Decentralized governance and forests in India
P.J.Dilip Kumar1
Keywords: joint forestry, panchayati raj, decentralized governance, village forest committees,
India
I. Panchayati Raj and its discontents
Setting the scene
In academic and governance circles in India today, it is considered as almost axiomatic that
villages should be self-governing and self-sufficient, and that economic and social
development, improvement in living standards, and equity can be achieved only if executive
and regulatory power and functions are handed over to the village community. This
conviction has led to the 73rd and 74th amendments to our Constitution, giving statutory status
and powers to the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) as an embodiment of decentralized
governance in the rural and urban realms respectively, after decades of experimentation,
advocacy and legislative action.
We would, therefore, expect a sense of satisfaction to prevail at this culmination of decades
of effort by social scientists, political actors, and others, and be looking forward to a brave
new millennium as far as these spheres of public activity are concerned. But paradoxically,
there are many expressions of discontent with this edifice of village self-rule and
empowerment, and a general sense of discouragement, not the least among the very
proponents of PRI, that justifies a second look at the whole gamut of issues. Therefore, it
becomes a matter of interest to understand exactly how this concept of village autonomy or
self-sufficiency has developed in India, and how it has worked in the field, and why there are
these portents of discouragement and disillusionment at a point in time when the concept
seems to have overcome all obstacles.
In consonance with our central interest, this discussion of decentralized governance will be
concerned with management of common property resources like forests. There is a
possibility, at least, that these concepts of governance by the village community, and of its
institutional relationships to the larger state, may be of more than academic interest to the
natural resource manager, because they affect fairly directly the shape of the relationship with
natural resources, whether at the level of the individual, the local community, or the state as a
whole. The special points of interest include the issue of sustainable use of natural resources,
1
Dr.P.J.Dilip Kumar, Ph.D. in Forest Economics (University of Wales), retired from the Indian Forest Service
in November 2012 as the Director General of Forests, Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India.
He is presently ICSSR Senior Fellow at the Institute for Social & Economic Change (ISEC), Nagarbhavi,
Bangalore-560072. His writings are at www.forestmatters.blogspot.in Email pjdilip@gmail.com.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-1-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
which are especially sensitive to institutional factors in view of their vulnerability to overexploitation under the unbridled play of private incentives and market forces. This has of
course been expressed by Hardin (1968) as the “Tragedy of the Commons”, which was
understood to force a choice between the two extremes of complete privatisation or total state
control, although there exists a tantalising possibility of achieving a via-media between these
two poles, in the form of a joint community-and-state control based on mutually agreed rules
and enforcement (Dilip Kumar, 1991). We will explore this possibility in some detail, based
on a field sample of villages in the states of Haryana, Tamilnadu and Karnataka that have
demonstrated various responses to the opportunities and challenges posed by the need to
manage the community’s forest resources, both private and public.
The progress of Panchayati Raj in India
The history and chronology of events related to Panchayati Raj in India are too well
documented to warrant a detailed retelling here. The details may be readily culled from
reports such as the major nation-wide surveys of the state of PRI published by the Institute of
Social Sciences (Mathew, ed., 1994: Status of Panchayati Raj in the States of India, 1994;
and a similar report, 2000, and lately, 2013), or the numerous collected works such as Joseph
(ed., 2007) or the EPW volume (Raghunandan, ed., 2012). To summarize, the British in India
appear to have been ideologically committed to the concept of local government since
transfer of administrative control to the Crown in mid-19th century, with Lord Rippon’s 1882
resolution on local governments, which led to the setting up of local boards with elected
representatives (albeit from a restricted electorate of ‘burghers’). Apparently some of the
Britishers thought of this as a new thing for India (notwithstanding our own nationalistic
pride in village self-governance as an age-old institution), as illustrated by the following
quote from the Right Hon. Lord Hailey’s Foreword to Hugh Tinker’s book (1954):
“As an organized system it represented in effect the deliberate introduction to India of an institution of a purely
western type… There existed in this particular field of activity no institution, if we except the village panchayat,
which could be said to have formed an integral part of Indian custom... The panchayat had in any case ceased to
be operative in most parts of India for a considerable period before the advent of British rule, and though
attempts had been made to revive it by some of the more liberal minded of our early administrators – Munro in
Madras, Mountstuart Elphinstone in Bombay and Malcolm in Central India – their efforts had met with little
success.” (Hailey,
op. cit., p.xii)
Hailey does soften this indictment with a back-handed compliment:
“Though the system was an importation from the West, owing nothing to indigenous custom, it became in some
measure a specifically Indian field of activity, as contrasted with the official administration, which even up to
the end remained strongly under influences which, to the mind of Indians, reflected its foreign origin” (Hailey,
op. cit., p.xiii-xiv)
Since then, of course, Panchayati Raj has gone through a long and convoluted history,
characterised in the literature as three phases, or generations, in its institutional development.
In the first phase, owing to a perceived lack of success for the much-vaunted Community
Development Programme in newly independent India, the Balwantrai Committee in 1957
recommended the “resurrection of local bodies” (Joseph, 2007, p.xxiv) through a 3-tier
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-2-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
arrangement, with directly elected representatives at the village-level and indirectly elected
and nominated members at the intermediate and the District levels, the “first generation”
local governments. The next stage in the progress of PRI was when the Janata Party at the
Centre set up another committee, under Asoka Mehta (Government of India, 1977), which
recommended a Central legislation to ensure public representation and the elevation of the
District-level body as the “basic coordinating and integrating unit” (Joseph, op. cit.). It was in
Karnataka and West Bengal that the state governments first brought into being the full threetiered set-up, which “played a major role in the successful implementation of various rural
development schemes”, the so-called “second generation” local government set-up (Joseph,
op. cit.).
This inspired the Union government in 1989 to introduce two constitution amendment bills
dealing with local government, but due to various political and other causes, these
amendments could be passed only by 1992, in the form of the 73rd and 74th Constitution
Amendment Acts for, respectively, the rural and urban areas. This “major watershed”
legislative framework is thought to have finally ushered in the era of “third-generation”
people’s self-governance, (Joseph, op. cit.), providing for the Gram Sabha (village council) as
a general assembly of all the electors at the village level, representative institutions at the
village (panchayat), taluk and district levels, mandatory elections every five years,
reservation of seats and chairmen’s positions for socially deprived classes, reservation of onethird of the seats for women, and so on. Finances are arranged through the independent State
Finance Commission, and elections organised by an independent State Election Commission,
so that now states cannot escape the onus of actually implementing the regular elections and
provisioning of these constitutional bodies, although they have some leeway in the subjects
that they do entrust to them. Thus, finally, panchayats were given a firm legal and
constitutional status by these amendments to the Indian Constitution.
In the 2000 status report, George Mathew takes forward the story after the passing of the 73rd
and 74th Amendments (Mathew, 2000, p.10 et seq.). As he points out, a major achievement of
this system has been the massively widened democratic base, with some 500 district
panchayats, 6000 block panchayats, and 250,000 gram (village) panchayats in the rural sector
where some 73% of the population resides. In the urban sector, which has around 27% of the
population, there are now some 96 city corporations, 1700 town municipalities, and 1900
nagar (town) panchayats. Every five years, about 3 million representatives are elected by the
people, of whom one-third are, mandatorily, women. Moreover, thanks to the reservation
schemes, women head about 175 district panchayats, more than 2000 intermediate level
panchayats, and around 85,000 gram panchayats and 630 city corporations and town
municipalities (Mathew, 2000). This massively widened democratic base, in his view, has
brought about a fundamental “qualitative change” to India’s federalism, in that that the
popularity and electoral success of the political parties now depends on the sincerity with
which they devolve power to the local bodies. Mathew ascribes losses and reverses suffered
by the ruling parties in Rajasthan and Karnataka during the assembly elections in 1998 and
1999, and similarly the reverses suffered by the ruling party in Uttar Pradesh panchayat
elections in 2000, to their neglect of Panchayati Raj. The continued success of the ruling
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-3-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
parties in West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh were likewise ascribed to the seriousness with
which they took up the cause of panchayat system.
Will Panchayati Raj ever be established firmly?
In the midst of this triumphal march, it is all the more surprising to find that the protagonists
of panchayati raj are still dogged by a sense of defeat and disillusionment. Thus, George
Mathew, writing as recently as April 2013, gives this bleak judgement:
“Although panchayats got a constitutional status 20 years ago, politicians have managed to subvert the
decentralisation of power, out of fear of the emergence of rival political forces. So panchayati raj remains a pipe
dream while the bureaucracy’s writ runs large.” (Mathew,
article in The Times of India, 15 April
2013)
Mathew charges that politicians champion panchayati raj when they are out of power, but try
to “weaken” it when they come to power; he blames the bureaucracy, “from the village level
to the highest level”, for continuously subverting the ideals of local government – since 1882
(sic.). In this they were “hand-in-glove with the state-level politicians”. According to
Mathew, “Hardly anything has been done to change this mindset of the bureaucracy and of
political leaders in the country”. In Annie Besant’s metaphor, like a baby that has been tied
up and therefore never learnt to walk, panchayati raj has never been allowed to play its role,
which explains “the inability of the panchayati raj institutions to become institutions of selfgovernment” (Mathew, 2013).
In his Introduction to the earlier 1994 Status report, George Mathew points to the initial gains
from the panchayat system, but states that “nevertheless, the panchayati raj system has been
moving downhill” (Mathew, 1994, p.6); he quotes various authors who use such disparaging
phrases as “a living caricature of local government”, “a focus of frustration”, “the gram sabha
is something of a joke”, and so on. This, Mathew feels, could have been set right if there had
been regular elections, but this was seldom achieved, a particularly unhappy example being
Tamil Nadu, where elections were postponed for some 20 years on one pretext or another.
Mathew and others ascribe this failures to a “conspiracy” by the bureaucracy, which launched
development programmes like the IADP (Intensive Agricultural District Programme), bypassing the panchayati raj institutions, with the intention to maintain its control over the
planning and execution of development plans. Other schemes and programmes, like the
SFDA (Small Farmers Development Agency) and the DPAP (Drought Prone Areas
Programme) or the ITDP (Intensive Tribal Development Programme), were also launched
outside the purview of the elected zilla parishads, whose plan allocations were “tapered off”
(Mathew, 1994, p.7).
In discussing the emergence of women as a separate force, apart from describing the
obstacles they face such as not being taken seriously, or being used as a front by men, or
having to face the threat of violence to their person if they dared to come out alone to attend
meetings, Mathew (2000, p.11) also lets fall some of the less desirable aspects of politics in
the panchayats.: “…the general atmosphere of politics has been vitiated by corruption,
violence and petty-mindedness. Great deal of money is involved in contesting elections. All
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-4-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
these factors affect the choice of deserving candidates among women and also their
efficiency after they are elected.” Other writers have also commented that women
representatives are often put up by the men-folk to grab power (Vyasulu and Vyasulu, 1999).
In a similar vein, Mani Shankar Aiyar, former minister for PRI in the central government,
says in a newspaper interview that panchayati raj has no hope unless all the powers of the
district administration are handed over to it, and the gram sabhas are put in charge of all
social sector schemes, but he also says (ironically, to my mind), that it is the bureaucracy that
will have to produce the methodology of devolution (Aiyar, 2013).
George Mathew, bemoaning the lack of strong demand for such institutions from the bottom,
calls for: 1) strong demand for devolution from below – the village assembly (gram sabha),
village panchayats and district panchayats as well as “enlightened citizens’ organisations”; 2)
creating a separate cadre of civil servants for the panchayats, not depending on the line
departments of the states, 3) making efforts to change the attitudes of state politicians, 4)
creating a “new culture of democracy” in the government servants, 5) eradication of feudal
values, casteism, low levels of literacy etc., to be a part of the agenda of change, training, etc.
(Mathew, 2000).
Why should there be this feeling of defeat and dejection, in the face of the tremendous
institutional effort and financial inputs, and the ostensible endorsement of PRI by all sections
of the polity, in the very midst of its triumphal success, so to speak? The answer may lie in
the actual experience of PRI in the field, in the underlying divergence between intentions and
perceptions of the reality on the ground. In the next section, I will suggest how the PRIs as
realised in the present dispensation satisfy neither the ideas presented by our leaders in the
past, nor do they actually serve the purpose of grass roots or decentralized governance, which
may be one source of this anomie. It also will become clear that PRIs by themselves are not
sufficient to facilitate this aspiration, and why the much-reviled lower level, community
based organizations (CBOs) and government departments are also going to be necessary in
the foreseeable future.
II. The ‘village republics’
The promise of village resurgence: Gandhiji’s vision
The vision of panchayati raj was invoked by our national leaders and thinkers as a revival of
a glorious past, in which, as per the usual story, each village had its own panchayat, or
committee of five wise men (pancha), to govern itself. Each village essentially arranged its
own activities, its own defence from outside forces, and its own economy, with very little
interference from the centre or from other polities.
It is generally recognised that village self-governance was a basic tenet of the Gandhian
framework. Since village self-governance is also a basic idea of the panchayati raj system, it
is natural to think (erroneously) that all that has been done is to give effect to Gandhiji’s
thought on the best form of governance for India. An important part of it was bound up with
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-5-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
Gandhi’s economic philosophy, in which he saw an inseparable link between the modes of
production and the power relationships in society: only if communities produce for their own
needs, and not for external markets, will a state develop that is not based on violence and
force. As stated by Ganguli (1973) in his scholarly book Gandhi’s Social Philosophy,
“Federalism, decentralisation, primacy of people’s initiative and autonomy in local
communities – interdependent, and not entirely self-contained – are apparently the main ideas
that follow from his logic of an ideal social structure”. The relationship of a village
community with other villages, and to the larger world, would be elaborated through a free
federation of groups in “ever-widening, but never-ascending circles” (Ganguli, op. cit.,
p.164). The relationship of villages and other levels in the polity would not be hierarchical or
pyramidal, but instead could be thought of as a number of “concentric circles” forming
finally an “oceanic circle”, all at the same hierarchical level. Ganguli then goes on to wonder
at the practical implications of this type of structure in the modern world.
We can discern here the germ of a contradiction, since it appears that Indian society had
developed traditionally on the basis of hierarchical position and caste affiliation, rather than
allegiance to the local community, whereas western thinking encouraged one to view all men
(and latterly, women) as equal, and democracy as a fundamental right of all people. In other
words, the autonomy that today’s believers advocate is only a relative one, circumscribed by
their other ideals of a just society, a completely egalitarian, even communistic set-up with
everyone working together to a common ideal. We obviously do not see the existing villages
as anywhere near that ideal. The autonomous village council, therefore, would not have the
power to create what would amount to unequal social hierarchies, or allocate property in (to
our mind) unjust ways, or discriminate against persons based on race, caste, gender or any
other such criterion.
This concept of Gandhiji’s may be characterised as basically an “ordered anarchy”, with
familial links to other utopian or idealist philosophers like Tolstoy or the American romantic
environmentalists Thoreau and Emerson (Ganguli, op.cit., p.171). Implicit in this is a picture
of a saner and kinder world order: if all people limited their wants and refrained from
coveting additional power and wealth, communities also would be non-accumulating and
self-regulating, and in turn states would become non-acquisitive and non-aggressive.
Gandhiji, being suspicious of the effects of state power and bureaucracies on society and
communities, was not apparently a votary of the modern organised welfare state; he may not
even have been sure about the merits of Western models of democracy, preferring instead to
entrust leadership to a set of wise people: “True democracy is not inconsistent with a few
persons representing the spirit, the hope and the aspirations of those whom they claim to
represent… Bulk is not the true test of democracy” (Gandhi, quoted in Ganguli, ibid.). There
seems to be an underlying ambiguity, therefore, in Gandhiji’s concept of the people’s role in
democracy, and perhaps this reinforced the ideal of entrusting the village community to the
committee of wise persons, the panchayat, from which the system of panchayati raj gets its
appellation.
However, there were also dissenting voices, however muted, that saw the emancipation of our
people from poverty and the dead hand of caste and religion, only in the development of
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-6-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
modern productive relationships and market mechanisms and institutions. The institutional
structure that has actually developed, then, looks like an uneasy compromise between these
different and disparate streams of thought, and the PRIs as actually realised are a far cry from
what Gandhi envisaged (without in any way implying that Gandhiji’s was the only way, or
even indeed a feasible option in the real world). So one comment we may safely make about
our present-day PRIs is that they are NOT a realisation of Gandhiji’s esentially anarchic
polity of self-sufficient village republics in an hierarchy-free network.
It is interesting that among the prominent and important actors at that time, it was a champion
of social justice and equality of opportunity like Ambedkar who had differences with this
approach. Unlike the Gandhians who had a basic distrust of bureaucracy and the State,
Ambedkar in fact stressed the features of the Draft Constitution that provided for such strong,
independent, institutions in the triune polity of the Indian republic: an independent judiciary,
a strong civil bureaucracy to service the executive, and of course the parliament of elected
representatives. A strong centre was an essential counterbalance to the states in taking
forward the affairs of the country:
“The Draft Constitution has sought to forge means and methods whereby India will have Federation and at the
same time will have uniformity in all the basic matters which are essential to maintain the unity of the country.
The means adopted by the Draft Constitution are three: (1) a single judiciary, (2) uniformity in fundamental
laws, civil and criminal, and (3) a common All-India Civil Service to man important posts.” (Ambedkar,
in
Rodrigues’ OUP edition, 2002, p.482)
Further,
“…there can be no doubt that the standard of administration depends upon the calibre of the Civil Servants who
are appointed to these strategic posts. Fortunately for us we have inherited from the past (a) system of
administration which is common to the whole of the country and we know what are these strategic posts. The
Constitution provides that without depriving the States of their right to form their own Civil Services there shall
be an All India Service recruited on an All-India basis with common qualifications, with uniform scale of pay
and the members of which alone could be appointed to these strategic posts throughout the Union.” (ibid.,
p.483)
Instead of trusting the ‘village republics’ to provide protection to minorities and depressed
classes, it would be the State, backed by constitutional guarantees and Directive Principles,
that would do so. A lot of detail was prescribed because:
“Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realize that our people have
yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic. In
these circumstances it is wiser not to trust the Legislature to prescribe forms of administration. This is the
justification for incorporating them in the Constitution” (Ambedkar,
op. cit., p.485)
India of the village republics: an imagined past?
As described above, a recurring motif in writings on India’s tryst with panchayati raj is a
picture of India being essentially made up of innumerable little ‘village republics’, which is
almost a part of the national psyche today. Ronald Inden, the eponymously named author of
the book Imagining India, points out that so pervasive – and persuasive -- was the image of
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-7-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
the self-governing Indian village, that every author had to repeat it, so much so that “It is one
of the pillars of these imperial constructs of India” (Inden, 2000, p.132). A favourite
formulation, which seems to have become an almost obligatory catch-phrase in our postcolonial era as well, is that India constituted a “congeries of republics”, a phrase we see used
by Colonel Mark Wilks (1820, p.121), reporting on the state of south India:
“The conqueror, or usurper, directly or through his agents, addresses himself as sovereign or representative of
the sovereign to the head of the township; its officers, its boundaries, and the whole frame of its interior
management remain unalterably the same; and it is of importance to remember that every state in India is a
congeries of these little republics.” (italics added).
According to Inden, most of these are capsule representations that can be traced back to the
statement of a prestigious servant of the East India Company, Sir Charles Metcalfe (17851846), who became Resident at Delhi at the age of 27, and went on to act as GovernorGeneral for two years (Mason, 1985). His description of a ‘village republic’ first appeared in
a British parliamentary inquiry of 1810.
“Not surprisingly, Mill, Utilitarian advocate of political economy, began this tradition, first reproducing the
passage in his discussion of revenue, the category under which most accounts of villages were classed in
nineteenth-century discourse … Elphinstone included it in his would-be replacement for Mill’s History in 1841,
the first part of which was updated by E.B.Cowell, H.H.Wilson’s student, early in this century... And it has
appeared in varying renditions countless times since. Even Marx, relying on the writings of two on-the-spot
commentators, Colonel Mark Wilks (1760?-1831), Company servant in Madras from 1782 to 1801, and Sir
George Campbell (1824-92), who held high posts in India between 1842 and 1874, produced a text on the
Indian village in Das Kapital.” (Inden,
op. cit.)
As a prominent world thinker who may have been unduly impressed by Metcalfe’s somewhat
grandiloquent characterisation of the idealised Indian village, Karl Marx’s attention turned to
India during the 1850s, amidst the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’ and transfer of control to the British
government. According to Draper (1977), Marx quoted the 1812 report of a House of
Commons committee (the Metcalfe report, that is) three times in reference to the societal
pattern in India, and interpolated the comment: “Every village is, and appears to always to
have been, in fact a separate community or republic” (Marx, quoted in Draper, op. cit.,
p.527). But Marx’s judgement was not really flattering: Marx (with Engels) thought that
Indian society had no history at all, apart from the successive intruders “who founded their
empires on the passive basis of the unresisting and unchanging society”; he declared of the
Indian village community, “rotting in the teeth of time”, that “no one could think of any more
solid foundation for Asiatic despotism and stagnation” (op. cit., p.527), that their very
isolation has “given rise to a more or less central despotism over the communes”, that they
were “contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery”, characterised by an
“undignified, stagnatory, and vegetative life” (ibid., p.554). And Engels declared that these
ancient communes “formed the basis of the cruellest form of state, Oriental despotism, from
India to Russia”, and that it was “only where these communities dissolved that the peoples
made progress of themselves” (Engels, quoted in Draper, op. cit., p.555). All this is just to
remind ourselves that the description of our “little republics” was not always laudatory.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-8-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
It is therefore quite likely that Gandhi and others also got their characterisation of the Indian
village as a ‘little republic’, from a study of these same colonial and Western intellectual
sources, to which we may add Sir Henry Maine, who served as legal member of council in
India, and who wrote of a joint system of cultivation and the “council of elders” in the Indian
villages (Maine, 1871, p.110). Apart from their observation of the existing Indian villages
themselves, the colonial administrators and writers may also have been swayed by some
degree of nostalgia for an imagined ancient history of the Teutons or Germanic branches of
the Aryans in ancient and medieval Western Europe, which had all but disappeared there as it
became a ‘modern’ society, but which still survived in its original, Aryan form in India,
which was still an ‘ancient’ society, as elaborated in Maine’s writings. Inden feels that not
only was the concept attractive to the colonial writers as evoking a sense of their own ancient
past, but the emphasis on India as a land of autonomous villages was a part of the efforts of
the colonial intellectuals to “deconstitute” the Indian state, by constant reiteration of the
village republics idea: “Just as the modern succeeded the ancient in time, so the modern
would dominate the ancient in space” (Inden, op. cit., p.132).
During the Constituent Assembly debates, Ambedkar refers to these concerns:
“Another criticism against the Draft Constitution is that no part of it represents the ancient polity of India. It is
said that the new Constitution should have been drafted on the ancient Hindu model of a State and that instead
of incorporating Western theories the new Constitution should have been raised and built upon village
Panchayats and District Panchayats. There are others who have taken a more extreme view. They do not want
any Central or Provincial Governments. They just want India to contain so many village Governments. The love
of the intellectual Indians for the village community is of course infinite if not pathetic (laughter). It is largely
due to the fulsome praise bestowed upon it by Metcalfe who described them as little republics having nearly
everything that they want within themselves, and almost independent of any foreign relations.”
Ambedkar goes on to say, of these village “republics”:
“That they have survived through all vicissitudes may be a fact. But mere survival has no value. The question is
on what plane they have survived. Surely on a low, on a selfish level. I hold that these village republics have
been the ruination of India. I am therefore surprised that those who condemn Provincialism and communalism
should come forward as champions of the village. What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance,
narrow-mindedness and communalism? I am glad that the draft Constitution has discarded the village and
adopted the individual as its unit.” (Ambedkar,
op. cit., p.486)
Being active in the real world, of course, Gandhi and other protagonists of the villageautonomy credo could not have been so unmindful of the effect of outside forces on the
village, especially the development towards private property rights and titles, whether in
antiquity or in their own times. Obviously one reason for the perceived independence of our
villages would have been the sheer lack of communications, which meant that each
settlement would have to stock up against calamities, and each household also would have to
make provision against future needs if it were to survive in the long term. Of course the
intermittent passage of campaigning armies of whatever hue or persuasion, could not have
left these communities unaffected or unruffled; and obviously, the closer the village to the
centre of power, the more it would have been integrated into those structures through trade,
barter, tribute, employment and patronage.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
-9-
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
Thus was the picture of autarky, stagnation and misery of the Indian villages built up by the
colonial writers. But there are also available more realistic accounts of the institutions of
community self-governance in historical times, as gleaned from the epigraphical record,
which I refer to in the next section.
III. Village bodies in the historical record
As a counter-balance to the pessimistic or nostalgic accounts of the Indian village in,
respectively, the colonial or nationalistic writings, what is probably a more realistic picture of
the Indian polity of those times is given in Radhakumud Mookerji’s scholarly study, Local
Government in Ancient India (revised edition, 1920). The overall purport of the author is that
there has been an essential unity in the institutional culture from north to south in India, along
with a great deal of “spontaneity and significance of specific variations”, as seen from the
literary and epigraphic evidence, law-books and inscriptions, from the 1st century onwards
(Mookerji, op. cit., p.xii-xiii).
The nature and activity of the vaunted village “republics” emerge from the epigraphic record
with a sense of immediate reality in Mookerji’s study. Firstly, their number: for instance, the
Tanjore records under Rajaraja I Chola (985-1013) testify to the existence of no less than 190
village assemblies, where the entire inhabitants assembled to conduct affairs: “The system
must have been in operation in thousands of other villages whose names and exact number
await discovery…” (Mookerji, op. cit., p.306). The Uttaramallur inscriptions closely
corroborate Megasthenes’ description of six boards of five members each, looking after
subjects like tanks and irrigation, gardens, public works, treasury, justice, general
supervision, and so on, and showing the essential uniformity of the North and the South of
the sub-continent (it is noteworthy that modern Panchayats also provide for a similar number
of sub-committees).
Next, their variety: it is clear from the records “that they are not uniformly composed and
constituted, but present a variety of types”. Just as there were diverse types of state tried in
India (not just one theocratic or autocratic type), “…similarly, even in the smaller sphere of
local government, there has been a considerable diversity of political growth” (Mookerji,
ibid., p.308). He cites different types of institutions available to the community, for instance
those based on caste, those based on special interest, or those based on the locality or
jurisdiction. One can discern the existence, and vigorous activity, of diverse organisations or
associations for the traders, the guilds, the religious orders and schools, and so on. Some of
the names mentioned are the sabha (the governing body of Brahmins of a village), the
mahasabha; the sangha already referred to by Panini (first century BC?), used “in a generic
sense to indicate all deliberate local associations other than the central government”, of
various types depending on the community of Dharma or ends (Mookerji, p.314); the kula,
the “closest corporation”, based on kinship; the sreni (craft or merchant guild), the vrata,
(based on martial pursuits); the matha or religious order; the territory-based puga, a
federation of all sectional or communal assemblies or association of men in a common
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 10 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
pursuit. At a yet higher level was the gana, or “political government of the popular type”.
Each of these bodies “is invested with executive and judicial functions and other powers of
government within the limits of its prescribed jurisdiction”. Many of these terms were used
commonly in the north and the south, pointing to the cultural unity of the sub-continent as a
whole (for meaning of terms, see Mookerji, p.32/3, 314).
Further, there is a distinct impression of the active combination of these ground-level
structures into higher level arrangements: “The individual village is not a world unto itself,
but is viewed as part of a larger whole. There is thus a widening of the sphere of interests and
public service.” The Mahasabha, for example, was “a development on some lines out of the
Sabha”; similarly, the general assembly of the Urar is “carried to the next stages of
development in the Nattar or District Assembly and the yet larger assembly of Nadu or
Division”. We even have references to even larger and higher assemblies, such as “the great
assembly of twelve Nadus… nay, of seventy-nine Nadus covering an area as vast as a
province” (Mookerji, op.cit., p.311).
Thus the actual nature of the ancient Indian polity was not exactly one of isolated villages
mouldering under a neglectful sovereign, but on the contrary a picture presents itself of a
bustling, vigorous civilisation with many levels of organisation and a rich tapestry of
activities and pursuits, within the region and across the seas as well, such as is portrayed in a
recent study (Pollock, 2006) on the wider world (the cosmopolis) of Sanskrit culture in South
and Southeast Asia that shows that it was, by the standards of any times, a sophisticated,
urbane, cosmopolitan affair. Mookerji argues that this “luxuriant growth” of local variations
gives the lie to those who state that there was no political institution between the village and
the central government, or that there could not be a federation of different communities and
castes. “On the other hand, …it is the very growth of these numerous, multi-form,
intermediate assemblies between the state and the individual which can most effectively help
on the evolution of Indian political life”. Again, “This pluralism of the group, as an
intermediate body between the state and the individual units, has been the most characteristic
feature of Indian polity” (Mookerji, p.317); and quoting M.P.Follet, “…politics cannot be
founded on representative or electoral methods but must rest on vital modes of association”
(what we could call civil society in today’s parlance).
According to Mookerji (op. cit., p.xxiii),
“Briefly stated, the Indian theory favours neither anarchy nor the unqualified pluralism of discrete and isolated
groups without reference to any nexus or solidarity as provided by the State, by Dharma, or otherwise… Nor,
again, are the local bodies of ancient India the products of decentralization operating in the sphere of a central
unitary State…The Indian polity … was, therefore, in its final development, neither pluralistic nor monistic in
its trend and type, but a balanced synthesis of three distinct and co-existing elements, the State with its
jurisdiction as represented by the Danda, the individual on the Road to Freedom (Mukti), and the various
intermediary groups, functional, local or voluntary, connecting these two poles by means of their own dharma,
their special Codes, and Customaries.”
In the light of the historical record, therefore, it appears that the flat, centre-less model is not
validated by appealing to the hoary past, whatever else may be its justifications. Neither the
centre, nor the peripheral village, can be considered as dispensable, nor can either be the final
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 11 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
arbiter. The present-day panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), therefore, correspond neither to
Gandhi’s vision of a hierarchy-free, anarchic, structure, nor do they hearken back to the
bustling and multi-hued complex of interest-based, caste-based, and locality-based
organisations that would justify the characterisation of the Indian polity as a ‘congeries of
village republics’.
In the next section, another issue in the PRIs will be discussed: the validity and role of subPRI bodies or the so-called community based organizations (CBOs).
IV Parallel community organisations and the panchayat
Perhaps the most vitriolic disapproval on the part of panchayati raj institution (PRI)
‘fundamentalists’ is reserved for the proliferation of ‘parallel bodies’ that work in the line
departments and not under the PRIs. Many departments and externally-aided projects have
spawned such committees and ‘special purpose vehicles’. For instance, Mathew (2000, p.16),
feels that central ministries and state line departments by-pass the panchayati raj institutions
through the creation of registered societies. If at all the sectoral line departments allocate
funds to the gram panchayats, they do so as “tied grants”. Schemes mentioned as culprits in
this regard include the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Watershed
Development Programme, Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMC), District Primary
Education Programme (DPEP), the Janmabhoomi programme in Andhra Pradesh “which has
come as a big blow to the panchayats”, and according to a study by the NIRD Hyderabad
“has sidetracked the Panchayati Raj institutions and other local bodies by maintaining parallel
systems of administration by according more importance to MLAs and other politicians”; the
“District Government” setup in Madhya Pradesh consisting of the minister, collector, MLAs,
MPs, ZP representatives, which makes the collector de facto the chief executive of the
district, under the guise of setting up the District Planning Committee under the Panchayat
Act. Similarly, the author finds the MPLAD Scheme, whereby each MP gets a discretionary
fund to be spent on public works through the District Collector, “an ‘assault’ on the letter and
spirit of the 73rd Constitution Amendment”, inasmuch as the list of 23 items of work that can
be taken up with these funds, are from the 29 subjects earmarked for the Panchayats under
the 11th Schedule. Now states are providing similar funds to their MLAs, and “dangerously
enough, several municipalities have started similar schemes for Councillors…This is a
dangerous portent and also a deplorable inroad into the domain of local bodies” (Mathew, op.
cit., p.18).
This position is expanded forcefully by Chandrashekhar (2011), who cites studies to show
that these agencies are nothing but a ploy to continue the hegemony of the official
departments: according to her, there is “a certain amount of deception” in this sort of
decentralisation in parallel fora, and as these parallel bodies “are expected to move centrestage and be mainstreamed”, they will in time displace both the PRIs and the very line
departments that have given birth to them, something that “does not augur well for a country
like India which is characterized by wide disparities and inequalities” (Chandrashekhar,
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 12 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
2011, p.196). The author feels that such modes of participation are geared to immediate
benefits, and in the example of a watershed project, terms it a “lackadaisical form of
participation”, or a “utilitarian” approach which is unable to “capture the imagination of the
people” (in contrast to the Gandhian mode, which is based on sacrifice by the leader and is
able to inspire the people to great effort). Similar observations apply to most of the other
departments and the societies and community-based organisations (CBOs) set up by them.
Chandrashekhar is emphatic that all activities in the 29 subjects earmarked for PRIs should be
brought before only the elected bodies, and not any alternative formation such as the Gram
Sabha (general assembly), which is only a ploy to circumvent the elected bodies. This point
about parallel bodies has been made by many observers.
Ground experience of panchayati raj
Coming back to the experience of establishing the rule of panchayati raj institutions (PRI) so
far, we sense a certain inadequacy in reviews like the ones by the Institute of Social Sciences
(Mathew, op. cit.), since they do not seem to tell us much about what actually has transpired
in the working out on the ground of the PRI legislation, such as an objective analysis of how
many of the panchayats could be considered to be working well, how many poorly, and how
many are middling (as has been done in the searching studies and periodic assessments of the
Village Forest Committees in the country, which will be discussed a little later). An
interesting portrayal of the ground reality is given in Gopalappa’s paper in the conference
proceedings “The Role of Panchayats and Bureaucracy in Rural Development” (Joseph,
2007), reflecting his interview-based study in three dissimilar districts of Karnataka, namely
Mandya, Gulbarga and Dakshina Kannada (South Canara).
In Mandya in southern Karnataka, Gopalappa’ found that the elected members “by and large
are ignorant, illiterate and poor”, and the panchayat is dominated by the secretary (a full-time
official). Where the president is well off, his decisions are final, and if he is “non-corrupt”,
good work is done. If the members are also “strong”, matters end up in court and
development suffers (i.e. there are disputes and disputations). In northern Karnataka, the
author found that “neither the elected representatives nor the officials take much interest”,
and the dominant members take control. Caste and other factors are influential. In Gulbarga
district (relatively more backward and dry), there are “extreme cases … where the entire GP
is controlled by a single family”. This is the case even of an all-woman panchayat cited by
him. In this “extreme situation”, the officials are neglected and behave like “obedient
servants” of the dominant family.
In Dakshina Kannada (a prosperous and forward coastal district in the southwest), things
were better, and “the members, office bearers and the officials work collectively for the
overall development of the community”, and often put in their own money into the
development works. Even here, though, the SC and ST members “do not have any say in the
panchayat matters as most of them are casual labourers” (even after becoming members of
the GP). In one instance, “The woman president of the ST category is controlled by a
dominant member belong (sic.) to Vokkaliga community”, as she works as a labourer in his
gardens. Except for this, Gopalappa found that PRIs in the Dakshina Kannada district are
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 13 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
doing better compared to the other two, and their panchayat members have “service motive
rather than profit motive”, while it is the opposite in Mandya and Gulbarga districts.
In going through reports of the ground reality in the context of the pessimistic assessment of
prominent PRI protagonists (quoted earlier), one aspect that causes concern is the assumption
that somehow when it comes to the panchayat institutions, people will take them as their
own, and bring to bear the level of “skill, honesty and will” that are so woefully lacking in
other spheres, until the State itself can comfortably “wither away” (S.K. Dey, from the Asoka
Mehta report on Panchayati Raj, 1977). This anticipation, which seems to echo one of the
most ardent (though unrealistic) aspirations of Marxist ideology, creates such a powerful
picture of an idyllic state of human affairs, that it can be employed as a cover-all for all sorts
of impractical ideas. Most factual accounts from the field would, no doubt, corroborate
Gopalappa’s findings about the persistence of unequal and feudal relations among the castes
and sections of rural society. In reality, it is puzzling why anyone should believe that out of
the feudal and casteist ground, an egalitarian and benign structure should automatically arise
like a phoenix from the ashes.
A ground-level view of what panchayats are in reality (which everyone is aware of, but no
one wants to comment on because PRIs are something of a holy grail in India today), is
afforded by another George, Abraham S. in his book “India Untouched”, 2004. Let me quote
just a couple of passages out of many pages on this subject (p.145-6):
“Of all the corrupt practices, the biggest obstacle our foundation faces in its daily work with the rural
communities is having to deal with Panchayat officials and some of the village thugs. They work in unison, with
Panchayat governance offering the cover for their attempts to extract money from us on some pretext or the
other. In the name of self governance and delegation of power to local officials, the government has created a
monster bureaucracy of unimaginable proportions throughout rural India – layers of officials with powers to do
little other than carry out extortion, take bribes, misuse funds, and dish out favours.”
A little later, he explains that
“even well-meaning government officials are unwilling to stop the activities of troublemakers for fear that they
might write false petitions to politicians…For NGOs like us, courts may be our only protection, but there is no
assurance of a prompt remedy. The system is so badly broken that only a good government with some courage
can fix it. In the meantime, the way to help the poor is to “help” the rich first”.
An underlying contradiction seems to persist in the attitude toward elected representatives.
For example, Mathew in his support for indirect elections “in consonance with the cabinet
system of government”, does not seem to find any irony in this formulation, which may seem
to an uncharitable observer to be taking away with the other hand what it gives with the one
hand. Again, in rejecting the idea of giving elected MPs and MLAs a presence in the
panchayats, he fails to see any irony in his mistrust of elected representatives at a higher level
and reposing of the same faith in equally or less directly representative members at the local
level.
Some of the most commonly cited issues in the implementation of panchayati raj are the
infrequency of elections (which was addressed by setting up independent State Election
Commissions), the limited amount of funds available to the lower levels (requiring the
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 14 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
establishment of separate State Finance Commissions), the lack of independent staff and
official cadres loyal to the PRI system (rather than to the state governments), and the role of
money and nepotism in elections (which makes it difficult for honest and well-meaning
persons to enter into the fray). While these analyses are unobjectionable, and their
prescriptions are well-meant in a generalised way, it is ironical that the very system which is
expected to take the country forward is unable to manage itself, and we ultimately have to fall
back upon the old pattern of a centralised and distant executive in the form of an Election
Commission and a Finance Commission to keep the system ticking.
In other words, it appears that in critical situations, the decentralised pattern does not deliver
as effectively as the professionalized but distant and unattached institutions (the State
Commissions). Once again, the irony in passing judgement against the latter is lost on the
social-political reformer, for instance that “the systems of government-elected politicians,
professional bureaucrats and the variegated apparatus built around them, has failed…”
(Mishra, 2004, quoted by Joseph, 2007, p.xxvi), while at the same time depending on just
such a system to establish the new order, and even asking for a similar set-up in order to
strengthen and make operational the district and village panchayats.
In reality, of course, neither are people’s organisations (and lately, civil society organisations
and private sector corporations) so uniformly virtuous as made out in recent popular writings,
and destined to prevail over all else, nor are all our other, state-run institutions so uniformly
bad as to be doomed to extinction (and of course, vice-versa). Any realistic system of
decentralisation would have to take into account all the foibles and weaknesses of human
nature as individuals and as members of groups, and provide for training, vigilance, and other
preventives, palliatives and correctives, rather than falling back upon a black-and-white view
of society as consisting of the people in government being uniformly bad, and the persons
outside government as universally virtuous.
Nor can we justifiably see panchayati raj as a stepping stone to a state-less society: what we
should be expecting, in fact, is the reverse, the conversion of panchayats into organs of the
larger state, an importation of all the aspects, good and bad, of large organisations and
bureaucracies down to the village panchayat level. But we accept the negative aspects as a
justifiable risk in the hope that the people at the receiving end may come to have a greater say
on how things are run, and a greater control over their own lives. We will not be able to
escape or circumvent the obligation to work on the details of our systems, such as they are, to
make them more rational, more responsive and responsible, and less arbitrary, less dishonest
and self-serving, and we may as well start with the politician-bureaucrat combine at the state
and district levels, and carry over the better values and systems into the lower tier panchayat
set-up.
Institutions of ‘little government’
While PRI purists insist that the PRIs are the only legitimate body that should operate in the
districts, others, like the line departments of the state governments and the public sector or
quasi-statal corporations and boards, are continually being entrusted responsibilities to
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 15 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
implement various schemes and programmes, apart from maintaining the basic law and order
in the countryside and safeguarding the physical integrity of the resource. This is especially
true of the forest department, which is the primary custodian of some 25% of the land area of
the country, much of it remote from centres of population and rich in biodiversity, timber,
minerals and of course land and water resources.
It is all the more intriguing, therefore, that PRI protagonists are still dreaming of a
structureless polity, while operating through the central government and especially its centres
of top-down power to impose their model. Similarly, ‘social environmentalists’ also think
that the only hope for conserving the environment and natural resources (like forests,
common lands, water resources) is through the autarchic village republics, which will be
imposed by fiat from the centre. There is a close parallel in this ambivalence between grassroots empowerment and imposition from above of environmental values of their choosing,
and the ambiguity in Gandhian thought on the relative merits of grass-roots, bottom-up
democracy and top-down, centralised national governance structures. Perhaps the only thing
that we can say about these dichotomies is that they are more in the mind (of the polemicist)
rather than out there among the general public, and that the essence of the democratic idea
(which the people who vote in elections doubtless understand) is not so much that it is an
ideal system, to be run by ideal humans, but that it is amenable to constant course correction
and modification as influenced by personages and experiences. As Fukuyama (2011, p.188)
says, “The experiences of China and India suggest then that a better form of freedom emerges
when there is a strong state and a strong society, two centres of power that are better able to
balance and offset each other over time”.
Everybody loves a good draught, as observed by Sainath (1996), and perhaps the same is the
case with local self-governance, or ‘little government’, whose importance in the US system
has been described and analysed at length, for instance in the volume of readings edited by
Erwin C. Buell and William E.Brigman (1968), The Grass Roots. Readings in State and
Local Government. In introducing their chapter on Local Government, the editors comment
(p.393) that:
“Faith in local government is an outgrowth of the frontier concept of democracy. The frontier, or Jacksonian,
concept of democracy contained many values that still have vitality. The belief that small, local government is
better than distant, big government still possesses propaganda value. Direct election of nearly all decision
makers is preferred to any form of indirect selection on the assumption that officeholders will be more
responsible and honest if directly elected. ...most Americans probably believe that rural government is more
effective, efficient, and honest than its urban counterpart.”
However, that is only the ideal; the reality is a little different, according to Roscoe C. Martin,
who “challenges these stereotypes of local government” in his paper “The Physiology of
Little Government” in the volume (op. cit., pp.395-400). Martin contends that “even in the
rural areas where grass roots concepts should be most viable they are invalid. The
government closest to the people is not necessarily the best government: it may be the most
biased, inefficient, and corrupt government” (ibid., p.393). In Martin’s words (p.399):
“Little government, being personal, intimate, and informal, is supposed by some to be free of politics. In simple
truth, no concept concerning local government has less merit… politics is found wherever people debate issues
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 16 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
of public import. Grass-roots politics frequently involves little of public policy; on the contrary, it may be
largely of a personal character, and it may indeed be cast in terms of personal loyalty … The smaller the unit or
area is, the closer the government is to the grass roots, the less meaningful is the distinction between politics,
government, and administration. ...Grass-roots government is therefore pre-eminently the domain of the
generalist, big government that of the specialist… The differentiations in process common in big government
are hardly known at the grass roots.”
This pattern is expected to obtain in the Indian scenario too, as in any other country, and it is
well that we are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of either alternative, and indeed of
any others, so that our expectations are tempered to match the potentialities, and we are not
left with the sense of almost obligatory disappointment with the pace of progress and public
support of ‘little’ government that characterizes the writing of many PRI protagonists.
In the next section, we will hear some views of actual villagers in three states of the Indian
union.
V Village conversations
This paper emanates basically from a study on the effectiveness of different institutional
modes on the protection and sustainable management of forests as a common property
resource (CPR). Some of the institutional alternatives available are the panchayat institutions,
the state (i.e., the forest departments), community organisations, and the collaborative or
participatory approaches developed in some departments (which have been castigated as a
violation of the Constitution by the PRI purists), like joint forest management (JFM) in the
forest department, and the school monitoring committees in education.
Community management of CPRs
In the literature on common property resources, various conditions have been suggested by
scholars like the Nobel Prize awardee Elinor Ostrom, to explain why some communities are
successful in sustainably managing their CPRs, while others fall prey to the ‘tragedy of the
commons’ and the ‘free-rider syndrome’. Of course Ostrom is well known on the subject, and
this is not the place to present a review of that body of work, so it must suffice to just
mention here the main understandings.
To institute a set of rules to manage a CPR, that are acceptable and sustainable, the
requirements according to Ostrom (1990) are as follows:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
define a set of appropriators who are authorized to use the CPR,
relate the rules to the attributes of the CPR and the community,
the rules to be defined at least in part, by local appropriators,
the rules to be monitored by individuals accountable to local appropriators
the rules are “sanctioned using graduated punishments” (in common parlance, I
interpret this to mean that serious punishments are not imposed at the first offence,
but through a gradually rising series according to the seriousness and frequency).
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 17 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
We may note, parenthetically, that a question may well be raised whether and to what extent
any community can actually hold its members responsible for their actions. The above list of
specifications still does not explain why some self-interested individuals should not gang up
to subvert the “rules”, especially in a fast-changing world where the younger generation may
see things totally differently. To follow Ostrom’s line for the present, the following set of
variables is presented as capable of explaining the supply of institutions in the sort of
situations her case studies cover:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
the total number of decision makers,
the number of participants needed to achieve the collective action,
the discount rate in use,
the similarities of interest,
the presence of people with substantial leadership assets.
that they have access to rapid low cost “arenas” to resolve conflicts,
that the rights to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external
government agencies, and
8) that these activities are organised in multiple layers of “nested enterprises”.
Ostrom found that successful experiments in community management have started with
small-scale institutions where people learn about one another and build up trust by face-toface interactions, and then gradually build it up to higher levels and larger groups. That is,
institution-building and management learning has to proceed through an “incremental, selftransforming process”, to be successful, when
“... individuals repeatedly communicate and interact with one another in a localized physical setting. Thus, it is
possible that they can learn whom to trust, what effects their actions will have on each other and on the CPR,
and how to organize themselves to gain benefits and avoid harm. When individuals have lived in such situations
for a substantial time and have developed shared norms and patterns of reciprocity, they possess social capital
with which they can build institutional arrangements for resolving CPR dilemmas” (Ostrom, 1990, p.183/4).
We may note on the margins that this is precisely what has been given short shrift in the
polemical approach to developing local governance through PRIs, which are to be set up all
at once, at a fairly high level (district, taluk and ‘village’, the last encompassing many
settlements and thousands of persons), with the accompanying problems of trust building
which Ostrom pointed out as crucial for natural resource management systems. Again
parenthetically, it may be noted that the strength of village forest committees and other
“parallel” community-based organisations (CBOs) referred to above, lies precisely in that
they deal with small groups of mutually known persons in the hamlet or neighbourhood,
enabling constant discussion and negotiation of the rules and their implementation.
Joint Forest Management and communities
Among observers of the CPR scene in India, Saxena (1997) has tried to identify the factors in
success and failure of various forms of participatory forest management in different states,
some of which are as follows. In the case of Van (=forest) Panchayats of the UP hills (now
Uttarakhand), some of the factors were: leadership quality , availability of funds, distance
from road and proximity to the forest; total area and quality of the forest land; whether
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 18 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
neighbours also were well-provided for; and single village panchayats fare better than multivillage (Saxena, op. cit., p.65). In self-actuated forest protection groups in Orissa: small
communities where people know one another are more successful; upland topography makes
the forest patch visible from the settlement, hence more effective; remoteness from market
and road; dependence on forests being shared by all families in the village are positive
factors; interest taken by the village leadership is crucial. Saxena sums up by saying (ibid.,
p.81):
“We can conclude, then, that community control and management can work in three circumstances. First, in
villages which are small, homogeneous, remote from markets, and dependent upon produce from the commons.
Second, where gains from organisation are high, for both the village elite and the commoners. And third, where
a leader is willing to oversee for non-monetary gains”.
In another much larger study, Ravindranath & Sudha (2004) found from their survey of 1421
JFM committees in 6 states a “marked increase in the vegetation density and canopy cover”
through plantations, and to a lesser extent, through protection of degraded areas and
encouraging natural regeneration. A better relationship between the forest department and the
people was reported in all the states, as also women’s empowerment and improved
relationship with the local Panchayat (“except in a few where it has led to conflict with regard
to benefit sharing and management”). The people recorded their perception of “an increase in
the water table in the wells” in West Bengal and Gujarat, as also an increase in the moisture
retention capacity of the forest soil, attributed to better canopy and root system, and reduced
run-off.
Ravindranath & Sudha drew the following “lessons” from their survey: for success, one has
to enlist the participation of all the eligible sections (men and women), get MoUs drawn up
and signed, prepare micro-plans, and so on. They identify the following “issues” to be
addressed: JFM orders in the states should keep pace with the more liberal policy
pronouncements from the Centre; economic viability is not addressed, and it is “necessary to
adopt a demonstrably cost-effective approach to JFM”; the relationship with PRIs needs to be
studied (it has been positive in some, like Rajasthan, but has led to problems in others); a
“national-level Monitoring and Evaluation” strategy is called for; and the community has to
be further empowered.
Saxena, talking about the relationship of Forest Protection Committees (FPCs) with the
Panchayats, appears to take a non-committal stand. He quotes Poffenberger and Singh, 1993,
that their relationships “need to be sharply defined”, without comment. But he also cites the
case of Orissa, where the requirement that the female Naib Sarpanch (Deputy Chief) of the
Panchayat will be the head of the FPC, is “not working well and her stewardship is not seen
as legitimate by the indigenous FPCs” (Saxena, 1997, p.116). He goes on to say that there is
the danger of the small user community losing authority to the much larger panchayat, and
that panchayats have had difficulty in managing community woodlots “due to their inherent
political nature and often diverse constituencies” (ibid., p.117).
Coming to our own small study on the subject, we looked at three villages located in the
Aravalli hills of south Haryana (Mangar, Zeer and Bondshi), three villages in the Western
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 19 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
Ghats of Karnataka (Shigehalli, Kalwe, and Sirur-Balgod VFCs in Sirsi Division), and four in
the hills near Vellore in Tamilnadu (Thorumalai, Thondam Thulasi, K-Pudur, and Velleri
VFCs in Vellore Division).
The Aravalli case study threw up some interesting insights on the way communities are
responding to pressures on forest CPRs that are, ostensibly, in their private holdings (not
reserved forests under the forest department). With land prices sky-rocketing in the National
Capital Region, obviously the communities are under great pressure to allow divestment of
the individual holdings, and here we find that the criteria listed by the authors cited above do
not seem to be good predictors of CPR integrity or community cohesion. One relatively
homogeneous village is on the verge of losing its CPR forest to private land developers who
have purchased individuals’ holdings, in spite of its status as a sacred grove; a second village
is confidently holding and managing its forests as a common property, in spite of the ethnic
(religious) heterogeneity and lack of economic returns; a third community has transferred
custody of its CPR to the forest department for a certain period of years.
A more detailed account of these three cases is presented in a paper in the EPW (Dilip
Kumar, 2013), and the long version is published as a monograph (Dilip Kumar, 2014).
However, whatever be the character of the community that has contributed to the vigour and
resilience of their forest conservation activities, the one common thread running through
these examples has been the success in fashioning what Ostrom terms a “nested” system of
institutions, by collaborating with the state authorities (mainly the forest departments, but
also including others like the police and development departments, and not excluding the
panchayat bodies). In the final analysis, we have to acknowledge that it is the mutually
supporting roles of the state forest department and the community organisations that has
made the programme successful, in both the biophysical and the societal, senses. The other
factors, which can form a self-extending list as more and more exigencies are accommodated,
do not seem to be good explanators: the least successful community happens to be the most
homogeneous, with a high spiritual value for its forest, but it seems to be powerless before
the market forces due to soaring land values.
This is not the occasion to delve deeper into the CPR or forest question, as we are mainly
engaged with exploring the relations of communities with PRIs, the forest case providing a
context illustrative of the general situation. Of the questions we asked in our village
discussions, the one of interest here is the relationship of communities and state line
departments with the panchayati raj institutions. The response from our ten sample villages is
summarized below.
Community organisations vis-à-vis PRIs and state departments
We now consider our learnings regarding the interrelations between the community-based
activities organised by the line departments and PRI systems. Firstly, in the communities we
visited, in all the three states, it was made patently clear that as far as the village communities
are concerned, they find no contradiction at all in the parallel functioning of different types of
institutions. In their view, panchayat bodies (PRIs) have their place, and community-based
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 20 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
organizations (CBOs) like village forest committees or school committees, also have their
own place.2 Again and again, in the face of repeated probing, the message came out clearly
that PRIs alone are not sufficient to meet all their institutional needs, and there is a place for
additional institutions closer to ground-level, for example specialised institutions to manage
specific activities like JFM or education or energy or toilets or agricultural inputs or savings
and loans. The villagers themselves do not see these as rival systems, and they recognise that
they all represent the same community and work together. They do not see any rivalry
between the JFM committee and the PRI, for example. There were no signs of hostility or
jealousy from the panchayat representatives either.3 So uniform were these reactions, across
the states, that we decided there was no point in visiting yet other villages in other states (as
originally planned): they almost seemed to be following a written script, so repetitive were
their reactions!
This is an eminently sensible approach, and moreover in consonance with the hoary traditions
and the history of the village set-up in India, which worked through a set of sub-committees
that seem to have had the requisite flexibility to accommodate diverse interest groups and
alignments for different contexts, as we saw from Radhakumud Mookerji’s account of the
traditional concepts and the epigraphical record (op. cit.). In effect, it appears that any such
antagonisms are more in the minds of the ‘civil society’ champions of one or the other
system, and not in the community.
With regard to the role of the panchayats and the issue of jurisdiction under the Panchayati
Raj Acts, it was made clear by every community we talked with that, while they do not have
any great expectations of the panchayat system, they do appreciate the PRIs for what they
are, another rung in the state political apparatus.4 Indeed, they actually find it easier to work
with the personnel in the line departments.5 In effect, the gram or village panchayats are
already farther away from the community in the individual hamlet or settlement than the local
functionary like the forest guard, or school teacher.
They are now well aware that, in the ultimate analysis, the panchayat is not of much
relevance in protecting their CPRs, and in fact only an umbrella legislation like the Forest Act
2
The villagers are particularly happy with the school monitoring committees under the aegis of the education
department; as they put it, previously parents wouldn’t remember even which class the children were in, now
they are closely involved in both planning and implementation.
3
Every village community we spoke with recognised that it is difficult to impose sanctions (fines etc.) on one’s
own neighbours, hence an outside agency like the forest department is needed to implement the rules and
regulations.
4
Interestingly, Bondshi panchayat, which has entrusted its CPR forest to the state forest department, has for
some reasons decided not to take a paisa from the government, and manages on its own income (mainly the rent
for land leased to para-military forces and interest from land sold to the Haryana Police).
5
As stated in one of the Sirsi villages, they would in the past have been hardly aware of the identity of the forest
guard, but now he or she is like a member of the village community. Of course, since these field staff are
recruited from the local population, they may actually be related to them in some cases, either by blood or by
marriage!
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 21 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
or the Forest Conservation Act (in the case of private forest) will come to their aid.6 Similar
considerations obtain in many other sectors of immediate interest to the people in smaller
population centres and hamlets.
Turning specifically to the status of the JFM committee vis-à-vis PRI in the village selfgovernance system, it was apparent that the villagers do not themselves see the JFM
committees as alien or inimical to the goal of village self-governance, or indeed (as already
stated) to the Panchayat framework. They feel that it should be a simple matter to position the
JFM and other such committees as sub-committees of the Gram Panchayat, and what is
required (if at all necessary) is to recognize this de-facto position by inserting a line in the
PRI acts. But this will be more to satisfy the juridical experts and sticklers for so-called
constitutional propriety, because as far as the people are concerned, it is sufficient that the
JFM committee is recognized in the Forest Act and has clear powers under that Act to take
measures to protect the forest.
Equally, they value the relative autonomy of their hamlet-level organisations, and are
emphatic that these should not be placed under the PRIs, which work at a different level on
different criteria or values. The JFM committee meets and discusses plans and budgets and
other matters in an open, transparent manner where all members are like a family. In other
words, the oft-repeated contention that no community-based organisations should be
supported outside the PRI system is completely unwarranted and not reflected in the wishes
of the people themselves (the muted demand for institutions which Mathew bemoaned).7
This is also eminently understandable in the framework given by Ostrom of the advantage to
the community of having the option of calling on other institutions or structures in society.
We see the difficulty that a small community will have in imposing a rule-based control and
sanctions framework on its own members, and hence an outside agent is required, which has
the authority of the law and government behind it. Further, it is clear that the panchayat
system by itself cannot make the hitherto neglected and powerless village community
autonomous or self-governing if the system is imposed suddenly from above, indeed until the
people have had experience of working in smaller, face-to-face groups, as Ostrom has
suggested. The village forest committees and other special interest committees, the self-help
groups, and so on seek to do precisely this preparatory trust-forming and capacity-building
activity.
6
This was obvious in the Mangar bani (sacred forest) case in Haryana state, where the only feasible strategy
now is to appeal to the higher courts to institute protective action under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. In
Zeer village, they say clearly that it is the forest staff who are actually protecting the forest from illicit fellings,
and without them there would have been considerable removals and conflicts with others, such as the people
from across the state border who might make incursions.
7
One lady member of the village forest committee, who also happened to be the vice-president of the village
panchayat, echoed the general sentiment when she said that nothing would get done if the VFC were put under
the panchayat. There was a repeated apprehension that matters would get ‘politicised’ in the relatively partisan
environment of the PRIs, hence things of common interest should be outside the purview of the panchayat
system, which however has its own, different, interest for the villagers.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 22 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
It is apparent that the committee-based approach is also sensible if we look at Ostrom’s
prescriptions on nesting of the institutions at successive levels, and putting them under an
overarching framework of the law of the land and working with law enforcing authorities and
courts. The very hostile reaction of our PRI theoreticians to state-sponsored institutions is
actually based on a faulty appreciation of these processes at the grass-roots, but if we do
accept Ostrom’s insights (based as they are on observation of a wide gamut of situations), the
JFM approach would look as though it has been designed on the basis of the Ostrom
framework, which the forest departments have arrived at mainly through their own common
sense and field experience.
We have to recognize that the Gram Panchayat itself is a fairly distant institution, and not
equivalent to a small group at the doorsteps of the villagers. In other words, it is quite clear
that the Village or Gram Panchayat is itself nothing but a replication of the state structures,
except that the central role is transferred from the career bureaucrat (petty though he may be),
to the part-time people’s representative. It should be considered as the last level of the state
apparatus, rather than the highest level of the village community. It appears a bit overoptimistic to expect this new institution to carry out the same functions as the erstwhile
government structure, without adopting the same (bureaucratic) procedures and falling prey
to the same set of constraints.
Indeed the PRIs will not be fully functional unless they develop their own administrative and
technical cadres, as repeatedly emphasised by writers on the subject (including the central
minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, 2002; see also his interview in The Hindu newspaper, 22 May
2013, “Put Gram Sabhas in charge of all social sector schemes”). Now it is very doubtful
whether a viable system of recruitment, training, supervision and so on can be set up for each
discipline (sector) in each Gram Sabha, separately. Professionals, like doctors or engineers or
agricultural specialists (or foresters), would not like to be placed under the taluk or village
bodies, but would always owe allegiance to a higher professional body that can set standards,
provide the framework for career enhancement and mobility, adjudicate in disputes, and
advocate their interests in the media and the polity in general. The village body is unlikely to
attract any professional if they do not guarantee this functional independence and appeal to a
higher calling. If nothing else, no Gram Sabha will be able to bear the expenses of such a
force of specialists. Therefore, it may well be a pipe-dream (to borrow the expression of
despair from the PRI protagonists) to expect that the PRIs will ever be fully staffed, and they
will probably always have to manage with officials on deputation or on consultation basis
from the respective line departments. The smart thing would be to develop the capacity of the
communities to make use of such outside expertise for the specific and limited purposes
required, rather than try to replicate the full bureaucratic and executive set-up of the Central
Secretariat in each district and panchayat in the search for the holy grail of village selfgovernance or autarchy.
The implication of this is that subject-matter committees, which are equivalent to subcommittees of the GP, are quite essential in the line departments, if actual work has to be
carried out at the ward, settlement, or hamlet level. Even Saxena, who is usually a staunch
protagonist of people’s empowerment, concedes (1994, p.117) that:
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 23 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
“There is also some concern that if JFM groups were absorbed by the village panchayat, vested interests might
exert control over decision making. Since small user communities may comprise less powerful groups, they may
lose authority to the elite if management becomes a direct adjunct of the panchayat. …On the whole, the
relationship of local forest management groups to panchayats needs to be clarified. Simply subsuming them as
part of the panchayat would almost certainly threaten their effectiveness.”
Apparently, the people themselves are quite comfortable with the somewhat hazy or
ambiguous status of sectoral committees like the JFM committees or school committees in
relation to the village panchayat setup. It is the outside experts who are so exercised about the
legal and constitutional niceties of the setup, to the point of injured outrage and affront at
almost a personal level, as illustrated by some of the writings quoted previously. If our
sample of villages is anything to go by, it is actually a complete non-issue in real life. It
appears that both the political, vote-based, and the apolitical, consensus-based, approaches
can, and do, co-exist in our villages, just as at the level of the Constitution of India, we have
both the elected legislature and the appointed but statutory executive and the independent
judiciary.8 All these types of institutions are required for the system to function in a selfcorrecting manner, and that is applicable at the state level as at the village level.
Despite its home-grown or common-sense approach and background, it appears that many
things in the JFM programmes have been done correctly. In trying to get a feel of the role of
JFM vis-à-vis PRIs in meeting the material needs of the villagers, and in improving living
standards and incomes, many of the communities actually spoke very warmly of the
constructive work done by the forest department. It appears that government officials at the
executive level are not merely specialists, but have experience in getting a lot of general
things done, for their own programmes and for the communities. Indeed, once the watershed
development work gives results in better availability of water, the dependence on the forest or
common property resource seems to have naturally gone down in our sample villages.9 The
JFM programmes seem to have been able to capitalise on this improvement in the economic
condition of the villages, by providing for training and other support for alternative nonforestry activities to further reduce the pressure on the forests. This is a win-win situation for
those concerned.
On the whole, it would be a misconstruing of the aims and intentions of decentralized
governance or PRI if we were to say that no other institutions have a right to exist. To the
people on the ground, there is little difference between PRI sub-committees and other
community-based or sector-driven subject committees; both are sponsored by the state and
supported by larger state organisations and departments. JFM committees can easily be
accommodated in the PRI structure as a sub-committee, but the message is also quite clear
8
The villagers commonly say that there is “too much politics” in the panchayats, too much public posturing and
so on. For instance, if the elected President of the panchayat feels that a ward or a hamlet has not voted for them,
it gets left out of the panchayat programmes.
9
For example, across the states, we were told that free grazing of scrub cattle has come down drastically over
the 25 to 30 years of the JFM programmes, fuelwood removals have also been consciously reduced, there have
been far fewer forest fires over this period, and the jungle has grown back. (But the downside is that the
population of pigs, deer and monkeys has grown to alarming levels, and the farmers are wondering how to
continue their agriculture between the animal depredations and the diversion of farm labour to NREGA, the
employment guarantee programme).
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 24 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
that communities value the relative autonomy and freedom of working a little outside the
formal PRI structures.
It is evident that the PRIs are better at larger programmes and engineering works like roads,
water supply, and other infrastructure. The villagers repeatedly explained that small things
that are of interest to the local group or community, like a shed, a threshing floor, a meeting
place, training for livelihood and self employment, solar lights and water heaters, and
especially the savings and loan groups, do not figure in the stereotyped plans of the district
panchayats, but are doable in the smaller line department committees like the VFC.
In fact local self-government was supposed to be ‘little government’, more informal, less
bureaucratic, and run by part-time officials from among the ordinary people (as in small-town
USA), but in our country, PRIs have now been fashioned after the state legislatures and
district collectorates (even to the extent of calling for a mini-Vidhan Soudha and a Chief
Secretary in each panchayat centre), and thus brought all the ills of ‘big government’ to the
lowest level of governance. The people therefore feel all the more need for small
organisations and institutions of their own, such as the self help groups (SHGs), school
committees, and, let us admit, the village forest committees (VFCs). Indeed the VFCs and
JFM are a good model of real grass-roots democracy in small communities much below the
level of the PRIs, which after all stop at the panchayat level, covering many villages and
settlements (wards, majras) and thousands of people. This means that PRIs are much like
government structures, and cannot be a firm ground for developing effective community
institutions based on face-to-face interactions and personal relations and confidence-building.
It will therefore be good if the Panchayat system gives recognition to these committees even
if they are not formally under the PRIs. Joint Forest Management is a unique and probably
unprecedented example of a specific line department (one with a strong ethos and sense of
mission), reaching out and sharing executive power with the communities at the ground level,
which has very important and significant lessons for PRIs and governance in general.
Our interactions in all these villages clearly brought out that there is no expressed antagonism
between the two institutions in the field, nor do the people in the communities look upon
government staff as strangers or criminals. They see both sector-based and panchayat-driven
activities and institutions as ultimately subservient to the overall framework of the ‘law of the
land’, which draws authority from the national Constitution and the specific laws passed
under it. Unfortunately the predilection seen among intellectuals and activists commonly
today is to debunk all state agencies, and elevate an undefined ‘people’ as a new final arbiter.
This is difficult to follow in practice, however, and I am sure that none of us actually likes to
or has to deal with this last tier of governance in real life. Even the various PRI experts have
set up their centres in the country’s capital cities, and if one goes by the information on their
websites, most of their funding is drawn from the very central ministries that they hold up as
examples of the top-down approach they profess to abjure, or from international agencies.
Even Members of Parliament and the State Assemblies, who champion so fiercely the cause
of PRIs, do not take kindly to the suggestion that the special discretionary fund placed at their
disposal for good works in their constituencies should be subsumed in the panchayat budget.
In other words, the message is to do as they say, and not as they do. This is a typical
characteristic of human psychology, which gives the lie to their one-dimensional polemics.10
10
One may ask, if the people on the ground don’t much care about the Panchayats, the state governments are
positively antagonistic to them, even the elected representatives are chary of giving them too much space, the
government bureaucrats are indifferent, and even private operators like the NGOs and social workers find them
less than friendly, why are PRIs so universally urged on us? A possible answer may lie in the tussle for power
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 25 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
The reason why intellectuals have this two-headed approach seems to be that funding and
recognition from research funds and international agencies is contingent on pushing this ‘neoliberal’ agenda, as a glance at the websites of those organisations and foundations will readily
show. This may be nothing but a continuation of the colonial strategy of gaining ascendancy
by vilifying the other and displacing it as an act of moral superiority and piety, which the
colonialists practiced in the course of subjugating us and other oriental cultures (Said, 1995).
Intellectuals fall easy prey to this type of campaign, as they become over-sensitive to the
faults in their own culture, while becoming enamoured of the foreign one, probably because
they have neither the resources nor the platform to subject the ‘other’ (culture and society) to
the same level of intense scrutiny and analysis. They also have to emulate faithfully the ruling
trends in the western world, if they are to gain acceptance and admittance to the international
world of the intellectuals and all its fruits and rewards. In other words, the familiar
‘asymmetry’ (a favourite term in economics) in information, power and influence, that
characterised the colonial and neo-colonial relations, persists in this matter of sociological
analysis to this day.
An intriguing, and exciting, possibility is that the VFCs and other community-based, small
organisations may actually be essential as a training ground for the larger democratic polity.
Democracy is achieved not by the vote alone, but by the functioning of diverse groups and
associations in small communities across the land, as recognised in the mother of liberal
democracies, the USA: “Tocqueville argued that what made the American nation democratic
was the vitality of direct participation in small and local associations. Face-to-face democracy
was the foundation – not a substitute – for representative institutions, federalism, and national
democracy” (Pitkin and Shumer, 1982). It is in these associations that the citizens learn and
practice democratic functioning, and the strength of the national community rests on this
broad foundation, on the roots, so to say.11
Especially in the case of CPRs like forest, it is abundantly clear that there has to be some
nesting of institutions and structures in larger and higher “enterprises”, or arrangements, so
that there is some framework to refer to outside the narrow village communities. If PRI
protagonists have been lamenting that acceptance has not been achieved even after so many
decades (and huge channelling of funds to 2,50,000 gram panchayats and constitutional
amendments and elections), obviously they should look into the basic tenets of their model
and try to align it with ground reality and people’s aspirations in a less authoritarian, less topdown manner. Perhaps they can even learn from the JFM model, instead of reviling it as antidemocratic and anti-constitutional, for the forest department has achieved a silent revolution
of sorts, with over 1,18,000 committees covering some 23 million hectares of state forest
(leaving aside the private forest and CPR resources), with little in the way of extra resources
or constitutional backing, comparing very favourably with the PRIs themselves.
A final comment may be interposed here from Francis Fukuyama, a leading contemporary
commentator on state and government. Writing about “Decentralization and Discretion”,
Fukuyama (2005, pp.91 et seq.) recognizes that there has been a large push since the 1980s to
decentralize political authority to state and local government, for the same (dare I add,
between the central and state governments, and it may be interesting to test the hypothesis that advocacy for
PRIs will dip when the same parties hold substantial power at both levels.
11
See, also, Benjamin R.Barber, 1984 (Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age), pp.150-5, in
the publication Democracy: A Reader by Blaug and Schwarzmantel, undated, p.448: “Community grows out of
participation and at the same time makes participation possible; civic activity educates individuals how to think
publicly as citizens even as citizenship informs civic activity with the required sense of publicness and justice”.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 26 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
ostensible) reasons that firms and organizations have resorted to flatter, leaner structures:
decision making is “closer to local sources of information, and therefore inherently more
responsive to local conditions”, it is quicker, and can introduce competition and innovation if
there are a large number of such units (in our JFM case, in this spirit, we can think of
different communities adopting different approaches and undertaking different enterprises).
These considerations “have led some observers to suggest that there is a long-term secular
trend leading inevitably to higher degrees of decentralization and flatness in organizational
structure”, but Fukuyama is sceptical about this, because (p.95 et seq.)
“…there are offsetting drawbacks to decentralized organizations that will never be susceptible to technical
solutions. Decentralized organizations often generate high internal transaction costs and can be slower and less
decisive than centralized ones... The most important drawback of decentralization concerns risk…”
Further (ibid., p.97):
“... Delegation of authority to state and local government means almost inevitably there will be greater variance
in government performance… some subordinate units will fall below a minimum threshold of tolerability... In
more mundane fashion, the delegation of authority to state and local government in developing countries often
means the empowerment of local elites or patronage networks that allows them to keep control over their own
affairs, safe from external scrutiny. One of the chief reasons for recentralizing political authority is to ensure
minimum standards of noncorrupt behaviour in public administration…” (Fukuyama, 2005, p.97).
The main consideration in putting forests under the central government’s control through the
Indian Forest Act in colonial times, and now the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 in
independent India, is precisely this concern about their long-term integrity, an application of
the ‘precautionary principle’ that has been recognised by our apex court as one of the bedrocks of environmental governance. The famous Godavarman case on forest management and
conservation in the Supreme Court of India. This brings to mind the parable of the six blind
men trying to describe an elephant and getting it all wrong. The real moral of the story,
however, is that when you are faced with such a huge enigma, instinct should make you run,
not blunder around trying to guess: an elementary application of the precautionary principle!
Environmental conservation is something like the proverbial elephant in the dark: there may
never be clear-cut answers to all our questions. There is no formula to achieve an optimal
balance in delegation versus centralization, or development versus conservation, in
organizations as in government. Hence scholars should not become spuriously puritanical in
their prescriptions, lest they end up like the Soviet-style Marxists in the by-lanes of history.
Marx is famously quoted as having said that the philosophers have only interpreted the world,
but that the point is, however, to change it. We know what the consequences have been of
this interventionist, egotistical approach.
Arm-chair idealists of my generation may still be fondly waiting for the state to wither away
(starting with the forest department, according to Lele, 2014), and it is some of those
sentiments that seem to have coloured the intellectual’s prescriptions for withdrawing the line
departments from the field and handing over everything to ‘the people’. However, the only
thing that has withered away in these hundred years of the Marxist millennium is the
revolutionary Soviet state itself, whereas the Chinese communist state is going on as strong
as ever, even as the world looks on in wonder and approbation. If the modern Indian state
apparatus moves out of the countryside, and remains limited to the government enclaves in a
few metropolitan areas, what will move in is not the people’s self-organised committees, but
some other external power to fill the vacuum. It is in this context that there is a case for a
more sympathetic look at the joint governance model developed by the forest department in
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 27 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
the form of the JFM committees, and similar joint community based organisations (CBOs) in
education, health, culture, grass-roots savings and loan groups, and other sectors.
The moral of the story, as I understand it, is that we should let a number of different
alternatives co-exist, as neither are the communities so fragile and ignorant, nor are
government and state organisations so unmitigatedly evil or useless, as our neo-liberals
would make out, because if that had been the case, our country would not have been a
fraction as prosperous and well-managed (in relative terms) as we are today. In the eyes of
the people, of the communities, the one does not take away from the other. From fullness,
fullness comes, and fullness ever remains, as realized by our Vedic seers many millennia in
the past (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, 5.1.1, see S.Radhakrishnan, 1953, ed. 1994, p.289).
We need a more balanced view than presented in contemporary polemical writing, on the
relationships between PRIs and other community organisations. Not all persons in
government are evil, and all outside it angels, nor by switching roles will we attain the
promised nirvana. This is like blaming the mirror for the deformities in our visage; the state
of the polity is a true reflection of what we are as a society, and this reality cannot be wished
away. Both good and bad co-exist in all human beings, and the challenge in governance is to
keep the show going with all these constraints, in other words to get good, if not great, things
achieved by ordinary people. This, the communities I visited have demonstrated and shared
generously, and I acknowledge and applaud them.
References
Aiyar, Mani Shankar. August 2002. Panchayati Raj. The Way Forward. Economic and
Political Weekly 37 (31): 3293-97. Reprinted in T.R. Raghunandan (Ed.), 2012.
Aiyar, Mani Shankar. May 2013. Put Gram Sabhas in charge of all social sector schemes.
Interview with P.V.Srividya. The Hindu (newspaper), 22 May 2013.
Ambedkar, B.R. 1948. Basic Features of the Indian Constitution. Pp.474-494, in V.Rodrigues
(Ed.), 2002, 2004. The Essential Writings of B.R.Ambedkar. Oxford University Press,
New Delhi.
Barber, Benjamin R. Strong democracy. Chapter 80 in Democracy. A Reader, Ricardo Blaug
and John Schwarzmantel (Eds), Edinburgh University Press. (Excerpt from Benjamin
R.Barber, 1984. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, pp.150-5,
University of California Press, Berkeley).
Chandrashekhar, Lalita. 2011. Undermining Local Democracy. Parallel Governance in
Contemporary South India. Routledge.
Dilip Kumar, P.J. 1991. Between common property and state monopoly: the institutional
context of wasteland management in India. In “Managing the Village Commons”,
Proceedings of national workshop 15-16 December, 1991, Bhubaneswar, Orissa. IIFM,
Bhopal.
Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2013 Village communities and their common property forests. Economic &
Political Weekly, Vol.XLVIII No.35, August 31, 2013, pp.33-36 (posted at
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 28 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
https://www.academia.edu/9234774/Village_Communities_and_Their_Common_Proper
ty_Forests).
Dilip Kumar, P.J. 2014. Managing India’s Forests. Village Communities, Panchayati Raj
Institutions and the State. Monograph No. 32, Institute for Social & Economic Change,
Nagarbhavi, Bangalore. Posted at
https://www.academia.edu/9235210/Managing_India_s_Forests_Village_Communities_
Panchayati_Raj_Institutions_and_the_State).
Draper, Hal. 1977. Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution. Vol.I. State and Bureaucracy.
Monthly Review Press, New York, 1977. Reprinted 2011 by Aakar Books for South
Asia, Delhi-110091.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2005. State Building. Government and World Order in the Twenty-First
Century. First published in the US by Cornell University Press. Paperback edition by
Profile Books, London.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2011. The Origins of Political Order. Profile Books Ltd, London.
Gadgil, Madhav and Ramachandra Guha.1992. This Fissured Land. An Ecological History of
India. Oxford University Press, New Delhi.
Ganguli, B.N. 1973. Gandhi’s Social Philosophy. Perspective and Relevance. Supported by
the Council for Social Development. Published by Vikas Publishing House Pvt. Ltd.
Delhi.
George, Abraham S. 2004. India Untouched: the Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty. East West
Books (Madras) Pvt. Ltd., Chennai.
Government of India. 1977. Asoka Mehta Committee Report on Panchayat Raj Institutions
1977-78. New Delhi.
Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243-48.
Inden, Ronald B. 1990, 2000. Imagining India. First published in 1990 by Blackwell
Publishers, Oxford. Second impression, 2000, with a new preface, by C.Hurst & Co.
Publishers, London.
Joseph, T.M. (Editor). 2007. Local Governance in India. Ideas, Challenges and Strategies.
Papers presented at the National Workshop on Decentralised Democracy and Planning,
Thodapuzha, 19 December 2003. Published by Concept Publishing Company, New
Delhi-110059.
Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner. 1871. Village Communities in the East and West. Six
Lectures delivered at Oxford. John Murray, London.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 29 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
Martin, Roscoe C. 1968. The Physiology of Little Government. pp.395-400 in the volume by
Buell, Erwin C. and William E.Brigman (eds.). The Grass Roots. Readings in State and
Local Government. Scott, Foresman and Company, Glenview, Illinois.
Mason, Philip. 1985. The Men Who Ruled India. First published in 2 volumes, 1953 and
1954. Abridged edition, Pan Macmillan Ltd., London,1985. Rupa paperbacks, 1992.
Mathew, George (General Editor). 1995. Status of Panchayati Raj in the States of India 1994.
Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. Published by Concept Publishing Company,
New Delhi-110059.
Mathew, George (General Editor). 2000. Status of Panchayati Raj in the States of India 2000.
Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. Published by Concept Publishing Company,
New Delhi-110059.
Mathew, George (General Editor). 2013. Status of Panchayati Raj in the States of India 2013.
Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. Published by Concept Publishing Company,
New Delhi-110059.
Mathew, George. 2013. Panchayati Raj or Collector Raj? Article in the Times of India (15
April 2013).
Mehta, Asoka. 1977. Asoka Mehta Committee Report on Panchayati Raj Institutions.
Government of India, New Delhi.
Mookerji, Radhakumud. 1918, 1920. Local Government in Ancient India. Second Edition,
Revised and Enlarged, 1920. Reprinted 1989, Low Price Publications, Delhi-110052.
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons. The evolution of institutions for collective
action. Cambridge Universities Press, Cambridge.
Pitkin, Hanna Fenichel and Sara M.Shumer. 1982. On Participation. Chapter 81 in
Democracy. A Reader, Ricardo Blaug and John Schwarzmantel (Eds), Edinburgh
University Press, pp.452-7. (Excerpt from article: On Democracy, Democracy, 2(4),
pp.48-52).
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Sanskrit, Culture,
and Power in Premodern India. University of California Press, Berkeley. Published in
India 2007 by Permanent Black, first paperback printing 2009.
Radhakrishnan,S. 1953. The Principal Upanishads. HarperCollins Publishers India, 1994.
Raghunandan, T.R. (Ed.). 2012. Decentralisation and Local Governments. The Indian
Experience. Essays from Economic and Political Weekly. Orient Blackswan Private
Limited. Hyderabad.
Ravindranath, N.H. and P.Sudha. 2004. Joint Forest Management in India. Spread,
Performance and Impact. Universities Press (India) Pvt. Ltd. , Hyderabad.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 30 -
Decentralized governance and forests in India
Dilip Kumar, P.J.
Said, Edward. 1978, 1995. Orientalism. Western Concepts of the Orient. First published 1978
by Routledge Kegan Paul Ltd, UK. Reprinted with a new Afterword by Penguin Books,
1995.
Sainath, P. 1996. Everybody Loves a Good Drought. Penguin Books, New Delhi.
Saxena, N.C. 1997. The Saga of Participatory Forest Management in India. Center for
International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia.
Vyasulu, Poornima and Vinod Vyasulu. 1999. Women in Panchayati Raj. Grass Roots
Democracy in Malgudi. Economic and Political Weekly 34 (52): pp.3677-86. Reprinted
in T.R.Raghunandan (Ed.), 2012.
Wilks, Mark. 1820. Historical Sketches of the South of India: In an Attempt to Trace the
History of Mysoor, From the Origin of the Hindoo Government of that State, to the
Extinction of the Mohammedan Dynasty in 1799, first published 1820, reissued digitally
2013 by Cambridge University Press, New York.
Forest Matters, No.14-18, April 2015 www.forestmatters.blogspot.in
- 31 -