Abstract
Grassroots Democracy and Governance in India: Understanding Power, Sociality and Trust by Amiya Kumar Das is a very crucial intervention in understanding governance, electioneering and grassroots democracy in everyday life in the context of North-East India. This study is predominantly based on ethnography which was conducted in four villages of Sonitpur district in the Indian state of Assam, which focuses on understanding the idea of state and governance from people’s perspectives. Apart from the study on governance, this book studies elections and people’s voting practices in the district. In the process, the book unfolds a unique way of comprehending the interrelationship between people and the state by focusing on narratives of multiple ethnic communities and their everyday negotiation with the state. Das has conducted a long stretch of fieldwork from 2009 to 2020 to capture the villages in transition, which he describes as ‘to collect ethnographic data from various elections and understand the state–society relationship more closely’.
Most of the socio-anthropological studies on North-East India usually focus on one ethnic or linguistic community. However, Das’ work captures narratives and experiences of governance among multiple communities, such as the Adivasis (tea tribes), East-Bengal–origin Bengalis (both Hindus and Muslims), Nepalis, Boros, Kacharis, Biharis and Assamese caste Hindus. For most people from these communities, agriculture is the primary mode of subsistence while poorer sections among them also go for daily wage earning in construction sites in nearby areas and other manual jobs. Due to such class nature of the participants and marginalised communitarian identity in the study, this book offers a perspective of governance from the below. Moreover, Napam Panchayat is relatively one of the backward regions within the district with a population of around 19,000. Again, to engage with the ethnographic nuances of voting behaviour, he has conducted an in-depth analysis of three selected polling stations in the Sontipur district. By choosing these three sites, the study focuses on tea garden workers, Muslims, Nepalis and Bodos. Through interviews, making observations during the voting process and by participating in election meetings, rallies and campaign trails of different parties, Das explores the relationship among political parties, leaders and voters.
To describe the governance at the grassroots level through people’s participation in the panchayat-level administration, Das provides the nuances of the complex inter-community relationship that change with the change in political regime. Based on the field narratives, the author concludes that Muslims have higher political representation at the panchayat level due to their numerical strength. However, after the rise of the BJP in 2014, their representation is becoming less as other communities are consolidating vis-à-vis the Muslims. The work also maps the subtle historical, cyclical linguistic polarisation between the Assamese-Bengali communities as well as the religious polarisation between Hindus and Muslims. But going beyond these occasional communal rifts in different contexts, it depicts an everyday harmony among the communities based on everyday economic, social and cultural exchanges.
The book interestingly connects important themes of bureaucratic exclusion and discrimination within governance. Many villagers from the Adivasi community are devoid of government schemes solely because of their inability to read the beneficiary documents. Again, building on the works of Kamal Sadiq and others, Das depicts the importance of ‘paper’ or documents to avail of welfare schemes as a citizen. Many of the Bengali Muslims, Hindus and Nepalis could not find their name in the National Register of Citizen list and some found themselves to be marked as D voters. This resulted in their exclusion from availing of basic welfare schemes such as housing, ration card and healthcare services. At the grassroots (panchayat) level, most of the benefits are taken by relatives and kins of the members of the local governing bodies. Another significant argument presented in this book highlights how middlemen or political brokers avail and deal in different welfare schemes by depriving common people. Das highlights how dalals (intermediaries) distort the idea of the welfare state by taking fixed commissions promising the attainment of government schemes in each community. In Chapter 6, Das captures the interaction between neoliberalism and welfare democracy. Narratives of many participants show how poor infrastructure and scheme management by the state in both health and education compel people to avail of private facilities—which the poorest cannot afford. Thus, the entry of civil society organizations, NGOs and other private players in grassroots-level governance including health and education depicts a state in transition—from welfare to a neoliberal state.
This work discusses various electoral processes and campaigns covered during the fieldwork as a spectacle with a sense of profound and dramatic festivity around it. Along with serious election business, on the other hand, the welfare state witnesses public amusement and entertainment with rhetorical speeches of the politicians, actors–actresses as campaigners, freebies by parties and offering food and alcohol to people by different political parties. Overall, the elections become a site of festival—especially for people like Adivasis, who have a hard monotonous life with little scope for entertainment. This work also depicts how vulnerable groups like Adivasis and Muslims are used as vote banks by parties like the Congress and the BJP. As citizenship is a contentious issue in Assam, Das through his fieldwork shows that while some people cast vote in fear of losing citizenship, many others get manipulated by the distribution of cash, liquor or food outside the polling booth. Das also provides a detailed description of the rise of Muslim identity politics through All India United Democratic Front where ordinary Muslims treat its leader Badaruddin Ajmal as a divine demigod.
Though the work provides a far-reaching and interesting insight into multiple themes on governance, elections and everyday life, it remains unconventional for an in-depth sociological work focusing on one aspect/community. Hence, the arguments and analyses presented in the book provide a detailed and wider analysis of the themes covered—offering a broad view of society and the governance of the Sonitpur district in Assam. A focused study considering only one aspect of governance and identity could have provided a much more in-depth analysis of the dynamics of the state–society interaction and transactions. Every community has distinct identity politics and hence each of them deals with bureaucracy and governance in their own manner. This work overlaps many of those concerns by providing the larger picture of governance and everyday life. Theoretically, this work takes a subversive position as opposed to traditional analysis of state-centric governance following the works of Foucault, James Scott and others. Rather, building on micro sociological theories and general theories of everyday life, this work focuses on the idea of governance from a citizen’s perspective focusing on common people’s agency. From this perspective, this work provides a new sociology of everyday governance in terms of how people act, react, negotiate and engage with the everyday state. As the majority of the sociological works on North-East India emphasise ethnicity, conflict, movements, displacement and migration, it is invigorating to see this work focusing on everyday governance. Though comprehensively portrayed, this work depicts a larger picture focusing on multiple communities and places—leaving scope for a more focused study.