A pradhan functions very much like a chief
minister or a prime minister in his gram panchayat. He has the Parliament of
five panch though only for namesake. The village chief of the olden times used
to perform far more welfare activities than its modern avatar. Even today, if
all the gram pradhans work towards establishing an ideal order in their
panchayats, the entire nation can become an ideal state.
When the Panchayati Raj Regulation was
enforced in the 1950s, the pradhans didn’t have funds, but moral force by
virtue of their altruism. This alone was used to resolve all mutual conflicts
and to accomplish community works by shramdaan — voluntary physical
contribution. In due course of time, the governments began providing funds
through the pradhans, and so started the commission business.
A pradhan’s functioning is never
subjected to an audit while funds audit may be accomplished by a government
official. In the 1980s, the erstwhile prime minister Rajiv Gandhi had hit the
bull’s eye when he quipped that we send a rupee but only 15 paise reach the
farmer. The gram pradhans consider their panchayats their personal estates and
making all the so-called committees redundant whether the matter is of
recruitment of the teaching aides or marking up of a pavage land, the functioning of a pradhan limits itself to the money-making purpose.
The Modi government may have diagnosed
and looked for the remedy by now, but the system shall function the same way it
always has. With the current proposal to keep a check on pradhans’ properties
and assets, there is some hope of corruption abatement.
With its money-making capacity, the
elections for the pradhan have turned very expensive. With no one knowing the
exact limit on the election expenditure that the Election Commission has fixed
for the pradhan-elections it is a fact that liquor, clothes, blankets and cash
worth lakhs of rupees, flow freely in these elections. Due to this, only that
candidate wins who has the most amount of money to spend or the power of muscle
or caste support. With the help of reservation, the dalits do get the
opportunity to earn a post and money, but nothing beyond.
The state of panchayat is such that
when the DM clearing up an unclaimed land attached it to the gram society for
the purpose of a playground, the pradhan failed to develop it as the playground
for the village children. Panchayats have neither the open pastures nor the
playgrounds. Even the rural villages lack playgrounds, how can the children then
participate in sports?
The pradhan doesn’t bother himself
with the issues like teachers’ attendance in the primary schools, ensuring
treatment facilities at the primary health centers, mounds of dirt due to
cleaner’s absence, tree plantation, vaccination or people participation in
keeping the village clean. He is simply concerned with land allotments, PM
housing, compensation, widow or old-age pension, compiling BPL lists and ensuing the commissions—if no commission these jobs are dropped as well.
The Modi government thinks that
directing money to the banks directly would solve the issue, but even then, the
beneficiaries will be selected by none other than the gram pradhan after
getting his dues in advance. A government aid may come to its beneficiary’s
account in its own sweet time.
The provision of women reservation in
gram pradhan elections may have been given with the objective of woman
empowerment, but instead helped propagate patriarchy further. Woman pradhan’s
husband remains the de facto pradhan and decorated with the title
‘pradhan-pati‘ (pradhan’s-husband) smugly attends all BDC meetings.
Similarly, the provision for the caste-based
reservation may have had the rationale of social equality and harmony, but so
far rarely it would have happened that a Pradhan from the scheduled caste had
the opportunity to dine at the house of privileged caste person. The caste
resentment caused during the elections doesn’t wear away easily. Matters
related to privileged caste people will neither be accorded to nor be executed
by the Pradhan from scheduled caste, ongoing court visits notwithstanding.
A gram pradhan, even without the
consent of the villagers, can construct a temple on gram society’s land and
capture it by inscribing his name on it. He constructs parapets and disbanding
the gram society’s land even provides land to farmers without any lease. He
covers up ponds for fields or hands it to the land-mafia.
A gram pradhan cannot effectively
assume his responsibilities towards the panchayat albeit is responsible for
communal ill will, discord and bloodshed. In a nutshell, we may say that the Panchayati
Raj system has been a total failure and retrograde. Mere expense-audit won’t be
enough, the need is for a total revamping of the system by ensuring the
answerability of the pradhans.
