Connecting Democracy with the People: Institutions in the ...



Gaining Access to Public Services and the Democratic State in India:

Institutions in the Middle

Anirudh Krishna

Duke University

ABSTRACT

How and to what extent do different citizens experience democratic governance on a day-to-day basis? What agencies do they utilize in order to have their voices heard and grievances addressed? How do they gain access to government agencies responsible for delivering social welfare services, such as education, security, health care, and poverty relief? Investigations conducted in two states of India inquired about the manner in which different social groups living in rural areas gain access to the welfare services of the Indian state. These results show that an intermediary is required for gaining access. Different types of intermediaries are consulted by separate segments of society. For a large majority of poorer individuals, a newly arisen type of mediator, the naya neta (literally, new leader), is the intermediary of choice. Neither usually low status nor high status, but younger and better educated than other types of village leaders, naya netas play important roles in shaping welfare consequences in these villages of Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, most importantly, by affecting equity of access.

Keywords: democracy, social welfare, equity of access, intermediary institutions, India

The nature and efficacy of the intermediary agencies that help citizens gain access to welfare programs are as important to consider as these programs themselves. Citizens do not communicate directly with an abstract entity known as “the state.” A great deal of political communication is mediated and indirect. Citizens make their voices heard through the mediation of party organizers, lower-level officials, civil society activists, local political entrepreneurs, news reporters, and other providers of mediation services. Their participation is engaged and their access is assured, not atomistically, every citizen for herself or himself, but usually through the agency of some intermediary agency. Political parties, trade unions, community organizations, religious congregations and other such intermediary institutions help individuals and groups gain access to the agencies of the state. Where these channels are weak, democracy itself is made feebler; its durability is brought into question; indeed, its democratic-ness is in doubt – for if a majority of citizens do not have access to reliable channels of political communication and access, then how will their voices be heard and their benefits and opportunities protected?

In recent years, a literature has begun to develop on how such channels might be created, strengthened and exploited by excluded groups. Some of this work, consisting unhelpfully of somewhat euphoric assertions about the promise of civil society, lacks analytical detail and serves mainly to raise morale among enthusiasts for civic associations. But several more careful studies examine specific cases, concentrate on empirical analysis, and offer theoretical insights into the ways in which emergent democratic systems can be made to serve the interests of poor and socially excluded groups.[1]

Nevertheless, these assessments suffer from a serious shortage of systematic analyses of political institutions, actors and dynamics that are operating in the space between the grassroots and low-to-intermediate levels in the political systems of Asia, Africa and Latin America. How do ordinary citizens, particularly poorer ones, gain access to the welfare services, broadly defined, that are provided by diverse agencies of their democratic state? Which groups and individuals can more easily gain equal access to social services and lawful protections? What types of intermediary institutions help open these channels for them? Which other groups find it more difficult to gain access and exercise voice? What other types of intermediary institutions are consulted by such less well-served citizens, and why do these types of institutions not work as well as others? What needs to be done in order to widen and strengthen these channels?

Various studies of democracy have identified different types of intermediary institutions. Some analysts expect political parties to perform the task of mediating between citizens and the state (e.g., Huntington, 1968; Kohli, 1987). In many new democracies, such as India, however, political parties are quite weakly organized, do not penetrate effectively to lower levels, have little or no presence at the grassroots, and may not provide much support for the tasks of interest articulation, demand representation, and political communication (Kohli, 1990; Krishna, 2002). Civil society organizations and local governments have been proposed as alternative bridging mechanisms between poor communities and the state.[2] But the reach of such organizations, i.e., the number of people with whom they interact, tends to be quite limited, even in developing countries that have a long tradition of civil society organization. Local (or municipal) governments have been mentioned in other studies.

Analysts have argued – with varying degrees of optimism – that democratic decentralization can enhance the political capacities of ordinary people; enhance downward accountability between elections; increase information flows (in both directions) between citizens and government institutions; enhance the “uptake” by poor people on crucial services such as education and ante- and post-natal care; and undermine authoritarian enclaves.[3] But does decentralization, pursued in certain ways, actually help to enhance poor people’s abilities to engage with democracy and improve access to social service provision – or can it, instead, result in further entrenching the power of local elites? Even where local governments have been established by law, do poorer residents find these institutions to be a useful means for making contact with higher-level agencies of the state? Interest groups, residential organizations, producer associations, labor unions, and ethnic and religious groupings have also been suggested as contextually-effective channels of political communication (Heller, 2001; Posner, 2005; and Rueschmeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, 1992). And some innovative solutions have been devised by ordinary people who have despaired of gaining assistance from any of the established organizations (Krishna 2003; Manor 2000).

As yet, however, no head-to-head comparison of alternative institutional conduits has been compiled that can help assess (and improve) equity of access. A few studies undertaken in Western democracies do consider the intermediary space between citizens and agencies of the state. They provide some interesting insights on how citizens gain access to policymakers and welfare services within these contexts.[4]

When it comes to developing country democracies, however, despite an abundance of studies at the national level, and in federal systems, also at state levels,[5] there is hardly anything that tells us about what happens further down. Anthropologists and others have produced valuable local-level analyses.[6] But the nature of mediation occurring at the grassroots – and its consequences in terms of equity of access to social welfare – are issues that have received relatively little attention so far. Which among these different agencies helps make democracy more real and social services more easily accessible in any given context, and in which contexts do particular types of intermediary agencies help produce real and important effects? Who helps ordinary people, especially poor ones, to articulate their preferences and demands? Who follows up to ensure that these demands are respected and addressed through the provision of the desired social services? Answers to these questions are not as yet available, but they need to be developed.

In parallel, it is important to uncover the role played by socio-economic change. In what ways does context influence the choice of agency? Do informal organizations play any role in this regard (Ananthpur, 2007; Tsai, 2007)? Does the growth of literacy and education, help enhance the quality of access and the effectiveness of service provision for poorer people?[7] Have state officials become more responsive to the demands of the now-educated poor? Alternatively, does market penetration and increased commercialization help develop different (and perhaps better) links with the state, as expected in part by modernization theorists?[8] Do aspects related to ethnic mobilization provide any part of an explanation for differences in political efficacy and service provision (Bates, 1999; Chandra, 2000; Wilkinson, 2005)?

India offers an excellent location for an initial comparative examination of this kind. Democracy has been in place in this country for more than 50 years,[9] providing ample opportunity for alternative institutional avenues to develop and be explored by people belonging to different social groups. Considerable differences across states – in terms of commitment to decentralization, richness and depth of civil society organizations, extent of ethnicity-based mobilization, educational achievement, and commercialization and market linkages, to name some key factors – provides researchers with a natural laboratory for testing alternative hypotheses related to local institutional development and social service provision.

Despite the relative longevity of the democratic experience, however, considerable deficits remain in terms of citizens’ everyday democratic experiences. Surveys that I conducted in rural areas of two Indian states show how a majority of citizens still find it hard to gain access to organs of the state and how these encounters are usually fraught with feelings of anxiety and marred by low expectations.

Investigating Institutional Intermediation in India

A team of field researchers that I led surveyed the opinions of village residents in four districts of Rajasthan and three districts of Andhra Pradesh.[10] These districts are neither the richest nor the poorest ones in these states; each district falls close to the median for its state in terms of diverse socioeconomic indicators.[11] Following a process of random sampling, a total of 1,898 individuals were interviewed (in 1997-98) in Rajasthan, and a total of 1,750 were interviewed seven years later (in 2004-05) in Andhra Pradesh.[12] A battery of pre-tested survey questions was administered to each of them, related to different aspects of public service provision.

These results show that despite having a great deal of faith in democracy, most citizens have a hard time making connections with public service providers. Table 1 provides the responses given to the following survey question: What do you expect? If you were to make contact with a government official or political leader, will you get a response or will you be ignored?

-- Table 1 here --

People’s past experiences are such that a majority of people in both states – a somewhat higher proportion in Rajasthan than in Andhra Pradesh – expect that their voices will simply go unheard by public officials, including those responsible for service delivery. As a result, relatively few take the trouble to express their demands directly. Other survey questions tended to confirm this impression. Table 2 provides the range of responses to two similar survey questions.

-- Table 2 here –

A vast majority of people in both states – this time, slightly more in Andhra Pradesh than in Rajasthan – felt that they could do little, if anything, to change the way that things were being run. They expressed such a view despite the fact that they had thrown the incumbent state government out of power at the most recent state elections. It would seem that changing ruling parties does little to change political dynamics at and just above the local level.

We have no comparable data from longer-established and better-institutionalized democracies. So it is not possible to claim that these numbers are conclusive of any particular pathology. Nevertheless, when more than three-quarters of all residents – selected randomly in villages of two states – expect that their voices will simply go unheard, it becomes important to investigate the sources of this weakness.

Scholars who have studied other parts of India have similarly found that ordinary people find it hard to engage with service-providing agencies of the state. “The state can and often does appear to people in India as a sovereign entity set apart from society,” state Fuller and Harriss (2000: 23). “A local administrative office, a government school, a police station: to enter any of these is to cross the internal boundary into the domain of the state.” The state, in turn, finds it difficult to reach out and connect with ordinary citizens. “In contemporary India,” as Yadav (1999: 2399) asserts, “the chain that links peoples’ needs to their felt desire to their articulated demand to its aggregation and finally to its translation into public policy is impossibly long and notoriously weak.” Demand-driven programs, serious efforts at democratic decentralization by a few Indian state governments, and efforts by civil society organizations have sometimes improved things somewhat, and on occasion, dramatically, but these remain exceptions to more discouraging general trends.

What is it about these contexts that helps produce despondent democrats, able to participate in electing their governments but unable to have a say in what governments do on an everyday basis? Poverty is an important background feature but it does not seem to be the only cause. Relatively rich and the relatively poor people gave somewhat different responses to the survey questions discussed above, but this difference was no more than a few percentage points. For instance, while 85 percent of the poorest quartile of villagers agreed or strongly agreed with the statement – “Things are run by a powerful few, and ordinary citizens cannot do much about it” – as many as 76 percent of the richest quartile also agreed or strongly agreed. There is very likely something deeper, something more institutionalized, which needs to be examined in greater detail.

How does one explain the paradox of widespread faith in democracy – accompanied by huge electoral turnouts, particularly among poorer citizens (Yadav, 2000) – alongside depressingly low expectations about the likely results from a visit to the police station, school board, or public development agency? We feel justifiably elated to observe mass participation and consistently fair elections in India. Newspaper headlines are quick to proclaim that “India has spoken” when governments are voted out of office, as they have been, over 70 percent of the time, in state and national levels held since 1980. Yet in the interim, between elections, many Indians do not speak and are not heard by officials. They are “citizens only in name [with] few meaningful channels of political participation,” as portrayed by Diamond (2008: 38).

Where in rural India does the breakdown in political communication occur? Mediated transactions characterize an important part of citizen-state relations. How do intermediary institutions fall short in these contexts? And how can they be strengthened and service provision improved, particularly for those who currently most lack voice?

The search for answers is hardly a simple one, even though parts of the literature can be read to suggest that solutions are readily at hand. In practice, however, one cannot blithely follow the communitarians and start investing in community organizations, nor can one assume that party building will resolve these problems in full.

Different intermediary institutions work well within different contexts. Different types of institutions are more or less accessible by members belonging to different social groups and living in different regions. Local residents know that the government is not monolithic, and they therefore turn more often to those agencies that they expect will respond more readily and effectively. They also tend to turn to intermediaries who are especially adept at obtaining responses from key service provision agencies. Thus, some channels (governmental and non-governmental) are more promising than others for gaining access to the state and its welfare program. How effectively do different mediating agencies perform, particularly in regard to poor people’s demands for service delivery?

Mediating Agencies: The Naya Netas

Diverse mediating agencies, including institutions as well as individuals, help ordinary citizens gain access to state services within the rural contexts examined in Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. A brief recounting of their natures and functions helps set the context for the analysis that follows.[13]

Legislators: Members of India’s Parliament (MPs) are prominent within this category, as are Members of the State Legislative Assemblies (MLAs), who have smaller constituencies, are more numerous, and make their presence felt more frequently. In recent years, both types of legislators have been provided with substantial (and growing) annual grants to spend on development activities within their constituencies.

Party activists: A few political parties in India have penetrative organizations which deploy activists at the grassroots, but most parties do this rather inadequately or not at all.

Political bosses: Previous studies have shown how potent “bosses” or “strongmen” (or local caudillos) can exercise very substantial influence over lower-level arenas of varying size (e.g., Migdal, 1988). These are usually people who make use of their wealth, status and a capacity to intimidate others. Some hold elected office, while others do not. Nearly all are linked to a political party. It appears that their influence to thwart key demands from below, often from poorer groups may – like the influence of caste – be diminishing (Mayer, 1997), but how fast and how far it has diminished (and where, and why) needs more systematic examination.

Lower-level bureaucrats: This term refers to employees of line ministries and to people working for special agencies that sometimes bypass conventional bureaucracies. Some, like government-appointed village accountants, have for a long time allegedly played a prominent mediating role, negotiating rights and authority between the people and the state.

Informal panchayats: An important strand of analysis argues that members of long-standing informal Village Councils – unelected multi-caste bodies that have dealt with dispute resolution and certain other matters for generations in some villages – often reach out to make contacts at higher levels in order to access government resources for their villages (Ananthpur, 2007). These people are well-established figures who therefore fall outside the category of emergent entrepreneurs described above.

Formal (elected) panchayats: These are the formally elected local councils that function in rural areas and which have been strengthened over the past 15 years following important constitutional amendments. While quite often these agencies are involved only in implementing development programs on behalf of the state (Mayaram, 1998), panchayats are also widely expected to grow into a larger role, crucially linking state actors with ordinary rural citizens (Mathew, 1994).

Civil society actors: Two types of actors need to be considered – those connected to higher-level civil society organizations that seek to penetrate from above into local spaces, and those connected to village- and lower-level civil society organizations which reach into the institutional space located above. In addition, it is essential that we consider not only actors, such as NGOs, operating within “enlightened” civil society organizations which seek to respond to the demands of poor and socially excluded groups, but also those who represent associations who seek to sustain inequality and exclusion and to convey parochial messages. This latter group will include most (though hardly all) caste- and religion-based associations.

Social movements: The right-to-information act is associated in parts of Rajasthan with an important and increasingly widely spread social movement. Similar movements – e.g., one demanding a separate state in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh – might also provide additional avenues of linkage with (or in some cases, detachment from) the agencies of the state.

These different mediating agencies vary considerably in their agendas, their activities, and their influence. Some seek to sustain imbalances in service delivery, while others seek to reduce them. How and how effectively do different agencies identify key demands of ordinary people – especially the poor – and then transmit them upward to higher levels? Conversely, how do they help government service providers communicate with people at the grassroots?

Before considering these questions in the next section, one other set of local providers of access needs to be considered in somewhat greater detail. Arisen relatively recently, these emergent political entrepreneurs need to be acknowledged and their roles understood.

Naya netas (or new leaders): These newly emerged village leaders “are usually between 25 and 40 years of age… [and] educated to about middle school [level]. They read newspapers… and are experienced [in dealing] with the government bureaucracy, with banks, insurance companies, and the like… These new leaders can be of any caste, but they must have knowledge, perseverance and ability.”[14] Such new and locally evolved leaders are active in villages of both states. Similar types of individuals have also been identified within other Indian states.[15]

Acquiring the ability to read and write and perform basic calculations has enabled younger villagers to negotiate much more easily than their older counterparts with the written-down worlds that they encounter outside the village, and it is from this growing pool of educated younger villagers that these new village leaders are drawn.[16] No particular caste group dominates within this group; naya netas are as likely to be drawn from among lower castes, including the former untouchables, and to hail from poorer households rather than richer ones. A basic minimum of education is required to function effectively as a naya neta; acquiring a college education does not add greater effectiveness. Naya netas in Rajasthan have on average acquired nine years of formal education, while those in Andhra Pradesh have on average 12 years of formal education.

In addition to rising education, intensified electoral competition over the past 25 years has assisted with the rise of the new village leaders. Neither of the major political parties in this region, the Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, has developed any permanent organization at the grassroots level, and party offices are located mostly at state and district capitals. Parties rely upon suitable local intermediaries for creating support among villagers. Naya netas (along with other local intermediaries) have stepped into this organizational vacuum.

Naya netas help connect villagers with one another. In many villages, organizations centered upon these new village leaders are beginning to take shape. As important, naya netas help facilitate villagers’ access to powerful actors with influence over diverse aspects of social welfare, including policemen, political party organizers, doctors, health and education bureaucrats, bankers, and insurance agents.

Since transactions in both directions help consolidate their positions, naya netas rely upon forging two sets of trustworthy bargains. On the one hand, they strike bargains with their fellow villagers needing access to welfare benefits, and on the other hand, they strike deals with the service providers. One village leader described these roles as follows:

Officials come to us when they want some work implemented. They know we can get it done...and no one else in the village. We also [take the initiative and] go to government officials ourselves. I am in regular contact with district-level government officials. There is a relationship of trust among us. We want employment for our fellow villagers, and they want to achieve their targets... Within the village, we rotate whatever employment is available, so that all who need wages are able to get a fair share.

Such regular and well-known practices, routines and relations of trust are developing as well in other villages of this region. Another new village leader narrated the following account to me:

When people come to me with some work, I have to attend to it at once. Even at night, if someone has a medical emergency or a police matter is involved I have to go at once on my motorcycle... Yes, my family members do complain quite often: "What do you get out of all of this work and inconvenience," they ask. But what can I do? I have stepped into [this role of] netagiri [leadership], and I have to do what it takes... No, it is not a full-time occupation. It does not take me more than a couple of hours on average every day, and the rest of the time I can do my own personal work. But when someone comes to me, I must go with them at once.

Norms, rules, roles, responsibilities, precedents and practices are emerging in these villages related to the activities of the new village leaders.

Some naya netas use their positions for extracting commercial advantage from other villagers, but a very large number, more than half, as far as I could make out, are in it more for social and political rather than economic gains. There is usually more than one new leader in a village. Villagers are free to select which among these new leaders they will use for any particular service, and they tend to prefer persons who abide by local norms of decent behavior – including rendering neighborly assistance in times of need, without profiteering from another’s misfortune.

In many respects, naya netas are a diverse group. Some represent entire local communities, while others seek advantages only for specific interests. Some are fiercely independent, but others become co-opted by powerful actors in political parties. They vary in other ways as well, but this sizeable army of middle men (and, less often, women) often plays crucial mediating roles.

Not all residents of these villages benefit equally from the services provided by naya netas. Poorer villagers rely upon naya netas more than others, as we will see below.

Equity of Access and the Roles Played by Naya netas

My first examination of patterns of access, carried out in Rajasthan, showed how different types of intermediary institutions are consulted by villagers in relation to different welfare agencies. We made inquiries from individual respondents in relation to four different types of public services required on priority by residents of these communities.

The first type concern individuals’ dealings with the police and with the state land administration agency which is responsible for maintaining the official records of land ownership and for regulating transactions in agricultural land. Land, it must be remembered, is the most important productive asset for people in Indian villages. More than 85 percent of all village residents are fully or in large part dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. Thus, land administration is a very important public service.

The second type of dealings with higher-level institutions that we examined concerns obtaining a loan from a commercial bank. Mostly public-sector banks have operations in rural areas of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan. They help advance various objectives of state policy, including reaching out to economically weaker sections of rural society and promoting agricultural growth and small business development. Better-off villagers seek bank loans in order to make improvements to their agricultural land. Less well-off villagers deal with banks for obtaining the subsidized programmatic loans that the Indian government has been making available under its numerous social welfare schemes.

In either case, obtaining a loan from a bank is not a straightforward mission, especially for older villagers, most of whom are unlettered. Bank branches have spread out in rural areas, and particularly since the 1970s a huge expansion of banking activity has occurred. As observed by Myron Weiner in the early 1960s, and as remains true to this day, some “expeditor is usually involved who may not be a man with any official power, but he is always someone who is familiar with the intricacies of administration” (Weiner 1963: 123).

The third type of dealing about which villagers were asked relates to replacing a non-performing school teacher. The network of public primary schools is even more widespread than the network of banks. Apart from the most isolated and thinly populated villages, most others have a primary school, which is funded by the state government and staffed by teachers who are employees of the state. Villagers have relatively little control over what schoolteachers actually do; responsibility for oversight is vested in a vertical hierarchy of school inspectors. Because oversight is sporadic and scanty in practice, absentee and non-performing schoolteachers have become the bane of many villages. All but the poorest villagers are keen to have their children educated. At least through the primary level, more than 85 percent of children in Rajasthan villages attend schools (Krishna, 2004). Surveys conducted in other parts of India report how as many as 98 percent of parents regard it as important for boys to be educated, while 89 percent regard education important for girls (PROBE, 1999). All of them face, to varying degrees, the problems brought on by non-performing school teachers (Kremer, et al., 2004). To whom do villagers usually turn for assistance in dealing with this problem? How do they attempt to get their children’s right to a free primary education – promised and paid for by a democratic state – asserted in practice?

The last type of demand considered here relates to wage employment. This demand is of particular importance for poorer villagers. Seasonal wage employment in public construction projects makes up nearly 45 percent of the annual income of poorer villagers (Krishna 2002). In response to demands from below, the Indian state has progressively enlarged its budget for employment-generating public works, culminating in 2006 with the introduction of a program guaranteeing 100 employment days each year for adult members of poorer households as a hedge against destitution.[17] These intents of policy and statute are carried through in practice by bureaucracies that follow certain procedures for determining eligibility and need. Their implementation is also influenced, and sometimes undermined, by local elected officials, landowners, potent local figures, contractors, etc.

Who helps mediate access to these four important welfare services? A similar survey question helped frame the choices that were posed to our village respondents: Which type of mediating agent do you turn to when attempting to deal with the concerned state bureaucracy? Table 3 provides the survey results related to all four domains.

-- Table 3 here -

“No one” was a choice that hardly any respondent selected, indicating that un-mediated transactions, rather than being a norm, are rare exceptions. The vast majority of village residents need help in gaining access to the welfare agencies of their democratic state.

The results in Table 3 also show that the usual intermediary institutions, i.e., the ones usually studied by political scientists – such as local governments or political parties – are hardly the most important ones for gaining access to public services within these contexts. Only a small minority of villagers consults with party representatives or local governments (panchayats) or even with the kinds of caste associations and informal caste networks that are available in such villages.

While decentralization is often proposed as a means toward achieving greater equity of access, it is not clear that strengthening party organizations or enhancing the role of panchayats will necessarily result in improving channels of political communication, particularly for poorer villagers. When they need to make contact with state agencies concerned with any of these four services, the majority of villagers, poorer or richer, prefer, instead, to consult with naya netas (or new leaders), whose mediation on their behalf is expected to have more benefits and fewer costs.[18]

As we saw above, naya netas come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are upper caste, although a proportionately larger number of these new leaders belong to the middle and lower castes of villagers.[19] Family background has relatively little to do with who becomes a new leader. Functional literacy and certain personal qualities are much more important, including a willingness to work hard on behalf of ordinary villagers. The rapid expansion of education in rural areas, particularly over the past two decades or so, has facilitated the coming into being of naya netas in every village investigated in Rajasthan.

A plethora of social welfare services and poverty reduction programs have been introduced over the same period by the Indian state. Villagers are keen to avail themselves of benefits from these expanding social welfare programs, but they are usually unable or unwilling to deal with state agencies directly on their own account. Because of ignorance or unfamiliarity with the Indian bureaucracy’s complex procedures, or for other reasons – including lack of time, unwillingness to suffer humiliation, lack of faith that any government business can get transacted without some intervention, etc. – villagers usually prefer to have agents deal on their behalf with the government machinery.

Where these agents are effective, they can help villagers gain larger benefits, individually and collectively, from government departments and market agencies. As one senior politician told me,

Many different types of schemes and programs are in operation. If they cannot understand these schemes, then of what use are the leaders? Ordinary villagers do not have the means to know about what benefits exist. Leaders perform these functions [for them]… They meet with officials. They [should] know about schemes and programs. They place the villagers’ demands before officials and politicians.

Why do the majority of villagers prefer to deal with non-elected local leaders, especially naya netas? Why do they not consult, instead, with Village Councils or with their elected panchayats for economic matters requiring interventions outside the village?

The short answer to these questions is that neither Village Council leaders nor panchayat officials are effective intermediaries for helping villagers gain access to the state’s welfare agencies. Hardly any Village Council leader has the kinds of information and contacts needed to interact effectively with state and market agencies, and most do not have the capacity required for acquiring this knowledge and these contacts. Village Council leaders acquire their offices by virtue of heredity, and most of these older leaders are not even functionally literate, so they can hardly undertake the kinds of transactions that result in individual villagers gaining access to state officials.

While Village Councils are incapacitated by their leaders’ illiteracy and lack of external contacts, the official panchayats are hampered by their institutional design. They are equipped to provide downward communication on behalf of the government, but they are not very effective for transmitting villagers’ demands and grievances upward to public officials. They receive their mandate and their funding from state and national governments; they look upward to these levels for authority and resources; and their officials are rewarded or punished from above by inspectors and officials appointed by the state (Crook and Manor, 1999). Further, because panchayats are not well grounded in the norms and morès of village social life, and control from below is virtually non-existent for these bodies, corruption is a frequent problem. An audit report presented to the state legislature of Maharashtra reports, for example, that “corruption has seeped into practically all fields [of panchayats’ activity] – the list is endless.”[20]

Naya netas have stepped into this institutional breach. Those who succeed in performing these services effectively and honestly acquire prestige and influence at the grassroots – regardless of whether they come from traditionally non-elite backgrounds.

Access by Richer and Poorer Citizens

A follow-up investigation, undertaken in villages of Andhra Pradesh seven years later (in 2004-05), showed how different social groups preferred to consult with different types of intermediary agencies. In relation to the same type of social service, poorer villagers preferred to deal with one type of intermediary, while richer villagers consulted with another type of intermediary.[21] A random sample of villagers was interviewed, using a pre-tested questionnaire.

Table 4 provides the responses given by poorest villagers (the bottom three deciles in terms of this index) and by the best-off villagers (the top three deciles) to three survey questions related to interactions with different service provision agencies of the state. Seven alternative responses were offered in relation to each of these survey questions. Six of these choices referred to six types of mediating agencies – including official panchayats, informal (or customary) panchayats, political parties, new leaders, caste leaders, and an unstated “other” type. Within this unstated “other” were recorded all responses claiming direct (i.e., un-mediated) contact with the particular state agency. As before, in the case of Rajasthan, hardly any un-mediated transactions were reported. The seventh choice was simply “Cannot do anything in this situation.”

-- Table 4 about here --

Considerable differences are visible between the responses of the poorest and the best-off people. While poorer people expect to consult with one type of intermediary, richer people prefer, in general, to make contact with a different type of mediating agency. In general, the official panchayats and political parties are preferred by richer people in each of the three situations examined. On the other hand, poorer people prefer to consult with new leaders (equivalent to the naya netas whom we saw earlier in the case of Rajasthan) or they expect to receive no assistance from any agency. A vast number of poorer people picked the option “Cannot do anything” in each of the three situations.

Consider the first type of interaction examined, namely, gaining admission for one’s child in a preferred government-run school. In such situations, a majority of better-off people would expect to have their communications mediated either by the official panchayats (37 percent) or by political parties (24 percent). The majority of richer people would tend to employ, therefore, types of means that are better recognized in the economics and political science literatures on institutions.

On the other hand, the majority of poorer respondents tend to employ means of communication that are not so widely recognized. Relying either on new leaders (31 percent) or caste leaders (17 percent), this group of people, by and large, tends to use more informal means. Access to the state’s welfare services is made possible through the agency of individuals rather than institutions. Another 24 percent felt that no means whatsoever would be available to them if they were required to deal with the public school administration. Access of any sort seemed a dim prospect to them.

Similar responses were received as well to the other survey questions related to other welfare services. Access to the state is mediated by diverse agencies on behalf of different social groups.

In general, richer people tended to name official panchayats and political parties; poorer people continued to rely for access upon more informal and personalized channels. For instance, in relation to the third type of interaction with a state agency – getting a sick relative admitted to a public hospital, supposedly a matter of right, involving a free public service in much of India, including Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan – hardly any villager felt it prudent to approach the hospital staff without the benefit of an intermediary. Once again, different types of intermediaries are preferred by rich and poor. Whereas 44 percent of richer individuals sought access through panchayat leaders, and another 38 percent preferred to seek out political party officials, making for a total of 82 percent of richer individuals, poorer people preferred, instead, to work with an entirely different set of mediating agents, with 31 percent seeking mediation from new leaders, another 16 percent preferring informal panchayats, and as many as 24 percent expecting to receive no help and no access. Differences in the nature of mediating agencies consulted by richer and poorer village residents are equally visible in the third type of interactions examined in Table 4, involving obtaining a bank loan.

Formal channels of access currently in existence work better, it would seem, for richer villagers. Poor villagers rely more often upon informal means, such as naya netas.

How and why do these different modes of access to welfare services co-exist, and how well does each mode function relative to the others? How do citizens select between different intermediaries?

In seeking answers for these questions, it is best to begin by recognizing that the tasks ordinary citizens require their mediators to perform are simple ones in nature, requiring no great technical skills. Gaining access is dependent upon a leader’s bargaining skills. Two sets of trustworthy bargains need to be struck in parallel. Trustworthy bargains between a citizen and her mediator must be accompanied by similar bargains between this mediator and the concerned state official. The nature of these bargains varies. Money changes hand, i.e., bribes are paid and received, but money is not the only currency that forms part of these transactions. Political currency – votes for favors – is also employed in a large number of cases. And links of kinship and caste can also help with access.

Rather than the amount of money changing hands, the sheer number of transactions has a greater influence upon the relative efficacy of an interlocutor. The more often you see the same public official, the easier it becomes to strike trustworthy bargains with him. And regular dealings with the same set of citizens helps a mediator develop a more loyal clientele. The most successful intermediaries are those with the highest volume of transactions. Increasing returns to scale factor into these local-level transactions.

As we saw earlier, naya neta, overtaking other types of intermediaries, have the largest volume of transactions. Their efficacy has risen in comparison to their competitors. By and large, naya netas can get the job done more reliably, quickly, and cheaply compared to other agent types.

To the extent that naya netas serve poorer more than richer people there has been some equalization of access. In fact, the availability itself of a reliable provider of access has come as a boon to many poorer villagers. Until the rise of naya netas, the richest villagers controlled access to the state. It is hardly surprising then that policy reforms involving large-scale redistribution, such as India’s incomplete land reforms, were largely aborted before they reached the ground (Januzzi, 1994).

The rise of naya netas has expanded access for poorer villagers. Naya netas are not only more easily available they are also more efficacious, in general, compared to other agent types.

However, access to the state and its programs has not become fully equal as a result. Inequality of access has not been reversed. The difference between rich and poor is made not just by the efficacy of their most important means of access but as well by the number of different means that they possess. Richer people can gain access through multiple pathways, including relatives, friends, friends of friends, and so on. Official intermediary agencies appear to be working much better for them (compared to the poor). Poorer people, on the other hand, have many fewer options. For them, it is usually the naya neta or bust: Notice how in Table 4, after new leaders the next most frequently reported response among the poorest people was “cannot do anything.”

The landscape of influence and access has changed visibly in these parts of India, with much of this change occurring within the past 25 years. Naya netas have arisen, reshaping welfare consequences by influencing equity of access.

Supporting the quests for access, most acutely felt by poorer people, and in turn elevated in status and efficacy by supporting these quests, naya netas have enabled many people to gain access to welfare ministries who had hardly any, and often no, access before. These changes, deepening with time, should help produce even greater equalization. Yet, the future remains risky and unclear.

Implications for policy and research

In a context characterized by weak intermediary institutions, the naya netas certainly provide for most villagers, particularly poorer ones, their most reliable means for gaining access to public service providers. Such new leaders do not, however, constitute a sustainable solution to the problem of access. Some naya netas move on to take jobs in urban areas, leaving behind their village and the villagers they formerly served. Others give up their leadership positions in order to spend more time with their families. Still others, albeit relatively few, get absorbed within party hierarchies, and rising higher, they move away from their home village. The roles that these intermediaries play are neither stable nor predictably recurring, so there is little that is “institutional” about naya netas in the sense implied by Huntington (1968). Their numbers should surely grow in the aggregate, but at the local level the behavior of individual naya netas is fickle. So itt is hard to predict how any given citizen, especially a poorer one, will be gaining access to welfare a year from now.

Observing the large and important roles that isolated new leaders currently play simply helps underscore, therefore, the vast need that exists for strengthening institutional links in the middle. Which particular links should be strengthened on priority – for which social groups and in relation to what activities – needs to be examined more extensively with the help of grassroots investigations.

Access is not assured for all. Nearly all citizens, and particularly the poorest ones, require an intermediary’s assistance. Institutionalizing these linkages – making them reliable, predictable, and steady – is essential for the goal of equality of access.

Context matters critically. The real worth of particular intermediary institutions needs to be investigated and cannot be assumed. What has worked well in the West may not work as well in the diverse contexts of the South and East. Different types of mediating institutions are likely to function well within diverse developing country contexts. Beginning by examining what exists – and what is lacking – is an essential first step for understanding what remains to be done.

Research efforts such as the ones reported on above need to be more widely undertaken. Institutions at the macro-national level have been given a great deal of consideration, and more recently, institutional designs for the global and international levels are being scrutinized. These investigations are critically important. Additionally, the sinews of democracy and development – the institutional channels that connect ordinary citizens with social service providers and with markets, enabling greater equity of access – need to be studied in depth. Making democracy more democratic requires working toward greater equity of access. Disconnected citizens do not make for good guardians of democracy. In order that democracy becomes more widely practiced and valued, intermediary institutions need to be made stronger and state agencies easier to access.

Table 1:

If you were to make contact with a government official or political leader, will you get a response or will you be ignored?

| |Rajasthan |Andhra |

|Will get a response |41% |46% |

|Will be ignored |57% |53% |

Table 2: Extent of Perceived Influence

| |Percentage of respondents who Agreed or Strongly Agreed with the |

| |statement |

| | |

|Statement: | |

| |Rajasthan |Andhra Pradesh |

|Things are run by a powerful few, and ordinary |83% |89% |

|citizens cannot do much about it | | |

|People like me don’t have any influence over what the|79% |87% |

|government does | | |

Table 3. Who helps gain access to the concerned agency of the state in the following situations?

(Rajasthan, 1997-98 data)

|  |Party Representatives |Panchayat Leaders |Caste Leaders |Naya netas* |

|Dealing with the land |6% |5% |20% |62% |

|administration agency or the | | | | |

|police | | | | |

|Getting a bank loan |5% |7% |8% |63% |

|Replacing a non-performing |4% |18% |11% |64% |

|teacher | | | | |

|Getting wage employment |4% |11% |8% |70% |

*refers to new leaders, whose functions and social backgrounds are discussed in the text

Table 4. Intermediaries preferred by Richer and Poorer Individuals

(Andhra Pradesh, 2004-05 data)

|  |Poorest |Best Off |

| |(bottom three deciles) |(top three deciles) |

|Having one’s child admitted to a preferred public school |- New leaders (31%) |- Official panchayat (37%) |

| |- “Cannot do anything” (24%) |- Political party (24%) |

| |- Caste leaders (17%) |- Informal panchayat (11%) |

|Obtaining a bank loan |- “Cannot do anything” (27%) |- Official panchayat (41%) |

| |- New leaders (25%) |- Informal panchayat (21%) |

| |- Caste leaders (22%) |- Political party (18%) |

| |- Political party (8%) |- New leaders (13%) |

|Getting a sick relative admitted to a public hospital |- New leaders (31%) |- Official panchayat (44%) |

| |- “Cannot do anything” (24%) |- Political party (38%) |

| |- Informal panchayat (16%) |- Caste leaders (13%) |

| |- Official panchayat (11%) | |

Note: Only responses given by at least ten percent of respondents within each category (poorest and best off) are reported in Table 4.

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[1] See, for example, Dreze and Sen (2002); Fung and Wright (2001); Goetz and Jenkins (2004); Heller (2001); Krishna (2002); Krishna and Booth (2008); and Tendler (1997).

[2] The general case is presented by, for example, Etzioni (1998); Fung and Wright (2001); and Putnam (1993). For the Indian context see, for example, Satterthwaite (2006) and Varshney (2001).

[3] These and other arguments for (and against) decentralization have been presented by, among others, Bird and Vaillancourt (1998); Blair (2000); Cheema and Rondinelli (1983); Cohen and Peterson (1999); Crook and Manor (1998); Manor (1999); Smith (1985); Smoke and Lewis (1996); and Tendler (1997).

[4] See, for example, Dahl (1971); Lipsky (1980); Rakove (1975); and Tarrow (1977).

[5] For instance, Ake (1996); Booth and Seligson (1979); Collier (1999); Diamond, et al. (1995); Frankel and Rao (1989); Kohli (1987); Rudolph and Rudolph (1987); and Seligson and Booth (1979).

[6] For India, some noteworthy studies of this genre include Bailey (1963); Beteille (1996); Chakravarty (1975); Corbridge, et al. (2005); and Fuller and Benei (2000).

[7] As discussed for particular contexts by Bratton and Mattes (2001); Finkel (2002); Krishna (2006a); Nie, Junn and Stehlik-Barry (1996); Przeworski et al. (2000); and Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995).

[8] See, among others, Almond and Verba (1965); Apter (1965); Inglebert and Baker (2000); Lerner (1958); and Lipset (1981).

[9] Except for a short hiatus between 1975 and 1977, when the Constitution of India was temporarily suspended.

[10] Andhra Pradesh, a state in the southeastern part of India, has traditionally ranked higher on several socioeconomic indicators than Rajasthan, a state located in India’s north-west. A higher rate of economic growth in Andhra Pradesh compared to Rajasthan – respectively, 4.8 percent per year and 3.2 percent per year, over the period 1993-2005 – has exacerbated some of these initial differences (Krishna and Shariff 2010). According to the latest population census, conducted in 2001, the population of Rajasthan was 56 million, of whom 77 percent live in rural areas, and the population of Andhra Pradesh was 76 million, of whom 72 percent live in rural areas. ()

[11] Districts in Rajasthan include Ajmer, Bhilwara, Rajsamand, and Udaipur. Districts in Andhra Pradesh include East Godavari, Khammam, and Nalgonda.

[12] Villages within each district were selected purposively in order to have a mix of remotely-situated and more central locations. Mixed-caste villages were selected in addition to others where a single caste group is more dominant. Within villages, individuals to interview were selected on the basis of random sampling from the most recent voters’ lists. In general, these lists are comprehensive and complete. We did not come across any adult village resident whose name was not included in the voters’ lists. Some selected individuals, less than five percent in all, were not physically present in their village at the time of the interviewer’s visit (and one revisit). These names were replaced by others from a reserve list, also constructed as part of the initial random sample.

[13] Some among these mediating agencies, such as bureaucrats and official panchayats, are located closer to the state (in the case of bureaucrats, in fact, being part of the state). Other mediating agencies, such as Village Councils and caste- or religion-based groups, are located closer to society. There are other differences as well among these types of agents. They are represented as equivalent only to the extent they present alternative options to the ordinary villager for dealing with situations in which they experience difficulties in gaining access to government officials.

[14] Interview with Chunnilal Garasiya, Congress Party leader and state minister on numerous occasions; Udaipur, March 13, 1999. Other analyses attesting to the growth of similar grassroots-level leaders in different parts of India include Manor (2000) and Mitra (1991).

[15] While the emergence of such new political entrepreneurs has been recognized by scholars examining local politics in different parts of India, a lively debate is ongoing concerning the social backgrounds and motivations of these actors and about the impacts of their activities upon democracy and development. See Jeffrey, et al. (2008); Krishna (2002, 2003); Manor (2000); Mitra (1991); and Reddy and Haragopal (1985).

[16] In Rajasthan, for instance, while only 15 percent of villagers aged 65 years and older have five or more years of school education, fully 70 percent of villagers aged 18 to 25 years have acquired at least this level of functional education, and many among them are more highly educated. More than 90 percent of all school-age children are currently attending primary schools in these villages, and it is only the children of the very poorest households who do not regularly attend primary schools.

[17] The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) guarantees “hundred days of wage-employment in a financial year to [every] rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.” See the web site

[18] Across different types of services, the same type of mediator prevails, suggesting that the provision of access or welfare tends to have certain economies of scope that remain both empirically and theoretically under‐explored. I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this formulation. An explanation for why this should be the case is presented below.

[19] Fourteen percent of 211 new leaders in these Rajasthan villages belong to the upper and middle castes, but as many as 49 percent belong to backward castes and 26 percent are from the formerly untouchable castes.

[20] This report (cited in the Indian Express, Bombay, April 15, 1999) goes on to add that “A total of 1,249 cases of misappropriation of funds, registered since 1963, are still awaiting action. The total amount involved in these cases is a whopping Rupees 4,08,99,524 crores [or approximately $9,100 billion ] which is very serious at village level bodies.”

[21] Levels of well-being were calculated using the Stages-of-Progress methodology (Krishna 2004, 2006b), which relies upon an asset-based index to compute each households’ current material situation. In addition, a community-generated poverty cutoff is also ascertained. Households located above this cutoff were considered as relatively rich, while those located below this cutoff were regarded as relatively poor.

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