Explained: Why over 1,000 tribal PESA Mobilisers are set to protest today

The Act extends the provisions of the Panchayati Raj system to tribal-majority areas, while giving Gram Sabhas wide powers over local governance, including control over natural resources, minor forest produce, and the selection of beneficiaries for government schemes.

Mobilisers act as a bridge between tribal populations, many of whom have low literacy levels and live in scattered, hard-to-reach hamlets, and the government machinery. Their core functions include educating villagers about their legal rights and the constitutional powers vested in the Gram Sabha, handholding communities so they can manage natural resources effectively, helping organise and run regular Gram Sabha meetings, and assisting in identifying beneficiaries for welfare schemes.

The posts were created in 2016 under the Centre’s Rashtriya Gram Swaraj Abhiyan (RGSA), with one mobiliser sanctioned for every PESA Gram Panchayat in the state. Maharashtra currently has 3,003 such sanctioned posts. The mobilisers, who are predominantly tribal women, have been working in this role for roughly a decade and are paid a monthly honorarium of Rs 4,000.

What has changed?

The April 1 order, sent by the state’s Panchayat Raj department to the Chief Executive Officers of Zilla Parishads in 13 districts, revised the staffing norm under the restructured RGSA. Instead of one mobiliser per PESA Gram Panchayat, the new directive says, after an online meeting with the Union Ministry of Panchayati Raj, calls for one mobiliser for every three PESA Gram Panchayats. Districts have been asked to revise their annual allocation of mobiliser posts accordingly, and the process of withdrawing the surplus positions has already begun.

The effect is a cut of nearly 67 per cent in sanctioned strength statewide, from 3,003 posts to 1,001. Nashik, Palghar, Nandurbar and Gadchiroli, districts with large tribal populations, account for the steepest reductions in absolute numbers, though every one of the 13 affected districts sees its mobiliser strength reduced to roughly a third of the previous sanctioned posts.

Why are the mobilisers protesting?

Dr Amol Waghmare, coordinator of the PESA Mobiliser Sangharsh Samiti, Maharashtra State, told the Indian Express that the cut would make the mobilisers’ work all but unworkable on the ground.

“These tribal women have been working to mobilise people for Gram Sabhas for the last ten years, and some measure of success is now visible in the implementation of the Act. But now the government is reducing the sanctioned posts to just one-third,” Waghmare said.

He pointed out that the area each mobiliser would now have to cover makes the job impractical. “With only one mobiliser for three Gram Panchayats, the work will become very difficult. Tribal people are mostly illiterate, their settlements are widely dispersed, and they need constant handholding. In many cases, a single Gram Panchayat itself governs multiple villages, so asking one mobiliser to now cover three Gram Panchayats amounts to a major overload,” he said.

Waghmare also flagged the human cost of the decision, noting that the 2,002 posts being scrapped translate directly into job losses for the mostly women currently holding them.

On the government’s stated reason for the cut, budgetary constraints, Waghmare argued the savings involved were negligible in the context of the state’s overall spending. “We were told the Panchayati Raj Ministry wants to slash the expenditure, which is why the positions are being cut. The 3,003 posts cost around Rs 14.41 crore a year in honorarium; with 1,001 posts, this comes down to about Rs 4.8 crore. When the government is spending thousands of crores on schemes like Ladki Bahin, the Shaktipeeth Expressway, and others, it should be able to find roughly Rs 10 crore for tribal mobilisers who are actually helping empower people on the ground,” he said.

Waghmare said mobilisers would travel to Mumbai from as far as Chandrapur, Gadchiroli and Yavatmal, among other districts to take part in the July 1 sit-in, since the process of scaling down posts has already started.

What does the government say?

Girish Bhalerao, director of Panchayat Raj, Maharashtra, told The Indian Express that, “We have been directed by the Department of Expenditure, Panchayati Raj, Government of India, to reduce the mobiliser positions to one-third,” he said.

Bhalerao argued that the original staffing level reflected the needs of an earlier, formative phase of the PESA Act’s rollout, which has since passed. “A fair chance was already given after the implementation of the PESA Act, when there was a greater requirement for mobilisers to create awareness. That was the gestation period. Much of that groundwork has now been done – people are aware of Gram Sabhas, and the necessary awareness has largely been created. So less effort is now needed at the mobiliser level compared to when the programme began,” he said.

He added that the posts were never meant to be permanent. “The Government of India had offered a spare period for this. These mobiliser positions were created in 2016 and were not permanent in nature. We have communicated this to the respective district administrations,” Bhalerao said.

Asked whether the state was exploring any options to manage payouts for the mobilisers whose posts are being scrapped, Bhalerao said he had no information on what, if anything, was being considered at the state government level. He did, however, acknowledge that the workload for the remaining mobilisers would increase.