The Indian government officials take bribe! Diluted forms of the government schemes reach the villages! But India should be labeled as a “corrupt nation”. I was fortunate to be a part of the Janpadh meeting today, where only the people’s representatives were invited. Let me give you a background. Jhabua district is divided into 6 blocks. Ranapur block in Jhabua has 96 villages. There are 47 Panchayats in Ranapur. Above the Panchayats is the Janpadh. Ranapur has one Janpadh which has around 15 members. Janpadh meetings are presided at the block office under the CEO Janpadh, President and Vice-President Janpadh. In short, Janpadhs hold the key to democracy in India.

It was hard for me to understand this complicated structure and to think it works was impossible, until today! The CEO Janpadh Ranapur accepted my plea to sit through a Janpadh meeting meant only for the elected officials. Members came with red turban and light blue shirts over white dhotis. Some were more “modern” who carried a cell phone and wore pant-shirt. Women Janpadhs came with their husbands who held no posts. The husbands occupied the front row and their wives draped in colored sarees with their faces covered sat behind. One of the Janpadhs presented a handwritten paper to the CEO. The application was about the mid-day meal in a particular village school. The Janpadh explained that there was no mid-day meal in his village lacked utensils to cook meals. The CEO promptly replied, “but I see in the accounts that the money was given to the PTA in your village and the Additional Education Officer himself visited your village”. The Janpadh member insisted that there were no utensils. Other members also supported that this was true in their village also. The CEO looked puzzled! He announced that in the next meeting the education officials will have to present their case. He also stated that the PTA Presidents will have to show where the funds for the utensils had disappeared. He also added that if any education officer visited the village, they will have to sign the log book kept at the local Panchayat office. This will help keep record of their observations in the village school.
How much of this will be implemented is yet to be seen, but it is a promise for a better system. I am pleased to see that the meetings were not one-way instructions and were truly democratic!

Radhika Iyengar

Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)