Governing the local networks in Indian agrarian societies—an MAS perspective

Abstract

In a networked society, governing advocacy groups and networks through decentralized systems of policy implementation has been the interest of governance network literature. This paper addresses the topic of governing networks in the context of Indian agrarian societies by taking the case example of a welfare scheme for the Indian rural poor. We explore context-specific regulatory dynamics through the situated agent based architectural framework. The effects of various regulatory strategies that can be adopted by governing node are tested under various action arenas through experimental design. Results show the impact of regulatory strategies on the resource dependencies and asymmetries in the network relationships. This indicates that the optimal feasible regulatory strategy in networked society is institutionally rational and is context dependent. Further, we show that situated MAS architecture is a natural fit for institutional understanding of the dynamics (Ostrom et al. in Rules, games, and common-pool resources, 1994).

Appendices

Appendix A: National rural employment guarantee scheme—provisions and practice

The basic objective of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGREGA) is to enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work (GoI 2005; GoAP 2006). This work guarantee also serves other objectives, namely, generating productive assets, protecting the environment, empowering rural women, reducing rural-urban migration and fostering social equity, among others.

The main implementation activities are at the village and Block levels, while coordination activities are mainly at the Block and District levels. Planning, supervision and monitoring take place at all levels (village, Block, District and State). At each level, the concerned authorities are accountable to the community. The Panchayats at each level will be the ‘Principal Authorities for planning and implementation of the Schemes under the Act’ (MGREGA, Section 13(1)). The Panchayats at different levels will need to coordinate with each other for the effective implementation of the Act. Similarly, the Panchayats and the District/Block administration will have to work together. The overall responsibility for ensuring that the Scheme is implemented according to the Act belongs to the District Programme Coordinator (DPC) at the District level, and to the Programme Officer (PO) at the Block level.

The registration of household needs to be done and should get job cards. After getting job cards, concerned people need to apply for works. Application for the work may be either written or oral. Receipt need to be given as soon as the application for the work is given. After the application for work, the work should be given within 15 days of application or at the date specified in the application, whichever is later. If not possible to provide, unemployment allowance will be guaranteed. Unemployment allowance will be specified as a percentage of REGS wage rate.

REGS is mainly funded by center and shared by the state. The cost of wages and material will be financed by center whereas the unemployment allowances should be paid from the state government’s budget. The share of center is 75 % and remaining amount need to be deposited in the state council’s account by state government as soon as the money is deposited by the center. Funds to the next level will be released if and only if at least 60 % of the previously distributed funds are utilized and proper utilization certificate is produced from the technical committee.

The Gram Sabha will monitor all the works at the village level as well as the employment provided to each person who has applied for work. It will also monitor the registration and issue of job cards and the timely payment of wages. The Gram Panchayat will monitor works executed by other Implementing Agencies, muster rolls maintained by them at worksites, and the payments made. Social audits should be conducted to monitor the entire process over time.

Appendix B: Description of variables

Category	Variable	Description
Social Class	Scheduled Castes (C)	As per Article 341 of the Indian Constitution, some castes, races or tribes or parts of or groups within castes or races are specified as scheduled castes and provided some special laws and services.
	Scheduled Tribes (T)	As per Article 342 of the Indian Constitution some tribes or tribal communities or parts of or groups within tribes or tribal communities are specified as scheduled castes and provided some special laws and services.
	Others Castes (O)	Castes, races or tribes other than, the notified castes, races and tribes as C and T.
Primary occupation	Cultivators (CL)	Person engaged in cultivation of owned or leased land, for most part of his or her work time.
	Agricultural Laborer (AL)	A person working on another person’s land for wages in money or kind or share.
	House-hold Industrialists (HHI)	Industry conducted by one or more members of the household at home or within the village in rural areas.
	Other Workers (OW)	All workers engaged in some economic activity during the last one year, but are not as cultivator, agriculture labour or household industrialist.
Size of land holding	Marginal (Ma)	Land-holding <1 hectare.
	Small (S)	Land-holding <2 hectares and >1 hectare.
	Semi-Medium (Sm)	Land-holding >2 hectares and <4 hectares.
	Medium (M)	Land holding >4 hectares and <10 hectares.
	Large (L)	Land-holding >10 hectares.
Type of land holding	Irrigated (I)	Land-holding with irrigation facility.
	Unirrigated (U)	Land-holding solely dependent on rain-fall.
	Partial (P)	Land-holding has partial dependence on rail fall.
Policy related	Delay (D)	% workers for whom payment of wages were not delayed beyond 15 days.
	Performance (Per)	Average number of man-hrs worked (per worker) in a month.
Other characteristics	Local agricultural wage rate (W)	Average daily wage paid for agricultural laborers in a region.

Appendix C: Indian context of policy implementation

Indian society is largely agrarian and rural marked by divisions of religion, caste and economic class. These divisions traditionally form the basis of complex social categorization, and exert significant influence on economic outcomes. One of the major arguments of decentralization is that decentralization is supposed to enforce the local governance politically answerable to the public through democratic institutions (Crook 2003; Heller 2001). However, patron-client relationships in the agrarian societies in terms of land-holding, class-based identities, and, high costs of political participation in India resulted in keeping the poor away from actively participating in local decision-making (Echeverri-Gent 1992; Moore and Putzel 1999). Several studies established as how the poor and the disadvantaged get limited benefits of participation due to powerful local elite or traditional socio-economic situation of the agrarian societies (Echeverri-Gent 1992; Grossman and Helpman 1996). Democratizing capacity of an institution got severely hampered in instances where the elected representatives and elected bodies are fractured by pre-existing structures of caste, faction, gender, and class (DeSouza 2000; Narayana 2005). This perpetuated weak societal accountability mechanisms due to lack of collective action (combined with lack of awareness) among the socio-economically underprivileged, and ensured maintenance of status quo (Gaiha 1997).

External sources of influences have some effect to improve downward accountability and responsiveness (Blair 2000; Evans 1996). The higher authorities in bureaucracy also proved to play a major role in successfully countering elite capture. The role of central government in decentralization to act as counter-elite to local elite, therefore, was observed to be critical for encouraging civic participation (Vyasulu and Vyasulu 1999; Echeverri-Gent 1992). Strong central state willingness to devolve powers and resources, a well-developed civil society, and, organized political force were identified as enabling conditions for effective participatory governance (Heller 2001; Bratton 1990).

The development of democratic politics is inextricably linked to the appearance of a strong and vibrant “civil society” (e.g. Harriss 2000; Putnam 1993). An effective way of encouraging democratic politics is to improve the distribution of information (Crook and Sverrisson 2001; Dreze and Sen 1997). The local media and public disclosure were observed to be effective means of information provision to improve transparency and accountability downwards (Blair 2000). However, direct participation though public meetings or similar channels did not ensure empowerment and need not necessarily facilitates further ‘democratic’ processes to be followed (Rigg 1991; Evans 1996). Therefore, a recurring theme that emerged from a sizable body of literature is the relatively weak correlation that exists between democratic decentralization and poverty reduction (Blair 2000; Crook and Manor 1998; Crook and Sverrisson 2001).