Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India: Understanding Power, Sociality and Trust [1 ed.] 9789811951091, 9789811951107

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Amiya Kumar Das

Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India Understanding Power, Sociality and Trust

Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India

Amiya Kumar Das

Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India Understanding Power, Sociality and Trust

Amiya Kumar Das Department of Sociology Tezpur University Tezpur, Assam, India

ISBN 978-981-19-5109-1 ISBN 978-981-19-5110-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5110-7 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the support and efforts of many individuals. I would like to offer my gratitude to Prof. Chandan Kumar Sharma for guiding me throughout this study. He devoted his time with an extra effort to go through my arguments in every possible way. I thank him for his time, patience and immense generosity and encouragement during the study. For their feedback on my study, inspiring words and encouragement, I sincerely thank Profs. M. N. Karna, C. S. Bhat, V. Xaxa, B. K. Danta, Avijit Pathak, Joydeep Baruah, Bhupen Sarmah, Ashok Kumar Kaul, Shashi Bhusan Singh, Kedilezo Kikhi, Sadan Jha and Rabin Deka. I express my gratitude to Prof. M. K. Choudhuri, the former Vice-Chancellor of Tezpur University, for providing necessary support to conduct this study. I must thank Jagritee, Piyashi, Kuntala, Prarthana, Dola, Antora and all others who helped me in their own special ways in completing this study. I thank my students Partha, Prafulla and Ransaigra for their support who are now teaching in different universities. I have benefited from the discussions and comments from my friends Bodhi, Camila, Anna, Abel, Devnath, Yugank and Salah. I would like to offer my appreciation to Profs. Akio Tanabe, David Swartz, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Patrick Heller, Peter Evans, Nitsan Chorev and Andrew Schrank for helping me in developing some of the arguments and providing various reference materials for this work. I have immensely benefited from my research scholars Mridusmita and Ahana in terms of their suggestions on the preliminary drafts. I am also thankful to them for helping me in this endeavour. I thank my friends and colleagues Sarmistha, Pami, Shim, Sumesh, Nirmali and Subhadeepta from the Department of Sociology, Tezpur University, for their support. I am much grateful to my friend Tathagatan who always enriches my understanding with his critical comments and suggestions. I acknowledge my thankfulness to my friend Soumen, Ananya, Veda, Kamal, Suru Babu, Arun, Prabin Kabi, Sanjay Da, Chintu Bhanja, Anupam, Uzma, Otojit, Jaffar, Baby, Pranta, Basanti, and Jyoti for their inspiration and motivation. I also thank Babu (Jugal Deka) for helping me in designing the maps of the villages. I owe my gratitude to Prof. Neshat Quaiser and Dr. Rabindra Ray, who have always been the source of inspiration to me.

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I am indebted to all those people who patiently and kindly responded to my questions in their homes, workplaces or on the roadsides during the field study. I would also like to thank various government officials and Panchayat members in Sonitpur district for providing various significant information and documents related to my study. I thank ICSSR-NERC for funding two minor research projects on election studies in the Sonitpur district. I acknowledge my gratitude to various libraries which I visited in connection with my research, especially the Central Library, DU, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Ratan Tata Library at Delhi School of Economics, Delhi. The online resources of Tezpur University were also a very useful source of relevant literatures. Finally, my family needs to be acknowledged for helping me with their emotional support through various difficult phases during this work. I have received unconditional and great support from Sheetal and Atanu. I am grateful to Arun Bhai, Akshaya, Atu, Anita Dei and other family members for their encouragement and support. I would also like to express my gratitude towards Ms. Satvinder and Mr. Ramesh Kumaran for their continuous support and patience during the process of publication.

Contents

1 Sociology of Governance and the Grassroots Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Sociology of Governance: Power or Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Sociologically Locating the Study of Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 The Porous State and the Society: Between the Centralized Consent and the Localized Perceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 The Social Field and the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Locating the Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Napam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Locating the State, Power and Governance in the Social Sphere . . . . . 2.1 Governance: Etymology and Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Forms of Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Formal and Informal Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Governance and Social Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Governance and Embeddedness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Power, Sociality and Trust . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.7 Understanding Sociality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.8 State and Society: A Porous Link . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.9 Governmentality and Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.10 Structure, Agency and Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.11 Knowledge, Governance and Failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.12 From Government to Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.13 Governance Without Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.14 Culture Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.15 Discourses on Good Governance, Development and Civil Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 2 4 8 10 12 14 21 22 26 30 32 34 35 37 39 40 41 42 45 46 47 48

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3 Seeing Like a Citizen: People’s Everyday Engagement with the State and Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Society, State and Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Precolonial Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 The Colonial Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3 The Present-Day Assam and Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.4 Social Life of the Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.5 Village-Level Governance and Development . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.6 Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.7 Problems Affecting Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.8 Maintenance of Primary Education by Panchayat . . . . . . . 3.1.9 Health: Facility, Perception and Participation . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.10 Availability of Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.11 Suggesting the Better Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.12 Employment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.13 Answer to Unemployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.14 Dispute Settlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.15 Need of the Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.16 Rural Development Programmes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.17 Experiencing the Government Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.18 Suggestions for Improvement in Governance . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.19 Clientelism, Brokers and Local Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.20 Clientelism in the Political Arena . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.21 Dalals: A Janus-Faced Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

53 56 56 56 59 62 63 64 67 68 69 72 72 76 79 79 80 80 81 82 83 84 86

4 Documenting the Body: Entitlements and Paper Citizenship . . . . . . . 89 4.1 Papers and Bureaucracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 4.2 Reified State in Modern Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 4.3 Documents and Social Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 4.4 Documents, Paper and Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 4.5 Colonial State and Paper Bureaucracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 4.6 Documents and Citizenship in Assam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 4.7 ‘D’ Voter and the Issue of Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 5 Rituals of the State: Enchanting Elections and Enacting Citizenships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 Social Aspects of Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Electioneering in Assam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Ethnographic Observation of Election Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 The Parliamentary Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.2 The Assembly Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.3 The Panchayat Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

105 105 107 108 108 113 119

Contents

5.4 5.5

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When Ajmal Was Like a Tajmahal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ethnography of the Polling Booth: On the Day of Polling . . . . . . . 5.5.1 Parliamentary Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.2 Assembly Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.5.3 Panchayat Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.6 Towards a Sociology of Electoral Politics/Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 Ritual, Performance and the Polls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.8 Peoples Play and Dance of Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.9 Are Panchayat Elections More Important? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.10 Voting for Whom? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

120 124 124 127 128 131 131 132 132 133

6 Corporatization of the State in the Neoliberal Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Neoliberal Governmentality: Blurred Distinction Between State and Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Neoliberal Governmentality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Neoliberalism in India: An Uncomfortable Trajectory . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Neoliberal Governmentality in the Context of India . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 In the Name of Good Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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7 State, Political Clientelism and Governance in India: Concluding Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Local Factors Influencing People’s Choice in Electoral Politics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 Community Sentiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 Village Sentiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Qualities of the Contestants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Role of Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 In Between Political Society and Moral Society: Political Clientelism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

135 139 142 147 148 155 158 159 159 160 160 160 161 162

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

About the Author

Amiya Kumar Das is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and coordinator of the Centre for Public Policy and Governance at Tezpur University, Assam. His research interests include Governance and Development, Sociology of Health, and Illness. Some of his recent publications include Investigating Developmentalism: Notions of Development in the Social Sphere (co-edited, 2019), Neighbourhoods in Urban India: In Between Home and the City (co-edited, 2021), Indigeneity, Citizenship and the State: Perspectives from India’s Northeast (coedited, 2021). He is also interested in sustainable farming and is a collaborator in the Feeding City Lab project at the University of Toronto.

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

AGP AIUDF ANM ASHA BDO BJP CDP CEO CPI-M CPI-ML CSR DC DPC DPEP EAS EGS EU EVM GP ICDS IMDT INC IRDP JRY JSSK JSY KMSS MDG MLA MLG MNC

Assam Gana Parishad All India United Democratic Front Auxiliary Nurse Midwife Accredited Social Health Activist Block Development Officer Bharatiya Janata Party Community Development Programme Chief Executive Officer Communist Party of India, Marxist Communist Party of India, Marxist–Leninist Corporate Social Responsibility Deputy Commissioner or Collector District Planning Committee District Primary Education Project Employment Assurance Scheme Employment Guarantee Scheme European Union Electronic Voting Machine Gram Panchayat Integrated Child Development Scheme Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act Indian National Congress Integrated Rural Development Programme Jawahar Rozgar Yojana Janani-Shishu Suraksha Karyakram Janani Suraksha Yojana Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti Millennium Development Goal Member of the Legislative Assembly Multi-Level Governance Multinational Corporation xiii

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MP NCPRI NDA NGO OBCs PDS PPP PRI RSBY SAP SCs SGSY STs TMC UNDP UPA VDC VEC VHC VHSND WHO WWII ZP

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Member of Parliament National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information National Democratic Alliance Non-Governmental Organization Other Backward Classes Public Distribution System Public–Private Partnership Panchayati Raj Institutions Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana Structural Adjustment Programme Scheduled Castes Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana Scheduled Tribes Trinamool Congress United Nations Development Programme United Progressive Alliance Village Development Committee Village Education Committee Village Health Committee Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Day World Health Organisation World War Second Zila Parishad

Chapter 1

Sociology of Governance and the Grassroots Democracy

In the happiness of his subjects lies the king’s happiness; in their welfare his welfare. He shall not consider as good only that which pleases him but treat as beneficial to him whatever pleases his subjects (Kautilya, 1992, 149). He who becomes a Prince through the favour of the people should always keep on good terms with them; which it is easy for him to do, since all they ask is not to be oppressed (Machiavelli, 2003, 46).

1.1 Introduction Reflecting on the experience of multiplicity in governance, the study discusses how people respond to various forms of governance and how these forms change as the state interacts with the population. It is well recognized that while the state frames all the rules and policies of governance, many factors influence grassroots level implementation of these rules and policies. Interlinkages among the state, society, community and the market unfold its own permutations and combinations on the ground. This study investigates how interaction occurs between the state and society in a country like India. The book explores some of the pertinent issues related to the grassroots governance with a focus on people’s experience and engagement with governance in everyday life. While doing so, it reflects on the processes associated with governance in the local context, how people imagine and comprehend the idea of the state, government and the governance in their day-to-day life. This book explores how the local social structures influence governance at the local level and examines the relationship between the state and the members of different ethnic communities during the time of elections. To understand the interrelationship between state, government and community, the theoretical perspective of this study draws upon the debates and works of scholars like Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, David Swartz, Gary Wickham, Janet Newman, Jan Kooiman, R. J. Pierre, Partha Chatterjee, James Scott and David Harvey. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Das, Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5110-7_1

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Various political philosophers suggest one thing in common; the citizen should lead a good life without coercion from the king or any other ruler. With the advent of democratic liberal philosophy, many of the political philosophers like Kautilya, Confucius and Machiavelli have been criticized for their orthodox and patriarchal approach. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that most of these political philosophers realized that it is expected to keep the citizens fulfilled to rule over a particular territory; otherwise, there are chances of resistance and revolt against the ruler. The concept of governance is not new, it has been discussed in many old treatises. But of late, it has become a buzzword among many policymakers and leaders to make the administration more efficient. Governance has different connotations in different contexts. It is contextualized, perceived and practiced according to space and time. It is believed that the present day practice and concept of governance has some similarities to the concept which was discussed in Plato’s philosophy. But the contemporary governance has always been complex, ambiguous and contentious. Although conventionally the issue of governance is largely used in the disciplines of political science and public administration, contemporary sociologists and social anthropologists are also keen on exploring the social dynamics of governance. Many sceptics and critics of the good governance approach have raised doubts over the politics of governance. In a developing country like India, majority of people live in the lower rung of the economy, struggling to negotiate with the state in their everyday affairs. Under the impact of neoliberal policies, the state tends to reduce the expenditures on various welfare measures, which adversely affects the everyday life of the poor. In India, political parties play a significant role in the lives of the people through the intermediaries or brokers (dalal) who most of the time control how people would gain access to different welfare schemes and entitlements. This book explores certain nuances where people negotiate the state in their everyday life. Before that, it would be useful to understand the ways in which governance is conceived and how it could be located across the discipline of sociology.

1.2 Sociology of Governance: Power or Regulation An object of knowledge (the way it is constructed and approached) is dependent upon one’s training in a particular discipline. The disciplinary domain trains us to think in terms of a disciplinary language and framework. Disciplines like political science and public administration focus mainly on the formal institutions and functions of the modern state, whereas sociology and social anthropology are concerned not only with the formal institutions of the modern state but also with the multiple engagement of the people with the state in everyday life. Sociology, through empirical study in the field, tries to unravel how certain phenomena work and through what mechanisms certain social processes occur. Issues of governance have majorly been discussed by the scholars of political science, international relations, public administration and so on. The sociological study of governance has not yet fully been developed into a sub-discipline in India and

1.2 Sociology of Governance: Power or Regulation

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South Asia. Sociologists and social anthropologists, who have always been fascinated by phenomena in their immediate surroundings, have only recently started analysing the sociology of governance and consider this sub-discipline a part of both political and economic sociology. Classical sociology was developed in response to the modernist intervention in the society around nineteenth century, which believed that society could be changed with necessary state interventions. Since then, sociologists have been engaged in comprehending the nature of state and it’s relationship with the society from various perspectives. Foucault analysed European society and tried to show how the modernist agenda had penetrated people’s lives and how various technologies and tactics of modern government constituted a strategy, which he defined as governmentality— and that it prepared citizens to be ruled in the manner that the state desired (Foucault, 1991). Thus, it can be argued that sociology, as a disciplinary practice, is appropriate to understand governance in the modern society. Contemporary governance, an outcome of modernism, gained prominence in the 1960s after the World Bank started emphasizing on good governance. Following this, scholars of social sciences, in general, and political science and sociology, in particular, started studying the issues of governance both theoretically and empirically, resulting in multiple understandings and interpretations of governance. In this book, I dwell upon the idea of governance in contemporary society in a particular region of Assam—an Indian province and try to develop a sociological comprehension of the social processes that shapes the nature and forms of governance. Despite the loud early claims that sociology is a ‘science of society’, its inability to provide a universal definition of society has in fact opened up multiple ways to look at society in different times and spaces with insights gained through its in-depth study. Theodor Adorno, one of the influential thinkers of the Frankfurt School, tries to interrogate the concept and idea of society in terms of individuals and various forces that connect individuals to one another. Adorno suggests that sociology must provide an insight into the society and explore its essential nature. Sociology should offer a critical insight into the society to discern the real meaning of it. Adorno quotes Wittgenstein’s well-known formulation ‘the world is all that is the case’ and emphasizes that sociology’s objective could be drawn from Wittgenstein’s idea. Adorno also proposes the idea of dialectical characteristics of society and contends that though the concepts of integration and differentiation are essential to society, it sustains itself through contradictions and changes (Adorno, 2000, 15). Following Adorno’s argument, it could be further maintained that the whole idea of modern rule and technology applied in governance mechanism is fallacious, and that it is bound to fail (Das, 2021a). Therefore, we need to accept the idea of failure in governance and that contradiction and failure are inherent in governance. This idea of failure has been further discussed in other sections of the book. Sociology aims to define ‘society’ and explain its structure and social processes in a systematic manner. It can be used to understand governance in its various forms— the different ways in which human beings govern themselves to cope with and exist in the larger process and structure of society. Apart from being governed by the

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state, people also govern themselves in everyday life, without necessarily involving the state, whether it is in the realm of culture, politics, economy, or any other social processes. Explaining this issue, Shams (2020) offers a critical analysis on the global geopolitical diasporas and the local spaces of cultural formations for the Muslims in the Western world, launches off through the dialectical versions of ‘performances’ as well as ‘presentations of the self’. As an accord of relevance, she decodes the everyday experiences of Muslims in the USA where they cultivate complex agencies disbursed within the social layers and exercise self-surveillance upon themselves to avoid becoming victims in public or political spaces. However, treading through structural and theoretical constructs of delineating political spaces, Pierre Bourdieu’s contribution remains significant. Pierre Bourdieu has extensively contributed towards understanding the relationship between politics and sociology. Writing on Pierre Bourdieu, sociologist David Swartz discusses that for Bourdieu ‘all sociology is sociology of politics’ (Swartz, 2010, 143). Drawing from it, I propose that ‘all sociology could be seen as sociology of governance’. In direct or indirect ways, people are governed by someone else, and, on a micro-level, people govern themselves. If one does online web search for the word ‘governance’, one can see many entries on either good governance or corporate governance. Governance is widely recognized as governance of corporations; however, it has different dimensions when it comes to issues related to the state, polity or government. Governance as a concept is eclectic and used differently by the social scientists in varied contexts. This study does not claim any universality in application of its findings. Therefore, in this case, learning from new experience would help us understand other similar phenomena elsewhere. The framework of the sociology of governance here deals with the production of governance objects by the state and how it is perceived, reacted, negated and negotiated in everyday life by the ordinary citizens. It is interesting to note that citizens who belong to the marginalized sections have high expectations from the state in terms of delivery of social goods and services. When the state fails to deliver their exceptions, they start complaining against the state as they perceive the state to be their guardian.

1.3 Sociologically Locating the Study of Governance It is imperative, at this stage, to trace the early ideas of the founding fathers of sociology, to see if they offer anything useful in understanding the process of governance. Among many others, Weber, Marx and Durkheim have contributed to the field sociology of governance. In this context, Ansell (2007) suggests that Weber’s theory offers more avenues to understand modern governance than Marx and Durkheim. But the works of Marx and Durkheim still remain helpful in many ways, to formulate a quite comprehensive base to understand governance from a sociological perspective. As it has already been mentioned, one of the aims of governance is to control and manage the known object. Here, Durkheim’s idea of morality and social control appear to be useful. Similarly, Marx’s analysis of class divisions in the capitalist

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society and control over the means of production can be analysed from the perspective of governance. In a broader way, it can help us to understand capitalism which is related to the state and creates divisions in society. Apart from these forerunners of sociology, Robert Putnam, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, James C. Scott and Mark Granovetter have also contributed to the study of governance from sociological perspectives. Max Weber’s contribution to sociology can form a solid pillar to the sociology of governance. In the book Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology (1978), Weber outlined many issues with sociological insight. Social scientists consider his intellectual contribution to social science literature in terms of ‘sociology of domination’. It could be argued that Weber might be considered as the founding father of the sociology of governance because his works on rationality, bureaucracy, economic action, sociology of law, political communities, domination and legitimacy are essential to analyse the modern system of governance. In most of his writings, especially in Economy and Society, Weber had shown how society changed from traditional to modern forms. Weber maintains that in the case of traditional authority, it had obligations to the community, on the other hand the modern state system is rational and neutral, objective in its approach. The rational legal authority takes up the modern role without any prejudice. State has a power of domination and exerts coercive force with legal means. To explain more, he analysed the concept of disenchantment, which in literal terms means adopting rationality, this helps in demystification of society. Weber argues that in modern societies, people have faith in scientific and bureaucratic rationality as opposed to the traditional society which believed in magic and myth, but it may not be always correct. Even today, one would find even literate and so called rational people relying on supernatural power and magic in the Indian society. During elections, performing Puja is an important act for many political leaders. Chapter 5 explains how certain leaders encompass magical power and enact performance to influence people during the time of elections. However, there has been a shift in the analysis of power of the state. Weber’s notion of power was different from Foucauldian analysis of governmentality. Weber stresses on state’s power to exert force on the subjects with legal means. This holds true even today in the contemporary analysis of the state, whereas Foucault argues that modern state developed various mechanisms in terms of technology of the rule. While explaining governmentality, he elucidates that the state would not necessarily employ the force to subjugate its population; rather, through subtle ways, it moulds and creates citizens/subjects by which they can be best governed. From a sociological perspective, Fox and Ward suggest, one must look at how governance functions properly within a social context imbued with cultural values where power is distributed unevenly. They argue, sociology could help us in analysing how governance affects individuals and institutions in shaping social organization. The authors emphasize that there is a ‘need to know where and when objects and practices become subjects for governance, how governance varies and adapts over time, and what this tells us about social organization, conflict, resistance and ideology’ (Fox & Ward, 2008, 1).

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Fox and Ward outline three broad perspectives within sociology which have addressed the issue of governance. One is interest-based accounts, in which groupings with material stakes influence the shape of governance; second one is value-based approach, which assesses how governance regimes reflect institutional values and cultural contexts with a focus upon the ‘macro’-level of politics and state regulation. The third one is the governmentality perspective derived from Foucault’s notion of technology of rule. It looks at government’s strategy to rule the subject and the impact of governance on the governed population (Fox & Ward, 2008, 5). Wittek tries to formulate three approaches that are apt for sociological analysis on the governance of organization. He mentions three general theoretical frameworks that seem to guide research on governance. These are the rationalist, structuralist and culturalist approaches. Each of them considers a different aspect of governance. ‘Rational choice theorists see governance primarily as incentive structures that influence individual interests. Proponents of culturalist explanations conceptualize governance primarily as the socialization and internalization of norms and values and consequently consider governance practices as the definition of identities; structuralists consider the behaviour of individuals to be primarily determined by their position in institutionalized power structures’ (Wittek, 2007, 74). Recently, it has been recognised that governance is different from government as it involves the non-state actors as well. Community, civil society and market are all part of the governance mechanism (Das, 2020). Many sub-disciplines have grown within the framework of sociology, specializing in diverse themes. Until recently, governance was dealt by political scientists in the domain of public administration and public management, it was even used in business management. Gradually, the importance of governance compelled sociologists to analyse the issue of governance in relation to the society, but it is yet to be established as a fully developed subdiscipline like sociology of religion, political sociology, or economic sociology. Sociologists mainly used to analyse the subject of governance under the purview of political sociology and economic sociology. Due to recent emphasis on the social dimensions of governance, there is a need to develop some perspectives that can be useful to study this subject. Entry on ‘sociology of governance’ in the Encyclopedia of Governance outlines, ‘if sociology is the study of society, and governance is the activity of managing or ruling human affairs, then the sociology of governance is the study of the societal dimensions of managing human affairs. No established subfield named the ‘sociology of governance’ exists within the discipline of sociology, … this entry argues that classical and contemporary sociology has much to say about the theory and practice of governance’ (Ansell, 2007, 901). Generally, governance is understood as a function of managing or ruling human affairs. Until the late 1980s, there was no specialized subfield of sociology of governance in practice but gradually scholars have started contributing to this subdiscipline. To understand the theory and practice of governance from a sociological point of view, it is important to mention about the forerunners of sociology who have contributed to this subfield.

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Ansell (2007) suggests that three different perspectives could be used to understand the relationship between society and governance. The first is basically civilizational or cultural. This suggests the societal perspective with the social dimension of human collectivities. Personal relationship and society influence the social behaviour of human beings, which is a kind of social approach to governance. In the second one, he talks of differentiation perspective, which is generally linked to the modernization approach. It is believed that in modern society, economy is differentiated from the society. Society can be governed distinctly from the economy. This perspective has been criticized by many sociologists and anthropologists like Polanyi and Granovetter. The third one is the embeddedness perspective which emphasizes that society is embedded in all spheres of activities. This approach argues that economic and political activities have a social dimension that cannot be ignored. Therefore, state, politics and economy are embedded in the society (Ansell, 2007). To emphasize the role of sociology in the study of governance, Andre Beteille suggests that the task of a sociologist is to understand the functioning of society and governance. Sociology is not a policy science; it is a reflexive discipline. He emphasizes the difference between policy analysis and policy prescription and opines that even the best-designed policies could have unintended consequences. According to him, sociology is at its best when it examines the unintended consequences of policies. For this, sociology of governance should focus on policy analysis rather than on policy prescription.1 In a similar line, Ansell (2007) suggests, sociologists seek to understand the sources of power in society and how it is wielded to produce both desirable and undesirable outcomes. Social scientists argue that over the period, the discourse on governance has taken a very strong position in academic and political arenas. It seems that the development discourse has been replaced by the discourse on governance. However, the critics do not see it as a neutral term and are sceptical about the idea of good governance. One must investigate the political economy of the term and in which sense it has been used. Ansell suggests that ‘it is important to acknowledge that governance may be a benign expression for domination or social control’ (Ansell, 2007, 902). It might be true to a large extent, but we also need to look at the case of individual human beings trying to govern themselves. In self-governance, it is not always about control or domination. Rather, it is about orienting oneself to adjust in the society to be part of the process of governance in a broader sense. In the domain of mainstream discussion, either governance is seen from the perspective of state or dominant citizens, but in a crucial intervention, Das and Poole (2004) suggest, sociology and anthropology should explore social processes at the margins of society. Therefore, the sociology of governance should study and analyse the margins of society and its location in the larger structure of governance. The margins relocate the fixity and flux of state-based governance while evoking the multiple formations of social reality that transgresses authority and often contributes

1

Andre Beteille, personal interview with the author on October 25, 2013.

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to its (de)legitimization. There might be many such abstract and concrete formulations of state that oscillates between the dynamic paradigm of legality and paralegality. The complex decodes of such nexus have been highlighted by Ivan Briscoe. As a relative existence of political identity and processes of claiming identity, ‘parallel state’ is used ‘to describe the existence of a clandestine nexus between formal political leadership, self-serving factions within the state apparatus, organized crime and/or experts in violence’ (Briscoe, 2008, 2). From analytic point of view, societal processes are seen as dynamic and which is not something static. It would be erroneous to define ‘state’ simplistically by assigning to it some concrete features of tax collection centre, police, judiciary, army, administrator and so on. In this case, sociology should strive to explain certain phenomena that influence society but are not directly visible. Das and Poole (2004) powerfully demonstrate the functioning of the state at the margins of society, where different communities and people perceive the state’s presence differently in their everyday experience. In that volume, various essays demonstrate how state practices are produced and reproduced in certain social spheres—from the family to the check gates and borderlines. Until recently, political sociologists and anthropologists hardly considered state in a holistic manner while studying local communities. However, in contemporary academic practices, there has been a shift in the approach—social scientists have started using ethnography to understand the element of sociality and power relations between the state and the people. The state governs people’s lives, which is dependent on the kind of relationship society shares with the state. This relationship is negotiated in various ways in everyday life. Interestingly, this relationship changes according to its ecosystem. It is also important to look at the role of global politics in creating different concepts, categories and rhetoric. Words like good governance, participatory development, cultural capital and social capital have dominated the contemporary governance discourse on the global as well as the national level. In social sciences, the idea of hierarchy has a prominent place. Hierarchy is a widespread feature of human society, reflected in many aspects and in varying degrees. Despite the fact that the governance process might involve super-ordination, people would always try to manipulate the system to gain an advantage over others, and people at the margins will seek to access scarce resources and services through various mechanisms and strategies.

1.4 The Porous State and the Society: Between the Centralized Consent and the Localized Perceptions Mitchell (1991) suggests that the edges of the state are uncertain, but societal elements have penetrated the state from all sides, and thus, differentiating between the boundary of state and society is very difficult. Similarly, the state has also penetrated into various social spaces (Das & Poole, 2004). It is important to understand

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the deceptive character of the state. Similar to this, Nandy (1989) interprets the Constitution of India and argues that modernization would prevail, more Indianness would emerge and the diversity of India would diminish, so that people of the country would be governable. Bardhan (1984) points out that the state would be controlled by rich farmers, industrial capitalists and bureaucrats. There are broadly two kinds of notions prevalent in social sciences. In one state is perceived as an Idea, while in the other, it is perceived as a system. But Abrams (1988) suggests that the relation between state as a system and state as an idea should be examined more carefully. For Mitchell (1991), the state is important because of its political structure as a mythic or ideological construct. For him, the state should not be read as a structure rather it should be understood as a structural effect, practices make the structure exist. Kaviraj (1984) and Chatterjee (1986) argue that Indian bourgeoisie could not dominate the masses because it could not control the community through culture. Chatterjee (1986) further adds that the postcolonial nation state, embedded as it is within the universal narrative of capital, refuses to recognize any form of community except the nation itself. Culturally distinctive expressions of community identity are therefore antithetical to the modern Indian state as it generally seeks to subjugate them. The boundary between the state and society is porous and permeable. This understanding emerges from ethnographic experiences in the field. However, and largely, people practice certain rituals related to the state in everyday life where they feel that the state (Sarkar)2 is different from them. Symbols and signs separate ‘state’ from ‘society’, and it is often difficult to define them in concrete terms. There are debates in the social sciences, particularly in sociology and social anthropology, over how to study the state. Das and Poole (2004) through various essays look at different practices and interaction of state and society that sociologists and anthropologists often ignore and take these issues for granted. It is also an important task of sociology and anthropology to understand people’s perceptions, practices and stratagems in negotiating with the state. The state has mechanisms to keep people in order and legitimize its presence through various social welfare schemes, but these people receive and respond to these schemes on their own ways. At the time of elections, for example, even vulnerable poor people can get to prove their importance with their voting power. Similarly, the local intermediaries who are mostly affiliated to different political parties also try to mediate with the agencies of the state for various socioeconomic benefits for the local communities. Further, different communities perceive and use the agenda of the state differently. They have various meanings for the same thing. One of the main causes of the failure of governance is miscommunication between the state and people. Often, members of the political parties mediate between these two and try to interpret various aspects of governance to the people. It can be argued that, often, people do not understand the language of governance and that is when they find the role of intermediaries useful.

2

Sarkar is a rough translation of government or state.

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At these times, intermediaries work as Hermes.3 This is exemplified in the multiple strategies of restoring social and emotional health devised by the Government of India (GoI) to fight COVID-19 pandemic in the year 2020, while the Prime Minister of India appealed to the citizens of the country to light up a candle to pay homage and respect to the menial workers and health service providers who worked relentlessly during the pandemic, a few sections of the Indian population interpreted it to be a nuska (home remedy in Hindi, from the original Urdu Nuskha here meaning prescription by a physician) for fighting off the novel coronavirus. Generally, international agencies and global players produce and reproduce the concepts of governance. It is stimulating to analyse how the nation state co-opts or operationalizes these concepts. Governance entails policy planning and evaluation. Generally, it is done in a centralized manner, where local considerations are hardly being incorporated. Despite bitter experiences, several lessons of failed programmes, implementations and unplanned consequences, why does the state follow governance patterns designed by so-called experts, who might implement esoteric proposals? This book looks at these programmes as the citizens see it, i.e. the people’s perceptions and ideas of the state, government and governance. This book draws on ethnographic studies of various elections, which are considered a pathway to better democracy, and analyses these in terms of performance and magic. Using the concept of neoliberal governmental politics developed by various scholars like Harvey (2005) and Brown (2005, 2006), this study explores the politics of good governance in relation to the agenda of neoliberalism. This book analyses governance at the macro-level and links it to everyday local politics, thereby situating the Indian state in people’s life. The core argument of this study is based upon the notion that the state might lay down governance rules and policies, but these assume various forms and characters at the grassroots, as mentioned above, and do not translate exactly. The idea of ‘embeddedness’4 is used to explain the dynamics at the local level.

1.5 The Social Field and the Study In any kind of empirical study in social research, the field holds a crucial place in researchers’ investigation. Field has different connotation, and it is inferred differently according to different contexts. The overwhelming presence of the field in social research has at times fascinated researchers. To contextualize the meaning of field, it is apt to bring in Quaiser’s position on the same. Reflecting on Bourdieu’s concept of field, Quaiser (2019, 180) points out that Bourdieu uses the concept of field in a very rigid and structured sense where a social field ‘exerts a force upon all 3

Hermes is a god in Greek mythology. He is considered an intermediary between gods and humans who interprets message of the gods to the people and vice versa. 4 The use of the term embeddedness is borrowed from Karl Polanyi and Mark Granovetter. It is explained in Chapters 2 and 4. It shows how individual actions are constrained by various social considerations.

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those who come within its range’. Those who come within its range are generally not aware of it, and its power is mysterious. Quaiser argues that ‘Bourdieu’s concept of field is very much akin to his concept of habitus where primary predispositions constitute structuring principles to constitute human activities/practices’. According to Quaiser ‘a social field is characterized by people placed in a hierarchical social order. They gain knowledge of it in a process that generates critical reflections and enables them to exert influence upon the field in order to change it through a process of unravelling its mysteries by their defiant subjectivities. In other words, people are not just constituted by the field, but they constitute and reconstitute it as well’(Ibid). It is important to take cognizance of the geographical field and social field where the researcher conducts the study. Field has both epistemological and ontological implications where the outcome of the study largely depends on the researcher’s position with reference to the ‘field’. This study combined an ethnographic approach with the survey and interview techniques to understand the state–society relationship and its impacts on the everyday life of the people. This research was conducted in the Sonitpur District of Assam, Tezpur is one of the sub-divisions of the district and is divided into different development blocks, each of which is further divided into number of panchayats. Napam Panchayat is divided into ten administrative wards. Napam Panchayat comes under Balipara development block which is located within Tezpur sub-division. Research has been conducted in the villages of Napam, Bhitor Parowa, Noorbari tea garden and Amolapam under the Napam Panchayat. The reason for choosing the field is the diversity in terms of it’s ethnic composition. Every field worker, whether an insider or an outsider, is faced with the challenge of maintaining objectivity in the accounts of the fieldwork with which she/he establishes close relations. Srinivas talks about a situation where a researcher finishes the field research and starts writing the analysis that forces the researcher to emerge from the field and transform oneself into an impersonal analyst from being a participant– observer. As he states ‘The process of writing about his experience for an impersonal and professional audience, which gradually produces for him a measure of distance from the field he has left behind’ (Srinivas, 2009, 165). The fieldwork for the present study was conducted in different phases from 2009 to 2020. The reason behind long period of research is to collect ethnographic data from various elections and understand the state–society relationship more closely. While the common people become more important for political parties during the elections, including those in the government, the former also become more assertive in bargaining for their demands and rights. Activities conducted during the preelection period thus offer significant insights into the engagement between the society and the state. Since elections are only held periodically, the study had to wait to gain a comparative, and comprehensive view of the state–society relationship as manifested during election times.

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1.6 Locating the Area The concept of village council or Gaon Sabha is not new in India; it existed in the traditional village society as well. The PRIs have got the constitutional status after the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments. The idea of participatory development and democracy is the main essence of the local self-governance. As an institution of self-government, Panchayat basically puts emphasis on maximization of local autonomy and minimization of control by higher authorities, thereby providing the scope for greater involvement of the common people in the governance of their own areas. The Tezpur Lok Sabha constituency is located on the north bank of the Brahmaputra River. Tezpur town is the headquarters of the district known as Sonitpur and is considered to be the cultural capital of Assam. It has also a large military base. Its total population according to 2011 census is about 1,924,110 out of which males are 983,904 and females are 940,206, respectively. Density of population in Sonitpur district is 370 people per square kilometre. Out of the total population in Sonitpur district, 9.04% lives in urban regions, whereas 90.96% of population lives in rural areas of the district. Basically, it is a district where 90% of the population lives in the rural areas. Drawing through a contextual specification, this present study was conducted in an area bestowed with a heterogeneous composition such as the ex-tea garden community, the Adivasis or the tea tribes in Assam primarily recognized under Other Backward Classes (OBC), the Bengali-speaking community with an origin from erstwhile East Bengal (Mymensinghia Hindus and Muslims), Nepalis, Boros, Kacharis, Biharis and Assamese caste Hindus. Agriculture is the primary occupation and the mode of sustenance of these groups, a section of the poor and the marginalized within these groups depend upon wage employment in construction sites. While the field sites have been reasonably scattered across several villages located in the Napam Panchayat, two villages such as Napam and Amolapam have been predominantly drawn for an intensive analysis on the citizens’ visions of governance relative to their geographical and politicized locations. While Napam is located near the Tezpur University, Amolapam is located on the other end. Bhitor Parowa and Noorbari are located near the Tezpur Town.

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1.7 Napam It is a village where a number of ethnic and religious groups are living including Nepali, tea tribes (Adivasis), Assamese, Bihari, Bengali (Muslim and Hindu) and others. The Nepalis are counted under Hinduism, whereas some of the tea tribes are Christians. The village has a Namghar and a Church. It also houses a lord Shiva temple in the locality. Most of the people residing in the village are agriculturalists. Cultivation is their main occupation and crops that they cultivate include rice, jute, sesame, mustard and vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, okra, potato, etc. Apart from agriculture, some of the people are engaged in carpentry. Some villagers, both men and women, are engaged in Tezpur University as salesperson, security guards and menial workers. The villages are mostly dependent on monocrops as a primary source of livelihood. Very few cultivators with strong capital bases go for double crops. The only water body present nearby these villages is that of the river Jia Bhoroli while no significant or thick forest cover is located around. So, the question of collecting any form of forest product does not make for a case. From the month of March until August, these areas receive heavy rain, leading to floods where the village community suffer regularly. These factors do shape the aspirations and expectations of the people from the state while leading to curving a niche of their interaction with various state-level

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institutions. In order to understand these processes with explicit and implicit connotations, multiple approaches were employed during the fieldwork. This fieldwork which was conducted in the Napam Panchayat of the Sonitpur District in Assam is based on a sample size drawn from the voters’ list. A simple random sampling was drawn in proportion to the population size of a group in the voters’ list. To maintain confidentiality, names of the respondents have been changed to pseudonyms. Napam is known as the backward region relative to its marginal presence in the indicators of governance and human development such as health, education, amenities and hygiene. Napam Panchayat has a population of 18,989 under it. The people from the Panchayat claim that Napam is one of the biggest panchayats in Assam in terms of deciding upon its population size. While discussing the human development of an area, its status and ascertainment cannot be unrelated to that of the economic practices. In Napam, people often do various kinds of jobs to sustain themselves and their families. In an environment where possibilities of lucrative jobs are few and uncertain, Tezpur University enables many people to be engaged in construction works as wage labourers. As an accessible scope of working in the domestic environment, women folk work as domestic helps in many of the middle- and upper-middle class households. Even some of the men folk work as gardeners in residential quarters and hostels and some are engaged in hostels as cooks. Besides, the Tezpur town also serves as a site of generating work for the daily wage labour, few of them also work in stationery or grocery shops as helpers. A majority of landless men and women works in the agricultural land, often valuing it as a means of sustenance and tradition. However, as a subtle class-based contestation and hierarchy, it has often been encountered that the local landowners complain about not being able to generate any potential income from agricultural source. They do not get people to work in their land. They attribute this to majorly two main factors of push and pull. The statebased employment seeks to pull many people in the hope of a regular and secure income such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). As a result of the vision of ’differentiated’ citizens, some landowners often argue that the reason people opt for such government projects is due to the government’s laxity. With less work, they can earn enough to live on. Hence, people do not want to come and work in the agricultural field where they have to produce a certain amount of work in the presence of the landowner. Furthermore, it was observed in the study area that many people with a substantial amount of land simply do not cultivate it. Due to economic constraints, the cultural traditions of cultivation seem to have taken a back seat. The local people have started leasing it out to other professional farmers who would cultivate cash crops or vegetables with a high amount of investments. Other informal employment sectors, such as brick kilns, have also contributed to a shortage of agricultural workers.Brick kiln requires a lot of manual labour, and the owners of this industry pay a substantial amount to the labourers in advance, which is an advantageous option for them. In a way, both employer and employee are able to reap some benefits from it. This sector can glue workers even if it can demand a lot of hard work. Due to its strict agreement on a job entry point, labour force cannot leave

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work half way. As an exploitative system, this industry contractually employs the whole family to work, including children. Recently, many new brick kilns have come up in the Napam Panchayat. Besides these works, teaching and other employment in government and non-government sectors also include the streamline of ‘service’. In other words, the formal and informal sectors of employment coexist, but often with cross-sections and blurred distinctions. People are also engaged in small businesses such as owning petty shops in front of the university area. In this regard, Napam and Panchmile centre serves as the main business communication and administration hub. In its specificity, a market area is also called as the centre in this locality. It needs a special mention here, most of the shops in Tezpur town close by 7.30 pm, but these centres are often open until 11 pm. The rural–urban division is reversed relative to the complexities of work opportunities and the peripheral locations. This shows the embeddedness of the market in rural areas like Napam wherein Tezpur town and its markets show a symbol of anonymity. As market centres operate as a space of transition from the private to that of the public, yet in coexistence of varying relationships, various things are being discussed by the actors participating in the market such as from religion to governance, politics and economic activities. The cultural symbol of this region is tamul, i.e. betel nut. People are seen taking tamul, drinking tea and having various locally produced snacks. Unlike the market in Tezpur town, women are visible in this area until late evening. Though Tezpur University is located in the Napam Panchayat, it could not contribute much towards the growth in the educational status of the people in this region. There are various factors responsible for this. From the survey covered for the households in the area, it has been found that the maximum proportion of people have completed their primary-level education; the other have no educational qualification, while graduates are negligible. Eighteen percentage of the surveyed population has completed their higher secondary education. The primary factor leading to such educational status lies in the lack of affordable education, wherein neo-liberalization and capitalist ventures have clutched it more in the hands of the privileged sections of the society. In an interesting glimpse, however, the present generations of the families in Napam have initiated conditionings of sending their children to schools, with a boost from Mid-day Meal Scheme (MDM). But the quality of education seems to be an important one which has dissatisfied most of the parents even if their children receive free food in schools. An affirmation for private schools has been observed but such opportunities are often dented due to expensive fees. For this study, the data was collected across several communities based in rural areas under the Napam Panchayat of Sonitpur District of Assam, which constitutes one of the most diverse demographic landscapes within the state. To grapple with the nuances of governance and politics in a multi-ethnic setting, the book examines the sociological dynamics involved in the processes of various elections, the most dominant and dramatic site of democratic participation and performance in India. Besides, the book also studies the day-to-day engagement of rural communities with state agencies and the way it informs their relationship with the same. Many different communities inhabit this region. Samples of these communities were drawn from

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the voters’ list. To begin with, a cluster of different communities was prepared from the list. Then, according to the population size of each community, a representative sample from each of them was drawn through random sampling. The field research on election was done in Tezpur and Behali, two Legislative Assembly Constituencies (LAC) under the Tezpur Parliamentary Constituency. A part of the study was also conducted in the Dhekiajuli LAC under the Tezpur Parliamentary Constituency. The issues pertaining to local governance were mostly studied in the Napam Gaon Panchayat, which comes under the Balipara Development Block of Sonitpur District. The study on elections aims to formulate the ethnographic details of the voting practices of people in Assam. To achieve this goal, three selected polling booth areas (Behali, Panchmile and Thelamara-Naharbari) of the Tezpur Parliamentary Constituency in the Sonitpur District of Assam were covered. These three polling stations were chosen to represent three different ethnic, cultural and geographically distinct areas, and utmost care was taken to select them so that these areas could be representative of the universe. Behali is dominated by tea garden workers (popularly called tea tribe in Assam), Panchmile area is inhabited predominantly by Bangla-speaking Muslims and Nepalis, and the Thelamara-Naharbari area consists of the Bodo tribal groups as the majority. These polling stations were selected based on purposive sampling, and utmost care was taken to have representation of three different communities, which were numerically preponderant in these areas. It was expected to provide an opportunity for making comparative analyses based on social and political behaviours. This procedure allowed the study to gather opinions from different sections of the electorate. The study also tried to find out the nature of voting decisions and gather views and opinions in the context of broader social and economic issues. This study was designed to analyse social background of voters, their social and political values as well as perceptions. It also intended to evaluate the levels of groups and candidates and ascertain opinions on questions of public policy besides studying the nature of participation in political activities. Data was collected primarily through the interview schedules. This process was also supplemented by detailed observations of various activities in the polling booth area on the day of election. I, along with the research assistants, participated in the election rallies and followed the campaign trails of various political parties and examined the response of the voters of various communities. This provided the opportunity to meet and interview some of the voters and political campaigners, leaders and contesting candidates. The polling booth-based profiles of the voting activities was prepared with the help of intensive fieldwork. This study thus tried to explore the relationships between workers of a political party, leaders and voters. I attended public meetings and public rallies that were addressed by the candidates themselves and some other meetings organized at the village level. The team also observed how workers campaigned and canvassed door to door and how voters were mobilized on the day of polling. The flyers, pamphlets, cassettes, CDs and banners of different candidates and parties were collected and analysed. I approached different party offices, spoke with party members, the candidates, the common people and reporters of different Assamese and English dailies. The respondents were randomly selected from different areas of the field. I visited some

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other selected areas of Tezpur town, Thelamara, Kawaimari, Naharbari, etc. Intensive fieldwork was conducted for one month before the polling. A cross section of people at different levels, which included party workers at the grassroots and administration, authority, different civil societies like Mahila Samiti (women’s association), Dokani sangha (shopkeepers’ association) were interviewed. The candidates in the fray were interviewed along with the voters to understand the general environment of the elections. The voters were observed minutely as to how they came to the polling booth, who accompanied them, how long they waited outside before and after voting, with whom different voters talked and how the different party workers tried to mobilize them at the last moment of voting. The book deals with the issues of grassroots democracy and governance and investigates the dimensions of power and trust. It has seven chapters. The introductory chapter discusses the theoretical framework and methodology of the study, briefly introduces the field set-up. It also explains the relationship between the state and the society. Besides, based on relevant works, the chapter highlights the challenges in studying the state, which has various forms and manifestations. The chapter also delves into the practices and possibilities of doing sociology of governance from academic and research points of view. Chapter 2 provides an account of the concepts, approaches and frameworks used in the study of governance. Locating governance within the larger social structure, the chapter discusses the idea of embeddedness in governance. It further discusses the paradigm shifts in the discourses of governance with the advent of neoliberalism. The chapter presents various models of governance. It recounts not only how formal structures of governance are generally adopted by the state machinery, but also how informal structures are also important in the vernacular society. Finally, the chapter gives an account of the discourses on good governance and civil society and its impact on contemporary governance. Chapter 3 presents an account of the demographic profile of the state of Assam and its ethnic, religious and cultural landscapes. It provides a brief overview of the political systems of the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial Assam. In that backdrop, the chapter recounts the historical background of the Panchayati Raj Institutions and local self-government in Assam. It explains how the social and cultural diversities in Assam need to be considered to understand the implications of the process of governance at various levels. The chapter then examines the three-tier structure of local governance in India with special reference to Assam. The chapter also presents various data collected with respect to the issues under study and analyses it to gain insight into various government welfare programmes. The chapter examines people’s perception of development and governance in detail. While doing so, the study considers various indicators of social development like health, education, drinking water and sanitation and how people perceive about these issues. People’s suggestions for improvement of various services are also enlisted. Chapter 4 argues how the process of citizenship is acquired through various bureaucratic procedures which need supports of various documentations. There are good number of academic works in the areas of documents and citizenship that show its importance in the modern forms of governance. Taking lead from those works,

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this chapter analyses the role of paper and documents in modern governance. The proof of documents to prove citizenship works as a double-edged sword. Sometimes, the original inhabitants who do not have proof of papers are barred from citizenship, whereas those who are well connected, with the help of documentary evidence, might prove their citizenship. This chapter demonstrates the importance of body and how a biological body turns legitimate through the help of documents. It discusses the issues of NRC and Aadhaar in the context of Assam. The chapter then delves into the process of informal governance and the element of trust in the everyday life of the people. The politics around the issues of ‘D’ (doubtful) voters and citizenship is also discussed. These analyses enable us to compare the perspectives of the beneficiaries of welfare schemes with respect to ethnicity, caste, class, gender, age, education and so on. Chapter 5 is based on the ethnographic study of three elections in Assam, apart from analysing the voting patterns and voting behaviour, it explains electoral participation as a form of enacting citizenship. Further, it examines the political significance of electoral voting for various communities. It then analyses the question as to why people vote. The chapter then discusses the campaigning and canvassing done by the political party workers and party leaders before the elections to understand the dynamics of the election process. The study also highlights the activities that play out around the polling booth on the day of polling. It thus tries to capture the way elections take the form of a ritualistic celebration and are often embedded in a paradigm of cultural practices. For the fact, democratic elections in India move far beyond voting. It is undeniably an expression of sedentary emotions. Delving into the differences between Parliamentary level, state level and Panchayat level, the chapter provides the explanation on how these different levels are enmeshed with everyday governance. Chapter 6 discusses the concept of neoliberal governmentality as developed by various thinkers such as David Harvey, Raymond Plant and Wendy Brown. It analyses the changing nature of the state in the context of neoliberalism, that implies the withdrawal of the state from various public welfare measures and explicates its manifestation and implications at the local level in the context of Assam. The discourse on good governance has been mentioned with the political agenda of various international financial organizations. It also discusses government’s new approach or a paradigm shift in managing welfare programmes. Many social scientists and critics argue that this is a step to further the privatization of the education sector. This kind of strategy is often adopted by the state in the name of public–private partnership. The corporate sector and the government are engaged in trying to create a belief in the public mind that private sector symbolizes efficiency. This chapter questions and critically analyses the LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation, Globalisation) model of governance. Chapter 7 concludes the discussion of the book by presenting a summary of the main arguments of the book. It emphasizes the need to understand the dynamics of governance in multi-ethnic democracy like India from micro-levels without ignoring macro-perspectives. The conclusion outlines the implications of contemporary governance for the rural societies in India with special reference to the state of Assam.

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Governance is considerably mediated and conditioned different local specificities. Both formal and informal governance are important in the everyday functioning of the state. But state tries to employ formal governance whereas people from time to time take the course of informal governance. Various informal mechanisms provide poor people ways to deal the state. Social connection with political parties or middlemen proves to be beneficial for the rural people. Both the state and community negotiate and renegotiate with the multiple interests and create a newer experience of multiplicity in governance. This book contributes to the study of grassroots governance with a focus on people’s experience where sociality plays an important role.

Chapter 2

Locating the State, Power and Governance in the Social Sphere

In contemporary debate, it is acknowledged that the disciplining technology of the state looks less penetrative in terms of interfering in people’s everyday life. In present times, if one looks at the dynamics of the state, it is changing the characteristics (from welfare mode to security mode) which is evident from various contemporary governmental policies and practices. Various modern mechanisms, such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT), have been used to collect revenue and taxes from the citizens. Nevertheless, the omnipresence of ICT often obscures the patterns of state interference as it is both a distant and proximate symbol to people. Through different policies, the state is also trying to encourage citizens to take care of the self and the family in terms of welfare provisions, and, it is evident from government’s inclination towards privatization of public institutions. In the above context, this chapter examines approaches and frameworks relevant to the study of governance in sociology, especially in relation to state and society. It explores the possibility of studying governance through the lens of sociology, by locating it within broader social processes. It also discusses the changing nature of the state and the shifts in the discourses of governance in recent times. In this context, when the word ‘Governance’ was searched in the most popular search engine, Google, it gave about 294,000,000 results in 0.53 s. But most of the links it provided after the initial three pages were related to either good governance or corporate governance. It shows how the word governance is closely related to the corporates and how it has become a key term in the present world where neoliberalization has penetrated into the most parts of the social world. Kjaer (2004) reports that the term ‘governance’ in the Social Science Index during 1986–1998 occurred in 1774 articles. But within the span of three years from 1999 to 2001, the index enlists 1855 articles. It shows the expanding popularity of the idea of governance in the academia. In common parlance, ‘governance’ means the process or act of governing. Thus, it involves anything to do with the process of governing, including self-governance, state, family or community governance. In Mark Bevir’s words, ‘governance refers to all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization, or territory, and whether © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Das, Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5110-7_2

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through laws, norms, power, or language, Governance differs from government in that it focuses less on the state and its institutions and more on social practices and activities’ (Bevir, 2012, 1). The rule of law denotes the formal governance whereas social governance is related to the community, which is a part of informal governance. But very often the meaning of the term ‘governance’ is confined only to be governed by the state, leading to the confusion between government and governance. As mentioned, governance is a process or outcome of an action of an institution or an organization. There are various institutions, organizations or bodies who are involved in the process of governance, such as family, corporate organization, association or government. The word governance can mean different things to different people depending on time and context. So, it might be problematic to follow a particular model of governance or define it in a fixed term. Governance should be defined and conceptualized according to the context where it is practised (Das, 2020). In the following section, some of the meanings and patterns of governance are discussed.

2.1 Governance: Etymology and Concept Commonly, it is found that the origin of the word ‘governance’ is obscure. One of the earliest usages of the term is found in Plato’s The Republic (2007). Even Kautilya has used the idea of governance in the magnum opus Arthashashtra. Etymology of the term ‘governance’ is derived from the Greek verb kubernân (to pilot a vessel or a tank) that was used for the first time in a metaphorical manner by Plato to imply governing men. It also gave birth to the Latin verb gubernare that carried the same meaning. Since then the term have had usage in several languages. The term in French has been first used in the thirteenth century as equivalent of ‘government’ (art or manner to govern). In the fourteenth century, it was passed on to the English language, giving birth to the term governance (action or manner to govern).1 To define governance2 is a difficult task. Even though one of the core questions of this book is based on governance, it will not be feasible to do a survey of different definitions related to governance, neither is there scope for surveying all the theoretical perspectives around it. This work intends to understand governance and grassroots democracy through sociological viewpoints located in a particular field-based setting. Therefore, conceptualization and operationalization of the term ‘governance’ is limited to the scope of this empirical study. Usually, governance is presented in a normative sense which has to be either good or bad. The concept of good governance is rooted in liberal philosophy and was later co-opted by multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF. 1

For more discussion on this, please refer to http://ec.europa.eu/governance/docs/doc5_fr.pdf (accessed on August 26, 2019). 2 For more discussion on the definition and ambiguity of the concept governance please see: Rhodes (1997), Kooiman (1999), Pierre and Peters (2000), Bevir and Rhodes (2003), Kjær (2004); Newman (2005); Jose (2009).

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However, it is often alleged that in the name of good governance, the state is acquiring the features of corporations and, through the alliance with global finance capital, it is acting against the welfare of most of its citizens. The techno-state generates and reappropriates governable ‘citizens’ for security of the state. For instance, the existence of various identification documents to prove citizenship validations such as Aadhaar card3 in India and its linkages to numerous other documents of national and personal importance such as bank accounts deploy the possibilities of ‘technological order’ determining the access of national resources and embodiments of national identities for the state-subjects or the citizens. This has also been broadly raised by Mitra. He articulates ‘depending on where one stands in the national and international nexus of power, the status of individuals in terms of their claims to citizenship can be both confirmed and contested, depending on which strand of liberal theory of citizenship or its derivatives one draws on’ (Mitra, 2013, 67). Generally, when the concept government is mentioned, it denotes the machinery and institutional arrangements for the exercise of sovereign power to serve the internal and external interests of the political community, whereas governance has a foggy connotation different from government (Mander & Asif, 2012, 11). In governing communities, right from antiquity, there have been ruler and kings who were concerned with governance in various manners. Governance as an idea is not new. Now, the modern states, following the democratic constitutional demands, are involved in governance through a transparent mechanism of checks and balances. During the last decades, good amount of literature on governance has been produced debating the nature and scope of governance. This work intends to add to this category with the help of empirical evidences observed during the study. The subject of governance is associated with social formation since ancient times. The necessity of governance became a core part of the society as it evolved from a simple to a complex form. Therefore, it has been observed that the governance is relatively informal in an ancient society and complex in modern societies. Various social processes were managed within elementary units, but it became more sophisticated and complex with the advent of the modern state. With the advancement of society, the process of governance changed at various stages. Even in the feudal system and under the rule of monarchs and kings, the issue of governance was important. The kings and chieftains had always claimed to have the ‘divine right’ to rule, some even claiming to be the descendants of God. The priests would agree to legitimize such divine kingship by manufacturing myths and scriptures (Mander & Asif, 2012, 7). Similar worldview is part of Vaishnavite tradition in Odisha. It is believed that the 3

Aadhaar card is a national identification card that is issued to Indian citizen by the government of India. But it puts a disclaimer which says Aadhaar is not a document of citizenship and UIDAI has been mandated under the Aadhaar Act to ascertain residency of a person in India for 182 days prior to applying for Aadhaar. Also, the Supreme Court of India in its landmark decision has directed UIDAI not to issue Aadhaar to illegal immigrants (https://uidai.gov.in//images/Aadhaar_Press_R elease_18Feb_2020.pdf). It is a 12-digit individual identification number, issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (Government of India). For more details, kindly refer to https:// www.uidai.gov.in/16-english-uk/aapka-aadhaar/14-what-is-aadhaar.html (accessed on November 26, 2021).

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king of Puri, who serves the lord Jagannath and works as a keeper to the heritage, is an incarnation of Lord Vishnu and should be respected and worshipped like a God. To elucidate this, Sharma (2003) has drawn attention to the Indic concepts that existed in the ancient India. In his analysis of Shantiparvam chapter in the epic Mahabharata, he refers to terms like Rajadharama, Dandaniti, Arthashastra, Rajyashastra and Nitishastra that were used to guide the kings to ensure good governance. These terms are often used in the study of politics in ancient India. Sharma rightly claims that the Mahabharata is presumably the first Indian treatise on the science of governance. In Mahabharata, there are sections such as Rajadharama, Sabhaparvam and Vanaparvam dealing with the subject matter of governance. The Rajadharma section constitutes part of Shantiparvam; Sharma observes that Mahabharata strongly condemns anarchy. Thus, the epic coaxed the people of kingless state to welcome any invading king because anarchy is the gravest sin on earth (Sharma, 2003, 110–117). But anarchy and its exigencies are certainly different in the modern society. While anarchy defines the lack of order and disarrayed norms followed by the people, the way ‘anarchy’ is constituted and perpetuated in the modern society to meet the desire of several political situations also deserves a space. This buoyancy also lies across the discourses of citizenship and its relationship to liberal or ‘modern’ forms of governance. The concept of citizenship with freedom in all the aspects is attributed to the modern political system; it is also an integral part of the modern governance. Indeed, the idea of governance is diversely embedded in polities of the ancient world. With the advent of enlightenment, a new awakening emerged, and people started questioning the authority of Church and other religious institutions. People started participating in political activity with a rational thinking, and they realized that the governance was not managed by God or his representative such as king or divine ruler, rather it is their own responsibility to decide about their life. They strongly felt that they were the ones responsible for their lives and realized that they could govern themselves. To address this issue, Kant (1784, 1996) penned the famous essay ‘An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?’. In the writings of Confucius, Kautilya (1992), Machiavelli (2003) and the Greek scholars, the issue of governance is discernable. They advocated giving more power and authority to the State. They had also suggested excluding certain sections of society from participating in the process of governance (Mander & Asif, 2012, 9). It calls for a closer relationship between the socio-ideological sanctions of Dharmashastra4 differentiation as well as the enrooting of specific communities across perennial servitude and encrypted exclusion. While governance was meant to be the act of government in the past, the new approach in governance has implications and scope towards the market and other

4

Dharmashastras (in Sanskrit) is an ancient, revered work on jurisprudence and ‘right codes of conduct’ for the Hindus in India. It ‘dwelt on the question of the master-servant relationship [loyalty and asymmetry] as part of the more appropriate pursuit of life’. For more debates on the issue, please see Sinha et al. (2019, 83).

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networks. This study deals with the idea of self-governance related to the decentralized bodies involved in various welfare programmes, analysing its different meanings. According to Jose (2009, 2), ‘governance is a concept that brings together multiple and diverse connections between ideas, interests and institutions. But governance is more than simply a concept in the above sense; it is also a constitutive and transformative term. It is a constitutive term because it appears within numerous diverse fields of scholarship and analysis as a conceptual or theoretical means to harness and mobilize other concepts and ideas to form knowledge and understandings’. He argues, there are difficulties in defining governance because it is subject to transformation; it moulds and is moulded by other concepts, practices and institutional locations. Stoker (1998, 19–24), in his oft quoted work on governance discusses various characteristics of governance in the context of Britain and formulates five propositions useful for a theory of governance. 1. Governance refers to a set of institutions and actors that are drawn from and also beyond government. 2. Governance identifies the blurring of boundaries and responsibilities for tackling social and economic issues. 3. Governance identifies the power dependence involved in the relationships between institutions involved in collective actions. 4. Governance is about autonomous self-governing networks of actors. 5. Governance recognizes the capacity to get things done that does not rest on the power of government to command or use its authority. It sees government as able to use new tools to steer and guide. Stoker compares governance with a map in a metaphoric sense and mentions that it is time- and place-specific and it has meaning only in a particular context. The governance perspective should be developed in an evolutionary method to understand the changing process of governance. ‘The world of governing is changing in ways which mark a substantial break from the past and that changing world is worthy of study’ (Stoker, 1998, 26). Governance is ultimately concerned with creating the conditions for ordered rule and collective action (Jose, 2007; Stoker, 1998). While discussing governance and its characteristics, Frantzeskaki et al. define reflexive governance as the interactions between different actors and structure where each of them should be reflexive to each other, and it should also incorporate multiple interests and uncertainties (Frantzeskaki et al., 2009, 4). They conceptualize certain transitions in governance from the earlier period. On the shifting of focus from the state point of view to the interactive form of governance, they mention, ‘interactive governance could be in this way, the foundation of a transitions governance paradigm given that it points to the dynamic nature of a societal system recognizing the complexity of social issues and problems’ (Ibid., 5). Their idea of reflexive governance or interactive governance might be well articulated in theory and concept, but it is very difficult to practise. In the field where this study has been conducted, majority of the people do not participate in the decision-making process as instructed in the local level governance. But during the time of election, these marginalized people

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have some power to exhibit and bargain with the members or leaders of the political party. To contextualize the above position, it is pertinent to bring in Samaddar’s (2010) formulation on transition of governance in the Indian democracy from colonial period to post- independence period. The question of democratic governance acquires relevance in the context of governing a wide variety of cultures. Along with the old governmental culture of ‘mai bap sarkar’ (government as mother and father) and ‘huzur hazir’ (Master/Lord/Sir, here is your servant ready to listen to your command) we now have ‘e-governance’ and ‘virtual freedom’ by courtesy of the new electronic media (Samaddar, 2010, 478). The idea of transition of governance from a traditional system to modern e-governance, as pointed out by Samaddar, might be useful in the urban context where most of the people are literate. But in a place like Napam, where majority of them are not literate or do not know the language of governance, e-governance is not very helpful. They have to depend on the intermediaries or dalal. People have a kind of love and hate relationship with the intermediaries because they hate to give them money, and sometimes, they cannot get their required things done without the help of them. It is useful to understand various forms of governance which are used in a democratic governance.

2.2 Forms of Governance a. Multi-level Governance (MLG) MLG has entered the governance literature recently. Bache (2007) explains MLG in terms of two dimensions: vertical and horizontal. The term MLG can be understood in two ways: it vertically refers to the increasing interdependence of actors situated at different territorial levels such as supranational, national and sub-national region and horizontally connotes to the increased role of non-state actors in the decisionmaking process. In MLG (which is non-hierarchical than other forms of governance), the state loses control over policymaking. European governance could be considered as one kind of MLG. It is drawn from the EU model. Kjaer refers to the MLG as complex and non-hierarchical nature of policymaking. But MLG need not necessarily involve all regions such as (local, national and transnational) and unlike old, topdown forms of governance, gives importance to horizontal networking (Kjaer, 2004). Hooghe and Marks (2004) differentiate between two types of MLG. One type of governance bears a resemblance to federalism. This model focuses on institution or governmental organization, rather than policies or issues. The other type of MLG is comparatively complex. In this model, numerous jurisdictions overlap with each other. These are also flexible as it might demand certain kind of alteration as and when required according to the situation. Here, institution or authority is not important; rather, issues and policies are significant. One interesting feature of the MLG is that it emphasizes on the location of power from the local to the global. The local might consist of actors at the ‘margins’ of

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activism yet within the larger nexus of power. Issac and Heller (2003, 84) place these localizations as ‘robust associational life, marked not only by the activism of citizens, but also by a proliferation of NGOs and community-based organizations and the highest rates of unionization in the country’. Indeed, in a way, every sphere can operate when it is necessary and required. MLG focuses on the continuously changing interconnections between various agencies located at various levels. It includes both public and private bodies. Critics point out that in MLG, hierarchical assumptions cannot be ruled out. Even when levels are not based strictly on hierarchy, it is bound to exhibit some sort of discrimination. This model does not seem to be compatible with reference to market and corporations vis-à-vis the state. This model of MLG does not clearly explain role and power of the state. b. Global Governance Another form of governance which is often used in the literature related to globalization is known as global governance. It is generally defined as the web of formal and informal organizations and their relationships and processes involved between state, international organizations, CSO, NGOs and market. Rosenau (1995) popularized this concept in many of his works. He refers to global governance or world governance as the political interaction of international and transnational actors where there is no power dynamics involved. The framework of global governance is used in solving a common problem that affects many nations. Due to globalization, there has been a significant change in the relationship between countries. In the process, global mechanisms developed to manage the international and transnational affairs. Rosenau and Czempiel (2000) define global governance in terms of all regulations directed towards different institutions, organization and centralization of all societies on a global scale. They point out that global governance could regulate the interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority, such as in the international system. Governance in the old sense denotes controlling or steering of various organizations but through the concept of global governance, they propose the idea of governance without government. Global governance should not be confused with term like world government. It became popular when two or more countries were affected by a similar kind of problem that needed to be solved through international collaborative mechanisms. There are various forms of globalizations like economic, political, environmental, health, education, military and so on. International governance institutions deal with various issues related to environment, health, education, etc. Bevir (2012, 83) explains global governance in terms of the involvement of NGOs, markets and networks that emerge around the transnational and international issues. It does not confine itself only to the action of state and international institutions. Global governance shifts attention from sovereign states in an anarchic international society to the creation, enforcement and change in global patterns of activity. Issues of peace, security, conflict resolution, poverty, health and education are concerns of various countries. They try to solve these problems through the pattern of global governance. Since the last two decades, it has been seen that the institutions of global governance are mostly controlled by few powerful counties in the western world. In the

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pretext of addressing global problems, these countries try to hijack issues or concerns of most of the developing countries, such as basic health, environment, education and livelihood. On the issues of global warming and nuclear proliferation, some powerful countries are trying to enforce their agenda on the developing countries. So, it can be inferred that the whole notion of global governance is not neutral or benevolent and it may have unequal power relations within it. c. Collaborative Governance Literature on governance emphasizes that governance extends beyond affairs of the State. Due to the advent of neoliberal policies, welfare state is outsourcing most of the welfare subjects like education, health, transportation, sanitation, etc., to NGOs and CSOs. Then, governance demands a new form of rule. Policymakers have advocated for a new form of governance which is different from the traditional form of governance. The demands of NGOs have become important in this respect. This process has led to the emergence of a distinct form of governance called collaborative governance. Defining collaborative governance, Bevir (2012, 109) articulates, ‘collaborative governance refers mainly to cases in which citizens play a more active role in policymaking or service delivery. Typically, collaborative governance is an interactive process in which myriad actors with various interest, perspective and knowledge are brought together’. Ansel and Gash (2007, 543) opine, ‘over the last two decades, a new strategy of governing called ‘collaborative governance’ has developed. This mode of governance brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums, with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision-making’. Bevir (2012, 109) states, ‘collaborative governance differs from network governance, therefore, because it involves the citizens affected by a policy or service, not just private or voluntary sector organizations with which the state forms a contract or partnership. Again, collaborative governance differs from whole-of-government approaches because it brings citizens’ groups into the policymaking process, not just diverse government departments and agencies’. Ansel and Gash (2007, 545) argue that collaborative governance has emerged as a response to the failures of downstream implementation and to the high cost and politicization of regulation. They defined collaborative governance as ‘a governing arrangement where one or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders in a collective decision-making process that is formal, consensus-oriented and deliberative and that aims to make or implement public policy or manage public programmes or assets’. Participatory development and participatory decision-making processes have been eulogized much. In some cases, the practices of participatory governance and development are transmuted into state as a ‘problem’ rather than an affirmative solution. Even the complex existence of participatory governance and development has faced criticism. Collaborative governance also seeks participatory decision-making process, which is in much vogue now. It is alleged by the critics that in the name of participation, only some powerful people who have voice represent the community. Often dominant individual or groups participate in the name of community

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participation. In such case, disadvantaged categories like women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, landless workers and vulnerable poor are left out (Das, 2021b). Cooke and Kothari (2001) argue that participation is new form of tyranny in the process of participatory decision-making process. They sarcastically articulate that tyranny is the illegitimate exercise of power and participatory development facilitates this tyranny. Harris (2001) has shown how development has been depoliticized. An institution like the World Bank has been using various terms and concepts like social capital in the arena of international development. Harris debunks the agenda of depoliticization by showing how institutions like the World Bank systematically obscure class relations and power at the ground level. Berner (2010) offers a critique to the process of participation, outlining four main categories, namely ritualistic, exploitative, exclusive and substitute participation. Ritualistic participation means little willingness on the part of development agencies and experts to share effective decision-making power. It makes consultative meetings mere rituals to legitimize preconceived plans and to manipulate rather than facilitate the process. Exploitative participation is a disguised form of participation. In the name of creating ownership and improving efficiency, development agencies often require beneficiaries to contribute work and money. Exclusive participation deals only with the leaders and powerful key informants in the name of community representative participation. Substitute participation looks for manipulation or distortion in the representation (Berner, 2010). Collaborative governance can be one of the powerful tools, but most of the times, it could be hijacked and misused. Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) are somewhat modelled in the framework of collaborative governance by GoI, implementing local-level self-governance after the 73rd amendment of the Constitution. In an area where most people are not conversant with the language of governance or how to deal with official procedures, it is difficult for them to participate in the process of governance on their own. So, in the name of participation and representation, as it is seen from the field study, local elites and petty political intermediaries, most of the times, consume the benefits. Even if in principle collaborative governance sounds good, in practice it still has to deliver with respect to inclusive participation (Das, 2021b). Carpentier (2011) argues that participation is not a fixed notion but is deeply embedded within our political realities and thus is the object of long-lasting and intense ideological struggles. For him participation is seen as structurally different from interaction and access. Carpentier suggests that access is based on presence, in many different forms; then, interaction is a second condition of possibility for participation. The juxtaposition to access and interaction, participation becomes defined as a political and operated through power relations. Barber (1984) contends that radical individualism undermines democracy. Weak democracy cannot function efficiently. Barber criticizes the liberal approach by stating that too much of individual liberty is harmful and obstacle to a strong democracy. For him a vibrant democracy or strong democracy is based on community participation and group action. Too much of liberal practice create crisis in the democratic governance where marginal people tend to suffer.

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While dealing with the question of participation, Kaufman and Alfonso (1997) point out that many social theorists have noted, ‘participation’ is a broad and often vague concept, it can refer to anything. Participation does not exist in the abstract. Participation is defined through specific institutions, processes and ideological and cultural factors. They question the idea of participation through inequality and oppression which are usually reflected and maintained in participate democracy. They term it as differential participation. The study of differential participation points out the structures of inequality and power which exist within a patriarchal society. They posit that there could not be a single mode for democratic experience or form which could be used as blueprint for future action at the community level and argue that grassroots democracy itself is not one thing. Hence we need to be careful while formulating and designing the policies based on the process of participation.

2.3 Formal and Informal Governance Indigenous or tribal form of governance differs from a modern form. Modern governance is based on a rational, legal aspect whereas indigenous governance follows a long tradition of community practices rooted in the culture of that community. In contemporary times, a conflict between the modern laws and customary laws are visible. In many parts of India where tribal laws and rules are in practice, government has also recognized their practices as customary laws. Most often, there are clashes between the two systems of laws and thus enforcing a specific or reasonable decision becomes difficult. Often, lawmakers try to subsume the traditional law into the fold of modern laws. Reilly (2006) argues that indigenous governance should be accommodated within the framework of formal governance. Although the Australian government has taken action, it hasn’t been substantive. He further adds, the process to make indigenous governance formal should be more prominent and concrete. ‘Indigenous governance describes the way indigenous people observe and practice their own laws independently of any obligations they have under mainstream law. It is also about how indigenous people negotiate the intersection of their own laws and the rights and obligations they have under the central legal system’ (Reilly, 2006, 407). The definition and patterns of indigenous governance law differ from context to context and country to country. In India, schedules V and VI recently introduced Forest Rights Act, 2006 trying to provide justice to India’s tribes. In the sociological framework, governance could be defined into two forms, i.e. formal and informal. Formal governance is based on rules, legal sanctions, encrypted legal codes and rationality, whereas informal governance is based on social embeddedness where various social elements like kinship, ethnicity, language, religion and community come into play. In a more comprehensive explanation of formal and informal governance, Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith (2002, 2) define:

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All nations have both formal and informal governance systems—that is, systems within which citizens and government officials interact. Governance involves both public decisionmaking and public administration. The formal systems are embodied in constitutions, commercial codes, administrative regulations and laws, civil service procedures, judicial structures, and so on. Their features are readily observable through written documents, physical structures (e.g., ministry buildings, legislatures, courthouses), and public events (e.g., elections, parliamentary hearings, state-of-the-union addresses, city council meetings, legal proceedings). The informal systems, by contrast, are based on implicit and unwritten understandings. They reflect socio-cultural norms and routines, and underlying patterns of interactions among socioeconomic classes and ethnic groups. Their manifestations are less easily noticed and identified. Thus, governance systems have a dual character; formal and informal elements exist side-by-side and are intimately connected in diverse and not immediately obvious ways.

It is agreed that most of the societies in different parts of the world have both formal and informal governance in practice. ‘Informal governance’ is conducted by actors and processes outside formal government (Peters, 2007). This institutional dualism has its roots in the historical evolution of social relations between the rulers and the ruled, from tribal chieftaincies to kingdoms and empires, to feudalism and emergence of the nation state. Yet, the changing blend of formal and informal governance elements does not connote a continuum from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 2002, 2). According to Wittek (2007, 81), ‘informal governance combines the following elements: (1) the major determinant of individual action is social incentives. (2) positions and roles in informal social networks determine access to information and form the starting point for the emergence of norms. (3) legitimacy of rules is not grounded in a formal-legal basis. Non-compliance, therefore, also cannot be legally enforced’. Polese (2021) in a comprehensive mapping of informality studies points out to the terminological confusion in both a generalization and banalization of the phenomenon. He opines that informality studies have indeed the potential to offer a significant contribution to social science debates and help to improve the quality of governance in different areas of the world. He suggests that one must pay attention to the overarching framework that considers everyday governance and the role of informal practices and actors in the construction of the political. According to him, informality should be used for the conceptualization of alternative economic and socio-economic systems beyond the profit motive of neoliberal goals. He further adds that ‘informality has the potential to become a framework allowing us to bring back onto the spotlight the social, cultural and environmental needs of segments of the population that have been neglected by orthodox economic and economic policy approaches’ (Ibid., 1–3). In a country like India, it is very difficult to comprehend the practice of governance. There are diverse societies with multiplicity of religions, ethnicities, languages, regions and cultures. Many societies still practice their age-old traditional form of governance. For example, many tribal and hilly regions have their own traditional bodies of local governments who listen to most of the problems and even try to resolve the conflict within the community in extra-legal manner. Such examples can be also

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found in the form of Khap Panchayats in Haryana and the traditional Panchayats in many other societies in India. It is generally thought that these traditional institutions are defunct with no influence on the formal governance structure. However, it is not true. ‘The khap Panchayat frame rules and regulations to be obeyed not only by the Jats but also other castes and communities of the khap area, and their infringement was [sic] punished by the khap Panchayat which was supreme in internal matters’ (Pradhan, 1965, 1). These bodies influence the working of the local-level governments, even influencing the local-level elections considerably. They also yield importance in selection of the beneficiaries and development projects in their area. In this condition, there is a blend of both modern and traditional forms of governance. If one tries to look at it from sociological point of view, it will not be wrong to bring in informal governance into the study of governance. In most of the informal governance, the power to define right and wrong does not necessarily rest on the legal authority or written codes but on the elders, headmen and other local specialists authorized to explain local customs. Thus, informal governance is dependent upon informal ‘leaders’ who have social positions and are traditionally recognized. Over the time, certain external power actors consisting of social, political and economic capital also adhere and influence the varying contours of local governance. From this study, it has emerged that in the Napam area, informal governance has a strong presence. Individuals run private banks without any legal permission from the concerned government authority. They run it on their own, the villagers deposit money and eventually get loan from the individual private bankers. This could be articulated under the domain of informal or embedded governance. This can also be seen as a patron and client relationship where they get loan only if they are dependent on the moneylender who runs the bank. This also implies how paper works; documentation process in the formal banks creates a wall between state machinery and rural people who want to avoid the formal process of documentation.

2.4 Governance and Social Structure In any society, the governance is heavily influenced by the existing social structure. So, it is important to understand the idea of social structure in relation to different processes involved in the governance. The term ‘social structure’ is one of the most debatable and contested concepts in social sciences, particularly in sociology. The concept of social structure is not very clearly defined because it has a very vague meaning in sociological and anthropological literature. To illustrate this problem, Lopez and Scott (2005, 1) write, ‘indeed, social structure is treated as a taken-forgranted concept that is not in need of any explicit definition or discussion. Actual uses of the concept, however, are strikingly nebulous and diverse. As a result, there is little consensus over what the word means, and it is all too easy for sociologists to be talking at cross purposes because they rely on different, and generally implicit, conceptions of social structure’. The debate on social structure or discussion on its historical and theoretical traditions is beyond the scope of this study, but I try to

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understand the role of social structure in the field of governance. It is often seen as a continuous negotiation between the society and governance. Briefly looking at the idea of social structure would be helpful to understand the larger framework of governance in the society. ‘The meaning of a concept cannot be determined with reference to every language; its meaning has to be understood in the context of the conceptual discursive networks in which it is embedded and used’ (Lopez & Scott, 2005, 2). Various postmodern thinkers and post-structuralists argue that meaning of a concept is open to multiple interpretations. However, in an empirical study, it is useful to operationalize the concept and explain the social processes within the broader framework of the study. Lopez and Scott (Ibid.) discuss that there has been a long-term coexistence of two different conceptions of social structure. One is institutional structure that comprises the cultural and normative pattern that underlines the expectations that agents hold about each other’s behaviour and their enduring relations with each other, which in the larger framework are governed in the society as expected from each other. The other one is relational structure. As Lopez and Scott (Ibid., 3) mention, ‘(H)ere social structure is seen comprising the social relations themselves, understood as patterns of causal interconnection and interdependence among agents and their actions, as well as the positions that they occupy’. Then what kind of relationship among people in a society would be helpful in explaining the dynamics of governance. Another approach to social structure might be useful in this context. Lopez and Scott (2005, 90) term the idea of social structure proposed by Giddens, Foucault and Bourdieu as ‘embodied structures’. The fundamental way in which people respond to a situation which is grounded in relational and institutional structure is on the basis of the knowledge available to them. Lopez and Scott articulate ‘the social structure of society, then, consists of the particular complex of collective relationships and collective representations, forms of attachment and regulation, they give the society its specific characteristics’ (Ibid., 16). Radcliffe-Brown’s (1995, 118) contribution in formulating the concept on social structure is significant. He defines it as ‘the social life as a phenomenal reality is a process consisting of a multitude of actions of human beings, more particularly their interactions and joint actions. The particular events of the social life are the facts to which all our concepts and theory must be applied’. He maintains, ‘the structural features of social life of a particular region consist of all those continuing arrangements of persons in institutional relationships which are exhibited in the actions and interactions that in their totality make up the social life’ (Ibid., 123). Social structure plays an important role in shaping the nature of society in terms of intercommunity relationship to the governance. The idea of ‘embodied structures’ is relevant to understand the field situation in Napam. Access to various provisions of the state is mediated by various axes of identity such as religion, caste, ethnicity, class and gender. People who are in power are often related with the supposed beneficiaries of the welfare schemes though these linkages. Chances of accessing state provisions are greater if somebody is linked to the officials or Panchayat functionaries on the lines of religion, caste or ethnicity.

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2.5 Governance and Embeddedness It is evident from the preceding section on formal and informal governance that certain non-state actors are involved in some practices that do not come under the formal rules and regulations of the state. This leads to an interesting facet of the idea of embeddedness. In this study, the idea of embeddedness has been used to understand where sociologists and social anthropologists have pointed out how certain obligations always remain crucial in the sphere of formal transactions in the everyday interaction of the community with the state. To explain the idea of embeddedness in governance, I have drawn from the works of Karl Polanyi (2001) and Mark Granovetter (1985). In his historical study of British economy, Karl Polanyi has argued that market and sociopolitical institutions are embedded within each other. So applying economic models to non-market societies will not be compatible and feasible. Economic processes were always embedded within noneconomic institutions like kinship and religious institutions (Polanyi, 2001). Taking the concept further, Mark Granovetter (1985) argues that even in modern market conditions, economic activity could not be seen separately from the society. Various kinds of obligations and loyalty come into play during the economic transactions where people are involved. Granovetter (1985) tries to find out a middle way between under-socialized behaviour and over- socialized behaviour in an economic action. He questions how behaviour and institutions are affected by social relations. In sociology and social anthropology, it has been analysed how economic action is embedded in social relation, but Granovetter believes it has been over emphasized. Economic action and rationality are embedded in a social relationship that cannot be seen in isolation. Conventional economic analysis considers that economic behaviour of the individual is not affected by any kind of social relations but the concept of embeddedness argues against this idea. It asserts that economic behaviour of an individual is embedded in social relations. Later sociologists believed that due to modernization, economy was separated from the society unlike premarket societies, and they did not pay much attention to the analysis of market and economic behaviour as an object of sociological research. The concept of embeddedness holds the core argument for Granovetter. ‘A fruitful analysis of human action requires us to avoid the atomization implicit in the theoretical extremes of under- and over-socialized conceptions. Actors do not behave or decide as atoms outside a social context, nor do they adhere slavishly to a script written for them by the particular intersection of social categories that they happen to occupy. Their attempts at purposive action are instead embedded in concrete, ongoing systems of social relations’ (Ibid., 487). The embeddedness is often strengthened by the element of trust which is considered as an important aspect of any kind of social transaction in society. Even if this factor has sometimes been downplayed by economists, it is important in the sociological analysis. Even people from very poor strata deposit money with the individuals who run private banks, only on the basis of trust and that trust is generated through social network and prior relationship. People deposit money in expectation of getting

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interests on their deposit and most important expectation is to get loan from the bank. Here, they have both the elements of trust and calculations. This trust eventually put pressure on the individual who collects money from the villagers and petty shopkeepers to restrain from doing any kind of malpractice. Even for Granovetter, trust is a feature of social network and social relations. He articulates ‘the embeddedness argument stresses instead the role of concrete personal relations and structures (or ‘networks’) of such relations in generating trust and discouraging malfeasance’ (Ibid., 490). Thus, it will not be correct to state that trust is an over emphasized category in the analysis of economic behaviour. There is always an amount of trust in any kind of social transaction. Granovetter argues (Ibid., 493), ‘the embeddedness approach to the problem of trust and order in economic life, then, threads it way between the over-socialized approach of generalized morality and the undersocialized one of impersonal, institutional arrangement by following and analysing concrete patterns of social relations’. Governance is framed according to various rules and regulations, with its own framework and mechanism of delivery. But when it comes to practice, it takes its own course. The well-defined procedure and legality do not always work on the ground level. Various interpersonal relationships based on caste, religion and ethnicity play their part. So, most of the times, putting too much trust in the bureaucratic plan and policy might not give the desired results. In this kind of situation, relying on purely codified form of governance might not give us the correct representation of the social processes. When we acknowledge the failure of governance, it might be more useful for us to understand the grassroots reality. It is apt to acknowledge that human behaves in both ways by mixing the formal and informal modes of governance. Therefore, Granovetter suggests, ‘most behaviour is closely embedded in network of interpersonal relations and that such an argument avoids the extremes of underand over-socialized views of human action’ (Ibid., 504). During the interaction and conversation, a good number of people opined that there has been favouritism based on various considerations like kinship relation, religious affinity and political party affiliation.

2.6 Power, Sociality and Trust There has been a shift in sociologists’ approach towards studying the state and the governance. Sociologists and social anthropologists are known for their engagement in the study of society in micro terms, but of late they have started studying the local processes through ethnographic method while contextualizing the phenomenon in global terms. Governance is no longer limited to the nation, state or government, it includes the international agencies as well as non-state actors. Presently, it has been acknowledged that there is hardly anything that can be referred to as ‘local’ in the literal sense. The global process becomes more penetrative in everyday local practices. Various forms of governance are related to the global phenomenon through the elements of politics, economy and culture.

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The idea of embeddedness in governance is important to understand various formal and informal practices in the society. In the Napam area, it is found that people feel more connected if someone from their community or network is placed in the government offices or hold power in Panchayat. Even if it is not always true, majority of the respondents feel that beneficiaries are selected on the basis of their relationship with Panchayat functionaries. Gaon Sabhas are not conducted according to the rule of the PRIs, so decision-making processes largely are with Panchayat functionaries. Thus, various social elements are embedded in the governance structure and determine the outcome of any kind of decision at the local level. Just like many vernacular societies, a peculiar economic transition is prevalent among the villagers of the Napam area. Due to various complexities and problems, people of the villages do not always prefer to go to bank to deposit money or apply for a loan. Rather they rely on and trust individuals who run private banks. These banks are not recognized by any government agencies. They even take loans from these private banks. Such informal transactions and governance hold a very crucial position in the so-called vernacular societies which are not counted as mainstream society by the policymakers. Informal governance has the capacity to manipulate the rules and regulations. These banks run by the private individuals are known by various names but mainly these are known as Gaonlia bank (village Bank), private passbook and got (group) bank. Service of these banks is mostly availed by petty shopkeepers who put their money as part of savings. One could see individual private bankers moving around in these places to collect money from the shopkeepers in the evening time. Usually, the amount of money collected from each customer ranges from Rs. 20.00 to Rs. 1500.00. In this informal banking system, shopkeepers keep a passbook and each time they pay money to the agent, he would enter the amount and put the signature with date. Invariably, only men run these banks, not a single woman was found who runs this kind of bank. There are hardly any agreements signed between the agent who collects money and shopkeepers, even then people invest money without any hesitations. This is because they trust the person who collects money, and he belongs to their community and located within the area of the village. More than 50 such banks are estimated to exist in Napam and Panchmile area but their exact numbers are difficult to determine since they are not registered. Some of the reputed and popular informal private banks are Jeevan Mitra Sanchayan, Samaj Kalyan Sanchayan, Jeevan Kalyan Sanchayan and so on (Das, 2012). Regarding the collection of money on everyday basis, even a big company like Sahara Group was asked by the Supreme Court of India to return money to its investors. Sahara Group owner is in prison for not returning the money to Security Exchange Board of India. Even after news and stories surface from different parts of India regarding the loss of financial investment in this type of banks, it is interesting to see how these informal money investment schemes are run without any distrust among villagers (Das, 2012). Encapsulating another reality within the fringes of governance, the formal banks have strict rules for opening bank accounts and multilayered procedure for loan sanctions. Therefore, people from the village area do not prefer to go to the formal banks and opt for gaonlia banks. People informed

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that through private savings they get easy loan, and they find it easy to handle the financial procedures. In Napam Panchayat, most of the private bank owners collect money by themselves. They give 7% annualized interests on their deposit. If one takes loan from these private bankers, they usually charge 30% annualized rate of interests. Trust comes from the kinship and community relationships. The shopkeepers who deposit money understand that the person who is collecting money is not a poor man and having sufficient amount of immovable property. The person who deposits money can go to the house of the private banker to ask for money or sit in front of his door from morning till night. Then the owner would be forced to give his money back. But as per the data collected from the shopkeepers till now, no such kind of incident has happened (Das, 2012). A man who runs a grocery shop in the village informed that they do not have enough money to run the business. That is why they rely on these private banks. In a formal banking system, people are not treated as a worthy customer. They feel embarrassed to enter these banks but here the agent comes to their doorstep and collect money. However, shopkeepers who earn more money prefer the formal banking system. The NDA government which came to power in 2014, since then there has been changes in financial policies. It led to the closure of many individual banks, leaving only few operational. It has been observed that where the state machineries and organs have complex and rigid system of governance, ordinary people tend to develop their own methods to solve local problems. Whether it is banking system or availing the services offered by various government departments, people try to explore their own mechanisms. Thus, informal governance is just as equally important as formal governance in places like Napam. I argue that this arrangement is a part of informal governance or self-governance mechanism. Where many state-authorized banks and private banks fail to run the deposit and money lending system, how are these small private players running their business? It depends on the trust and convenience. The idea of embeddedness could be attributed to the success of these private banking practices in this locality.

2.7 Understanding Sociality In biological sciences, sociality refers to the tendency of animals and insects to form social groups and maintain gregariousness. In common parlance, social science literatures refer to sociality as being social or something related to society. Much before these contemporary scholars, Arthur (1902, 78) defined that ‘the social is not the product of the interaction; it is the interaction. The sociality consists in the correlated, coordinated activity of the integrated parts. Sociality is conduct, service rendered, not a consciousness of kind nor a feeling of sympathy, excepting in so far as they may be useful for the conduct of the parts’. This idea of sociality developed by Arthur has been questioned by the contemporary thinkers and scholars.

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To bring more clarity on the issue, Sillander (2021, 2) mentions that ‘sociality is rendered as a diversely realized and motivated practice, which is conditioned by values through cultural and political imaginaries, the ethical and strategic agendas of situated actors and their aspirations to establish autonomy and separation to evade constraints’. Generally, in social sciences, the concept of sociality has been taken for granted, but scholars working in the domain urge that it is important to understand the concept which would eventually lead us to a better understanding of the social phenomena. Silander further articulates ‘sociality is shown to be fundamentally dynamic and dialectical, subject to extension and contraction, and having both positive and negative valences, it is not only a resource but also a burden’ (Ibid.). Sociality is also used according to the disciplinary practices, most of the times it is used as a form to denote society per se. In a notable academic seminar at University of Manchester in 1989, Marilyn Strathern, Tim Ingold, Christina Toren have reflected on the issue of sociality. Strathern’s sociality focuses on diverse forms of social life whereas Ingold tries overcoming the individual-society dichotomy (Ibid.). According to Silander (2021), Strathern aspired to uncover the ‘sociality within’ persons and suggests a pervasive presence of sociality in human lives whereas Ingold in similar line considers persons as the ‘embodiments of relationships’ enfolding within them the history of all previous interactions. To supplement to the discussion on sociality, Long (2015, 854–855) suggests that we need to look at sociality in a manner that ‘any given human being can participate with others in the world in multiple ways (some circumscribed, and others less so), and very often in multiple ways at the same time’. He further argues that anthropology adopts a broad and encompassing definition of sociality, recognizing it as the dynamic and continually emergent matrix of relations within which subjects are continually interacting and bearing upon each other in a process of coproduction. This approach focuses on ‘how humans are continually coming into being through dynamic social processes, rather than being ‘socialized’ into independent sets of rules, structures, customs or meanings—and it is the documentation of such processes that is the proper task of anthropology’ (Ibid., 855). On a different note, Carrithers (2017) refers to two different types of sociality such as ‘ethnographic sociality’ which suggest diverse social life in specific society and ‘human sociality’ which is generic in nature and here human beings tend to engage in complex social behaviour. Strathern and Ingold emphasize on the sociality’s constitutive quality as a definitional property; they focus on the relational matrix that constitutes the life of persons and the constitutive quality of relationships. Stathern and Ingold emphasize on the constitutive element of sociality (Silander, 2021). Thus, sociality is created through continuous engagement and revolves around the relational matrix. This interactive social practice or process influences other forms of relationship such as kinship, caste, gender, politics and so on. In an attempt to make the context of sociality more relevant, Long and Moore (2012, 41) suggest that the enquiry into society, social relations creates challenges but the process also offers advantages over approaches that sought to study ‘the social’, conceiving this as a product of either ‘social relations’ or ‘social interaction’. They further emphasize that human sociality has capacity to take many forms. Therefore it

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is not productive to stick to a specific, circumscribed definition of sociality rather any sociality involving humans can account for its diverse manifestations, its plasticity and fragility and also its possible resilience. Toren (2013, 46) addresses, sociality ‘pervades literally every aspect of being human. Or put it another way, sociality is not part of what we are, but rather the sum of human being—its entirety’. For Toren, sociality is fundamental and foundational essence of human being. I draw from the works of scholar like Strathern, Ingold, Sillander, Carrithers, Long and Moore to look at human sociality as a dynamic relational matrix within which human subjects are constantly interacting in ways that are productive, continually flexible, plastic and pliable. Through this interaction, they find the meaning, redefine it, negotiate and create newer ways to engage among themselves and with the state to find solutions to the problem they encounter in the everyday life. From the cases of elections to resource distribution, we see here, how sociality centres around the social processes or events to make the process of governance more challenging and interesting.

2.8 State and Society: A Porous Link When it comes to governance, it includes how human beings govern themselves to survive in the larger process and structure of governance. It is related to the state, but we also govern ourselves in everyday life without necessarily involving the state. As per Foucauldian argument, through governmentality we develop certain customs and norms. Custom might be the closest word that Foucault tries to explain through the idea of governmentality. Whether it is culture, politics, economy or any other social processes, governance plays a significant role. The object of research for sociology and social anthropology has been changing quite substantively since the last few decades. Shift from studying community to state has also gained popularity. It is crucial not to miss the changing nature of state and the relationship between state and society. Thereby, it calls for a change in ethnographic gaze to study the new state and its characteristics or manifestations. One striking point of this study is the language of governance. This study emphasizes on the idea of a governance language, which is very important to handle the process and power of governance. The study found that people who are aware or equipped with the language needed to understand governance are better placed in the social structure of governance, making others who are not well equipped to be at the receiving end. From various ethnographic studies conducted on state and development, we can see that very few CSOs and NGOs are challenging the age-old established practices rather than reproducing the same with a different name (Harris, 2001; Kamath, 2002; Mosse, 2005). Skocpol (1999, 8) argues that states will not always be capable of intervening in different areas of socio-economic life of people. ‘States necessarily stand at the intersections between domestic sociopolitical orders and the transnational relations within which they must manoeuver for survival and advantage in relation to other

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states’. Skocpol emphasizes the relationship and nexus between state and society. She urges for a new theoretical understanding of states in relation to social structures. ‘We do not need a new or refurbished grand theory of ‘the state’. Rather, we need solidly grounded and analytically sharp understandings of the causal regularities that underlie the histories of states, social structures and transnational relations in the modern world’ (Ibid., 28). This is where the language of the state in their everyday manifestations among people could be located. Hence, state is not merely a grand narrative, but it is also a thought-process working within the minds of the people and manifested in their everyday social actions. From the study, the divide is evident where some people still consider state as a paramount structure whereas some people think it is not as important in their day-today life. For some poor people, state is perceived not as an antagonistic unit but as a benevolent structure. They expect a lot from the state, assuming it to be their protector and guardian. Most of the time, people complain that state is not taking care of them as it should have, believing themselves to be powerless. In the time of destitution, they expect state to help them and save them from misery. So, neither ‘society’ nor ‘state’ is fixed or static categories. Society keeps challenging and influencing the state, and the state keeps changing from one position to another with necessary alterations to sustain itself. State has its own limitations in many ways; for example, it cannot put surveillance mechanism everywhere as it could backfire. In rural areas, people make their own way by subverting the procedures laid down by the state.

2.9 Governmentality and Governance Various social scientists have taken clue or inspiration from Foucault’s idea of governmentality. Though he has not directly discussed the concept of governance as we discuss generally in the present context, a meaningful analysis of his idea certainly leads to the idea and concept of present-day discourse on governance. While defining governmentality, he maintains: This word [government] must be allowed the very broad meaning which it had in the sixteenth century. ‘Government’ did not refer only to political structure or the management of states; rather it designates the way in which the conduct of individuals or states might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick. It did not cover only the legitimately constituted forms of political or economic subjection, but also mode of action, more or less considered, which were designed to act upon the possibilities of action of other people. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others. (Foucault quoted in Hunt and Wickham, 1994, 24)

It would be useful to understand Foucault’s concept of governmentality in terms of conduct of conduct. It tries to produce the subjects that are best suited for ruling. In this context, I look at people’s various strategies to counteract the state’s governance mechanism. In the process of negotiation with the state mechanism, people often devise certain strategies to get the best deal. It is noteworthy to see how they try to

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change or evade rules and regulations best suited to them so that they can be ruled accordingly. Hunt and Wickham (1994, 23) discuss Foucault’s idea of disciplinary society and point out certain disciplinary mechanisms devised by the state which led to the emergence of a easily governable disciplinary society. Power is inscribed in social life and self-constituted itself as a subject. Several researchers owe their understanding of governance to Foucault’s idea of governmentality. The simplest definition of governmentality could be ‘custom’. Foucault defines governmentality in terms of the conduct of the conduct which means how people govern themselves; government produces that technology of rule to shape people’s behaviour. Training and shaping of behaviour in family, schools, workplace and wider society are the best examples of technology of governmentality. Jose (2010a) argues that equating Foucault’s idea of governmentality with governance would lead to confusion. He adds that it is doubtful that Foucault ever used the term ‘governance’, either directly as a distinct term or indirectly as a nun-named cluster of ideas that are now understood as ‘governance’. The presumed Foucauldian basis for ‘governance’ rests on a confusion of discourses. Quoting Foucault’s various works, he argues that governmentality is a mode of governance shifting the state’s governing principle to the conduct of the population. This governmentality which is concerned with ‘identifying the mentalities of government and governing, about the specific institutional arrangements, understandings and practices, the technologies of power (like governance) that those within apparatuses of governing bring to bear on any given problem of political rule’ (Ibid., 128). Fox and Ward (2008) substantiate their argument with Foucault’s idea of governmentality and suggest it could be a useful sociological category to analyse governance. This approach principally looks for the relationships among power, knowledge and subjectivity. They pointed out that governmentality studies examine the subjectivities produced by the disciplinary regimes that govern how people should act and behave. Broadly, sociological perspective on governance according to them focuses on certain key themes like power, interests, values and subjectivities.

2.10 Structure, Agency and Governance In the discourse of governance, the dichotomy of structure and agent would not be very productive to understand the nuance of the relationship between state and society. In the larger sociological tradition, there has been a long debate on structure and agency. In order to achieve any meaningful understanding, we need to look at both structure and agency from a broad point of view. Dealing with both structure and agency, Bourdieu (1982) analyses the practice of governance by explaining field and habitus. He demonstrates the embeddedness of social practices in the social structure. Giddens (1984) also argues that instead of looking at the structure and agency in a binary position, it would be productive to examine both agency and structure simultaneously. Giddens explains that structures impose on agency at the

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same time through the continuous social practices agency influences and creates the structure. Swartz (2010, 140) argues that for Bourdieu, politics was the core of his sociological analysis. ‘Bourdieu’s sociology makes no distinction between the sociological approach to the study of the social world and the study of the social power. Bourdieu sees all of sociology as fundamentally dealing with power. He therefore rejects the validity of a substantive area of investigation that might be considered as specialized in the study of only the power dimension of social life’. Swartz further explains ‘Bourdieu sees the very foundation of the social order as a struggle among various collectivities to impose as legitimate their particular identities and definitions of the social world. This occurs through struggle over the right to exercise that symbolic function. The task of sociology is to reveal the underlying character of those legitimation struggles. Viewed this way, all sociology for Bourdieu is in fact sociology of politics’ (Swartz, 2010, 143). He tries to locate Bourdieu’s concept and ideas in his analysis, which can be useful in governance analysis. Policymakers and professionals with their so-called expert knowledge associate with the state to formulate policy. Bourdieu emphasized on stratifying effects of culture in the political arrangements. ‘Bourdieu’s field analytical approach to politics, like the new governance perspective, brings into play a broader range of power centres contributing to political life than do the approaches focused on the central organism of government’ (Ibid., 151). Bourdieu’s notions of social capital and cultural capital are often regarded as important categories in the field of sociology of governance. Those who have community linkage and support base tend to do better in terms of receipt of goods and services at the local level. Here, Giddens’ (1984) idea of structure and agency could be useful to understand the social and political transactions in the ground level. Giddens argues that it is not only structure that influences human agency; it is shaped by the agency as well. Structure is both medium and outcome of reproduction of practices. Just as an individual’s agency is influenced by structure, at the same time structure is also maintained through the practice of agency. From Giddens’ idea, it is argued that social structures have no inherent characteristics without human action or a priori to human agency. Rather it is socially constructed, and the agency’s reflexivity modifies the social structure where it operates (Giddens, 1984, 1986).

2.11 Knowledge, Governance and Failure Sociology of knowledge is considered to be one of the oldest sub-disciplines of sociology. Many sociologists have contributed to a large scale on the politics of production, reproduction and circulation of knowledge. In its analysis, sociology does not look at knowledge from a neutral or unbiased point of view even if knowledge is popularly regarded by many disciplines as rational. In the discourse of governance, knowledge of the experts is taken as foremost and often not questioned, but through his study, Scott (1998) has shown how expert knowledge is prone to failure. Generally, policies are made in the central level without taking account of the local specificity.

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Similarly, Mitchell (2002) has argued how the rules of the experts have failed in the context of Egypt. Scott in his notable work, Seeing Like A State (1998, 1) argues that state always wants to domesticate its subject. In his words, ‘state has always seemed to be the enemy of people who move around’. He further deals with the issue in his book The Art of Not Being Governed (2009). Here, he discusses how people in the Zomia5 stay away from the reach of the state. I would argue, in the line of Scott, how certain schemes and policies of the state are bound to fail because of their ill-conceived design. He asserts ‘state always wants the make the society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion’ (Scott, 1998, 2). Social scientists have argued that the main problem lies with modernity and with modern statecraft. In ancient times, prior to the modernization, state functioned in a different manner. Scott (1998, 3) maintains, it was with the modern state that the process of standardization began, ‘this process of social simplifications not only facilitated the system of modern taxation and conscription but also greatly enhanced state capacity in the discriminating interventions of public-health measures, political surveillance, and relief for the poor’. Social engineering has faced severe criticism in the contemporary times. The modern idea of changing social conditions with technological intervention has backfired with the process of social engineering. Most well-meaning policies and programmes intended for the poor have failed, for example the concrete toilet scheme implemented by the government. In the rural areas in Assam, some people use these toilets to store grains since poor people do not have a concrete place to store their food grains during rainy seasons. This might also indicate a covert sensibility of resistances towards state’s distant action and misrecognition. On the other hand, introducing a food pattern, cash crops or work culture alien to local people tend to fail drastically—not merely their economic means of sustenance but also the propensities of their cultural valuation. The introduction of cash crops into hill and tribal regions of Assam has failed. Cash and commercial crops in place of traditional crops have hampered farming patterns thereby affecting the larger (pastoral) and social structures in the northeast region. If this continues, there might be cases of farmer’s suicides in Assam as is happening in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala (Das & Nath, 2013). In a similar trend, Scott (1998, 4–5) demonstrates with various examples how schemes of social engineering have failed. Most tragic episodes of state-initiated social engineering originated in a pernicious combination of four elements, which create disaster in society. In a more systematic framework, Scott argues and demonstrates with various examples that modern knowledge tried to codify real and functional social order. These orders depend on many informal practices that undergo continuous improvisation, eventually it fails both the beneficiaries, for whom it is designed and the designers who have designed it. ‘Schematic, authoritarian solutions to production and social order inevitably fail when they exclude the fund of valuable 5

Zomia as a concept first used by Willem van Schendel which refers to the high land areas in South East Asia region. Later it was used by James C. Scott in his work‘The Art of Not Being Governed’.

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knowledge embodied in local practices. Finally, that most characteristics of human institutions, language, is the best model: a structure of meaning and continuity that is never still and ever open to the improvisations of all its speakers’ (Ibid., 357). ‘Most of the time, there are tendencies of governance failure like market, state and even meta governance. Even then, public–private partnership is essential in securing the stability in terms of social, economic and community development. There should be greater commitment to participatory politics based on stake holding and to sustainable economic and community development’ (Jessop, 2000, 32). According to this position, it could be inferred that failure is a central feature of all social relations (Das 2021a, 2021c). In a similar line, Malpas and Wickham (1995) argue that governance seeks control of its objects, ‘yet it can only ever take up those objects under certain aspects. Therefore, it can never have control of its objects as such. Indeed, since governance can only take up its objects in certain specific and partial respects, so failure itself will always remain obscure from within any particular governing practice’. Chhotray and Stoker (2009, 48) contend, ‘the idea of governance failure draws upon a recognition that organizing governing through networks is far from unproblematic because it operates in the context of conflict and uncertainty. In this light, governance failure might occur because of irresolvable conflict between interests, a lack of trust between agents, inept steering by state actors’. Governance failure might occur while implementing policies when the target groups are not willing to comply. Mayntz (1994, 13) opines ‘this may be due to the lawmaker’s deficient knowledge of causal relationships that are of relevance to reaching a given goal (knowledge problem), or to the impossibility to intervene in a goal directed way in certain system processes by means of the instruments that are available to central authorities (governability problem)’. Furthering this position, Jessop (2000) asserts, governance is always exposed to failure. One cannot ignore the issue of failure while analysing governance. There are different sources from where the governance failure might arise. These governance failures are mainly concerned with the role of markets, states and networks in capitalist social formations rather than more amorphous interpersonal relations. Sociologists have warned that without adequate knowledge of the object that needs to be governed, an ill-designed model is always prone to failure (Das, 2021c). Sometimes, a complex social system is understood by the policymaker in an over-simplified manner. Malpas and Wickham (1995) cast doubt over whether the object of governance could ever be manageable even with enough control mechanism and adequate knowledge. Further, they argue, social life is made up of innumerable attempts to control all the known objects, which sets the ground for failure to feature as a crucial element in the governance process. They emphasize that governance is necessarily incomplete, and failure is the result of targeting full control or total control of governance object. Drawing their argument from Foucault, Malpas and Wickham emphasize on the need for a sociology of failure where failure is centred around both known and unknown objects. They suggest ‘governance has to be understood in relation to its objects and the objects of governance can only be understood in relation to practices of governance’ (Malpas & Wickham, 1995, 40–45).

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2.12 From Government to Governance As briefly mentioned earlier, governance is different from government both theoretically and empirically. In theoretical terms, governance is the process of governing. It is what government does to their citizens. But it is also what corporations and other organizations do to their employees and members. Whereas government refers to political institutions, governance refers to processes of rule wherever they occur (Bevir, 2012, 3). Chhotray and Stoker (2009, 3) mention: ‘governance is about the rules of collective decision-making in settings where there are plurality of actors or organizations and where no formal control system can dictate the terms of the relationship between these actors and organizations’. The rules in a governance system entail both formal and informal practices. While studying governance one must consider formal arrangements and informal practices, conventions and customs (Das, 2020). In sociological research, defining a concept is important, as every term is having its own definitive connotation. Jose (2009, 9) articulates this point in the Aristotelian framework and states that a given term or word has an essential meaning, that is somehow unique to it. Specifically, a word designates a particular entity or thing’s essence. The word or term is therefore ontologically committed to a unique entity. Governance is an eclectic concept where one finds difficulties in having a precise definition. Another aspect of the governance mechanism is failure of governance. In the policy domain, the failure of governance is taken seriously as an undesirable outcome. Whereas sociologists and social anthropologists do not hesitate to acknowledge the idea of failure in governance, some social scientists even acknowledge the failure of governance as a model. Governance has been discussed widely in the last two decades. Authors have conceptualized this concept differently according to their disciplinary locations. It is often argued that contemporary governance must be viewed from a new perspective. It is different from government and a new process of governing. Various authors suggest that apart from state, market and society also have a stake in the process of governance. The process of governance is more about getting into networks and interdependence (Bevir, 2012; Pierre, 2000; Rhodes, 1997). Bevir (2012, 5–7) outlines the broad characteristics of governance. First, it combines the administrative arrangements with features of market mechanism and non-profit organizations. Second, it has a multi-jurisdictional or transnational character. Governance refers to the coordination of people and institutions across different policy sectors and across different levels of government, such as local, regional, national, and even international. For example, in controlling food policy and quality, different levels of government bodies are needed to be involved. Third, governance has developed the characteristics of increasing range of stakeholders from different sectors like third-party organization to deliver state services. Governing became increasingly hybrid multi-jurisdictional and plural phenomenon. There is a shift from old governance to new governance. Old governance is usually referred to the controlling capacity of central government over other federal state governments and local governments. Economy and society are also controlled and

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steered by the central government (Peters, 2000). New governance emphasizes the need for policy networks with the advent of self-governance and public–private partnership. Old governance is considered as state-centric whereas the new governance is considered as society-centric. Another perspective supports the participation of community in the process of governance. In this argument, it is proposed that society and state influence each other. This view emphasizes the relationship between the state and society, where community and people also participate in the policymaking and influence the government. These authors call for an approach in which one should not ignore the involvement of various networks and non-state actors (Chatterjee, 2004; Kooiman, 1993, 2003; Migdal, 2004). This approach to governance emphasizes on the participation of people in the process of governance whereas earlier governance was controlled by the government. But real participation of people in the process of governance is not always practically viable. Some people who have power over others in terms of putting their voice in the matter of decision-making process would dominate the marginalized sections. So, it is difficult to claim that the shift from government to governance is always beneficial for the poor and the marginalized.

2.13 Governance Without Government It has already been mentioned that governance is often confused with the concept government. Researchers dealing with the issue of governance often emphasize that these two concepts are not the same; governance is a broader concept than the concept of government. While discussing the issue of governance and government, Rhodes proposed the idea of governing without government. He analyses the modern state with governance and argues that the nature of state is changing. Governance is no longer the only subject matter of government. Non-state actors are also part of the governance and they are contributing substantially to this process. Others have also shown how the governing process happens out of the purview of the government as various formal and informal institutions are involved in the process of governance (Jessop, 1998; Mitchell, 2002; Rose & Miller, 1992). In recent times, there has been a change in the nature of governance. Due to transnational transaction of cultural, political and economic affairs, a new form of governance has emerged. Social scientists think that this new form of governance might weaken the state’s capacity to govern the society. In this context, Jessop (1997, 573) mentions, ‘there is a general trend towards the denationalization of the state (or, better, statehood). This structural trend is reflected empirically in the ‘hollowing out’ of the national state apparatus with old and new state capacities being reorganized territorially and functionally on sub-national, national, supranational and trans-local levels’. Jessop (1997, 573–574) outlines that ‘state power has become less important in key respects in contemporary capitalism—as governance has become more important however, countering this trend is the survival of the national state as the principal

2.14 Culture Governance

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factor of social cohesion in societies and its associated role in promoting social redistribution’. Khan (2002) marks that international agencies have failed to recognize the basic problem of corruption and governance in the developing countries. They have overlooked the construction of capitalism, which is inherently divisive. It often rewards and deprives individuals in arbitrary ways. Ignoring this issue, it is not possible to understand the roots of political instability, political corruption and the extant political clientelism.

2.14 Culture Governance Culture governance is seen as an altered form of governmentality approach. In contemporary times, political authority is trying to establish a connection with the community. Government is improvising on interaction and effective communication with the society. Culture governance is about how political authority must increasingly operate through capacities for self-governance and co-governance. There is a need to act upon, reform and utilize individual and collective conduct, so that it might be amenable to its rule. For Bang (2004), culture governance represents a new kind of top-down steering approach. It is neither hierarchical nor bureaucratic but empowering and self-disciplining. Bang (2004, 159) defines culture governance as ‘a new steering situation in reflexive modernity where the expansion of self and co-governance is becoming a prerequisite for welfare states (and all other kinds of expert systems) to supply them with the wholeness, coherence and effectiveness that they no longer can obtain by directly commanding and exercising control over their members and environments’. He is critical of culture governance and argues that it manifests itself in various forms of joined-up government and network governance. Culture governance proclaims itself genuinely democratic and dialogical. Thereby, it constitutes a formidable challenge and threat to democracy in attempting to colonize the whole field of public reason, everyday political engagement, democratic deliberation and so on. It goes against the public reasoning and practices of freedoms. In popular conception, there is a belief that globalization has weakened the power of the state. However, this view might not be correct as state has taken a different avatar by gradually withdrawing from most of the public provisions and penetrating into people’s social life to control the citizens through modern technology. More developed ICT, use of mobile phones and Internet keep people under surveillance, citizens surrender themselves to the scrutiny of the state. The more civilized one becomes, the more obedient and surrendered to the state. Scott (2009) argues that those who stay outside of the state domain might not be civilized but are away from the modern governance structure. But this formulation of Scott has been critiqued by Karlson. Though James Scott tries to locate the zomia as the zone of ungovernability and articulates that people who want to stay away from the state’s supervision occupy the highland area, this position has been questioned by Karlson. According Karlson (2013, 329), people in Northeast India seem to straddle between a kind of longing for

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the state and the opposite, that is, a rejection of it. People also expect that state should provide functional transport, education, health services and justice. By referring to people’s desire for normal life, he suggests that ‘to understand northeastern social realities, one has to engage with gridding and not only grid avoidance’. Contemporary literature on governance also emphasizes on the shift from government to governance, bringing in the role of non-state actors into the analysis of contemporary governance. But I argue that the role of government cannot be downplayed in the process of governance. It has its own mechanism to control its citizens. Some social scientists argue that the state has been hollowed out. But Bevir (2012, 76) explains, ‘the states have expanded the mix of policy instruments. As the older coercive and regulatory instruments became less important, states developed softer instruments by which to realize their intentions and control other actor. In this view, the state has emphatically not been hollowed out’. It is evident from the World Bank report that it wants to establish democracy in the developing parts of the world and weed out corruption. The World Bank facilitates INGOs through global networking and tries to export democracy. This involves largescale violence when developed countries try to intervene in the internal affairs of the countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Increasing export of democracy creates a difficult governance problem. Different societies have their own way of governing. When outside parties intervene through global networking, it does more harm than good. Winning the faith of citizen and in return having legitimacy is the state’s responsibility. The World Bank and similar international agencies are concerned with developing good governance in the developing world. They primarily focus on enhancement of administrative efficiency and reduction of economic and political corruption (Peters, 2007). Though there has been a dominant discourse of governance in favour of less government and more governance, the actual delivery of governance is dependent on the grassroots conditions. At the local level, that the local leadership holds a decisive position in delivering services. But governance at the ground level (which is supposed to be impartial and neutral) is embedded within various social categories like caste, class, religion, ethnicity and gender. So, this study proposes to look at governance from a context-specific perspective.

2.15 Discourses on Good Governance, Development and Civil Society The agenda of good governance has slowly taken over the development discourse in developing countries. It is strongly argued in the World Bank report that good governance is prelude to development. After the advent of neoliberal discourse, the idea of good governance has taken a central place. Indeed, the development aids being given to the developing countries are allocated with a demand for change in their governance. The World Bank promotes the idea that only good governance

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and corruption-free society can bring change and economic development in true sense. Various neo-Marxist literatures were produced in the 1960s on dependency and world systems theory. Mostly Andre Gunder Frank and Immanuel Wallerstein have argued that developed western countries plundered the underdeveloped southern countries (Frank, 1969; Wallerstein, 1974). By the time the colonization process was over in most parts of the globe, the good governance agenda was set in motion to start a new chapter of transforming the under-development processes. The good governance produced vulnerability as well as development, further shaping the asymmetries of socio-economic stratification at the backdrop of international political economy. The language of good governance soon became the language of power. In the name of development, many NGOs and international organizations started mushrooming in the southern countries. It became a power symbol to transform the backward and corruption-ridden society into the imagery of modern developed nations. International agencies demanded for civil society bodies and non-profit organizations to work without interference of the state in the developing countries. In both academic and non-academic circles, people speak for and against the idea of good governance. In recent years, good governance has been seen as a pejorative term by certain academics and activists. It has been used widely by the World Bank, multilateral and bilateral donors as a condition for giving aid to developing countries after the Second World War. It acquired prominence in it’s use after the proliferation of neoliberal agenda. The World Bank even professed that due to the lack of good governance, Africa is in crisis, and all the problems related to the issue of development have resulted from the crisis of governance. It has also given many tips on how to bring about good governance and how to fight corruption. It suggests for promoting privatization and making market more competitive without much interference from the state. ‘Since then, good governance or its versions with less normative adjectives such as ‘effective’ or ‘sound’ governance have dominated the development discourse’ (Mander & Asif, 2012, 1). Science and technology were viewed as the real saviour from scarcity and backwardness. Later, it was contested by various alternative thinkers and postdevelopmentalists as it did not generate the desired results, instead it proved to be disastrous. At the same time, the discourse on development was replaced by governance. As a result, most of the big donors and global financial capital organizations are pressurizing the developing countries to improve on their governance. Traditionally, the state used to take care of its citizens through various social welfare policies, now these welfare measures are increasingly outsourced to private organizations or corporations. The reason being given is the efficient delivery of services and goods, but this does not come for free. One has to pay heavy price as these private bodies have increased the price of the welfare services. Critics point out that developed countries should not interfere in the internal governance process and policy matters of developing countries. Therefore, through the idea of good governance, developed countries make strategies to enter into the domain of politics and economy of other less developed countries. By doing so, they protect their own economic interests. Mander and Asif (2012, 2–3) articulate ‘bogey of ‘good governance’ is used a tool like human rights and democracy to win over confidence

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of different countries. Motives behind it may not be always helping the country or people instead use it as an escape clause and punitive measures’. Good governance as a concept was initially introduced by the World Bank report of 1989 on sub-Saharan Africa. The World Bank emphasized on private investment, public sector management, accountability and transparency of information. This report, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, evoked a ‘crisis of governance’ as a key underlying barrier to development in much of Africa. It began to use the term ‘good governance’ to cover both technical areas and civil society (Bevir, 2012, 106). In the 1990s, the World Bank and other international donor agencies emphasized on corruption-free society and the need for good governance. They argued that good governance is prerequisite for the development of the developing countries. These countries need a strong civil society to counter the corruption and nepotism of the state. Marketization of economy and penetration of these international agencies promoted the idea and practice of good governance with the objective of utilizing the fruits of development in a decentralized manner through the civil society. Khan (2004) points out to the conventional analysis of good governance which is usually based on a neoclassical approach. State is associated with the economic development of a country without hampering the private interest. Similarly, Jose (2010, 121) contends, ‘World Bank’s view occupies an influential position in the discursive construction of governance relations. World Bank perceives the political rule by governments and their relevant state apparatuses when seen through the governance lens was merely a matter of economic management’. There is a close link between neoliberal programme and decentralized governance that pave the way to market-driven development process. Panchayat can play a greater role to facilitate the idea of good governance. People can participate and ensure transparency and accountability in the Panchayat. The role that has been assigned to facilitate the process of decentralized governance can be termed as a paradigm shift (Sarmah, 2006, 2). Sometimes, academicians and activists confuse PRIs with NGO and civil society organization. The ethos of PRIs are participatory in nature with representatives being selected through elections, which is missing in the governance process of NGOs. Moreover, the ethics and syntaxes of PRIs integrate its horizon with that of M. K. Gandhi’s self-rule or swaraj. Swaraj augments that a village should act as a sovereign unit where it would have full control on its own governance. In principle, the PRIs emphasizes Gandhi’s idea, but it seems the agenda of neoliberalism has hijacked the true essence of decentralization of power. Social scientists like Chatterjee, Beckman and Mcduie-ra posit that civil society as a concept was originated in the west and remained more relevant to their society. The Eurocentric nature of civil society is not compatible to the Indian context. The social condition in India is quite different from the Europe. In India, most of the writers use this concept as synonymous with NGOs, non-profit sector and voluntary organizations. (Beckman, 1998; Chatterjee, 2001; Mcduie-ra, 2009). Beteille (2003) also argues on the similar line, he emphasizes that civil society as a concept is not very old in the Indian context. Indian scholars have used it in western context, and the concept has gradually gained traction in both academia and the policy domain.

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The politics of good governance, if analysed critically, means the non-interference of the state. If one looks at the World Bank report on good governance, it emphasized on the strengthening of the private sector, hinting that good governance is prelude to privatization. In India, critics point out that in the 1990s when neoliberal agenda paved its path into Indian economy, it captured the imaginations of different third world countries. India went through the 73rd Amendment of Constitution. Under this provision, power is delegated to the local-level government bodies. Good governance agenda stresses that international agencies should directly work with the local-level governments without much intervention from the union government. Most of the time, policies fail due to the friction between state, local governments and international agencies. In the context of Bangladesh, Parnini (2006, 193) deliberates, ‘the western concepts of so-called civil society and good governance can hardly help indigenous civil society to flourish for bringing about home-grown good governance in Bangladesh. The donor-driven governance conditionality is prescribing governance reforms in favour of trade liberalization and privatization in the recipient country’. It is evident from the various examples from African and Asian countries where imported democracy and governance have failed. Concepts and practices are different in different geopolitical structure. Demmers et al. (2004, 6) outline the attractions of good governance. It is ‘generally presented as a non-political and non-ideological programme; these three attractions of the concept of good governance—filling gaps, simplifying complex issues and hiding disagreement—tend to work in favour of economic liberalization, both by strengthening its supporters and by disarming its critics’. Leftwich (1993, 606) underscores the two meanings of the concept of good governance. One is related to the World Bank in administrative and managerial terms. The other one is associated with the western governments, which is political in nature. He emphasizes that these two should not be confused with each other and should be kept distinct. Scholte (2007, 320) provides an interesting position, he looks at actors’ lack of clarity and orientation in the civil society which has led to little success of global civil society movement. They lack clear strategy frameworks. ‘In short, civil society efforts to promote more legitimate global governance are hampered to the extent that the advocates lack a clear conception of what, beyond the issue immediately at hand, they are advocating’. Scholte suggests that convention like the World Social Forum could challenge the global hegemony and injustice done by many countries and international agencies. Network should be created through Internet and modern social media to form solidarity and counter the hegemony. Mcduie-ra (2009, 4) contends that civil society is a more complex and contradictory sphere than it is understood in the political, social and academic spheres. Civil society often creates a difficult situation for the marginalized population. The inequalities and power structure within civil society is under-evaluated in the discourse of civil society. The political issue is most of the time depoliticized, thereby creating a camouflage understanding of the issues of civil society. These scholars whose works have been discussed in the chapter are largely critical about the existence and role of civil society in the larger governance processes in India. During the ‘India Against Corruption’ campaign in Delhi in April 2012, mostly

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middle-class people raised their voices against corruption. Civil society is considered to be an urban phenomenon among the literates. But places like Napam, where the study has been conducted, are devoid of such civil societies. People are mostly dependent on the resources of the state and have a marginal position vis-à-vis state. It is difficult for them to raise their voice in such a condition even though they are subjected to various kinds of discrimination and exploitations.

Chapter 3

Seeing Like a Citizen: People’s Everyday Engagement with the State and Governance

The three-tier governance system has yielded a significant result for the Indian state. Despite having a difficult phase during the post-independence period, India could balance its position in terms of it’s adaptive as well as innovative institutions at various levels. These innovations came through costs, exchanges and reviews of the public policies at different times. The governance mechanism of the state has not only received appreciation, but also faced severe criticisms. Many scholars have also voiced their scepticism about the stability of the democratic and inclusive character of the Indian state. In this context, Harriss-White (2003) argues that states have a chance to fail poorer people on a regular and predictable basis, and they will continue to do so in the process of governance. However, these failures can be envisaged as a dynamic contemplation and practice of the governance in India which runs through the diversity of cultures, traditions and social influences. The model of governance at the centre may differ from that of the peripheries. Yet, ‘peripheries’ and ‘centre’ evoke multiple meanings in the mundane world to negotiate, adapt and process economic, social and political functions at various levels. State is not all about only structures, it can also be a collection of experiences. The aspirations, choices, limitations, ramblings and conflicts which the citizens’ often encounter in their everyday life, restructure the dimensions of the state. Following the arguments of Harris-White (2003), Das and Poole (2004), it is suggested that the state should be understood anthropologically instead of thinking of ‘them’ as singular entities. To discuss further, it is very essential for researchers, academicians, policy makers as well as activists to understand the concept of ‘seeing like a citizen’. Scott’s concern in Seeing Like a State (1998) was about the way in which the state might see its citizens. Instead, we should view the state from the perspective of its citizens. Hence, this study emphasises to consider peoples plan, goal, strategy and approach while studying the interaction between the state and society. To demonstrate peoples disguised power, as a critique to Scott and Foucault’s formulation on states’ domination, Quiser (2019) emphasizes on the way parallel

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practices are adopted by the ordinary citizens. To contextualise people’s power against the powerful and ruler of their times. He writes: Largely, it remains invisible, dormant and undeclared. Those experiencing the similar situations can only feel it within. It is invisible because it goes unnoticed, not considered of much significance, considered impulsive, foolish, does not get recorded, and largely unstudied. But this invisible disagreement, discontent and those who execute them – the invisible challengers – contribute immensely to the making of history…In other words, situations of inequality of power are not considered ‘unavoidable’, ‘inevitable’ and thus ‘just’…Ideology is not only a critique of relations of domination but also the celebration of the parallel practices against the relations of domination…The authors of parallel practice refuse to get ‘destroyed’. They command the language by giving it a new meaning and refuse that it is the language that should speak and the ‘authors’ go into oblivion. For they and those in similar situations make the constituency of audiences, readers and practitioners of their own texts. For, after rejecting the given meanings of dominance, they write their own texts of parallel practice (Ibid., 93–105).

In light of Quiser’s argument, it is important to consider people’s agency having power to assert themselves in the sphere of governance when the situation demands. Adler et al. (1987) review the everyday life sociology extensively and mention that it comprises a broad spectrum of micro-perspectives such as symbolic interactionism, dramaturgy, phenomenology, ethnomethodology and existential sociology. They argue that the recent development in everyday life sociology has been enriched by the existential sociology, the sociology of emotions and conversation analysis. They analyse the everyday interaction as proposed by Goffman and Garfinkel. They have also highlighted the important contributions of Giddens and Bourdieu as a mediated space. They advocate that the field must continue to advance new perspectives on substantive, epistemological and theoretical issues rather than merely applying the existing ones. ‘Without this regenerative capacity, everyday life sociology may have a limited future and faces a bankruptcy that threatens not only itself but the insight it brings to the entire discipline’ (Adler et al., 1987, 230). Lofgren (2015) argues that the study of everyday life has been used not only as a research perspective or an analytical tool but also as a research ideology. He mentions that the study of everyday life started to look at the everyday life of ‘ordinary people’ to create an alternative to the classical history of kings and elites. Phenomenologists like Alfred Schütz, ethnomethodologists like Harold Garfinkel along with Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau mainly studied the everyday life of people. Taking lead from earlier works on everyday life, this study tries to understand how people act, react, negotiate and engage with the state in everyday life. Through various participations in village-level meeting or elections meetings, people enact various strategy to get access to the welfare resources through different provisions. In this sense, the state can be viewed in myriad ways. For example, different sections of the ‘rural poor’ might look at different government agencies differently. These ways of seeing and perceiving the state happen differently because people encounter the state in many forms in their everyday lives in rural and urban India. The state matters to a great extent to the poor people in both rural and urban India. They confront and look forward to the state through entitlements, rights, provisions of goods and services. However, we must pay attention to the people’s perception

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on development and governance in their everyday life. While doing so, this study undertakes various indicators of social development like health, education, drinking water, sanitation and analyse people’s perception towards such facilities. The chapter discusses people’s suggestions for the improvement of various services and people’s interaction with government agencies engaged in rural development programmes. With its ethnic, religious and cultural diversities, the demographic profile of the state of Assam has certain interesting dynamics. In this backdrop, the chapter briefly recounts the historical background of the Panchayat Raj Institutions and the local selfgovernment in Assam. It is widely agreed that participation in the processes of local governance is very important for the functioning of local government. But in practice, the expected level and extent of citizen’s participation in everyday governance is debatable. The participation of citizens in the democratic process is complex as it is differently perceived and practiced by different groups. Gaon Sabha which is a village-level meeting where all registered voters can participate is considered to be one of the important features of local participatory governance. But, it was not conducted as per directives. Rather, it is often conducted in the Panchayat office against the mandate. Drawing from such observations, key interviews, focus group discussion and surveys, this chapter examines how governance works at the local level and how the supposed beneficiaries of the welfare schemes perceive the processes of governance. It also tries to understand the notion of informal governance at the community level. Besides, it also highlights the role of clientelism in local politics. To understand the deprivation and exploitation at the global level, Frank (1978) examines the privileged positions of the European nations as ‘metropolis’ extracting natural resources and wealth from the developing world or ‘satellites’, while the developing world is often left devoid of economic and social development. These discursive orientations are not merely present across countries but also the inequality persists among the different states within specific countries. In a relative justification, the unequal distribution of power and resources across the states of Northeast India is not merely debated but also prevalent across the structures of governance and ‘gaze’ of the socio-political actors at the centre. The plethora of literatures available on village studies lack depictions of the Northeastern region of India. The chapter is based on this region which is inhabited by various ethnic communities. Without the presence of many civil society bodies or NGOs, life in these villages are different from other places. Farming as an activity is shirking and not considered as a profit making activity by most of the rural people. A marginal community hardly having any substantive resources to rely upon, so in this case welfare measures by the state, becomes the main site of dependence. Some of the populations are also considered as illegal by the state. Resources are scarce, and beneficiaries are many; in this situation, the social relationship becomes prone to friction. Negotiation among the villagers and their interaction with the state becomes important to have access to the resources. This negotiation with the state is often mediated by the brokers.

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3.1 Society, State and Governance This section sets the background of the chapter. It depicts the demographic profile of the village and describes its ethnic, religious and cultural make-up. It provides a brief historical narrative of Assam and introduces the socio-economic setting of the villages selected for the study. The present political Assam consists of three distinct geographical parts divided into thirty-five districts. Twenty-nine of them are in the Brahmaputra Valley, three in the hilly south-central region and the rest three in the Barak Valley. Present Assam is only a shadow of the colonial province of Assam, which included the neighbouring states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland. These states were gradually made into separate political units starting with the creation of the Nagaland state in 1963.

3.1.1 Precolonial Period Assam, known as Kamrupa in the ancient times, was dominated by various Mongoloid groups up to the advent of British colonialism in the early nineteenth century. Migration of people from other parts of India with superior agricultural technology and revenue administration also facilitated the processes of state formation and social development in the region. The Varman dynasty, who reigned over parts of North Bengal, Central and Lower Assam (known as Kamrupa then) from the fifth to the eighth century AD were perceived to be the ‘Hinduised’ Mongoloid tribal group. Other Mongoloid royal dynasties following the Varmans also embraced Hinduism. Following the royal dynasties, many autochthons groups also came under the fold of Hinduism. It is believed that the Ahoms came to Assam through Upper Burma around 1228 AD and established their rule in Eastern Assam and subsequently went on to dominate major parts of the Brahmaputra Valley for about six centuries. Though initially the natives resisted the Ahoms, finally they succeeded in establishing its authority and supremacy. Their contact with the natives strengthened to the extent that they even entered into marital relations with the locals, embracing local customs, cultural practices and language. Gradually, the process of adopting Hinduism or their Hinduization gained momentum from the sixteenth century, especially with the expansion of the Ahom Kingdom.

3.1.2 The Colonial Period Assam has been a habitat for migrants since ancient times. But, the wave of immigration gathered serious momentum since the colonial rule. The present demographic crisis of the state is linked to the colonial policies of encouraging migration into the

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state of Assam. It further accelerated during the post-colonial period. Prior to the colonial regime, Assam was scarcely populated; it was full of uninhabited land. This picture however drastically altered when the colonial rulers encouraged migrants to cater to their needs and work for their interest. Colonial rulers found the land favourable for tea cultivation, and this discovery marked the beginning of socioeconomic transformations in Assam. The possibility of large-scale tea production enthralled the minds of the British and lured them to heavily invest on tea plantations. The British officials destroyed forest and established tea gardens. Thus, there emerged the need for labourers to cater to that, colonialists brought people from outside the state to work in the plantations as they could not convince the local people to work in the tea gardens. This demand for cheap labour in the tea plantations was the first major reason to turn to immigrants (Barua, 1999, 46). Along with tea, the discovery of oil fields, coal, timber, etc. led to the economic transformations of Assam. Oil fields, coalmines, construction of roads, buildings and railways also attracted migrant labourers. Apart from labourers, migrants who were educated and had knowledge of the English language came in to occupy certain administrative jobs. Thus, thousands of people from outside stepped in to the region in search of jobs and livelihood. One of the migrant groups is the tea labour community comprising of members from Santhal, Mundas, Oraons, Kharias, Gonds and other tribal and non-tribal groups from Chotanagpur region of Central and Eastern India. Their movement into the region was not voluntary. Rather, they were forcefully and repressively brought in by the colonial rulers as indentured labour. But gradually, they started settling in Assam even after the contract period was over as they were left with hardly any means of returning to their land. Hailing from a poor socio-economic background, their life in plantations was not easy as they had to work in a strict, regimented system with little autonomy of their own. Even after having internal differentiation among them, they are usually recognized in Assam as belonging to one single community named as either ‘Adivasi community’ or ‘ChahJanajati’. Further, even if they were in friendly terms with the larger Assamese population and shared a common identity, in recent decades, they too like many others have been claiming a separate identity. They are also aspiring for the Scheduled Tribe status for availing various government facilities and schemes. The Hindu Bengalis from East Bengal were one of the early migrant groups encouraged by the colonial regime to migrate to Assam. They came here to work as clerks, supervisors, etc. in government offices, courts and later in the tea plantations. Another predominant section of Assam’s population today comprises of the Marwaris, a commercial trading community from Rajasthan. Even before the advent of British, the Marwaris had their business enterprises in Western Assam and being blessed with no competitors, trade and commerce in the state gradually became their monopoly (Sharma, 2012). The Nepalis from Nepal also immigrated into the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and with the approval from the colonial administration, settled in some of the excluded areas of Assam. They were predominantly engaged in milk business and buffalo herding. Devi (2007) claims that the real immigration of Nepalis into the Northeast India began in the early nineteenth century to employ

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Gurkhas in the army. Nepali migration continued in the post-colonial period as well. They came to Assam to settle down in the riverine tracts and subsequently on the outskirts of towns along the hill slopes to sell milk and milk products in the urban areas. In this manner, Nepalis came to constitute a sizeable population in Assam. Further, immigration accelerated with the introduction of commercial agriculture and profit-driven motive pursued by the colonial rulers. They encouraged migrants from erstwhile East Bengal mostly from Muslim peasant community. Members from this community were regarded as expert in farming. The British administration settled the Muslim migrants in the wastelands to earn more revenue. They were also encouraged to engage in commercial jute cultivation. Since the first decade of the twentieth century, Western and Central Assam witnessed massive waves of immigration of these East Bengali peasants. However, immigration of different communities did not confine only to the colonial period. After independence, Assam witnessed migration of groups mainly from Bihar and Eastern Uttar Pradesh. They come from marginal socio-economic background and are engaged as construction workers, thella or rickshaw pullers, barbers, cobblers and other petty jobs (Sharma, 2012, 301). They too gradually settled in Assam, and their numerical strength grew with time to the extent that they have turned into a powerful community of the state. Baruah (2005) highlights the major challenges faced by the Indian nation state through the issues of nationalism and sub-nationalism. Different ethnic groups demand separate territory and autonomy to distinguish themselves from the others. Assam has been the home to diverse ethnic communities, but these demands created persistent ethnic conflicts in the region. He argues that when the Indian nation state tries to make the region a part of the mainstream through power of control, the process itself mark these regions as disturbed areas. Xaxa (2008, 71) explains that in Assam, the district councils obtain specific allocations and funds from the Planning Commission. But, these funds come through the Government of Assam. Xaxa points out that some of the revenue raising powers of the autonomous district council in the Sixth Schedule areas are less than the powers actually granted to even the Gram Panchayat in the non-tribal areas of some of the states. Because of this, the demand for a separate state emerged out of this situation to justify the greater empowerment of tribal people. Mishra et al. (2012) demonstrate the burden of neoliberal policy on the tea planation workers. Drawing from both primary and secondary data sources, authors reveal the issues of lack of mobility among the tea garden workers, pathetic health condition, lack of proper education and schooling system as well as weak social protection schemes. Many important studies have revealed the wretched condition of tea garden workers. Das (2013, 183–184) argues that since the inception of tea gardens in Assam, tea gardens workers have been subject to severe exploitation. They reside in a condition which can be compared to a walled city. They hardly interact with the outsiders. On very few occasions, they come out of the gardens. Due to low income, during emergency like health issue or social obligation like marriage, they have to rely on the private borrowings. They eventually fall into debt trap. ‘It is very difficult for them to come out of the tag of bagania and coolie, such words over the time have been stigmatized. It is illogical that even though they are called as tea tribes,

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in government records they are enlisted as Other Backward Classes (OBC)’ (Ibid.). I argue that because of their low chances of mobility, limited freedom and flexibility, they reside in a zone of boundedness. They are caught between the state and estate. Neither tea garden management nor the government has been able to solve their everyday crisis. I term this crisis and challenge as ‘E(state)within the State’. From the continuous interactions with the members of the tea garden community, I gathered that the government is not keen on extending its welfare services to the garden, while the tea garden management works as a gate keeper and control the decisions on whether the workers should avail welfare schemes or not. Thus, the tea gardens workers stand in a zone of no man’s land, and their sufferings on a regular basis aggravate the crisis.

3.1.3 The Present-Day Assam and Governance Colonial Assam came to be divided into five states beginning with the creation of the Nagaland state in 1963. Subsequently, Meghalaya was given statehood in 1971; Mizoram was made a union territory in 1972; Arunachal Pradesh which was earlier known as North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) was made into a union territory in 1972 and subsequently as a separate state in 1987. The provision of tribal autonomous districts, although evidently a progressive policy, under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution also fuelled tribal aspirations. More and more tribal (and even non-tribal) groups in the state are raising demand for autonomy and separate state creating a serious challenge to the governance and social landscape of the state. The above discussion gives us an idea about the multi-ethnic society in Assam. This multi-ethnic character greatly influences the political and economic processes of the state. This discussion will be helpful to grapple with the functioning of the local governance in Assam and how it is influenced by the ethnic or communitarian sentiments. As mentioned earlier, due to the diversity of population, effective management of governance is a challenging task. In this context Das (2014) articulates that insurgency and independentist movements continue to create disturbances in this region; however, developmentalism in terms of infrastructure development emerges as the new paradigm of governing the northeast region of India. Large infrastructure, big dams bring diverse ethnic groups together to protest against the state. Pointing towards another type of discrimination, researchers and activists argue that it is difficult for the citizens of Northeast India to get job outside the region. They often face discrimination and stigma in the other parts of the country. McDuie-Ra (2012) demonstrates that tribal migrants encounter racism and discrimination in mainland India. It is not easier for them to integrate into the so-called mainstream society. To investigate the inter community relationships of the region, Chaube (1975) explores the interethnic politics and collaboration among the ethnic groups. He shows how primordial ethnic affinities survive or is constrained by the overwhelming power of the state and merge into new alignments and develop alternative aspirations. In this

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case, we could see various alignments and negotiation to form government both at the state and the autonomous council level. While most of the citizens depend on the modern state for social welfare measures, the degree of dependence of the poor and marginalized is most obvious. That is why the poor and marginalized are the worst affected when the state withdraws from its social welfare schemes or fails to implement them effectively. Few government welfare schemes work properly at the grassroots, where specific circumstances impair their implementation. Although the factors that contribute to this failure are wellknown, specific factors must be examined in the local context. In Napam, there is a phrase that is commonly heard: Sarkare amak eko dia nai (government has not given us anything!). In response to a question about government benefits, poor people often say this. The relationship between the Indian state and society has become interesting, especially after the advent of PRIs and devolution of power to local bodies. People have their own expectations from the state where they consider the state as a problem solver; the state also expects its citizens to conform to a particular mode of behaviour. When there is a mismatch in communication, the relationship between the state and society is ruptured. Assam has been witnessing a recurring conflict between various communities. These conflicts mostly occurred in Western Assam in last few years. The furious strife took many lives and displaced lakhs of people in the Western Assam in the last couple of years. One respondent said that there is no visible conflict between the communities. But, the relationship turns tense in a subtle way whenever conflict takes place somewhere else. A critical visualization of this would score that the relationships of conflicts are disseminated across larger global topographical contexts apart from the specific micro-contextual underpinnings. The socio-political identities are shaped across ‘impersonal’ worlds before it bulges into the personal complexes of self, community and subjective–objective dualisms. These blurring of lines across heterodoxies in ‘village’ democracies and governance often arouses tensions and ambivalences. Similarly, this is encountered in Napam when conflicts between communities take place in the ‘distanced’ places of Assam or its greater region. The relationship between communities did not remain cordial as earlier. But, the resentment evaporates gradually in the long run. The respondent whose words spoke the larger point above, added that, however, Muslim people have a good relationship with other communities. They even participate in Bihu, Rash, Bhauna, etc. Similarly Bengali Hindu also participate in these Assamese festivals. People in the village opine that changes take place with the change of regime. Like an old respondents from the Nepali community stated that during the Congress government, the Muslim people dominated the village Panchayat, but after BJP came to power, they seem to be less dominant. He further added that now Bengali people are proactive in panchayat politics under the BJP regime. Earlier, the whole village was a bastion for the Congress. The political allegiance of the Bengali people was divided between BJP and Congress. But now except the Muslims, the whole population of the village has turned towards BJP. He feels that people wanted a change. The villagers were disillusioned with the rampant corruption of the Congress regime. It

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was not communal card, but the anti-incumbency factor that acted as a catalyst for such changes. To understand the political life of the village area, many people were interviewed on the basis of their ethnic origin. One male respondent from the Assamese community, around 50 years old narrated that the East Bengal origin Hindu and Muslim people are more interested in NRC issues as compared to caste Hindu Assamese people. From his narrative, it seemed that the politics of the village revolves around the issues of Bengali, Muslim, Nepalese and caste Hindu Assamese. A man, 45 years old from the Muslim community was asked about the political representation in the Panchayat. He informed that though every community has a minimum representation in the Gram Panchayat, Muslim representation is more in numbers in the Panchayat because their number is more in this area. According to him, though the village is not socially or politically turbulent, but social strain emerges contextually among the communities. He contended that they used to enjoy a cordial relationship with the mainstream caste Hindu Assamese. During Assamese festival Bihu, Muslim people participate enthusiastically. They even organize cultural and sports events in the Bihu festive season. But sometimes, this communal harmony gets hiccup with the rise of religious politics. He recalled that during the Assam movement, this village had gone through some communal furry. That time, the society was extremely polarized on the issues of Bangladeshi infiltration. It is worthwhile to mention that Assam was marred by a turbulent phase during 1979–1984 on the issue of foreign infiltration. Interestingly, he mentioned that the main communal strain in the village comes mainly from the East Bengal origin Hindu and Muslim people. These two communities are mostly hostile to each other due to their distinct origin. He stated, ‘we never take these people in faith. These Bengali-Hindu people always try to polarize the society on communal line’. He further explained that these people try to provoke us against the mainstream Assamese people. ‘They (Bengali-Hindu) say that we all are Bengali speaking people. We should not take Assamese language and culture. We should counter the Assamese hegemony by uniting together’. On the other hand, they try to provoke the mainstream Assamese people against us by playing the Hindu card. He further added, ‘they use to say to the Assamese people (caste Hindu) that we are Hindu. We should remain united. These Muslim people are threat to this country. Our country is a Hindu country, these Muslim people are predators’. He also acknowledged that Assamese people have played a pivotal role in their education and economic development. We still have a harmonious relationship with the Assamese people. We used to cultivate on the Assamese people’s land as a sharecroppers. We never hesitate to visit Assamese people’s house, but we hardly visit any Hindu Bengali’s house. Regarding the prevailing politics of the village, in the context of the rise of BJP in the state, he added that we feel insecure, and are very worried about our future. He said that in recent times, the Hindu Bengalis and Assamese people are increasingly labelling us as outsiders. They are always sceptical about our citizenship. We always have to prove our loyalty to this place. Recently Assam’s socio-political scenario is simmering due to the centre’s decision to grant citizenship to the Hindu migrants from

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Bangladesh. On the question ‘does this issue have any implication on your village?’, they are very upset with the government’s decision to provide shelter to these Hindu migrants. Government policies cannot be based on religious lines, or it cannot favour a particular religion. We have scarcity of resources, how can we provide shelter to these Hindu Bengalis? He believed that along with them, the Assamese people in the village are also apprehensive about this policy.

3.1.4 Social Life of the Village Assam has been increasingly polarized on the issue of immigrations and various political parties are trying to capitalize the issue in favour of their interests. People are increasingly dubious and creating the discourse of the ‘other’. The projected changes in demography create insecurities among the local Assamese population, whereas it has been observed that this mainstream reservation has resulted in the ghettoization of the members of the Muslim community across different parts of Assam. This creates a vicious cycle of blame game as it benefits certain sections of the society. The popular statement ‘development is the best contraceptive’ which was made by Karan Singh at the World Population Conference in Bucharest in 1974 still has relevance. Many informed respondents from the Muslim community during the study opined that their expectations from the government is to get good education and health facility. If people get good education, they will be more conscious in terms of their health and well-being. Eventually, this will also lead to low population growth. But on this issue, members of the Nepali community and Hindu Bengali community differ. They allege that the Bengali Muslims are more money minded and do not give importance to education. Even if government has provided many facilities, they are not taking benefits of those services. A female member of the Nepali community around 60 years old opined that various communities in the village are living harmoniously for years. There is no major strife among the communities. She narrated, Nepali and people of other community jointly organize festivals like Durga puja in the village. They organize cultural events together and other small communities in the village have gradullay taken up the Nepali cultural elements. However, she opined that intercommunity marriage is rare. Nepali people never approve conjugal relationship outside of their community. She recalled that during the Assam movement, the relationship between Nepalis and people from other communities deteriorated. Historically, these Nepali people had migrated to this region from Nepal and the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. So, there were popular resentments against these Nepali people at that time. But later, communal harmony was gradually restored in the village. Also an old woman from Bodo community asserted that no strong Bodo identitybased politics exist in the village due to their small size population. Bodos in the Napam village have assimilated culturally with the Nepalis. She thinks, the political culture of the village is changing. Earlier AGP and Congress dominated the electoral politics in the village. But later with the decline of the AGP, BJP emerged as a strong

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electoral player in the village, and among the Muslim community AIUDF’s presence gained momentum. She pointed out that people do not support a particular party as a community inclination, but support is based on certain issues and popular promises. Whenever there arises any dispute in the village, people from all communities sit together and settle things among themselves. If that cannot be solved within the community, they prefer to go to the police. A male member who was 55 years old from the Bengali Hindu community narrated that in the last six months, the village has been divided on the issue of Hindu migrants of East Bengal origin. Though they used to be silent in public spaces, there is a growing tacit polarization among the communities. The main opposition has come from Bengali Muslims, Assamese people are also against us. He said that we the ‘Hindus’ should stand together. Hindu people in neighbouring communities are getting killed, so we should accept Hindu Bengalis on the humanitarian ground. He further added that we have taken Assamese language and culture. We are not different from the Assamese people, our main identity is based on Hinduism. Bengali Hindu have by and large been assimilated with the Assamese society. They collectively celebrate various cultural events with the Assamese people. Regarding the village electoral politics, he said, ‘earlier the main support base of the Congress or AIUDF were Muslims. Now our government has come to the power, this government will take care of the Hindus’.

3.1.5 Village-Level Governance and Development Rural development programmes are generally implemented through the Panchayats. So, in everyday practice, people encounter the state through the workings and functions of the Panchayat. People in the village usually do not consider Panchayat as the government or a part of the state mechanism because functionaries from their locality only manage the works of Panchayat. There are individuals in the locality who may be more powerful than the Panchayat members, so they consider Panchayat as a weak or powerless organization in comparison to other government offices located in the district head quarter. Most of the eligible beneficiaries have availed Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) now renamed as PMAY, a free housing scheme for the poor. Some of them have also received free toilet under Swatch Bharat Mission and SNHS. Others have received free electricity connection and subsidy while buying agricultural tools. The government scheme that provides free wells has been utilized by only two persons in the whole of the Napam Panchayat. Very few respondents believe that socio-economically poor have benefited from various government schemes. Majority of them believed that either relatives of the Panchayat members or those who have money or political power benefitted from such welfare schemes. For the villagers, especially the Amolapam, only the agricultural sector has been successful in implementing schemes since most of them have been provided with high-yielding variety seeds, insecticides and pesticides. The respondents have stated that the Panchayats can implement schemes and

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programmes, but it often turns dysfunctional. They are aware that the relatives of the Panchayat members and politically powerful get more benefits from the scheme. One old man from Nepali community informed that most of the people here in Napam are poor and illiterate, so they cannot open their mouth and raise their voice against the panchayat members. In some cases, the Panchayat members are so clever that they take signatures or thumb impressions from the beneficiaries even if they do not receive any goods or schemes. And thus, Panchayat members remain in the safe side. He insisted that for the successful implementation of the rural development schemes and programmes, senior citizens of the village should be appointed to look after the working and functioning of the schemes. Then only, the rural development schemes and programmes will be effective in the development of villages. On the question of making the governance more effective and efficient, some people from Napam suggested that through the application process, government should select the beneficiaries of the welfare programmes. The selection procedures should take the socio-economic background of the people into account, and those who are economically backward should get benefits. Some people agreed that identification of beneficiaries and implementation of different programmes should be left to the Panchayat. But there must be some stringent rules and regulations in place. In the Napam village, people pointed out that the Panchayat president and members control all development programmes and also they decide while selecting beneficiaries. Generally, relatives and kins of the Panchayat president and members, who have the money to bribe and often political brokers get the benefit of the schemes. Many respondents complained about corruption, discrimination and nepotism on the part of the Panchayat members. It has already been discussed in the preceding chapters how certain gaps exist between government policies and its implementation at the ground level. There are many development programmes envisaged by both central and state governments to benefit the poor. But, they often fail to reach the actual beneficiaries who are supposed to be benefited. Then, questions arise why the target population do not get the benefits they are supposed to get.

3.1.6 Education Health and education are two most important aspects in the realm of social development. The grassroot-level organizations have been entrusted with the power and responsibilities to look after these two elements in the rural areas. Villagers were asked whether education has improved over the past decade in order to better understand the situation. Interesting responses were shared, and the summary has been presented in Table 3.1. Most people, cutting across the income categories, think that education has improved over the last 10 years. Only 17% of the respondents felt that the status of education has remained the same. Quite a few of them feel that the number of schools are not sufficient. Even if schools are there, infrastructure is

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Table 3.1 Opinion about quality of education Opinion/Income Poor category No. %

Vulnerable

Non-poor

Affluent

Total

No.

No.

No.

No. %

%

%

%

Not good

15

(17.0)

3

(10.0)

1

(3.2)

6

(15.4)

25 (13.3)

Good

52

(59.1)

17

(56.7)

21

(67.7)

19

(48.7)

109 (58.0)

4

(4.5)

6

(20.0)

2

(6.5)

4

(10.3)

16 (8.5)

16

(18.2)

3

(10.0)

5

(16.1)

7

(17.9)

31 (16.5)

(1.1)

1

(3.3)

2

(6.5)

3

(7.7)

7 (3.7)

Better than earlier Lack of higher education Cannot say Total

1 88

(100.0) 30

(100.0) 31

(100.0) 39

(100.0) 188 (100.0)

very poor. Due to lack of toilets and other facilities, girl students often do not go to schools and dropout rates among them are very high. For a comparative analysis, respondents were divided into four categories on the basis of their incomes. These categories were—poor, vulnerable, non-poor and affluent. Monthly per capita income categories are obtained roughly corresponding to the monthly per capita consumption expenditure categories defined by NSSO 66th round of survey for rural Assam with an estimated average Engel’s ratio of 70%. Those who earn an income of up to Rs. 900.00 per month are categorised as poor. Those who earn between Rs. 901.00 to Rs. 1300.00 per month are categorised as vulnerable. This category is not clubbed under poor although they are separated from poor by a thin margin. Any time due to vagaries of earning they can slip down to the poor category. They can also shift to an upward category by earning more. Those who earn between Rs. 1301.00 to Rs. 2000.00 per month are categorised as non-poor and those who earn more than Rs. 2001.00 per month are categorised as affluent.The different parameters used to know the opinion about the quality of education were—not good, good, better than earlier, lack of higher education and cannot say. The last column on ‘total’ gives us an idea about all the five different types of opinions based on the numbers from each income category. So, out of the total 188 respondents covering all of the income categories, 25 responded to the question of quality of education as ‘not good’, 109 said that it is ‘good’, 16 opined that it was getting better than earlier, 31 opined that it was poor due to lack of higher education, and lastly 7 concluded by saying that they cannot say anything regarding this. The most common opinion in terms of the quality of education was ‘good’. The second most common opinion was that the quality of education was getting poor due to the lack of higher education. The third most common opinion was that of ‘not good’ in terms of the reference point. This is followed by the opinion that it is getting better than earlier. It is also interesting to see that the total number of respondents from the ‘poor’ income category were the highest in number while those from the vulnerable were the lowest, followed by the ‘non-poor’ and ‘affluent’. Large percentage of the total

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Table 3.2 Opinion on teachers’ quality Opinion/Income Poor category No. %

Vulnerable

Non-poor

Affluent

Total

No.

No.

No.

No. %

%

%

%

Not good

11

(12.5)

6

(20.0)

4

(12.9)

5

(12.8)

26 (13.8)

Good

63

(71.6)

22

(73.3)

24

(77.4)

24

(61.5)

133 (70.7)

Lack training

12

(13.6)

2

(6.7)

3

(9.7)

10

(25.6)

27 (14.4)

Cannot say Total

2 88

(2.3) (100.0) 30

2 (1.1) (100.0) 31

(100.0) 39

(100.0) 188 (100.0)

respondents in the ‘poor’ category have claimed the quality of education as ‘good’ which reflects a lot of irony as well as puts a question mark onto the level of awareness towards quality education at the grassroots. Not only in this category, but in general as well, the opinion of ‘good’ quality of education seemed to be the most popular. Here, it is difficult to understand the quality as good in terms of its subjectivity. People showed their concern about the lack of college education in the Napam area. It is seen that students have to go a long distance to Tezpur town for pursuing college education and take the brunt of long-distance travel, which is around sixteen kilometres away from their village. They have to spend a lot of their energy, time and money on travel. People consider the government schools’ curriculum as unsatisfactory, and this is the reason behind its downfall as compared to the private schools, in terms of employment. The local communities are not able to intervene in the education process. Lack of teachers as well as teachers’ quality is affecting the quality of primary education (Table 3.2). The issues of privatization and corporatization of welfare provisions have been discussed in Chapter 6. Lack of quality teachers as well as inadequate training are two factors that affect the quality of education. While 70.7% of the respondents feel that teachers’ quality is of good standard, around 30% consider it as not up to the mark. The training aspect of the teachers is also duly highlighted. They feel that government teachers lack training, and they are not performing at the expected level. People emphasize that better teachers, especially Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) qualified teachers, should be appointed in the schools. In many primary schools, often a single teacher teaches three classes simultaneously. Also, the absence of new appointments is affecting the elementary education in the whole of Assam. Majority of the people feel that the infrastructure of the government run school is very poor, they lack proper building. In many villages, they are made from thatch, bamboo and mud. Students mostly use broken desk and bench. In some of the schools due to the lack of infrastructure, they even take classes under trees or in the verandah of the school. Some respondents also informed that due to lack of buildings, in some primary schools, teachers take classes in their homes. Regarding education of girls, almost everybody opined that girls’ education is very essential. The respondents felt that higher education is necessary for girls which will make them aware of their rights. The proper education of a girl child ensures progress for society and her family. It was interesting to find that there was one respondent

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Table 3.3 Perceived problems in education Opinion/Income Poor category No. %

Vulnerable

Non-poor

Affluent

Total

No.

No.

No.

No. %

%

%

%

Lack of teacher

18

(20.5)

7

(23.3)

6

(19.4)

9

(23.1)

40 (21.3)

Facility insufficient

14

(15.9)

5

(16.7)

5

(16.1)

7

(17.9)

31 (16.5)

Lack of affordability

11

(12.5)

4

(13.3)

4

(12.9)

10

(25.6)

29 (15.4)

Lack of accessibility

1

(1.1)

1

(3.3)

1

(3.2)

Poor infrastructure

11

(12.5)

4

(13.3)

4

(12.9)

3

(3.4)

Lack of awareness

3 (1.6) 7

(17.9)

26 (13.8)

2

(5.1)

5 (2.7)

No problem

18

(20.5)

6

(20.0)

7

(22.6)

3

(7.7)

34 (18.1)

Lack of trained teacher

12

(13.6)

3

(10.0)

4

(12.9)

1

(2.6)

20 (10.6)

Total

88

(100.0) 30

(100.0) 31

(100.0) 39

(100.0) 188 (100.0)

who considered that only primary education is sufficient for girls. As they will have to look after the household after their marriage, they do not need higher education. If they are more educated, they may not obey their husbands’ commands. This will create a rupture in their family life. Therefore, there is no need for the girls to go for higher education. This reflects the patriarchal ideology even after awareness campaigns conducted by governments at various level (Table 3.3). In terms of perceived problems in education, different parameters were considered in terms of lack of teacher, insufficient facility, lack of affordability, lack of accessibility, poor infrastructure, lack of awareness, problem and finally, lack of trained teacher.

3.1.7 Problems Affecting Education As per people’s opinion, it was found that one of the major drawbacks of the government schools is the curriculum. Respondents have claimed that there is a lack of competition of students from government schools, with those of private schools due to the poorly designed curriculum. It is felt that the syllabus needs sufficient restructuring so that it can stand at par with the national standard. Another concern is related to the severe shortage of teachers as well as their irregularity in attending schools. Also, lack of higher secondary schools in the locality leads to unaffordability of many students to continue pursuing further education. 21% of people perceive that lack of teachers is a problem in the education system. 17% of the population felt

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that the facility is not sufficient. Due to lack of affordability, 15% of people feel that they cannot send their children to school. Only 2% think that lack of accessibility is a problem, whereas poor infrastructure is the biggest challenge to quality education according to the 14% of the population. 3% of the respondents feel that lack of awareness among people is the main reason behind educational backwardness, while 11% of them think that it is due to the lack of trained teachers. Approximately 18% of the respondents were neutral to all of the queries and issues regarding education. Poor economic condition in general also affects their ability to afford education. For example, many parents instead of sending their children to school, send them for earning a wage. Because of financial problems, they cannot continue with school education. Some people responded that they have to send their children to teacher’s house for schooling. So, they are obliged to pay some fee to the teacher for such purpose. Availability of optimum number of schools is also a concern for the parents in the locality. It is difficult for the poor parents to intervene in matters related to the improvement of the quality of education in the local schools. But, few respondents opined that problem cannot affect children’s education, if people send their children to school.

3.1.8 Maintenance of Primary Education by Panchayat Maintenance of primary education sector is another area. On the question of whether primary education should be maintained by the Panchayat or not, almost 65% of the people said that it should be the responsibility of the Panchayat. The remaining percent of the population spoke in contrast. People believe that more benefits can be gained if the Panchayat is actively involved in schooling. Thus, for any kind of problem, the school can directly contact the Panchayat members. However, the Panchayat must be corruption free, otherwise corruption will enter into the school system. The Panchayat will know better about the school and education in their respective villages. They can understand the problems at local level, and it will be beneficial if the Panchayat is also active. People can discuss the problems of education and school with the Panchayat members. However, though people think that primary education should be managed by the Panchayat, they feel that higher education (from high school onwards) should be governed by the government. The people, who said that Panchayat should not look after the primary education, argued that Panchayat members are corrupt. They will syphon off the money, and there will be no significanat development. They suggested that primary education should be controlled by the government. Some of them also opined that it should be managed by the school committee and state government should look after the school. This is because many people believe that Panchayat is different from the state government (Table 3.4). In terms of the presence of the Village Education Committee (VEC) in the village, 5 households responded in the positive sense while 168 households responded in the

3.1 Society, State and Governance Table 3.4 Whether there is any VEC in the village

Response

69 No. of HH

Percent

Yes

5

2.7

No

168

89.4

Cannot say Total

15

8.0

188

100.0

negative and 15 households could not say anything on it. So, it seems that a majority of the attention can be given to the 168 households who mentioned about the lack of VEC which is one of the features of the decentralized form of governance. VEC is formed in the village, but it is not functional. It was also found that there is no VEC in two villages. Some respondent pointed out that the VEC was once formed, but it did not continue it self as a functional body. It remained in pen and paper only.

3.1.9 Health: Facility, Perception and Participation The people from the Napam area mostly visit Kanaklata Civil Hospital in the Tezpur town, which is a district-level hospital of the Sonitpur district under the Department of Health, Government of Assam. They visit the Panchmile health centre located around 4 kms away for immediate consultations. Many poor people also visit the Mission hospital run by the Christian Baptist Mission, located 15 kms away in the Tezpur town, where the fee is relatively less. Those who can afford prefer private hospitals. This issue is discussed in detail in Chapter 6. People from Noorbari tea garden area often consult the garden hospital. Noorbari tea garden area is one of the most backward regions in the Napam Panchayat in terms of health service facilities, so people suffer immensely. One health centre, which is run by the tea garden management, is not functional. People complain that the diagnoses of the doctors are not proper. Patients have to sit a considerable distance away from the doctor. Many a times, the doctor writes the prescription without enquiring in detail from the patient. Most of the medicines are purchased from outside,. They are entitled to get some basic medicines from the health centre, and most of these medicines are often out of stock. One of the respondents in the tea garden said that ‘Amar gaonot eta sasthyakendra ase, eitu companir hoi’ (in our village, there is only one health centre and it belongs to the tea company). When asked about the services it provides, the respondents stated ‘ami akol dorob ekta duta pao. Ketia ba bemar bhal hoi aru ketia ba nohoi. Aru dorob pale o bohut bemarot dorob nathake’ (we get few medicines, sometimes it helps and sometimes it does not. For many diseases, one does not get medicine here). These statements reveal that the quality of health services in the Noorbari tea garden area is very poor. It also speaks of the medical facilities in the tea gardens of Assam. The sick person here gets limited amount of medicine from the health centre,

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Table 3.5 Whether government has implemented rural health programme Opinion/Category Poor Yes

Vulnerable

Non-poor

Affluent

Total

No. %

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No. %

58

(65.9)

22

(73.3)

23

(74.2)

35

(89.7)

138 (73.4)

8

(26.7)

8

(25.8)

4

(10.3)

50 (26.6)

No

30

(34.1)

Total

88

(100.0) 30

(100.0) 31

(100.0) 39

(100.0) 188 (100.0)

which often does not cure the illness. Only a single compounder is available in the health centre. The health centre lacks infrastructural facilities for it’s sustenance.

3.1.9.1

Why Health Services Are Important

Informants articulate that for the poor, their body is their wealth. So, bodily well-being is very important for them. Illness hampers earning which is crucial to their livelihood. Thus, good health is very much desirable. One respondent stated, ‘Swasthya hi Sampada’ means ‘health is wealth’. According to him, for the poor, health is the biggest asset. If that is lost, the entire purpose of living is defeated. Another respondent showed serious concerns about the quality of vegetables available in the local market, and he linked the regular illness to the chemically grown vegetables. He said, mostly they consume vegetables sold in the local market which are brought from the Kharupetia1 region. They eat vegetables which are laced with chemicals and pesticides. One respondent believes that good health is essential as it contributes to the development of the country. In the locality, 71% of the population feel that health service facilities have improved, while 27% feel it has not improved, but 2% population opine that it has improved elsewhere, but not in their village (Table 3.5). On the question if the government has implemented rural health programme, the overall percentage is higher for those who said in the negative rather than the positive. Out of a total 188 respondents, 138 mentioned no, while only 50 responded yes. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) programme of the government is perceived to be one of the most successful programmes in recent times. Some findings related to health show that few respondents get iron tablets from local health centres. Sometimes, vaccination is done in the government run schools. The JSY, Mamoni, Majoni, Adoroni schemes are very much popular in these areas. These schemes are operational under NRHM in Assam. Most of the respondents claimed that they are beneficiaries of JSY, Mamoni, Majoni schemes (Table 3.6). In terms of the functioning of NRHM in villages, there are four categories of opinions—working properly, not working properly, don’t know and working in other villages. A total of 94 respondents (50.3%) from all income categories together opined that NRHM is working properly. On the other hand, 72 (almost 39%) of 1

Located at a distance of 100 kilometers from Tezpur town, Kharupetia village has many farmers who are engaged in vegetables farming. To increase profit and win in the competitive market, farmers use excessive pesticides and fertilizers to grow more vegetables quickly.

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Table 3.6 View about functioning of NRHM in villages Opinion/Category Poor No. %

Vulnerable

Non-poor

Affluent

Total

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

No. %

Working properly 43

(48.9)

16

(53.3)

15

(50.0)

20

(51.3)

94 (50.3)

Not working properly

30

(34.1)

12

(40.0)

15

(50.0)

15

(38.5)

72 (38.5)

Don’t know

12

(13.6)

2

(5.1)

14 (7.5)

3

(3.4)

2

(6.7)

2

(5.1)

7 (3.7)

Working in other villages Group total

88

(100.0) 30

(100.0) 30

(100.0) 39

(100.0) 187 (100.0)

them opined that NRHM is not working properly. Other 14 were of the view that they do not know about this aspect; they accounted for almost 7.5% of the total respondents in all categories; and lastly, 7 opined that NRHM is working in other villages well in comparisons to their own locality. They accounted for about 4% of the total respondents of all categories combined. This could be concluded as most responses were in favour of the proper working of NRHM. Only few people felt that the NRHM is running well in other places, but not in their villages. Of the many schemes running, only Mamoni and Majoni are working properly. It is benefiting poor people up to a great extent. Most of the poor people are benefiting from the schemes of NRHM. It is interesting to note that 4% of the population responded that people from outside the village are benefitted and 50% of the respondents feel that it is working properly in the village. However, 39% of the population opined that it is not working properly or not being implemented properly in their village. Many of them felt that NRHM scheme is good for poor people, but they do not get much of its services. On the question of the quality of health services in their village, only 18% feel that it is sufficient, whereas 77% of the people feel that the quality is not good. They said that there is an urgent need for more facilities and schemes for the poor people and that it must be utilized for the needy people only. They complained that often schemes benefit people who are related to the concerned officials of the NRHM. Few of them opined that rural health is improving even though certain sub-centres are not working properly. However, the poor and the needy are not getting much of the benefit. They commented that as poor people cannot afford private healthcare facilities, the need for more such government hospitals becomes imperative. One respondent vehemently articulated that in their Panchayat, the government provided many schemes, but only limited people are benefited from these schemes. Most of the health problems of women are handled by ASHA; sometimes, they do not work properly. The satisfaction level of the health facilities in the Panchayat is also alarmingly low. Only 2% people are largely satisfied with the state of health facilities in the Panchayat, while 63% of people are satisfied only to some extent.

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3.1.10 Availability of Medicine The poor availability of medicine in the Napam Panchayat is very disturbing. People said that medicines are found in very limited amounts. Iron tablets are provided to the women. Only few are satisfied with the supply of medicine; others are not very happy with the supply and availability of medicine in the area. They informed that medicines are available only during the first and second week of the month. By the third and fourth weeks, medicine supplies get exhausted. In the later parts of the month, people have to buy medicines from their own pocket. Most of the people responded that facilities in the hospitals are either not good or enough. People get hospital beds with great difficulty even at the time of delivery cases and receive Adoroni2 scheme. On a positive note, people have expressed their happiness over the availability of ambulance facilities. Many people agreed that the ambulance facility is very good in their area. Regarding the question of visiting ASHA in their locality, 81% of the people said yes. 18% of people opined that they do not visit regularly, and 2% of people said that they visit only when they are called. In most of the rural areas, some people are still dependent on traditional healing practices. They believe that sometimes they are affected by foul air, which creates sickness. They believe such sickness cannot be treated by modern allopathic doctors. For this, they consult either traditional healer or Ojah. As many as 88% of the population said they do not believe in traditional healer, whereas 9% of them opined that they have faith in traditional healer and 3% of the population informed that they occasionally visit the traditional healer. It was reported that when their children get fever, stomach ache or minor sickness, they go for a traditional healer. Even for ailments like jaundice, they consult traditional healers. But in the case of some serious illness like TB, they prefer visiting an allopathic doctor (See Photographs 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6).

3.1.11 Suggesting the Better Governance While offering suggestions for better governance, people said that the government should take initiatives to improve the state of health facilities in the Napam area. Government should set up a hospital in this area that will help the poor people. According to them education and health are both correlated. If people get good education, they will be more aware of their health and lifestyle. Medicines should be available throughout the month. In the present conditions, it is available only in the first half of the month, and the stocks get over by the end of the month. Mid-day Meal (MDM) is a nutritional scheme launched by the Government of India which is functional in government schools and students get free food during 2

The pregnant women receive free transportation to and from the hospital. Along with this facility, they get free blood test and ultrasound facility. Free essential medicines are also provided to the mother.

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Photograph 3.1 An old woman sitting in front of the Napam panchayat office, which has the names of IAY applicants written on the wall

the lunchtime. In India, it has helped in retaining students in government schools and up to a large extent, it has reduced malnutrition in children. Many people cannot send their children to private schools, as it is very expensive. The MDM programme in the schools have helped them a lot, as one of the women in the village lamented, ‘anganwadi schoolot e amar lorai khua pai, ghorot tu ketia ba chowkha no jolei’ (in anganwadi school, at least my son gets food, sometimes at home we do not even light the hearth). Thus, the MDM in schools is a boon for the poor. In some houses, people even cannot light their hearth to cook food, as the wage earned is not enough. Majority of people felt that MDM is a useful programme. But, almost half of the population felt that MDM is not the reason for children’s presence in schools. Most of the people felt that the quality of food served is not good even though the MDM scheme is regular in the school. While expressing their opinion on the MDM, people suggested that it can potentially attract students to schools. They also said that it is beneficial for the poor people. Some of the respondents argued that it should be discontinued as it has affected the quality of the education, since more attention is paid to cooking than teaching and learning activities. According to them, if at all government wants to continue this scheme, then it should be managed by NGOs or some SHGs. It harms the functioning of the classes and quality of education as teachers are busy in managing MDM. One middle-aged man opined that though it is affecting the education, it is nevertheless

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Photograph 3.2 Work in progress under MGNREGA in Napam Panchayat

helpful for the poor children who are getting at least a meal in a day. Therefore, the government should continue with the programme. One guardian who belongs to the non-poor category asserted that this programme should be scrapped as students are interested only in food and run away from the schools after having their meal. Countering this view, another person argued, government knows what is good for the poor people and that is why it has floated this scheme. It is very much beneficial for the students who do not get food at home. Some people strongly expressed their opinion like NGOs should be employed in managing the MDM. There were also some views about the quality of education. People feel food having more nutritional value should be provided to the school children. Teacher and authority should give more importance to education rather than to distribution of the food. The responsibility of preparing food should be taken away from the teachers. Instead of food, government should provide books, note pads and uniforms. It should also take measures so that the issue of MDM should not harm the educational quality of the schools. If the government is planning to run these schemes, reputed NGOs should manage this programme. Schools should emphasize more on learning than eating. Interestingly, one respondent said that the government should provide money instead of food, another opined that non-vegetarian food should be included in the MDM. Some people expressed that the food in anganwadi school is bad; there is a need for good, healthy and hygienic food. One respondent said that because of the

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Photograph 3.3 People attending a Vishesh Gaon Sabha in Napam GP office

MDM, children lose their attention at learning and classes become irregular. Some parents informed that the food sometimes causes stomach pain among the children. Many people do not have access to safe drinking water. Many of them use unsafe source of water for drinking purpose, whereas very few have running tap water connection at their home. Some of them use hand pump where the water is not filtered. Many of them said there is no proper facility for drinking water, and 61% of people opined that drinking and rural sanitation programme in the village has been implemented, whereas 39% of people said that there is no drinking water facility in the village. Sanitation is a major area which has had a great impact on the health of the people. The drinking water facility in the village is of low quality; while some people have private wells for purposes of drinking, cooking, cleaning, etc., the rest do not have their own sources of water, so they use hand pumps. Regarding sanitation, the existing government schemes provide only 300 bricks, some amount of sand and cement which is not sufficient for making a toilet. Moreover, a monetary payment of Rs. 300.00 also has to be made to the government. There are some cases where people have received toilet facilities. They have built a pucca toilet with concrete roof. Instead of using that as toilet, however, they use it as a granary. When they were asked about the reason for this, it was found that this room is the sturdiest one in the entire house. So, they cannot use this as toilet rather they use this for storing grains. This is another instance of planning and governance failure which has been discussed in Chapter 2.

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Photograph 3.4 Children having MDM in the open area in a School under Napam Panchayat

3.1.12 Employment One of the most important programmes on employability is Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). The MGNREGA guarantees employment for 100 days per household in a year which necessitates the creation of a ‘job card’ that details the employment record. People colloquially use the term ‘job card’ to refer to the MNEGRA scheme. They complain that though they are entitled to get 100 days’ work but in reality they do not get work for more than a month. On the question of availability of employment schemes, a total of 36 from all income categories revealed that they have benefited from such schemes. On the other hand, 93 have said they have not benefited from any employment programme. A total of 13 from all income categories together has claimed to be benefited from the employment scheme while 46 have not benefited. These are another bunch of interesting insights in terms of awareness and availing the schemes. It is interesting to note that the category of those who are aware but have not benefited is the highest in number. It shows their apathy towards such programmes where many of them believe that due to mis-management, chances of getting work is very less.

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77

Photograph 3.5 A defunct hand pump in one of the schools of Napam Panchayat

In the rural areas of India, ensuring employment throughout the year is a big challenge. In the absence of employment, people tend to migrate or starve. Table 3.7 shows that 129 people out of the 188 surveyed households are aware of the employment generating schemes of the government. Out of that, only 36 people have benefited, whereas 93 people have not benefited. Out of 59 people who are not aware of employment schemes of the government, 46 people have not been benefited, whereas 13 people have been benefited. Most of the people in the village are aware of MGNREGA. Most of them are job card holders. But, one of the respondents replied that ‘job card kono kamor nohoi, eitue amar kam ni die aru dileo bosorot ek mah kam hoi aru poisao ek mahor pai, aru eyat o bohut dalal ase, ji kam loi aru nijor porialor manuh uk mat logai. Kiba kam olale khobor nidie’. (Job card is of no use. It does not help us. We get only work for one month in a year and are paid for it. There are many brokers around who give jobs to their kith and kin. They do not inform us in case if any job is available). Even if the villagers have job cards, it is of no use to them as this ensures jobs only for a month, while they might remain unemployed for the rest of the year. Even if people have job cards, the Panchayat does not allot them any work. So, the middlemen exercises their informed authority to reproduce social stratifiers across the shifting tensions of employment, work and on the basis of who can participate in the mechanisms of sustenance.

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Photograph 3.6 A typical classroom of a Lower Primary school in Napam area

Table 3.7 Awareness on employment schemes Awareness

Benefit

Poor

Yes

Yes

19

3

8

6

No

39

13

16

25

93

Total

58

16

24

31

129

Yes

6

1

2

4

13

No

24

13

5

4

46

Total

30

14

7

8

59

No

Vulnerable

Non-poor

Affluent

Total 36

As a derivative of such processes of dispossession, many people migrated from the Napam area to areas outside of Assam in search of jobs. Generally, they migrate to Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Goa, Punjab, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. Some people also go to Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland. They generally work in sectors like dairy firm, construction, hotel, shopping malls, private security agencies, etc. The reason for migration is local scarcity of jobs. For some people, it has a positive impact because they can earn money and send it to their families. But according to some people, migration has a negative impact as some families have only one son. If that son has to go far away from home to earn money, their old parents face problems.

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79

3.1.13 Answer to Unemployment From the discussion, it is inferred that different people perceive the problem of unemployment differently and also offer different solutions. According to them, the educated and unemployed should be given loan by the government. Along with formal education, vocational courses should also be offered in schools and colleges. Government should also implement new effective schemes which will help the educated unemployed people. Local unemployed should be given more preference in employment opportunities. They too stated that government should give importance to the agricultural sector as Napam area is known for it’s agricultural activities. These days, people have stopped farming in their land. Government should encourage people to open small-scale industry, and industrial loans should be provided in each locality. Training in agricultural practices and other allied services should be provided to the youths. The youth should be encouraged, and awareness campaigns should be organized to impart training on self-employment. Government should take special initiative in this locality to stop the outmigration of youth. Industrialization can reduce the problem of rural unemployment. Various employment programmes should be properly implemented. By giving them employment opportunities, migration can be stopped. In the tea garden, workers suggested that the company should employ people not only for leaf plucking, but also for other types of work. Employment generation schemes should be implemented in the area and work opportunities should be provided by the Panchayat. Training programmes on various vocational courses should also be started. Enabling job opportunities at the local level should be explored.

3.1.14 Dispute Settlement In case of any kind of conflict or trouble, people prefer going to various institutions such as Panchayats, courts, police. In Napam, people informed that they initially try to settle the dispute among themselves. If it is not settled among them, then they go to the village headman or the Panchayat. For more serious issues, they go to the police station or court. Land-related issues are preferably settled at the village level. If it cannot be solved there, then they go to the police station or court. But, most of the time people said that they prefer traditional Panchayat as it is more of informal in nature and takes less time to settle a dispute. Some people said that they prefer Panchayat because they will be better informed on the nature of dispute. Village headman will know the issue properly, so they prefer him as an adjudicator in mediating disputes. But in the tea garden area, people informed that initially they go to the Noorbari tea estate office; if it cannot be handled there, then they go to the police station. People think that it is better to consult traditional Panchayat-like bodies or village headman for the settlement of dispute because it will consume less money and time

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which is helpful for the poor. Local people will know the issue better and work in an unbiased manner. According to them, proper justice will be served, and people will be able to express the issue frankly without hesitation. Sometimes, the issue goes out of control for the village headman to mediate and then there is a need to go to the police station. But, some people said that they do not prefer village headman. There is a chance of favouritism, and they might face injustice.

3.1.15 Need of the Village Most of the people opined that they need a hospital or health centre in their locality. People were concerned about the drinking water facility that results in illness. Electricity supply is also very irregular in the Napam area. Indulging in corruption is a general complaint about the Panchayat and a lot of discrimination happens in the process of selecting beneficiaries. Such favouritism is identified on the basis of kinship, ethnicity, religion and political party lines. So at the time of distribution, it is majorly people related to the Panchayat functionaries who get more of the benefits. It is also seen that people belonging to the same political party take much of the benefits. Hence, it is seen that people demand for better governance in the PRIs. Though Panchayati Raj Institutes are considered to be the primary agency of development, it has been observed that people in the Napam area do not consider Panchayats to be an organ of the government but consider it as local entities. Hence, it has been suggested by many people that a village development committee should be formed. Though in the guidelines, there have provisions for many such committees, in practice these are not in place. As most of the functionaries of Panchayat belong to the local area, people believe that they are not capable to manage the local affairs. Contrary to the philosophy of local governance, people demand that through strict governmental rules and regulation, the functioning of Panchayat should be monitored.

3.1.16 Rural Development Programmes Rural development programmes are implemented through the Panchayats. In everyday practice, people encounter the state through the workings of the Panchayat. It is socio-politically constructed as a ‘volunteer’ of the state rather than a mainstream locus of the power stratum. Many people responded that they have not got any kind of welfare benefits or schemes floated by the Government of India. Out of the surveyed population, 74% of people responded that they have not received any kind of government schemes, while 26% of the people accepted that they have received some sort of government scheme floated in their area. Most of the people who responded in affirmative to the government schemes and some of them said that they have received Indira Awas Yojana (IAY).

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81

The people of the village are only aware of IAY and JRY. For them, it is the Panchayat which can implement rural development schemes that will enable their village to develop. They said beneficiaries of any government schemes should be identified by the people of the village. If it is left in the hands of the Panchayats, then only some sections will be benefited such as the relatives of the Panchayat members. Moreover people usually visit the Panchayat office for formal work to get signature of the Panchayat president or secretary in required documents. In a way, the functionaries of Panchayat function as a form of social control among the villagers. Government should set up a development committee that will look after the necessary developmental needs of the local people. One old-aged male teacher from Nepali community commented that the major threat to any developmental plan is corruption and it should be tackled very seriously, poor people should be given such benefits. Strict rules and regulation should be enforced. Government should appoint the administrative members to investigate the works of the such Panchayat. The government should consult the people of the village about the problems. Senior citizens and officials from the government should be appointed to look after the functioning of the rural development programmes. People should be consulted at an early stage before the implementation of any developmental programme. People’s awareness and participation are essential for which Panchayat should organize campaigns and awareness programmes.

3.1.17 Experiencing the Government Office The participation of the people in the processes of the state and governance stems across various contours of the everyday realm. Political and social representations are not polar concepts opposing each other but form an intricate indulgence in one’s lived experiences. People visit several establishments sanctioned by the state such as the court and other government offices, for example, agriculture department, block development, Panchayat, the deputy commissioner’s office, post office, revenue office and district transport office. These visitations often speak the way social and political ‘memories’ of participation in local governance depersonalizes as well as personalizes through the bodies and action of the citizens’. In a justifying stance from the respondents voices, officials in state based establishments often ask for bribes for the routine work, let alone work of a specialized nature. While moving to a deeper structural form, this problem is even more severe in the Panchayat, and circle offices or at the police stations, which is dispatched by the state to work for the common people (Das, 2021d). To process a caste certificate, one has to pay at least an amount of Rs. 50.00 at the Panchayat office, especially for the poor people, this is a challenge. In that case, the pro-poor policies of the state arrive at a faulty line. A direct or indirect bribe to officials is also often required. More implicit bias is often portrayed through ‘good behaviour’ towards the people who pay more and these makes their work faster while marginalizing a vast share of poor people from accessing the goods of equality

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and social justice. On the other hand, lack of punctuality among the state officials remains a non-negligible threat to the respondents. They often act with leisure or do not arrive at the office on time and keep people away from vital information. The lack of access to information makes the task of the people harder where the poor might face hurdles in getting a small job done. In a nutshell, the language of governance reveals the problem of communication for an intermediary to get their paperwork done (Das, 2021d). The power relations are often manifested when the marginalized and the poor are often blamed as illiterate, not understanding the official procedures or being ignorant of the paperwork procedures despite the help of the officers. This remains a problematic disposition where the naivety is imposed on the powerless to assert the relationship of dominance and subordination. However, while speaking to the president of the Panchayat, he has claimed that the Panchayat has implemented several developmental schemes such as IAY and MNREGA from which 82% of the people benefitted in Napam. He stated that the funds dispatched from central and state government funds have been transferred regularly. But, this opinion appears in stark contrast to the people of Napam who negated such view. Moreover, the people confirmed that in an instance, an IAY applicant was made to pay a sum of Rs. 10,000.00. In an interesting scenario, the president of the Panchayat claimed upon the implementation of the developmental schemes. But, the distantiation in the language of the governance was thrown upon when rural people tried to contact an advocate from their locales, neighbourhood, community or religious group to explain them the schemes in their own language. Listening to someone speaking in their own language is often imbibed with a sense of trust.

3.1.18 Suggestions for Improvement in Governance Corruption is often identified as the most important deterrents to governance. The idea of corruption has taken a prominent place in people’s imagination even in rural areas. People feel government departments are not functioning well due to corruption and suggest various ways to improve government administration. According to the people, eligible and efficient candidates should be elected, based on personal probity rather than on party affiliation. The government should scrutinize the Panchayat president and members from time to time. The government should implement rules strictly and inspect welfare schemes and facilities periodically to ensure that the benefits are distributed equally among the poor people. Senior government officials should go to the field to inspect the activity of the Panchayat members. Besides, people believe that the leaders should be patriotic; therefore, only patriotic members should be appointed, but they should also be eligible and educated. Frequent Panchayat meetings with the villagers should be organized. There is no Gaon Sabha organized by the Panchayat. As soon as they

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are elected, leaders forget the promises they made before the elections. The government should implement some strict rules and regulations regarding corruption and nepotism. People strongly asserted that bribery in government offices should be eliminated. To improve governance, leaders should be concerned about the village and its development. There should be efficient leaders with a strong political background. Corruption should be stopped at the grassroots, and people should be made aware of such issues. Eligible candidates should be selected as well as elected, for which people’s consciousness is essential. The Panchayat president and all Panchayat members and government officials should work honestly. All the government officials and Panchayat members must meet people every month and inform them on the government schemes and facilities. The villagers believe that everything related to public welfare should be transparent and communicated to the people, so that they can take advantage of it. A few respondents said they are deprived of food and rations because of the corrupt officials. Panchayat members do not listen to the poor people; therefore, people need to have some group action. They said they need a good administration and a mechanism for lodging complaints. Officers should go to the field instead of doing desk work only. Every department should be inspected like the education department. To improve governance, the distribution system should be inspected carefully. When asked about the qualities of a good leader, there were various responses. The people opined that the leader should be conscientious, patriotic, honest, active, simple and concerned with the village and its people. He should think of others’ benefit and not of his own. Most also felt that one should be impartial, experienced, sensitive to the poor people and secular to be a good leader. The local people in the Napam area had many opinions on governance and PRIs. One crucial issue was of the intermediaries, who are reviled but also consulted by the people in their engagement with the state. The following section discusses the concept of dalal or broker in light of the data collected during the study.

3.1.19 Clientelism, Brokers and Local Politics Many social scientists argue against the problem of clientelistic politics in the developing countries, as it violates the policy of equal distribution among the needy. In a clientelistic exchange, votes are exchanged for material favour. This is a two-way process: politicians buy votes and people pay for developmental work. Political ‘fixers’ or pyraveekars exploit both government and the people by distorting information; mostly, they are considered as a negative element in society. Reddy and Haragopal affirm, ‘(W)hile the pyraveekar with one hand applies pressure, pushes the files, lubricates the process, and extracts the benefits from the system, with the other hand he passes on incorrect information, misleads the target groups, and makes a private fortune. It is the negative and exploitative dimension of the institution that speaks against it and calls for its elimination through appropriate

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measures’ (Reddy & Haragopal, 1985, 1161). People feel that due to the growing incidence of ethnicization, it is very tough for people to get resources if they do not belong to a specific ruling cluster. People express that they have to fight very hard for the resources they need to survive. Clientelism is also based on the line of party, community, religion, etc. Many social scientists look at the issue of clientelistic politics from a negative point of view, whereas Nicolas VandeWalle (2003) argues that clientelism should be seen as an inevitable feature of the modern state. Clientelism can be based on political party lines, language, community, religion or other factors also, but the defining factor is that poor people feel they need a mediator to access such scarce resources.

3.1.20 Clientelism in the Political Arena In recent times, social scientists have focused on the issue of clientelism. Earlier, this issue was taken as detrimental to the functioning of democracy and often grossly ignored by the social scientists. In a normative sense, the pork barrel politics3 is considered bad for any kind of democracy. It is usually discussed that clientelism is mostly specific to the developing countries and this phenomenon gradually disappear with improved governance. To understand the political culture of any developing country and the political processes, it is pertinent to discuss the idea and concept of clientelism. Researchers have claimed that poor people even in the Indian context enter into a patron–client relationship because of the inefficiency and partiality of the state mechanisms. To get public services in a country like India, where few know documentation and paper work, it is very difficult to access government services and schemes. From receiving PDS to getting a nativity certificate, ration card, voter card and for all sorts of provisions, people therefore depend on a facilitator, to whom they express their loyalty during the time of elections. Social scientists do not uniformly define ‘clientelism’, which is used synonymously with brokership, patronage, pyareveekar etc. Sometimes, it is used in the context of buying votes during the election and after that it does not continue. But, it has different connotations in many developing countries. This relationship is more or less a stable, and it exists even after the elections. Clientelism is understood in terms of some kind of power relations within the society and involves a hierarchical, patron–client, give-and-take relationship. Hopkin writes, ‘Clientelism is a way of describing the pattern of unequal, hierarchical exchange characteristic of feudal society, in which patrons and clients were tied to durable relationships by a powerful sense of obligation and duty’ (Hopkin, 2006, 2). All multi-ethnic societies—including many northeastern states and Assam—are getting more and more ethnicized. People from a particular community try to explore the possibility of a link, where a network can be established and compete for resources to survive. In 3

‘Pork barrel politics’ is the appropriation of government funds meant for some purpose by a representative in a particular area and used to gain popularity.

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a competitive society, as demand far outstrips availability, most of the time, people with political connections tend to get things. Is there any difference between clientelism in the feudal period and clientelism in modern democracy? During feudal period, clients used to have a relationship with a particular feudal lord, and there was little scope for them to change their position but, in the modern democratic system, clients can switch to a different patron depending on the favour or scarce resource they get from the patron. As Hopkin argues, ‘(O)f course, the distribution of such benefits does not require strong clientelistic ties. The typology distinguishes between cases where club goods are made available to a group with a durable and close relationship with the patron and cases where benefits are acquired on an ad hoc basis in return for short-term political support, or often money campaign contribution, etc.’ (Hopkins, 2006, 11). It is not always easy to define what political clientelism is, as no precise definition exists in the literature. The NDRI report says it is ‘a more or less stable network of asymmetric dyadic relationships; the exchange of primarily private goods (and occasionally ‘club goods’) in return for political support and/or loyalty; benefits intended to influence political preferences and behaviour that include but are not limited to voting; and/or the assurance that even non excludable public goods reach their beneficiaries in a relatively expeditious manner’ (NDRI, 2010, 2). Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith maintain, ‘in many cases, informal systems of clientelism and patrimonialism are key contributors to stifling popular participation, subverting the rule of law, fostering corruption, distorting the delivery of public services, discouraging investment and undermining economic progress. Because they are deeply entrenched, seldom authorized or openly acknowledged, and take different forms depending on their context, clientelistic networks can be both difficult to detect and to remove’ (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 2002, 1). Similarly, Reddy and Haragopal depict political brokers or pyraveekars as scoundrels who pass incorrect and distorted information for their own gain and urge appropriate measures to eliminate them from the democratic system (Reddy & Haragopal, 1985, 1161). This argument is seen from the perspective of a modern state, where it is assumed that rules and regulations are followed strictly, and poor people receive due benefits. Generally, though, the benefits of schemes, however well intended, do not reach the people—for a variety of reasons—and clientelistic politics is the only source left to the poor people to compete for resources they need to survive. In a brilliant ethnographic work of poor people’s politics and survival strategy in the Latin American context, Auyero (2001) shows how in difficult situations people employ clientelistic politics to access various lifesaving provisions of food, shelters, drugs, etc. It is argued that in the absence of state mechanisms to deliver public service and goods efficiently to the deserving groups, people form various networks, especially patron– client networks, which might provide an important alternative to social safety net. It is often believed that the patron–client relationship is seen more in multi-ethnic societies, where resources are relatively scarce. People have a tendency to form social network based on some common features like language, ethnicity, and religion and kinship.

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3.1.21 Dalals: A Janus-Faced Character Community networks often foster relations of collective ownership of traditions and amity. People tend to form community networks in societies where social and political landscapes are often unstable. The community relationships would enable the villagers to receive support from the person in power at times of their need (Das, 2021d). As Brinkerhoff and Goldsmith write, ‘(U)nder competitive conditions, political bosses need criteria to single out and reward followers and to exclude nonsupporters. Even as such benefits dry up, there is logic to voting for politicians from one’s own tribal or linguistic group, on the grounds that such a politician will tend to defend the interests of the group as a whole’ (Brinkerhoff & Goldsmith, 2002, 20). This can be analysed from the voice of a participant Ruma Devi. As a widow living in Noorbari, she narrated a story filled with tragic moments about the intermediaries of the state. Her opinion resonates to them being greedy, immoral and unreliable. Devi mentioned that since her husband passed away, she is facing enough troubles in making her ends meet. With some information in hand, she paid Rs. 30,000.00 to a dalal to help herself and her son with a job. The dalal asked Devi to vote for his party in return. But, even after she voted as required, her son failed to procure a job, and the dalal never bothered to contact her ever. She is beyond regret for her decision, trust and mistakes. Susita Topno from Harigaon also said that people who take dalals’ help should be condemned, as dalals harm society more because of their encouragement. She thinks that people from powerful and rich backgrounds have connections with dalals. Sanju Kumari, also from Harigaon, agreed with Topno, but Bimala Devi of Amolapam finds dalals helpful, as all they need is votes during elections and money for facilitating government work. Sukumar Pandit from Amolapam also finds dalals as good facilitators. Mohammad Jamaluddin of Amolapam feels that dalals are necessary evil and says a benevolent dalal once helped them get a bed in the hospital and that it would have been very difficult for them to manage that medical incident without his help. To contextualise this kind of process, Das (2011) articulates that citizenship is a claim rather than a status. Applications for availing welfare schemes or getting an official task done often require a payment to be made to the dalals on a fixed rate, which should have been rendered free otherwise. This led to a general air of demand among the villagers to weed out corruption in the Gaon Panchayat. The villagers were informed about several of the discrepancies in the Gram Panchayat, and during the fieldwork conducted for the study, the villagers informed about several loopholes which still exist at the level of the Gaon Panchayat. The levels of corruption endangers the villagers to an extent of fixed price for things such as Rs. 10,000.00 for the IAY; Rs. 1000.00– Rs. 1500.00 for a latrine construction from the WASH scheme; and approximately Rs. 300.00– Rs. 500.00 for a roof made of tin. But, these prices are often subject to change depending upon the proposed loyalty of the political party in power. Moreover, upon interviewing a postman working on a contractual basis, he was of the view that, ‘There are certain rules and regulations for availing something. If you are failing to receive your rightful service from the state, then you write

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an application to the Panchayat office and get it. It is not very complex’. But, the dichotomy of authority realization and resilience to state has been more strongly revealed with the reply of another person, ‘Belege Jodi nilikhi pai, ami kyo likhibo lage’ (if somebody receives something without writing any kind of application, then why should we write?). It is certainly undeniable that the language of governance reaches those who are keen to keep themselves updated politically and are often placed at the topmost level of the social hierarchy. Most of the participants stated that the Congress government has hardly produced development works over the years. The party workers have been largely corrupt and often failed to understand anything except money. One of the biggest entities for hatred consists of the dalals. The question of dalals comes as a factor of abuse as well as a compulsion. The dalals are often not trusted yet they remain to be the only predominant source of connecting people to governance. In the study, the respondents have often used the word mazboori (helplessness) for contacting a dalal. At the hindsight, another respondent angrily commented that poor people are deprived from job cards as it is only for the rich. He challenged the lifestyles of the rich people who ironically curve opportunities of the MGNREGA. He stated, ‘konu din hatarkud eta dharanai, hi pai paisa’ (that rich fellow has never held a shovel or spade but gets money from the MGNREGA scheme). In addition, a man from Napam spoke about the schemes of the government and the governed in the context of the elections. He also directed the attention towards the broker who possesses every knowhow of whom, when and how to contact. Even they negotiate with the voting action of the villagers such as paying the probable voters a sum of Rs. 500.00 or Rs. 1000.00 just before the day of polling. While this tactic might not last in a long run, but it is an easy mechanism to get votes from the poor. One of the respondents stated, ‘We are like khilonas (puppets) who are being played by the leaders of the political party. We have strings attached to us’. While he was narrating this, the shopkeeper from a nearby village, who owns a betel shop, voiced his concerns with the respondent. Together, they emphasized on the deteriorating situation of governance in rural areas. (Das, 2021d). One more interesting point brought in by the respondent, he said that the then Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sharma (now the ruling chief minister of Assam) would not come and check their school. As parents, their duty is to check and put pressure on the teachers and staff to run the school smoothly. Instead of taking interests in school, parents give some money to their kids and send them to school. They are least interested in school’s affairs. That is why, teachers in the school are not at all interested in discharging their responsibility. Even the poorest of them are trying to send their children to private school as the quality of teacher is good in private school. In a generalized assertion, the functioning of the dalals occurs primarily at the grassroots. It has been informed to us that a male primary teacher from the Nepali community of Napam emerged as a probable harbinger for 25 elderly persons when they paid him Rs. 200.00 for getting the old age pension sanctioned from the state government. The teacher had few contacts with the officials at the block office and assured to get it done soon. But, this harbinger had been a suspicious person

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who might have used fraudulent measures to gain money. This directs our attention towards the ironical state of affairs at the village level governance. Similarly, in another instance, thirty persons from the village paid a substantial amount of Rs. 1000.00 each to a woman who works as an Anganwadi worker from Rupkuria village for getting ration cards and old age pensions. She threatened the villagers that their names would not be included in the list of beneficiaries, if they do not pay bribe to the block-level government officials. But, even after waiting for long, only six villagers could secure their pensions. These instances are also made a profession by the kins of the dalals in hope of monetary benefits. They often use the authority status of their dalal relatives or spouses and seek an easy way out through the villagers. In one of the cases, the husband of an Anganwadi worker from Bhaluk jharani village collected around Rs. 5000.00 from few helpless villagers. While he collected money from ten people, only two of them could save their luck for job and others are being made to wait for their turns (Das, 2021d). It is intriguing to note that the concept of intermediaries (dalal) is very prominent in a society like India. Many scholars have also studied this phenomenon in the context of Latin America and Africa. But in the Indian context, it is prevalent in many areas. Dalal is a person whom everyone loves to hate, but at the same time in many contexts, this person becomes inevitable. People need their help to get things done, it is also seen that anyone could become a dalal. It is both time and context specific, it is not about a position; it is about a role. Whoever plays the role of a middleman in any transactions to get things done in the unofficial or informal manner is termed as a dalal. So, it is a role-based concept rather than position based. It keeps changing and not considered as a fixed category. That is why in most of the cases, the concept of dalal is very elusive. But nevertheless, it adds interesting dimensions to the governance studies in a developing country like India.

Chapter 4

Documenting the Body: Entitlements and Paper Citizenship

This chapter argues how the citizenship is acquired through various bureaucratic procedures which require evidences of different documents related to identity and legacy. The importance of documents in establishing one’s citizenship in modern governance has been shown in different academic works (Hull, 2012; Khan, 2008; Raman, 2012). Taking lead from such scholarship, this chapter explores how documents become a double-edged weapon in the governance process. In certain instances, the genuine inhabitants of a nation, who do not have the proof of papers, are barred from citizenship, whereas those who migrate across borders prove their citizenship with the help of documentary evidences. In this context, this chapter demonstrates the transcending importance of documents with the rise of a new form of governance. Additionally, the discussion involves how a biological body turns into a legitimate body with the help of documents, at the same time without the documentary evidence the body is prone to deportation and legal action. This chapter traces the practice of documents in terms of tangibility and discusses the issues of NRC and Aadhaar in the context of Assam. Then, it delves into the process of informal governance and examine social trust in the everyday life of the people. In this context, it explores the role of political brokers and clientelism in local politics. The politics around the issues of ‘D’ (doubtful) voters and citizenship is also discussed. These analyses enable us to compare the perspectives of the beneficiaries of welfare schemes with respect to ethnicity, caste, class, gender, age, education and so on.

4.1 Papers and Bureaucracy Modern governance and bureaucracy have generated interests among the social scientists to analyse their organization, dissemination and social relations while revealing the nature of the state. To understand the impact of the state in the everyday lives of its citizens, various perspectives were developed for an enhanced empirical analysis © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Das, Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5110-7_4

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of the ‘state’ as a layered institution. Therefore, to understand its presence in the lives of its citizens, documentation has been the most formal way of taking account of its people. This form of knowledge and control in the form of documents, plans and reports was analysed by sociologists as objects of enquiry to comprehend its impact on the lives of its citizens (Bernstein & Mertz, 2011; Hoag, 2010). Critical scholarly work contends; mundane paperwork consisting of records, logs and reports makes governance analytically invisible (Brenneis, 2006) which spills into a state of affairs wherein the mediating role of documents seems to cease (Mazarella, 2006). Similarly, governance through documents is also a phenomenon with a tactic of power and authority underwritten that defies transparency (Silverstein & Urban, 1996). In this context, it is pertinent to illuminate the idea of documentation which has to be understood in this chapter. To quote Smith (1996) documents stand ‘about or oriented towards some other entity, structure, or other patch of the world. In other words, how do documents because of their representational character comes to stand for a different decree of control or manipulation?’ Documents do not simply stand to be instruments of accountability of the state but rather transcend to be constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, objects, outcomes and even the organization themselves (Hull, 2012). Thus, documents bring into the forefront the precise nature, ideology and knowledge-making procedures of the state.

4.2 Reified State in Modern Governance The basic understanding of the state as an absolutist entity is on the verge of dismantlement in modern governance. The demands and the goals of the state since the fifteenth to twentieth centuries focused on empire building, global trade, bureaucratic invention, legal codifications that gave the state an absolutist character. What we understand from such conception is that the state was transparent to its citizens in terms of its functionality of establishing itself as an entity dedicated to upholding the welfare of the people. Generalization of such absolutist states in early modern Europe gave a tough base to the idea of the state as a sovereign monarch (Breckenridge, 2014). The states occupied larger than life machinery governing the lives of the people and human dispositions. These early accounts of the state mainly in the works of Hobbes, Machiavelli and Hegel are mindful of the sovereignty of its citizens to the proper allocation of resources, which evades principal questions related to power and authority. Such self-preserving nature of the absolutist state as propounded by Machiavelli (2003) committed to the well-being of its citizens is in stark difference to the kind of sovereignty modern governance entails for the biological well-being of its population (Breckenridge, 2014). For instance, the governmental policies on abortions, maternal mortality, malnutrition and fertility fuel the responsiveness of ‘body-in-making’ at the backdrop of sovereign state formations. But, these relativity and processing of the body as symbols of a ‘healthy’ state are complicated by the ‘countervailing institutions, path dependency, and the interdependency of various actions’ (Shah & Shah,

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2006, 19). However, focusing on the kind of network that emerges in a cumbersome reality of roads, hospitals, telecommunication lines, computers, filling cabinets, etc. requires a coordinating bureaucracy at its heart that can eventually become the object of enquiry. Modern governance is nothing of a sovereign monarch but consisting of the elected legislatures carving out means to make its citizens tangible that would help in record keeping and documentation. We live in a global society witnessing the stripping off the ideological nature of the state but enmeshed with a single power network (Mann, 2012). Such networks demanded a different kind of surveillance system unlike the earlier singular mode of documenting its citizens in the physical sense, i.e. maintaining documents, records and log books. Lyon (1994) makes an important contribution and maintains that the state now has a dual responsibility of integrating its welfare policies and global national security. Such rationalization of the state is intrinsically different from the idea of bureaucracy, as suggested by Weber. In this context, it is imperative for the state to develop new techniques of identification of its citizens that inevitably gives rise to the biometric state. Breckenridge’s (2014) conceptualization of biometric state could be helpful to understand state’s mechanism to count citizens in terms of documents. In simple terms, the biometric state can be referred to as a technique of automated identification that uses features of the body for the identification of individuals. Such techniques of analysis and predictability eventually convert biological individuals or citizens to a legitimate social body that may be accounted for the schematic control by the state. In a similar way, bringing down the entire creditability of a citizen to a single document and the ability to vote can be viewed as arbitrary mathematics—a technocratic measurement that relies on the procurement of a paper record. The chapter tries to deal with the nuances of how the social body and practice of identity as a citizen in the form of documents are an essential practice of the modern state. The practice of maintaining documents is a necessary evil for the state. More importantly, does the process of procuring documents itself turned into a commonplace of exclusion and marginality? Does the legitimate right to documenting entitlements often transform into generational and class characteristics of eliciting constituents ‘out-of-the-ordinary’?

4.3 Documents and Social Body It has been argued that the legibility of citizenship based on paperwork invariably becomes a means of control and manipulation by the state. The biological body residing in a particular geographical territory defined as a nation state, crystallizes into a social body through certain social practices and norms of modern statecraft. Such practices of governance transcribe the body into documents. The goal of the state in establishing legibility seemingly gives prominence to the legal or social body rather than the biological existence of the body. Furthermore, the social body is fragmented into various social forms that give cognizance to ethnicity, caste, class,

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gender, age, education and so on. For people with social and cultural capital do not need any kind of documentary evidence to prove their biological body as a legitimate body. But in the case of those, whose authenticity of citizenship is under question, the necessity of documents becomes more important. It is used to validate and transcend the biological body into a social body. In an interview with Sarala Das, 42 years old female from the tea garden community of Noorbari tea estate, it has been gathered that she was sitting in the premises of the panchayat office, since morning, waiting for a confirmation of her name in the list that has allotted people for Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) rechristened as Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Gramin (PMAY-G). This scheme supported by the central government is a social welfare programme designated to cater to the housing of the rural poor. The names of the applicants and beneficiaries are documented on the walls of the Panchayat office. I asked her the purpose of her visit to which she replied anxiously ‘I have been coming here for so many days but have not been able to figure out whether my name is there in the list of approved beneficiaries who are eligible to get IAY. The assistant who is dealing with the papers is not giving me proper information’. The peon approached her and enquired whether she can read or not? When she said, she cannot read, she was asked to bring somebody who can read the list revealing the names of the beneficiaries for the scheme. After some time, I observed the Panchayat secretary coming out of his office and giving her a grim look. Later, she was able to communicate with the secretary, who told her ‘Naam nuthile kaam no hobo’ (nothing could be done if your name is not there). Such incidents reflect the conflicts between the welfare state and the citizens at the grassroots. The inability of Sarala Das to check her name in the list of beneficiaries and the monotonous tone of the government officials to manage some help by herself to read the enumerated list creates the ‘unequal’ being. Furthermore, she lacked the cultural capital to seek out ways in which she could claim herself as a beneficiary. It is interesting to note how these documents create unequal bodies and an ephemeral self. One form of discrimination and differentiation can start from a person’s physical appearance such as face, body, height, look, dress and language, which is very much evident in everyday social interaction and persuasion. Pulera argues, ‘the observable differences in physical appearance separating the races are the single most important factor shaping intergroup relations, in conjunction with the social, cultural, economic, and political ramifications of this visual divide’ (Pulera, 2003, 9). Here, Pulera intends to suggest that race is one among other markers where an individual’s social location is identified and dealt within the society. This kind of marker is created in the social history or biography of a person. It is all about power and is related to the identity he or she subscribes to. It then creates a hierarchy, though it does not come directly under the state agenda of discrimination. People occupying various bureaucratic positions in the state’s domain have the power to discriminate citizens at the grassroots in a subtle way. Humans get their identity both from biological as well as social presence. The biological body is one which an individual inherits from the birth while it transforms into a social body gradually through socialization. The kind of social identity one

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would get from the body depends on the person’s position in the society. That position might be determined through multiple factors such as sex, gender, class, caste, religion and ethnicity. Of late, looking at the idea of political and social body from the sociological perspective has gained popularity in the discipline under the rubric of the sociology of body. ‘Our very ability to intervene in social life is dependent on the management of our bodies through time and space’ (Shilling, 2008, 7). Turner (1992) articulates that the body has not been an important part of classical sociological traditions. However, it is important that one should seriously deal with the social body from sociological perspectives. Turner formulates the idea of somatic society whereby the body is regulated from a regimental domain. Modern medical knowledge is equipped with the power of classification there by controlling the body in the society. Body can be used in various activities, the most horrific and docile use of body happens through suicide bombing. Other than this, human beings seek alteration through physical exercises, beauty surgery and some other activities. Body is not only a biological entity; as it enters into the social sphere, it captures different meanings. Different body equalizes to different values, the most common and suitable example can be insurance. The more one pays for it, the more insured value one gets for the body. The modernist injunctions in the creation of a self-sufficient yet enigmatic body for legitimate market-citizenship holds its residues through the insurance documents and the varying boxes on the insurance forms. Keane observes, the documentary pieces of the ‘social’ body of citizens are intrinsically related to the ‘medium of representation’ which is not ‘something that stands “between” those things it mediates, it is also a “thing” in its own right’ (Keane, 1997, 8).

4.4 Documents, Paper and Citizenship In the context of paper bearing citizenship, Sadiq (2009) argues that documents are important in qualifying for citizenship. Documents allow people to legally convert themselves into a part of a community. The rule is designed by the state, but at the same time, state does not have total control over the production of documents. Documents in a modern bureaucratic system possess magical powers. Documents are identified with a person, and they create being-ness. However, documents are always a double-edged weapon and come with inherent problems. In this process, a member of a state without having a proper documentation may be branded as an illegal member of the country. Sadiq (2009) demonstrates in his work titled Paper Citizens how non-citizens may challenge the documentary process of the state through their network and produce such documents to establish their citizenship to a state. They put question mark on the mechanism of the state to distinguish citizen from a non-citizen. He further establishes his argument by showing the importance of documents in acquiring citizenship. He argues that it is not only state, but documents can also produce paper citizens. Sadiq explains, ‘the purpose of the citizenship infrastructure is to identify

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and order individual subjects so that they can be ruled by the state’ (Sadiq, 2009, 9). He emphasizes that it is not possible for the state to counter the documentary citizen as state’s existence depends upon the documents itself. Contextualization of this phenomenon can be discussed in relation to Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) to upgrade the citizen register in detecting the ‘illegal immigrants’ from genuine citizens. This artefact dates to the Assam Accord of 1985 that suggested detection of illegal immigrants in the state, strike out their names from electoral rolls and deport them to their respective countries. In modern bureaucratic system, documents play a very important role. Max Weber in his theory on bureaucracy has analysed the importance of documentary practices. In a sovereign country, to prove somebody’s legal status as a citizen, one needs certain official documents. It is interesting to know that few documents transform the biological body to a legitimate body, or the absence of documents can convert the body into illegal body. Weber describes that modern statecraft can use legitimate force to decide what is legal or not and holds the authority to enforce it. The first draft of NRC was published in 2018 that excluded around 4 million of its applicants. Thus, with the publication of a single document, a citizen stands the chance of being stateless instantly. Interestingly, the state machinery boasted of the NRC process bereft of the public disorder or chaos hinting at the consensus of such documentation. However, the NRC process in Assam was not a voluntary process, but a compulsion. Garnering public consensus works as a means to downplay the discriminatory and exclusionary character of documents that has led to numerous suicides, dispossession and anxiety (Gogoi & Bora, 2019). Noorzamal who is around 45 years old, a villager from Amolapam, discusses the ordeal of his name not being included in the NRC list. His family members have been included, but Noorzamal was exceptional in his family. ‘The NRC Sewa Kendra in Amolapam could not give a definitive answer to how long the second list would take to be published. He states that there has been news in my village that people would be deported to detention camps if their names fail to make it to the list. I have been living my entire life in this land and nowhere to go. I have submitted the required documents on time but still do not know the reason of my omission from the list. People from my close circle have already started viewing me as a refugee. Frequent visits to the NRC office for updated information becomes hectic as long queues take up the entire day’. There has been a subtle hint of stigmatization of the people excluded from the list. Henceforth, the excluded citizens by the state machinery qualify as bodies that are more than biological entities. They enter into socially constructed categories as ‘illegal’, ‘miyas’ and ‘gedas’ that allure a sort of suspicion (Gogoi & Bora, 2019). Such deliberation of technicizing paper record individualizes a biological body into a social body taking away his symbolic power as a citizen of the country. Further, the body becomes an outcaste stamped by the state that rationalizes its ability to denounce a body from its sovereign territory. The NRC process thus became a battleground for citizenship which saw precarious form of state supremacy. In discussing the exclusionary politics of NRC, we need to be cautious of the gender politics at play too. Richardson (2000) discusses the void that exists in defining citizenship especially among the vulnerable sections of the society.

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Moromi Khatun, a 35-year-old woman from Panchmile area, is apprehensive about the whole process. She narrates that ‘my name is not listed in NRC. I entered matrimony at a very young age and the tracing of my lineage from my father’s side has been difficult. As my place of residence changes, the enumerator at my paternal village do not ask for married daughters nor do families mention about the daughters those who are married. I am a widow now and there has been utmost difficulty in tracing my husband’s lineage too’. Moromi has felt the brunt of the brute force of documenting the NRC register. No link with family makes it practically difficult for her to get hold of the legacy data. As she puts, ‘the government should have had a criterion for people like us as well. It is not clear how will I be accommodated in the list so that I do not fall into the assumptions of being an ‘illegal’ Bengali Muslim woman. Henceforth, the determination of citizenship based on lineage illuminates the impact from a gender perspective as well. Azad (2018) mentions that the prerequisite of documents like birth or education certificates in order to establish their link to the legacy holder and high incidences of child marriage make establishing such documents difficult. At the same time, these rules become stringent in the case of Muslim women and Bengali Hindu women. Such mechanism serves in the larger interest of the state’s goal too. White (2014) elaborates the process of deportation of illegal migrants which is often a sought-after plan by the state as a solution to illegal migration. According to her, an undocumented migrant becomes vital for the sustenance of global capitalism as it provides a steady supply of exploitable labour and hence provides the background for them to be included in the category of migrant labour. The state’s goal of taking a provocative stand in global capitalist order inevitably makes citizenship an exclusionary exercise.

4.5 Colonial State and Paper Bureaucracy Over centuries, there has been a debate around the architecture of establishing state power through legal document. In the context of India, there has been literature emphasizing in serious contestations, interpretations and various kinds of internalization in making of statehood through the art of writing. In colonial times, the agenda of British India was a gamut of coercion and persuasion in the process of state-making (Raman, 2012). With the sole intention of expanding colonial dominance, order was sought through the structures of paternalism to create a group of employees called ‘un-covenanted’ servants that eventually became the mainstay of Document Raj in colonial India. This can be inferred as a distinct characteristic of the colonial state to have access to the subjects’ bodies in a unique way. Such structures of documentary transactions gave the colonial state the discretion to select their subordinates or members of the bureaucracy. The very inception of the production of documents was an important site for the colonial statecraft to cement its hold on the colonial subjects (Ibid.). To reiterate Raman (2007), the extensive use of documents began to address a social world of different character as it introduced an intersection of material and epistemic practices; the text has its imminent form and authority.

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Further, it created subjectivities of a different order—those who could write (or issue a document) and those who depended on or applied for those texts. Such transformation in the ideology of governing the people impacted their daily lives to a great extent. In this context, it is pertinent to discuss the transformations in land relations in the context of the colonial Northeast India. Given the unmapped, rugged and the least administered region, its inhabitants were tribes that essentially did not have the character of settling down to a specific place. This was something beyond the imagination of the colonizers whose motive was to establish social order. This was the place for contestation as the tribes were accustomed to enjoying customary rights to lands. The idea of tribalism from a colonial perspective resided in creating categories likes that of the ‘primitive’, ‘backward’ which still is a misery in understanding their legible past. The autonomous identity of the tribes and their shifting territorial limits was a challenge to the colonizers interest in collecting excess (Kar, 2016). Bodhisattva Kar lucidly explains how contracts in its own legality were being accommodated and deployed in the British Northeast India. This was attained by unsettling the categorical definitions of general and primitive economy by allowing a concession to its primitiveness. Kar associates Posa (an annual practice of payment by the British government to its Hill Tribes) closely with the histories of contracts in this region which has its own complex dynamics. In simple words, payment of Posa helped the Britishers to advance their interests of demarcating a juridical limit between the plains and the hills. While in the plains ruled by the Ahoms in the nineteenth century, it was reeling under weak monarchy and eventually the Britishers took the centre stage as the rightful inheritor of the Ahom State. This was significant and symbolic for the Britishers as it came to be seen as their territorial claim over the northeastern frontier (Kar, 2016). This led to the legitimacy of paper bureaucracy through objectification of Posa as a contract in colonial India. The backdrop of such history informs how the transformation of territorial claims altered the social fabric, autonomous identity and the right to self-determination of communities in colonial India. In contemporary times, Assam is also struggling with the epistemic orientation of the state with regard to citizenship. An update in NRC to identify illegal immigrants from the neighbouring countries led to a legitimate introduction of palimpsest of documents to establish evidentiary proof of residence through tracing the legacy of an individual. There have been debates about the authenticity and the quality of the update in the registers of citizenship. In tracing one’s legacy, one’s family tree gets objectified and such protocols of proof are hard to establish because earlier people were never concerned about their legacy or familial roots to establish their identity or citizenship per se. This change in the culture of establishing citizenship has its own complex dynamics. The inhabitants of this region never had to resort to documents to establish its territorial right to live in this land. Appadurai (2019) explains the epistemic change in viewing citizenship. The evolution of the state in terms of paper bureaucracy has changed from administration and control to statizenship. According to Appadurai, a nation state in its political form stood for as a guarantor of resources, social benefits, protection and freedom to its national citizens. Here, nationality was the source

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of state power. On the contrary, the birth of the state across the past century and a half and the powers of the state have come to have value, normativity and legitimacy shielding the character of nation as a secondary attribute of citizens. The shift Appadurai contends is the rise in statism and the end in citizenship. By statism, he means the processes of making the state sacred running parallel with making authoritarian populism and a compliant set of citizens who come to be defined as statizen. They would be the democratic army for this new political form of the state. Extreme statism is reflected when an individual’s right to liberty, equality and fraternity depend on their documented status as a statizen. States will now define who will belong to them, will war among each other for global resources, manipulate global capitalist order, for markets and profits, all in line to advance themselves, and at the same time, they comply with people that are documented, counted and certified by the state (Appadurai, 2019). Here, it is imperative to reflect on the empirical nuances that emerge at the grassroots levels within the contextual shift of the nation state to a new form of supreme authority of state-certified document. The acceptance of document citizenship comes to be appealing to a certain section of people, while it may deny and exclude a legitimate citizen. This is discussed in the context of the NRC processes in Assam which may be viewed as a fertile ground to see intricacies wherein the legitimate citizens run high chances of being excluded and expelled. The condensation of one’s legal existence as a citizen to a legal document undoubtedly creates apprehensions, stigmas and exclusions. The NRC process is seen dubious in the creation of an aura of consensus invoked by the majoritarian public intellectuals in Assam. It outrightly downplays the different legal provisions for different categories of bodies. It catalyses creating the ‘other’ that subjects to different forms of abuse (Gogoi, 2019). What we categorically need to understand is the rise of the surveillance state both in terms of biometric identification and paper bureaucracy as structures of administration. Biometric identification assigns numerical characters to different parts of the body as for instance fingerprints and face, and transforming them to unique patterns through which they come to be counted across millions of populations. The biological body comes to have its significance in the statistics of the computer tucked away intangibly in a database or in the memory of an integrated circuit of a smart card (Breckenridge, 2014). This way, citizens come to be counted, information extracted and kept beyond the access of the citizens itself. Thinking critically of biometric identification, Appadurai (2019) discusses the context of Aadhaar in India. The real idea of this biometric document was to make state-issued document the basis of everyday life of the people, be it in procuring rations, loans, taxation, voting, etc. There were apprehensions of its usage as a weapon for controlling dissent and identification of political enemies instead of being a document that would make its people accrue to social benefits. The state-certified document comes to have a supreme authority in the legal existence of a biological body. The proof of documents to assert their citizenship works as a double-edged sword. This inevitably points to the breeding of exploitation and clientelism at local circumstances. The procurement of a document in an office of

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government representative emerges as a middleman in this very critical state–community transaction. Its indispensability, now in the lives of every person, gives them the authority of a different genre. The granting of documents, scrutiny of the documents, concessions to individuals and under what circumstances often arouses questions that are visible and is under an eerie silence on behalf of the state’s representative offices. A document that is inevitable for the sustenance of an individual in terms of its economic and social entitlements and translation of the idea of citizenship to a paper creates havoc for people in establishing evidentiary proof. One of the serious problems while applying for Aadhaar is the requirement of a voter identity card. In simple words, the necessity of a document to procure another document creates a cyclical process of authority dissemination, consumption and reproduction. Radhika Mandal has applied for voter ID card twice, but till now she could not avail the document. Repeated visits to the kiosk shows her application is not recorded. Puzzled and frustrated, she laments ‘some of the government officials listen and help those who offer bribe to get their work done, but do not give vital information to those who do not offer bribe. I do not know any government official personally to explain my current situation. Additionally, the persistence on having an Aadhaar card to procure ration have also added to my woes. I do not know where to go’. In this context, the agents or broker plays a crucial role. The springing up of informal agents at the cost of the surveillance state is crucial for grassroots governance. Pranab Boro (56) of Amolapam had a serious grievance against the local authorities. I met him at the circle office as he was waiting for the circle officer with a complaint serious against the illegal settlement of some families in Amolapam. He narrated ‘what is astounding is their access to the ration shops while we keep on struggling to get a ration card. But what was more serious is their casting of vote in 2016 assembly elections. My friends saw them waiting in line for their turn to cast their vote; whereas I am still applying for my sister’s voter identity card’. When citizen suffers with the bureaucratic process in their own country, they tend to visualize, construct and imagine the others’ entry into the state or country as illegal. There may be cases of irregularities in terms of granting citizenship, but the feeling of belongingness and deprivation creates a condition to construct the other as illegal or encroachers who take away their share of entitlement. This is also one of the main reasons for various kinds of conflicts that happen in a multi-ethnic state like Assam. The kind of inference we may draw from such experience hints at a subtle political patronage from political parties as vote bank politics to win elections and form a government. Such people qualify to be a continuous source of loyal supporters affiliated to a particular political party. For the people whose nationality is doubted and are not accepted socially, transforms to a legitimate social body with a voter ID card and the activity of casting vote are symbolic of their acceptance by the state. Thus, document overrides identity, and a state-certified documents mean all the rights and privileges of being a citizen of India flow from this fact alone (Appadurai, 2019).

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4.6 Documents and Citizenship in Assam The juridical limit of British India in the northeastern frontier was not solely based on the basis of expansion, the administrative challenge was to contain the ambiguous, shifting and unmapped character of the communities and geography. The tribes of this region had an antithetical relationship with the marvels of the capital and thus were outside the logic of the British East India Company (Kar, 2016). At this juncture, the negotiation between the ‘company’ and the ‘tribes’ needs a focus. As for instance in 1865, Commissioner Henry Hopkinson lamented the dearth of records to prove the legality of their land. Such ideas were instilled into the minds of the Nagas to advance the economic interests of the company rather than the former. Suspicion was paramount regarding the speculator’s interest in aiding the community’s legal claim of their land. A contract or a form was deemed necessary to articulate the proprietary rights of the tribes so as they can enter the market economy for the benefits of the company. This way, the incorporation of paper into the lives of the tribes in Northeast India occurred in the colonial era. Increasingly, after the ‘Singhpho rebellion’ in 1843, the local communities began to understand the disproportionate importance of paper, the new regime is attached to (Kar, 2016). In both colonial and post-colonial India, migration to Assam from different parts of the country and outside the country has been going on in various phases. The state has to bear the brunt of a new form of paper bureaucracy in 2018. As for instance, the Bengali-speaking Namashudras (SC) community largely the residents of the districts such as Nagaon, Bongaigaon, Kamrup metro were originally the inhabitants of East Bengal. They migrated to Assam during the colonial period to clear and cultivate the dense forest lands. The main influx of people began during the partition and before the Bangladesh war in 1971 to escape persecution. Till date, these people are worst affected by the NRC process (Malik, 2018). The legal structures of NRC make us question, does every individual irrespective of their migratory history may have the access to the process? Casting a sense of doubt to an entire community on the basis of language (in this case Bengali), religion (Muslims) and caste in relationship to the aforementioned community eventually violates the archetype of being a citizen in a secular and democratic country. However, it is the issue of in-migration especially from the neighbouring country of Bangladesh which is still considered by the politicians, bureaucrats and the civil society as a big challenge to the state of Assam. It is popularly believed that the problem of immigration creates problem for the standardized resources of the state in terms of livelihood, access to land, social welfare provisions. Such planning of state machinery gave a complementary growth to communal politics to appease the interests of the Hindu upper caste family system (Sharma, 2019). This way, the state and the society come in single idiom that accommodates the beliefs, ideologies of the dominant discourse by transforming a biological body residing in a defined territory to a social body defined by migration, caste and class. The state apparatus giving precedence to a particular ideology can be deemed in the words of Appadurai (2019) ‘the sacrality of the nation is to be democratically eclipsed by the sacrality of the state’.

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4.7 ‘D’ Voter and the Issue of Citizenship The necessity of bureaucratic documentation has it’s own dimension. In the electoral roll of Assam, there exists another category of citizens who are on the verge of being a citizen or a stateless person. The concept of ‘D’ voter is one of a kind to Assam as no other state in India has this category of voters. In common parlance, ‘D’ voter refers to a ‘doubtful or a dubious voter’. This category of voters is not entitled for the suffrage due to the lack of evidence to prove their Indian citizenship. While some ‘D’ voters do not know the how to address the issue, some voters enlisted in this category do not seem to care much about it. They express the view that they have been here for generations. Their parents’ names are enlisted in the voter list, so naturally their name should have been there. Even if due to some technical problems, their names do not appear, it is not their fault. Instead, the government should take care of this important issue which affects their rights and identity as an Indian citizen. Human rights activists along with civil society bodies of religious and linguistic minority groups are fighting and alleging the government of favouritism and parochialism in dealing with the issue. If we look at the news reported in various newspapers, then the issue will be much clear. Vernacular news reports and field data hint at two sides of the popular discourse. First, argument is that most of the ‘D’ voters are Bengali Muslims from Bangladesh, and hence, they should not get the status of citizenship. Second, Bengali-speaking Hindus should be granted citizenship, and they should be elevated from the status of a refugee to that of an Indian citizen. Muslim student’s bodies including other minority activists group allege the government of parochialism by maintaining that generally poor Bengali Muslims are harassed by the police and administrative authority. At this point, a minute detail that majorly gets unnoticed in this rhetorical challenge is the role-play of cultural capital that eventually makes a difference. It is reported that while the earlier chief minister of the state sought the intervention of the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to resolve the contentious D-voter issue, he also urged the PM to consider the case of Hindus who came to Assam after the partition of Indian on humanitarian grounds (Jaiswal, 2012). The state government now wants the union government to consider the case of Bengali Hindus who suffered during partition of India and the then creation of Bangladesh. The community has been demanding citizenship instead of a refugee status. The then Assam’s Health and Education Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma mentioned in a rally that the state government will try its best to ensure that the police did not harass Bengali Hindus in the name of being ‘D’ voters (Ibid.). Another serious grievance from the ‘D’ voters is that when people are not available at home during the time of the household survey, the enumerators sometime mark them as ‘D’ voter. Thus, the insistence of a comprehensive list often overlooks the materiality of documents in everyday lives of the people. The dire need to be present at home to be enumerated makes our bodies objective and interjects our daily lives. After receiving complaints from various civil and social forums about the presence of a huge number of foreigners in the electoral rolls, the Election Commission of

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India on the 17th of July 1997 issued a circular to the state of Assam to mark ‘D’ against the names of the voters who were found missing or absent. The ‘D’ category voters should be put on trial before the Foreigners’ Tribunals as suggested by the Election Commission (Chowdhury, 2012). Public intellectuals allege that political parties—Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Asom Gana Parishad (AGP)—have political interests and hence are trying to include the status of Bengali Hindus as Indian citizens at the expense of other non-Hindus who are being harassed as ‘D’ voters. The Muslim students’ bodies have been vehemently opposing these political parties to stop addressing the issue with hidden motives and calls for a quick resolution to the problem. It strongly criticized AASU and other political organizations for targeting poor innocent Muslim villagers as Bangladeshis (TOI, 2012). Baharul Islam raises few interesting questions regarding the issue of ‘D’ voters. He asserts that thousands of Adivasis, Bengali Hindus and other communities were driven out of their homes in 1993–94. Were they also ‘illegal migrants’? It is easy to term Muslims as ‘illegal migrants’, and hence, this initiated a ‘struggle between the Indians and the migrants’. He argues that in Assam, if you are Bengali-speaking Muslim, you are ‘infiltrator’, but if you are Bengali Hindu, then you are ‘refugee’— this dichotomy of the right-wing sections has now invented a new discourse of ‘struggle between Indian origin people and the Illegal migrants from Bangladesh’. Islam argues that ‘D’ voter Muslims are very few than the Hindus in Assam. Right-wing forces bring in communal argument against Muslims (Zafar, 2012). So, sympathetic processing of authority, control and surveillance by the state generates dichotomous formulations of ethereal and representative selves of the citizens. Therefore, in the above context, one of the major areas affected by the paper bureaucracy of the state is 600 inhabitants based in Khumri, near the Bangladesh border in west of Goalpara (140 km west of Guwahati), who are being identified as ‘D’ voters. Legal experts say that the concept of ‘D’ voter is controversial. HRA Choudhury, a politician and an advocate opines, ‘there are no clear criteria for ‘D’voter as per law, and tagging them invariably depends on the subjective judgment of the electoral registration officer of each assembly segment’ (Karmakar, 2011). People ridicule the state at various levels as someone opines ‘government is losing our precious votes by putting our names in the list of ‘D’-voters. We are losing nothing’ (Begum, 2011). According to an official source, Election Commission records have about 151,374 lakh ‘D’ voters. The maximum number (26,484) of ‘D’ voters is in Sonitpur district followed by 24,247 in Barpeta. On the issue of ‘D’ voter, it was reported that Arjun Namasudra, age 32, a resident of Haritikar (Subodh Nagar colony) under Katigorah circle in Cachar district near the India-Bangladesh border, allegedly committed suicide on the 8th of June 2012 after he was declared a ‘D’ voter. He was not given the form to apply for voter photograph identity card. Citizens’ Rights Preservation Committee (CRPC) functionaries claimed Arjun was an Indian but was tagged as a ‘D’ voter. His father, late Ananta Namasudra, came to India in 1950 and had a refugee card, but Arjun was born in India. After the incident, CRPC also approached National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). They emphasized that there has been harassment of a large

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section of citizens of Assam in the name of ‘D’ voter which needs to be stopped immediately (TOI, 2012). Human rights activists argued that Namasudra was a poor daily wage labourer and could not fund the legal proceedings after a case was filed against him at the Foreigners’ Tribunal alleging he was a doubtful citizen. Though he had received notice twice from the Tribunal but could not appear in court because of his helplessness (Ibid). Such chaos is a resultant of the state’s incapacity to document its citizen at the micro-level. Abass Halim, a middle-aged man from Bengali Muslim community, states that his family have been staying in this Napam village since many generations. ‘I do not even remember since when. Everybody in my family is having name in the voter list. But my name is marked against ‘D’ category, I do not know the reasons. The only thing I get is humiliation during the time of election as since last four elections, I have not been able to cast my precious vote’. When he was asked what situation, he faces when election is not around, he said that he lives a normal life as everybody including the Panchayat members also know about him. But during the elections, he feels like a non-citizen. In this area, people consider any kind of election as a carnival. They come out in large numbers to vote. Contextualizing the bigotry, hatred and suspicion centred on the community of a particular faith and language, Appadurai (2019) discusses the cultural change and progression of the nation state. According to him, with the rise of extreme nationalism in the country, in the current regime of governance, ascribing to national citizenship is no longer feasible. Rather, it has to ascribe to a political community. Nirmala Devi, a Nepali woman of about 60 years of age, connoted a contested voice on her own ‘alienation’. She was one of the respondents during the study and shared her experience of being misinterpreted. The lady was visibly upset and was complaining on the day of polling in 2011 Assembly elections about the discrepancy that government has created. Her husband and her family have their names on the voter’s list except her. Instead, her name appears in the category of ‘D’ voters. On further probing, she informed that when the enumerator was entrusted with the duty of preparing the voter’s list visited her house, she was out of the house for some work. Her husband gave the necessary information on her behalf, and she was asked about her husband’s name, she replied that his name is Narayan Kumar. But, the final voter list documents the name wrongly as Nayan Kumar. After that, her name was listed in the category of ‘D’ voter. She says sarkar does not give her the basic necessities, but one thing it can do is to remove her citizenship status as an Indian. With minor glitch in collecting the data by the representative of the government, a social body is immediately transformed into an illegal citizen. Asma Begum is a young Muslim woman who has her name enumerated in the voter list but in her native village. When she came to her in-law’s house in Amolapam, her name surfaced under the ‘D’ voter category. She narrates that it is unfortunate and awful to become a ‘D’ voter from the regular voter. She asked, ‘what wrong did I do to Assam or to the Indian nation that they have given me this punishment?’ Being in a ‘D’ voter category invites social stigma and humiliation. There are numerous similar narratives where people narrate and express their anger and anguish against the government officials who have committed this mistake. They convey that due

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to some government officials’ negligence ‘we lose the status of citizenship of this country. Government must take serious action against such officials’. It is in this context of such an unreliable and susceptible processes of paper bureaucracy that gives the perception of deception, forgery and translation gives rise to an inclination to develop the technologies of biometric identification technologies (Breckenridge, 2014). The governance and micro-disciplining of people in the case of the NRC process in Assam undeniably has been a cultural product of the state and its effects. It also reflects that the state does not always function to be an absolutist entity but is an amalgamation of the language and practices of both the governed and the governing (Ibid.). It is evident from the expression of people how the tag of ‘D’ voter is a stigma to them. Casting vote is an important activity for many villagers in the Napam area. During the time of poll, everybody including the old and the sick want to cast their votes. This exercise legitimizes them as the citizen of the country, and at the same time, they are saved from the threat of being disfranchised as Indian citizens. There has been a propaganda in this area that if one does not cast the vote, then that person will lose her/his citizenship status. For this reason, many of them come forward in large number to cast their votes. Thus, these regions invariably experience high turnouts of voters during the polling. But at the ground level, there are instances that put the bureaucracy against itself. There have been experiences and cases where non-citizens establish their citizenship with the help of documents. The critical point to be focused here is that even then the proof of their citizenship is based on forged documents, which convinces the Indian state that they are real citizens. Inevitably, this hints at clientism that exists within the practices of bureaucracy. Hence, the local people, who are part of the same society have apprehensions to socially accept the paper citizens. Further begins the process of ‘othering’ of these people on the basis of their dress, language and culture. This whole idea of citizen and non-citizen comes to play its role during the time of elections. This is similar to what is known as the ‘graphic ideologies’ of ‘othering’ as conceptualized by Matthew Hull. He articulates, ‘graphic ideologies’ are ‘sets of conceptions about graphic artifacts held by their users, including about what qualities of an artifact are to count as signs, what sorts of agents are (or should be) involved in them, and what the roles of human intention and material causation are’ (Hull, 2013, 14). To explore the evolution of state bureaucracy, it is important look at the semiotic coordination and control of its citizens by the state which involves extensive dependence on paper documents. The objectification of the biological body in a particular sovereign territory creates new subjectivities. The state, as a part of the global capitalist order, creates a new set of loyal citizens by expanding its borders beyond its physical territory by making its national boundary porous with the help of paper citizenship as well as gaining support and loyalty to comply with the larger interests of the political party. The self-preserving nature of the state catering to the biological needs of its populations is transformed to statism that justifies state power (Appadurai, 2019). The politics around the issues of ‘D’ voters and citizenship questions in Assam creates apprehensions, trauma and anxiety. The discourse resolves around documents when legality of right to live intertwines with nationalism

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and political structures along with the rise of statism. These analyses enable us to compare the perspectives of the beneficiaries of the welfare schemes with respect to ethnicity, caste, class, gender, age, education and so on. It also provokes us to critically engage with the nature and character of citizenship, where people become subservient subjects catering to the whims of the state and at times becomes powerful citizens who bargain with the state.

Chapter 5

Rituals of the State: Enchanting Elections and Enacting Citizenships

5.1 Social Aspects of Elections A nation state is considered healthier if it holds regular free and fair elections with inclusive participation so that it could gain legitimacy from its people. Participation in Indian elections by diverse communities representing a multiplicity of religions, languages, and ethnicities has fascinated many observers. Traditionally electoral politics has been a domain of political science, which is now being studied by sociologists and social anthropologists too through the method of in-depth fieldwork. The sociological or the social anthropological language of fieldwork can be employed as a methodological argument to explore governance and its diverse relational spaces in Assam, as Shah (2011, 2) emphasized the importance of indepth fieldwork based on data collected from different parts of India by his team of researchers. Shah argued that their study was grounded in the study of small communities through intensive fieldwork. Thus, this was not like a hit-and-run kind of macro-study, which depended on data collected at the district or sub-divisional headquarters in a very short span of time. One cannot rely on the results or conclusions drawn by such studies (Shah, 2011, 2). Shah articulates that in spite of democratic principle and electoral laws that guarantee exercise of individual’s free will in voting, their study suggests that the decision to vote for a particular candidate depends upon the pressures and obligations—coercive or subtle—depending on one’s membership into various social groups, classes and categories like religion, region, caste, tribe, class, faction, neighbourhood, trade union, family or gender (Shah, 2011, 8). Various groups and individuals might even use such an election as a weapon to settle local scores. For example, in the location of the present study, people talk about elections in terms of game. They use the phrase—playing in the game of election instead of the usual phrase which is used—contesting an election. Like one respondent said ‘jiye jiye eibar election kheli ase, teu lokar majot ejono bhal manuh nai’ (there is not a single person who is good among the constestants who are playing in the elections). People in Rampura village where Panini conducted his studies also talked in the similar language by describing the elections as games (Ibid.). So, the motives of © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Das, Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5110-7_5

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electoral processes and wining might be a calculative reasoning of acquiring power than the ‘secular’ functioning of a healthy democracy. Assam is the second largest in size, most populous and considerably multi-ethnic state in Northeast India. Political situation in Assam is complex due to the presence of multiple communities. It becomes a challenge to seek votes from across the diverse communities other than their own community. ‘In ethnically divided societies, small groups of voters can have great strategic importance, so interethnic group votepooling and the development of positive-sum electoral strategies to garner second choice votes makes political and electoral sense’ (Taylor, 2005, 438). Theoretically, people should vote their own candidate or party formed by the members of their own community, but sometimes it does not happen. The party workers, middlemen and their patrons may influence the voters. ‘Some indigenous people have voted for the main parties for clientelist reasons or because these parties represent their views on other policy issues, but many indigenous voters have opted for other parties that have made greater efforts to cater to the needs of indigenous communities’ (Madrid, 2005, 692). However, ‘electoral politics in Assam shows a new trend. The one-party dominant system is giving way to a multiparty system in which political parties of various ethnic groups or smaller cultural communities play significant roles. A number of smaller parties articulating the interests of smaller ethnic communities and religious and linguistic minorities have also been making their presence felt’ (Baruah & Goswami, 1999). There is always a danger that a member of a particular community may hold on to the power most of the time because of community’s numerical strength, to the detriment of a multi-ethnic democratic society. Taylor holds, ‘the consociational model holds that in ethnically divided societies, majoritarian electoral systems are dangerous because they encourage permanent conflict between ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups. Consociationalism seeks power-sharing and an important factor encouraging powersharing is proportional representation’ (Taylor, 2005, 438). Madrid, in the context of Latin America, writes that ‘the failure of the main political parties to adequately represent the indigenous has weakened the support for these parties among the indigenous, which has contributed to party system fragmentation in indigenous areas’ (Madrid, 2005, 692). Conventional thinking and democratic theory view voter’s ignorance as being generally bad for democracy. The rational ignorance theory does not support this idea. It argues that voters always try to find out information through short cuts, and they rely on the political elite or media to obtain knowledge before voting (Arnold, 2012). In a place like Sonitpur where this study has been conducted, politically less informed voters gain political awareness from their kinsfolk and family members. In a large family, the head of the household collects information from the political party workers or the intermediaries who help them in most of the government-related work. This can be reiterated as a distinctive formula of practising governance and electoral decisions across the domains of social institutions and practices. In India, often kinship relations formalize, legitimize and synchronize the intricacies of political recognitions. Ensuring absolute support to political parties often runs through systems of familial practices and ideologies.

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Political knowledge differs from people to people; it is found that even in advanced countries like the USA, people have little political knowledge. The political knowledge also depends on the affinity towards political parties and groups (Andersen et al., 2002). Toka (2008) argues that a better-informed electorate helps produce greater collective welfare. However, the effect only materializes over multiple elections and may not extend to all aspects of good governance. In a way, the political institution imposes modes of socialization and resocialization upon people. Relative to the propositions of governance and political behaviour, this study suggests that the sociology of governance should focus on election studies with greater methodological rigour to obtain meaningful insights from the grassroots electoral processes. It should try to understand why and how people vote. Sociological analysis of elections should focus on individual’s location in a social context and in the dynamics of the campaigns (Knight & Marsh, 2002, 173). By understanding the nature of the society, it needs to explore the nature of social cleavages and partisan dynamics. One has to be objective in terms of observation while describing the individual’s location in the social structure, social class, reference group and party identification. Knight and Marsh suggest that one has to understand ‘membership of and position in, the main social cleavages of a country, with class, religion, race or ethnic identity as primary elements to discuss more meaningful voting process’ (Knight & Marsh, 2002, 181).

5.2 Electioneering in Assam This chapter is the outcome of ethnographic study of three different types of elections in Sonitpur District, i.e. Parliamentary elections of 2009 and 2014, State Legislative Assembly Elections of 2011and 2016 and local Panchayati Raj elections in 2013 and 2018. In Assam, electioneering is crucial in the backdrop of much controversial and contested ‘illegal immigrants’ for whom the electoral participation is a form of ratification of citizenship. This chapter further analyses the entire process of elections as performance, festivals and rituals. It tries to explore the visibility of the marginalized and poor invisible citizens. This is the time when these people try to come out of from behind the curtain and participate in the election process, which makes them both socially and politically visible. The politics of Assam is somewhat unique compared to other parts of India. Several demographic transitions due to the uninterrupted in-migration of people from different parts of India and allegedly from countries like Bangladesh and Nepal transitions its status from a state bearing its own culture to a state of diverse assimilation. Under such circumstances, the political activities of the voters and the political parties assume specific significance, given the prevailing complex multi-ethnic nature of politics in Assam. The question of the identity of different ethnic communities is linked with the fear of submergence within the dominant society, leading to demands on local autonomy, self-governance, regionalization and development. As immigration, encroachment and displacement remain the vibrant issues in Assam,

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the agendas of the political parties and behaviour of the voters reflect their attitudes towards such problems. Hence, a close examination of the electoral processes helps examine the diverse political orientations of the different communities. Primarily, the Tezpur Parliamentary Constituency was opted in for the study. Tezpur is the head quarter of Sonitpur District in Assam. It has one Lok Sabha (Parliamentary) constituency and nine Assembly constituencies. The boundaries of Tezpur Parliamentary Constituency (TPC) and the Sonitpur District are coterminous. TPC consisted of nine Assembly constituencies. They are 1. Dhekiajuli 2. Barchalla 3. Tezpur 4. Rangapara 5. Sootea 6. Biswanath 7. Behali 8. Gohpur 9. Bihpuria. In 2015, Biswanath was constituted as a separate district with Sootea, Biswanath, Behali and Gohpur. People belonging to several communities live side by side in this big constituency. Some of the major communities inhabiting the area are Assamese, Nepalis, Bengali Muslims and Bengali Hindus, tea garden community (Adivasis), Bodos and others. Interethnic rivalry and ethnonationalist emotions shapes the mood of the electorates of Assam. What is seen is that migrant communities have become dominant factors in the elections in the last three decades. Rise of religious temper and caste-based politics are part of the charged scenario.

5.3 Ethnographic Observation of Election Campaigns 5.3.1 The Parliamentary Elections Right after the declaration of the election date of the Parliamentary election, the village, Block and mandal-level meetings of party workers were held with the sitting MLAs to mobilize people. Till the last date of the nominations, fifteen persons filed their nominations as candidates for the ensuing election. The candidate from All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) was the centre of attraction. The party fielded Lakshmi Orang, a victim of the Beltola incident.1 It was a sentimental issue for the tea garden community members. However, her nomination paper for the Lok Sabha election was cancelled due to the controversy about her age. The AIUDF leaders later fielded her father, Deba Orang as their candidate. It is widely perceived that the AIUDF has been formed to protect the interests of the Bengali Muslims. As the constituency is dominated by the tea garden community, the AIUDF deployed Deba Orang from the same community. The party thought that with the votes of Muslims and the tea garden community, they would be able to win the seat. 1

On 24 November 2007, at Beltola area in the city of Guwahati, tea garden community led by the All Adivasi Students Association of Assam (AASAA) gathered for a mass rally in support of the demand for the Scheduled Tribe status to the tea garden community. There was a clash between the protesters and some local residents. In the violence that followed, Lakshmi Orang was stripped off her clothes. This incident was widely condemned and Lakshmi was shot into prominence locally and nationally.

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Similarly, the secrecy and malleability of such tendencies was also visible in case of the AGP. Traditionally, Congress has been winning TPC seat for a maximum number of times, due to its support base among the minorities, the tea garden community. The sitting MP of the constituency also belonged to the Congress. The rest of the candidates were not even known to the voters. The campaigning presents the most fascinating electoral scenario. Since last one decade, there have been many new restrictions on the modalities of campaigning. Murals and wall paintings used to be the main element of any election campaigning in India. But, it got reduced drastically after the Election Commission purported restrictions towards it. Various promotional materials like stickers, posters, key rings, umbrella and caps were generally distributed carrying the party symbols and candidate’s names. In Assam, street plays and folk performances like Bhaona and Baul are performed before the day of polling to attract voters. Vehicles are decorated with life size cut-outs of party leaders and contestants. Popular political songs are composed especially for elections. AIUDF had maximum number of prerecorded songs accusing Congress and BJP of misruling while Congress had songs on how it has addressed poor people’s problems nationally and locally. Due to the mass use of mobile phones, political parties have found another innovative way to convince their voters. They send bulk text messages to appeal voters to support them. However party members maintain that the best way of campaigning is individual one to one contact with voters, which has a positive impact. These are the few ways on how different political parties campaign for their respective candidates. The campaigning gets initiated by meetings, gatherings and rallies organized by various political parties and candidates in different corners of the constituency. But the most important thing to note here is that people’s participation in the election process was low as compared to earlier elections. On inquiring the low level of polling participation, it elicited different answers, such as after being elected, the candidate did not work for the development of the people, and the festive season of Bihu coinciding with the election and the greatest beneficiary was the middleman (Dalal) but not the common people. All the candidates and the leaders of the respective parties tried their level best to organize meetings at Panchayat and village levels but they miserably failed to attract general voters. In a Panchayat-level meeting organized by the MP of the constituency at Batiamari, it was observed that people in the MP’s convoy outnumbered the audience present in the meeting. Other political parties faced similar problem in Behali constituency. The total number of participants in the village or Panchayat level meetings was not more than 100–120 which proved clearly that enthusiasm among the general voters for the election was almost invisible. At the same time, the Election Commission had imposed restrictions on the use of wall painting, poster pasting and banners as a part of the election campaign. Painters were dissatisfied as they were deprived of their work. People felt that the prevailing environment does not indicate that elections are approaching. In earlier elections, promotional materials like party flag, umbrellas were distributed while this time such things were almost absent.

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Another reason behind the lower level of participation of people in the election process in this area could be the fact that the incumbent MLA of the Behali Legislative Constituency is from the BJP, but the BJP candidate was not contesting from this seat. So, workers of the BJP and their supporters showed negligible interest in these elections. Since last one decade, people are not impressed with AGP which has partnered with BJP in Assam. People in this locality thought that the AGP could not do much work as it is not a national party and people seem to prefer national parties to regional parties. They thought that the national parties could get support from the centre and bring the welfare schemes to the region. The AGP and BJP alliance organized one big joint public meeting in Ketla, located under the Behali Legislative Constituency. In this meeting, some senior leaders of both the parties, namely Rajnath Singh, Bijoya Chakrabarty and Chandra Mohan Patowary, addressed a huge gathering. The then president of the BJP, Rajnath Singh, pledged to supply rice at two rupees per kilogram to people belonging to the BPL category. He said that due to bhrastachar (corruption) by the Congress government, prices of all essential commodities had increased while the value of the ‘common people’ had declined. In this meeting, about 4000–5000 people assembled not only from Behali but also from nearby places like Sootea, Gohpur, Balipara and Jamuguri. The proportion of male and female attending the meeting was almost equal. Even children below 18 years of age joined the gathering to eat and make merry with the elders. A large number of people from some interior villages rushed only to see the helicopters used by the leaders. People who gathered to see the copter comprise of all ages. As the party had provided vehicles, a section of people came there without having much interest in the meeting. Another section joined the meeting as the leaders of their locality forced them to join and pledged to provide drinking water facility, old age pension, transport facility, etc., in return. On the other hand, some people came there to watch the ‘real’ scene of the meeting, that is, how the senior leaders of the party appealed to the gathering, whether they attacked the ruling government, and so on. However, rather than listening to the speeches of the high-profile leaders, people kept themselves busy in discussing their own problems, family matters and were waiting eagerly for the closing ceremony of the meeting. It is very interesting to mention here that a large group of young boys collected money by performing husari2 in their villages and used that for hiring a bus to join the meeting. Their purpose behind attending the meeting was that some leaders of the area had spread the news that Hema Malini, the famous Bollywood actress, will address the meeting. Such rumours were not new to the area. During the last legislative Assembly election, the BJP leaders spread the same rumour to attract and convince a section of people to join the election meeting. On the contrary, instead of organizing such big public meetings, the CPI (ML) tried to mobilize their voters by organizing small street corner meetings where attendance was very low.

2

The practice of performing Bihu dance and singing Bihu songs by visiting different households during the Rongali Bihu.

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Besides local village and Panchayat-level meetings, an attempt was also made to watch the campaigning in the urban centres. Tezpur city was the locale chosen for this purpose. As elections approached, temporary election offices were set up by various political parties. Inside Tezpur city, the number of election offices of the Congress was found to be much more than any other party. In these election offices, people came in the evening and discussed the happenings in and around during the whole day. During the daytime, the offices remained vacant. Sometimes even the office-in-charge could not be found in the party office. In Tezpur city, the people were found to be busy with the Bihu festival, but in the outskirts of the city, some activities were found in connection with the election campaign. When the candidates came to hold meetings, participation was found to be very low. In four of the meetings of the Congress and the AGP-BJP which were held in the city that I attended, it was found that the number of people participating in these meetings was hardly 30–40. Sometimes, passers-by would stop for some time and listen to the speech and leave. But in the outskirts of the city, the people’s participation was found to be more as compared to the city. In a meeting of the Congress which was held at Panchmile some eight km away from Tezpur, and close to the Napam Panchayat, it was found that around 200 people attended the meeting. There was no unanimity among the different political parties about the apathy of voters and the style of campaigning in these elections. The opinion varied about the response to the door-to-door campaign. The Congress party leaders and the leaders of the CPI (ML) were of the opinion that door-to-door campaign was not possible in Parliamentary election as it covers quite a huge area. On the day before polling, three political parties, namely the Congress, the AGP-BJP combine, and the CPI (ML), had distributed letters in every household requesting voter to cast their valuable votes in favour of respective parties. However, voters never go through the letters to know the content but use it to collect the serial number of the voters list. Despite the model code of conduct in place, political parties indulge in ‘money for vote’ drive in a surreptitious manner. It is a very common phenomenon. For example, in a village-level public meeting of the Congress party, people demanded a sum of Rs. 4000.00 from M. K. Subba, the sitting Congress MP, for a cultural programme to be organized on the occasion of Rongali Bihu. Usually, Subba does not refuse to donate cash to satisfy voters. Though the amount demanded by the people was not huge for Subba, he refused to donate perhaps because of the imposition of the strict rule by the Election Commission. People became very dissatisfied with his refusal and the MP faced an unexpected situation. A small group of people started throwing stones at him to take revenge. Not only the people of village Rangsali but members of different Bihu Committees usually take the election campaigning season as a golden opportunity to collect money from different political parties to organize cultural nights. Out of the fifteen candidates, it was found that Moni Kumar Subba of the Congress, Joseph Toppo, from the AGP-BJP alliance, Deba Orang from the AIUDF and Jiten Sundi from the CPI (M) were popular among the people. The Congress candidate M. K. Subba was the MP, and Joseph Toppo was the MLA from Dhekiajuli. Toppo was also a minister in the AGP government in the state. Deba Orang, the

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AIUDF candidate, was famous among the people because of his daughter Lakshmi Orang who was involved in the incident of Beltola violence of November 2007. The CPI (M) candidate Jiten Sundi who is an advocate was popular among the tea garden community due to his legal profession. But the rest of the candidates were not known among the people. Majority of the men and women interviewed did not know how many candidates were contesting from the Tezpur constituency. When I informed them about the fifteen contesting candidates, they were surprised. They did not know about most of the candidates. They had not heard the names of different parties like Bharat Vikash Morcha, National People Party, Revolutionary Socialist Party, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, etc. During 2009, most of them admitted that Congress (I) and AGP are the dominant parties of Assam and in the Tezpur seat either Moni Kumar Subba or Joseph Toppo will win. People generally do not want to disclose their political ideology. Majority opined that they did not support any kind of political party and for them candidate is more important than the party. In the meantime, we found some young people who candidly expressed their political stand and also told whom they would vote for. One such youth held that Congress could give the best government. He mentioned different plans and programmes taken up by the Congress government such as NREGA, Kalpataru and Indira Awas Yojna and said that he would therefore vote only for Congress. Another youth said that as he was able to get a house under the Indira Awas Yojna, so he supports Congress (I). Party campaigning or mobilization is not important for them, even if no party campaigned, they would still vote. A sense of loyalty and memory making activity often strengthen political ties for the voters who often survives across the peripheries. A major section of the people interviewed was frustrated with the political scenario, political culture and the unexpected price hike of essential commodities of daily use like rice, oil, vegetables, dal, etc. Most of the respondents responded that as a citizen of a democratic state, it is their primary right; hence, they had come for voting. Some claimed that election is like a festival that comes every five years. They have no choice but to select one. The role of the common population becomes important during the time of elections. Once elections are over, no one cares for them. The long experience of their life proves this as they have voted in different elections a number of times, but no measurable change has taken place in any aspect of their life. Most of the people interviewed did not participate in the rallies organized by different political parties except that of the party workers. Some people, however, attended the meetings held in their village but they did not take any interest in them. Most of the people left the meeting before it ended. Most of the voters, including the party workers, did not know clearly how many candidates were contesting in the election. Some of them knew that seven candidates were contesting but were not able to tell the names and their party affiliation. Common voters knew only the candidates of AGP, BJP and Congress (I) while some knew about the Bodoland People’s Front’s (BPF) candidate too. Workers of different political parties approach every household requesting the entire family to cast their votes in favour of the respective candidate. People were

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called for meetings; rallies as well as individual letters were delivered to each household as mentioned earlier. The vision document, agenda, manifesto and etc. of all the political parties were quite catchy. All of them talked about development, employment generation and special programmes for the poor. Almost all voters felt that these agenda and manifesto are nothing but means to influence the voters. Some of them opined that in reality, these will not be fulfilled. Once election is over, they will forget everything and then come again after five years. The respondents felt that apart from the promises in pen and paper, special measures should be taken by the representatives for poor people like them. At least rice should be available at cheaper rates. Free seeds and fertilizer should be provided to the farmers and for better production, irrigation should be improved. The young generation however primarily talked about opening up of more job opportunities in the public sector. An intergenerational difference in the pursuit of aspirations, choices and upliftment has been traced, as younger generations are inviting opportunities from outside the community and village. They are keen on negotiating the external and internal barriers of ‘identity’ consciousness. However, almost all people were very much concerned about the price hike of daily essential commodities which troubled the common population. They felt that whoever wins or forms the government should tackle the issue of price hike.

5.3.2 The Assembly Elections The 14th Assam legislative Assembly elections were held in two phases on the 4th of April and 11th of April 2011 to elect members from 126 constituencies in Assam. The result was announced on the 13th of May. The election process of Sonitpur District was begun with its announcement by the probable candidates by organizing meetings of their cadres, supporters and workers at block and Panchayat levels. It looked like the beginning of a festive season. Party workers were put on alert, especially Panchayat members were asked to mobilize people in their respective areas. Organization of huge gatherings, frequent visits of high-profile senior leaders, their addressing of the gatherings, cycle rallies, bike rallies, poster pasting, etc., are the necessary ingredients of election campaigns in India. This constituency too was not an exception. Almost all the well-known political parties organized such meets. Congress organized one big public meeting on 24th March 2011 in the Behali Rangamancha where the then Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma came to address the gathering. Local party leaders and police personnel got busy arranging the meeting and in tightening security. As he was supposed to come by helicopter, there was excitement among the people especially among the children to witness the scene. Though he was about to come by 11 am, people gathered there from 9 am. Interestingly, the gathering at the helipad was greater than the meeting place. The number of women exceeded the men. Some came to see the helicopter and some to listen to the health minister’s speech as he is considered to be a great orator. Some aged persons also came to fulfil the demand of their grandchildren. As a health minister, Sarma was very popular among the people for his different health policies like majoni and

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mamoni. As the Congress party provided vehicles to bring people from different villages of the constituency, people came from nearby places to attend the meetings. It is interesting to note that Sarma changed the party in 2016 and shifted to BJP from Congress. Now BJP has formed the state government after the Assembly elections in 2016 and Sarma retains the same ministry. In 2021, BJP again won the election and Sarma became the chief minister of Assam. In the meeting, Sarma requested people to vote for Pallab Lochan Das and pointed out to the inefficiency of the present MLA. Again it is significant to note that, Pallab Lochan Das also left Congress in 2016 to join BJP along with Sarma. Das has been elected as a Member of Parliament from TPC in 2019. At that time, Sarma criticised the BJP for attracting people to the meetings by inviting stars like Hema Malini, Smriti Irani, Satrughan Sinha, etc. Just after the declaration of the contesting candidates’ names, the local MLA (candidate of BJP), Ranjit Dutta, had arranged for a lunch and dinner at his residence for all the people of his constituency. Even vehicles had been provided to go for dinner. This was a new technique to woo the poor voters. In the meeting, Himanta Biswa Sarma asked people to visit the MLA’s place and have lunch and dinner because Dutta has invested public money in this arrangement. Commenting with a satirical tone, he said, ‘today I have realized that our Assamese girls are more beautiful than Hema Malini, they are not only beautiful but also expert at cooking and weaving. So it is unnecessary on the part of BJP to invite film stars. Instead, they should pay attention to solving the burning problems of the area’. He had appreciated girls perhaps to impress the large number of women present in the meeting, as according to his claim, he ‘delivers public speech according to the situation and context’. This meeting was over within 45 minutes. Just after Sarma’s departure, but before the dispersal of the crowd, a CPI (ML) cycle rally, with approximately 2000 men bicycle riders only reached the venue. When the rally crossed the venue of the meeting and the Congress office, a group of young supporters of Congress started shouting slogans like ‘CPI (ML) go back!’ and ‘Bibek Das murdabad’, indicating that election campaigning was at its zenith. The then chief minister Tarun Gogoi also visited Behali constituency in order to campaign for his candidate. It was learnt from some elder persons that the chief minister’s joining the campaign in their village happened for the first time. So a section of the people was very happy, they thought that the ministers are giving importance to this place and have therefore supported the Congress party. There was competition among the parties in conducting election campaign. The leaders of almost all the political parties give greater importance to organizing public meetings, cycle and motor bike processions as a show of their strength, which in their estimation would increase their chances of victory. In a competitive mode, different means are employed to woo the voters. For example, CPI (ML) and BJP also organized a cycle rally on 1st April 2011 but very few people turned up at their main office at Borgang. The BJP candidate, the sitting MLA, Ranjit Dutta, got very offended as the local leaders could not meet the target of arranging about 2000 cycles. So, they again arranged one motorbike rally on 2nd April 2011 with a near about 103 motorbikes. Congress party also organized a motorbike rally on the same day with

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around 125 motorbikes. Members of the Behali Youth Club also joined the rally, it was reported that these youths were offended with some active Congress leaders until 31 March 2011, because they had refused to give them donations for organizing a cultural programme on Rongali Bihu. Perhaps the leaders had managed to appease them, an election during the festival season helps Bihu committees to collect money from different candidates and political parties. On the 27th of March 2011 when the first village-level meeting of CPI (ML) was going on, at that time also group of youths sat in the front row. Most of the people in that meeting were common people so the presence of this group raised some questions. However, they attended the whole meeting, and when the candidate was about to leave the place, these youths encircled him and collected money for organizing Bihu cultural programmes. It is a common practice in the region that during election period, people collect money from the different political parties and contesting candidates to celebrate Bihu. It is well known that money for vote is a national phenomenon that spreads across rural and urban areas, among the rich and the poor. Is it possible to win the election by distributing money and liquor? In the Behali legislative constituency, most people were dissatisfied with the present MLA as he remained very inactive during his tenure and had not utilized the MLA fund properly. People lamented that instead of bringing proper development schemes to the region, he enriched his own treasury. So, people viewed that the BJP must not win from Behali. The independent candidate Biswajit Goswami appealed to people saying, ‘Please vote for me, if you want to end Ranjit Dutta’s corruption and monopoly’. Cadres of other parties too felt the same way: We are in favour of a change but are afraid that he might have some other way of pleasing the common people to win the election. Despite all these, if he again wins the election, it would prove that the power of money could change the decision of the public and people can select their representatives based on monetary power’. On the other hand, it is very important to mention that the ethnic composition of the people play a very important role in electoral decisions. In this constituency, about 50% voters belong to the tea garden community, followed by the Nepali population, and the high-caste Assamese population comes third. The Congress party has therefore given its ticket to Pallab Lochan Das, former secretary of All Assam Tea Tribe Student Association (AATTSU). In one of the public meetings, Pallab Lochan Das said ‘I am sure that I will win the election because in this area 51,000 thousand voters belong to the tea garden community, they will definitely cast their vote in my favour’. But his speech was against the sentiments of some other communities of the region. Large sections of the Nepali community were against the candidature of Pallab Lochan Das as Congress party had not given party ticket to some old Congress leaders of their community. It is believed that the support of the tea garden community to any candidate is a deciding factor in winning the elections. Thus, in India, the community always plays a significant role in elections. It is a tricky situation for the political party to choose their candidates without disturbing the sentiment of the other communities. But such a sentiment was not seen among the caste Assamese people, especially among the youths. They have supported the Congress candidate but not the Assamese candidate of CPI (ML). This may be because of several reasons. First, they have realized the need for a proper representative, irrespective of caste and

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community. Second, as Congress is the ruling party, they assumed that their chance to win the election was strong. Third, as Congress was economically very strong and their budget for election campaigning was big so they supported the Congress party perhaps expecting material benefits. They were well aware of the fact that if they joined hands with CPI (ML), they would not be able to get any material benefit. Interestingly, the AIUDF candidate was Malay Das who belongs to the caste Assamese community but in a jocular vein, the people of the area named him Mohammad Malay Das. It is perceived among the people that AIUDF is a party of the Bengali Muslim community. He was not bothered about conducting election campaign. Instead, he went to his own small tea garden with his security person. One of the workers informed that one day he asked Malay Das for some money to cast vote in favour of AIUDF. He replied: ‘I have doubt regarding my mother’s vote and who are you to ask money to cast vote for me?’ Why did he contest then? Perhaps, the leaders of AIUDF have offered him the ticket in order to make people aware of the existence of the party (if also for drawing the attention of Hindu voters) and he accordingly accepted it for getting some amount of money to run the campaign. On the other hand, Biswajit Goswami has contested because his party, i.e. AGP denied him a ticket; thus, he resigned from the party and contested independently with a negligible support base. On 31st of March 2011, BJP organized a big public meeting in Behali Ketla field. They also provided vehicles to the people of each village of the constituency to join the meeting. People were also very excited to join the meeting as they had heard that the location of the helipad and the venue of the meeting were the same. Near about 7000 people gathered there, where most of the people were from the tea garden community; a large number of children also gathered in the field. The popular BJP leader Arjun Munda was about to come at 1:30 pm, but the common people were eagerly waiting for his arrival since 11 am. As it was a rainy day, some people of the nearby areas started selling some delicious items like omelettes, boiled egg, pokora, potato chips, etc. However, it was a misfortune for both the party and their candidate. Because of the bad weather, the landing of the helicopter became impossible. As a result, Arjun Munda could not arrive on time. Still many people waited. The meeting was rescheduled for 2 pm. Due to heavy rain, 80% of the people took shelter in nearby shops and vehicles, leaving them angry and disappointed. Their hopes of seeing the helicopter could not be actualized. Several people of the tea garden community angrily said: ‘leader gela Hema Malini ale bollek nai aile, Satrughan Sinha aile bollek nai aile, aita ke meeting? Naidibo Ranjit Dutta ke vote’ (leaders had promised that Hema Malini and Saturghan Sinha will come to the meeting but they did not come. What kind of a meeting is this? We will not cast our vote for Ranjit Dutta!). It is worth mentioning that traditionally tea garden workers used to have very little scope for entertainment. During festive season, tea garden management usually arrange to screen popular Bollywood cinemas (which is known as ‘parda’ by the tea garden workers) acted by Mithun Chakraborty, Hema Malini, Govinda, etc. For them to see an actress like Hema Malini in person was like a dream. So when they failed to see her in person, it added to their frustration as their hope to see their idol got shattered.

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But some were still of the opinion that they had come to the meeting because the MLA has provided them IAY houses. It is their duty to come in his support. Some others expressed that the Panchayat president has sanctioned one house in their name but they have not yet received the cheque. If they do not attend the meeting, the MLA might remove their names from the list. A very small section said that they had come to attend the meeting as they were supporter of the BJP. One retired school teacher said that instead of making the common people politically aware, political leaders are busy attracting people by talking about heroes and heroines of Bollywood. Instead of such acts, they should try to make the common people knowledgeable about the party politics and democracy. On 1st April 2011, CPI (ML) also organized a big public meeting in the Ketla field. Unlike other parties, due to meagre resources they could only provide few vehicles such as mini trucks, wingers and Tata magic for transporting people. Due to inclement weather, some women refused to come in open trucks and used the vans, Tata Magic, Tata Winger, etc. From the new Ketla field, they organized a procession to the Ketla field. Dipankar Bhattacharya, the central leader of CPI (ML), some state-level leaders and the candidate also joined the procession. People were very happy to take part in such a huge rally where around 9000 people participated. They were busy raising slogan, two groups played dhols (drum) throughout the procession and some of them were dancing to the tune of the music. Most of the people belonged to the tea garden community, men and women were almost equal in numbers. The number of non-voters was negligible perhaps because of the fact that the leaders of CPI (ML) had not used helicopter for the campaign which attracts the voters and more so the non-voters. First, the district secretary of CPI (ML) addressed the gathering and criticized the BJP candidate. He narrated how their candidate had protested against the lockout of some tea gardens of the area and fought against the exploitation by the management. Lastly, the district secretary appealed the unemployed youth that ‘you please cast your vote for our candidate, although Pallab Lochan Das, has promised to provide you jobs. It is not possible, he is a liar, as he has done nothing for the people of the tea garden community as a secretary of ATTSSA’. Some leaders of CPI (ML) delivered their speeches in the vernacular language that is Sadri.3 Dipankar Bhattacharya, a central leader, said that ‘election koi khel nehihei, ye chunav hei, isko seriously lekar proper MLA chunna Janata ke liye jaruri hei’. (Election is not a child’s play. It is important that one takes it seriously and elects a proper MLA). The candidate of CPI (ML) did not criticize the other candidates in his speech. One of the speakers also composed a song in Sadri, which prompted some people to dance. The song was about the life of the tribal people of Chotanagpur Plateau, from where mainly the tea garden community migrated to Assam. It also described how development plans have deteriorated their living conditions, displaced them from their homes, and how food and firewood became inaccessible to them. The 3

Sadri is spoken in Chota Nagpur Plateau and in many tea gardens in Assam. Tea garden community members have developed a different version than the original one. Various communities from different parts interact with each other in Sadri. So, the language has also been changing.

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song ended with conviction that: ‘we will fight for our resources and we will not leave our tea gardens’. After the meeting, the leaders made arrangements to send people back home. In these elections, almost all the parties conducted door-to-door campaigns. CPI (ML) had engaged some women and a group of young girls for this work. The young girls were very excited and made all efforts. They asserted that most of the people of the area were against the BJP candidate. They readily shared their experience of the campaign. A woman told that she felt like vomiting when she heard of elections. A group of small children in a van were campaigning in favour of BJP; they were announcing on the microphone, ‘vote diyok, vote diyok, Ranjit Duttak vote diyak’ (Vote for Ranjit Dutta). It was observed that people found those speeches interesting which are critical of others. People readily clapped when a speaker criticized political parties and their leaders. At most of the meetings, a section of people remained busy in talking about some other issues, and women were worried about whether they would reach their homes before evening or not. Despite the Election Commission’s strict restrictions, some government employees came to the meeting just before it ended. It becomes impossible for anybody to stay away from the election process, when one was a strong supporter of a party or a candidate. This is what makes elections interesting in India. Children played with posters of political parties and shouted slogans in favour of all parties. Political parties opened temporary party offices at different places for campaigning and mobilizing their workers. However, like the Parliamentary elections, most of the offices remained mostly unoccupied. Sometimes the office incharge sat there with his friends and gossiped, and sometimes children of the area could be seen using it as a play house. Temporary party office of the Congress party at Borgang arranged tea and pan for almost all visitors to the party office. Letters from political parties were commonly delivered to every household, which were used for getting the serial numbers of the voters list. But this time it was not needed as the government officials had distributed the serial number of voter’s lists long before the polling day. Issues in the Assembly elections were different from those in the Parliamentary elections. The approach of the candidates and party workers towards the voters as well as the response of the voters was also different. As compared to Parliamentary constituency, Assembly one is much smaller; the political parties tried to contact all voters personally rather than through addressing a cluster or a village as a whole. Apart from the particular party agendas, local-level problems got much emphasis. One respondent said that people were concerned about their individual and family interest; issues and interests of the village came after that. Some poor people demanded Indira Awas Yojna houses, BPL ration cards and government jobs for their children. In addition to personal demands, people asked for the development of village roads and good school buildings. In the Assembly elections, voters were quite familiar with the candidates; some even knew them personally. Candidates’ social background, public image, relation

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with the locals, character also importantly influenced the voters’ decision. A candidate’s popularity was also influenced by his campaigners and associates. An affinity towards the latter generated a kind of trust. On the other hand, a bad opinion of them created pessimism among the voters. They felt that if that particular candidate wins, his associates will rule and common people will suffer.

5.3.3 The Panchayat Elections As scheduled by the Congress government in Assam, Panchayat elections were held on January 30, February 6 and February 12, 2013. Polling was conducted for representatives for the Panchayat, Zila Parishad and Anchalik Panchayat Samiti as part of the regular Panchayati Raj elections to the three tiers, that is, the Zila parishad (at the District level), the Anchalik Panchayat Samiti (at the block level) and the Gram Panchayat (at the village level). The Napam Panchayat comes under Balipara Development Block. One of the major landmarks of Napam Panchayat is that the Tezpur Central University is located within this Panchayat. Napam Panchayat consists of fifteen villages which is organized into ten administrative wards. In Assam, under the Rural Panchayat Act 1948, two tiers of Panchayats—Primary Panchayats at the village level and Rural Panchayats at the Mouza level—were created. After that, under the Assam Panchayati Raj Act 1959, a three-tier system was introduced such as Gaon Panchayat, Anchalik Panchayat and Mahkuma Parishad. But in 1994, Zila Parishad was introduced instead of Mahkuma Parishad under the new three-tier system. The Panchayati Raj System in Assam operates through Gaon Panchayats with a president, directly elected by the people and a vice-president, elected from among the ward members of the Gaon Panchayat and ten ward members directly elected by the people. The members of Zila Parishad and the councillors of Anchalik Panchayat are directly elected by the people. The presidents of these two bodies are elected from among the members of the Parishad and Council respectively. In an election, therefore, one person has to cast four votes for a ZP member, an AP councillor, a GP president and a GP ward member. Supporters of a particular party, besides factors like religion, also take into account the past benefits that they received from the party or the government. Some Nepali people supported the Congress party as they received different benefits from the government such as BPL cards, housing facilities and fair price ration provisions. However, some other people of the same community did not receive any benefits from any scheme of the Congress party as they could not pay money to the middle man or to the elected leaders. They complained about corruption. According to them, those who were already more well-off received the benefits as they had the money to pay the middle man. Party workers worked hard to make election rallies and meetings a success. The then Congress party leader and Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, the star campaigner was leading his party while Badruddin Ajmal was leading from the front for AIUDF.

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Mostly perceived as a party of the Muslim community, AIUDF tried every possible means to convince people across caste, class and religious community to come and listen to Ajmal. And the party workers did manage huge gatherings in the name of Ajmal. However among the Muslims, the educated and relatively well-off supported the Congress party. According to them, Congress introduced health and medical facilities such as ASHA, 108 ambulance service, Majoni and Mamoni schemes, which has also generated employment. Apart from this, development in the field of education like establishing new schools and classrooms with proper teachers, introduction of mid-day meals is credited to the Congress. These developments were not taken into account by the poor sections as for them development entails a different meaning, i.e. access to basic needs. Thus, it can be seen that development here was not universal; rather it was benefitting only one section of society. The most important reason for the majority of Muslims going against the Congress was the violence in Bodoland, an autonomous region created for the Bodos under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Many All Assam Minority Student Union (AAMSU) members were taken into custody by the police in the aftermath of the violence. The Bodoland People’s Front (BPF), the ruling party in the Bodoland area, was an ally of the Congress. This was the time when AIUDF took the opportunity to motivate the people to support their party by saying that the Congress does not protect minorities. People also argued that Congress leaders had betrayed them. They only worked for themselves and neglected its people and their needs. They have only widened the gap between the rich and the poor and pushed the poor into poverty, hunger and grief. It is the middle class who secured all benefits from the Congress because whatever welfare schemes were available, those were not freely distributed among people and benefited only a group of people who had money and necessary networks. People blamed party workers and members of the Panchayats for the poor condition of the people as the former were corrupt and did not implement government policies and schemes efficiently. So people were gradually losing trust in the party as it became a party for the well-off people. But the poor were not benefited by the welfare schemes, even the flood affected were not compensated. They would often talk about dalals, the middlemen, who ruined their chances by not letting them have access to resources meant for them. They were indeed very disappointed because the government turned a deaf ear towards them.

5.4 When Ajmal Was Like a Tajmahal On 2 February 2013 in Panchmile locality of TPC, thousands of Hindus and Muslims in their colourful dresses, in a mela like atmosphere, attended a rally, however, Muslims were in majority. The Bengali Muslims considered Ajmal as an agent of God. He was not only a political leader but also a spiritual leader for the Muslims. Ajmal was considered as a mediator between them and God, who would help them

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to solve their problems. An old man was holding a flag of AIUDF and was roaming around the field. He said that he wanted to meet Ajmal personally and ask his help to improve his conditions. He was very hopeful regarding this party. Even women were seen to be very enthusiastic to see Ajmal. The meeting in a way was also a source of relief from the daily chores for the women. Women said that it was indeed their good luck to see their spiritual leader in person and hear him speak and believed that he would change their destitute condition. People were also brought to the venue by party sponsored vehicles from far off places, demonstrating the importance of a large gathering to establish party’s credibility. People showed no complaints for travelling miles to come to the meeting. This was a sign of their grievances against the party in power and their growing concern to have a just party. Muslims could connect with Ajmal because of religious affiliation. They felt that just seeing and hearing him will free them of their sins. They would sing ‘Ajmal amarjaan’ meaning ‘Ajmal is our life’. The ‘lungi, the long-white beard and the white cap’ image of Ajmal instilled a sense of brotherhood and belongingness in them. They could easily relate themselves with that image that fostered the feeling that Ajmal belonged to them and that they belonged to the same fraternity (Das, 2018). People had different perceptions about the mode and manner of Ajmal reaching the meeting place. Someone said that after performing Namaaz, Ajmal would come by airplane directly from Macca/Arab; another said that he would come by train from Guwahati. Someone said that he knows everything. Every Friday he used to go to Arab (where Macca, the most sacred place for the Muslims, is located) for praying. Someone from the crowd prompted ‘Ajmal is like the Tajmahal” (Das, 2018). There were countless stories that were doing rounds. These people believed that Ajmal Sahab was there for fighting for their rights. Various stories were told about the Hazoor Saab. People have placed Ajmal in an extraordinary position. This kind of imagination gives them strength to overcome their helplessness and feel that a powerful person can help them in the time of distress. In many societies since ancient times, there have been practices of magic and rituals. Most of the people take these experiences seriously and do have a significant place in their lives. The concept of ‘Magical Performance’ has been discussed and elaborated elsewhere (Das, 2018). In India, it is well articulated and documented in various media, how political leaders perform to attract voters and followers towards them. Every political leader has a peak performance period within which they can really charm people. In almost all the Bangla speaking Muslim areas of Assam, including Napam, people perceived Badruddin Ajmal as a spiritual leader and healer. He has been accorded a kind of godly status. Once die hard supporters of Congress were seen shifting their camps to AIUDF and thereby the party gained enormous popularity. The reasons for this shift could be attributed to people’s disappointment towards the ruling Congress party, religious factors and community sentiments. People regarded Ajmal to be the child of ‘Allah’ who would work for their welfare and development.

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However due to some wrong political move, Badruddin Ajmal lost his credibility and popularity in the last two elections, but even now he is popular in many of the Muslim populated areas of Assam. He could create a saintly status for himself among poor Muslims in these areas. Many loyal supporters of Congress were seen shifting their camps to AIUDF because of Ajmal and his party gained enormous popularity. Badruddin Ajmal inherited the business of Ajmal Ali who was a farmer in Alinagar in the Nagaon District of Assam. He slowly gained popularity and established a political party named Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) in 2005. Due to his success in politics, Ajmal had attained a larger-than-life stature and his followers made him a ‘messiah’. He was projected a magician, charismatic leader and messenger of God. People believe he has some divine power through which he can ameliorate problems of the poor. His popularity and charisma which are discussed in this section has been gathered from a study of Panchayat election conducted in 2013 (Photographs 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 and 5.4).

Photograph 5.1 Poll officials demonstrating the use of EVM

5.4 When Ajmal Was Like a Tajmahal

Photograph 5.2 A sick and old man coming to the polling booth to cast his vote

Photograph 5.3 Voters waiting in a queue in Napam Panchayat

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Photograph 5.4 Eateries near a polling booth in Panchmile area

5.5 Ethnography of the Polling Booth: On the Day of Polling 5.5.1 Parliamentary Election One of the polling centres was located in Panchmile Higher Secondary School near Panchmile, 8 kms. away from the Tezpur city, having two polling booths (1) Alisinga Uriumguri and (2) Alisinga (North). In both the polling booths, the voters primarily belonged to the three communities, namely, Bengali Muslims (who use Mymensingia dialect), Bengali Hindus and a small number of Nepalis. The most dominant among them are the Bengali Muslims who constitute around 60% of the total population in the area. Bengali Hindus constitute around 34%, followed by the Nepalis who constitute around 6%. On the day of the election, people came to cast their vote as early as 5 am in the morning. They stood in queue and waited till the polling started around 7 am. Only after 11 am people started coming in large numbers crowding both the polling booths. People came with their documents and before going to the polling booths they took their serial numbers from the counters of different political parties which were put up just at the gate of the polling centre. It was observed that many people came alone and very few came with their families. But it was interesting to note that females from the Bengali Hindu families came along with their husbands and their family members while the females from the Muslim families came alone or with

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their female friends. Some Muslim women came even with their new born babies. Differently abled person, sick and old persons of the Bengali Muslim and Hindu communities also came to cast their votes. The small number of Nepalis left as soon as they cast their votes. Workers from different political parties were seen roaming in and around the polling centre and trying to mobilize people in favour of their respective parties. They were seen standing in front of the gate of the polling centre and welcoming the people, helping them find out their serial numbers. It was also observed that the party workers took the voters to tea stalls and provided them with refreshments. The party workers involved in these activities were mostly of the three major political parties namely the AGP-BJP alliance, the Congress and the AIUDF. They were the mediators of these enchanting elections, serving food to the ‘voter’ guests. However, though the people were mostly illiterate, it was observed that they had a predetermined choice about voting in their mind. Lastly, it was seen that the Congress party workers were dissatisfied with the work. The grassroots-level workers were unhappy with the work of the Panchayat president. It was said that the grassroots-level workers came to the polling station by 5 o’ clock in the morning while the senior-level workers came to the polling centre very late. Two incidents that occurred during the polling day seem noteworthy. With their ailing and fragile bodies, Md. Ali, an old man and a differently abled man, Md. Hazrat came to cast their vote. When asked, why they came even in such a physical state, they stated that if they do not cast their vote, then they would lose their citizenship. But there was also another section of people who came to the polling centre just to watch the people vote. But they would not cast their vote because they were fed up with the election. This section of people basically belongs to the Bengali Hindu community. There were also a few people who were willing to cast their vote only if they were paid some money by the political party. On the question of distribution of money, many people said that there was distribution of money by the Congress party, but they did not receive cash. Two students of class 11 from the Panchmile Higher Secondary School, Md. Rahman and Md. Haque stated that money was distributed to the people of their village by the Congress party at the eleventh hour and their families also received some money. Since they were young, they did not receive any money. People were sceptical about the use of EVMs. But to the surprise of polling officials and observers, people were comfortable with the use of voting machine in the polling booth. They showed interest and opined that it is better than the paper ballot as the chances of votes getting rejected in paper ballot is more. A valid identity document issued by the government office or by any reputed/authentic source is necessary for casting vote as per the directive of the Election Commission of India. But the indigenous population is hardly concerned about such documents. Though they have lots of valid documents starting from bank account, ration card and identity card, they do not want to bring such documents. In this context, few angry men informed that if they are not allowed to vote without the identification document they will not vote. Meanwhile, the Gaon burha (the headman of the village) identified the voters inside the polling booth who were then

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allowed to vote. The school field is the only social space available, and it is situated in the middle of the village; hence, people were seen more interested in talking and gossiping. Different groups were seen across different age and gender. Majority of the voters in another polling booth were from the tea garden labour community which was located near Bhitor Parowa. A voter at the booth maintained, ‘we have no value, they try to purchase our votes by giving money like 100 to 200 rupees before the day of the elections but never try to solve our problems to make our miserable life better’. This time also they are casting vote in favour of someone but not in the hope of fulfilment of their need. They are doing it only to exercise the adult franchise. Despite negligence by the leaders of different political parties, one section of people wanted to vote in favour of Congress party because they received cash from the party on the eve of election. Congress had gained their faith by promising to supply food products like rice, mustard oil at Rs. 3.00 per kilogram, Kerosene oil at Rs. 5.00 per litre, safe drinking water facility and so on. It has been observed that some active workers of the Congress party from the tea garden community were working sincerely in favour of the party for their own gain. This puts forth a case of community allegiance at the backdrop of socio-economic marginalization. Most of the tea garden workers regard the day of election as a festival because excluding Sundays the gardens are closed only during some particular festivals. As the day of polling is a holiday and they also get wages for the day, workers were seen to be happy. They came to the booth in a festive mood and in colourful attires. Some workers were busy selling biscuits, boiled eggs, pakora, papad, biscuits and chocolates in front of the polling station. After pressing the blue button in favour of the candidate of their own choice, most of them were busy in buying delicious items. In case of nuclear families, spouses came with their small kids. In case of joint families, male head accompanied by his wife came to the booth early in the morning, after exercising franchise they went quickly because they had to send their children and in-laws to vote. Some women came in a group to cast their vote and most of the voters brought the serial number of the ration card instead of the voter’s list serial number. Following this they asked for help of the volunteers of different political parties to find out their number. On the other hand, few voters felt that voting is a burden. Most of the people did not bring any identity documents in the morning session and the polling officer in-charge of the polling booth did not allow such persons to vote. As a result, such voters were disappointed and started complaining against the presiding officer. They said ‘we are the indigenous people of Assam; why should we need the voter identity card?’ Some said that, ‘we are not Bangladeshis’.4 More interestingly, one person told the polling officer with a satirical tone that ‘he has kept his identity document in Bangladesh’. In such a situation in the morning session, those who could not cast their vote because lack of identity cards did not return with any valid document. The 4

People who speak Mymensingha in Assam are from erstwhile East Bengal. In popular discourse, the foreigner is a Bangladeshi who has come to India without legal documents. So when ever this kind of issue arises, people refer to an illegal immigrant as Bangladeshi.

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larger section of the voters of the village came quite late to the booth. Moreover, different party offices were set up to give the voters identity numbers so that they need not have to wait inside the booth to search for their names. Outside the booth, we saw various groups discussing different topics. Groups were mainly constituted of young people. They discussed the elections, Bihu, sports, etc. All agreed that the election had reduced the charm of Bihu, the most popular festival of Assam. Workers from different political parties talked with each other in a friendly manner. A major section of the younger generation was not happy with the scenario of contemporary politics and had tumbling faith in the present political system, parties and the representatives. They came to vote not in the hope of any revolutionary change but only because they have got the chance to vote and it was their right. A marked difference between structural and attitudinal patterns of voting behaviour and practices has been observed. They were talking since morning but did not cast their votes until around 1 o’clock. In some cases, the party workers were seen cutting out jokes and making humorous remarks against the young members and workers of other parties.

5.5.2 Assembly Election In Assam, tea garden community members have always decided the electoral outcome in those constituencies where their number is significant. Thus, all political parties try to convince them. In the Behali tea estate branch office polling station of the Behali constituency, the voters include both permanent as well as temporary workers of the tea garden. One woman opined that ‘aji utsav lekhia lagse’ (today feels like a festival day). A few of them responded that the election would not bring any change to their life. The company provided them rice, flour, drinking water, etc. so that elections do not distract them. About the contesting candidates, one woman replied ‘we do not know because during the day time we work in the garden because of which even attending public meetings becomes impossible for us. How can we know all these things?’ At this polling station, most of the voters favoured the Congress party perhaps because of their community sentiments. Some of the voters said as Pallab Lochan Das belongs to their community, they would vote for him. They were very hopeful that he would attend to their needs if got elected. Though the people appeared innocent, they never disclosed secrets like the distribution of money and liquor by political parties. But one of the voters at the polling station informed me about the distribution of jaggery among some people by the BJP leaders for the preparation of liquor. It has already been mentioned that the tea garden workers take the polling day as a festival, they get leave on the day of polling and not required to perform their duties. They came in their best clothes with a festive mood. As photographs were being clicked by the researchers, they became happy and a group of women asked for more photographs. Some voters were also inquisitive to know whether these photographs will appear in any newspaper. So, elections are not mere elections but entails symbolic meanings of enchantments.

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Getting photographed often displays a privilege for the marginalized members of the tea tribe community as elections are perceived as festivals. After casting their votes, they became very busy in talking and eating some food items from the temporary shops opened by nearby people basically from the tea garden community, which was a common phenomenon on the election day. This time, some small children were also engaged in this business. Besides stalls of delicious snacks, one could also find a beetle nut stall in front of most of the polling stations. In Behali tea estate branch office polling station, voters came from early in the morning, 70% of the voters cast their vote before 12 pm. The polling officers could seal the machine on time. Party workers as polling agents are selected from the local area to cross check bogus voters and to oversee free and fair polling. In the polling booth under discussion, around 3 pm, a few young girls came to cast vote in other voters’ names. It seems they were brought by the Congress supporters. It was objected from the AGP polling agents and when they were barred from casting their vote, they became furious and left the booth subsequently. They were also afraid when the polling officer told them that he would inform the police.

5.5.3 Panchayat Election Generally, in India, government schools are used as polling stations. Schools are also symbols of the modern secular ritualistic practice of the state. The condition of government run schools in most parts of India is not good. This is the only time when the broken buildings of schools are put in a relatively good shape. One evening before the day of polling, vehicles and election personnel take position at the school. Then all of a sudden, the area looks different. With a red ribbon, the polling areas are demarcated with various signs, wood and bamboos are also used to make different queues to facilitate the polling process where men and women would line up. The next morning gives rise to an unusual scene. The place where children used to play and attend their classes becomes a forbidden zone for them. They can only play outside the demarcated area. Outside the polling booth, party workers would stand and sit with a table with a list of voters. Before entering into the polling booth, names of the voters are verified from the list and then they are given with a number, which they need to show to the election officers at the time of voting. People thought that it was their duty to cast their vote. Therefore, they took a day off from their routine work, even if they lose one day wage, this day will come only after five years. It was their day! Many said that they would make up their loss in the afternoon session or on the next day. Women voters were more excited to cast their vote. They came early as their household work load was not very heavy in the morning time. The women, unable to come in the morning, came later and opined that ‘voting and household work both are important’. Hence, voting has also turned into a recreation for them. Despite the instructions given by party workers, some people committed mistakes during the time of polling. During Parliamentary

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and Assembly elections, Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) and in the Panchayat elections ballot papers are used. Most of the old people believed that Congress was a better party. One old woman said, as in the last elections, this time also she would vote for Congress. Although last time she did not get anything, she hoped that this time the government would fulfil her requirements. When asked: why then vote for Congress? She said, ‘the government was not the ultimate ruler; there was another ruler which is God. If God would favour her, she would automatically get her means of subsistence’. The voting started at 7 am. The presiding officers and other members and policemen came one day before to make necessary arrangements. Men, women, the young and old in large numbers queued up early in the morning to vote. Men and women had separate queue. Veiled women, maintaining properly the queue, waited patiently for their turn. Housemaids took leave for the election. The men, however, comfortably squatted on the ground, having tobacco and talking with their friends. There were factional differences regarding support to a particular party in view of importance of Panchayat elections. Factors like community feeling, class division, education, etc. were crucial in this regard. The poor Muslims supported the AIUDF as they believed that the party would work for their welfare. They opposed the Congress party as the earlier Congress president had not helped most of the people to get BPL cards, because of which they lacked access to facilities like fees for their children’s education, free cycles, etc. They said that to get the BPL card, one needed to bribe the middle man. They also had to bribe middle man to get free housing and electricity connection etc. They feel middleman, therefore, was an obstacle for their development. On the day of polling, many temporary food stalls, tea shops and fruit shop were established by petty shopkeepers, and some of them were sponsored by political parties. Party workers and supporters gathered there to have tea and pan, which is a common phenomenon in Assam. It gives the occasion a festival like colour. Therefore, elections in India are said to be a festival of democracy. It has both a symbolic and a concrete meaning. As I interacted with some women in the queue, their husbands signalled them not to interact with me. They thought, I might influence them to vote for somebody else other than their own candidate. Some preferred to vote for a candidate of their own community; otherwise, they believed they would not be benefited. One woman from the Nepali community expressed a similar view. There were also few people who said that it is not religion, but qualities to work efficiently for the area that mattered. An old Nepali woman also said, she and her family still support Congress as earlier. Thus, sometimes choice of a party becomes a matter of family tradition. Some people give preference to the party and some to the candidates. Interestingly, some people, employed by the middle men, were trying to peep inside the polling room to find what shape the polling was taking. The functioning of this local politics directly affects local people. Pre-election time is very crucial as it brings dominant people from the party to the common people, enabling local people to raise their grievances and demands. Young people also earned some money from

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the work like campaigning, distribution of posters and also some paper work. Thus, local-level election is important for the people of the villages. Someone said that when election would get over, the festive mood would vanish. Few days before these elections, they had been enjoying campaigning for the political parties, which took care of their daily subsistence. Many women felt that the polling day was a rare occasion for them to come out. Women and young girls generally dress well and wear make-up on the polling day as they do on festival days. Except two or three, hardly any shop opened in the regular market area as people were busy in the polling stations. Despite bad transport facility, people came to vote by faring different means of transport such as tempo, rickshaw, etc. One political party transported the tea garden labourers from one village to the polling station on tempos at their expenses to get the votes. Compared to men, women in the village had less interest in the elections. However, some women did express concern for having good roads and equal access to goods and services provided by the government. They were aware of the government schemes and the inefficiency and corruption in their implementation. Therefore, they must raise their voices against it. According to them, these elections are crucial for there was high a chance of a change in the ruling party. Such concerns were expressed by women who had at least some level of education. Women who hardly find time to come out and talk to people on normal days because of domestic work were seen enjoying outside their homes on the day of polling. They talked, laughed and interacted with each other. Their conversations mostly related to children, family, and husbands. After reservation policy for women, they were also becoming politically conscious. Politics found a place in their discussion. However, unlike men, they understand only local politics. Except local leaders, they do not know much about national or provincial politics. It reflected women’s predominantly home-bound role. On their choice of candidate, they referred to the discussion with their family male members about the candidates and the parties, indicating how patriarchal residue persists in determining women’s voting choice and behaviour. They were usually hesitant to discuss election related issues publicly. However, their responses varied on the basis of communities they belonged to. For example, a Muslim woman was shyer and more hesitant than a Nepali or Bihari woman. Further, the way of responding also varied according to classes, as economically better off women were more open than poor women. Their exposure to education and the outside world also determined their level of political awareness. The candidates visited the polling booths and greeted the voters who were standing in the ques. They displayed their election symbols so that even the illiterate voters will easily recognize them on the ballot paper. Thus, the symbols became their identity. They would also request people to pray for them and seek their blessings. As a last attempt, they made innumerable promises. Party workers were also bargaining with voters till the last moment which is a common phenomenon during the elections time. The polling day was a fun time for the kids. No school, no classes, no studies, no scolding, they freely enjoyed running here and there, playing games with friends. Thus, different section of the people spent the day in their own way. Though people

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were disappointed with the government for not taking care of their needs, not keeping their promises, not living up to their expectations, and denying them a decent living, they would still vote. Main reason was that majority of them, especially women, voted out of the fear that if they do not vote, next time, their names might appear on the D-voters list. And it is tough job to get their names deleted from that list, which also requires money and social network. Again they feared that they might lose their citizenship if they do not vote, they might be deported from their own country.

5.6 Towards a Sociology of Electoral Politics/Elections Studies on elections are part of various academic disciplines. In some places, there are specialized sections who conduct election studies in different parts of the globe. In this context, I would suggest, it would be worthwhile to conduct more studies on elections which include electoral behaviours, politics, strategy, campaigns and polling. If we extend it to South Asia, we may find many similarities in the electoral process. Therefore, it is important to contribute to the field of sociology of electoral politics/elections. Going beyond the numbers and statistics of poll, psephology, opinion and exit poll, social researchers can explore deeper meanings by conducting long term ethnographic studies on elections. Though there have been studies on villages which cover elections as part of the research objectives, there are different aspects of electoral politics which remain untouched, which could be observed and studied closely by social researchers. Analysis of various social categories such as caste, gender, class, ethnicity, religion, occupation, region, etc. and its relation to the electoral politics will have interesting outcomes. In this context, Manza (2012, 169) outlines various sociological aspects of electoral politics which are studied by political sociologists. He outlines that elections are of interest to political sociologists for three main reasons: first, because of policy outcomes; second, causal importance of political institutions finds important expression in the electoral context; and third, election results provide one of the clearest (and well-measured) sets of signals about how important social groups are parented to political life. Thus, it is important to conduct in-depth studies on elections from a sociological perspective to contribute to the policy framework and make the governance process more effective. This will also help us to address the issues of deprivation and exclusion which are encountered by the marginal communities in a majoritarian democratic polity. The following sections elucidates various facets of elections and its constituents in a country like India.

5.7 Ritual, Performance and the Polls In a country like India, there are huge logistics involved in conducting regular elections. This task is even harder in the so-called socially and politically unstable and disturbed areas. What happened a day before the polling at the place where voting

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was going to take place? What changed the whole environment into a magical arena through certain rituals reinforcing the presence of the state? It has been argued that the state manifest itself through concrete and abstract symbols as well as practices. How the idea of the state is perceived in everyday lives of the people, description of this voting event would give us a different kind of understanding of the process (Das, 2018). Foster explains ‘more tangibly, the indelible ink stripe drawn on one’s finger signifies membership in the community of active voters. By the end of the day, the adult population would be classified into two categories: voters and non-voters, the former recognizable by their marked fingers’ (Foster, 1996, 63). The scrutiny of names in the voter list gives rise to two different senses of identities. One is where individuals reinforce their citizenship status through the act of voting and the other is that how they distinguish themselves from the non-voters who struggle to be part of the nation state’s legitimate member. The ink mark on the nail gives a different symbolic value to this process of voting (Das, 2018).

5.8 Peoples Play and Dance of Democracy It is seen from the study that mostly marginalized people who are not comfortable in dealing with the government officials come out openly during the time of elections. They form various small groups for getting a kind of bargaining power to interact with the middlemen and brokers, some of the marginalised population also feel privileged during this time. All along they have to beg to have access to welfare schemes. But when during elections political leaders come to their houses, they feel proud and privileged. In the process, poor gain some power to bargain and uncover themselves.

5.9 Are Panchayat Elections More Important? For most rural people, Panchayat elections are important for their own reasons. First, they can easily approach the Panchayat member for any of their problems, which is not the case with the MPs or MLAs. Second, all rural development schemes are implemented through the Panchayats; thus, it is a very important institution for them. Third, some Panchayat members are from their own village, so the community sentiment is significant. Fourth, Panchayat elections are mostly a local affair and therefore people are more enthusiastic about it. Fifth, they are also personally familiar with most of the members, so this makes Panchayat elections more interesting. Regarding the difference between Panchayat and Assembly elections, responses varied. As for instance, Panchayat elections are smaller than Assembly elections; both are the same; Assembly elections are more important because ministers in the state level are elected in those elections; in Panchayat elections, only local people are elected; Panchayat elections are more powerful in terms of influencing people; when

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one woman was asked whether she would vote or not, she directly replied ‘vote dile ki hobo, mor eku labh nai, hei karone najau’ (What will happen if I vote, I do not get any benefit, that is why I will not vote). One man from the tea garden community said that if someone would pay me, only then I would cast my vote, otherwise not. While responding to the questions, some women from the tea garden community angrily said that corruption is everywhere. She argued that the members of the political parties ran after the people only during elections to seek vote. But once they are into the power, people have to run after them. One woman said that it is very unfortunate that tickets are always given to the rich. Nobody from their community are given ticket to contest. Therefore, they always remained backward and deprived. One old woman sarcastically said, ‘that the Panchayat members often maintained, there are no poor people in our village. That meant we all are rich, so we are not given any facilities which are provided by the government. But there existed a very pathetic condition in their village. That is why, this time we decided not to vote’. She lamented that the previous members of the Gaon Panchayat won because villagers helped them. After winning, they had no time for the people. They were only busy in making their own profit; kutcha houses of the Panchayat members became concrete buildings after the elections; and their kin and relatives benefitted from all the schemes instead of the poor. She said that Panchayat elections are totally dependent on us and in a real sense, Panchayat is our own government. We have no rights or control in Parliament or Assembly. But we have a right to make a good Panchayat committee, which can help the poor and work for the betterment of the villages.

5.10 Voting for Whom? People vote for various reasons. It is evident from the study that the most important factors is to prove and retain their Indian citizenship; thus, polling percentage in Sonitpur District is normally about 90%. Usually this does not happen in other parts of the country. It is largely because of fear propaganda by brokers that those who would not vote for one or two specific parties, they will lose their citizenship status. Mostly marginalized people during the time of elections form various small groups to interact with the middlemen or brokers (Das, 2018). Regarding the development of their region, people have certain expectations from the newly elected MLA. Napam and Panchmile regions are badly affected by flood caused by the Jiya Bhoroli River. So, their main demand is proper embankment on the river. Severe socio-economic problems are exacerbated due to flood. They, therefore, demanded rehabilitation of the flood victims, additionally they expect that corruption in the Gaon Panchayat should be checked. Muslims considered themselves forming a minority community. Thus, there is always a fear that if they do not cast their vote they would be branded as D-voters and that they would have to prove their Indian citizenship. People in this area are also judged by their outfit dress. ‘If you wear a white cap, a lungi and speak Bangla (Mymensinghia) then you must be an illegal Bangladeshi. People do not know that we are settled here for generations. The

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masjid (mosque) here in Panchmile is 100 years old’ (Das, 2018). Thus, there has been a continuous concerns among various communities to assert citizenship and belongingness in the region, which is also visible across ideologies and praxis of voting as a performance and an integration of conflictive communities. It has been observed that different elections have different social meanings and specific connotations for the local people. Though people consider Parliamentary and Assembly election as significant, for them the Panchayat elections are more crucial. It is the unit of grassroots-level governance where people have access to it on regular basis. The trajectory of unknown to the known in terms of familiarity and acquaintance is observed in the different types of elections. The Parliamentary and Assembly elections are distant to them, whereas Panchayat election is closer as most of the candidates belong to their own locality or community. So, voters connect more with the Panchayat election as part of the ‘we feeling’ and consider the PRIs as part of their own governance structure. This remains the trope of political practice whereby a marginalized community is located within the frontiers of support and guarantee to claim more votes than the actualization of equality and social justice. Votes manifest the symbolic borders of wealth for the political actors, which is transient, dynamic, deterministic as well as problematic.

Chapter 6

Corporatization of the State in the Neoliberal Era

Neoliberalism, according to activist Monbiot (2016), is the root of all the present-day problems that afflicts us. It is not a mere economic problem of transnational scale but is also the source of moral crisis of our times. Anti-neoliberal activists argue that this is a system that feeds on moral injustice—a highly problematic system that the world needs to overcome sooner than later. But why does neoliberalism get so much traction, or how did this become an all-pervasive economic worldview in the first place? An answer to this question could be because no other force comes close to cause dissolution of the state in such a covert manner than neoliberalism does. However, a quick look at its intellectual history tells us that neoliberalism has traded places several times to reach its current form. According to Birch (2019), the first appearance of the term can be ascribed to an 1884 article by R. A. Armstrong in The Modern Review. It is interesting to note that in Armstrong’s usage, neoliberalism carried a complete opposite meaning to its current form—it was a statist idea that promoted state intervention in the economy. From then on, the world saw two destructive wars, foreign meddling in Latin America, the bloodbath in Vietnam, the reign of Thatcherite thought, liberalization in Asian economies, the financial crisis of 2008, and many other momentous events to reach the present moment of global right-wing populism. Neoliberalism took on its pejorative form only in the 1980s when the Chicago School Economists, most notably Milton Friedman, took on the mantle of its intellectual guardians.

6.1 Neoliberal Governmentality: Blurred Distinction Between State and Market If one looks at the idea of neoliberalism, it can be traced to the works of Adam Smith. The idea of neoliberalism is considered to have first sprouted in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (2003), where it was argued that if there were no restrictions on economic transactions, i.e. laissez-faire model, the wealth of nations would increase. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Das, Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5110-7_6

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Classical economists like Smith considered market as efficient means for producing and distributing goods. In contrast, neoliberals consider markets morally good in themselves. Liberalism acknowledges individuals’ freedom, whereas neoliberalism prefers markets and individuals who choose freely (Prechel, 2007). Presently various countries try to promote capitalism in tandem with neoliberal policies which in turn affect the two vital social sectors such as education and health. To contextualize the effect of neoliberal policies in the field of education, it is apt to recount the case of a 14-year-old respondent Jahangir Alam from the Amolapam village. He dropped out of school after seventh standard. Jahangir runs a small shop and informed that his brother and sisters are continuing their schooling from a government school. Though he had dropped out of school, he feels that private schools are much better in terms of facilities and their uniform too fascinates him. The young respondent expressed his desire to join a private school for his higher secondary education if he passed class 10th with a good percentage. When probed as to how he intendeds to complete his education till 10th standard, he informed hesitantly that his father admitted him to Dirajaan Madrasa, where along with religious studies they could also complete general school education. Like him, many others too go to such Madrasas. Some of them had joined it voluntarily even if they are not school dropouts. He has a strong belief that private education is better but at the same time, he maintains that if facilities like Tezpur University, which is a public university, were provided in the government schools, then even government run institutions would be much better than the existing ones. Maloti Das, a teacher in a kindergarten school, shared that people from lower income groups are mainly forced to send their wards to government schools. According to her, as far as higher education is concerned, students prefer government colleges as fees are much less and institutes are well known. At the primary level, the government education system is in a bad shape and need an overhaul. The respondent also passed out from a government school and during their time, there was hardly any option for the private schools. Though she does not have any children yet, among her relatives all the children are going to private schools. She mentions that Kendriya Vidayalayas1 are doing well, but admission to these schools is restricted to a selected few. According to her, government education system should have been better, but sadly the case is not so. As the foundation of primary education system is in a ramshackle state, it is allowing the private education system to gain an upper hand. The growing demand for Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) curriculum among the students placed government schools in a tight spot as they still follow state board syllabus. The respondent did not express her confidence on either Sarba Shikshya Abhiyaan or Mid-day Meal Scheme, she questions the reliability of the officials who implement these plans, and cited examples of Maharashtra where many children fell ill by consuming adulterated food offered as a part of the Mid-day Meal Scheme.

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Also known as Central Schools which are part of an Indian school system and function under Government of India.

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In another instance, Hira Saikia, aged 23, hails from the Assamese community. He is a private security guard by profession from the Napam village. He shared that his family preferred to educate girls as they felt girl children need to be empowered. Both he and his sisters were sent to government schools as the expenditure was less. He feels that government education system could be better if necessary facilities are provided. Private schools are doing better as they have competent teachers and better infrastructure. But on the other hand, the fees at private schools are very high and many people cannot afford to send their wards to private institutions. He also informed that in government institutions, some financial help is also given to good students to complete their education. He would prefer to send his children or relatives to government institutions at the primary level but for higher education, if need arises, private institutions could be an option. Even if money was not a cause of concern, he and his family would still prefer government schools for primary education. He was aware of policies like Sarba Shikshya Abhiyaan and Mid-day Meal Schemes. On the other side, neoliberals are opposed to any common good that could be pursued by the state. It rather focusses on ‘freedom’ that exist with absence of coercion, which is to comprehend as relational to rule of law. Therefore, a neoliberal state is considered a nomocratic state being devoted to fulfilments of private ends with no interest in common ends. ‘(T)he neoliberal concept of governance as a minimal state conveys a preference for less government. According to many social scientists, the neoliberal reforms fragmented service delivery and weakened central control without establishing proper markets. In their view, the reforms have led to a proliferation of policy networks in both the formulation of public policy and the delivery of public services’ (Bevir, 2010, 31). State tends to reduce or withdraw welfare schemes from the public domain and markets start playing an important role in developing world. Plant (2010) understands neoliberalism as a political, legal and economic doctrine. He gives detailed analysis of the neoliberal understanding of freedom, justice and bureaucracy. According to Plant (2010), neoliberals are aware of the possibilities of bureaucracies rising along with welfare state being built in the interest of social justice. This garners risk of undesirable features to pop out. With aim of the bureaucrats to maximize size of their bureau, the bureaucrats’ could magnify on expanding any particular welfare aspect of health, security, etc. The welfare states, on the above backdrop, possess the likelihood to expand, and if successful, there clearly emerges the pertinent distributive question of sharing scarce resources. The residual and the social democrat, both types of welfare state, lay at risk of falling out, if distributive politics fall out of the law. Therefore, the argument here stands for discretionary power to settle at the heart of the government because any deviation from improper sharing of scare resources is contrary to law. In neoliberal view, the objectivity of basic needs is deceptive because the needs are not objective and cannot be privatized. The neoliberals argue that health, education or any other service that falls within the realm of welfare has no objective line as in where it has to end, so the neoliberals cannot set the limit and privatize it. Neoliberalism advocates that a planned society means imposition of a particular service of certain values in society and this has severe implication for personal liberty. In similar line, a

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planned economy would be coercive because it prevents individuals from doing what they would otherwise do to carry on with their plan. In a similar sense, neoliberals have a negative attitude towards the interest groups. And all the argument against planned economy is an argument in favour of free market. Neoliberals have deployed many arguments against historically important shift in the understanding of the nature of freedom.2 The major argument of neoliberals is the institutionalization of private capital accumulation, production and consumption. Harvey, echoing this, argues that the neoliberal state favours strong individual property and free functioning of the market. Private enterprise and entrepreneurial initiatives are seen as keys to wealth creation, and it is only through free market and free trade that there could be elimination of the poverty. But while personal and individual freedom in marketplace is guaranteed, each individual is held responsible and accountable for his or her own actions and well-being. And this principle extends to realms of welfare like educational welfare (Harvey, 2005). Neoliberalism is, therefore, a mechanism of private accumulation of capital and not an agenda of economic prosperity for public interest. It dismantles welfare states and privatizes public services. Neoliberal political rationality, on an important note, stands more as a market rationality, diffusing economic disparities everywhere. Its governance and social cannot be contended to be falling off from economic leakage to other spheres. While neoliberalism has not taken the limelight amidst contemporary discussion on anti-capitalism, anti-globalization or anti-imperialism, there are oppositions against neoliberalism. For example, Bourdieu (1998, 7) argues that neoliberalism occupying its position within the state, and if not prevented from its stance, could possibly jeopardize the marginalized sections of the population. Bourdieu is apprehensive and critical on the stand of intellectuals on neoliberalism, where the latter has favoured withdrawal of state, and subjected themselves to values of the economy. Bourdieu points out that the discourse of neoliberalism is very strong unlike other discourses. It is strong and hard to fight because other powers of a world of power relations help it. He calls neoliberalism ‘a programme of methodical destruction of collectives’ (Ibid, 95). Neoliberal ideology creates circumstances conducive to the state’s withdrawal from its duty towards the citizen. Instead of performing its duty, the state surrenders to market forces and gives more value to the economy, which is not concerned about societal conditions. Then the idea of neoliberalism is embedded in the soul of the state. He affirms ‘neoliberal utopia [is] embodied in the reality’ (Ibid, 100). So, a deconstruction of such utopia needs to be taken into account through a ‘how’ rather than a ‘what‘ equation, while trying to analyse the other domineering purviews where the dividing lines between Global North and Global South operates within the logical manifestations of neoliberalism. As a deeming necessary to rethink on the operational definition of ‘neoliberalism’, as a concept, it is very broad and vague. Harman’s contribution makes a case. Harman points out the ambiguity of the term ‘neoliberal’; he asserts that the question about neoliberalism is not easy to

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For a more detailed discussion on this issue, please refer to Plant (2010).

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answer and defines it as an ideology that is a new form of liberalism. In its continental European sense, it means ‘free market economics’ (Harman, 2007).

6.2 Neoliberal Governmentality Neoliberalism, if deployed as a form of social governmentality, acquires a dynamic meaning. Its role has to be considered when it prioritizes citizens, education and health, at various levels. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (2009), governmentality refers to the complex set of processes through which human behaviour is systematically controlled across the wider areas of social and personal life. The concept of governmentality was introduced by Michel Foucault as a more refined way of understanding earlier idea of power/knowledge. The significant characteristic of governmentality stressed by Foucault is the prominence of disciplinary power over other kinds of social power which we can call government. He calls this as the governmentalization of the state (Dean, 2010). A description of this framework can be found in Chapter 2. It is a form of authoritarian control which combines two forms of power: the sovereign powers of command and productive and the disciplinary powers. The sovereign power is the repressive power which is the coercive structure of exclusion, repression and punishment. Modern states are concerned with ensuring their sovereignty, and it is done with sovereignty over a territory and management of its population which Foucault calls as bio politics. It is a form of governmentality that is premised on the active consent and subjugation of the subjects where the social, cultural, economic and political dimensions and the physical biomass of the society turn into a primary object of intervention. Thus, neoliberal governments are an active intruder into the personal and the social life of the subjects. It constantly keeps a ‘panoptican’ (Foucault, 2008); gaze over its population. Thus, governmentality is a constant control over security, territory and population (Burchell et al., 1991). Brown (2005) argues, the concern of neoliberal rationality is not only market, but also it seeks to extend its influence over various social institutions and tries to influence social action. Neoliberalism through a powerful discourse tries to inflict its market rationale in all the spheres of social life. Therefore, such behaviour based on economic rationale is naturalized. Brown goes on to say that the state caters to the needs of the market by formulating policies in favour of the market. Therefore, the market is not controlled by the state rather it is the other way round and the state is controlled by the market. Indramamul Haq is a 17-year-old enthusiastic boy, preparing for his school final examinations informs that in his house, all the children are sent to school and that in terms of education, his sisters did not face any kind of discrimination. Just like his brothers, they also go to the government schools. On being questioned about his opinion regarding government schools, he states that fewer students go there as the schools are in a bad shape. He narrates that his siblings go to a school where there

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is no provision of electricity and hence no question of availability of fan. During summers, they somehow managed classes and most students stayed away from the school. He opines that education in private schools and colleges is better as they have good facilities, the students conversewell in English and look smarter. It can be deciphered that ‘English’ language seems to be marker of social status for many, which they seek to associate with the well-furnished private schools. But he also points out that everyone could not afford to send their children to private schools. Fascinatingly, the respondent himself goes to a private school and informed that he is better in academics compared to his siblings, and hence, his father decided to send him to a private school hoping he will do even better by availing the requisite facilities. On the question as to whether his father would send his sister to a private school if his sister too did well in studies, he replied that now his family could afford the expenses of his schooling only in a private school. So, ‘gendered’ behaviour and practices might intervene into determining and legitimizing the male children of the family to perform the role of a catalyst of social mobility. Abhishek Thakur, aged 40, hails from a Bihari community in Napam village. Engaged in a clerical post under the central government, Thakur stated that he preferred to send his children to the private schools for education up to the higher secondary level. Depending on the subject of study, he would not mind sending them to government institutions as well. Though he himself completed his education from government institutions, he had put his children in private schools. He says that in this modern age, it would be foolish to differentiate between a boy and girl and opines, irrespective of gender both ought to get equal opportunity for continuing their studies. He has two sons and has not seen any discrimination between boys and girls in his family. According to Thakur, private schools fared much better, for government schools are plagued with corruption and lacklustre attitude of the authorities. On the other hand, private institutes have a good work culture and a better infrastructure. They have a comparative edge over government schools. He made a significant point that government schools in Assam follows state board syllabus. But many prefer to send their children to CBSE and ICSE curriculum-based schools which would help them to do better in various competitive exams in future. But those who are financially not well off have little alternative or option but to send their children to government schools. He, however, felt that at the level of higher education, government institutions have done better and is a boon for all. Thakur was sceptical about the government schemes like Sarba Shikshya Abhiyaan and Mid-day Meal. He has come across many reports of the lapses in the implementation of these schemes which is a cause of concern. After all, it is a matter related to children. Sukumar, a gardener by profession aged 40 hails from Bengali Hindu community. He informs that common cold, stomach ailments, fever and cough frequently affect his family, and that they do nothing extra in the name of health care, except that of maintaining the general cleanliness of the house and consuming boiled water. For prenatal and postnatal health care, he takes his wife and child to government centres as he has to pay the cost of the medicine only. Similarly, for childcare too, they rely on government facilities for vaccinations, etc. On being questioned what kind of diseases can be treated under government healthcare schemes, he says that

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he had only taken his child to the government hospital and when it comes to the elders, he prefers availing private healthcare facilities. He opines that government healthcare establishment is both good and bad. On the question of assistance from the government, he mentions about the ASHA, that served as an agency of the government, who helped the women of his house. Otherwise, he goes to private health care, as treatment is much better, and behaviour of the staff is good. He did not care about the ongoing government healthcare schemes because he felt more secure availing the private health care. In affirmation to his believe, he narrated about an incident that had taken place in their village few years back wherein many children fell ill after consuming medicines that was given by the government healthcare units. He believes that the medicines were given to children without verifying the expiry date. For him, money is not important than the life of a human. Observing the growing nexus between the state and the market, Ferguson and Gupta (2002) studied Anganwadi centre and shows how higher officials feel the presence of the state at the time of inspections and visits. It is worthwhile to note that not only the presence of the state felt by the sudden visits but also through the way welfare measures like education health have been twisted and turned for their own benefit. For example, Baru and Nundy (2008) argue that the partnerships between the private and public have broken the traditional boundaries between the state and the market leading to the emergence of multiple roles and multiple actors. Thus, this led to governance and control of welfare services. Therefore, neoliberalism and governmentality feed upon each other and thus producing and reproducing each other. In a similar context, Clarke (2003) questions the role of the nation states, national governments and their public spending programs including social welfare because, first, there seems to be a clear corporate capital accumulation where the corporate have articulated a clear business environment with low tax, low regulation, low cost, low risk, labour and, second, such concerns have installed ‘global economic wisdom’ by supranational organizations and agencies like International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization. Their policies have tended to reinforce a vision of minimalist or laissez-faire government centred on reducing levels of taxation and public spending. Therefore, this kind of behaviour of the state may be called as ’corporatization of the state’. In its usual sense, corporatization refers to the transformation of the state resources or agencies into corporations to introduce corporate management techniques to their administration. But I use ‘corporatization’ to describe the process through which the state acquires the characteristics and essence of corporations. In this neoliberal era in India, we can see certain revolutionary changes in the non-corporate establishments like universities and hospitals, acquiring structures, features and behaviours like that of the corporations. As the state comes up with various developmental projects under the influence of corporations, MNCs and TNCs, it tries to manufacture the consent of a large section of the people as part of the nation-building process. However, it mainly ignores the indigenous people who inhabit those areas where the developmental projects are being executed. Indigenous communities are often denied access to the media and the political or decision-making processes. They are certainly posed

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unheard, the neoliberal agenda and corporatization have a close link. These two leads to the privatization of the state’s various welfare services. As Bevir argues, ‘(T)he neoliberal reforms had two main strands: marketization and NPM. The most extreme form of marketization is privatization, the transfer of assets from the state to the private sector. Hereafter, the state takes little or no responsibility for providing the relevant goods or services to citizens’ (Bevir, 2010, 10).

6.3 Neoliberalism in India: An Uncomfortable Trajectory A closer look at government’s policies during last two decades tells us that the relationship between the Indian state and neoliberalism is complicated and not so clearly defined. The central tenets of neoliberalism, namely advocating for free markets, deregulation of the economy and limiting the role of the state, have to be looked at as ideal types. How close a state chooses to align itself, or if it even wishes to, with these ideal types depends on specific political, social and economic contexts. Thus, the origins of neoliberal thought in India have to be traced to sense the issue prevailing on the ground. Emerging fresh out of a long fought and divisive independence struggle, the Congress party was placed right in the middle of a predicament. It had to shoulder the responsibility of reforming India in its own image while maintaining popular support (Chacko, 2018). The Nehruvian project failed in its attempt to distribute the benefits of industrial and economic growth to the masses as the bureaucratic establishment who was delegated the role of managing the agenda of reform helped the urban groups and the rural elite to cling on to its power. As Sen (2005, 213) states, ‘in this context [postindependence Nehruvian era], it is particularly remarkable that India has continued to amass extraordinarily large stocks of food grain in the central government’s reserve, without finding good use for them. In 1998 [close to neoliberal modernization] the stock was around 18 million tonnes—close to the official buffer stock norms’. This led to a crisis of endemic hunger, even if drastic situations such as famines have been curtailed. The Green Revolution which coincided with Indira Gandhi’s ascent to power changed the dynamics of development to a heavily centred agrarian scenario. Industrialization came to be controlled by the state using the framework of import-substitution. It was a measure tied to agrarian populism. Aggressive nationalization of industries and banks was pursued during this period. However, in the late 1970s, the global fuel price hike because of the oil embargo, rising inflation and problems in managing the welfare agenda saw the Indian state acquiesce to the first seedings of liberalization. When the Rajiv Gandhi became a prime minister, his government initiated the easing of the private sector and access to credits, introduced tax cuts for corporations for the first time and slowly dismantled the walls that obstructed import (Chacko, 2018). In the name of efficiency and productivity, the present NDA government in India also aligned itself with the policies of previous UPA government and started privatizing most of the public sectors such as banks, railway, airlines etc.

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However, it must be clarified here that growth in the service sector did not mean that it benefitted the domestic sector as equally as its global counterpart. The fact that the informal labour market occupies the highest share in the Indian economy can be attributed to the outward-looking expansion of services and manufacturing. Although agricultural subsidies continued, rural investment fell compared to previous measures, and welfare schemes became more targeted in its reach. All of these factors combined in a way that made growth uneven, which led to increasing inequality. But high GDP growth made it seem that the economy was robust and dynamic to the political elites. It gave birth to a regime of neoliberal-like governance that was preparing the ground for the ‘market orientation of policy’ (Jenkins, 2003). Aihwa Ong argues that neoliberalism does not just exist with capital (Münster & Strümpell, 2014). But it can coexist with other forms of political subjectivities. For e.g., the UPA regime’s agenda of ‘inclusive growth’ sought to cover up for accelerating neoliberal reforms while keeping the side-effects of neoliberalization in check through the creation of new welfare programmes like the National Food Security Act, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, etc. Similarly, after the NDA came to power, it announced a slew of radical measures like demonetization and the Goods and Service Tax (GST) reforms. The GST push was meant to formalize the economic structure of the country, by moving away from an informal economy to a formal economy. What it did was pit the crores of selfemployed small shop-owners, traders and goods producers directly against the big corporates that were bound in an organizational structure and the unorganized sector had to lay off millions of workers to account for the loss of manufacturing revenue. There have been other developments that facilitated the boom of e-commerce and consumption-driven activity in the country. The Indian government fiddles with the concept of neoliberalism as and when it chooses to, because it also cares about the optics of its agenda of economic nationalism. The allure of privatization has also not come to grip the country’s imagination in a true manner, because more than privatization of government assets, the state is more enthused by the option of ‘disinvestment’. Some have observed that it proves their doubts on the unholy nexus between crony capitalism and neoliberalism in India, which has grown in proportions during the last few years. In that case, how to reconcile the fact that the very same government has also erected walls to bolster trade protectionism? Here, it is seen that India follows the political principles of ‘neoliberal exceptions’ (Münster & Strümpell, 2014). In an interesting turn to reinforce the presence of Dalit communities in the sphere of market, Dalit Capitalism marked its presence in the competitive space of capitalism with the help from Dalit entrepreneurs. But its viability and future growth will depend on the equal space provided by the global market (Das, 2021e). If Dalit capitalism succeeds in the long run, then a new kind of capitalism may emerge which could challenge the existing structure and practice of conventional capitalism. Multiple sets of interpretations of the state formation have emerged or been established in the past decades such as post-colonial state, the developmental state, the bureaucratic state and the welfare state. However, a globally standardized state model—the neoliberal state—has emerged during the early 1980s; this has replaced the diversity mentioned previously. The neoliberal state is also referred as the minimal

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state, surveillance state, managerial state, etc. The minimalist tendencies of the state for example in the Asian nations can be gauged from the fact that it tends to extend support to other private sectors with regard to the finance, investment, marketing and negotiation. Corporatization of the state in the neoliberal era could be understood by emphasizing how neoliberal state often adopts an anti-welfare position. Striking examples in ‘developing’ nations can be recalled where welfare rights of citizens are attempted for abolishing in terms of economic security, health services, and educational facilities. Moreover, attempts at sidelining anti-poverty programs or withdrawing food or agricultural subsidies in poverty-stricken nations of the African continent are examples of anti-welfarism. India also could not escape the brunt. The northeastern part of the country, with instances from Assam, depict the loss of faith in welfare measures pertaining to education and healthcare facilities. Salema Begum who is a mother of three children states that education is very important. Her children go to government school. She wants her daughter to pursue higher education. Furthermore, she opines that it was a matter of pride for them that they managed to send all their children to the government school. On being probed about her view about government schools, she says that fewer students go there as the schools were truly in a dilapidated state. But people who do not have the resource to send their wards to private schools. If money was not a factor, then she would send her children to private schools. She assumes that private schools are better than government schools and Sarba Shikshya Abhiyan was a good scheme but was not aware whether it was implemented well. Mid-day Meal Scheme, according to her, is also a good scheme as it helps families who could not provide good food to their children. Furthermore, another respondent, a small-time businessman by profession, 31year-old, Abdul Rafiq, clearly states that income is very important to decide on whether to send the wards to government or private schools. Sending children to private school is an expensive affair which he can not afford. In an interesting instant, he stated that private jobs are not secure, and the working condition is also very oppressive. He hopes that education of his children in government school would help them get government jobs eventually. So, a legacy of occupational achievements in government sectors and (in)security of jobs in private sector for people belonging to the lower-income families could be observed. In the Indian context, government jobs hold a distinct position of power, identity, morality and even sanctity. In a more in-depth exploration of the respondent’s narratives, he believes that education is a must these days so that no one could demean anyone and also prayed that his children could graduate from the university. If money is not a concern, he would still prefer to weigh which education system is better between the government and the private and then take a decision as to where he would send his children. He feels that government education system is better. He does not have any awareness about various government education schemes but knows that Anganwadi centres and lower primary schools provide lunch to the school going children. Therefore, Anganwadi’s centres or Mid-day Meals are crucial to bring people to school and continue their schooling. However, that has not been enough to improve on the quality of education.

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Consequently, looking into other couple of factors, Shiv Prasad, a 19-year-old student of the junior college in Panchmile, proudly says, both he and his brother have been pursuing their studies well despite financial difficulties. He does not have a sister of his own but thought that his parents would not discriminate between them in case he had a sister. When asked about his view regarding government schools, he explains that fewer students go there as the schools are in a declining state. He too faced many difficulties as a small child in school. They did not even have proper drinking water facilities and sitting without a fan in class during peak summers. Therefore, many a times, they stayed away from schools during those times. He hopes that even government schools could come at par with private ones so that children from poorer families also get similar opportunities. Leela Chetry, a 45-year-old woman and mother of two, says that her priority is to provide good education to her children and since they could afford, they send their children to private school. She herself could complete her schooling and hence by all means wanted her children to be educated. According to her, the state government should invest more money for the development of education. She states that the private educational institutions had stricter norms and so things were in-order. Therefore, in current times, private education system is better than that of the government ones. She opines that at present, people are aware about the importance of education. She has two daughters and whole heartedly wants them to do better than boys. If both government and private educational institutions are at par, then she would send her children to government schools. After all, these services are meant for the public and if they do not use them, then who would do that. The respondents are aware of both the schemes—Sarba Shikshya Abhiyaan and Mid-day Meals and certainly feel these as viable plans. But constant reports about children falling ill after consuming poor quality food make her apprehensive. There persists a covert contestation between governmental ‘misregulations’ and gradual shift and drift of the people towards privatization in practices and consciousness. An undergraduate student, Sangeeta Rana, strongly believes that any government plan such as the Sarba Shikshya Abhiyan or Mid-day Meal Scheme or any other schemes for that matter cannot be trustworthy as they are afflicted with corruption. She feels that people do discriminate between girls and boys in terms of sending them to school, though she never faced any such problem and passed out from a government school. Private education system is better than government. They focus on giving quality and holistic education to the students whereas government schools do not maintain the teacher student ratio. Education has become so important in the present times that people have no option but to send their children to government schools even if the condition of the schools are not worthy. Given a scenario where government and private educational institutions are at par, then government schools would be a better option. After all, many government institutions in the field of higher education have done very well. It is evident from the people’s opinion that if the welfare schemes related to school education such as Sarva Shikshya Abhiyan and Mid-day Meal Scheme work properly, people would prefer government schools. But the government has failed to improve the quality of education at the primary level. There has not been enough

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interest and investments to develop the government schools. People are apprehensive about the government establishments and showed lack of trust in government run educational institutions. Income has a direct influence on the choice of schools for children as well. Generally, it is seen that people would prefer private education to government one if their income is not a constraint. This is due to the neglected state of educational infrastructures and quality. The case of 14-year-old respondent Jahangir Alam is noteworthy who perceives that private education is better than government education. Such examples substantiates that the state has failed to provide necessary welfare support to strengthen the basic education systems. Interestingly, the villagers advocated the case of improving government education which is more accessible to them. They also feel that government education at higher levels is much better in terms of quality. It may therefore be inferred that people’s opinion and choice for private education services stems more out of compulsion arising out of the crumbling state of public education. Another important feature to correlate a neoliberal state with a corporate state is the idea of how a neoliberal state imitates business management. For example, most developing countries have replaced the state’s developmental goals—e.g. nationbuilding, social progress, and human development—with more business-like objectives such as efficiency, productivity and economic growth (Walton & Seddon, 1994). In doing so and moving/diverging towards vested self/private interests, important social sectors like health and education have also increasingly been pushed towards the corporate frame of functioning. In the sphere of education, we can see how the rapidly visible demise of public education is enabling us to understand neoliberalism and its complex cards which hover in directions often known or unknown. Under neoliberalism, education no longer ‘majorly’ remained a ‘public’ good. To understand the concept of public good, we need to first understand the underlying principles of public education, the first and foremost of which is the inherent relation between public education and freedom. As education increasingly gets corporatized and mainstreamed into a money-driven business, the idea of providing quality and student-focused education gets hampered. In the early 2000s, public sector ‘underfunding’ and privatization as well as announcement of the second National Health Policy of India were the important developments in terms of ideas and achievements. This is the central approach of neoliberalism. A report titled ‘Better Health Systems for India’s poor’(2002) published by the World Bank highlights the need to promote the private sector in the country so that it can take better advantage of the capacity of the private sector and deliver better service and outcomes across diverse socio-economic groups. The idea of ‘marketizing’ the healthcare sector as harmless became popular as since the public system has largely been inefficient in meeting the healthcare needs of the population. The following evidences from the field demonstrate the condition of government health facility. Thirty-year-old Babita, belonging to the Bihari community who is a mother of three children informs that the common illness are cold, stomach ailments, fever and cough. For all the kinds of health issues they prefer to avail a government healthcare service that includes pre-natal and post-natal care as they could not afford to pay

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the fees at private health clinics. Even for childcare, they opt for government health care, nearest one being at the Panchmile Health Centre, information of which they get from the local ASHA. Despite her elder son suffering from persistent ailments like dysentery, she would purchase medicine from the local pharmacy and visit the PHC only if he was seriously ill. She could not afford to take her son to the government civil hospital in Tezpur town and prefers to use the cost of transportation to purchase medicines from the pharmacy. Because of inadequate government infrastructure on health, they rely on private services. They are not able to afford the private health services. Only her youngest child was born in a government hospital; her elder children were born at home, which reduced their expenditure on childbirth. Vaccination for the children had been administered in the government hospitals. She has no information about any government healthcare scheme except that of the ASHA. She believes that if free medical aid are offered, that would be a boon for families like hers. Bengali-speaking Rashmi Karmakar, 25-year-old and mother of three, presented a rather different picture from all other respondents. She is ignorant of the idea of anything called health care and she feeds her family usual dal (lentil), rice, and the bare minimum that they could afford. She gave birth to all her three children at home with the help of a midwife who came from Solmara. Since her first delivery was successful at home, she felt no need of doctor’s aid or hospitalizations and the story remained the same during all her pregnancies. She was not aware of ASHA but upon hearing from her neighbours, she took her children for vaccination to government hospitals. On being questioned about her preference between the government and the private healthcare centres, she says that her days are spent thinking about the survival of her family each day, doctor and health schemes are the last thing on her mind. If any aid comes her way, she would gladly accept it.

6.4 Neoliberal Governmentality in the Context of India In this section, I intend to see the co relation between development, neoliberal ideology and governmentality in the Indian context with special reference to welfare parameters like health and education. Developmental ideology, neoliberal thoughts and governance of the state are interrelated. The process of development in India has to be mentioned if one aims to understand the way in which the Indian state has changed from post-independence period to post-liberalism period. It becomes all the more important and interesting in the Indian context because of the nature of the Indian society. It is a non-homogenous and stratified society. Thus, definitely, the impacts of development are differently felt by different sections of the society. This differential impact is accentuated by the advent of neoliberal policies. It is seen that the neoliberalism favours only a certain section of the society as it is known for private capital accumulation rather than working as a private welfare mechanism. Thus, when neoliberalism works to implement development strategies for developing the conditions of the underdeveloped with the funding

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from the international monetary organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank, etc., it creates a kind of governance and gaze in the lives of the poorer section of the society. A mechanism of control and surveillance develops in relation to the welfare schemes like health care, education, women empowerment, etc. The mechanism of welfare schemes create its own form of governance with two combined aspects: welfare and surveillance. Reclining on Sen’s (1999) idealization that development primarily means freedom, and freedom in its principle means, a connection of the ideas of international bodies, democracy, governance and development. This also constitutes his broader view of development where man will garner self-fulfilling potentials, and being primarily an engine of change, enhance clean democracy and protect human rights.

6.5 In the Name of Good Governance In the first two chapters, I have discussed the idea of good governance as devised by the multilateral organizations like WB and IMF. The politics of good governance is very deceptive. One has to look very cautiously not to miss the nuances of the matter. In the name of good governance, it is seen that various development agencies are trying to penetrate into the grassroots-level development activities. At times, they are trying to either replace state’s responsibilities or influence it by suggesting that CSOs and NGOs are more efficient than the agencies of the state. In the last few years in India, one can see the rise of a strong anti-corruption movement. Even large numbers of people from middle class are joining the movement. If one looks at the issue carefully, it reveals less and it hides more. Most of the movements are not durable as they do not come from strong class association in terms of fighting for a cause. Again, in general, people think that big monetary irregularities are the only form of corruption. Roy (2011) argues that there are major problems with this kind of anti-corruption movement. If one looks at the kind of movement initiated in the name of civil society in India, it will be very clear as to how people who lead the anti-corruption movement somehow are related to various NGOs. Many of these NGOs receive funds from Ford foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and WB. Roy reveals anticorruption movement led by Anna Hazare on behalf of India Against Corruption (IAC) and his team is basically an NGO-driven movement.3 She suggests, if one has to find real understanding of issues than one has to look at the history of different movements in India. History is immanent in any kind of social processes and by ignoring history, one cannot get into the core of the issue. The culture of a nation and symbols used in mobilizing people can reveal the motives behind any movement or mobilization.

3

accessed 16th August 2018 interviewed on 30th August 2011 on CNN-IBN.

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Careful reading of the IAC movement and the people involved in it will give the reader an interesting trajectory. The idea of good governance and decentralized planning is in a subtle way product of the neoliberal agenda. It aims to depoliticize the local-level politics in the name of good governance so that the international financial capital and vested interests can enter into the field. As Roy argues, WB report talks about 600 anticorruption programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa region. The moot question is why the World Bank is interested in anti-corruption programmes in the developing world. Roy emphasizes broadly on five points. These are: increasing political accountability, strengthening civil society participation, creating competitive private sector, instituting restraints on power and improving public sector management. WB is trying to facilitate the penetration of international capital. One, therefore, has to interrogate the whole idea of corruption. The perception of corruption also varies across different communities and classes (Roy, 2011). For example, the living space and livelihood of a huge number of people in India do not come under the legal framework. Corruption at different levels (police, municipality officials, etc.) helps them make earning for hand to mouth living. The anti-corruption law is bound to the legal framework. The million of slum dwellers, petty roadside sellers, street venders, etc., will not come under the purview of this law. She raises a question as to why this law is allowed to leave out corporate houses, NGOs and media houses from its purview while any law should address the inequalities in the society. In one context, she talks of Anna Hazare going to a private hospital after his fast. A private hospital symbolizes the withdrawal of healthcare facility by the state. There is a huge influence of corporates over the contemporary state, as can be seen from many scams in recent times. Due to the unholy nexus between corporation and state, the government is losing lot of revenue and public fund. Partial structure of the state is becoming like corporations. State tries to mould itself like corporations. Person like Chandra Babu Naidu, ex-chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, was portrayed as CEO of Andhra Pradesh. State has not withdrawn itself totally from the activities of welfare governance. Sometimes, it implements certain schemes like MGNREGA and NRHM to gain legitimacy among the people. But the state is also active in repressing people’s movement in many tribal areas of India wherein the big corporate is looking for exploiting the rich natural resources against the wishes of the tribal people. Influenced by Nehruvian ideology, development has been the magical formula of post-independence India. It has always been seen as the answer to all the socioeconomic challenges that India was facing since independence. This development is, however, a double-edged sword: as few have gained from development at the cost of the masses. This has occurred mainly as these developmental projects were generated and executed in a top down approach without taking into consideration the specificities of the local areas. As a result, the poor, marginal people lose their living habitats and traditional sources of livelihood like land, water and forest. Thus, in the current trend of development, poor are becoming poorer, farmers are becoming landless, tribal are losing their forest rights and common property resources and, above all, when people are not left with any alternative sources of livelihood, then

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question of doubt obviously arises about the present development model and its promise to bring about a better society. Such developmental projects are being implemented in various tribal areas of India. One may cite the examples of the Lanjigarh bauxite mining in Orissa and Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Power Project in Arunachal Pradesh. Both the cases are special as indigenous endangered tribal groups inhabit these places. Tribal people in Lanjigarh region worship the mountain as Niyam Raja, i.e. King of Law. Forests and the mountains form integral parts of their religious belief system. For them, it was their religion and claim that even if they die, they will not leave the place. However, there are very few Dongria Kondhs left; if mining comes, their identity may disappear from this world forever (Das, 2014). Various international financial organizations in most of the cases have funded such ‘developmental projects’. The main motive of such projects appears to be the control of land and resources, and this control is in the form of the neoliberal governance. As the control of land or the surveillance over the life of the people is without their knowledge, it may be referred to as a kind of ‘biopolitics’, as explained by Foucault (Burchell, 1991). Thus, the underlying politics of ‘developmental projects’ and neoliberal policies both are forms of neoliberal governance. This governance is created due to the neoliberal policies that enable a certain section of the society to accumulate capital. It is producing class-based economic growth at the national scale. It shows how the coercive power of global governance institutions has worked in tandem with the interests of the local elite to produce such neoliberal changes in India (Ahmed, 2009). As this public–private partnership got stronger in the 1990s, the WB, UNDP and UNICEF became more dominant and active in its approaches. The global endorsements by the WHO and other multinational organizations of public–private partnerships have its influence on the local and national levels of planning and implementations of the healthcare policies in India. It strengthened and supported the free market that advocated a reduced role of the government in the economy. It also reduced the roll of the state in providing services to the social sectors by breaking down the traditional boundaries of the state and the market. Initially, health care was taken care of by the government with support from the NGOs. But after the 1990s, the collaboration shifted from the government and NGOs to that of the government and for-profit organizations (Baru & Nundy, 2008). From an empirical study of the public–private partnered tuberculosis programme, Baru and Nundy (2008) have found that the detection and treatment was supposed to be done by the private partners, whereas cases of referrals have to be done by the government agencies. The authors argue that the division of role and responsibility between the state and market leads to the fragmentation of the programme, which is bound to have negative impacts on the effectiveness of the programme. For example, in the Janani scheme in Bihar, the poorest groups were not taken into account as it only includes the lower and the middle-income groups who could pay a part of the expenses/prices of the private sector. Health care in Assam is very crucial as the state lags behind in this indicator. Jayesh Singh, aged 28, working in a retail outlet in Guwahati city as a sales person, says

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that he and his family members recurrently suffers from stomach ailments and fever. He and his father go for morning walks regularly while the women of the household do not follow any specific fitness regimes (it may be due to the social restrictions on women’s mobility). Another common practice they all follow is drinking plenty of water which he feels help them to stay fit. On being asked about the preference between government health services and the private services, they avail both, depending on the situation. Singh explains that for simpler, common ailments, they go to the public health centre in Panchmile, Napam, or civil hospital, Tezpur. But for more complex ailments, they prefer private doctors. For instance, his father was suffering from heart ailments and had undergone a surgery, for which the entire treatment was carried out in a private hospital in Guwahati city. Similarly, in most cases, it is seen that people chose when to go to a government health facility and when to go for private health care. The general ailments almost always make to the government hospitals, whereas the more serious ailments or child delivery requires private care. For example, Sushila Devi, a 30-year-old Nepali women, informs that women members of the house along with other male members availed government health care. However, she availed private medical service during her pregnancy. These reflections from the field enable us to understand the categorization of the neoliberal ideas in the minds of the citizens as certain kinds of facilities are only better at private healthcare facilities. This also impinges on the lack of faith in the state by the people, where the state only emerges as a governmental state. This is how neoliberalism becomes crucial as it penetrates the social sphere and creates a new mentalite about the state and society, therefore transforming welfare state into a corporate state. This argument gives base to what Migdal (1994) argues how the state impinges on society and society moulds the state. Here, it becomes important to understand as to how these various institutions like NGO, civil society and state along with other international financial institutions have changed their role in producing a state which is not weak, rather a state which has diversified and institutionalized various forms of governance in all the spheres of social life. Therefore, from the ethnographic accounts, it appears that the government policy of gradually withdrawing from the health sector seems to have disproportionately impacted rural poor. They are vulnerable to most of the common diseases. However, they are often compelled to take the help of private medical services because the public health services are either inadequate or they have no confidence in it. Even if they go for private health services out of some compulsion, they will prefer public health service if the facilities are good enough because private health service is beyond their affordability. It is also important that the lone public healthcare facility available from where the respondents were chosen is the Primary Health Centre at Panchmile area which is located at a distance of 4 kms from these villages. This government facility also caters to the need of twenty-seven more villages. This is a huge burden on the health centre which does not have the required number of doctors and other paramedics. Besides, the health centre is often short of medicine and other facilities for regular medical tests for which the people invariably have to depend on the private sector hospitals and facilities at the Tezpur Town. The government civil hospital at Tezpur

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is also inadequate in terms of its staff. Important medical instruments are either not there, or they often remain non-functional compelling people to go to the private healthcare centres while spending huge sums of money. All these have generated scepticism towards government health facilities and a newly emerging faith in the private facilities among the villagers. Interestingly, however, they would often emphasize the necessity for a good public health system which is accessible to the rural poor. Thus, neoliberal policies and reduction in the social welfare measures have facilitated the commercialization of critical social sectors like health and education. It could be analysed that the neoliberal logic also turns basic human rights (education and healthcare) as elements of conspicuous consumption. The increasing drift of people towards more privatized sectors with high end facilities and ‘shopping mall’ like gated arenas reflects not merely the ‘cultural reproduction of class inequality, it is also consciously mobilized by the elite and its spokespersons as an ideological prop for neoliberalism and market fetishism’ (Das, 2015, 717). So, adopting a critical lens, it can be envisaged that neoliberalism has helped private corporations to make enormous increase in their wealth leading to the polarization between the rich and poor both within individual countries as well as among the other countries of the world. However, this has cast a devastating effect on the poor and marginal people in terms of their accessibility to the basic necessities of life like health and education. Despite this, the fact that even the poor people are now losing their faith in the government services and are posing new faith in the private services is, but an impact of the neoliberal governmentality. Neoliberalism upholds the production of certain subjects and behaviour through market incentives and deterrents. It produces citizens on the basis of the entrepreneurs and consumers and subjects them to extensive forms of governance. Neogovernmentality achieves what Foucault’s biopower and discipline together accomplishes and which in turn generates statism. As neoliberalism identifies the state with entrepreneurial as well as managerial functions and remakes the state on the model of the firm, it facilitates and legitimizes the power of the state (Brown, 2006). One can raise the question that whether the term ‘neoliberal’ which is often used to describe social and economic policies in developed countries can be applied to the Indian context. The neoliberal policies are part of the global capitalist system; therefore, these policies can be implemented and are being implemented even by the governments of those countries (of Asia and Africa) where capitalist system may not have developed to the fullest extent as in the case of the advanced countries. This often happens through the global financial penetration facilitated by multilateral financial institutions. However, the public welfare provisions in the advanced countries have a long history, and they are well-entrenched. It is not that the gradual withdrawal of the government from these provisions has not created a crisis in these countries. But in a developing country like India with staggering human development index in the world, the government’s withdrawal from these welfare provisions can lead to catastrophic consequences. Safiqur Rahman, aged 38, narrates that his family members commonly suffer from headache, influenza, common cold and stomach trouble. On being questioned

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about his idea of health care, he was quick to add that on a daily basis he or his family members do nothing extraordinary to maintain the general health, but pay attention to forms of general cleanliness, drinking boiled water and visiting doctors when anyone fall ill. Likewise, for all kind of medical aid, they favour visiting private clinics as he could afford to pay for the expenses and would not like to tolerate bad behaviour of the government hospital staff which many of his kin have experienced. Though he is aware about ASHA and the government aid, he took his wife to a private clinic for the delivery of all his four children. Similarly, for childcare like vaccination, etc., he relies on private assistances. He opines that healthcare services offered by the government is satisfactory but those who can afford prefer to opt for private services. He informs that he or his family members do not visit doctors for any health check-up unless they fall ill, and it applies to both female and male members of the household. Given an option to pick between government and public health services, he would favour government services, provided it is reliable, if the staff behave well and trustworthy. He emphasizes that a person’s life is more important than money, and he would like to spend the money if it ensures good treatment for the ailing family member. Rajeshwar Das who is 45-year-old and hails from the caste Assamese community, in a very straightforward manner points out that health matter seldom concern them as day to day survival is their main concern. Whenever some form of medication is required they would resort to home remedies or at the most purchase medicine from the local pharmacy. At the time when his first two children were born, they did have the knowledge of institutional delivery, and as desired by his family, the children were delivered at home. Only during the birth of his youngest daughter, he took his wife to government civil hospital at Tezpur. He does not remember whether all his children were vaccinated but recalled taking them for polio vaccination. Since the services are provided by the government, he believes that the government healthcare services are better than private and would prefer availing the services of the former. His wife ensures they drink boiled water, and basic cleanliness is maintained in the house and that is enough for good health. Coming to the context of Assam, approach towards privatization in the state has manifested quite strongly. The then Assam’s minister of Education and Health, Himanta Biswa Sarma, declared in 2013 that the state government has decided to hand over one hundred model high schools, being set up in the state, to private institutions like Don Bosco and Sankardev Sishu Niketan to look into their academic aspects.4 He pointed out that the bill on Assam Model School Act will be tabled very soon in the State Assembly. Appointment of teachers to these model schools will be done by the state government and the infrastructures will be provided by the Rashtriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan, a Government of India mission to promote high school education in India. He emphasized that the private institutions would extend academic support to these schools to have better academic performance which is lacking in government run schools. Students enrolled in these model schools would have the option to choose either English or Assamese as the medium of instruction. 4

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This step clearly shows how government is also interested in taking up the help of private organizations. Many social scientists and critics argue that this is a step to further privatization of the education sector. This kind of strategy is often adopted by the state in the name of the public–private partnership. The corporate sector and the government today together are engaged in trying to create a belief in the public mind that private sector symbolizes efficiency. Thus, neoliberalism and governmentality are two sides of the same coin, and one feeds on the other to produce as well as reproduce each other. Neoliberal ideology has thus turned the welfare states to corporate states with the state behaving as markets. The state is not dismantled but is reproduced in a sense where it behaves like a market which favours capital accumulation of a certain section of the society at the cost of the masses. As part of neoliberal policy, the process of corporatization of the state continues despite the fact that the poor masses find it very difficult to access them. This has been demonstrated from the empirical evidences of the impact of the neoliberal policies on education and health sectors in Assam.

Chapter 7

State, Political Clientelism and Governance in India: Concluding Observations

The overarching nature of the state, its programmes and policies, or the techniques and process of governance, is considerably mediated and conditioned by a host of local specificities. Often, people negotiate with the day-to-day functioning of the state through the system of informal governance. While the state employs structures of formal governance projected as a legitimate means to reach out to the people, informal governance facilitates people’s negotiation with the state for access to varied and limited resources. In a multi-ethnic society, a community’s political and ethnic affiliations play a significant role in terms of the access to the state machinery and its various welfare schemes. Such communities operate at the local level in their own distinctive ways, often defying state’s structured designs aimed at causing unquestioning consent. In the process, on the one hand, intermediaries bridge the gap between the state and the community, thereby apparently adding to the state’s legitimacy and presence among the latter. On the other hand, intermediaries also erode the state’s formal legal authority by underscoring its indispensability for the community. This work emphasizes the need to understand the dynamics of governance in a multi-ethnic democracy like India from the micro-level without ignoring macroperspectives. It uses the concept of embeddedness in analysing governance across a vernacular society. It outlines the implications of the contemporary statist governance for the backward and marginalized rural societies in India with special reference to the state of Assam. It demonstrates that the political and the ethnic affiliations of a community in a multi-ethnic society play a significant role with respect to its access to the state machinery as well as to its various welfare schemes. While this may be true even at a broader level, it argues that the ways in which such affiliations play out among the poor, marginal and rural communities at the local level have its own distinctiveness. The manner in which the state negotiates and renegotiates with the multiple interests of these local communities for sustaining its paramountcy defines the functioning of the state in a multi-ethnic context. I suggest that instead of political society or moral society, ‘political clientelism’ is more relevant as a conceptual tool to understand the relationship between the people and governance in a multi-ethnic and © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 A. K. Das, Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5110-7_7

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competitive society where the resources are little, but the number of beneficiaries are more. In the ‘politics of negotiation’, communities negotiate with the local agencies of the state on various issues while becoming partner in governance. With the advent of PRIs and the political parties, the nature of the community’s engagement with the politics has been changing. While earlier a community was collectively mobilized, mainly in terms of caste, religion, ethnicity, etc., it is now mobilized in terms of loyalty to various political parties. While inquiring into the people’s perception about government (‘sarkar’), it has been found that people often equate the latter with the political party in power. Due to clientelistic politics and the importance of brokers/intermediaries ‘dalal’ between the state machinery and the society, the needy always finds it difficult to access these welfare services. Thus, the notion of trust in informal governance and economic transactions plays a significant role in the everyday life of the rural poor. They are afraid of official paperwork and find nationalized banks difficult to access, which make them, depend on private bankers. So, in a way, the marginalized groups find themselves socio-politically located within a liminal horizon of formal as well as informal governance. The formal processes of governance often enact the role of a ‘stranger’ for them, which expands their distance with the rights yet enforced within the state. To avail different rights and entitlements in a sovereign country, legal citizenship is essential. The discourse of citizenship brings in human body to the site of politics. People without legal documents are often described as D-voters in Assam, which emphasizes how documents have acquired magical power in modern bureaucratic practice. Non-citizens can acquire documents through extra-legal means to prove their citizenship, whereas actual citizens can be labelled ‘illegal’ if they do not have the requisite documents. It is learnt that the state must not ignore the idea of embeddedness of social and cultural linkages across governance. However, it must remain careful of other informal ways of governance based on the community networks of local institutions in overplaying them, which might destabilize democratic governance and deprive marginalized smaller groups who do not have access to the informal governance. It was found that apprehension and mistrust remain between communities, local Panchayat functionaries and other political leaders if they belong to different communities. Democratic practices are manifested during elections. Regular elections—Parliamentary, Assembly and Panchayat—hold a very important place in marginalized peoples’ lives. Elections are important for people who are sidelined in everyday life. During elections, they are visible and assert their presence. They seek to affirm their existence so that they can also compete for the benefit of government welfare schemes. Most of the migrant communities in Assam vote in significant numbers. For example, polling turnouts in most of the tea gardens are always high because workers get a day off and treat it as a festival or carnival. They come with their family, buy sweets and drink; they get free drinks and food from the political parties who have money. Traditional parties like the Congress regard them as vote banks. The tea garden community is also part of a ‘political clientelism’; they think the party they vote for will help them in achieving their social and economic goals.

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People belonging to marginalized communities, especially Bengali Muslims, whose identity and legal status is contested, come in large numbers to prove their citizenship. They also vote for a political leader who can support them in need. A poor fish seller, whose 10-year-old son had a heart ailment that could only be treated at Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore, would not have been able to afford the treatment without help of a minister in the state government. A Congress leader was very popular among the Bengali Muslims. He, therefore, feels obliged to vote for the Congress. Thus, the vote and clientelistic politics hold much importance for the poor. Political parties, brokers and leaders propagate that the action of casting one’s vote is a proof of one’s citizenship, which will be scrapped if one does not vote. Settled migrant communities in Assam take this kind of rumours seriously and come out in large numbers to vote to prove their citizenship which also strengthen their ties with the leaders. Elections in the post-independent India have been like a theatre. Powerful leaders are often projected as demigods in terms of their spiritual and political power. They raise a ray of hope among the marginalized poor and draw their support from their magical power. Every candidate campaigns as much as possible and tries every bit to turn people in his or her favour; yet only one emerges as a winner. People consider several factors in voting—caste, class, age, religion, gender—and the considerations differ within and between communities. Generally, Hindu voters believe that Muslim candidate serves Muslim interests only in terms of accessing government schemes, plans and programmes and vice versa. But, if the vote is being cast out of loyalty to a party, the candidate’s community and religion do not count as a factor. For example, people said that they may vote for a Congress candidate, because it is the ruling party in the state, and they will benefit only if a Congressman wins. A contestant from an established party will have more resources to spend on elections and buy votes than an independent candidate who might lose because he/she lacks certain valuable resources. Often, economic resources pre-determine the oratory power and speeches of the leaders. People see no point in electing an independent candidate who has no backing of any party because such a candidate would not be able to help them in a long run. A party’s image or position also determines the fate of the contestants. People’s trust or distrust of a party plays a major role in determining the future of the contestants. Thus, a candidate’s party affiliation plays a major role in his success or failure in the elections. It is difficult for the government to fulfil all the expectations of its people. But a state needs strong social protection schemes to protect poor people, especially the marginalized, from falling into certain form of destitution and crisis. Even if particular state policies have good objectives, various factors undermine implementation, which often becomes work as the undoing of the state. Political sociologists Malpas and Wickham (1995) have argued that failure is not governable; it happens because of the incompleteness of governing practices. They emphasize that even if it wants, governance cannot fully control objects and subjects. That means people can be neither totally controlled nor regulated. Therefore, failure is inevitable, and one has to acknowledge this factor (Das, 2021a).

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In Napam, one of the most common phrases one hears is ‘Sarkare amak eko dia nai’ (government has not given us anything!). Poor people often say this regarding the entitlement of government-related scheme. Especially after the advent of PRIs and the devolution of power to the local bodies, people have their own expectations from the state, which they see as provider and problem solver; the state also expects its citizens to conform to a particular mode of behaviour. When there is a mismatch, the relationship between the state and society is ruptured. While all citizens depend on the modern welfare state for social welfare measures, the degree of dependence of the poor and marginalized is the most obvious. That is why the poor and the marginalized are worst affected when the state withdraws from its social welfare schemes or fails to implement the schemes effectively. Few government welfare schemes work properly at the grassroots, where specific circumstances impair their implementation. Although the factors that contribute to this failure are known broadly, the specific factors need to be inquired into, given the particular local context. India is considered to be a successful democracy but fares worse than many other developing countries (such as Bangladesh) on various human development index or social development parameters, as pointed out by Sen and Dreze. Despite fair economic growth over the past 15 years, India has failed miserably in making investments for human development, basic health care or primary education (Sen & Dreze, 2013). With the advent of neoliberal economic policies, the Indian state has gradually been withdrawing from the crucial social sectors like health, education, agriculture, etc., which has created serious survival questions for millions of its poor citizens. To pacify the public outcry during the past decade or so over its withdrawal from critical social sectors, the Indian state has undertaken several flagship programmes to improve the life and livelihood of its poor. Allegations of misappropriation of funds, discrimination in the distribution of benefits at the local level and malpractice by state agencies have been widespread; but there are serious communication gaps between the grassroots communities and the state. Bang (2003) defines governance as a form of social and political communication and asserts; those well versed in the language of governance can exploit its various programmes while the ignorant must fend for themselves. This study demonstrates that communication gap between the grassroots communities and the state is a reason for which governance fails at the grassroots.

7.1 Local Factors Influencing People’s Choice in Electoral Politics There are many factors which influence people’s decision to vote for a particular candidate in local elections. There is no doubt that there are broader-level factors too

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playing their roles in the elections. Some of the major factors influencing the choices of the voters at the local level are as follows:

7.1.1 Community Sentiment People choose to vote for a particular candidate because they belong to the same community, religion, caste or region. Community sentiments therefore play a significant role. When the contestant is from the same community, voters feel that he/she will understand their needs and help them, he/she will be easily approachable and would give their need a priority. Further, they relate community prestige to the candidate’s victory. Thus, the ‘we feeling’ becomes very strong and they vote for the candidate belonging to their community. Durkheim (1995) articulates this as collective effervescence. As discussed in Chapter 5, the leader may enchant them through various promises. It may take them to an extraordinary level of charm. During elections when common people revere a leader like that of Ajmal, this could be presented as an element of ‘collective effervescence’. Helpless marginalized people forget their troubles and recognize other people as their own, who follow person like Ajmal; it gives them power for resilience. The magical enactment of Ajmal and the way he tries to connect to the people gives them the ray of hope. Here, the notion of effervescence becomes the impetus for the community who follow Ajmal as their leader.

7.1.2 Village Sentiment Just like religious or other kinds of sentiments, village sentiment is also an important deciding factor. If a contestant is from the same village, people easily relate to him. He becomes the pride of the village. In the Amolapaam village, a woman while talking about a contestant from their village in a Panchayat election said, ‘she is like my sister. We have grown up together, and if she wins, it will be a victory for all the people in our village. We can then proudly say to others that she is from our village. Moreover, we will get the benefits of government-run schemes. She is our neighbour, and she is going to help us’. It can be placed through a diacritical comment where kinship relations often override the consideration and expectations of quality services from known political leaders. This might survive within the complexities of family, personal relationships, communities and lineages. For instance, it would be a difficult move to question the malfunctions of governance when the leader is among the known or even someone from within the neighbourhood or family.

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7.2 Gender An inescapable factor lies with that of gender and dialectical manifestations of governance at the outset. The gender of a candidate also shapes voting behaviour. Interviews in the field revealed that if the contestant is a woman, other women may vote for her on the grounds of gender. They see her as a role model and find a women candidate more understanding, approachable, responsible and less corrupt. They feel that women candidates will be of more use than a male candidate. On the other hand, some men were bit apprehensive about women. Though they did not directly oppose women candidates, they did not offer much support too, to the idea of women contesting in the elections. Similarly, the people in the interviews possessed patriarchal residues and scripts. They felt that elections and politics are not for women; it is not safe for them. The brother of Hasina Begum, a contestant for the post of the Gram Panchayat President, said that they were not in favour of their sister contesting elections. He argued that politics is dirty, and it lowers one’s prestige, especially if she is a woman. Various rumours spread about the candidates, and this harms the women candidates more. Furthermore, it may also lead to the disintegration of her family life. But in the above case, the seat was reserved for women, and finding the girl qualified, the local MLA persuaded her family members to let her contest elections and they agreed. Many men feel that women are weak, emotional and not clever enough and so will not be efficient if elected. Although, a few men feel that women may excel if they are given a chance.

7.2.1 Class In Napam, class also influenced voting behaviour of the voters. Because of their purchasing power, the middle-class voters could avail the benefits of government schemes and were therefore in favour of the Congress, the then ruling party of the state. The poor, who are not benefited by the government schemes, favoured other opposition parties (like the AIUDF) in the hope that things may improve if the ruling party changes. Thus, their class position, their access to resources and governmental schemes also influenced their voting behaviour.

7.2.2 Qualities of the Contestants While talking about the qualities of a candidate, people make a mention of qualities such as helpfulness, sincerity, honesty and contacts with influential people. Thus, contestant’s personal image, activities and friends determine his or her suitability. One’s family is an important source of identity, and therefore, family background is also a criterion for evaluating a contestant. A voter said that Hasina Begum (a

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contestant for the post of president) might lose votes since her brothers are corrupt and have a bad reputation in the village. The interviewees even said that age can also become a factor, even if not a major one. Some believe that younger people can be better leaders because they are more educated and exposed while some others feel that they are too restless, not very mature, aggressive, and therefore, middle-aged contestants are more suitable.

7.2.3 Role of Media Most respondents in the study were following TV and newspapers. Media has always been an accessible resource in some form or the other. People agreed that though media production is not free from political bias, it does influence their decisions to some extent. Most of the newspapers were publishing news against the Congress (I) party candidate Moni Kumar Subba in 2009 general elections, which he lost. This is not to say that he lost the election only because of the role played by the media. Rather, what is emphasized here is that the media’s participation in the electoral process and its influence cannot be ignored in today’s context. Kooiman (2003) rightly suggests that leadership is an important concept in governance. In this study, it is found that community leaders play a crucial role in the community affairs. People follow a particular leader because of trust and rationality, i.e. the calculation of gain and loss in expressing their allegiance to that of the leader. Again, people repose trust on the party leader from the neighbourhood. If the party leader belongs to the same community, his/her bond with the people becomes stronger. The amount of trust and respect the member from the same community commands is not generally found in party leaders from outside one’s own community. The election process involves many interesting social factors and in-depth research into the dynamics of election will help us understand these factors in a comprehensive manner. Through the process of election, the poor and the marginalized confronts the symbolic state and reinforces them into the state machinery as a legitimate member and a legal citizen. The voters often cast their votes not for any revolutionary change; they know it is just a political right and want to establish it. Campaigning in the form of public meetings, rallies, door-to-door contacts, etc., positively influence the decision of the voters to vote. The tendency to vote varies from community to community; for example, people belonging to some indigenous tribal communities are not much interested in voting. On the other hand, immigrants, especially the Bengali-speaking section both from Hindu and Muslim communities, are very much particular about voting. They think that their name in the voters’ list is a sign of being a citizen of India and they may lose citizenship if they do not vote. Common people are not much aware of the policies and programmes of different political parties despite all the campaigning and publicity. Campaigning unofficially continues on the day of voting even at the polling booths. The general tendency among the common people is not to disclose their political stand as to whom to vote for as they are afraid of backlash from the opposition parties. They often refrain from being influenced by

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other malicious forces while sustaining their life processes within an uncertain zone of governance. The Panchayat elections in Assam in general and in Napam Panchayat in particular show that while people are fed up with the functioning of the Panchayat system— where the needy often fail to receive the benefits of various welfare schemes, they realize that voting in elections are also part of rituals. This is so because for them Panchayats are the only local governance institutions they can access and interact with the officials. The rural population in India feels that the Panchayat elections are the most significant and relevant to them of all the three levels of elections. Both the candidate and voter put various strategies, game plans and manipulations into play to get and give votes. The everyday language they use for the winning and losing of the candidates is likened to having passed or failed in an examination.

7.3 In Between Political Society and Moral Society: Political Clientelism Education and health services are also being usurped by private players, leaving many of the poor miserable. The government even wants to consult private players to improve the standards of public health and education. There is a popular discourse that private education and health services are better than the government ones, so people tend to believe this and those who can afford are also availing it. From different cases and arguments, it is apparent that state’s nature is changing gradually; to understand it, we need more micro-level insight into its functioning. Multilateral organizations such as IMF, World Bank, ADB, etc., have been arguing for more efficient governance in developing countries of the world. Governance has emerged as the new avatar of development. In the post-Cold War era, multilateral organizations and first world countries used development as a panacea for the socalled underdeveloped countries. The failure of development is widely acknowledged now, and its new avatar is governance. Through empirical evidence, various studies have shown that programmes of new or good governance are as much a failure as development. In fact, scholars have already underlined the deceiving nature of development as it depoliticizes the whole grassroots political mobilization. Harriss (2001), for example, argues that there has been an attempt at segregating development from the politics. He demonstrates how in the name of developmental programmes, people’s rights at the grassroots are being seriously undermined. This process paves the way for civil bodies and NGOs to work as the bridge between people and the state. The corporate media and big corporations, create narratives of malnourished and underdeveloped regions like Ethiopia and Kalahandi to justify the need of investment, reform and aids. This eventually ruins the age-old traditional selfsufficiency of different communities based on indigenous knowledge and resources.

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Roy (2004) terms it as ‘depoliticizing the resistance’ and argues against the NGOisation of resistance and appeals to look into this NGO phenomenon in a broader political context. NGOisation started when neoliberal policies came to be implemented in India. It worked very well when the welfare state started withdrawing from the welfare provisions like public transport, free education, public health, etc., investing very little through the NGOs. The Structural Adjustment Programme worked according to plan with all these NGOisation and economic reforms cutting state expenditures. Local practices of governance and politics seem to be highly influenced by the dominant neoliberal agenda of the state. The state–society relationship is also influenced by the neoliberal operations at the micro-level. In this situation, both state and community negotiate with each other for a win–win-type situation. In his idea of political society, Partha Chatterjee explains the politics of the governed in developing countries. Political society takes up the means that are not available in the domain of the civil society. Chatterjee defines political society as a site of negotiation and contestation opened up by the activities of government agencies aimed at various population groups, and many of these groups, organized into associations resort to illegal means for sustaining their lives and livelihood. The state agencies and NGOs ‘therefore deal with these associations not as bodies of citizens but as convenient instruments for the administration of welfare to marginal and underprivileged population groups’ (Chatterjee, 2004, 40). His concept of political society might hold relevance in many parts of India, but this concept may not be applicable in Napam. Chatterjee differentiates between the concepts of ‘citizen’ and ‘population’. As per his formulation, the concept of ‘citizen’ is more theoretical and related to the ethical connotation of membership in the sovereign state. On the other hand, population inhabits the domain of policy and programmes. It is a concept based on a descriptive exercise and empirical evidence. Chatterjee further articulates ‘population makes available to government functionaries a set of rationally manipulable instruments for reaching large section of the inhabitants of a country as the targets of their “policies”—economic policy, administrative policy, law and even political mobilization’ (Chatterjee, 2004, 34). Chatterjee defines two sets of conceptual connections: ‘one is the line connecting civil society to the nation state founded on popular sovereignty and granting equal rights to citizens. The other is the line connecting populations to governmental agencies pursuing multiple policies of security and welfare’. He distinguishes the latter from the classic associational forms of civil society, which he calls political society (Ibid., 37–38). Several works on the pragmatic importance of morality in political culture and governance can also be accounted. Akio Tanabe indicates how moral society (and not civil or political society) often comes to play its role in the governance in vernacular democracies. He argues that while Chatterjee’s concept of political society captures the actual field of mediation between the people and the state in which various groups, factions and communities are the main players, it does not capture the other side of the imaginative power of the community. This is an aspect of the community which Chatterjee himself has paid attention to in a different context as the site of ‘ethical life’ where he highlights the condition of human beings who are born as members

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of society in which ‘subjective rights must be negotiated with the ‘ascribed’ field of the ethical life of the community’ (Chatterjee quoted in Tanabe, 2002, 41). Tanabe defines this site of ethical life of community, in which ‘rightness and goodness rather than individual rights or political gains are at issue, the space of ‘moral society’ (Tanabe, 2002, 42). He distinguishes his concept of moral society from ‘civil society’ and ‘political society’. While the ideas of equality and human rights pertaining to ‘civil society’ have ‘profound influence upon the idea of rightness and justice, they have not replaced the morality of the community by individualist ethics’. Moreover, he maintains, the concerns of ‘moral society’ cannot be reduced to the strategy of survival and political gains as in the case of ‘political society’. The concerns of ‘moral society’ are about what kind of practices should be considered right and good. However, Tanabe emphasizes that the ‘moral society is not a mere residue of the traditional community norms that stand against modern ideas and institutions. It is rather a site where continuing conceptions of what is right and good are connected and mediated to the contemporary context. Here, the symbols and rhetoric of morality may be used for affirmation, resistance and/or transformation of the existing socio-political order’ (Tanabe, 2002, 42). Like political society, the concept of moral society is also pertinent to many contexts in India. The chances of the prevalence of a political society, as defined by Partha Chatterjee, are more when a group belongs to a particular class. In such situations, it will have more power to confront or negotiate with the state. However, the possibility of a moral society will be more in a place where population is socially more or less secure and stable. However, in societies where population is neither socially secure nor socio-economically homogenous are not able to indulge in a politics informed by an assertion or negotiation for fulfilment of their demands. Such a population is also not animated by the concerns of a moral society as discussed above. In different areas of Assam including the field chosen for the ethnographic study, we find a relationship between the community and governance that defies the processes identified by Chatterjee and Tanabe. In Napam, for instance, we find a community–governance relationship that is dependent on negotiations and remains open to alterations if necessary. In this case, the requirements of political society or moral society are differently viewed. For example, a mixed or fluid population in terms of its composition does not allow the kind of stable identity that facilitates political and moral society. Here, we find people’s negotiation with the processes of governance from a perspective that can be broadly described as clientelism. A seminal feature of clientelism is that neither governor nor the governed remains fixated in their positions. Each tries to fashion itself and the other according to the changing political or strategic requirement. An implication of this phenomenon is that people are willing to modify the basic rules of government and change their expectations from government or governance according to the condition or need demanded by circumstances. In places like Napam where population and communities are heterogeneous, they often have a fear of rejection from the state. Poor people compete for limited governmental welfare resources, but unexpectedly some of the school teachers and

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the non-poor also have BPL cards. Respondents complained that sometimes rich and salaried people benefit from the IAY but not the needy; here, the issue of material existence takes priority over morality. In Napam, poor people from the Bengali Muslim and Hindu communities are often or ‘popularly’ considered illegal immigrants. Due to their marginal status in society and fear of state action, these people tend not to form a political society and depend instead on ‘political clientelism’. Therefore, moral ethics is sidelined where existence is at stake, and moral or political society stays not very relevant. Thus, I suggest that ‘political clientelism’ is more relevant as a conceptual tool to understand the relationship between the people and governance in such societies. We may also call the political procedure in such societies as ‘politics of negotiation’. Most of the time, the communities negotiate with the local agencies of the state on various issues of governance. There is a need to understand the relation between democracy and governance. It is generally held that good governance will lead to more polling in elections, reflecting the continued interest and trust of people in democratic processes, and bad governance would alienate the people from democratic processes while limiting their participation in electoral processes. However, the relationship between the nature of governance and the level of electoral participation needs to be contextualized. Napam, and as is the case with various other parts of Assam, is inhabited by different ethnic communities. The ecology and economy of the region encouraged immigrations through various ways which have been discussed in Chapter 3. Continuous migration to the state, both from the neighbouring countries and from other parts of India, also adds to the fluidity of society in Assam. This long process of migration over the period gave birth to a society with diversified caste, tribe, language, religion and ethnicity. However, in a twist and turn, massive migration also created its own pressure on the available resources of the state and this issue came to be raised strongly by the local people. There have been agitations by various groups to identify and expel the illegal immigrants. There has been a subdued and vocal anger against migrants from other parts of India. This has created a political space where the issue of one’s existence becomes the most crucial issue of political importance. The insider–outsider debate has today become the ‘dominant ideology’ around which other elements of the socio-political life functions. The different groups of people look forward to the state and other political agencies for their intervention in the insider–outsider debate. This has brought a different meaning to democracy for different set of stakeholders. Each group of stakeholders tries to influence the state and polity for their respective advantages. As state itself is defined by the way it relates to different social groups, the state here becomes more like a mediator and peacekeeper. For certain sections of population who become the potential target of being designated as outsider and are not sure about their social and political identity, the only way left to prove their identity as a citizen of the country by participating in the electoral process. The legal existence of the suspected illegal immigrants as citizens is dependent upon the documents they possess and their involvement with various functions and rituals of the state. In that context, voting in elections becomes probably the most important action to prove one’s citizenship. This voting exercise becomes a fiercely

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debated issue since it has the potential to legitimize and delegitimize the citizenship of certain social groups. This condition is exploited by the politicians and political parties by seeking votes from these sections of population while promising them political protection. This has also brought a new type of player into the political system who mediates between the state and its ‘citizens’. They are often termed as dalal (intermediaries or broker). For instance, many people are not aware about the way state functions and they fall back on these intermediaries for their needs. These intermediaries become a layer which fulfil various functions that otherwise come under the domain of the state. Hence, democracy and voting take the form of a religion for these social groups. Under the context of neoliberal political economy, it has been alleged that the state is withdrawing from various social sectors and leaving spaces for the market. The services provided by the markets and private sectors are not only costly and beyond the reach of the large number of people, but they are also sub-standard. Though the state has taken various welfare measures, these measures are intended to get the votes of the people and are more political as well as purposive in nature, rather than dutiful. Even local-level political institutions become sites for the generation of votes and creation of political support base. Just maintaining law and order and certifying who turns out to be an insider as well as outsider has become the most important function of the state. The issue of physical existence takes precedence over issues of welfare and governance. Neoliberal forms of governance are new and need to be understood at the micro-level. Marginalized and vulnerable populations are capable of governing themselves which is evident from the informal governance. This is seen in terms of the engagements with new forms of governance. It was found from the study that poor people often complained about the mismanagement of funds in PRIs. They complain about the nepotism and misgovernance. Even then, they come out in large numbers to cast their votes. A senior bureaucrat in the Sonitpur Zila Parishad opines that, ‘development is the motto of the whole world. All countries are developing by adapting to modern technology and economic activities. Even countries in Africa are developing. Then, why should India stay behind? India should not miss the development bus. One cannot imagine the power of development. There is no limit to development and the real development only can be achieved through efficient and good governance’. However, from the study, it becomes clear that the meanings and functions of development and governance cannot be conceived in terms of black and white. They are complex and often susceptible to the social processes of those societies where they are practised. The common people look up to the state for fulfilling their needs and are driven by a belief that the state would cater to their needs. It seems that there is a gap between people’s expectation and the delivery of state’s welfare measures. During the study, many people voiced that Panchayat election is important for them because of various reasons. Generally, the candidates are from the nearby locality or belong to their own community. But in elections like Assembly and Parliament, candidates come from outside their locality. It is helpful to approach a member of Panchayat if they face any problem. It becomes part and parcel of the politics in everyday basis, but in the case of state capital or national capital, these places

7.3 In Between Political Society and Moral Society: Political …

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are usually out of their reach. It has been observed that marginalized people, who are generally invisible during normal times, becomes more confident, articulate and visible during the election periods. They opine that during normal period, they have to beg officials and politician to get their works done. But during the time of elections, they have the power to negotiate and bargain with the political leaders and candidates who contest elections. This revealment attributes the powerful element of temporality determining the sporadic claims and entitlements on welfare policies issued by the state. Due to clientelistic politics, the needy always find it difficult to access the welfare services. The role of brokers or intermediaries like ‘dalal’, between the state machinery and society becomes important. People without legal documents are described as D-voters, which emphasizes how documents have acquired magical power in modern bureaucratic practice. Non-citizens can acquire documents through extra-legal means to prove their citizenship, whereas actual citizens can be labelled illegal if they do not have the requisite documents. Here, we find people’s negotiation with the process of governance from a perspective that can be broadly described as ‘clientelism’. The meaning and notion of governance have been changing over time. Law and order are one of the important elements of any governance mechanism. In earlier days, law and order used to be controlled by the kings, where it could not be challenged by the ordinary citizens. But with the onset democratization and modernization of the governance, it can be challenged and reviewed. Technically, today, anyone can access the law. Justice is also dispensed through modern legal institutions, whereas earlier, it was the jurisdiction of the king’s court. In that case, regular elections can be defined and redefined as one of the most important features and prerequisites of the modern governance. Thus in a country like India, it could be concluded that regular elections provide the necessary platform to the poor and marginalised to interact, negotiate and bargain with various powerful actors and agencies of the state through both formal and informal mechanisms. The emerging avenues in the field of formal and informal governance open up new areas for the social researchers to explore the relationship between state and society in the Global South.

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