The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

ARTICLE

Panchayati raj in J and K
Towards centralisation and regimentation
by Balraj Puri

The election to the panchayats in Jammu and Kashmir are scheduled to be held on April 17. The last panchayat polls were conducted in 2001. There were hectic discussions among political parties, including the coalition partners in the state government, on introducing reforms in the Panchayati Raj system before this announcement.

The Congress and the opposition parties of Jammu had demanded that the new panchayats should be formed after adoption by the state of the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution which would have made panchayats a genuine instrument of decentralisation of power. It is not the 73rd Amendment as such that is important. Jammu and Kashmir, after studying its working in other states, could have enacted even a better law than elsewhere if the objective was the empowerment of the people.

The state assembly, however, did enact a law to constitute an Election Commission to conduct the elections. But by that time the code of conduct had been enforced, which meant that the commission would work from next elections. The coming elections would be conducted by the Election Department of the state government.

The fears about the centralisation of power through the cover of panchayati raj are further confirmed by some provisions in the state law. While the Central law provides for direct election to all panchayati raj institutions, it is not so in the state. For instance, not a single member of the district board under the J&K law shall be directly elected. The chairperson shall be nominated by the government. A provision has now been added for an elected vice-chairperson of the board. But the supreme power will continue to be exercised by the chairperson.

The other members include the chairmen of the Block Development Councils, Town Area Committees and the Municipal Council in the district, MLAs and MPs who would be ex-officio members of the District Board. Though they are elected, it is well known that voters often choose different parties at local, state and national levels as the issues are different at these levels. Members of the Assembly and Parliament, in their capacity as members of the district boards, cannot, therefore, be said to represent the wishes of the people. In many states where MLAs and MPs are members of the district boards, they have no voting rights. But under the J&K law, they shall have these rights also.

At the block level, unlike the Central law, the State Act does not provide for direct election of any member. It shall comprise sarpanches of halqa panchayats and the chairman of the marketing society within the jurisdiction of the block. With the Block Development Officer, an ex-officio secretary, the block development council is also brought under the influence of the government. The government shall have power to nominate two members to give representation each to women, the Scheduled Castes or any other class.

The Central Act provides for 33 per cent reservation for women and, according to the population ratio, the Scheduled Castes, but it does not provide for any nomination at any level. The state law provides for nomination but not reservation. Further, the term “other class” is so vague that it can be used by the state government to nominate any person on the block council to represent it. The nominations can always ensure majority for the ruling party.

It is only at the halqa panchayat level where all members shall be directly elected. But even at this level, a government employee — a village-level worker — shall be the member-secretary who shall thus ensure government presence at the base of the panchayati raj system. Moreover, the government shall have the power to nominate two members on the halqa panchayat on the same pattern as it does in the case of the block council.

One more flaw in the state law with regard to the functions of the halqa panchayat is that its members have not been made accountable to the people after they are elected. There is no provision for a gram sabha which could act as a sort of assembly for the panachyat and could meet once or twice a year to pass the budget and to exercise some control on the working of the panchayat, including the right to pass a vote of no-confidence against the members and elect new members in their place.

A prerequisite for the success of the panchayati raj system is its financial viability and autonomy. The 73rd Amendment to the Constitution also provides for the appointment of a finance commission by the state governments to make recommendations for the determination of taxes, duties, tolls and fees which may be assigned to panchayats; distribution between the state and panchayats of the net proceeds of taxes, duties, etc; and grant-in-aid to the panchayats by the states.

The J&K law neither fixes a minimum amount of grant-in-aid by the state to the panchayats nor autonomous machinery for objective allocation of funds. There is no assured source of income either. The law, therefore, does not ensure financial viability and autonomy of the panchayats and leaves enough financial power in the hands of the state government which it may use arbitrarily to influence the working of the panchayats.

Panchayat adalat is another important feature of the new panchayati raj law of the state. For the modern system of justice is not only very expensive and time consuming, but is also virtually inaccessible to most of the rural and far-off areas. Panchayati adalats have been used in many states to supplement the formal judicial system by reviving and legitimising the traditional system of justice.

But by empowering the state government to nominate members of the panchayati adalat and to remove its chairman or any member, the new law robs independence of the institution of justice at the grassroots level. It amounts to supplementing the judicial system and the traditional system of justice, both supposed to be independent of the executive, by a third sector of justice controlled by the state government.

The Jammu and Kashmir Panchayati Raj Act does not accept the jurisdiction of the Union Election Commission “for superintendence, direction and control of the conduct of elections in the state” nor that of the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) of India “for the audit of the accounts of the panchayats” as the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution proposes to do for other states.

The state is not only independent of the federal autonomous institutions like the Election Commission and the CAG, it has also not made any amendment in its own Constitution corresponding to the amendment in the Indian Constitution. Such an amendment would not have compromised autonomy of the state, but would have projected the interests of the panchayati institutions against bureaucratic encroachments by, say, making re-election of superseded panchayats constitutionally mandatory and reserving a list of subjects in the constitution for exclusive management by the panchayats.

J&K needs genuine panchayati raj, more than any other state. For it has more diversities than others. In view of its multi-ethnic and multi-religious character, panchayati raj is not only a means for the devolution of power and participatory democracy but is also a vital instrument of accommodating its wide diversities. Panchayati raj implies a federal continuum through which power devolves from the Centre to the state and then to the districts, blocks and villages. In the case of J&K, regional tier is an indispensable part of the federal continuum.

Lack of trust in the people seems to be the only plausible explanation for the type of law the state has passed. Which is more an instrument of regimentation and centralisation than empowerment of the people.n

The writer is Director, Institute of Jammu and Kashmir Affairs, Jammu.

MIDDLE

Dhabas in academia
by P.C. Sharma

The ‘dhabas’ are the favourite spots of the tired truckies. But these old-world restaurants are now firmly flourishing in the academic environs of universities as well, relieving stress and tensions of the young minds. Steaming sweet tea, lusty paranthas and fried pakoras are the well-known items on their menu.

‘Ramdhan Ka Dhaba’ in my alma mater, Kurukshetra University, set up on the bank of a canal running through the campus was the refuge of all hostellers. Not more than a thick thatch cover resting on low brick walls, string charpoys spread out in the open were all the trappings that it had. It functioned overtime during examinations when Shakespeare and Dickens were discussed on charpoys and wooden stools. “To be or not to be” was every examinee’s dilemma besides Hamlet’s. But what comforted the disturbed souls was the optimism of Micawber of David Copperfield: ‘something will turn up”.

Away from classrooms the dhaba was both a refuge and an academy where dialogues among the pupils in the manner of Plato’s Academy “contrasted the impact of written works with that of the contact of living minds”.

The dreariness of the dhaba used to occasionally liven up when the inmates of the girls hostel passed by it, some looking askance, a few — placed in the predicament as ours — exchanged smiles and some notes but most others ignored us. The canal served as a ‘Lakshman Rekha’.

Exams over, we walked into an uncertain future. It was not just the hostel, the classroom and the library that we missed, but ‘Ramdhan-Ka-Dhaba’ the most. Leaving it behind with the canal flowing quietly was a wrench.

Then came the convocation to unite us once again. With degrees in hand, we all trouped to the dhaba in our robes. No one was better pleased to see us than Ramdhan silently rejoicing in his own contribution.

After obtaining degrees earning livelihood was uppermost in our minds. But Ramdhan had his own convocational advice, quite in tune with Micawber’s advice to young David Copperfield: “Gist of life: your income 20 shillings, expenses 19, result: happiness; your income 20 shillings, expenses 21, result: misery”.

‘Ganga Dhaba’ in Jawaharlal Nehru University is a quaint mixture of stone age and modernity. No charpoys, no stools. Only rocks and rocks – of varied sizes – under the trees double as its furniture. Bristling with the ideas discussing almost everything under the sun from the ‘left’ to the ‘right’, farmer’s suicides to rising GDP, the young academicians – boys and girls, both – mix well in this sylvan setting.

The dhaba stands out as the only ‘restaurant’ which its young entrepreneurs Sushil and Anil run at night to help the ‘night birds’ who study the whole night recharge themselves with its heady concoctions. If the JNU is hailed as an intellectual workshop, Ganga Dhaba should be remembered for fighting globalisation by catering to the needs of Aam-admi i.e. food and shelter, albeit temporarily.

OPED SOCIETY

Suicide and survivors’ survival
Behind every statistic about farmers taking their own lives is a story of what drove them to the edge. After the tragedy comes a struggle for the family, which has to cope with the loss and find ways to fend for itself.
Mallika Kaur

The numbers war that has raged around the issue of rural suicides is unacceptable when one looks at the urgent needs of the children of suicide-affected families.

Even as the grim reality of farmer suicides in Punjab has been increasingly exposed in recent years, the inter-generational and gendered effects of suicides have received scant attention. These are more than mere ‘collateral damage’ as they exhibit the deeply afflicted condition of rural Punjab and call for urgent policy changes at the Centre and state levels.

Currently, masking apathy in various political and economic clichés, we are ignoring how the children of suicide victims continue to suffer the very plight that led to the suicide in the first place. Unsurprising then are the multiple suicides in a single family: right on our watch.

A puerile numbers war has raged around the issue of rural suicides. Accuracy of various statistics has been noisily challenged, while equally boisterous calls for more statistics have been made. While the state and Central government can agree to disagree with civil society’s estimates, they can no longer limit their response to questioning the authenticity of suicide statistics.

Such delay tactics are particularly unacceptable when one looks at the urgent needs of the children of suicide-affected families. Take the case of Gurmeet Kaur, from Bhutala Khurd village, Sangrur district. In 2005, Gurmeet had completed her Class XII boards. Then one day, not too soon after, Gurmeet’s father, Roop Singh, committed suicide.

“We had no clue that the debt situation was so bad. He didn’t really tell any of us anything. He had left for work at 9 am that morning, and apparently ran into some bank official on the way, who reminded him of the outstanding debt. He walked into the fields where he worked, and drank pesticide,” Gurmeet recalls. The family took Roop Singh to a local hospital, where, after 15 days and Rs 80,000 spent on treatment, he breathed his last.

In post-Green Revolution Punjab, marginal and small farmers such as Roop Singh find themselves facing mounting debt, since the input costs of agriculture far outweigh the returns. The Green Revolution was ushered in with the encouragement of the US, where the prevailing wisdom in the 1960s was that Communism could be kept at bay by combating low standards of living and rural discontent stemming from food shortage.

Punjab was singled out by the Central Government as the site for the counter-revolutionary Green Revolution experiment. Though a relatively dry state, Punjab had the colonial-era canal network and a predominant agrarian population.

The ‘success’, in terms of increased yield, of the ‘revolution’ depended on foreign-developed high-yield seed varieties. However, these seeds increased yield only under certain circumstances: they needed increased fertiliser and irrigation. Starting in the 1970s, small farmers, unable to afford sufficient amounts of expensive inputs, found their holding becoming progressively less profitable.

Meanwhile, grain prices remain comparatively low even as input costs increase. Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) of grains—the pre-season price guarantee for farmers that is set by the Centre—are not associated with the Price Index, which is adjusted for inflation every six months and dictates all other prices in the country. Thus, the farmer who provides food security to the nation faces insecurity within his own home.

Gurmeet’s father had owned 1.5 acres of land which he put up as collateral with moneylenders about a decade ago. “Even after he lost his land, he didn’t lose all hope. He kept working hard on other people’s land to pay back loans and to keep us alive. But the loans were too big, and he didn’t even make enough to pay the interest every month.”

Commission agents in the area continue to charge incredible 40-60 per cent interest rates. While older laws such as the 1900 Punjab Land Alienation Act under Sir Chottu Ram have fallen inexplicably into disuse, the government has, just as inexplicably, shied away from passing a new legislation to regulate money-lending, a routine and necessary activity in Punjab villages where institutional credit is hard to come by.

By 2005, Roop Singh had taken Rs 40,000 from the local cooperative bank, about Rs 1,00,000 from the State Bank, and a little over Rs 1,00,000 from a local aartiya (commission agent).

“The banks were still further away, but the aartiya was right there, in our village…he would stop by and taunt my father, and make demands,” Gurmeet recalls. “You can calculate, he killed himself over about 2.5 lakh rupees. That amount is still outstanding today; it’s sitting there, accumulating interest for us to pay…someday.” While lenders can recover from the deceased’s estate, including the family house—regardless of the fact that there may even be minor children in it—often the kin like Gurmeet remain unaware of the legal limits of such recovery or the legality of the means employed for recovery.

Neither in 2005 nor today is Gurmeet’s family in a position to repay the debt. But in 2005, there was also no source to pay day-to-day expenses. Gurmeet is the oldest of five children. The second eldest, Gurjeevan Singh, began looking for work as a daily labourer to bring home some income, while Gurmeet and her mother began looking for work from fellow villagers. “We stitched suits, made daris, and tried to earn whatever little we could. What other honourable work is there for women in our villages?”

However, Gurmeet’s mother’s eyesight was failing, and she was having difficulty doing this work. “Anyway, I kept thinking, this all will hardly even pay for our daily rations. In many families, after the first suicides, things get so bad that other family members also eventually resort to suicide…I didn’t want to think like that, but things were very bad at home.”

Then, Gurmeet heard of another option. The Baba Nanak Education Society (BNES), an NGO operating in Moonak and Lehran subdivisions of Sangrur district, was asking about families where the breadwinner had committed suicide due to agrarian debt. They were ‘adopting’ such families, giving them between Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,200 a month, but on one condition: the children of the family must continue their education.

Gurmeet met with BNES field workers and answered all their questions. “I thought that this money would help with our daily expenses and also allow for me to study and get a job, to get my family out of this situation.”

While Gurjeevan Singh remained skeptical and saw ‘no point’ in going to school, Gurmeet eagerly shared information with BNES and was hoping they would help her.

Gurmeet Kaur and her family were duly sponsored by the society. Gurmeet’s younger siblings went to school and Gurmeet was given a full scholarship to go to Jashmer Singh Jaijee College at Gurney Kalan, also run by BNES. I kept thinking, “If I do well, I can help pay for my sisters to also go to college.” Gurmeet earned her BA in 2009 and started working as an office administrator at the college itself.

“Education helps as the children at least have some chance to get jobs. There is no future in agriculture for most people. And for girls, if they are educated, lesser dowry is demanded, and they get respect as they are earning members of the family,” explains Gurmeet.

Looking for a slightly better salary, Gurmeet asked BNES if she could be employed in their Chandigarh office, where she now works as an Office Assistant. “This means more exposure, and a chance to work on my computer skills because those are essential these days,” she says with the confidence of a self-starter. “Also, it allows me to work for other families of people who have committed suicide. In Bhutala Khurd alone, 17 or 18 farmers have committed suicide.”

But Gurmeet’s worries are far from over. “The work is great, but I don’t make much. I want to work very hard and earn enough to pay back the lenders, and help with my siblings’ weddings. I don’t want to get married. When some relative sometimes mentions it, I ask, ‘Why would someone else’s son come and take responsibility of my siblings and of our family debt?’”

Once again, recognising herself a role model for other girls in the village, she says, “I want to show my sisters, and the others, that girls can study, make money, and don’t have to be dependants. Except from BNES, we’ve never received any compensation or scholarships from the government. Now, I want a government job. I’ll work for my family’s future.”

Gurmeet provides a painful reminder of the long-festering agrarian problem in the country and the state. Immediate solutions include providing relief to families that have had suicides, while long-term solutions require a holistic governmental approach that both ensures renewed profitability of agriculture and creates clean industries as alternatives to agriculture.

The Gurmeets of Punjab are not asking for handouts. They have a right to be heard beyond the election cycles and provided the minimum necessities required to dig their way out of a debt that accumulated despite their being the brave and hard-working daughters of the ‘bread basket’.

The writer focuses on gender and security issues in South Asia. She holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard, and a JD from the UC Berkeley School of Law.

Rural Suicides: The Human Toll

The government’s own studies have shown that the problem of rural suicides is by no means insignificant. A 2009 study by Punjab Agriculture University reports 2,890 suicides in the two districts of Bathinda and Sangrur between 2000 and 2008, while the Punjab Farmer’s Commission, created by the Punjab government in 2005, estimates about 2,000 farmer suicides per year.

Civil society estimates are more chilling: The Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU-Rajewal), estimates 90,000 suicides between 1990 and 2006, while Punjab-based Movement Against State Repression (MASR) estimates 50,000 suicides, after having recorded 1,842 individual cases in 91 Punjabi villages between 1988 and 2010 (and accounting for the reality that these 91 villages are from two subdivisions of Sangrur district, one of the 20 districts of Punjab, but also that all districts are not equally affected).

While the suicide victims are overwhelmingly men, the surviving women, children, and elderly become particularly vulnerable. Currently, these families receive no relief. Moreover there is no protection against the debt against the farmer passing on to his minor children. In some of these families there have been multiple suicides. NGOs have stepped in to provide immediate relief in the form of monthly education scholarships to the children of suicide victims, but there is no substitute for the required policy changes by the Center and state governments.