Abstract
As we shift our focus from China to India, we notice that local power structure in the latter is closely linked with the panchayati raj, the key political institutions in the village. This does not mean that CSOs and NGOs do not exist in Indian villages.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
…Panchayati system was dormant in most parts of the state.
- 2.
See Nirmal Mukarji and D. Bandyopadhyay (1993) for a critical review of the functioning of panchayats in West Bengal.
- 3.
Dasgupta, Abhijit. 1981. Land and Politics in West Bengal. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, UK.
- 4.
- 5.
It consisted of 5 gram panchayats.
- 6.
For a detailed discussion of the Krishak Sabha in Bengal, see Beteille (1974: 171–87).
- 7.
For detailed studies on electoral politics and panchayats in West Bengal see Togawa (1993: 275–299), and Kumar and Ghosh (2002: 2–35).
- 8.
The Congress (I) won this seat in 1988, 1993 and 1998.
- 9.
The BJP won this seat in 1998.
- 10.
Other parties that tried their luck in the electoral battle in the village are the TMC, the Bahaman Samoa Party, Socialist Unity Center, Utter Khan Dal (a political outfit of the Kamtapuri Liberation Front or KLO).
- 11.
The Statesman, 10 May 2003, p. 2.
- 12.
The Statesman, 10 May 2003, p. 2.
- 13.
In 1993 a candidate from Uttara Khanda, a new political outfit, contested from this constituency.
- 14.
The rotation takes place in the following way: a gram panchayat with 10 seats will have reservation for women in the following order: 1,4,7,10. This order will change in the next election like: 2,5,8,1 and it will be 3,6,9 and 2 in the following election. It will go back to the first order in the next election.
- 15.
Government of West Bengal (1997).
- 16.
Several such cases were reported in the media. For instance, Mrs. Madhumita Bhuiyan, a TMC candidate, contested from a reserved seat that returned her husband during the last elections. Her husband confessed that he would wield the real power once his wife wins the election. Another women pointed out that “In my 27 years of married life, I have never ventured out of the house, I don’t know for sure what the local problems are.”
- 17.
In order to solve the problems the state government has undertaken several programmes to train women candidates in cities and towns, but many women were conspicuous by their absence. Those who never stayed out without husband and children found it too inconvenient to attend such training camps.
- 18.
Rajbangshis, Dalits in north Bengal, numerically dominant in the village.
- 19.
V. K. Ramachandran et al. (2003).
References
Banerjee, Abhijit V., and Esther Duflo. 2011. Poor Economics: Rethinking Poverty and the Ways to End It. Gurgaon: Penguin Books.
Beteille, Andre. 1974. Studies in Agrarian Social Structure. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Boyce, James. 1987. Agrarian Impasse in Bengal: Institutional Constraints to Technological Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chatterjee, Joya. 1995. Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1997. The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Chaudhuri, R. 1964. Panchayats and Interest Groups: Study of a Bengal Village. The Economic Weekly 31 (9) (September 19): 1527–1530.
Cox, Kevin. 1988. Spaces of Dependence, Spaces of Engagement and the Politics of Scale, or Looking for Local Politics. Political Geography 17 (1): 1–23.
Dasgupta, Abhijit. 1998. Growth with Equity: The New Technology and Agrarian Change in West Bengal. Delhi: Manohar.
Dasgupta, Abhijit. 2000. In the Citadel of Bhadralok Politicians: The Scheduled Castes in West Bengal. Journal of Indian Political Economy, Special Edition (July–December): 445–458.
Dasgupta, Abhijit. 2017. Displacement and Exile: Refugees and the State in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Davis, Marvin. 1983. Rank and Rivalry: The Politics of Inequality in Rural West Bengal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Epstein, T.S. (1962). Economic Development and Social Change in South India. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Gupta, J. 2002. Women Second in the Land Agenda. Economic and Political Weekly 36 (18): 1746–1754.
Lieten, G.K. 1992. Continuity and Change in Rural West Bengal. New Delhi: Sage.
Jacka, Tamara, and Sally Sargeson. 2015. Representing Women in Chinese Village Self-Government: A New Perspective on Gender, Representation, and Democracy. Critical Asian Studies 47 (Issue 4): 477–494.
Joshi, P.C. 1975. Land Reforms in India. Bombay: Allied Publishers Ltd.
Kumar, Girish. 2002. Constitutionalizing Panchayats: The Response of State Legislatures (Occasional Paper). New Delhi: French Research Institute in India.
Kumar, Girish, and Buddhadeb Ghosh. 2002. West Bengal Panchayat Elections 1993: A Study in Participation. New Delhi: Institute of Social Sciences.
Kohli, Atul. 1987. The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reforms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lewis, Oscar and Victor Barnouw. 1956. Caste and the Jajmani System in a North Indian Village. The Scientific Monthly 83 (2): 66–81.
Mallick, Ross. 1993. Development Policy of a Communist Government: West Bengal Since 1977. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mehta, Ashok. 1978. Committee on Panchayati Raj Institution. New Delhi: Government of India.
Mukarji, Nirmal, and D. Bandyopadhyay. 1993. New Horizons for West Bengal’s Panchayat. Calcutta: government of West Bengal.
Nicholas, Ralph. 1965. Factions: A Comparative Analysis. In Political Systems and the Distribution, ed. M. Banton. ASA Monograph no. 2. London: Tavistock.
Nossiter, T.J. 1988. Marxist State Government in India-Politics, Economics and Society. London: Pinter.
Rajagopalan, Shruti. 2018. Evaluating the Panchayati Raj Institutions at 25. Mint, April 30.
Ramachandran, V.K., Madhura Swaminathan, and Vikas Rawal. 2003. Barriers to Expansion of Mass Literacy and Primary Schooling in West Bengal: a Study Based on Primary Data from Selected Villages. Working Paper Series no. 345. Trivandrum: Centre for Development Studies.
Rana, Kumar. 2013. Panchayat Elections in West Bengal—A Role Reversal? Economic and Political Weekly 48 (30) (July 27).
Sanyal, Hiteshranjan. 1981. Social Mobility in Bengal. Calcutta: Papyrus.
Som, Bijon Bihari. 2004. Operation Barga and Its Aftermath: A Case Study of Two Districts in North Bengal. Paper Presented at the National Seminar on “Panchayat Experience in West Bengal,” held at north Bengal University, January 2004 (Unpublished).
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Zhong, Yang. 2003. Local Government and Politics in China. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Liyiyu, Dasgupta, A. (2022). Local Power Structure in an Indian State. In: Alternatives in Development. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4698-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4698-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-4697-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-4698-0
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)