These Village Republics

BY J. A. RAMAMOORTY, B.A.

[Having been connected with village improvement work for nearly fourteen years in a number of capacities, and now as the Manager of the Kondevaram Rural Uplift Centre (East Godavary District. Madras Presidency), I consider it my privilege and my duty to point out some directions in which the organisation of village life needs improvement, and to suggest lines of approach to the problem of creating village communities that would effectively help in decentralising many of the functions of government now carried on with great cost, much seeming efficiency, and little real use to the people.]

The first thing that strikes an observer of village conditions, in regard to the organisation of village life, is the diversity of institutions or bodies which have been created from time to time and which are functioning more or less nominally in the villages without being correlated. Thus, for example, the Village Panchayat, the Panchayat Court, the Temple Committee, the Vigilance Association, the Co-operative Credit Society and, sometimes, the Irrigation or the Forest Panchayat have all been brought into being according as the exigencies of departmental management, or the tendencies of administrative policy, dictated. These bodies, on that account, have hitherto signally failed to set themselves in any organic relation with the main streams of village activity, which, naturally enough, proceeded in a way comparatively unaffected by the existence of these bodies. Nor is this all; they have served to disturb the poise and equilibrium of village life without setting it up on any fresh basis, more in consonance with modern needs.

The failure to achieve such vital connection has also led to the existence of those parties, factions, feuds and quarrels which are the offspring of irresponsibility no less than of a dis-jointed public life. The whole countryside has till recently been rent into great divisions which, originating in some personal interest, ambition or quarrel, have fed on local differences in every village and hamlet, to present the spectacle of contention, disorder, and discontent. And this state of affairs prevailed right down till the advent of the Congress Ministry to power, and nearly proved the despair of the village reformer.

Such a state of things is now fortunately ended or nearly so: for while faction is not itself dead, it has ceased to derive or assumed political differences, and the support, on that account, of those in high places; and the country is in a state of anxious expectancy which may be the prelude either to fruitful constructive activity in the villages or the recurrence of storms and tempests. The task of wise statesmanship is to take advantage of the present to so order village affairs that the largest measure of village autonomy is introduced simultaneously with the placing of useful and worthy objects of public endeavour before the villagers. This will have the effect of stimulating public activity in the villages, of directing it into useful channels, of replacing the villagers’ sense of helplessness by a consciousness of strength, of making the villager the architect as it were of his own fortune and of instilling a feeling of pride in local achievements.

How can this be best effected? The Revenue Minister of the Madras Government has been recently declaring his policy in regard to the creation of village units for the collection of land revenue and the maintenance of primary revenue staff. This will no doubt restore to the villages some of their lost power and authority, and make them masters in their own house. But land revenue collection in itself is an invidious duty, and the control over village officers, while it will prevent their playing false to the villagers, will not materially mend matters.

The integrity of village life in all its aspects must first be realised and specifically guarded; for without it the various departments of public action must each tend to stultification. Take the village co-operative society for instance. The task of attracting deposits, whether from the thrifty poor or from the lending rich, and of diverting them to the benefit of those trades and industries which form the staple of village activity –the trade of the cultivator, the potter, the weaver, the black-smith, etc.,–is one that may appear mechanical and may seem to call merely for business acumen and skill; but it is not really so. It cannot, in practice, be divorced from the habit of co-operation in ordinary village matters of daily occurrence–the adjustment of disputes, the co-ordination of employments, joint action in the clearance of weed and silt, and in the repair of wells, tanks, canals or channels. That is why we find unlimited liability reduced to a farce in village co-operative societies, and the whole structure of rural co-operative credit tumbling down on the heads of devout and unimaginative authors and supporters of a frame-work which proceeded from a priori principles of human conduct and took no account whatever of historical perspective or ground.

Take again the failure of our statutory Village Panchayats to call forth the best in our villages either of talent, public spirit, or pride of place or accomplishment. Village Panchayats had a spell of activity under the wise guidance of Sjt. N. Gopalaswamy Iyengar, but it was more a promise than a fact, an earnest of things to come rather than a measure of success; and it was due to an attempt at co-ordinating the several aspects of village life and of bringing them together under the same control. Since his time the failure of Village Panchayats for purposes of wide and genuine uplift may be said to be as phenomenal and significant as the failure of Credit Societies. And why? Simply because sufficient elbow room has not been left for the Village Panchayats to turn in and round. Like the heavy Persian galleons of old in the Bay of Salamis, they have fast fallen a prey to their own limited powers and circumscribed opportunities, as well as to executive fiat and edict which help to kill their life for the sake of the departmental development, or the growth of parasitical bodies like the District Boards which have no principle of life of their own. And again, can we in India, being alive to our traditions and our history, conceive of, or be satisfied with a Village Panchayat shorn of large judicial powers, disabled from regulating its communal life through taxation, kudimaramath and effective police action, and excluded from important spheres of village well-being like the education of children, etc? And yet, "cribbed, cabinned and confined" as they have been, such are the institutions that have been presented to our villagers as worthy of their serious attention, regard and concern, and which they have been invited to make the most of. It is not surprising in these circumstances that they have no edifying spectacle to present, (for excessive limitation of powers is often found to lead to irresponsibility), nor that petty politics have invaded these Panchayats, and, like the wax-moth in a weak bee-hive, eaten the very life-stuff out of them.

What, then, is the remedy? Village Panchayats must be created which will act on behalf of, and be responsible to, the villagers in all branches of communal life, from which Panchayats no department of administrative action will compulsorily be excluded, which will have a fair measure of freedom in dealing with the subjects in their charge, and which will not be liable to galling restrictions from any superior body or department. A certain extent of control will be necessary, more so in the first stages, but it must be used to guide and encourage rather than to restrain and put down with a heavy hand. In short, sympathetic administration is the first desideratum.

This presupposes an army of honorary workers who will make it their duty to organise, guide, help and assist in every possible way a certain number of villages, say 50, entrusted to each by the Government. In any scheme of general mass awakening, whether through education, prohibition, or sanitation, the creation of a band of enlightened and selfless organisers with faith in themselves and their mission is of the first importance. The deplorable stagnation that has set in in the Khadi work is largely due to the fact that it has ceased to attract any fresh, devoted workers or to evoke enthusiasm in more than a handful. This must at all costs be avoided. Absolute officialisation in these cases will be nothing short of a disaster.

What of the Panchayat’s resources? Apart from its internal sources of men and money which must always be available for any emergency, it is clear that the Panchayat should be equipped, with a nucleus of fund which should be adequate for the upkeep of its works and the performance of the normal functions of administration,–the payment of its staff of Accountant (Karanam) and Executant (Head-man), Messenger (Vettiyan), Water-distributor, School teacher, Pandit and others. For while we may reasonably expect judicial service, temple management, executive supervision of work, etc., to be honorary on the part of some prominent men of the village, still it would be demanding too much to count upon any regular and well-ordered routine work, in the absence of funds which serve to defray several miscellaneous items of expenditure and to keep up the ceremonial of public causes and occasions. It may be recalled in this connection that, in ancient Athens at its highest and best, the practice of paying jurors prevailed, and while this may not be copied in our villages, some inducement beside the love of public service and distinction will certainly be found necessary to prevail upon the able, educated, and intelligent villager to put in any whole time work for which the necessity will naturally increase in the days to come. The contribution to the Panchayat Fund may usefully take the form of a substantial fraction, say a quarter or a fifth, of the entire land assessment, supplemented by avenue produce, fishery income, grazing or pasture fees in communal lands, together with any license fees. These last, that is the license fees, should not be made compulsorily leviable, as unfortunately a Section in and a Schedule (Schedule IX) under the present Local Boards Act seem to make out; for, instances have been known of the potters,–surely a very useful and innocuous class of artisans,–being subjected to heavy fees for their kilns, under the notion that the Act makes it obligatory to do so.

Then, with regard to constitution, experience of democratic institutions in villages shows that they can only be successful on the basis of full and free adult franchise on the coloured box system. Representation by wards and by communities should be provided for, not in the Statute itself, but by means of healthy conventions set up by the villagers themselves. There should be no bar against women electors or representatives.

Nominations will of course have no place; but interim vacancies may conveniently be filled up by the method of co-option. Lastly, provision must be made for joint action by Panchayats in matters of common concern.

Having indicated the intention, scope, and constitution of the type of the Village Panchayat that, in my view, would best be suited for the purpose of sending the pure blood once again coursing through the veins of our village life, it may be well to suggest the procedure that may be adopted to bring out the essential oneness of all village activities–social, economic and purely administrative. But first let me caution against a possible danger. The idea of forming groups of villages as administrative units is in the air, and while this may in a sense be convenient, it is better that no artificial affiliations be imposed than that some facility of control be aimed at. The present minimum limit of one thousand of population may be retained; but, at the same time, villages bearing natural affinity to each other and possessing identity of interest may be profitably clubbed together.

How will the Panchayat work, having in its charge the entire field of village health, sanitation, revenue collection and management, irrigation, education, civil and criminal justice, communications, trusts like temples, taxation, co-operative credit, supply of drinking water and other amenities? Obviously, the committee system must of necessity prevail, since subjects so widely differing in character, although organically interrelated, cannot be handled by the same set of representatives with equal care and efficiency. And here again we have a bedrock of tradition to fall upon. The Elders or the Pettandars of old were each nominated to a certain sphere of work which latter came into the purview of the whole body. Similarly here, as in the case of all large representative bodies, (it is my considered opinion that no Panchayat should contain less than 10 members, and large villages may have as many as 20 or 25 Panchayatdars) committees for (1) Finance, Taxation, Co-operative Credit and Accounts, (2) Education in school, library or by lectures, Harikatha, Puranam, etc., (3) Public works including temples, tanks, communications, etc., (4) Judicial administration, and (5) Health, should be formed to deal with individual subjects which would later be brought before the whole body of Panchayatdars. In the course of this work of everyday administration and consultation, of free deliberation and unforced decisions, of responsibilities to fellow-villagers conscientiously discharged, will develop the latent political capacity and the training in citizenship of the millions of our countryside, and not merely of our educated few. While the District and the Taluk Boards, the Co-operative Societies and Associations have only served to kindle the ambitions, without satisfying the aspirations, of some of the more assertive and enterprising of our villagers, the full and unfettered guidance of their own villages will place in their hands, amidst more natural and congenial surroundings, opportunities of public service and public distinction that we may reasonably expect to be utilised to the fullest extent.

And it may not be idle to hope that it will be given to the leaders of this movement, in a generation or two, to discover and to effect the golden mean between the village and the city, between agriculture and heavy industry.

Here, of Course, the sceptic will naturally put in,–"Is all this capable of accomplishment? Will not villagers fall foul of one another, and frustrate the very object of their freedom? And does their present economic condition justify us in entrusting them with large powers and a full purse?" The answer is: political and administrative freedom in the village is as much the necessary condition, as it is also the result, of economic betterment; and measures of economic relief in the present, improvement in the future, and of ultimate economic self-sufficiency or even superfluity in the villages, must be envisaged in order to make the scheme an unqualified success.