The Cosmetic democracy

When grassroots democracy was proposed in this country, everybody thought it would be a new beginning altogether, and rightly so because in no other country so much of people running in lakhs were directly elected by the people and managed their own affairs, the democratic institutions found new expression inform of mukhiya, sarpanch, panchayat samiti, block pramukh, PACS, fishery institution, trade bodies etc apart from legislature at central and state level. The underlying foundation of these institutions efficiency was a believe that they will work on the principles of ‘enlightened self interest’ which means that in the pursuit of  their own self interest they will  promote the interest of the masses, thus arising at overall efficient for all solution. It was believed that if they are given the financial power of building a school in their own village, they will use the best material, knowing that collapse of the building will endanger their own children lives.

That seems to be quite a fairy world, but in reality thing started deviating from the ideal solution, as they were given financial power to build a school they started siphoning off money and send their kids to a private school, thus having no danger of getting them injured if building collapses, this is only an example which envelopes larger policy issue and core questions of sustainability of this model in the entirety. Let’s see why did it happen?

Democracy at very micro level created micro constituencies, since the level of education is low the entire exercise of winning votes and garnering supports stood on the single ground of how much benefits they could make available to these constituencies, another way of securing loyalty was caste line, which increasingly made one caste hostile to another in the same small unit of village, moreover people supporting the rivals can easily be identified and targeted in the micro constituencies, financial power in too much of hands created fractured decision making leading to waste of public money in many cases.

In celebrated scheme like MNREGA, mukhiya in collaboration with local officials increasingly favoured own people denying opportunity to all, chose site for public assets creation in favoured land and thus made money, what else explain the phenomenon of still continued migration from rural areas. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that a mukhiya spends nearly 8to 10 lakhs on an average in the panchayat election.

I am not against democracy, my contention is very simple, is giving premature financial power, the only way to strengthen democracy at grassroots level, shouldn’t we wait before there is actual capacity building.