Surely there is reason to be suspicious of Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Laloo Prasad Yadav's promise that the Bihar government will hold panchayat elections by February next year. Elections to panchayats have not been held for over two decades in that state - they were last held in 1978. After 1992, this has been in clear violation of the constitutional mandate incorporated by the 73rd and 74th amendment Acts - that "there shall be constituted in every state, panchayats at the village, intermediate and district levels." For the past many years, the government has insisted that the delay is caused by an appeal of the state government in the Supreme Court against the Patna High Court judgement which struck down several provisions of the Bihar Panchayat Act in March 1996. But everybody knows the real reason for moving the Supreme Court in the first place. Quite simply, the Bihar government lacks, has always lacked, the political will to share power with the panchayats. As always, Bihar shows the acute symptoms of a shared disease. Despite the constitutional amendments of 1992, most states have been reluctant to hold panchayat elections on time. Even where elections have been held, the devolution of power remains incomplete. Ambiguity and ad hocism mark the process; the idea and practice of local self-government continues to meet with fierce and entrenched resistance. In many states, for instance, civil servants are indirectly given powers over the elected bodies. Although states have enacted Conformity Acts, many have not formulated rules and bye-laws for the day to day functioning of institutions of self-government. Panchayats lack the necessary infrastructure in many states; programmes and schemes that run parallel to them continue to undermine their functioning in others. In turn, fiscal federalism has so far concentrated on the distribution of resources and powers between the Centre and the states, ignoring the lower tiers of government. Of course, it can be nobody's case that wherever institutionalised, the panchayati raj system has ushered in ideal communities thriving on the democratic participation of all. In many places, in fact, the panchayats themselves are working as instruments of oppression. The absence of land reforms and low levels of literacy in the village have helped feudal and patriarchal structures mount a determined fightback. Take the case of Gundiyabai Ahirwar, Dalit woman sarpanch of Pipra village in Baldeogarh block, Madhya Pradesh, beaten up for hoisting the national flag in her village a few years ago. Or more recently, the excommunication of Ashish and Darshana for daring to marry inter-caste by a village panchayat in Jaundi, Haryana, a mere three-hour drive from the country's capital. Yes, institutions of local self-government mirror the existing inequities - whether of gender or of caste. What the gram panchayat does, however, is to provide a democratic forum for grappling with these at ground level. We live intimes when regional and local voices are becoming increasingly more assertive, when they refuse to be silenced by writs from above. If not now, then in the very near future, the government of Bihar will have to muster the political will to institutionalise the panchayat.
