From the margins

Think innovatively, plan realistically, govern with participation

Sanjoy Hazarika Guwahati

Last year, a team of 100 enumerators in eight states of the Northeast conducted a visioning exercise, focussing on the rural population, on what people wanted to see in their lives 15 years late. It reached virtually every district and over 40,000 rural households,. I discovered, as team leader, that this was the first time that anyone had come to them for their opinion on anything, especially on planning for their future. They were asked for their views on their priorities, dreams, and where they wanted to see a difference: quality and levels of health, education, governance, communications, agriculture development and rural development.

The survey clarified one thing – that basic minimum needs were yet to be met despite all the funds that had been poured into the region (a staggering estimated Rs 12,000 crore in both Plan and non-Plan projects in the past 15 years). For most households, health and education were top priorities. In addition, there were concerns about new livelihood opportunities and food security. Governance was seen as critical and received lowest marks in the survey but the interest in being involved in planning, reviewing and implementing government projects that had an impact on their lives was encouraging.

What relevance does this exercise have for the essays set forth in this magazine?

It’s simple: 60 years after Independence, barring some parts of India, most regions, especially places like the Northeast, which have been chronically unstable and devastated by both natural and man-made disasters, remain cut-off from the basics of good governance and transparency through public participation, which are at the heart of responsive governments and policies.

The region is among the most complex in Asia, with over 200 ethnic groups and as many languages and dialects. Just this one characteristic makes governance under the standard administrative format developed from colonial times, extremely difficult because there is an urgent need to respond to different local conditions. Then there is the problem of insurgencies and militancies, seeking separation from India or greater rights or just recognition. There is migration, largely from Bangladesh, and cross-state movements from places such as Bihar. Large populations are on the move, creating new faultlines in traditional societies.

To complicate matters here are eight states with a population of 40 million and barely one per cent of the region’s land borders are with India. Myanmar, China and Bangladesh and even little Bhutan have longer borders with the Northeast than mainland India.

We are not, for lack of space, getting into issues of insurgency, migration and other confrontations. Here the focus is on the questions of public participation and involvement in issues of governance and delivery of promises. While Arunachal Pradesh, the plains of Assam and Tripura as well as Manipur are covered by the 73rd and 74th Amendments with Panchayati Raj (PR) in the rural areas and municipal committees in the urban centres, there are special constitutional provisions for Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram and the hill areas of Tripura and Assam which seek to give greater powers to local institutions.

The PR system does not apply to these specific areas. What works, to make matters more complex, are not just existing constitutional arrangements but also traditional institutions which are respected by local communities beyond the constitutional authorities. In states like Meghalaya, the state government depends on the village Durbors or councils of senior village figures (not unlike a panchayat) among the Khasis when issues at the village level have to be discussed, decisions taken and implemented. The Khasis have a finely structured system of advisers; there are similar institutions in other hill states like Nagaland with tribal associations, clubs and organisations.

There are other arrangements in place such as Article 371A of the Constitution under which Nagaland is not covered by legislation passed by Parliament unless enacted by the state legislature. In addition, there’s the Sixth Schedule which covers the hill states of Meghalaya, Mizoram as well as two districts in Assam and one in Tripura. Under the Sixth Schedule, tribal communities are technically protected from land alienation (by plains dwellers) and can set up Autonomous District Councils which function as the second tier of governance, with control over several subjects, but rarely do much beyond being the training ground for ambitious politicians wanting to graduate to the state level and beyond. At the village level, often the states depend on the traditional institutions although there are disturbing accounts of tribal elites buying out poor marginalised farmers in states like Meghalaya and acquiring their lands.

States and policy makers have gone wrong in the Northeast by not giving traditional institutions a constitutional role in governance, especially at the rural levels. This would have enabled them to access funds and implement policies but also make them accountable to the public, instead of operating as gender-insensitive fiefdoms. Decades have passed and it is only now that a discussion, if not a full debate, is taking place on delivery and governance mechanisms in the region. Views are growing louder that seek the involvement of traditional institutions but with extensive reforms including accountability, gender representation and democratic change – not selection by a clan or nomination by male elders.

In some tribes, for example, the male chief owns all property and can do with land as he wishes. And even though societies like the Khasis and Garos of Meghalaya are matrilineal (inheritance rights go to the daughter), women have little voice in political decision-making: they are not part of the councils although civil society groups are now demanding that right, pointing to the advantage their contemporaries have under the PR system elsewhere in the country. Such views have been strongly resisted by many traditional institutions, although this too is slowly changing.

Two pioneering institutions and innovations were launched by two IAS officials: one, in the 1980s, kicked off the village development boards in Nagaland by AM Gokhale, former secretary, Ministry of Mines, and a former chief secretary of Nagaland. Gokhale saw the need to devolve development funds to village levels instead of keeping these at state and district levels. This has worked to an extent but the second step for decentralisation came in the form of the Communisation Programme of Raghaw Pandey, also a chief secretary of the state, a couple of years ago.

Pandey looked at the biggest asset of the Nagas, their social capital, and proposed a structured approach that would give villagers control over state assets – thus teachers would be paid through an account in the village, not the state treasury; the local government school could take independent decisions on construction and so on. The programme is now mandated by law – it is not working as well as envisaged but provides a flexible, innovative way of developing participatory governance.

These are lessons which could be absorbed by other parts of the Northeast. With better governance, involving reformed traditional institutions and enabling local decision-making, many of the conflicts and bitterness could have been reduced, if not ended, assuaged, if not resolved. Partly because of this failure, we have paid heavily in terms of lives and time lost, energy drained, economic devastation and social disintegration.

Complex problems don’t necessarily require equally complex answers; sometimes, simple steps pave the way for change and resolution. This is where a decentralised approach to the ethnic weaves and demands of the Northeast has been missing. The moves suggested here can play a role in the greater democratisation and calming of a troubled region.