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Understanding Social Dynamics in South Asia pp 125–143Cite as

Panchayat Elections and Democratic Decentralisation in West Bengal

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Abstract

The panchayat election of 2008 signalled the decline of the Left Front hegemony, which never failed in getting a clear and often substantial majority in the State Assembly and Panchayat elections since 1977. This field-research based study of the panchayat election of 2008 poses the question: how democratic is decentralisation of Panchayati Raj in West Bengal? The landmark 73rd Constitutional Amendment of 1992 gave wide scope to states to democratize and empower the Panchayati Raj institutions in the country following the federal principle. The chapter argues that the panchayat system was indeed institutionalised by the CPM-led Left Front, but not democratized. Panchayat and Assembly elections before and after 2008 demonstrate that the democratisation process even after regime change with TMC firmly in power has a long way to go.

Revised version of the Inaugural Memorial Lecture, Special Lectures Commemorating Professor Ramkrishna Mukherjee, organised by the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, March 28th and 29th 2016.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Mashtermoshai in Bengali is a highly respected and venerated teacher—from school to any level of teaching and learning.

  2. 2.

    The Left Front consists of: Communist Party of India (Marxist; CPM), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), All India Forward Bloc (AIFB), Revolutionary Communist Party of India, Marxist Forward Bloc, Samajwadi Party (SP), Democratic Socialist Party (DSP), Biplobi Bangla Congress, Workers Party of India and Bolshevik Party of India.

  3. 3.

    Speaking in an election meeting in Kamarkundu in Singur, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee reminded the audience that although the panchayat was the creation of the Left Front, it belonged to all of them (Mukherjee 2008).

  4. 4.

    I followed up with the study of the institutionalisation of panchayat system in Punjab in panchayat elections held on 26th June 2008.

  5. 5.

    James Manor identifies six major forms of decentralisation of which only two have devolved the power of autonomous decision making to its members (1999: 4–6).

  6. 6.

    Dwaipayan Bhattacharya makes this point in 2006.

  7. 7.

    Patrick Heller distinguishes between ‘formal’ and ‘effective’ democracy (2000: 488).

  8. 8.

    We have also collected data on other aspects of the functioning of gram panchayats, which would need much more space, hence, have not been included in the scope of this paper.

  9. 9.

    The methodological argument is based on a prior research experience from our study of the first ever Naxalite (Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist; CPI-ML) participation in Gopiballavpur in the district of Midnapore, West Bengal, in the post-Emergency elections to the State Assembly in 1977. Santosh Rana, still languishing in jail, was the candidate. The election study was directed towards discovering if the Naxalite movement long suppressed for seven years would resurface in the context of this electoral contest. Methodologically, we steered out of the ‘game model’ of electoral contest, to the ‘manifest-latent’ model premised on the manifestation of latency. It was a most exciting piece of research in which Manabendu Chattopadhyay, Late Prafulla Chakrabarty, Late Suhas Biswas and Late Prodyot Mahalanobish (all from SRU, ISI, Kolkata); and Late Anjan Ghosh (then from IIT, Delhi) and Buddhadeb Choudhury (then ICSSR Fellow) participated in fieldwork (Mukherji 1983: 21–30).

  10. 10.

    Dr. Bhola Nath Ghosh of the Sociological Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, joined me in all the interviews.

  11. 11.

    This is not to suggest that ‘critical periods’ are specific only to elections; they can be identified during periods of high-level mobilisations of social movements triggered by sharp contradictions.

  12. 12.

    An ambitious project by the Department of Sociology, Delhi University, compared the 1967 and 1971 General Elections on a fallacious assumption of methodological monism that participant observation was a superior method to any other (particularly survey method) for studying election outcomes. Each of the researchers had a ‘village’, ‘small town’, of his/her own where they parked themselves for over a year for their doctoral/post-doctoral research. These very sites (local communities) were recycled as sites for election studies at grassroots for no other rationale than they were familiar with the local social system. The study is replete with primordial loyalties of all kinds—caste, kinship, religion, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, etc. contributing one way or the other to election outcomes. There is neither clear causal nor a solid verstehenian understanding of election outcomes. Yadav (2011) in the Epilogue is critical of this methodological monism and advocates methodological pluralism (Shah 2011).

  13. 13.

    Debraj Bhattacharya, Panchayati Raj Update, August 2013. Figures vary, for instance according to M. N. Roy these are correspondingly: 41,809 (GP), 8855 (PS) and 755 (ZP).

  14. 14.

    There is some discrepancy in the statement here: Dr. Ranjit Panja, well-known dermatologist, was elected to the Parliament as TMC candidate (not FB) in 1996, 1998 from Barasat. Chitta Bose the veteran FB leader was MP from Barasat from 1977 until 1996. It is not clear exactly when the incident of vandalism occurred.

  15. 15.

    Rahul Mukherji, Professor at Heidelberg shared with me the vernacular term ‘matabbar’ used to describe such a CPM cadre-type that CPM leaders themselves found difficult to manage.

  16. 16.

    D. Bandopadhyay, Land Reforms Commissioner who steered ‘Operation Barga’ during early period of land reforms pursued by the LF in 1977–1978, described this phenomenon as ‘rigging at source’ (Statesman, 9th May 2003). Quoted in Liberation June 2003.

  17. 17.

    In West Bengal there are 17 rural districts: Bankura, Bardhaman, Birbhum, Coochbehar, Dakhin Dinajpur, Uttar Dinajpur, Hooghly, Howrah, Jalpaiguri, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, Paschim Medinipur, Purba Medinipur, Purulia, 24 Parganas South, 24 Parganas North.

  18. 18.

    Foremost among bureaucrats was D. Bandopadhyay, the then Land Reforms Commissioner of West Bengal.

  19. 19.

    More recent CPM document claimed: (i) 28 lakhs (2.8 m) people benefitted from land redistribution; (ii) 15 lakhs (1.5 m) sharecroppers (tenants) were registered so that could not be evicted at will by landlords; 11 lakh (1.1 m) acres of land ‘was permanently brought under the control of sharecroppers and their right to cultivate land was firmly established’ (CPM statement June 17, 2007). See also, Kohli (2009: 364–388).

  20. 20.

    More research is needed to identify the precise process leading to this shift in people’s participation. Atul Kohli testifies to this incipient tendency in the late 1970s and early 1980s (2009: 374).

  21. 21.

    This does not preclude its occurrence in pockets where the opposition was in control.

  22. 22.

    Mukherjee (2008) refers to a government website showing 191 out of 196 Gram Panchayat seats in Arambagh declared won uncontested, corresponding figure for panchayat Samities was 42 out of 44.

  23. 23.

    It may be recalled (Table 1) that LF commanded 68.5% of GP seats, 73.7% of PS seats, and 86.4% of the ZP seats in 2003 panchayat elections.

  24. 24.

    Exact statistics are difficult to retrieve. Liberation data adds up to a total of 5897 uncontested seats for the LF. PUCL Bulletin puts the total uncontested seats at 6300 (11%) with ‘most of them [having gone] to CPM and its allies’ (George Mathew July 2003). This seems to corroborate Liberation data.

  25. 25.

    Figures vary: The Hindu (June 12) reports TMC bagging 14% seats in the first phase of elections in nine districts; NDTV (July 29) reports 6000 seats in GPs and PSs going to TMC; Ghosh’s study states that 5376 out of 48,800 seats were uncontested at the GP level with TMC claiming 98.5% of these, whilst 881 out of 9240 seats were uncontested at the PS level, all but four going to TMC.

  26. 26.

    In a recent interview projected by TV news channels, after her outstanding showing in the Assembly polls of 2016, Mamata Banerjee, in reply to a question commented: ‘Election is a war, a democratic war’. Conspicuously, State Assembly elections were held simultaneously in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, but the electoral environment in these States was more competitive than war-like.

Abbreviations

CPM:

Communist Party of India—Marxist

CPI-ML:

Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist

FB:

All India Forward Bloc

GP:

Gram Panchayat

INC:

Indian National Congress

PS:

Panchayat Samity

RSP:

Revolutionary Socialist Party

TMC:

All India Trinamul Congress

ZP:

Zilla Parishad

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Acknowledgements

Sincere thanks are due to Dr. Bhola Nath Ghosh, presently Head Sociological Research Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, who joined me in all the interviews that were conducted during the field study on which this chapter is based. The origin of this chapter can be traced to our joint paper ‘Democratic Centralism, Party Hegemony and Decentralisation in West Bengal’ (Mukherji and Ghosh 2010). Dr. George Mathew, presently Chairman, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, whose contributions to the panchayati raj movement are well known, provided both the inspiration and financial support in 2008 when I held the S. K. Dey Chair. Professor N. Jayaram was kind enough to review the draft and offer some valuable suggestions. Dr. Bhola Nath Ghosh was kind enough to recheck our field data. My sincere thanks to all of them.

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  1. Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Partha Nath Mukherji

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  1. Institute of Social Sciences , New Delhi, Delhi, India

    Partha Nath Mukherji

  2. National Law School of India University , Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

    N. Jayaram

  3. Sociological Research Centre, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, West Bengal, India

    Bhola Nath Ghosh

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Mukherji, P.N. (2019). Panchayat Elections and Democratic Decentralisation in West Bengal. In: Mukherji, P., Jayaram, N., Ghosh, B. (eds) Understanding Social Dynamics in South Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0387-6_8

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