Disadvantaged Social Classes in the Panchayat system: Social Democratic Half-truths
June 2, 2008
In a recent article in Macroscan, Jayati Ghosh (JG hereafter) has argued that West Bengal is a “pioneering state” with regard to panchayati raj institutions and other measures aimed at decentralization of state power in India.
Compared to other states, what made the decentralization process much more democratic in West Bengal, according to JG, was the fact that “it was preceded and accompanied by significant land reforms”. Land reforms increased the “power and status” of hitherto marginalized social groups, according to JG, and encouraged their active participation in the structures of local governance. As evidence of this “positive experience” with decentralization, JG directs our attention to the current social composition of the three tier panchayats: gram sabhas, panchayat samitis and zila parishads.
Drawing on data from a “study commissioned by the Ministry of Rural Development of the Government of India”, JG demonstrates that “less well-off categories are more numerous in the panchayat membership, and traditional elite groups are hardly represented”. To make her case she specifically presents data on three socially disadvantaged groups: scheduled castes (SC), scheduled tribes (ST) and women. In Table 1, I reproduce her data depicting the share of each of these three social groups at all the levels of the panchayat system.
| Gram Sabha | Share of total Panchayat members (in %) | ||||||
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | ||
| SC | 16.1 | 12.5 | 10.3 | 11.5 | 13.7 | 28.6 | |
| ST | 0.7 | 42 | 17.9 | 13.7 | 0 | 7.5 | |
| Women | 35 | 33.7 | 33.8 | 33.3 | 37.9 | 36.6 | |
| Panchayat_ Samiti |
Share of total Panchayat members (in %) | ||||||
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | ||
| SC | 16 | 12.1 | 10.6 | 11.5 | 15 | 28.8 | |
| ST | 0.8 | 40.2 | 17.6 | 13.5 | 0 | 7.4 | |
| Women | 35 | 34.3 | 33.4 | 36.1 | 36 | 35.4 | |
| Zilla Parishad | Share of total Panchayat members (in %) | ||||||
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | ||
| SC | 16.1 | 10.9 | 10.6 | 11.5 | 14.7 | 26.8 | |
| ST | 0.8 | 40.9 | 16.6 | 13.7 | 0 | 7.2 | |
| Women | 35.3 | 34.7 | 33.8 | 33.7 | 37.1 | 34.2 | |
The data presented in Table 1, according to JG, conclusively demonstrates her case. Other than West Bengal, JG has picked up five other Indian states to demonstrate her argument; and it is by comparison with the other states which JG has chosen that West Bengal comes out with a very strong and positive record.
One only needs to look at the last column of Table 1, which presents data for West Bengal, to see that the share of total panchayat members at all the levels of the panchayat system coming from the three disadvantaged social groups is substantially higher in West Bengal. The proportion of SCs, it can be easily seen, is significantly higher in West Bengal at all the three levels of the panchayat system; the proportion of women is also high; the proportion of the STs is markedly lower but then that can be explained, according to JG, by the fact that STs are a small share of West Bengal’s population. All in all, if one were to go by JG’s analysis, West Bengal has a sterling record.
Two questions, though, crop up almost immediately.
First: why did JG pick these particular states? JG provides no answer to this question. She offers no reason for the sample of six states that she has chosen. It is possible that data for other states is not available; one does not know for sure because JG does not indicate the exact source of her data other than stating that she has picked it up from a “study commissioned by the Ministry of Rural Development of the Government of India”. If data for other states are also available, it would make more sense to broaden the comparison by including the other states as well.
Second: why does JG not take account of the share of the three social groups in the population even though she uses that fact when making comparisons of ST proportions? To understand the import of this question take the hypothetical case of two states: A and B. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that SCs comprise 30 percent of the population of state A and the corresponding figure for state B is, say, 10 percent. Now suppose SCs comprise 25 percent of the gram sabha members in state A and 20 percent in state B. Would this mean that SCs have a higher representation in the gram sabha in state A than in state B? Evidently not. And why not? Because we have not accounted for the differential population shares of SCs in states A and B. Thus, to make the fair comparisons across states, one needs to correct for the population shares of the three social groups in each state. JG certainly understands this problem (and even uses it to explain away the low share of STs in West Bengal in comparison to Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh) but does not rigorously address it.
One way to address this issue would be to deflate the share of the social group in question with their share in the population. Thus, the correct measure of participation of a social group could be computed by dividing the share of the social groups with their respective shares in the population; higher values of the measure would indicate relatively higher participation, with values greater than unity showing a higher representation in the structures of governance than the corresponding share in the population.
Let me illustrate this using the above hypothetical example of states A and B. The correct measure of SC participation for state A would be 0.83 (=25/30) and for state B would be 2 (=20/10). Hence, one would now be justified in concluding that state B has afforded greater opportunities for SC participation that state B even though the share of gram sabha members coming from the scheduled castes is higher in A than in B. Note that if we had, instead, used just the share of SC members in the gram sabha as the measure of SC participation, we would have arrived the opposite conclusion. Hence, it is important to use the correct measure.
In Table 2, I give the shares of the three social groups in total population for the six states that JG has chosen for her analysis; this data is easily available from the website of the Census of India. I will then use this population share figures to correct JG’s data (which I have reproduced in Table 1) in the manner indicated in the earlier paragraph, i.e., by deflating with population shares.
| Table 2: Share of population in 2001 | ||||||
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | |
| SC | 15.72 | 11.61 | 15.17 | 10.2 | 21.15 | 23.02 |
| ST | 0.91 | 31.76 | 20.27 | 8.85 | 0.06 | 5.5 |
| Women | 47.9 | 49.72 | 47.9 | 47.98 | 47.31 | 48.28 |
In Table 3, I report results of the corrected measure of participation, i.e., for each social group, I divide the share of their membership (as reported in Table 1) by their share in the population (as reported in Table 2); I do this for all the three levels of the panchayat system and for all the three social groups under consideration. The results are not surprising. Other than for SCs, West Bengal does not have the best, i.e., highest participation, figures as claimed by JG. For STs, Maharashtra has the highest scores at all the three levels; for women, Uttar Pradesh has the highest scores for all the three levels.
With this new and corrected measure, one can also see that many of JG’s assertions do not quite hold. For instance, while comparing the position of women across states, she states that “the proportion of women panchayat members at different levels is somewhat higher in West Bengal than in four of the other states”, i.e., leaving aside Uttar Pradesh, women, according to JG, has a somewhat higher representation in West Bengal than the other four states. One can see from Table 3 that this is only true at the gram sabha level. At the Panchayat Samiti level, for instance, Bihar and West Bengal are at par, while Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh have a better position. At the Zila Parishad level, women have the same score in West Bengal as in Madhya Pradesh, while they have a higher score in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh; the corresponding scores for Maharashtra and Chhatisgarh are virtually indistinguishable from West Bengal’s.
| Gram Sabha | Share of total Panchayat members (in %) | ||||||
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | ||
| SC | 1.02 | 1.08 | 0.68 | 1.13 | 0.65 | 1.24 | |
| ST | 0.77 | 1.32 | 0.88 | 1.55 | 0 | 1.36 | |
| Women | 0.73 | 0.68 | 0.71 | 0.69 | 0.8 | 0.76 | |
| Panchayat_ Samiti |
Share of total Panchayat members (in %) | ||||||
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | ||
| SC | 1.02 | 1.04 | 0.7 | 1.13 | 0.71 | 1.25 | |
| ST | 0.88 | 1.27 | 0.87 | 1.53 | 0 | 1.35 | |
| Women | 0.73 | 0.69 | 0.7 | 0.75 | 0.76 | 0.73 | |
| Zilla Parishad | Share of total Panchayat members (in %) | ||||||
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | ||
| SC | 1.02 | 0.94 | 0.7 | 1.13 | 0.7 | 1.16 | |
| ST | 0.88 | 1.29 | 0.82 | 1.55 | 0 | 1.31 | |
| Women | 0.74 | 0.7 | 0.71 | 0.7 | 0.78 | 0.71 | |
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | |
| Gram Sabha | 0.84 | 1.03 | 0.76 | 1.12 | 0.73 | 1.12 |
| Panchayat Samiti | 0.88 | 1 | 0.75 | 1.14 | 0.74 | 1.11 |
| Zilla Parishad | 0.88 | 0.97 | 0.74 | 1.13 | 0.74 | 1.06 |
| Bihar | Chhatisgarh | Madhya Pradesh | Maharashtra | Uttar Pradesh | West Bengal | |
| Gram Sabha | 0.81 | 0.94 | 0.74 | 1.02 | 0.56 | 1.03 |
| Panchayat Samiti | 0.84 | 0.92 | 0.74 | 1.04 | 0.56 | 1.02 |
| Zilla Parishad | 0.84 | 0.91 | 0.73 | 1.02 | 0.57 | 0.97 |
To get an idea of the overall position (in terms of representation) of these three groups in the panchayat system, one could find the average score at each level of the panchayat system. I have reported two kinds of averages in Tables 4 and 5, one where all the three scores are accorded equal weights (I call this “Average”, Table 4) and the other where women have been accorded twice the weight of the the other two (I call this “Weighted Average”. Table 5). According higher weights to women seems a sensible strategy to me because they are a much higher proportion of the population and their membership cuts across caste and class groups.
According to the simple average, Maharashtra does better than West Bengal at the two higher levels while they are equal at the gram sabha level; the difference, moreover, increases as one moves up the panchayat heirarchy. According to the weighted average, West Bengal has a higher score at the gram sabha level while Maharashtra has a higher scores at the higher levels.
Several things emerge from this simple study.
First: the higher performance with regard to representation in the panchayat system of disadvantaged social groups in West Bengal that JG has reported is an artifact of both the sample she has selected and the measure that she has chosen to use. The problem of the measure that she uses has been demonstrated above; and once the measure is corrected for population shares, other states are seen to be much more close to West Bengal than JG’s analysis implies. One cannot also help raising concerns about the sample of states she has selected. This is because apart from Maharashtra, the other four are known laggards in economic and social development; they are members of the BIMARU group of states and higher performance with comparison to these states does not warrant the triumphalism that JG’s article displays.
Second: Maharashtra has outperformed West Bengal is terms of two social groups and on terms of overall participation even though it has never had the benefit of a progressive, left-wing government. On the other hand, it certainly has a vibrant culture of grassroots social and political activism, nurtured and led in no small measure by the radical left. Hence, those who still repose their faith in the social democratic left in this country should probably ask themselves why the levels of grassroots activism is so muted and ineffectual in West Bengal despite the presence of an apparently progressive, pro-people government.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 am
This sordid disingenuity on the part of CPM hacks like Jayati Ghosh is not surprising.What is of concern is that such elements do hold some clout in famed academic circles as analytic intellectuals.
Herein lies the importance of Dipankar’s article.Hard hitting articles which show ommissions and spins as plain lies in a different garb, it takes the glamour out of elements such as Jayati Ghosh and others.
In any case, Marxians have a very instrumental and cynical view of caste.There is nothing to caste identity but a story of oppression ( the giver and the taker).And the underlying strain is that such distinctivenesses between people’s groups need to be homogenized into groups of people with the right amount of consciousness to enable one or more post-enlightenment visions to take root and mark their “liberation”.Knowledge system of the castes (all) that far outdate modernist utopias of the Central European vintage have shown far more resilience that marxians and liberals would have liked.Being unable to defeat the “crass” politics that plays out in Indic categories, rather alien to the urbane and the bastard children of enlightenment, they seek to constrict the choices of the future of the castes and the tribes of India, by various interventions.There is a common thread- no one leaves them alone - for they cant manoevere themselves.What is we are not white..we are not that brown as “them”.And we have a burden at hand.This is the unspoken logic, couched in languages of liberalism and vanguardism.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
and when will charity begin at home. One needs to take a look at CPI(M)central committee and politburo for SC,ST,OBCs and women and the hypocricy of Jayati Ghosh will be apparent.
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
and when will charity begin at home. One needs to take a look at CPI(M)central committee and politburo for SC,ST,OBCs and women and the hypocrisy of Jayati Ghosh will be apparent.
June 4th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Garga, I don’t agree with you when you say “Marxians have a very instrumental and cynical view of caste”. Both at the theoretical and at the practical level, Marxists have engaged with the caste issue in very serious and fruitful ways. At the theoretical level, one only needs to remind oneself the real study of caste began with the work D D Kosambi, and he was a Marxist. At the practical level, the caste issue was integrated into a revolutionary Marxist framework by the ML movement. In Bihar, the ML movement right from the early 1980s always had the dual slogan of wages and dignity for the landless labourer was also the dalit and the caste issue was intricately linked to the class struggle.
Of course any fruitful analysis of caste cannot escape the issue of hierarchy, and with hierarchy comes oppression; so Marxists have highlighted, correctly in my opinion, the issue of oppression that is inherent in the caste system. Analyses which try to brush the aspect of oppression and struggle within the caste system and instead suggest a harmonious existence of the castes are ways to make that oppression invisible. Naturally this kind of analysis has found favour with the right-wing Hindutva political trend in India.
A general point: the fundamental point of departure in European history is not the Enlightenment but the development and spread of capitalism (out of the womb of feudalism). So, the question is not to try and impose any post-enlightenment vision but to do a concrete historical analysis and draw out conclusions about the possible paths out of the current oppressive system; these possible paths are non-trivially circumscribed by the material conditions of current existence and not amenable to manipulation by arbitrary visions, post-enlightenment or otherwise.
June 7th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Why these states for comparison? The DFID supported Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) programme operates in the poorest districts of Maharashtra, MP, UP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar. The choice of districts and states is based on the Planning Commission’s classification of the poorest districts. The data that JG uses is drawn from a table that the PACS project uses (see table at the end of http://www.empowerpoor.com/backgrounder.asp?report=80) where this unnamed Ministry study is cited. JG is an adviser to the DFID’s International NGO Partnership Programme, a follow-on to PACS. In her table, JG is comparing West Bengal to the states where the poorest districts are located.
The question is: over and above the statutory reservation quota, which is proportional to percentage in population for SCs and STs, in how many open seats do SCs and STs win? The Gram Panchayat is the least important tier in terms of resource allocation compared to the other two tiers but most important in terms of resources reaching beneficiaries. The data broadly shows that West Bengal and Maharashtra score highest. Personally, I am surprised by the over-representation of STs in Maharashtra Panchayats, the answer may lie in the classification of STs in the state.
The question that is most sharply framed by the data is: women hold up half the sky, but there is only one-third reservation, and actual representation proportions are not much higher anywhere, including in progressive West Bengal.
Overall, this numerical stuff is very misleading compared to the actual play of power on the ground. Check out the average Lodha settlement in Midnapore, or note the stark contrast in Panchayat investments between wards that vote Left Front and those that do not.
RR
June 17th, 2008 at 4:10 am
On the outset, I congratulate Dipankar on his outlining of the
untruths by CPM hacks.
When one talks about materialist studies of caste, it is important to
note that the imagination of caste
by others, may not be the same as the imagination of caste by people
themselves who belong to a certain
caste.And could one elucidate what does “materialist” study mean? Let
me go ahead on the basis of some
assumptions.The imagination of the world around by all people may not
flow along “materialist” lines, whatever that means.People, within
their realities and imaginations and theory of life, device ways to
cope and negotiate.One has to remember, that everybody’s theory of
world is but a specific instance of imagination - nothing more,
nothing less.The problem arises, when local imaginations become
project into the global, and start making claims of the universal.Cate
to them is a category -which is , at the end of the day, an unwanted
hindrance to some idea of progress.Is this the idea that is shared by
a vast majority of Yadavs or Kurmis? I dont know.It is in this sense,
I call such views cynical and instrumental, for it deals it from the
exterior and the non-experiential.Why then such dignity-campaigners
have as leaders Pattanayaks (Nagabhushan), Bhattacharyyas (Dipankar
and Buddhadeb).Is it incidental? One can then argue that whatever the
theoretical base of these elements are, they are best available to
certain specific exposures to alien worldviews.For example, all these
3 are/were atheists.To most of the people for whom they want dignity,
they do not share such a central plank if their respective theories of
the cosmos.And one is to understand that there is a symbiotic, equal,
respectful exchange? No one believes that the worldview of the other
is superior than their own.The problem lies when worldviews dont have
a equal footing to compete.The constricting space for worldviews to
compete is a direct effect of someone’s local becoming or wanting to
becomes everyone’s global.
Hierarchy and oppression are present between the castes.However, that
is not all that there is to it.There are life practices, divinities,
habits, which are specific to castes - such things may be irrelevant
to me in my grand scheme but everyone may not share my ways to
dismissal.And there is the rub.It is hard to actually stomach
that knowledge systems and imaginations of the future can be actually
equal.It is a discomfiture one lives with - but when ideologies want
to destroy this discomfiture by uprooting or dismissing whole systemm
of living communities, one has to be very cautious.For nothing is more
dangerous and constriction in the plurality of future.This arises
directly from constriction of plurality in the present.
I am unconcerned by the nomenclaturization of the systems of the
Occidental which have come to dominate the belief-world of the rest of
the world.I am only pointing out that it is someone’s local.
In the context of Dipankar’s nice article, I would like to point out
that recently in AnandBajar Patrika, a caste analysis of the Communist
government of Bengal was given.It is an enlightening table.Brahmmons
are about 2.5% of West Bengali population and have more than 40% of
the minister posts, according to that table.The situation has not
changed much in the last 10 years.
Everyone has to fight their own battles.Solidarities only have meaning
when one’s freedom is tied with the freedom of others.But we have to
learn to live with the fact that other’s imaginations of freedom may
not result in the utopia I would like to construct.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:11 am
A pertinent piece. One recalls Yogendra Yadav’s article which appeared in the Indian Express after Nandigram erupted.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/26169.html
(also archived on this site)