Devolution in Indian: Lessons for Sri Lanka

1. Need for Informed Discussion

To clarify the connotations of key terms used in this essay: (a)

‘devolution’ refers to a constitutionally facilitated process of power-

sharing between the central government and institutions of government at

the level of sub-national units of territory – it is also known as

‘territorial power-sharing’; (b) there are other modalities of power-

sharing such as those referred to in Arend Lijphart’s ‘Consociation

Theory’ in the early expositions (1977) of which the accent was on

devices that enhance minority participation at the Centre and cultural

autonomy for the minorities; and (c) usually, strategies of “development

from below” and “community empowerment at the grass-roots” such as those

epitomised by Panchayat Raj are not considered as falling within the ambit

of ‘devolution’ or ‘power-sharing’. (See, the endnote on Panchayat Raj )

Is there a Consensus on Devolution in Sri Lanka’s ‘South’?

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka, has recently

(September 2006) declared a policy commitment to “maximum devolution

within the framework of a united Sri Lanka”. Ranil Wickremasinghe and

some of his party colleagues have over several years been advocating

federalism, in subdued tones when elections approach but with

considerable vehemence at other times. Stalwarts of the ‘Old Left’ have

favoured autonomy to the north-east all along. Certain other political

leaders like the much admired Anandasangaree prescribe a federal

arrangement similar to that of India as the solution to the current

conflict in Sri Lanka. These leadership stances have formidable backing

from an array of opinion makers – scholars, journalists, diplomats,

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visiting pundits from abroad, donors of aid, facilitators of peace

negotiations – casual but so cocksure in their pronouncements that Sri

Lanka should devolve (ideally, go federal) because: (to paraphrase) the

people desire it, or people demand peace which devolution/ federalism

alone will bring about, or devolution will enable the government to reach

out to the Tamils bypassing the LTTE, or it will bestow on Sri Lanka’s

ethnic minorities their due political rights, or it will make the

secessionist campaign redundant, or it will please the ‘international

community’ and thus increase the flow of aid, or (as a prominent

historian once claimed) ancient Sri Lankan kings practiced it, or because

those who express reservations and misgivings on devolution/federalism

are, ipso facto, chauvinists, hegemonists and racial supremacists.

Needless to stress, these rationalisations have hardly ever been

substantiated with hard evidence. Their exponents probably believe that

constant repetition will provide them the aura of unassailable truth.

Some of us, however, are aware that, even in their most refined and

sedate formulations, they represent no more than a mix of well-

intentioned speculation and superficial, short-sighted benevolence. Hence

the fact that in Sri Lanka today there is, at least at the higher levels

of the arena of formal politics, greater receptiveness to the idea of

devolution than there has been ever before, should not deter us from

placing devolution under critical scrutiny against the backdrop of the

Sri Lankan conflict. In this, circumspection is warranted on two counts.

One is that devolution as a modality of conflict resolution, as many

examples from recent history demonstrate, is a ‘ratchet phenomenon’

irreversible in its directions of change, is irremediable in its possible

adverse consequences, and, more important than all else, has seldom been

successful in the fulfilment of expectations of those who demand it. The other is the

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existence of a scatter of evidence pointing to a disconcerting lack of

memory and/or awareness among our political/opinion leaders regarding not

only the LTTE responses to devolution-based peace overtures of the past,

but also on past experiences with ‘macro-territorial devolution’ and

‘empowerment at the grassroots’, both in our own country as well as

elsewhere, especially in the Indian sub-continent. The amnesia/ignorance

is vividly illustrated, for instance, by the persistence of the myth of

an ‘Oslo Accord’ that is said to have signified an LTTE willingness to

pursue a “federal solution”, or the hilarious spectacle of a group of our

leaders attempting to acquire “first-hand knowledge” of Panchayat Raj

through a brief guided tour in a small part of India.

The present essay, brief as it must remain, cannot venture into a

detailed reappraisal of devolution in federal arrangements that could be

of relevance to Sri Lanka. The essay is, in fact, a follow-up on a survey

of selected federal systems from the standpoint of conflict resolution,

published about an year ago (‘The Federal Option for Sri Lanka’, in

Faultlines, Volume 17, Institute of Conflict Management, New Delhi: 1-72,

re-published in The Island, 7-15 September 2005). Instead of revisiting the

same conflict situations, the remainder of this essay proceeds to

introduce the principal features of the Indian federal system, examines

some aspects of its performance germane to an assessment of the extent to

which it can serve as a model for emulation in Sri Lanka, and concludes

with a series of extracts from authoritative writings, punctuated with a

brief commentary on the subject of power-sharing and conflict resolution.

The thematic contention of the essay is that, in the promotion of

devolution/federalism of whatever design as a modality of conflict

resolution in Sri Lankan, it is desirable to abandon the practice of

repeating hackneyed slogans and clichés, and focus specifically and as

objectively as possible on genuinely relevant considerations including

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the related global experiences which have, in fact, been fairly well

documented.

2. Devolution in India

Twenty-nine ‘States’ and six ‘Union Territories’ constitute the

present (2006) sub-national spatial network of devolution in India. All

States and the Union Territory of Pondicheri (former French colony

comprising four non-continuous localities) have their own elected

legislatures (mostly, unicameral), in addition to being represented in

both houses of the federal parliament. Five of the Union Territories –

Chandigarh (city), Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu (two groups of

non-contiguous enclaves), Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar

(archipelagos) – send elected representatives to Lok Sabha, are

administered directly by the central government, have no elected

legislatures of their own, but have their local government institutions.

There is variation among the States of the Indian federation in

respect of the devolved powers they exercise. The most important and

controversial among such variations is the substantially higher level of

autonomy accorded to the State of Jammu & Kashmir through Article 370 of

the Constitution, amendments to its original form (introduced in response

to opposition from certain other States to the exceptional treatment)

notwithstanding.

The Indian Constitution provides for a strong Central Government,

with the Centre having exclusive powers over 99 specifically listed

functions of government, in addition to the powers it shares with the

States in respect of 52 functions – those specified in a “concurrent

list”. At least in theory the State governments have a monopoly over 61

functions specified in the “State List”. All residual powers (those not

listed) are also vested in the Centre. As several critics have pointed

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out, in Centre-State disputes concerning the actual exercise of these

powers it is usually the will of the Centre that has prevailed (subject,

however, to the enhancing or curtailing impact of tug-of-wars of

electoral politics). The Centre’s exclusive powers include those

pertaining to the creation of new States and Union Territories. More

significantly, in situations of serious confrontation, the central

government of India derives overwhelming powers over the States from the

so-called “emergency provisions” of the Constitution (Articles 253 to

260) which enable it to suspend over any part of the country the normal

procedures of law enforcement, to dissolve State governments, and to

establish ‘Presidential Rule’ over any State. According to the review of

India’s federal system by the Sarkaria Commission of 1983, since the

promulgation of the Constitution, “emergency regulations” had been

invoked on more than one-hundred occasions, almost entirely at the

discretion of the Prime Minister.

In the formative stages of the Indian nation-state – i.e. the final

phase of decolonisation in South Asia – British control over the areas

that came to constitute the Republic of India was not uniform. The

‘Provinces’ under direct British rule accounted for no more than about

49% of India at independence. A large part of the remaining territory

consisted of more than six-hundred ‘Princely States’ over most of which

British rule had been nominal, and several coastal colonies of the

Portuguese and the French. There were, in addition, the extensive

Himalayan tribal tracts that had been designated ‘Excluded’ or ‘Partially

Excluded’ (from Delhi’s direct control) under the constitutional

dispensation of the Simon Commission of 1935. Their outer peripheries

remained ill-defined, and, in that sense, they constituted a ‘buffer

zone” between the British Indian Empire and the interior of continental

Asia.

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The task of national consolidation that confronted the leaders of

emergent India thus involved the resolution of territorial disputes with

neighbour countries and the stabilisation of international frontiers, the

strengthening of national security, the absorption into the national

polity of many pre-modern enclaves the rulers of which had exercised

varying degrees of autonomy in earlier times, the appeasement or

suppression of incipient secessionist movements in certain peripheral

areas (notably in Nagaland, Kashmir and Hyderabad) and, above all,

facilitating due representation in the affairs of government of the

diverse groups of people with distinctive identities in respect of

language, religion, caste and tribe that constituted the Indian nation.

The federal system adopted in 1950 after more than two years of intense

deliberation was expected to facilitate this task.

The adoption of federalism as the guiding principle of national

consolidation was accompanied almost throughout the first few post-

independence decades by the importance accorded to linguistic ethno-

nationalism in the demarcation of the constituent spatial units of the

federation. The Indian Constitution of 1950 accorded the status of

‘National Languages’ to Hindi and English but made provision for the use

of fifteen other ‘Indian Languages’ in regional administrative affairs

(this number has since then been increased to 22). In addition,

constitutional guarantees ensured for all children primary education in

their mother-tongue. Hindi being the first language for only 42% of the Indian population,

the constitution facilitated the promotion of literacy in that language

in all areas of the country with the objective of making it, by the mid-

1960s, the sole ‘National Language’ of India. [Note that, as Hart (1988:

18-61) has shown, the constitution in its original form made provision

for making Hindi the sole official language of the Union in January 1965.

As the date approached there were massive protests in Tamil Nadu. Five

Tamil students burned themselves to death. In the course of attempting

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to suppress riots in various parts of the state, over a period of two

weeks, police firings had killed sixty. During Lal Bahadur Shastri’s

tenure as Prime Minister, with a much weaker Congress, the Congress Party

leaders persuaded themselves that holding to the policy of Hindi only

will cost the party the South. It was only after that that the decision

to continue to retain English was made.]

The notion that a single indigenous language of government will

best serve the interests of national consolidation was much in vogue in

India in those less enlightened times as it was in several ex-colonial

Asian nation states during their early existence – Urdu in Pakistan,

Nepali in Nepal, Sinhala in Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh with Bangla (to

this list may be added Malaysia and Indonesia with their own bhāshā in the

roman script).

A process of ‘State Reorganisation’, initially aimed at eliminating

the waywardness of the existing demarcation of administrative units at

the second tier of government, and later, specifically focused on

providing each of the numerically large language groups at least one sub-

national unit of government (‘state’ or ‘union territory’) in which it

would constitute the majority began to be pursued in the early 1950s.

Andhra Pradesh, the earliest product of this principle, brought together

within a single State the areas carved out of former Madras Province,

Hyderabad and Mysore, so that Telugu-speakers would constitute its

majority. This was soon followed by the partition of the former province

of Bombay into Maharashtra and Gujarat – a Marathi-majority State and a

Gujarati-majority State. Parts of the Malabar coast from the former

Madras Province were annexed to the districts in Travancore-Cochin to

constitute the Malayalam-speaking State of Kerala. The State of Karnataka

was created by merging the Kannada-speaking areas of southern Deccan.

Madhya Pradesh, a State in which Hindi speakers would constitute a

slender majority, was created out of a linguistically heterogeneous area

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of which the former ‘Central Provinces’ and ‘Madhya Bharat’ constituted

the core. Meanwhile the committee entrusted the task of ‘State

Reorganisation’ ignored demands that did not appear to command vehement

popular support, sometimes in disregard of the numerical size of the

population on whose behalf the demands were being made (as in the case

of the Maithili of Bihar). It also remained wary of granting statehood

to linguistic regions that correspond spatially to large agglomerations

of people with other ethnic identities such as those of religion or tribe

– the delay, despite intense agitation, in forming the State of Nagaland

until 1962, and of Punjab until 1966, and the rejection of the demand for

a State of ‘Udayachal’ by Bodo tribes of northern Assam and for a State

of ‘Gorkhaland’ by the Nepali-speaking Gurkhas of the Darjeeling area of

West Bengal were due largely to this cautiousness. Creating the Sikh-

majority and predominantly Punjabi-speaking State of Punjab also meant

the carving out of a new, predominantly Hindi-speaking State of Haryana.

Meanwhile, the ‘North-East’ (original State of Assam, the North-East

Frontier Province, and former monarchies such as Manipur, Tripura and

Sikkim) was converted in a series of slow and cautious steps into a

network of States – Nagaland (in 1963), Meghalaya (1971), Manipur (1972),

Tripura (1972), Sikkim (1975), Arunachal Pradesh (1986) and Mizoram

(1987). In most of these, language did not figure prominently in state

demarcation. Thereafter, following a long spell over which the federal

government remained unresponsive to various other demands for autonomy,

three new States – Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh (both in north-eastern Deccan)

and Uttaranchal (in the Himalayan foothills of the north) were created in

2000, and the Union Territory of Delhi City was elevated to statehood in

2004, once again, largely in response to non-linguistic necessities and

demands.

Thus, over a period of slightly more than half a century since its

initiation, ‘State Reorganisation’ resulted in (a) converting the former system

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of placing the constituent units of the Indian Union in several categories

(each with different relations with the centre) into a largely dichotomous

typology of ‘States’ and ‘Union Territories’; (b) increasing the number of

fully fledged states from 10 (those placed in the list of ‘Part A States’ of

the First Schedule of the Constitution in 1950), to 29 at present, and (c)

bringing about a far greater correspondence between the distribution of groups

with linguistic and certain other prominently articulated ethnic identities and

the spatial structure of the Indian federation than there was at the

promulgation of the Constitution. (The changes referred to above are depicted

in the following sketch-maps.)

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Figures 1 & 2 – Sub-National Units of Government in India on the eve of Independence

and prior to the ‘Reorganisation of States’

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Figure 3 – The Indian Federation in 2000

3. India: A Model for Sri Lanka?

An appraisal of the federal system of India as a ‘model’ for

emulation must, first of all, be placed in the context of the

extraordinary territorial and demographic dimensions of India which

entail, among other things, a degree of “remoteness” of its people from

the institutions of the central government, which one does not find in

small countries with representative forms of government. The size of a

national entity is, of course, not the only determinant of the “distance”

between the government and the governed. Nevertheless, the

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significance of the size factor from present perspectives which has

often tended to be overlooked could be illustrated with reference to the

fact that Sri Lanka (with a population equivalent to about 2% of that of

India), if it was a component of the Indian union, would have been

represented in the 545-member Lok Sabha by only about nine members with,

say, the entire Colombo District or the Central Province constituting

single-member constituencies. It could thus be argued that, given the

enormity of the Indian “scale”, sub-national institutions of government,

sharing power with the central government, are far more vital an

ingredient of democratic governance (in order to provide even a semblance

of popular participation in the direction and control of the daily lives

of the people) in that country than they are in tiny and spatially

compact nation states like Sri Lanka.

Another relevant but frequently overlooked consideration is that the

evolution of the present geographical mosaic and the power-sharing

arrangements of the Indian federation represents a long drawn-out and

tortuous process, the initial impulses of which could be traced back to

the Swaraj Movement. Even more importantly, since independence, this

evolutionary process has been regulated by a powerful government at the

Centre, which, though never entirely unresponsive to the more important

sub-national electoral pressures, has always had both the capacity to

retrace its steps when costly blunders were made as well as the strength

to overwhelm (through recourse to military power when necessary) any

serious resistance to its fiat, with hardly any external challenge

barring the past Chinese links of the Nāga rebels and the allegedly

continuing Pakistani links of the Kashmiri rebels. Unlike in many other

federations India’s federal arrangement has been, in that sense, the

product not only of trial and error but also of compulsion from the

Centre and, at least occasionally, involuntary obedience from the States.

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There is much controversy among researchers on the relative success

of devolution (and, more generally, on the overall complex of

consociational power-sharing arrangements) in India from the viewpoint of

their expected objectives of democratisation and national consolidation.

The best illustrations of this are provided by the mutually

irreconcilable assertions on the related issues found in abundance even

in some of the most authoritative commentaries on India such as those by

Arend Lijphart (1977& 1996), Myron Weiner (1978, 1979, 1996), Donald

Horowitz (1985), Rajni Kothari (1989), Paul Brass (1990, 1991, 1994,

2002), Atul Kohli (1990), Christophe Jaffrelot (1993), Dipanker Gupta

(1997), Dreze & Sen (2002) and Ashutosh Varshney (2004). Most scholars

evaluating India’s record tend to take a stance of qualified

commendation rather than outright condemnation.

Moreover, the hazy consensus one could discern on the positive

contribution of territorial power-sharing towards preserving the nation’s

territorial integrity and towards diffusion of the destabilising effects

of language-based rivalries is not entirely free of discordant nuances.

The following passage is an extract from an article by two reputed

Indian scholars (Ajuha & Varshney, 2005: 242) which could be considered

typical of the “favourable” end of the spectrum of conclusions on the

performance of the Indian system.

“More than anything else, two enduring continuities –

geographical and constitutional – sum up the overall success of

Indian federalism. Since independence, India has not

experienced secession, though it has witnessed a few

secessionist movements here and there; there has been no replay

of the terrible partition of 1947. India’s constitutional

continuity also calls for attention. The federal features of

India’s constitution debated over several years in the

constituent assembly and promulgated in 1950, remain intact.

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The constitution has gone through several amendments, but no

amendment has altered the basic outlines of centre-state

relations permanently in favour of the centre. Indeed, the

current situation is the obverse of a centralizer’s dream. If

anything, the polity is becoming more and more decentralised”.

(emphasis added)

The diversity of views in the scholarly works referred to above

could, of course, be illustrated by quoting other eminent social

scientists who would disagree with Ajuha and Varshney, and would not, in

their own assessments of the India’s achievements, confine themselves to

the criteria of durability of India’s territorial integrity and the

recent trends towards distribution of political power. For instance,

through a more broad-based evaluation, Paul Brass (2002: 3026) has

arrived at the conclusion encapsulated in the following quotation:

“So implicated were political scientists in the

developmentalist goals of elites that they failed to provide an

independent basis for critique that has become increasingly

necessary as it has become more and more obvious that those

goals have failed to transform India into the modern,

industrial state of its elite’s imaginings, have failed at the

same time to provide for the basic minimum needs of its people,

have failed to eliminate the causes for unrest and have instead

drawn the country into the ugly morass of state terrorism in

the north-east, Punjab and Kashmir, and have failed to provide

a basis for accommodation between the Hindu and Muslim

populations of the country”. (emphasis added)

That certain Indian critics of scholarly repute have also been in

agreement with Paul Brass’ verdict is illustrated by the passage cited

below (extracted from Dua, 1994: 20):

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“India seems to be at war with itself. This is driven home

with brutal evidence in Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, and in the

north-eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura.

Marked by a variety of militant movements, these states have

become virtually ungovernable. In most other parts of the

country, caste and communal violence, aided and abetted by

mafia leaders, seems to have become the normal way of life. The

politics of Mandal and Mandir, of Yadavs and Thakurs, of Jats

and Rajputs, of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, of Senas (or

military fronts) and Saffrons, of polarising marches (Bharat

Yatras, Ekta Yatras) have drawn the country into the edge of

collapse”.

Nevertheless, there could obviously be no charge of serious

distortion against the sketch by Ajuha and Varshney. One could, for

example, accept the claim that the post-independence secessionist

movements witnessed “here and there” have not been as convulsive as the

partition of 1947 (which was not exactly a secessionist movement – no

matter), in the same way that one could accept the assertion regarding

the absence of changes in the basic outlines of Centre-State relations as

designed in the Indian constitution of 1950. The claimed trend of

increasing decentralisation could also be considered valid especially in

the light of the weakening of the nation-wide grip of the Indian Congress

that existed in the Jawaharlal-Indira era, and the increasing propensity

in the recent decades for coalitions that include State-based parties to

hold the reins of office at the Centre. We can certainly share in the

satisfaction expressed by the authors of the above passage regarding the

fact that the Indian federation “has worked reasonably well”.

Such a verdict, however, does not help in resolving the question of

whether it is devolution that explains the success. What about the sporadic

secessionist movements which the authors have referred to but

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trivialised. And, was it devolution that prevented their culmination in

secession? How effective and how genuine has territorial power-sharing

really been, especially from the viewpoint of both the numerically

largest as well as some of the smallest minority communities of India?

Has devolution or other forms of power-sharing brought about greater

ethnic harmony? These, surely, are the issues that must be pursued from

the perspective of Sri Lanka’s present concerns.

3.1. Secessionist Movements “Here and There”

The sporadic secessionist insurrections referred to by Ajuha and

Varshney were no fireworks displays. Kashmir, for example, has remained

the venue of one of the most complex and destructive conflicts in Asia

ever since the late 1940s. If estimates furnished by Rasul Bakhsh Rais

(1997) are authentic, its death-toll could well exceed 80,000. The

conflict in Kashmir, though often perceived as a territorial dispute

between India and Pakistan, has a pronounced dimension of ethnic

conflict, especially in the political turbulences witnessed in Jammu &

Kashmir (J&K, 39,600 sq. miles) – the part of the former Kingdom of

Kashmir which is a State of the Indian federation. Indeed, as several

scholars have shown, there has always been among the Muslims of J&K an

ardent ethno-nationalist sentiment which seeks to disengage Kashmir from

the Indo-Pakistan conflict and make “Kashmiriat” the basis of an

independent Kashmiri nation-state. From about the late 1980s several

Kashmiri Muslim rebel groups, initially united under an umbrella

organisation named Hurriat (Independence), have been locked in fierce

confrontation with the Indian forces.

Ever since the Maharaja of the kingdom of Kashmir (Figure 4)

signed the Instrument of Accession to the Indian Union in 1947, the

integration of this predominantly Muslim kingdom with India has remained

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one of the cardinal objectives of Delhi’s Kashmir policy. The provision

made through Article 370 of the Constitution of India for the State of

J&K to exercise a substantially greater degree of autonomy than the other

States of the Indian federation, efforts by the Centre to secure the

collaboration of Kashmir’s moderate groups towards democratisation of

the institutions of government at Srinagar, and the substantially higher

per capita levels of central government funding for the development of J&K

compared to other states (Partha Ghosh, 1997), are among the devices that

have been adopted in pursuance of this objective. Yet, it is undeniable

that, in the long-run, Delhi’s rule over J&K has continued to depend

largely on its military capacity to combat the challenge of insurrection

alongside the external security threats.

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Figure 4 – Changing boundaries and ‘ceasefire lines of the Kingdom of

Kashmir

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Figure 5 – The British Province of Punjab, and Post-Independence Changes in the configurations of the main sub-national units of government in the Punjab Area of India

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Likewise, in Punjab, ethnicity figured prominently in the process

of estrangement of Centre-State relations which culminated in a

secessionist war that raged throughout the 1980s and extended into the

early 1990s, in what was perhaps the most serious challenge ever to

India’s national integrity since independence. According to very

“conservative” official estimates it caused within the State the death of

about 22,000 persons. It also reverberated outside the State in large-

scale mob violence against the Sikhs, and outside India in terrorist

attacks on civilian target.

Secessionism in Punjab, with its goal of creating an independent

Sikh nation-state – Khālistan – was spearheaded by several militant

groups some of which received strong backing from the Sikh diaspora and,

allegedly, from Pakistan as well. The Khālistan ideal found qualified

support from certain factions/leaders of the Akāli Dāl – the political

party of the Sikhs in the democratic mainstreams, the declared policy of

which up to 1984 was “maximum autonomy within the federal structure of

India” (similar to that of our TULF?). However, by the early 1980s, with

the militants establishing their hegemony over Sikh politics (like the

LTTE did here from about the late 1980s?), the insurrection gathered

momentum and became seemingly irreversible in the escalating ferocity of

its violence.

The Khalistan insurrection has been attributed by certain critics

to mismanagement of Centre-State relations. Paul Brass (1991: 210), for

instance, reached the conclusion that “… relentless centralisation and

ruthless, unprincipled intervention by the Centre in State politics have

been the primary cause of the troubles in the Punjab and elsewhere in

India since Mrs Gandhi’s rise to power.” He also noted, however, that the

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“bold and constructive initiatives” adopted by her successors, Rajiv

Gandhi and V. P. Singh also failed to quell the rebellion. From the

viewpoint of the present study what the long-term record of Punjab

politics illustrates as clearly as the consequences of Indira Gandhi’s

unscrupulous manipulation of politics at State-level is that the

concessions offered by the Centre in response to Sikh demands including

the grant of statehood in 1966 (see, Figure 5, above) to an area in which

the Sikhs constituted only 62% of the population only had the effect of

whetting the desire of the Akali Dal leadership for further autonomy.

Thus, some of the demands they incorporated into their ‘Anandpur Sahib

Resolution’ of 1973 (and the later versions of it) included the

restriction of Centre’s intervention in Punjab to Defence, Foreign

Affairs, Currency, Post and Telecommunication, and Railways; annexation

of the city of Chandigarh (where the Sikhs are a minority) to the State

of Punjab; and an excessively large allocation of the Beas-Sutlej water

for exclusive use in Punjab, were not of the type a central

government could have conceded without

placing the entire federation in jeopardy. The tragic story of this

insurrection also makes it abundantly clear that its trail of destruction

and anarchy ended only when it was crushed through an all out military

effort.

A third venue of conflict – the ‘North-East’ – has also ranked

among the most turbulent parts of South Asia. At the promulgation of

India’s constitution in 1950, the ‘North-East’ consisted of (a) the State

of Assam, (b) two territorial entities placed in Part C of the ‘First

Schedule’ of the constitution (Manipur and Tripura), (c) the semi-

independent kingdom of Sikkhim placed in Part D of the ‘First Schedule’,

and (d) several ‘Tribal Areas’ listed in the ‘Fifth Schedule’. The

devolution cum power-sharing measures adopted in this region, usually

though ‘Accords’ between Delhi and the rebel groups since that time have

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involved, inter alia, the recognition of various areas within this region as

fully-fledged ‘States’ of the Indian federation. Thus, at present, the

region consists of the states of Assam, Meghālayā, Tripura, Mizoram,

Manipur, Nāgaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkhim.

Devolution which the process of creating new States represents has

undoubtedly had the effect of making certain insurrectionary movements in

the north-east dormant, if not pacifying them altogether. Yet, intense

political turbulences in the form of both inter-ethnic clashes as well as

anti-Indian acts of destruction and sabotage have persisted (see Figure

6). For example, the All Assam Student Union (AASU – the strongest

Assamese militant outfit since the early the 1980s) has continued to

engage in sporadic but deadly attacks on civilian targets, the most

recent of which was staged in November 2006. In Tripura thousands of

Bengali migrants have perished in attacks led by the guerrilla group

‘Tripura National Volunteer Force’, one of the most gruesome episodes of

which occurred, coincidentally, in July 1983. In Manipur, the ‘People's

Liberation Army’, the Maoist revolutionary group that provides leadership

to an insurgency among the Meitei tribals of the Imphal valley, launched

a campaign against “outsiders” (Assamese and Bengalis) mainly in order

to whip up popular support for their radical cause. The prolonged and

bloody campaign for the creation of a semi-autonomous ‘Bodoland’

embracing an area that stretches along the northern banks of Brahmaputra

river has drawn strength from two sources – the resentment of the

Bodo/Kachari tribes against Assamese domination, and their traditional

animosity towards the so-called “ādivasi” (now outnumbering the

Bodo/Kachari) who are believed to have migrated into this

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Figure 6 – Insurgent Groups in India’s ‘North-East’

area in the 19th century. Finally, there are the frequent outbursts of

violence between the Naga and the Kuki tribal groups in Manipur, each

regarding the other as intruder. The Naga insurgents, meanwhile, have

embarked upon a campaign for the creation of a “Greater Nagaland” that

would extend well beyond the frontiers of the State of Nagaland as

demarcated at present. To sum up, India’s hold over its North-East is

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certainly much more secure today than it was at independence, or even at

the time of the Sino-Indian War of the early 1960s. Yet there is still a

great deal of spatial variation in the effectiveness of the institutions

of government in this region. Indeed, over some of its localities,

government authority is either non-existent or is confined to what could

be enforced by the armed forces.

3.2. Continuing Language-Base Discrimination

The Urdu-Hindi language dispute is a persistent language-related

problem in India to which devolution has not found an answer. Urdu, the

language of the Muslim elite in several areas of pre-partition India, and

one to which the British had accorded an official status similar or even

superior to that of Hindi, still remains the preferred language of an

estimated 50-60% of the Muslim segment of India’s population. This makes

it one of the largest minority languages of India. Though Urdu was

granted constitutional recognition as one of India’s official languages,

for many years after independence there remained a strong resistance

among the Hindus to the idea of placing Urdu at par with the other

officially recognised languages of the country.

Linguistic Minorities within the States of the Indian Union, 1971

State

non-speakers of the official language of the State as % of theState population)

State

non-speakers of the official language of the State as % of the State population

Jammu &KashmirAssam Karnataka(Delhi) Tripura

47.839.034.133.331.223.4

Tamil Nadu Andhra PradeshWest Bengal HimachalPradesh Uttar Pradesh

15.514.714.714.311.410.5

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Maharashtra Punjab Bihar MadhyaPradesh Orissa

20.520.416.815.5

Gujarat Haryana Rajasthan Kerala All states

10.08.94.017.1

NOTE: Nagaland, which was a state by 1971, has not been covered in the source.Delhi, though covered, was (in 1971) a Union Territory.

‘State re-organisation’ on the basis of language has also been

criticised on the grounds of its shortfall in achieving the objective of

reducing the numerical size of linguistic minorities at the level of the states.

In this context, critics have presented various sets of data (such as

those tabulated above) to show that in many States there are fairly large

minority groups (many of which are numerically larger than the total population of Sri

Lanka) whose languages are not used in the affairs of government.

Implicit in this is the idea that there persists in India considerable

discrimination against the smaller linguistic minorities. The validity

of this criticism, however, has necessarily to be gauged against the

backdrop of the fact that such un-accommodated linguistic minorities

constitute a lower population ratio than ever before – probably no more

than about 17% of the country’s total.

3.3. The Marginalised Muslim Minority

The Muslims, the largest religious minority of India, constitute

about 12% of the country’s population. Though spread throughout the

country, about 52% of the Indian Muslims live in the ‘Gangetic’ States of

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. Outside this area, fairly large

Muslim concentrations are found in parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra and

Kerala (western Deccan), Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (especially in

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areas of the former princely states of Hyderabad and Mysore), Tamil Nadu,

Jammu & Kashmir, and Assam. In many of the larger cities of the north

the Muslim population ratio exceeds 20%. These include Sri Nagar

(91.0%), Hyderabad (38.0%), Lucknow (29.6%), Varanasi (25.9%), Allahabad

(23.9%), and Kanpur (20.2%). In metropolitan Calcutta, Mumbai and Delhi

it approximates 15%.

The impact of the Hindu-Muslim rivalry has continued to pervade

almost all aspects of governance in India. It has tended to condition the

nature of Indo-Pakistan relations and Indo-Bangladesh relations,

perpetuating the intractability of solutions to disputes among them in

respect of their national frontiers, control over peripheral territory,

and the sharing of resources. It has had a profound influence on extra-

regional foreign relations of each of these countries.

In general, economic factors have figured less prominently in the

Hindu-Muslim confrontations witnessed in India during the past 50 years

than they have in most of the other types of internal conflict in the

country. This could be explained with reference to the fact that,

typically, in most parts of India, socio-economic stratifications cut

across the Hindu-Muslim divide in the sense that, in respect of both

wealth and income as well as other criteria that have a bearing on the

physical quality of life, there are no sharp contrasts between the

Muslims, on the one hand, and the less affluent numerical majority (the

lower castes) in the Hindu segment of the population, on the other. The

readily evident economic difference between the Hindus and the Muslims

lies in the fact that in most parts of India, the latter group is under-

represented in the higher strata society.

Nevertheless, there could be no denial of the fact that the Muslims

see themselves as an economically disadvantaged and socially

discriminated minority. The spokesmen of this community often emphasise

its relatively lower level of literacy and educational attainment and its

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under-representation in both public sector employment as well as high-

income professional fields. In this context, it has been pointed out

that, of the 3,062 recruits to the elite Indian Administrative Services

from 1948 to 1982, Muslims have accounted for only 1.7% ( Beg,

1989:121); and, according to

estimates furnished by the Minorities Commission of India, Muslims

constitute only 4.4% of the total central government employees at all

levels throughout the country. Information generated by surveys of more

restricted scope provides further confirmation of the impression that, at

least is some of the main Muslim population concentrations of north

India, the average household incomes of the Muslims are lower than those

of the Hindus, and that the majority of Muslims are confined to low

income occupations. For instance, as Rudolph & Rudolph (1987: 43) have

shown: “[i]n Maharashtra and Gujarat where there are large local

concentrations of mostly poor Muslims, communal violence has become

endemic as a result of struggles between Hindus and Muslims over

reservations, employment, property and business opportunities”. Yet

another facet of economic discrimination is found in the fact that the

poorest among the Muslims have been denied many of the benefits of

‘affirmative action’ (the most widely acclaimed form of consociational

power-sharing in India) made available in the form of “reservations” to

the depressed segments of the Hindu population (‘Other Backward Castes’

and ‘Scheduled Castes’) and to the ‘Scheduled Tribes’.

There have been periodic oscillations in the incidence and

intensity of violence associated with Hindu-Muslim rivalry in India.

Following the great convulsions that accompanied the partition of British

India in 1947, the trend throughout the 1950s was one of steady decline

in the occurrence of these ‘communal’ clashes. In the next decade there

was, first, the sharp spurt of 1964 which coincided with the ‘Hazrat Bal’

incident, followed by a dip, and then another upsurge which lasted from

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1969 until about 1972. Thereafter, the rate remained relatively low

almost up to the end of that decade. In the 1980s, there was, once again,

an increase which accelerated sharply from 1986 until about 1994. It was

at this time (December 1992) that the infamous destruction of the Babri

Mosque at Ayodhya by the exponents of the ‘Ramjanmabhoomi Movement’

occurred. The number killed in communal confrontations of the 1980s,

according to Hasan (1996), was almost four times higher than that of the

1970s. From the mid-1990s, with fundamentalist groups like the ‘Rashtriya

Swayamsevak Sangh’ (RSS) and the ‘Vishwa Hindu Parishad’ (VHP) emerging

at the forefront of Indian politics, and with the spread of the concept

of an all-Indian ‘Hinduthva’ even at its highest levels, there has been

an oscillating but fairly distinct long-term trend towards further

deterioration of Hindu-Muslim relations in areas where there are large

agglomerations of the latter group.

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TEXT BOXPatterns of Violence in Hindu-Muslim Confrontations in India*

Hindu-Muslim violence has been more an urban phenomenon than a ruralone, mainly for the reason that it is in urban areas that the two groupslive side-by-side in intense competition with one another for the highlyrestricted range of opportunities in the same economic space. The urbancharacter of these conflicts have increased in the recent past also becauseit is mainly (though not exclusively) in the cities and the towns thatpolitical and/or criminal organisations sponsoring violence operate withincreasing vigour and effectiveness. On the basis of information furnished in several detaileddescriptions of communal clashes it is possible to construct a model whichportrays how economic factors aggravate the rivalry between these religiousgroups. The basic components of this model are that, in all these urbancentres (or, in the case of the larger cities, the suburbs or residentiallocalities) there is, on the one hand, a sizable presence of Muslimsconstituting a part of the “native” segment of the population, engaged inlong-established middle class occupations in various crafts and in retailtrade, and falling into the lower and lower-middle income strata; and, onthe other, a Hindu population in which there is a prominent presence ofrelatively recent migrants, most of whom are in low income occupations ofthe informal sector. It has, indeed, been suggested that some of the mostgruesome communal riots, such as those of Ahmedabad, Meerut, Surat,Aurangabad, Baroda, Aligarh, Varanasi, Bhiwandi, Kanpur and Calcutta haveoccurred in situations where the Muslims have achieved a measure ofeconomic stability and an improvement of their living conditions. Incontrast, the employment prospects of the migrant Hindus in many of thesesituations are, at best, irregular and vulnerable to changes in the short-run. Both these groups live in conditions of extreme squalor, in spatiallysegregated residential neighbourhoods where, typically, crime and vice arealso rampant. Formal law enforcement is perfunctory, and many aspects ofdaily life remain under the control of criminal syndicates with amultiplicity of interests including protection and extortion rackets,smuggling and drug trafficking, land grabbing and other shady transactionsin the real estate market, and the control of trade union activities. The

There are indications that the communal violence that has continued

to be more or less endemic to the cities and town of ‘western India’

(Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Meerut, Surat, Aurangabad, Baroda, Aligarh) has also

99

begun to occur with increasing frequency in some of the main urban

centres of the South and the Gangetic plains, for the same underlying

causes, and in almost identical fashion. At the time of these convulsions

formal law enforcement has often been perfunctory. More significantly,

even in normal times, many aspects of daily ghetto life remain under

the control of criminal syndicates with a multiplicity of interests

including protection and extortion rackets, smuggling and drug

trafficking, land grabbing and other shady transactions in the real

estate market, and the control of trade-union activities. In the larger

cities, in particular, regimentation of daily life through the exercise

of muscle-power is the norm among slum dwellers, as organised mob-

violence is in electoral politics. Indeed, several Indian scholars (not

the types that sermonise to adoring audiences in less enlightened

countries like Sri Lanka) have exposed the links that exist between

politicians, the police and the gangland bosses in the phenomenon

frequently referred to as ‘criminalisation of politics’ in their country.

The aggravating Hindu-Muslim conflict, featured as it is by

intensifying religious fanaticism on both sides of the great divide, is

probably the biggest blot in the record of performance of the Indian

political system. Given the basic elements of the ‘geography’ of

phenomenon, it is obvious that neither devolution (in the case of the

Muslim-majority State of J&K) nor other forms of consociational power-

sharing that could be provided through statutory means have been

effective in safeguarding the rights of the Muslims and reversing the

escalating trend of Hindu-Muslim rivalry.

“Gathering Storm” of Radical Revolt

Rivalries generated by socio-economic causes are often prominently

displayed in the conflicts that are regarded as being based on the caste

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and tribal diversities in India. It has even been persuasively argued the

‘State Re-organisation’ of the Indian federation, initiated in the mid

1950s, in which the focus throughout has been on facilitating power-

sharing among the main linguistic groups has, while diffusing some of the

language-based tensions of the past, has had the effect of bringing into

the forefront of India’s political affairs conflicts relating to caste

and tribe.

101

In pre-independence times and in the early years of independence,

violent conflict between castes, where it occurred, tended to take the

form of confrontations between the land-owning upper castes and the

landless segments of the peasantry usually belonging to the lower castes

and the tribal groups. Such conflict usually took the form of forcible

occupation of land, organised protest against the collection of land

rent, and pillage of granaries, sometimes spontaneously, and at others,

with a measure of guidance provided by ultra-left political

organisations; and retaliatory action by the law enforcement agencies.

Episodes of this type, involving varying levels of violence and lasting

102

over varying lengths of time, were reported from areas such as Kerala,

Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam up to about the early 1970s. They

were, however, few and far between.

In more recent times ‘caste conflict’ in India has shifted towards

the lower levels of the traditional caste structure, taking the form of

confrontations either between the middle castes that command newly

acquired wealth and enhanced social status (following agrarian reform

movements such as ‘Zamindari abolition’ and ‘land ceiling legislation’)

and those whose identities of caste or tribe place them lower down in the

social hierarchy, or between the ‘Scheduled Castes’ and ‘Other Backward

Castes’ (OBCs), or between contending groups representing complex caste

and/or tribal alliances. These new types of confrontation, as reported

from Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, have been

featured by gruesome and large-scale violence perpetrated by one group

upon another, and have involved the participation of both armed

revolutionary militias (for example, the so-called ‘People’s War Groups’,

the ‘Vinodh Mishra Faction’ of the CPI-ML, the ‘Maoist Communist Centre’,

and the ‘Mazdoor Kishan Sangharsh Samiti’) as well as private caste sēnā

(mercenary armies serving one or another of the propertied castes.

Causal connections between widening disparities in wealth and

income, the rapid upsurge of unemployment, discrimination based on caste

and tribe have been highlighted in several recent studies of intra-state

conflicts in India (Government of India, 1988; Chaudhuri, 1991; Gupta,

1992; Misra, 1993; Sen, 1996). One such study (Chandramohan,1998) has

identified the districts listed below as areas which have experienced a

relatively high incidence of such conflict from the early 1980s to the

late ‘90s.

An official investigation on extreme forms of violence generated by

this type of inter-group conflict in Bihar (Government of India, 1988)

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speculated on what the prevailing trends could portend for the stability

of the India’s federal system in the period ahead in the following terms:

“It should not be surprising if the winds of peasant politics of

the twenty-first century take a south-east direction (from Bihar),

with Kerala providing the legislative wherewithal, and Andhra

Pradesh and West Bengal providing the organisational lessons. The

environment conducive to a massive peasant movement dominated by

the landless labour, small and marginal farmers from backward

classes with greater participation of women ... already exists in

these conflict-prone states. The increasing politicisation of

these movements would bring the extremists into mainstream

politics”.

An appraisal of the Indian system of devolution from the viewpoint

of its adoptability in Sri Lanka should also take into account the

increasing trend of collapse of formal government in many parts of that

country in the face of a rising tide of insurrection supposedly based on

‘Maoist ideology’. Scholars have attributed this phenomenon to increasing

oppression, deprivation and socio-economic marginalisation of groups of

people living in conditions of dire poverty and want. The present study

cannot venture into a detailed analysis of the causal connections between

poverty and political unrest (of the type attempted in Peiris, 1999).

However, the passage from a recent writing by one of the leading

authorities on insurrectionary politics in rural India (Mehra, 2006: 36)

presented below underscore the fact that devolution, and even other forms

of consociational power-sharing in India, are featured not only by the

achievements highlighted by their exponents, but also by phenomenal

failures.

Table 3 - Areas featured by a high incidence of violent inter-group

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conflict (since the early 1980s)

State District

Punjab Jullandhur, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Hoshiapur

Bihar Patna, Gaya, Aurangabad, Roitas, Bhojpur, Nalanda, Dhanbad, Sirpur, Santal Pargans

West Bengal Bhardwan, Twenty-Four Paraganas, Midnapore

Maharashtra Thane, Ahmadnagar, Nasik, Chandrapur

Madhya Pradesh Batsar

Andhra Pradesh Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warrangal, Medak, Nizamabad, Khamman, Mehnagar,Rangareddy, Srikakulam

Karnataka Dharwar

Tamil Nadu North Arcot, Dharmapuri, Salem, Thanjavir

Kerala Aalepy, Kottayam, Palghat

“The Maoist expansion in the past few years has been impressive –

from 55 districts in nine states in 2003 to 156 districts in 13 states in

2004 to 170 districts in 15 states in 2006. In their strongholds in

about 55 districts in 12 states, they run parallel governments, which is

not surprising given the retreat, if not collapse, of the state in key

social sectors such as education and health in many States and

stranglehold on political power of those who control land and other

economic resources. However, only thing prominently known about their

parallel government so far is the jan adalat, basically kangaroo courts,

and their brutal summary punishments that keep the people in the area

105

adequately terrified. The expansion of their area of influence in 170

out of 604 districts of the country and the ‘parallel’ government they

have been able to establish, give them sustenance in a dubious way, give

them a territory to train on and plan their ‘revolutionary’ foray against

the state and the people” (emphasis added).

4. Devolution and Conflict Resolution

No critique on devolution could afford to ignore the strong

confirmation provided by international experiences of the past few

decades to the generalisation that devolution through constitutional

devices (‘quasi-federal’, ‘federal’, ‘confederal’ or whatever) in nation-

states plagued by ethnic conflict have not restored inter-ethnic harmony

and that, on the contrary, it has had a tendency to imperil democracy,

and could constitute an irreversible step towards national

disintegration. Moreover, as the related evidence also shows, these risks

were averted only in situations where the Centre had the capacity –

usually in terms of military strength – to overcome the challenges to

democratic governance and national integrity.

The following extracts from major writings on the subject conform

closely to the observations made above. In introducing these studies

mention should be made of the fact that they are empirically based on

wide spectra of case studies of conflict situations. They are not aimed

at authenticating one or another conceptual postulate. All of them have

paradigmatic similarities in their commitments to peaceful resolution of

inter-group conflict and in their concern for safeguarding the rights of

minority groups.

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“Even if power-sharing can avert potential ethnic conflicts or

dampen mild ones, our concern here is whether it can bring peace

under the conditions of intense violence and extreme ethnic

mobilisation that are likely to motivate intervention. The answer

is no. … The core reason why power-sharing cannot resolve ethnic

civil wars is that it is inherently voluntaristic; it requires

conscious decisions by elites to cooperate to avoid ethnic strife.

Under conditions of hypernationalist mobilisation and real

security threats, group leaders are unlikely to be receptive to

compromise, and even if they are, they cannot act without being

discredited and replaced by harder-line rivals”.

KAUFMANN Chaim ,1997: 265-304

“Proposals for devolution abound, but more often than not

devolution agreements are difficult to reach, and once reached,

soon abort. Most such agreements are concluded against a

background of secessionist warfare or terrorist violence. Where

central authority is secure, as in India, the appropriate

decisions can be made and implemented by the centre. But, where

the very question is how far the writ of the centre will run,

devolution is a matter of bilateral agreement, and an enduring

agreement is an elusive thing”.

HOROWITZ Donald L ,1985: 622-3

“(I)n ethnically divided societies after intense conflicts they

(i.e. power-sharing institutions) typically have a set of

unintended but perverse consequences. They empower ethnic elites

from previously warring groups, create incentives for these elites

to press radical demands once peace is in place, and lower the

costs for these elites to escalate conflict in ways that threaten

democracy and peace. These dangers can be avoided when power-

sharing institutions operate under very special conditions such as

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a political culture of accommodation, economic prosperity and

equality, demographic stability, strong governmental institutions,

stable hierarchical relations within ethnic communities, and a

supportive international environment. Yet those conditions are

unlikely to be present or difficult to sustain after severe

conflicts such as civil wars.”

ROTHCHILD Donald & ROEDER Philip G, 2005: 29

In the entire mass of research literature on this subject one

could find only a few cases of successful resolution of ethnic conflict

through the constitutional device of territorial power-sharing –

surprisingly few, given the fact that, as an approach to negotiated

settlement of inter-group conflict in Third World countries, it has

tended to be prescribed by peace-makers from both within and outside far

more frequently than any other. For example, a recent study (Hoddie &

Hartzell, 2005), presents what purports to be a comprehensive list

containing 38 ‘civil wars’ of the period 1945-1998 that were ended

through negotiation. Of this total, 18 had territorial power-sharing

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agreements. A careful perusal of the latter category in the list would

show, however, that four were agreements involving successor states of

the former Soviet Union and their respective ethnic minorities, eleven

have failed to achieve durable peace, one culminated in secession, and

that even qualified success could be claimed only in respect of five. It

is also of interest that none of the five successful cases are comparable

to the Sri Lankan conflict in respect of power, ferocity and the global

reach of the insurgents.

During the more recent past (i.e. after the period covered by the

foregoing study) there have been three other peace settlements that

contained ‘regional autonomy’ dimensions – the agreement between Dhaka

and the Chittagong Hill-Tribes of Bangladesh, the Jakarta-Aceh Peace

Accord of Indonesia, and the so-called ‘Belfast Agreement’ Northern

Ireland. The agreements in Bangladesh and Indonesia, it should be noted,

were achieved under exceptional circumstances and in the aftermath of

devastating calamities. In both, the political concessions granted to the

rebel groups in the form of “autonomy over local affairs” and

“representation at the Centre” in return for total disarmament have also

been extremely meagre and are far less substantial than that provided for

under the present constitution of Sri Lanka and its Thirteenth Amendment

(i.e. the Provincial Councils system). And, in both situations,

persistent rumblings of discontent continue forming a gloomy shadow of

doubt on the durability of peace.

In Northern Ireland armed confrontations between the ‘Unionists’

(drawn from the predominantly Protestant segment of Northern Ireland’s

population, desiring continuing union with Britain) and the

‘Nationalists’ (comprising almost exclusively Roman Catholics, who desire

merger of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland) had defied many

attempts at negotiated settlement, and had, for long, been associated

with both fierce armed confrontations (between the militant groups on

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either side of the ethno-political divide, and between the militants and

the law-enforcement agencies) as well as terrorist attacks on civilian

targets by the paramilitary groups. The

‘Belfast Agreement’ of 1998 (a.k.a. ‘Good Friday Agreement’) that marked

the conversion of the existing uneasy truce (declared in 1994) between

the two sides into a peace accord, entailed, among other things, the

initiation of several institutional measures that were intended to

facilitate: (a) various forms of power-sharing among the participants of

the conflict and (b) the decommissioning of arms, large stockpiles of

which were believed to be held by the paramilitary groups. The agreement,

though widely hailed as a major breakthrough towards ending a seemingly

intractable and never-ending conflict, has hitherto fallen short of the

expectations with which it was forged. Thus, the ‘Northern Ireland

Assembly’ which was intended to facilitate the establishment of a

government in Northern Ireland that accommodated all segments of its

population (i.e. all political parties) and, at the same time, maintain

links with the governments of Britain and Ireland, was suspended in 2002

due mainly to the non-compliance of certain paramilitary groups with the

stipulated procedures of disarmament. In September 2005, the

‘Independent Commission’ entrusted the task of monitoring disarmament

reported that, while the decommissioning of arms by the ‘Nationalist’

militant groups has been satisfactorily accomplished, several

pro-‘Unionist’ groups of militants were yet to abide by the related terms

of the agreement of 1998. Meanwhile violent clashes and acts of terrorism

have continued to occur, albeit at a lower level of intensity than in

earlier times. From perspectives of the present study, the feature of

the Belfast Agreement that needs to be highlighted is that its main focus

was on power-sharing through various consociational modalities, and not

on the devolution of power.

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Endnote

On Panchayat Raj

‘Panchayat Samithi’ (village- or clan- level, consensus-based

committees consisting of ‘elders’, often multi-caste in composition, but,

as far as it is known, never accommodating representatives of the so-

called ‘untouchables’) existed in parts of pre-modern India, performing

an important functions in community-level governance Including those

111

pertaining to the enforcement of traditional laws and social mores. The

leaders of India’s freedom movement believed that similar institutions,

if re-established under government sponsorship at the grassroots of

Indian society, will have the potential to perform a catalytic role in

mobilising popular participation in rural development of post-

independence India. This perception drew strength from the remarkable

success achieved in a few experimental development projects based upon

the Panchayat approach in localities such as Comila and Etawar pioneered

in the 1920s and the ‘30s by volunteer workers affiliated to the All-

India National Congress. Mahatma Gandhi took a special interest in

Panchayat Raj. Thus, the ‘Community Development Programme’ (CDP), one of

the main components of India’s First Five-Year Plan (1951-55) envisaged

the setting up of a network of ‘Panchayat Samithi’ throughout India,

administratively regulated by a hierarchically arranged system of

institutions – Zilla Parishads, District Panchayat Committees, Panchayat

ministries/departments at State-level – in which Panchayats are

represented.

Despite the high priority accorded to the CDP and the concept of

‘Panchayat Raj’ in the first three Five-Year Plans, by the early 1960s,

it was becoming increasingly evident that, barring exceptions in States

such as Kerala and West Bengal, the entire programme had failed to fulfil

its expectations and had become a huge and wasteful burden on the

government’s coffers. A Ford Foundation funded variant of the programme

named the ‘Intensive Agricultural Development Program’, confined to a

selected Panchayat Samithi Block from each district, aimed at propagating

newly introduced ‘Green Revolution’ technology, also experienced a high

failure rate. Thus, from about the late 1960s, the entire Panchayat Raj

strategy receded to the background and was eventually abandoned

altogether.

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In the early 1990s, however, the government headed by Narasimha Rao

initiated a concerted effort to revitalize the Panchayat strategy. The

main innovative element of this attempt was that it involved the adoption

of the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution (so-called ‘Panchayat

Raj

Amendments’) which required all State governments to introduce

legislation to revitalize the Panchayat system, make regular elections

of their members mandatory, facilitate the reservation of seats in the

Panchayat Samithi for women and Scheduled Castes, and devolve on the

Panchayats a range of development functions. Large financial allocations

were also set apart for this programme.

There have been many evaluations of the revived Panchayat system of

India. The following extracts from a volume authored by two of the most

distinguished among the writers on India (Dreze & Sen, 2002: 361) is

fairly representative of the available general evaluations and, one

should add, reminiscent of the guarded optimism that featured the

evaluations of the CDP that were published in the heyday of that

programme in the 1950s.

“Indeed, the reforms associated with Panchayat Raj amendments have

followed very different courses in different states. At one

extreme, Bihar has barely reached the stage of organizing

Panchayat elections. Kerala, on the other hand, has gone far

beyond the constitutional requirements and initiated a visionary

campaign of ‘decentralised planning’ through Panchayat Raj

institutions. Even among states that have followed a similar

course in terms of legislative reform, the practical results have

varied a great deal depending on the extent of social preparedness

in terms of educational levels, political mobilization and social

equity. The issue of social preparedness has emerged quite clearly

in states like Madhya Pradesh where the state has been active in

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legislative reforms, yet the practical results have been held back

by the antecedent social inequalities, educational backwardness

and other barriers inherited from the past”.

Dreze & Sen conclude (p. 363):

“In the light of these learning possibilities (i.e. from

experiences since 1993), the first wave of social change

associated with the Panchayat raj amendments warrants cautious

optimism about the potential for local democracy in India. There

are, of course, also the matters of concern. These include the

frequent derailing of local democracy by social inequality, the

limited participation of the public in local governance on a day-

to-day basis, the dormant conditions of ‘gram sabha’ (village

assemblies) in many states, the lack of significant devolution of

powers in many fields, and, last but not least, the widespread

embezzlement of public resources associated with local development

programmes under Panchayat auspices”.

As postscript, it may be recorded that, in Sri Lanka, there have

been several development projects that were conceptually similar to the

Indian Panchayat Raj – for example, the Rural Development Scheme launched

informally in the 1930s and placed on an official footing soon after

independence, the Cultivation Committee system under the Paddy Lands Act,

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the Divisional Development Councils programme of the early 1970s, and the

Gramodhaya Mandala programme of the Premadasa regime. It is of interest

that Ursula Hick’s seminal work titled ‘Development from Below’ referred

to Sri Lanka’s Rural Development Scheme as a forerunner of India’s CDP.

The Panchayat Raj approach has also been pursued in other South

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