A CAPTIVATING, OFTEN SEARING NARRATIVE OF HOW LIVES ARE LIVED IN THE VILLAGES OF BIHAR—AND INDEED IN MUCH OF INDIA. Sanjay Sahni was living an ‘araam ki zindagi’ in Delhi, working as an electrician, until a chance encounter with a computer sent him hurtling into the labyrinth that is the NREGA (and the corruption within), one of the world’s largest rural poverty alleviation programmes. It led him back to his village, where eventually, he and his comrades—primarily women, mostly from the Dalit and most backward castes—formed the anti-corruption group, Manrega Watch. Their tale is one strand of village politics, a story of resilience among citizens, those outside the system. But what of the ‘insiders’? The complex local-state unit of the village has at the top a mukhiya, who, like the one in Sanjay’s village, wields great power, even to do harm. Ward members—closest to their constituents and the most socially representative group in the panchayati raj system—are at the bottom of this structure. Development economist M.R. Sharan brings these two interweaving strands of insiders and outsiders together to tell a tale of that those on the margins can challenge entrenched hierarchies. Through government action—reservation, decentralisation, transparency measures—and through citizenly engagement, social movements and elections, change is possible, if not necessarily easy. Take the resourceful ward member, Kamal Manjhi, who repurposed the grievance redressal system to complain against the this was essentially a member of the local state, using a state mechanism to arm-twist another part of the state to do its job.
9789395073165 (hb.)
Caste--Political aspects Manpower policy, Rural Power (Social sciences)