Panchayat

Whether voting along narrow parochial lines in socially and ethnically fragmented societies has measurable gains is explored. Using data from rural India, it is established that identity-based voting, driven by membership in social and informal networks, will lead to enhanced participation in welfare programmes, which in turn leads to increased consumption growth. Further, reducing agency costs does not necessarily remove the need for identity-based voting, and such voting behaviour is a means for engaging in the capture of public and private benefits by these groups.

All progressive forces need to come together to roll back the recent moves by the Bharatiya Janata Party Governments of Rajasthan and Haryana to curtail the right to contest elections through arbitrary and restrictive criteria. Parliament has just passed an amendment to the President's address reiterating the fundamental right to contest elections. This is a battle for India's democracy.

The potential space for change provided by gram swaraj remains underutilised and the new system has languished, partly because of inconsistent support from the state government.

In the rural areas of Madhya Pradesh, democratic decentralisation through the panchayat raj institutions has been instrumental in allowing people to generate a prompt response to urgent problems such as acute water shortage.