt of the colonial state to reorganize the

colonial administration in the face of the growing demands of the nationalist movement,

the Bengal Village Self-Government Act was passed. This act was passed on the basis of

the report of the Royal Commission on Decentralisation in 1909. It is not possible to

know on the basis of existing research as to why it took ten years for the colonial state to

act on the recommendations of the report and how far the recommendations were carried

out. Another influence was the report of the District Administration Committee. The Act

set up the Union Board covering on average 8 to 10 villages with a total population of

10,000 to function under the District Board. This brought the traditional panchayats

directly under the control of the colonial administration. According to Webster, the

legislation was aimed at incorporating the rural middle-class who were utilizing the rural

poverty as an issue to generate political support for their own nationalist aspirations. By

giving them access to institutional power within the lower echelons of the state, with

small doses of money and power, it was hoped that their political aspirations would be

controlled.4 The electorate was composed of all adult males, having residence within the

union and paying local tax. Hence the electorate was a restricted one, consisting of tax

payers only. Each Union Board had a President and a Vice-President elected by its

members. Women and the poor were not allowed to vote.

The Union Boards were given several responsibilities. These were mostly normal

municipal functions such as sanitation, conservancy, water supply, maintenance of roads

or drains or regulatory functions such as control on construction of buildings. There were

a few development functions as well, such as promotion of cottage industry,

establishment of primary schools and libraries. The Boards could also exercise control

3 Budhadeb Ghosh, ‘West Bengal’ in Status of Panchayati Raj in the States and Union Territories of India 2000, Institute of Social Sciences, Concept, New Delhi, 2000, p. 306.4 Neil Webster, Panchayati Raj and the Decentralisation of Development Planning in West Bengal: A Case Study, CDR Project Paper 90.7. Copenhagen, 1990, p.22.

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over the rural police (chowkidars and dafadars). The Union Boards could exercise a

certain amount of autonomy within the overall administrative structure but the

government retained the power of auditing of accounts, power of annulling proceedings

and suppression in case of default. Financially the Boards could levy a rate on the owners

or occupiers of buildings within its territorial jurisdiction.

By 1936-37, the number of elected Boards stood at nearly five thousand. A new

post was created in the administration, known as the Circle Officer, to supervise the

functioning of a group of boards and to act as a link between the Government and the

Boards.

The Union Boards lasted for about four decades. There is as yet no detailed

treatment of the impact of the Union Boards. However Ghosh has said that the Union

Boards ‘created such lasting influence that even later developments introducing

democratic decentralisation could not alter some of the traditions created by them.’5

Ghosh is in general agreement with Webster regarding the limitations of the Union

Board. According to him, firstly, social and economic power in the villages was

concentrated in the hands of a small group consisting of the landed gentry, zamindars and

intermediaries and the professional classes. Union or District Boards were dominated by

this rural elite which wanted to preserve the status quo of the rural society. Secondly,

official control over the institutions was too strong for them to work freely as institutions

of local governance. Finally, all these bodies, Ghosh says, suffered from acute shortage

of funds. The British had followed a policy of ‘local taxation for local purposes’ and

therefore disowned any responsibility for providing funds for development work in the

rural areas. The Act of 1919 in fact specified that the payment of salaries and equipment

of the chowkidars and dafadars would be the first responsibility of the colonial

government. This meant that there would be hardly any more fund left with the Union

Boards for development purposes. According to Ghosh’s estimate, at least 50 per cent of

the income of union boards used to be spent on salaries or chowkidars and dafadars.

Thus in spite of some efforts towards decentralisation, the achievements during

the colonial period remained limited and the Union Boards had very little impact in terms

5 Budhadeb Ghosh, ‘West Bengal’ in Status of Panchayati Raj in the States and Union Territories of India 2000, Institute of Social Sciences, Concept, New Delhi, 2000, p. 308.

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of reducing the poverty of the countryside. The catastrophic famine that engulfed rural

Bengal in 1942-43 probably revealed more than anything else the absence of

decentralised governance in Bengal and the ineffectiveness of the institutions of

decentralisation that were created during colonial rule.

II. The Congress Era: 1947-67

Before initiating a discussion on the literature on the Panchayati Raj during the Congress

era it may be worthwhile to take note of some of the important changes that were brought

about by the end of the colonial rule in 1947. For Bengal, freedom from colonial rule

came as a mixed blessing. Joya Chatterji in her study of partition of Bengal has argued

that the partition was welcome to the Hindu bhadralok elite as they feared losing their

power to the Muslims who were in the majority6 but there cannot be any doubt, as

Chatterji herself has admitted in her subsequent book7, that it proved to be disastrous for

both the bhadralok elite as well as for Bengal. The new state of West Bengal became one

of the many states of India controlled by Delhi. The loss of East Bengal meant a shock to

the Jute industry as most of the fertile jute growing areas were in the eastern part of

Bengal. The tea industry suffered as a result of the loss of waterways and the influx of

refugees from what now became East Pakistan led to massive increase in population

pressure on the state as a whole and Calcutta in particular leading to a humanitarian crisis

of gigantic proportions8 and the communal riots of 1946-47 left a deep scar on the

collective psyche and created a sense of political instability9. Moreover as the new state

of India developed a largely centralized system of development (although formally it was

a federal republic) West Bengal became dependent on the permission from the Centre at

every step and was to lose out heavily because of the Centre’s decision regarding freight

equalization and the bhadralok elite also lost eminence in the corridors of power at the

6 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition 1932 – 1947, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994. 7 Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-67, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007. 8 For a discussion see Amiya Kumar Bagchi, ‘Studies on the Economy of West Bengal since Independence’ in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIII Nos. 47 and 48, Nov 21-27/28-Dec-4, 1998, p. 2974.9 For a discussion of communal riots in Bengal see Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal: 1905-1947, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1993.

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Centre. Within the parliament also the members from West Bengal were far outnumbered

by states of north India such as UP and Bihar.

Within the Congress, which was the most important political party in 1947, there

was a period of faction fighting immediately after independence. The loss of eastern

Bengal meant that the leaders who had their base in eastern Bengal became less

influential and were superseded by what is known as the ‘Hoogly group’ whose most

important leader were Prafulla Chandra Sen and his protégé Atulya Ghosh.10 The Hoogly

faction managed to dislodge the first Chief Minister P.C. Ghosh in December 1947 and

back the bid of Bidhan Chandra Roy, who did not belong to any faction as such and had

good relations with the Congress High command apart from being a charismatic and

successful doctor in Calcutta. Dr. Roy became the Chief Minister in January 1948 and till

his death in 1962 remained the undisputed Chief Minster of the state while Atulya Ghosh

became the President of the Provincial Congress Committee from September 1950

onwards. The Roy-Ghosh combine ruled West Bengal for nearly two decades. Together

they managed to ensure that Congress won three successive elections and retained power

for the first two decades after independence.

The success of Congress during the first two decades was partly because of the

weakness of the opposition. The most important opposition party, now that Muslim

League had declined, was the Communist Party of India. CPI had managed to increase its

vote share in all three elections but was still largely restricted to the urban industrial

areas. Congress on the other hand was able to spread its organisations all over the state

and was able to project a stable leadership. The image acquired during the nationalist

movement also helped. The rank and file of the party at the district level also worked as a

link between the rural people and the bureaucracy in charge of implementing

development programmes. According to Marcus Franda, the party also provided an

opportunity for ‘social mobility in a society where social mobiles are frequently

frustrated’.11

10 For a political history of Congress during 1947-67 see Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-67, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp. 211-259 and Budhadeb Ghosh, ‘Empowering People or the Party?: Panchayati Raj in West Bengal’ in Budhadeb Ghosh and Girish Kumar (ed.) State Politics and Panchayats in India, Manohar, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 147-189.

11 Marcus F. Franda, Political Development and Political Decay in Bengal, Firma KLM, Calcutta, 1971, p. 90.

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Although Congress during this time had to accommodate the interests of the lower

sections of the society, Chatterji has clearly demonstrated that it remained a party of the

rural elite without any definite ideological stance. Dr. Roy invited Kiran Sankar Roy, a

Zamindar from eastern Bengal, to become the Home Minister who promptly banned the

Communist Party in West Bengal and passed the draconian West Bengal Security Act

which allowed the police to search without warrant. In 1951 the Government passed the

Eviction Bill aimed at securing the interest of the property owners against the tenants,

mostly refugees. In the same year it passed the Calcutta Municipal Act which restricted

the vote in municipal elections to the wealthiest 10 per cent of the city.12 The government

also dragged its feet whenever there was pressure to enact land reforms and

systematically blunted the effect of the reform of the Bengal’s zamindari system when it

became law in 1953.They also turned a blind eye to the many devices by which landed

interests illegally held on to their property. The government of Dr. Roy, according to

Chatterji, ‘was as conservative in the countryside as it was in the towns: it had no

intension of backing the forces of change. Its remit was to preserve, and whenever

possible to reinstate, the privileges and powers of Bengal’s traditional ruling elite’. 13

It is not difficult therefore to understand that the Congress government under Dr.

Roy was not particularly enthusiastic about the introduction of a vibrant local self-

government. However more research on this is perhaps required to understand the story

in detail. There were certain developments during this period but the Congress

government was always hesitant to carry forward a full-fledged reform of the system or

make panchayats a thrust area of state policy. Whether this was because of the class

character of the regime or for some other reason is something that requires detailed

investigation. Let us however take note of the changes that took place during this time.

In 1954, the West Bengal Legislative Assembly had passed a non-official

resolution seeking the government to take steps to establish village panchayats and

endow them with judicial, administrative and other powers. In 1956 a draft bill was

introduced in the Assembly which after being scrutinized by a Select Committee, was

enacted in 1957 as the West Bengal Panchayat Act. The Act of 1957 replaced the earlier 12 Myron Weiner, Party Building in a New Nation: The Indian National Congress, Chicago University Press Chicago, 1967, p.352.13 Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-67, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, p. 226.

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Act of 1919 and introduced certain structural changes. It introduced two tiers – gram

panchayats and anchal panchayats – in place of the union board. Besides, the gram sabha

was introduced for the first time. The Gram Sabha consisted of all persons who were in

the electoral rolls and usually covered a population of 7000 to 1200 persons. The Gram

Panchayat was the executive arm of the Gram Sabha which consisted of nine to fifteen

members elected by the members of the gram sabha. There was also a provision for the

state government to nominate persons possessing special qualifications as members of the

gram panchayats. However such a member did not have any right to vote or become the

chairperson or the vice-chairperson who were elected by the members of the gram

panchayats.

The gram panchayats were provided three kinds of functions – obligatory,

discretionary and delegated. The first consisted of municipal functions which were not

very different from the functions of the union board and were mostly municipal in nature.

The other two categories consisted of several rural development activities. The gram

panchayats were however not given much autonomy to raise funds. Power to levy rates

and fees was given to the higher tier, the anchal panchayats.

The anchal panchayats were to collect rates and fees, to maintain the chowkidars

and dafadars and to distribute the surplus revenue to the various gram panchayats under

its jurisdiction. The source of the internal revenue was the same as that of the union

boards. Thus, according to Budhadeb Ghosh, through the Act of 1957 ‘West Bengal tried

to implement the directive contained in Article 40 of the Constitution of India for

establishing village panchayats without disturbing radically the traditions of union

boards.’14

What was even more disappointing was the fact that in the same year the

Balawantrai Mehta Committee Report was submitted to the Union Government but West

Bengal was far less enthusiastic than many of the other states.15 The report had called for

development of participatory democracy through local institutions to bring about

improvement in the life of Indian villages. The report called for the establishment of a

three-tier system of panchayats consisting of the Gram Panchayats, the Panchayat Samiti 14 Budhadeb Ghosh ‘West Bengal’ in Status of Panchayati Raj in the States and Union Territories of India 2000, Institute of Social Sciences, Concept, New Delhi, 2000, p. 309.15 The report was formally known as ‘The Report for the Study of Community Projects and National Extension Service’.

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at the Block level and the Zilla Parishad at the district level and called for development

programmes to be channeled through these institutions. The recommendations found

enthusiastic support among the planners and in January 1958 the National Development

Council gave its approval to the recommendations of the report. The Union Government

transferred the issues related to the Panchayat from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry

of Community Development, which was subsequently renamed the Ministry of

Community Development, Panchayati Raj and Co-Operation. However there was no

serious effort in West Bengal to implement the recommendations of the Committee. The

old model was allowed to continue while the new institutions were being slowly set up

without any serious energy behind it. Nonetheless, between 1957 and 1962, 19662 gram

panchayats and 2926 anchal panchayats were created.16

The next important landmark was the West Bengal Zilla Parishad act of 1963.

Under this Act two new bodies were created – the anchalik Parishads at the block level

and Zilla Parishads at the district level. However there was no provision for direct

elections to these bodies. The anchalik Parishad consisted of all the Pradhans of the

anchal panchayat within the area. One Adhyaksha from each of the anchal panchayats

was to be elected by the adhyakshas of the respective areas, while the local MPs and

MLAs as well as two women were to be nominated by the state government. There was

also provision for local cooption of two local persons with specialized knowledge. The

Block Development Officer was made the associate member of the parishad. The

associate member had no right to vote. For every anchalik Parishad there was a president

and a vice-president elected by the members from among themselves.

The presidents of the anchalik Parishads were also members of the anchalik

parishads. Two adhyakshas from each sub-division within the district, elected by

adhyakshas of respective constituencies were also included in the Zilla Parishad. Apart

from this MPs and MLAs of the district, one municipal chairperson nominated by the

state government, the president of the district school board and two women nominated by

the government were also included.

Thus with the 1957 Act forming the Gram and Anchal panchayats and the 1963

Act establishing the anchalik and Zilla Parishads the four-tier Panchayat structure was

16 Neil Webster, Panchayati Raj and the Decentralisation of Development Planning in West Bengal: A Case Study, CDR Project Paper 90.7. Copenhagen, 1990, p.29.

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created for the state. This was different from the recommendations of the Balawantrai

Mehta Committee’s recommendations. It is important to note here that that structure that

was created was largely non-representative as only at the Gram Panchayat level there was

provision for direct election. Nonetheless, two years after Dr. B.C. Roy’s death, West

Bengal had a full-fledged Panchayat structure. B.C. Roy, according to Ghosh, did not

share Nehru’s enthusiasm for panchayats and community development and had little

respect for Gandhian model of rural development. For him rural development meant

modernization of the social and economic infrastructure in terms of more schools,

colleges, hospitals and large irrigation projects.17 The next Chief Minister, P.C. Sen, was

more enthusiastic and it was because of his enthusiasm that a four-tier Panchayati Raj

was finally established in West Bengal. Being closer to Gandhian ideals he proposed a

panchayat system where political parties would not have any role.

The performance of the Panchayats during this period is yet to be studied in

detail. Webster’s assessment is wholly negative. According to him:

While the two local government acts might have created the institutions of decentralised government, in practice these were little more than a façade with the state government merely playing lip service to the ideas of popular participation and decentralisation embodied in the proposals of the Mehta Report. Participation was minimal, the powers and responsibilities devolved were few, financial support was lacking, departmental and administrative officials continued to function as before, and Panchayati Raj remained little more than a distant idea given the absence of political will on the part of the state government.18

Budhadeb Ghosh has presented a somewhat more charitable view. He argues that in the

years after 1964, the state government did assign to the Zilla Parishads and Anchalik

parishads some funds and some schemes for execution. Government also, for the first

time took the responsibility of some of the administrative costs of the panchayats. Thus

by 1965-66 half of the total income of the anchal panchayats was in the form of state

assistance. In the same year the percentage of state assistance for the Zilla Parishads and

Anchalik Parishads were respectively 77 per cent and 94 per cent. However, according to

him even such funding was not enough for them and also the schemes that were given to

them for implementation were ‘of a minor nature’. In spite of these shortcomings,

17 Budhadeb Ghosh, ‘Empowering People or the Party?: Panchayati Raj in West Bengal’ in Budhadeb Ghosh and Girish Kumar (ed.) State Politics and Panchayats in India, Manohar, New Delhi, 2003, p. 174-75.18 Neil Webster, Panchayati Raj and the Decentralisation of Development Planning in West Bengal: A Case Study, CDR Project Paper 90.7. Copenhagen, 1990, p.29.

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Ghosh’s assessment is that ‘the assignment of schemes and transfer of state funds at least

indicate the good intention of the state government to support these nascent

institutions’.19 He on the other hand says that the timing of the introduction of the

Panchayati Raj institutions was rather bad. All over India in fact the period 1965-69 has

been considered a period of stagnation of the Panchayats. The Congress Government in

West Bengal, after nearly two decades of stable rule, entered into a phase of crisis from

1965 onwards. There was acute shortage of food in 1965, and solving this crisis through

the public distribution system had become the most important concern for the

government. The next year saw widespread protests, strikes and bandhs, against the

inability of the government to solve the food crisis. Moreover, the state unit of Congress

was divided into two. In such a situation, according to Ghosh, there was hardly any time

for the government to nurse these institutions.20 What can be perhaps said even in the

absence of any detailed data on the panchayats during this period is that Congress was

not sure whether it wanted the panchayats to become a priority area in their political

agenda. As a result Congress neither said that they do not want to have Panchayats nor

did they go ahead with the institution at full steam.

By 1965-66, the nearly two decades of Congress rule was beginning to look

shaky. On the other hand the prospects of the left parties were beginning to look better

and better as they exploited the food crisis to increase their chances in the election that

was coming in 1967. Before we conclude this section let us quickly take note of the rise

of the left parties in the post-independence period.

In the aftermath of the independence the left parties of Bengal, which were

marginal in the 1930s and 40s, joined the political mainstream of the state. In course of

time the Communist Party of India, The Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist

Party emerged as the main opposition to the Congress as other political parties such as

the Hindu Mahasabha lost their eminence. According to a calculation made by Marcus

Franda, in the Assembly elections of 1952 all the left parties together got 18.69% of the

votes. In 1957, it rose to 24.29% and five years later it rose to 33.88%.21 Thus between

1952 and 1962 the share of left vote in the elections almost doubled. Of them the 19 Budhadeb Ghosh ‘West Bengal’ in Status of Panchayati Raj in the States and Union Territories of India 2000, Institute of Social Sciences, Concept, New Delhi, 2000, p. 310.20 Budhadeb Ghosh ‘West Bengal’ in Status of Panchayati Raj in the States and Union Territories of India 2000, Institute of Social Sciences, Concept, New Delhi, 2000, p. 310.

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Communist Party of India, formed in 1921, was the most important. CPI won 28 seats in

the 1952 polls and was already the leading opposition party to the Congress. Within a

decade their tally went up to more than 50. This was quite remarkable given the fact that

before partition the left parties had only two seats in the Bengal Assembly. In 1947, CPI

had roughly the same influence in eastern and western part of Bengal and therefore had

the risk of losing their influence because of the partition. P.K. Chakrabarti has shown that

the party at this stage took a significant decision of challenging the logic of partition and

to continue to operate as one party for both countries. The party directed its members to

stay where they were and face expulsion if they disobeyed. This was CPI’s official line

till 1951. In an unexpected way this saved some of the elite cadres of the party from

imprisonment when the party was banned. However many of them slowly began to come

over along with the refugees from east Bengal in a clandestine manner. This kept them

out of jail during the mass arrests of 1948 and 49. This also gave them a first hand

experience of the life of the refugees and their suffering. While the official party line had

nothing to do with refugees these leaders started to organize them without disclosing their

own communist identity. This mobilization along unofficial channels later paid rich

dividends in electoral terms when the time came for it. In August 1950 for example the

refugee communists from east Bengal formed the United Central Refugee Council, which

brought within one platform various Marxist parties into one block – The Marxist

Forward Bloc, The Socialist Unity Centre, the Revolutionary Communist Party of India,

the Democratic Vanguard, the Bolshevik Party and the Socialist Republican Party. This

was followed by many such united movements – against hike in tram fare (1953), for

cheaper food in ration shops, for better pay of teachers etc.

These movements ensured not only that the different groups remained united and

managed to tide over the crisis of the partition but actually improve their mass base with

every new election. The refugees in Bengal unlike in Punjab swayed towards the left as

they saw that the Congress leadership at the centre was not receptive to their woes and

the Congress leadership in the state, especially under Atulya Ghosh, had a clear anti-east

Bengal stance (a legacy of the Hoogly group’s fight with the Congress leaders of eastern

21 Marcus F. Franda, Political Development and Political Decay in Bengal, Firma KLM, Calcutta, 1971, p. 116.

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Bengal). Similarly the coming of the universal adult franchise meant that now the

working class of the tea estates, where CPI had a presence, could be mobilized.

In a different manner the left parties managed to woe the Muslim voters as well, a

new phenomenon which didn’t exist in the pre-independence period. The left parties

managed to maintain a fine balance between supporting the Muslim cause and at the

same time projecting a secular image. The left insisted that the displaced Hindus as well

as the Muslims should be rehabilitated, campaign for backward Muslims such as the

momins, war on Algeria and Government policy in Kashmir and Hyderabad, and the

rights of the minorities. This effort led to a swing of the Muslim intelligentsia,

increasingly disenchanted with the Congress, towards the left by 1957. This does not

mean that all Muslim votes went to the left but there cannot be any doubt that the left was

able to win over a significant number of the Muslim electorate.22 This steady rise of the

left influence was not hampered by the split within the Communist Party of India through

which the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M) was born in 1964.

This rise of the left parties, as is evident from the brief narrative above, had

nothing to do with the panchayats or the issues related to rural development during this

period. In left intellectual thinking also the Panchayats did not figure. The burning issues

were the plight of the refugees, low wages, unemployment and the food crisis. But at this

stage the left parties were yet to understand the significance of the panchayats for their

expansion in the rural West Bengal.

III. ‘A Decade of Chaos’: 1967-77

The 1967 Legislative Assembly election ushered in, what Atul Kohli has called ‘the

decade of chaos’23. Congress won the maximum number of seats (127out of 280) but the

other parties including the Communist Parties and the break-away group Bangla

Congress, succeeded in forming a coalition government. This government however lasted

less than a year. A Congress-led coalition replaced it, but only for two months. This was

followed by imposition of President’s rule by the Centre. The UF coalition government 22 Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947-67, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007, pp 297-302.23 Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, p.274.

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came to power in 1969 but was again replaced by Presidential rule in 1970. After the

Bangladesh war in 1971, Congress once again came to power but there were considerable

allegations of electoral fraud. The Congress Government last till 1975 when a National

Emergency was declared which lasted till 1977 when the democratic process was once

again resumed. This was also the period during which West Bengal experienced the ultra-

left Naxalite movement and its brutal suppression by the Congress government after it

came to power in 197124.

Although both CPI(M) and the Naxalites at this time had taken up the cause of

land grabbing from the rich peasants and distributing them to the poor peasants (but

differing in terms of method) neither saw in the panchayats anything worthy of

intellectual or political attention. Within the United Front government, for example, CPI

(M) took the ministries of labour, land and land revenue and police but not the ministry

for panchayats. The Minster for Panchayats within the UF government was Bibhuti

Dasgupta, who came from a little known Gandhian Party in Purulia district known as Lok

Sebak Sangha. Dasgupta prepared in 1969 a significant white paper known as ‘Basic

Ideas about the Re-organisation of Panchayats in West Bengal’.25 The white paper

envisaged a radical departure from the way Panchayats were conceived so far. It called

for a complete transformation of administration through which ‘the pattern of district

administration’ is to be modeled on the state pattern’ and called for further strengthening

of the district as an autonomous unit with almost as much power as the state government.

Regarding the structure of the Panchayats it envisaged a three-tier structure instead of the

prevailing four – The Zilla Parishad/Panchayat, the Anchal Parishad/Panchayat and the

Gram Parishad/Panchayat. Each tier was to have a Parishad (similar to a Legislative

Assembly) and a Panchayat (like a cabinet). The document also called for setting up of a

Nyaya Panchayat, where village level disputes would be settled.

In practice the new ideas could not implemented because of turmoil in which the

new government found itself in. The United Front government took the controversial

24 For histories of the Naxalite Movement in West Bengal and its suppression see Shankar Ghosh, The Naxalite Movement, K.L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1974; Biplab Dasgupta, The Naxalite Movement, Allied Publishers, Bombay, 1975, Marcus Franda, Radical Politics in West Bengal, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., 1972; Sajal Basu, West Bengal: The Violent Years, Prachi Publication, Calcutta, 1979.25 For a detailed analysis of Basic Ideas and the Panchayat Act of 1973 see Dilip Chakrabarti, Dilip Ghosh, Nivedita Ray and Debraj Bhattacharya, Dilemmas of Decentralisation: Making of the West Bengal Panchayat Act, 1973, unpublished paper, P&RD Department, 2009.

14

decision of disbanding the Zilla Parishads and the Anchalik Parishads and introduced a

new Panchayat Bill when it came back to power in 1969 but that bill could not be enacted

as the government once again fell and President’s rule was imposed on the state. When

Congress came back to power it promised a new Panchayat legislation. In all probability

the Local Self Government department on its own was pushing the agenda of another

Panchayat Bill during this time. A report in leading Bengali daily, Anandabazar Patrika,

dated 5 April 1973, says that the department had prepared a draft Bill but that was

rejected by the Government as they do not want to give so much power to the panchayats.

The report says that the Bill wanted to introduce election in all three tiers of the

government and wanted the BDO and other government officials to be under the

jurisdiction of the Panchayat. This was not acceptable to the Government. On 30 August,

1973 the same newspaper carried a report saying that the Chief Minister Mr. Sidharta

Sankar Ray, had said in an interview that the chief aim of the government was take the

government to the doorstep of the rural people. There was possibly a connection between

such statements and the agrarian unrest that was growing in the countryside thanks to the

left-extremist upsurge. In any case, a Bill was prepared and sent to Select Committee.

After the recommendation of the Select Committee was tabled, it became clear that the

Government wanted to do away with the radical ideas on decentralisation that was

presented in Basic Ideas. The power of the state government over the Panchayats was

firmly established in the recommendations. The Panchayats were given minor powers

within their jurisdictional areas. When the Bill was introduced in the Legislative

Assembly, The Minister for Panchayats, Mr. Subrata Mukherjee said that there were six

major differences between this Bill and the previous Acts. They were – (a) the Bill had

proposed a three-tier system, (b) the Bill was proposing election in all three tiers, (c)

there is provision for reservation for SC, ST and women in all three tiers, (d) in the new

Bill the members of the Legislative Assembly and the Parliament would not be able to

hold offices although they would be able to remain members, (e) in the new Bill the

power to tax and the power to impose cess has increased, and (e) the new Bill envisaged a

Rajya Unnayan Parishad and Zilla Unnayan Parishad which would be responsible for the

monitoring the three tiers of the Panchayats. CPI (M) had boycotted the Assembly during

this time and therefore its views could not be recorded during this time. In spite of several

15

criticisms from the opposition, the Bill was ultimately passed and the Panchayat Act of

1973 came into being. Subrata Mukherjee promised the house that elections to the

Panchayats would be held immediately. However Congress failed to carry this forward.

One reason behind it of course was that the government was facing turmoil all around but

according to an interview with Subrata Mukherjee carried out by the research team of

P&RD department, The Chief Minister, Mr. Sidharta Sankar Ray failed to take the right

decision and because of this Congress has suffered heavily since then.

Thus in spite of some interesting ideas developed by the Union Front Government

and the enactment of the Panchayat Bill in 1973 by the Congress government, the

condition of the panchayats in West Bengal was quite dismal in 1977 when the National

emergency was lifted and West Bengal along with the rest of the country went to the

polls. In West Bengal both Parliamentary as well as Assembly elections were held.

Because of the Emergency, Congress had become unpopular all over India, including

West Bengal. Thus in the election to the Legislative Assembly Congress could get only

20 seats as against 216 in the previous election. CPI (M) on the other hand, increased its

tally from 14 to 177. The Left parties together won 204 seats in the Assembly, an

overwhelming majority. Jyoti Basu was sworn in as the new Chief Minister of West

Bengal on 21 June, 1977.

IV. The Left Front Era: 1977- 2011

Unlike the Colonial period and the Congress period, the Panchayati Raj of West Bengal

under the Left has been extensively studied by scholars. However there are still some

gaps in our knowledge, which may be briefly mentioned here. Firstly, there is no blow by

blow political history of the Panchayats. Nor is there any systematic study of the more

than thirty amendments brought about by the Left Front Government (henceforth LFG) to

the West Bengal Panchayat Act, 1973. Similarly, except for a couple of recent

unpublished reports, there is very little on the institutional dynamics of the Panchayats.

Finally, the upper two tiers have received less attention from the scholars than the Gram

Panchayats and their impact. Having said this, we shall divide the existing research into

16

certain thematic areas – (i) changing patterns of the institutional structure, (ii) dynamics

between the administration and the Panchayats, (iii) interface between the party and the

panchayats, (iv) people’s participation and planning from below, (v) impact on poverty,

and (vi) changing patterns of rural class structure.

Before we being the thematic discussion let us take note of an important shift

within CPI(M) which to some extent helps to explain their growing interest in the

Panchayats after coming to power. Kohli has noted that CPI(M) underwent an ideological

shift by 1977. It had moved away from ‘revolutionary inclinations to a reformist

orientation’.26 The experience of the National Emergency had taught the party the value

of democratic institutions and CPI(M)’s power seemed heavily dependent on the

openness of the political process. Thus the Party increasingly talked less of ‘dictatorship

of the proletariat’ and more of strengthening democratic institutions. Secondly, during the

United Front rule, the party’s inability to control its mobilized forces led to a change in

the strategy of struggle. Labour militancy, strikes in the factories and land grabbing was

replaced by legal and constitutional struggles. Finally, related to the first two, was the

shift in the definition of class-enemy. A purist classification of class struggle between the

proletariat and the bourgeoisie was replaced by a broadly pro-poor stance where almost

all those except the rich were welcome to the party and struggles were defined as and

when political contingency arose rather than along a pre-determined ideological line.

This, as Kohli has rightly observed, made the party a social democrat one rather than a

communist party.

There is some confusion as to precisely when and how CPI(M) began to get

interested in the Panchayats. In the election of 1977, panchayats, unlike land reform,

were certainly not a very important rallying cry for the CPI(M). Subrata Mukherjee27 and

former civil servant Debabrata Bandyopadhyay28 in two separate interviews to a research

team working on the history of the 1973 Act mentioned above, opined that it was Jyoti

Basu’s master stroke after coming to power. He realized the significance of the

26 Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, pp.287-88. See also Atul Kohli, The state and poverty in India: The Politics of Reform, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, chapter 3. 27 Veteran Congress leader and Panchayat Minster during the 1973 Act.28 Bandyopadhyay played a key role in land reform programme of the Left Front and has also written widely on rural West Bengal.

17

institutions in gaining greater control of the rural society. This was important for CPI(M)

which was still a largely urban based party. Jyoti Basu, in his autobiography29, has given

credit to Satyabrata Sen, a professor of Indian Statistical Institute and who also played a

key role in Kerala’s experiment with Panchayats, for providing the ideological guidance

to the Party during this time. According to Subrata Mukherjee, Basu went ahead with the

agenda that Sidharta Sankar Ray failed to take up and this success has had a lot to do with

CPI(M)’s uninterrupted rule for more than three decades.

What exactly Satyabrata Sen said is not known. However in an interview to Neil

Webster, veteran CPI(M) leader, Binay Chowdhury has said that there was a crucial

difference between the ideological position of other political parties of India and CPI(M)

on panchayats. Left Front, according to Chowdhury, believed that without parallel

initiatives that would also challenge the vested class-interests of the ruling elite in the

rural society, genuine Panchayati Raj cannot be established. Hence land reform and other

measures have to be taken in this regard simultaneously with the reform of the

panchayats.30

IV.I. Changing patterns of the Institutional Structure

After coming to power in 1977, CPI (M) retained the West Bengal Panchayat Act of 1973

but with some amendments, thus reflecting a new kind of political pragmatism. The most

important innovation in the context of India that they introduced was that all tiers of the

panchayats would have party based elections and secondly, there would be direct

elections to all three tiers. As a result in 1978 elections were held in all three tiers of the

Panchayat, a first in case of India.

The gram panchayat, the tier closest to the rural people, consisted of anything

between five to twenty five members elected by the adult voters. For every 500 voters

there was one member. The Pradhan (or the Chairperson) and the Upa-Pradhan (or the

Vice-Chairperson) of the Gram Panchayat was not elected directly but by the elected

members of the GP. Every development block had one Panchayat Samiti which usually

had the same name as the development block. It also consisted of members who were 29 Jyoti Basu, Jatadur Mone Pore (As far as I can Remember), National Book Agency, Kolkata, 1998, pp. 237-51. Basu has however not elaborated much on this crucial transformation of the party. 30 Neil Webster, Panchayati Raj and the Decentralisation of Development Planning in West Bengal: A Case Study, CDR Project Paper 90.7. Copenhagen, 1990, p.30.

18

directly elected by the electorate but in addition the Pradhans of all the GPs under the

Panchayat Samiti and the local MLA and MP were also made members of the Samiti as

long as they were not Ministers. As in the case of the Gram Panchayat, the members

among themselves selected a Sabhapati and a Sahkari-Sabhapati as the heads of the

Samiti.

At the level of the Zilla Parishad also the members were elected, each Block

electing two members. Sabhapatis of all Panchayat Samities of the district as also the

MLA and MPs of the district were ex-officio members of the Zilla Parishad. Members of

the Zilla Parishad chose among themselves who would be Sabhadhipati and Sahakari

Sabhadhipati. Neither in case of the Panchayat Samiti nor in case of the Zilla Parishad,

the MPs and the MLAs could also become heads of the institutions. The term for all

elected members was five years and a new GP, Panchayat Samiti or Zilla Parishad were

to be constituted.

Each Panchayat Samiti and Zilla Parishad also had several standing committees

called Sthayee Samities which carried out different development functions. The head of

the Sthayee Samities were known as Karmadhyakshas.

In 1985-86, in order to facilitate decentralised planning, two new structures were

added. The first was the Block Planning Committee and the second was the District

Planning Committee. They were to be headed by the Sabhapati and the Sabhadhipati

respectively. The Pradhans and the Karmadhyakshas of Panchayat Samities and the

Block level officials of different departments were made members of the Block

Planning Committees. Similarly the Sabhapatis of the Panchayat Samities, the

Karmadhyakshas of the Zilla Parishads, the Chairpersons of Municipalities, and district

level officials were made members of the district planning committees. Provisions for

budgets of different departments for district level items were made for these planning

bodies.

The District Planning Committees were also given a certain amount of untied

funds under a new head of the state budget, the district plan scheme fund, to meet critical

gaps between the requirements and availability of funds out of the departmental

allocations.

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In the nineties three major amendments were made in 1992, 1994 and 1997.

These amendments coincided with the 73rd amendment to the Constitution of India,

which was initiated during the Rajiv Gandhi period but finally enacted only during the

regime of Narsimha Rao. The aims of the reforms introduced during this time were two

fold: (a) to increase the responsibilities of the elected representatives, and (b) to make the

system more accountable to the people.

One of the problems which had emerged by this time was the fact that the

Pradhans and the heads of the upper two tiers were becoming all powerful. Hence the

amendments of 1992 strengthened the roles of the Karmadhyakshas. They were made

responsible for ‘financial and executive administration’ of the programmes or schemes

under the control of the Sthayee Samities. They were also given a certain amount of

administrative power. Similarly although at this stage there was no standing committee at

the level of the Gram Panchayat, efforts were made to strengthen the powers of the ward

members. This indicated a shift towards a cabinet type of executive structure – the

chairperson and his colleagues forming a team for all three tiers of the panchayat bodies.

The 1992 amendment also made it mandatory for all Chairpersons and Karmadhyakshas

to be full-time functionaries. By the 1997 Act, the offices of the Pradhan and the Upa

Pradhan were also made full-time.

In anticipation of the 73rd amendment, the 1992 amendment also ensured that one-

third of the seats of all three tiers were reserved for women. Similarly seats were reserved

for SCs and STs in all three-tiers. The number of such seats to be reserved was

proportional to the percentage of SC and ST population in that area. The amendment

made in 1994 also provided for reservation in the offices of both chairpersons and vice-

chairpersons of all the tiers for women as well as for the SC/ST population as per the 73 rd

amendment.

The 1994 amendment, in order to increase accountability of the Panchayats, a

Gram Sansad was introduced in addition to the Gram Sabha, which is mandated by the

Constitution. The purpose of the Gram Sansad was the fact that in West Bengal the Gram

Panchayats typically have a jurisdiction over a fairly large population, and hence the

Gram Sabha is quite ineffective. It was felt that a ward level structure would help to make

the panchayats more accountable. At least two meetings of the Gram Sansad were to be

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organized by the Panchayat as per this amendment, one in November and another in May.

One-tenth of the total adult population of the Sansad has to attend in order to fulfill the

quorum. The Gram Sabha on the other hand was scheduled to be held once in a year

during the month of December. For this the quorum was fixed at one-twentieth.

How did the Gram Sabha and the Gram Sansad interact? The Gram Sansad was to

formulate certain resolutions which would be placed before the Gram Sabha by the Gram

Panchayat along with its own views and action taken/proposed to be taken reports on

such resolutions. Based on this the Gram Sabha shall take the final resolutions, except for

the fact that it cannot change the list of beneficiaries selected by the Gram Sansad.

The 1994 amendment created a new institution known as the District Council.

The Act provided that in each district of the state there shall be such a District Council.

The Chairman of the Council would be, interestingly enough, the leader of the

opposition. The Vice-Chairperson shall be one of the members of the Zilla Parishad.

Apart from these two the Council was to have another nine members, five of whom

would be members of the Zilla Parishad while the other four shall be officials, three of

whom will be nominated by the state government. The fourth person shall be the

additional executive officer of the Zilla Parishad who would be the ex-officio member

secretary of the council. The main functions of the council, as designated by the Act, are

– (a) to scrutinise the accounts/budget of any panchayat body of any the three tiers within

the district in order to ensure that the expenditure made by it satisfies the norms of

propriety, rules and regulations, (b) to consider the audit reports of panchayats and to

examine the replies to such reports furnished by the respective panchayats, (c) to pursue

the matters relating to unsettled audit objections and send its observations to the

appropriate authorities for corrective action.

The State Finance Commission was constituted as per the constitutional mandate

in 1994. The Commission submitted its first report in November 1995. The state

government is bound by the constitution to set up such a Finance Commission and submit

an action taken report to the Legislative Assembly regarding the recommendations of the

SFC. So far three such Finance Commissions have been set up by the State Government.

Several new features were introduced to the Panchayat Act in 2003 to further

reduce concentration of power. Firstly, five Upa-Samitis have been constituted at the

21

Gram Panchayat level; their functions being similar to that of the Sthayee Samitis.

Secondly, provisions have been made so that opposition members are represented in each

Sthayee Samiti. Thirdly, Block Sansad and Zilla Sansad have been constituted as

accountability forums for Panchayat Samiti and Zilla Parishad. Finally, Gram Unnayan

Samitis were to be constituted by the Gram Sansad, and which were to be the executive

wing of the Gram Sansad and act as an extension arm of the Gram Panchayat but not a

different tier. In the Gram Unnayan Samity a provision was made to include members of

local civil society organisations, self-help-groups and significant educated members so

that the partisan nature of decision-making may be reduced.

In addition to these amendments to the provisions of the act, the Gram Panchayat

Administration Rules31 has recently been amended in 2004. The Accounts Rules for the

Gram Panchayat32 in substitution of the earlier rules framed in 1990, have been re-framed

in 2007. The West Bengal Panchayat (Panchayat Samiti Administration) Rules, 2008 has

been framed as well.

Thus on paper there has been quite a few policy changes aimed at devolution of

fund, function and functionaries to the PRIs. This is certainly the result of the good

intentions of some people working inside the government who would like to see changes

as per the 73rd amendment. This does not mean that that Government of West Bengal has

actually devolved power. The latest Finance Commission report33 has, for example, made

a substantial critique of the state of affairs as far as decentralization is concerned.

Regarding functions, it has observed:

3.11 The Cabinet decision of transferring the subjects to the three-tier Panchayats was to be given effect to by issuing appropriate notifications transferring such powers, functions and duties in the official gazette in terms of Section 207B of West Bengal Panchayat (Amendment) Act, 1994. Notwithstanding such repeated policy declarations, such formal notifications appear to have not been issued as yet. The Cabinet sub-committee also does not appear to have taken the follow up action. While it has been repeatedly announced that the plan budget of each department has been decomposed into State level and District level components, in reality, the same is yet to be undertaken.34

Similarly the conclusion is not charitable regarding devolution of funds either:

31 The West Bengal Panchayat (Gram Panchayat Administration) Rules, 200432 The West Bengal Panchayat (Gram Panchayat Accounts, Audit and Budget) Rules, 200733 Government of West Bengal, Report of the Third Finance Commission of West Bengal, Kolkata, 2008.34 Government of West Bengal, Report of the Third Finance Commission of West Bengal, 2008, p.23.

22

3.23 As for West Bengal, the fiscal system is heavily dominated by the State Government…the State Government raises 96 per cent of all revenues. Only about 6 per cent of total revenues of GPs is derived from Own Source of Revenue (OSR) and 94 per cent comes from grants and transfers, of which 70 per cent from Central Government and 24 per cent from State Government.35

Regarding functionaries, the Report has noted there the number of staffs in all three tiers

have gone up but the GPs still continues to have very little power over the staffs.

3.69 It, therefore, appears that even in the new revitalized structure of functionaries to be available to the three-tier Panchayats, powers and authority as required for any self-governing unit have not been endowed with the Panchayati Raj institutions. Number of functionaries, particularly with the GPs, is highly inadequate and even those functionaries are not under the control and authority of the GPs so far as their appointment, transfer and disciplinary control are concerned. In respect of PSs and ZPs also, the arrangement of placing the services of the line department officials with suitable ex-officio designation (the arrangement which has, in fact, not been fully given effect to) is not expected to help much since the Panchayat bodies will have hardly any control and authority over such functionaries.36

This last observation clearly reveals that there is still a tension between the PRIs on the one hand

and the administration on the other. This tension is explored in greater detail in the next section.

IV.II. Panchayats and Administration

As may be understood from the above section, the old colonial structure of

administration was continued during the Left Front period as well. Thus West Bengal

acquired a highly complicated structure of rural governance. On the one hand there was

the colonial style District Magistrate and Sub-divisional Officers and the line

departments. The post-colonial state added the structure of the Community Development

Block. The three-tier panchayats came as an addition to these structures and not as

something that replaced the old structure. Thus the task of development work in a district

became a highly complicated one with numerous players.

There is no detailed study which has looked into these institutional dynamics

within the system as it evolved during the eighties. However in 1992, two senior civil

servants, Nirmal Mukarji and D.Bandyopadhyay, at the request of the Government of

35 Government of West Bengal, Report of the Third Finance Commission of West Bengal, 2008.p.27.36 Government of West Bengal, Report of the Third Finance Commission of West Bengal, 2008, p.40.

23

West Bengal, went around the districts to understand how the panchayat system was

working. They found many problems. Consider the following comment as an example:

…the Panchayats have so far operated mainly in the field of development. There also, they have functioned more as implementing agencies of Union and State schemes than doing things on their own. Even as implementers of such schemes, they have had to depend on departmental staff outside their control. On the face of it they have resigned themselves to the situation, but below the surface there is great deal of dissatisfaction.37

In such a situation, the report continued, the Panchayats have taken up several extra-

developmental activities like mediating village level disputes. However the idea of the

panchayat as an institution of local self-government was not something that the panchayat

leaders were familiar with.38

The two civil servants found plenty of examples of conflict between the

departmental staff and the Panchayats. In case of Agriculture, for example, they found

that the Agriculture Development Officer (ADO)

…keeps his distance from the PS, his cooperation being available only by chance. A PS [Panchayat Samiti] Karmadhyakshya is unable to call meetings of the Krishi Sesh o Samabaya Sthayee Samiti [standing committee for agriculture, irrigation and cooperatives] because the Cooperative inspector, who is the secretary, is rarely available. Things are worse at GP level, where officials like the Agriculture Technical Assistant (KPS) and the Health Assistant largely stay away. Except for the vanishing tribe of the old faithfuls, the chowkidars, GPs have no field staff.39

The two civil servants noted that if Panchayats were becoming more and more important

as units of self-governance then this should have led to a decrease in the size of the

government machinery. The opposite seemed to be true. As per their calculations, in

1977-78 total revenue expenditure on the government machinery was Rs. 701 crores. By

1991-92, it had expanded to Rs. 5181 crores. Between 1980 and March 1991 government

staff increased by 1, 57,000. They commented:

It seems that the governmental machinery, far from diminishing, has expanded during the very period that the Panchayats have been in existence. The implication is that, whatever the rhetoric about the success of the Panchayats, the State Government has not felt under

37 Nirmal Mukarji and D. Bandyopadhyay, New Horizons for West Bengal Panchayats: A Report for the Government of West Bengal, Government of West Bengal, Department of Panchayats, 1993, p. 7.38 Nirmal Mukarji and D. Bandyopadhyay, New Horizons for West Bengal Panchayats: A Report for the Government of West Bengal, Government of West Bengal, Department of Panchayats, 1993, p. 7.39 Nirmal Mukarji and D. Bandyopadhyay, New Horizons for West Bengal Panchayats: A Report for the Government of West Bengal, Government of West Bengal, Department of Panchayats, 1993, p. 8.

24

compulsion to reduce either its functions or its staff, and consequently any claim that the Panchayats have a degree of autonomy is not sustainable.40

A little more than a decade later, in 2005, The Panchayat Department carried out a study

on the organizational issues of the Panchayats as part of the Strengthening Rural

Decentralisation programme in collaboration with Government of UK.41 The report made

the following four significant comments regarding the status of PRIs as its key findings:

1. PRIs in West Bengal are subject to sluggish and unpredictable devolution of funds.2. Long term policy planning and implementation by PRIs is absent.3. PRI offices at District and Block levels are understaffed. Existing staff has low skills

and capacity, with faulty work distribution leading to a portion of staff being underutilised. Some line departments are understaffed and under funded to the point of being redundant.

4. There are structural flaws in the PRI system due to an incomplete merger of the traditional bureaucratic set up and the Panchayat system of local government.42

The fourth point was elaborated further as follows:

a. The offices of the District Magistrate at district level, the Block Development Officer at block level and the various line departments continue to be the de facto centres of power in local government systems. The Zilla Parishad and the Panchayat Samiti are in comparison poorly staffed and funded and are inadequately equipped to monitor bureaucratic service delivery in rural areas.

b. There is role confusion between line departments and PRIs. Moreover, line department staff members are accountable to their parent offices and not to elected PRI representatives as their pay and terms of service lie outside PRI jurisdiction.

c. Conversely, elected Standing Committees/Sthayee Samitis lack the power and the capacity to fulfil their mandated roles, particularly the role of monitoring the line departments and bureaucracy. Elected representatives, at all tiers, displayed a lack of skills, procedural knowledge and monitoring capability. Most representatives “rubber stamp” decisions taken by PRI heads like the Sabhadipati and the Sabhapati.

d. There is a multiplicity of parallel bodies through which decisions are taken without consulting the Zilla Parishad/Panchayat Samiti/Gram Panchayat or their respective Standing Committees.

e. PRI powers and functions are strongly centralised to the District Magistrate/Sabhadipati at district level, Block Development Officer/Sabhapati at the block level and the Pradhan at the Gram panchayat level.43

40 Nirmal Mukarji and D. Bandyopadhyay, New Horizons for West Bengal Panchayats: A Report for the Government of West Bengal, Government of West Bengal, Department of Panchayats, 1993, pp. 21-22.41 Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Report on the Pilot Study on Organizational Issues, Government of West Bengal, 2005.42 Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Report on the Pilot Study on Organizational Issues, Government of West Bengal, 2005, Chapter 2, pp.5-7.43 Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Report on the Pilot Study on Organizational Issues, Government of West Bengal, 2005, Chapter 2, pp.5-7.

25

The study not only pointed out control by the district bureaucracy, it also pointed out

towards bureaucratization of the processes through which the PRI functioned. The report

noted that the ‘absence of a formal distribution duties combined with understaffing has

left the ZP office prone to duplication of processes.’44 One such example is the process

through which the ZP engineering section executes a community project by competitive

tender bid. Once a project is approved by a Standing Committee and endorsed by AEO-

ZP, the engineering section takes over the project after a contractor is selected through a

tender. What follows is a Kafkaesque nightmare involving 20 steps as is evident in the

box presented in the report45:

File: “Construction of brick road from Patiram to North Raipur” [NIT No: 19/03-04

S/L No: 3]

Stage Task Date

1 Resolution on project adopted in Purta SS meeting 23.10.03

2 Resolution note sheet prepared 5.11.03

3 Preparation of estimate by Assistant Engineer-ZP ?

4 Vetting of estimate by Executive Engineer-ZP 5.11.03

5 Approval of scheduled rate by Karmadhyaksha-Purta SS 5.11.03

6 Signature of AEO-ZP 6.11.03

7 AEO-ZP signs Administrative Order 6.11.03

8 Last date for submitting tender bids 9.2.04

9 Opening of tender box and preparing Comparative Statement 11.2.04

10 Tender Committee formation 26.2.04

11 Work Order issued by Executive Engineer-ZP 27.2.04

12 SAE submits bill on completion of work and on request of contractor 29.3.04

13 Note sheet prepared 30.3.04

14 Signature of Assistant Engineer-ZP 30.3.04

44 Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Report on the Pilot Study on Organizational Issues, Government of West Bengal, 2005, Chapter 6, p.49.45 Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Report on the Pilot Study on Organizational Issues, Government of West Bengal, 2005, Chapter 6, p.50.

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15 Signature of Executive Engineer-ZP 30.3.04

16 File handed to ZP Accountant 30.3.04

17 Note sheet prepared 31.3.04

18 Signature of ZP Secretary 31.3.04

19 Signature of AEO-ZP 31.3.04

20 Cheque issued by AEO-ZP 31.3.04

Total number of days 160

Two years later, another study of Gram Panchayats by Utpal Chakraborty, one of the

faculty members of the State Institute of Panchayats and Rural Development (SIPRD),

made the following ironic comment:

Gram Panchayats are presently over burdened with government orders and circulars. In most of the cases they are not properly maintained. On the other hand very few office bearers are able to decipher the contents of the orders.46

Chakraborty has also pointed out that the government officials who are responsible for

monitoring of the Gram Panchayats are either not performing or are not able to perform

their duties properly. For example, in course of his field visits, he found that the

Panchayat Audit and Accounts Officers (PAAO) are busier with other activities of the

Block than looking after Panchayat accounts. Annual audit reports hardly ever lead to

corrective measures from the Panchayat Samiti and the Block administration. In course of

his field visits he did not find any example of the relevant officers - PDO, PAAO, BDO,

SDO and DPRDO - ever visiting the Panchayats and providing valuable guidance and

monitoring their activities.47

46 Utpal Chakraborty, Gram Panchayats in Action: A study of Some Critical Issues, Panchayats & Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, 2007, p. 7.47 Utpal Chakraborty, Gram Panchayats in Action: A study of Some Critical Issues, Panchayats & Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, 2007, p.9.

27

It is not surprising therefore that there would a significant gap in the capacity of

the Panchayat functionaries. A study conducted by Panchayat Department on capacity

building issues had this to say regarding the capacity of the functionaries in 2004:

The field studies have revealed that most of the elected representatives, particularly those newly inducted into the system and most of the PRI employees as well as the Govt. employees functioning as members of Sthayee Samitis of ZPs & PSs and members of Upa-Samitis of GPs are not fully aware of the full structure, powers, functions, roles & responsibilities and inter-relationship of the 3-tier Panchayat system and of the accountability structure of the Panchayat system namely Gram Sansad, Gram Sabha, Block Sansad, Zilla Sansad and the District Council. Most of the elected members of the Sthayee Samitis of ZPs & PSs and Upa-Samitis of GPs are also not aware of their roles and responsibilities and as such cannot discharge their responsibilities satisfactorily.48

Thus, even though we do not have detailed study of three decades of relationship

between the Panchayats and the administration, the existing research clearly points

towards the fact that the Panchayats have had an uneasy relationship with the older

bureaucracy and have been to a large extent been dependent on them for funds as well as

guidance. The Panchayats have also increasingly become vulnerable to bureaucratization

of their own processes. While significant policy changes have been made and new

institutions have been created to improve the participation and transparency aspects of the

Panchayats, there has been a gap in development of the capacity of the functionaries to

perform their task adequately.

IV.III. Interface between the Party and the Panchayats

It has been mentioned earlier that around the time the Left Front Government came to

power, there was historic shift in its perceptions regarding the usefulness of the

Panchayats for fulfilling the agenda of the Front. West Bengal under LFG was also the

first state in India to introduce party based panchayats in all three-tiers. It is not surprising

therefore that the ‘Party’ would continue to play a significant role from behind in guiding

and controlling the elected representatives. This aspect of the Panchayats of West Bengal

has been fairly well-documented, although perhaps a comparison between Left ruled

48 Panchayat & Rural Development Department, Report on the Post-Design Study on Capacity Building of SRD, Government of West Bengal, 2004, p. 36.

28

Panchayats and those which have been traditionally ruled by Congress would have

explained better the peculiarities of Left intervention in the panchayats.

Harihar Bhattacharyya has noted a certain ambivalence in the stance on the

Panchayats taken in the Party documents of CPI(M).49 The CPI(M)’s West Bengal State

Committee in a document said in 1994 that the role of the Party shall be to provide

direction and guidance and direction (‘parichalona’ in Bengali). The document then goes

on to explain that ‘this does not mean acting at will. It means activation of Panchayats in

accordance with the principles and ideals of the party.’50 In course of time at each level of

the Panchayats, CPI(M) formed a Panchayat Sub-Committee which is the Party’s

‘Parichalan Committee’. Its activities have been defined as follows:

All elected party members of Panchayat Samiti and Zilla Parishad will act under the respective committees. Generally, the local and zonal committees of the party will look after the Gram Panchayat [and Panchayat] Samities respectively. The final decision at each level will be taken by the Parichalan Committee of the Party, although the elected members may offer recommendations.51

This is however followed by certain cautionary notes which reflect the ambivalence in

Party’s thinking. For example:

We must involve the people irrespective of all classes and creed in the activities of the Panchayat. The people of the area must be made aware of the fact that it is their money and work…If everything is concentrated in the hands of a few and people are kept in the dark then, even honest operation will also arouse suspicion in the eyes of the people…We cannot expect those who do not take part in decisions to carry out decisions. The process of decisions must start from the people.52

Bhattacharyya’s empirical investigations in the districts of Bardhaman and Hoogly, led

him to conclude that the decision of the Party, not the Panchayat members, is final and

this was justified by Party functionaries as a necessary step to win the class-struggle

against vested interest in the rural society.

That the party has the most important role to play in decision making was

observed by Atul Kohli in the late eighties and by Moitree Bhattacharyya in 2002. Kohli

observed that decisions at the Gram Panchayat were made in consultation with the Party

and the Party machinery supervised the activities of the Panchayats53. A decade later,

49 Harihar Bhattacharyya, Micro-foundations of Bengal Communism, Ajanta, New Delhi, 1998, pp.110-134. 50 Harihar Bhattacharyya, Micro-foundations of Bengal Communism, Ajanta, New Delhi, 1998, p.110.51 Harihar Bhattacharyya, Micro-foundations of Bengal Communism, Ajanta, New Delhi, 1998, p.111.52 Harihar Bhattacharyya, Micro-foundations of Bengal Communism, Ajanta, New Delhi, 1998, p.111.53 Atul Kohli, The state and poverty in India: The Politics of Reform, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987, chapter 3.

29

based on a field work done in 1997, Moitree Bhattacharyya also came to the same

conclusion. In the two Gram Panchayats that she studied, in one case 60% and in the

other case 90% of the respondents said that the decisions are taken by the Party

representatives.54 She has also shown that a provision was made in the 1994 Amendment

of the Panchayat Act [Section 213(A)] according to which no member can cast vote

against the wishes of the majority members of the Gram Panchayat elected from his

party.55 Thus it is not possible for any individual member belonging to a party to vote

differently from the other members of the same party, which in reality means that s/he

cannot rebel against the party dictat unless all the members from his/her party in the GP

stand united for that decision, which of course is almost impossible. A couple of years

later, a research team from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, found an interesting

term in the field – the ‘Pradhan Chalak’.56 This literally means the person who makes the

Pradhan move, referring to the invisible hand of the Party from behind. In another article

published in 2009 based on ethnographic study of two villages in Koch Bihar and Malda,

Rajarshi Dasgupta found a well-oiled CPI(M) ‘machinery’ running the show ‘adept in

formulating different strategies for different tiers of the panchayat system, calibrating

their rivalries.’57 Another micro-study published in the same year, by Manasendu Kundu,

has corroborated thesis of control of the Party over the Panchayats and said that the

boundary between the Party and the Panchayat is ‘ambiguous’.58

There is thus a clear consensus among scholars that the Party has dominated the

Panchayats. The more complicated question is what has been the consequence?

According to Moitree Bhattacharya, this has led to politicization of rural life and the

ordinary people of the villages try to stay away from the affairs of the Panchayats. She

has quoted one veteran CPI(M) leader which perhaps deserves to be quoted again:

54 Moitree Bhattacharya, Panchayati Raj in West Bengal: Democratic Decentralisation or Democratic Centralism, Manak, New Delhi, 2002, p.176. 55 Moitree Bhattacharya, Panchayati Raj in West Bengal: Democratic Decentralisation or Democratic Centralism, Manak, New Delhi, 2002, p.176. 56 Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, SRD Programme: Design of Purpose-level Indicators and Baseline Measurement in West Bengal Districts, Report submitted to Department for International Development, UK, 2006, p.129.57 Rajarshi Dasgupta, ‘The CPI (M) ‘Machinery’ in West Bengal: Two Village Narratives from Koch Bihar and Malda’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009.p.80.58 Manasendu Kundu, ‘Panchayati Raj or Party Raj? Understanding the Nature of Local Government in West Bengal’ in B.S. Baviskar and George Mathew (ed.) Inclusion and Exclusion in Local Governance: Field Studies from Rural India, Sage, New Delhi, 2009, p. 126.

30

In the initial years, i.e. late seventies and early eighties, the panchayats were more movement oriented, the tendency was to involve the mass of villagers into whatever activity it undertook. Although the party gave the leadership, common people were also part of it. It was the participation of people that enabled panchayats to deal so successfully with flood relief activities and rehabilitation works in 1978…In the later years, the nature of Panchayat politics changed – from movement politics to institutionalized politics. Now the panchayat have been reduced to mere institutions for implementing development activities.59

In course of her field work, she found very few respondents interested in the affairs of the

Panchayat and most of them felt alienated from the institution. This lack of interest was

also evident in the poor attendance in the gram sansads and gram sabhas, which has

remained a problem over the next decade as well.

In a recent essay, Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya has tried to explain the impact of the

strong grip of the Party in terms of a theoretical formulation called the ‘party-society’.60

Modifying the concept of ‘political society’ proposed by Partha Chatterjee61, he says that

in rural West Bengal ‘political parties tend to displace other competing channels of public

transaction – which made the rural situation ontologically different from the urban

political society.’62 Unlike other states in India, political parties transcend caste, religion

or ethnicity based organisations. As a result, all disputes, familial, social or cultural, takes

very little time to become partisan. This party-society has over the last three decades

displaced the older patron-client form of relationships. Bhattacharyya argues:

Land reform legislations and local government bodies (the panchayats) were the tools and the CPI(M) (as well as its peasant wing, the Krishak Sabha) was the primary agent to bring about this change. The new politics set new norms of transaction to which every political outfit – the ruling side as well as the opposition – had to conform, willingly or unwillingly. In this organizational grid … [the] political party was largely accepted as the chief mediator, the central conduit, in the settling of every village matter: private or public, individual or collective, familial or associational.63

Bhattacharyya does not think of the ‘party-society’ as simply a negative phenomenon. He

says that it played a very important role in democratizing rural politics in the early years

59 Moitree Bhattacharya, Panchayati Raj in West Bengal: Democratic Decentralisation or Democratic Centralism, Manak, New Delhi, 2002, pp. 183-84.

60 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Of Control and Factions: The Changing ‘Party-Society’ in Rural West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009.pp. 59-69.61 Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most parts of the World, Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2004.62 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Of Control and Factions: The Changing ‘Party-Society’ in Rural West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009.p.60. 63 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Of Control and Factions: The Changing ‘Party-Society’ in Rural West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009.p.68.

31

of LFG. It freed the poor from dependency on the exploitative rich landed families,

‘produced a governmental locality in the form of the village panchayat, and carried out

numerous measures that enabled the underprivileged and the marginal to realize host of

rights’64. Such positive impact of the early part of Left Front rule however did not last and

was replaced by concern for electoral victory only. This meant that social stasis proved to

be more alluring for CPI(M) than ‘the uncertainties of expanding the democratic space.’65

One significant impact of the party-society of course has been the remarkable

stability of Left Front over more than three decades. In a recent study of the reasons

behind such success, Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee and Abhirup

Sarkar have tried, on the basis of a survey of 2400 households spread in 88 villages of all

districts of the state except Calcutta and Darjeeling, to answer this phenomenon.66 On the

basis of their survey, which included a secret ballot regarding voting preferences, they

made the following observations. Firstly, there is a clear association between voting for

the Left and ‘having less land, less education or belonging to SC or ST groups’.

Secondly, ‘the likelihood of voting for the Left increased with benefits received from

programmes administered by previous Left dominated local governments.’ Benefits that

are recurring in nature (IRDP programmes, minikits, employment and relief programmes

etc) had a positive correlation with voting for the Left rather than benefits that are one-

time in nature (housing, supply of water, building of roads, provision for ration cards

etc.). In addition, informal help provided by GPs in overcoming difficulties in personal

and familial matters were positively associated with voting for the Left. Thirdly,

‘improvement in agricultural fortunes between 1978 and 2004 were significantly

associated with voting Left in Left dominated panchayats.’67 Having said this, they have

also found evidence of a ‘clientelist’ politics operating in rural society. For example, they

have found that attendance in political rallies tend to fetch more benefits for the

64 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Of Control and Factions: The Changing ‘Party-Society’ in Rural West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009.p.69. 65 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Of Control and Factions: The Changing ‘Party-Society’ in Rural West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009.p.69.66 Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Abhirup Sarkar, ‘Local Democracy and Clientelism: Implications for Political Stability in Rural West Bengal’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009, pp. 46-58.67 Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Abhirup Sarkar, ‘Local Democracy and Clientelism: Implications for Political Stability in Rural West Bengal’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009, p. 49.

32

households. Also the fact that recurring benefits from the GP as opposed to the one-time

benefits have more clear association with voting for the Left is also an indication of the

development of such clientelist politics. In addition there was also a gratitude factor –

Left rule has given the poor a sense of dignity which they did not have previously and

hence they have consistently voted for the Left. They study has also claimed that such

factors are much more important than the popularly believed idea that elections are

regularly rigged in order to win votes. A very small percentage of respondents said that

they faced trouble in voting.

We may note however that this study, or any other study for that matter, has not

discussed the other fairly obvious explanation – lack of strong opposition parties capable

of replacing the Left Front. There has been a steady erosion of Congress’s organizational

capacity and even resulting in the formation of All India Trinamool Congress under

Mamata Bannerjee, which has split the opposition vote whereas the Left Front had

managed to stay united. This factor perhaps needs to be taken into account especially if

one has to explain the rise of the opposition since the 2008 Panchayat election. In other

words, some of the explanations of the political stability have to be found through close

studies of the nitty-gritty of electoral politics rather than simply explaining it in terms of

the everyday politics of development. Congress during the 1980s and 1990s failed to

impress upon the electorate that the schemes from which they were benefiting were

coming from the Congress Government at the Centre and not from the Left run State

Government. The data presented by the study on seats won by the Left Front in Gram

Panchayats between 1978 and 2003, similarly shows interesting ups and downs which

perhaps do not reflect in the ultimate result as the opposition was not strong enough to

capitalize on them. According to the figure presented68, the Left had around 70% seats in

1978. This was followed by a sharp decline to about 60% in the next election in 1983. In

the next election it again went up to about 70%. Since then, interestingly, till 1998, there

has been a secular fall in share of seats to less than 60% and then again the percentage

went up to 70% in the 2003 elections and then (this is not shown in the figure) the

proportion was reduced to 49% in 2008 when the opposition was able to pick up

68 Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Abhirup Sarkar, ‘Local Democracy and Clientelism: Implications for Political Stability in Rural West Bengal’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009, p. 47.

33

significant issues and stand united. So between 1988 and 1998 the Left’s fortune was

falling but there is no clear explanation available as to why it then went up quite

spectacularly. On the other hand there is no clear explanation either as to why in 1983 the

Left’s share of the seats actually went down from that of 1978 even though conventional

wisdom tells us that the Left performed very well in these years. A detailed political

history of the Panchayats unfortunately is yet to be written.

IV.IV. People’s Participation and Planning from Below

It has been mentioned in the above section that Harihar Bhattacharyya traced a certain

ambivalence within the CPI(M)’s position regarding the Panchayats. On the one hand

there were firm directives that the Party would be controlling the representatives and on

the other hand there was also a discourse on involving the people and the people taking

initiatives. Hence along with the formation of what Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya calls

‘party-society’ we also have narrative of participation and planning from below in the

three decades of Left Front rule.

Participation is a term that however requires certain amount of clarification. We

shall try to understand the term in terms of (a) participation of the electorate as voters (b)

participation of poor and marginalized and the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and

Women in the Panchayats as members, (c) participation in the Gram Sansad and Gram

Sabha meetings, (d) participation of people in decision making, and (e) participation in

planning from below. Each may be seen as a progressively higher level of participation in

the Panchayati Raj system.

(a) Participation of the electorate as voters: Surya Kanta Mishra, Minister in Charge

for Panchayats and Rural Development till recently, has quite understandably proudly

presented data on Panchayat elections in his book Sreni Drishtibhongitey Panchayat.69

He said that while in the ‘bourgeois’ countries it is rare to see even 50% voters turnout in

their election, in case of the Panchayat elections of 1993 and 1998 the voter turnout has

been more than 80%.70 This was also corroborated by a study by Girish Kumar and 69 Surya Kanta Mishra, Sreni Drishtibhongitey Panchayat (Panchayat through the Class Perespective), National Book Agency, Calcutta, 1998, pp. 47-58. 70 Surya Kanta Mishra, Sreni Drishtibhongitey Panchayat (Panchayat through the Class Perespective), National Book Agency, Calcutta, 1998, pp. 49-50.

34

Budhadeb Ghosh.71 We do not have any study which has looked into the voting data for

the entire Left Front period, but generally speaking, it can be safely said that the voters’

turnout has been high. The study by Pranab Bardhan et al mentioned earlier has also

shown that the electorate have had very few complains for electoral malpractice.

(b) Participation of poor and marginalized as members: The West Bengal Human

Development Report for 2004 (henceforth WBHDR) has quoted three studies to compile

a profile of the representatives of the PRIs between 1978 and 1993.72 The data is as

follows:

Occupational Distribution of Panchayat Members73

Occupation 1978-83 83-88 88-93

1 Landless agricultural

workers

4.8 3.4 16.8

2 Bargadars 1.8 2.2 11.3

Landless agri population

(1+2)

6.6. 5.6 28.11

3. Cultivators below three

acres

21.8 - }

Landless and marginal

peasants (1-3)

- }30.17

4. Cultivators (2-5 acres) 14.3 - }

Landless and Small

peasants (1-4)

42.7 - 58.3

5. Cultivators (5-8 acres) 6.6. - }

6. Cultivators (8-10 acres) 4.1 - }28.5

71 Girish Kumar and Budhadeb Ghosh, West Bengal Panchayat Elections 1993: A Study in Participation, Institute of Social Sciences and Concept, New Delhi, 1996.72 Government of West Bengal, West Bengal Human Development Report, Calcutta, 2004, p. 49.73 1978-83 data is from a study conducted by the economic and planning section of the Development and Planning Department of Government of West Bengal. Sample consisted of 100 Gram Panchayats. 1983-88 data is from a study conducted by Panchayat Department of Government of West Bengal. Sample consisted of 200 Gram Panchayats. 1988-93 data from survey by G.K. Lieten. Sample consists of 8 Gram Panchayats in Birbhum District. It may be noted that the sample is too small in case of the 1988-93 data to arrive at definite conclusions for the state.

35

7. Cultivators (above 10 acres) 4 - -

Total owner cultivators (3

to 7)

50.7 51.7 58.6

8. Non agri workers 3.9 2.3 2.4

9. Unemployed 7.5 14.7 -

10. Student 0.6 0.47 -

11. Teachers 14.0 15.3 7.9

12. Doctors 1.1 0.23 -

13. Shop owners 1.4 6.7 9.4

14. Others 14.2 3.0 1.57

Total non-agri (8to 14) 31.3 25.7 18.9

Total 100.00 100.00 100.00

The WBHDR says that landless and poor peasants constituted nearly 43% of the gram

panchayat members and this represents a break from the usual pattern in India where the

rural elite have captured the Panchayats. The survey by Centre for Studies in Social

Sciences, conducted on GP members elected for the term 2003-08, based on a sample 0f

162 GPs in all districts of the state, however shows a more complicated picture at the

beginning of the twenty first century. The report concluded:

…more than 25 per cent of GP members in most districts were landowning agriculturists, the proportion going up to 79.8 per cent in Purulia and 68.9 per cent in Uttar Dinajpur. However, the proportion was as low as 4.2 per cent in Howrah, 16.2 per cent in Birbhum and 22.4 per cent in Hooghly. In Dakshin Dinajpur and Birbhum, there were a significant proportion of GP members who were agricultural labourers. Interestingly, as much as 23.8 per cent of GP members in Jalpaiguri were in private employment, i.e. employed as workers in tea gardens. In North 24-Parganas and in Purba Midnapore, more than 10 per cent of GP members were in government employment. Also interesting is the fact that in as many as eight districts, more than 10 per cent of GP members were in some sort of business activity as their profession, the proportion being as high as 22.7 per cent in Howrah.74

It is unfortunately not possible to compare the data that has been presented in the

WBHDR on 1978 and the CSSSC data presented on 2003 as sample sizes are different

and also because the data presented by CSSSC is disaggregated into districts and does not

74 Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, SRD Programme: Design of Purpose-level Indicators and Baseline Measurement in West Bengal Districts, Report submitted to Department for International Development, UK, 2006, p.125.

36

show any state wide average. Also the CSSSC data does not divide the ‘landowning

agriculturists’ according to the size of their holding. We can perhaps hazard one

generalization which is in agreement with the overall thesis of WBHDR that there has

been a strong participation of the poorer sections of the society. However, in all

probability, and this is not mentioned by the WBHDR, the agricultural labourers have not

been significantly represented in the GPs as members. So in terms of participation as

members, the small peasant has been more dominant than the agricultural labourers.

Regarding participation by Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes and OBCs and on

participation of women also we have only the CSSSC study which gives data on a large

scale. The data is presented below75:

Distribution of GP Members by Caste 2003-08

DISTRICT SC ST OBC GENERAL

MALDA 25.00 2.36 1.89 70.75

PURULIA 23.08 36.69 15.38 24.85

MURSHIDABAD 12.00 0.75 0.25 87.00

BIRBHUM 46.05 5.70 1.32 46.93

UTTAR

DINAJPUR

28.15 1.48 3.70 66.67

DAKSHIN

DINAJPUR

33.91 32.17 4.35 29.57

COOCH BEHAR 67.96 0.00 5.83 26.21

BANKURA 37.07 25.00 8.62 29.31

JALPAIGURI 32.80 35.20 1.60 30.40

NADIA 49.33 3.33 12.67 34.67

24 PARGANAS

(S)

53.52 2.73 1.17 42.58

PURBA 27.13 0.00 3.72 69.15

75 Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, SRD Programme: Design of Purpose-level Indicators and Baseline Measurement in West Bengal Districts, Report submitted to Department for International Development, UK, 2006, p. 123

37

MIDNAPORE

PASCHIM

MIDANPORE

28.71 22.97 3.83 44.50

HOOGHLY 40.74 3.09 1.85 54.32

BURDWAN 35.71 8.57 1.90 53.81

DARJEELING 26.67 66.67 0.00 6.67

24 PARGANAS

(N)

41.51 3.77 1.26 53.46

HOWRAH 28.68 0.00 5.43 65.89

The data reveals that the participation of the SCs, STs and OBCs is quite significant in all

districts except where there is very little ST population.

For participation of women also we only have the CSSC data for 2003-2008 that

is giving us a picture on the basis of a significant sample size. The data presented is as

follows76:

Distribution of GP Members by Gender 2003-2008

DISTRICT Male Female

MALDA 60.85 39.15

PURBA MIDNAPUR 62.16 37.84

MURSHIDABAD 61.65 38.35

BIRBHUM 62.56 37.44

UTTAR DINAJPUR 66.67 33.33

DAKSHIN DINAJPUR 67.83 32.17

COOCH BEHAR 63.11 36.89

PURULIA 50.00 50.00

76 Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, SRD Programme: Design of Purpose-level Indicators and Baseline Measurement in West Bengal Districts, Report submitted to Department for International Development, UK, 2006, p. 123

38

JALPAIGURI 61.29 38.71

NADIA 60.93 39.07

24 PARGANAS (S) 60.94 39.06

PASCHIM MIDNAPUR 62.68 37.32

HOWRAH 60.16 39.84

BANKURA 62.28 37.72

BURDWAN 61.54 38.46

DARJEELING 73.33 26.67

24 PARGANAS (N) 59.87 40.13

HOOGHLY 62.96 37.04

The data clearly shows that at least towards the end of our period women were becoming

representatives as per the requirements set by the 73rd Amendment and in some cases

their percentage is higher than the minimum required one. However statistic alone does

not tell the complete story. This is because the women representatives are sometimes

dictated from behind by their male family members. A study conducted by Raghabendra

Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo observed that 43% of their sample said that they were

being helped by their husbands, and ‘the interviewers are more likely to find the women

hesitant, they are more likely to acknowledge that they did not know how the GP

functioned before being elected and that they do not intend to run again’.77 Another study

conducted by Suparna Ganguly and Sonali Chakravarti Bannerjee in 2006-07 based on a

sample of 260 women representatives in 32 Gram Panchayats found that:

…84.23 per cent of the women Panchayat members under study have been playing their maiden innings in the current term. It is evident that the women who had earlier worked in the Panchayat bodies have mostly disappeared from the public arena. A fresh set of women members is evolving (due to compulsion of reservation) through every Panchayat election in every five years. But they are proving to be a perishable breed, in the male-dominated political culture of ours.78

77 Ragahbendra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo, ‘Impact of Reservation in Panchayati Raj: Evidence from a nationwide randomized experiment’ in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIX No 9, February 28 – March 5, 2004, p. 983. 78 Suparna Ganguly and Sonali Chakravarti Bannerjee, ‘Women in Gram Panchayats’ in Alok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Satyabrata Chakraborty, Apurba Kumar Mukhopadhyay (ed) Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Institutional Capabilities and Developmental Interventions, Panchayat & Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, vol.1, p. 432.

39

Moreover the study also said that ‘68 per cent of the women respondents in the 32

"mixed" GPs have never placed any demand in the general meetings at the GP level’79.

Chattopadhyay and Duflo have presented a more positive picture of the impact of

reservation for women and have noted some difference in the way women heads

prioritize development work (for example water over roads) and have also noted that

representation of women in gram sansad tend to go up when the GP is headed by

women.80 But there is a general agreement between the two studies regarding support

from husbands and the fact that many of the women do not intend to become Pradhans in

the next election.

(c) Participation in the Gram Sansad and Gram Sabha meetings: The WBHDR has

acknowledged that attendance in gram sansad meetings has been low and has been

declining over the years.81 A study of gram sansad meetings in 20 sansads of 3 districts

by Maitreesh Ghatak and Maitreya Ghatak82 found the average attendance to be about

12%. Although once again detailed data is not available in any existing research, there

seems to be a consensus that the Gram Sansad meetings are yet to become truly

democratic forums where the poor can freely voice their opinion. The CSSSC study also

came to the same conclusion:

A majority of our respondents in most districts said that they never attend the meetings of the Gram Sansad. This figure is as high as 75.66 per cent in Murshidabad. On the other hand, the absentee rate was the lowest in the plains region of Darjeeling and in Paschim and Purba Midnapore. Most people said that they were unable to attend because they were not informed of the meeting (in Uttar Dinajpur, Malda and Murshidabad) or the timing of the meeting was inconvenient (most other districts). It is also significant that except in Dakshin Dinajpur and Purba Midnapore, only a small proportion of people actually know that there are two meetings of the Sansad every year.83

79 Suparna Ganguly and Sonali Chakravarti Bannerjee, ‘Women in Gram Panchayats’ in Alok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Satyabrata Chakraborty, Apurba Kumar Mukhopadhyay (ed) Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Institutional Capabilities and Developmental Interventions, Panchayat & Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, vol.1, p. 437.80 Ragahbendra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo, ‘Impact of Reservation in Panchayati Raj: Evidence from a nationwide randomized experiment’ in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIX No 9, February 28 – March 5, 2004, p. 982.81 Government of West Bengal, West Bengal Human Development Report, Calcutta, 2004, p.67.82 Maitreesh Ghatak and Maitreya Ghatak, ‘Recent Reforms in the Panchayat System of West Bengal: Towards Greater Participatory Governance?’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.XXXVIINo.1. January 5-11, 2002, p. 50.83 Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, SRD Programme: Design of Purpose-level Indicators and Baseline Measurement in West Bengal Districts, Report submitted to Department for International Development, UK, 2006, p. 148.

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Thus, while we can say that the record of the Left Front is quite impressive when comes

to voting percentage and percentage of representatives from disadvantaged sections of the

society (SC, ST, women), the performance is less than impressive when it comes to their

participation in the Gram Sansad where people actually have a chance to review and

contribute to the workings of their gram panchayat. Let us now consider the fourth level

of participation and ask how far the people are able to contribute to the decisions made in

the Gram Sansad and how far the Gram Panchayats are responsive to the demands that

are raised in the Gram Sansad.

(d) Participation of people in decision making of the GP: The CSSSC study team asked

the respondents whether beneficiary lists are modified as per the deliberations made at

the Gram Sansad meetings. Their conclusion is as follows:

We asked the GP functionaries whether beneficiary lists were modified at the Gram Samsad meetings after soliciting the views of the residents. Only in seven districts did more than 30 per cent of the respondents say that this was done. Most of the people said that beneficiary lists are prepared by GP leaders beforehand and the Samsad meetings are not generally seen as events where these lists can be seriously discussed.84

Another study, conducted by Debjani Sengupta and Dilip Ghosh85, in 2006-07, roughly

came to the same conclusion:

In gram sansad meetings the experience is that common people coming to the meetings mostly do not speak out. The gram panchayats also do not feel encouraged to make these people involved with the process. As illustration, the placing of income-expenditure report, budget of the gram panchayat and the latest report on the audit of the accounts of the gram panchayat can be cited. These important documents are rarely shared with the people.

Regarding the demands people make in the gram sansads the study made the following

conclusion:

In gram sansad meetings people raise many demands in the context of priorities in the local area...No reflection of the demands from gram sansads is generally made in the upa samiti meetings. The general body of the gram panchayat directly deals with these demands and takes necessary decisions. The role of upa samitis came only in

84 Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, SRD Programme: Design of Purpose-level Indicators and Baseline Measurement in West Bengal Districts, Report submitted to Department for International Development, UK, 2006, p.150. Since 2008 the beneficiary lists of schemes are computer generated from the Rural Household Survey data by the Panchayat Department and hence this has further eroded the role of the Gram Sansad. 85 Debjani Sengupta and Dilip Ghosh, ‘A study of the Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Their responsiveness to demands made at the Gram Sansad’ in Alok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Satyabrata Chakraborty, Apurba Kumar Mukhopadhyay (ed) Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Institutional Capabilities and Developmental Interventions, Panchayat & Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, vol.1, p.394.

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implementation stage. Though in the frame-work of law it is stated that upa samiti will prepare budget and plan for the subjects entrusted, in practice this is yet to be followed. In course of dialogue with the coordinators (sanchalaks) of the upa samitis, it was felt that they were mostly not aware of the demands raised in different gram sansads of the gram panchayat.86

Among the respondents they interviewed, 45.6% of the respondents felt that the decisions

taken in the Gram Sansad meetings were implemented. While 81.4% stated that they

raised demand in the Gram Sansad meetings, only 27.4% were of opinion that their

demands were redressed.87 It is not difficult to see therefore why the enthusiasm

regarding the Gram Sansad meetings are falling over the years. The voice of the people

clearly hardly ever gets reflected in the decisions made by the Gram Panchayats. It may

be mentioned here sometimes the GPs also do not function on their own and merely

implement schemes that are sent to them from above. A study by the Institute of Social

Sciences on the utilization untied fund by the Gram Panchayats, for example, has shown

that GPs have spent less from the Untied Funds over which they have greater control than

from the schematic funds they have received from above.88

We now proceed to discuss the fifth and highest layer of people’s participation,

where they plan for themselves.

(e) Planning from Below: CPI(M) in Kerala under the leadership of E.M.S.

Namboodiripad carried out the first state-wide campaign on planning from below, which

has become justifiably famous all over the world. The history of planning from below in

West Bengal actually goes back to the early eighties and was a first in case of India.

According to the WBHDR the districts of Midnapore and Bardhaman performed quite

well but all districts were not equally good. Unlike in Kerala, the process did not receive 86 Debjani Sengupta and Dilip Ghosh, ‘A study of the Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Their responsiveness to demands made at the Gram Sansad’ in Alok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Satyabrata Chakraborty, Apurba Kumar Mukhopadhyay (ed) Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Institutional Capabilities and Developmental Interventions, Panchayat & Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, vol.1, p.379.87 Debjani Sengupta and Dilip Ghosh, ‘A study of the Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Their responsiveness to demands made at the Gram Sansad’ in Alok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Satyabrata Chakraborty, Apurba Kumar Mukhopadhyay (ed) Gram Panchayats in West Bengal: Institutional Capabilities and Developmental Interventions, Panchayat & Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, vol.1, p.398.88 Institute of Social Sciences, A study on Utilisation of Untied Funds by the Gram Panchayats in West Bengal, Report submitted to Panchayats and Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, 2007, p. 35.

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wholehearted support from the Party or the Government. WBHDR has accepted that from

1988 onwards there was a rollback and by mid-nineties most of the districts stopped the

process.89 We do not have any systematic research on the politics behind this rollback.

Since mid-nineties there was another effort at doing planning from below in 40 Blocks of

the state, which was known as ‘Convergent Community Action’ (CCA). What is

important to remember here is that at no stage did CCA become a people’s campaign for

planning like it did in case of Kerala. It was largely carried out by certain enthusiastic

development practitioners, civil servants at various levels and some political persons but

the Left Front did not give it the kind of big push that was required to make it a success

even in these 40 blocks. We do not have any systematic study of the experience of CCA

especially the political side of it. In 2004, Panchayat and Rural Development Department

carried out a study to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the planning process in 18

GPs of 13 Blocks in 5 districts.90 The report acknowledged a gap in terms of ‘social

acceptance’ where it noted that ‘participation is still to be assured in decision making and

transparency is needed’91.

The CCA process at this stage was largely abandoned and was replaced by

another effort at planning from below which was part of the Strenghtening Rural

Decentralisation programme which was initiated in November 2005 after a piloting in 6

Gram Panchayats earlier. With support from British Government initially it was started

in 304 GPs in 6 backward districts of Purulia, Birbhum, Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur,

Murshidabad and Malda and later has been scaled up to about 800 GPs in 12 districts.

This effort was largely driven by the contractual project staff and the civil servants

responsible for the project and was restricted to the Gram Unnayan Samity and Gram

Panchayat level and had no integration with the planning process at the Block and

District level. The Block and District mainstream administration largely remained aloof

from the process. More importantly, neither the Left parties, nor the opposition parties

took any active interest in the process although at the grass-root level some political

89 Government of West Bengal, West Bengal Human Development Report, Calcutta, 2004, p.5590 Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, Evaluation of Panchayat Planning and Implementation Experience in West Bengal, 2005.91 Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Government of West Bengal, Evaluation of Panchayat Planning and Implementation Experience in West Bengal, 2005. pp. 7-10.

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leaders were involved. At best the political parties did not create any hindrance.

However, in spite of the best efforts of the project staff, it was a far cry from the people’s

campaign of Kerala. Left Front was at this stage, following the victory in the 2006

Assembly Elections, more interested in industrialisation through private corporate capital.

Strengthening participation of people through planning from below was less of a priority.

This had disastrous consequences for the Left in the next Panchayat elections in 2008 and

Lok Sabha elections in 2009.

To sum this section therefore we may say that the during the Left Front period

‘participation’ in the form of voting percentage and representation of SC, ST and women

as elected representatives has been quite healthy. Higher levels of participation, such as

participation in Gram Sansad meetings, participation in the decision making process of

the GP and participation in planning from below has not been as impressive as perhaps it

could have been.

We now move on to a discussion on the literature regarding the role of the

Panchayats in poverty reduction.

IV.V. Panchayats and Poverty Reduction

Any analysis of poverty reduction by the Panchayats has to cope with certain

methodological problems. While it is possible to say how far poverty has decreased

during the Left Front period, it is difficult to ascertain exactly how far this is because of

the role played by the Panchayats. All factors which affect poverty are not in control of

the panchayats but in the hands of departments specializing in agriculture, health or

education. There is also a lack of systematic official data trying to track the impact of the

tied and untied funds routed through the panchayats over the last three decades. Given

this complexity, we may take note of some of the studies which have addressed the issue.

The best defense of the achievements LFG has been recently presented by two

civil servants of the Panchayats Department, Dr. M.N. Roy and Dilip Ghosh.92 Roy and

Ghosh have argued that if one comparer the percentage of population below poverty line

92 Dr. M.N. Roy and Dilip Ghosh, ‘Daridro o Panchayat: Paschimbanger Obhigyota’ in Panchayatiraj, June 2008, pp. 13-25.

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in 1973-74 with 2004-05 then one can see the following decrease in percentage of

population below poverty line in case of West Bengal and India:

Decline of Poverty in India and West Bengal 1973-04 – 2004-05

(in percentage)

Year India West Bengal

1973-74 55.4 73.2

2004-05 28.3 28.6

Thus 44.6% of the population of West Bengal went above the poverty line during this

time, a percentage that is only marginally lower to that of Kerala which stood at 46.00%.

In all-India terms this was the second best performance after Kerala. The all-India

average is 28.1%. Thus the two states where Panchayati Raj has been strongly

implemented the percentage of poverty reduction has been the highest.

Regarding the role of the Panchayats in this story of poverty reduction, the

authors pointed out the following areas – (a) creation of rural infrastructure through

various poverty alleviation programmes, (b) distribution of minikits for farmers, (c)

increase in wages of agricultural labourers from 1980 onwards (d) improvement of

drought prone areas and mitigation of floods, (e) provision of rural housing for the BPL

category, (f) various social security programmes for the BPL families. The authors have

also provided detailed data on fund flow during the 8 th, 9th and 10th Five-Year Plan

periods and the achievements from such fund flow. To this we can perhaps add that at

least in late 1980s G.K. Lieten had observed in an ethnographic study carried out in

Birbhum district that LFG’s intervention in the rural society through land reform and

Panchayti Raj had led to a new sense of dignity among the poor peasantry vis-à-vis the

rural rich.93

How far were the funds to which Roy and Ghosh had referred to able to reach the

targeted population? Was there widespread leakage and did the elite capture the funds

that were meant for the poor? In a study of 89 villages spread over 15 districts, Pranab 93 G.K. Lieten, Continuity and Change in Rural West Bengal Sage, New Delhi, 1992.

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Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee have tried to find answers to these questions94. Based on a

data covering the period from late seventies to late nineties, the authors concluded that

‘average levels of targeting and land reform effort was quite high’ although land that was

distributed was only about 3-8 per cent of cultivable land and one in seven households

were benefited from the programme. Leakage of IRDP programmes was minimal (4%)

and 87% of the minikits went to the landless and small land-owning households. Thus,

‘the West Bengal panchayats directed a significant portion of benefits of different

developmental and poverty alleviation programmes to the poor’.95 Sunil Sengupta and

Haris Gazdar, based on their analysis in early 1990s came to the same conclusion

regarding targeting of IRDP schemes. In their opinion, ‘most beneficiaries were from the

target group, and transaction costs of obtaining the loan were relatively small. This was in

contrast to other parts of India where the beneficiaries were often the well-off relatives of

panchayat officials, and intended target groups faced high transactions cost including the

bribing of officials.’96 On the other hand Ross Mallick97 has argued on the basis of a

Government of India report 98 and an essay by Madhura Swaminathan99 that there was no

significant difference between other states and West Bengal.

The overall positive assessment by Bardhan and Mookherjee, however, according

to the authors themselves needs to be qualified in some important respects. The authors

‘consistently found that targeting performance was poorer when the land distribution

became less equal, the poor was less literate, when there was major low caste households,

and local elections were less contested.’100 Moreover, ‘political biases were more

94 Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee, ‘Poverty Alleviation Efforts of Panchayats in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIX No. 9, February 28-March 5, 2004. pp. 965-973. 95 Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee, ‘Poverty Alleviation Efforts of Panchayats in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIX No. 9, February 28-March 5, 2004. p. 972.96 Sunil Sengupta and Haris Gazdar, ‘Agrarian Politics and Rural Development in West Bengal’ in Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (ed.) Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives, OUP, New Delhi, 1996, pp. 156-57.97 Ross Mallick, Development Policies of a Communist Government: West Bengal Since 1977, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 148.98 Government of India, Department of Rural Development, Ministry of Agriculture, Concurrent Evaluation of IRDP: The Main Findings of the Survey for January 1987-December 1987, New Delhi, 1988.99 Madhura Swaminathan, ‘Village Level Implementation of IRDP: Comparison of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu’, Economic and Political Weekly, March 31, 1990, p. A-25.100 Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee, ‘Poverty Alleviation Efforts of Panchayats in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIX No. 9, February 28-March 5, 2004. p. 972.

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significant in the allocation of resources across villages, rather than within villages’101. In

other words, where villagers were of low caste and lacked literacy they tended to lose out

from the benefits of the panchayats are they were not able to voice their demands

adequately. Similarly absence of political competition meant that the panchayats were

less scared of favouring their own supporters. Finally, the targeting by the Gram

Panchayats was probably much better than the targeting of the upper two-tiers.

The discourse on poverty in West Bengal needs to be qualified in three other

important ways. Firstly, although there is no significant study on this, the Left Front

Government was not able to arrest the regional imbalance that had emerged during the

Congress era. In other words, the rural areas of the district adjoining Calcutta are in

general much more prosperous that the districts in the north and the dry regions of the

west. Some evidence of this is presented in the WBHDR. According to a table presented

in the report based on NSSO 55th round (1999-2000), we can see wide variation in the

rural poverty ratio of the districts102:

Poverty Ratio of Different Districts (1999-2000)

District Poverty ratio (in percentage)

1 Darjeeling 19.66

2 Jalpaiguri 35.73

3 Koch Bihar 25.62

4 Dinajpur 27.61

5 Malda 35.40

6 Murshidabad 46.12

7 Birbhum 49.37

8 Bardhaman 18.99

9 Nadia 28.35

10 North 24 Parganas 14.41

11 Hugli 20.43

12 Bankura 59.62

13 Purulia 78 .72

14 Medinipur 19.83

101 Pranab Bardhan and Dilip Mookherjee, ‘Poverty Alleviation Efforts of Panchayats in West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIX No. 9, February 28-March 5, 2004. p. 972.102 Government of West Bengal, West Bengal Human Development Report, Calcutta, 2004, p.80.

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15 Haora 07.63

16 South 24 Parganas 26.86

It can be seen that whereas a district like Bardhaman has a poverty ratio of 18.99, the

ratio is as high as 78.72 for Purulia, both interestingly, consistently ruled by the Left.

Secondly, in 2004, the Government itself published a list of 4612 villages which

were termed as ‘backward villages’ based on the proxy indicators (a) female literacy rate

less than 30% and (b) percentage of marginal workers plus non-workers greater than

60%. A study conducted in 2006-07, with a sample of 92 villages in 7 districts found a

rather sad picture.103 The survey discovered a population that has not benefited from any

development initiative. Significantly a very high proportion of the population was from

the Scheduled Tribes. Also a significant 20% of the 3815 respondents said that they had

no faith in the Panchayats. By plotting the Blocks which have at least 10 such backward

villages, it was found that there was distinct pattern to it – they formed a big red patch to

the west of the state. It is perhaps not a coincidence that this is the area that is witnessing

the maximum amount of Maoist violence in recent times.

Thirdly, based on the NSSO 61st round data the state government has accepted

that 9% of the population of the state does not get adequate food.104 This corroborated the

findings of the Rural Household Survey that 16.5% of the population finds it difficult to

arrange two meals a day throughout the year. A programme called SAHAY has been

since then launched to address the problem but implementation has been less than

impressive.

Thus one can perhaps say that the impact of the panchayats on poverty has been a

positive one but there are substantial dark spots within this bright story. How far LFG

would be able to remove them would perhaps decide its political future.

IV. VII. Panchayats and Changing Patterns of Rural Class Structure in West Bengal

103 Dilip Ghosh, Prabhat Datta, Ajay Bhattacharyya, Dipankar Sinha and Debraj Bhattacharya, The Backward Villages of West Bengal: An Exploratory Study, Panchayats and Rural Development, Government of West Bengal, 2007. 104wbprd.gov.in/.../Sahay/Policy%20Guildeline%20for%20Sahay/Policy%20Guidelines%20of%20SAHAY.doc, checked on 04.01.10

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We conclude the discussion on Panchayati Raj and the Left Front by trying to address a

question that is relevant regarding any historical assessment of the Left Front itself – did

LFG manage to create any transformation of rural class-structure in West Bengal through

its programmes over the last three decades? Suryakanta Mishra makes the claim that this

has been the case.105 Scholars such as G.K. Lieten have argued that there has been a

fundamental transformation in the sense that the poor are no more afraid of the ‘dapot’

(domination) of the rural rich.106 There cannot perhaps be any doubt that the kind of

zamindar/jotdar domination that was found in the pre-Left Front period had disappeared

to a large extent by the end of 1980s.

The more significant question is who therefore became powerful in the rural areas

as the dominant class? N. Mukarji and D. Bandyopadhyay pointed out in their report in

1993 that the ‘Panchayats brought in a middle-category of society into key positions,

many of them school teachers…power has yet to travel to the lower levels.’107 A similar

conclusion was reached by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya108 and Aril Engelsen Rudd109 – the

rise of CPI (M) also saw the increase in power of the teachers in the rural society.

Bhattacharyya further argued that CPI (M) leaders coming from the middle-peasantry and

the school teachers excelled in a certain form of ‘politics of middleness’ i.e. ‘a consensus

evoking unifying politics of mediation between several sectional interests’. In other

words, what CPI (M) practiced through the Panchayats was not a classical class-struggle

on behalf of the rural proletariat but rather a certain kind of mediatory role with the key

objective of winning in elections and staying in power. Roughly similar argument was

made by Dipankar Basu in 2001110. Basu echoed what Ross Mallick111 had said earlier -

105 Surya Kanta Mishra, Sreni Drishtibhongitey Panchayat (Panchayat through the Class Perspective), National Book Agency, Calcutta, 1998, pp. 65-71.106 G.K. Lieten, Continuity and Change in Rural West Bengal Sage, New Delhi, 1992.107 Nirmal Mukarji and D. Bandyopadhyay, New Horizons for West Bengal Panchayats: A Report for the Government of West Bengal, Government of West Bengal, Department of Panchayats, 1993, pp. 38-39.108 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Politics of Middleness: The Changing Character of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Rural West Bengal’ in Ben Rogaly, Barbara Harriss-White and Sugata Bose (ed.) Sonar Bangla: Agricultural Change in Rural West Bengal and Bangladesh, Sage, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 279-300.109 Arild Engelsen Rudd, ‘From Untouchable to Communist: Wealth, Power and Status among supporters of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Rural West Bengal’ in Ben Rogaly, Barbara Harriss-White and Sugata Bose (ed.) Sonar Bangla: Agricultural Change in Rural West Bengal and Bangladesh, Sage, New Delhi, 1999, pp. 253-278.110 Dipankar Basu, ‘Political Economy of ‘Middleness’: Behind Rural Violence in West Bengal’ in Economic and Political Weekly, April 21, 2001, pp. 1333-1344.111 Ross Mallick, Development Policies of a Communist Government: West Bengal since 1977, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 149.

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through CPI (M) and the Panchayats the rural middle class consolidated its position at the

expense of the landless. Mallick has also quoted a field study by Ranjit Kumar Gupta

which claims that ‘Socially the leftist leadership in rural areas is connected to the Rural

Power Structure by Kinship and affinity: they were no strangers elevated to power. Often

the family struggle took a political shape and often it was within the Rural Power elite a

struggle for power between two relatives.’112 Barbara Harriss through her work on the

agricultural markets have commented that many of the erstwhile elite have continued to

remain powerful through their control of the rural markets.113

We can perhaps conclude on the basis of such studies that by mid-nineties Left

Front achieved a partial shift in rural power structure towards poorer sections of the

society but not a complete transformation of class-relations. The rural middle class were

better placed to take advantage of the changes than the landless poor.

Has there been any substantial shift between mid nineties to 2008? We

unfortunately do not have substantial research on class-relations during this time.

However the recent essay by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya where he has coined the term

‘party-society’114 seems to suggest that power structure in the present agrarian scenario

cannot quite be understood in strictly class terms. The party seems to be the ruling elite

rather than any particular class and party is not simply hegemonised by any particular

class. Partha Chatterjee has agreed with Bhattacharyya on this.115 Chatterjee thinks that

there has been a significant change in the last decade or so. The conditions of agricultural

production have changed along with the growing significance of non-agricultural

activities. This has generated ‘unprecedented demands that the local institution of the

party is now required to fulfill’. Chatterjee has also pointed out that one of the crucial

tasks of the political management of the rural society is now to manage illegalities, an

issue on which there is very little research. Here ‘party’ plays a significant role in

distributing benefits and mediating conflicts. For example, more people may be included

112 Ranjit Kumar Gupta, Agrarian West Bengal, Three Field Studies, Institute of Social Research and Applied Anthropology, Calcutta 1977. p.45.113 Barbara Harriss-White Rural Commercial Capital: Agricultural Markets in West Bengal, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008.114 Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya, ‘Of Control and Factions: The Changing ‘Party-Society’ in Rural West Bengal’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009.115 Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Coming Crisis in West Bengal’ in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV No 9, February 28-March 6, 2009, pp.42-45.

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in a publics works programme at less than minimum wage without the official records

showing the discrepancy. Similarly, almost all road side markets are regulated politically

and not legally. In case of white-collar jobs such as teaching and government jobs are

controlled by the party. According to Chatterjee, ‘West Bengal has never seen Weberian

ideal where the state holds a monopoly over legitimate violence.’ On the contrary the

political mediators have always controlled violence, or the threat of it, as a significant

resource ‘to be deployed in the task of building consensus and keeping peace.’ This

instrument can be used effectively if their use is more as a threat and can be kept

localized and limited. This in turn, according to Chatterjee, requires a certain moral

legitimacy as the local leader. In recent times, Chatterjee notes, this credibility is on the

decline and ‘it is this that signals the coming crisis in West Bengal.’

51