M.R. Sharan’s splendid book brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. The scene is a public meeting at “Narega Chowk” in Ratnauli village, Muzaffarpur district of Bihar. Activists of Bihar Manrega Watch (BMW) are helping resolve grievances. An old woman speaks. She has worked a full 100 days on MGNREGA a few years ago only to never get paid for it. When she brings her grievance to the meeting, even the activists are surprised at the lack of documentation on her part and chastise her for it. At the end of the meeting, the author observes her, in a corner of the tea-shop, “clinging to a pole and staring at the steadily pounding rain, soundlessly mouthing the words” to a protest song.
This and many other moments fill the book and demonstrate the deep empathy of the author. Following economist Albert Hirschmann, Sharan aims to convey “a feeling for what he witnessed as village life and politics in Bihar.” He succeeds brilliantly, bringing the reader a powerful cocktail of RCTs (randomised controlled trials) and Srilal Shukla’s Raag Darbari. The writing is witty and poignant, the scholarship is deep, and the style is eminently readable. Sharan also has a gift for simile. One of the book’s characters is described as speaking “in staccato bursts, like an Aaron Sorkin character on a Zoom call with intermittent connection.”
Sanjay Sahni’s story
The real-life, amazing story of Sanjay Sahni, a Bihari migrant in Delhi, an electrician-turned-MGNREGA activity-turned aspiring MLA, is the glue that holds the book together. The story starts with Sanjay hearing the word “Narega” in his village of Ratnauli. Ratnauli is where most of the book’s action takes place. Back home in Janakpuri (in Delhi), it is 2011, and Sanjay is becoming more and more curious about what goes on in his neighbourhood internet cafe. One day he musters up the courage to walk in and sit at a computer. Wanting to do something “important” and “worthy of the computer” he types the words “bihar narega” in the search engine. With a series of breathless clicks on the official MGNREGA website, he travels to Muzaffarpur, then Kurhani (his block) and reaches his village. One last click and he is virtually meeting people he knows. ‘It was like I was sitting in Delhi, but also in my village,’ says Sanjay to the author.
Sanjay senses that he has struck upon vital information. He spends cash he can ill-afford to print out pages and pages of MGNREGA wage payment records. His subsequent efforts, carrying those pages to Ratnauli, finding evidence for corruption and building a peoples’ movement to improve MGNREGA functioning in his village occupy a large part of the book. The story culminates in his inspiring campaign for MLA in the 2020 Bihar elections.
From ground zero
Originally a Karnataka native, Sharan has been a close observer and participant in the peoples’ movement around MGNREGA as well as other issues in rural Bihar for over 10 years. He has carried out large-scale surveys, visited government officials at the village, block, district and State level, and spoken to thousands of workers in this time. Grounding his narrative in data as well as stories (and funny anecdotes), he introduces the reader to the workings of “last mile democracy,” i.e. panchayat-level politics, how welfare programmes work (or do not work), why it matters that programme funds are sent directly to the ward instead of through the panchayat, and above all how salient local caste relations remain to explain outcomes. Along the way, we learn of the fascinating history of caste-based reservations for Mukhiyas in Bihar, from its origin as an ordinance in the 1980s during the Bindeshwari Dubey government to its passage as a law 18 years later.
The story of Mandesar Ram, another recurring character in the book and a Dalit ward member in Ratnauli, illustrates, quite literally, the problems with last-mile delivery. Ram has a bank account opened for his ward, receives government funds and pays a contractor to lay water pipes and taps in the households of his ward. He also installs a pump to draw groundwater. The final step is to get an electricity connection to power the pump. But Bhumihar landlords in the neighbouring ward refuse to let electricity lines pass via their (unused) lands. Sharan describes the heartbreaking story in plain terms, choosing to let the bald facts do the talking. All Ram has to show for his efforts are “electric poles without wires and taps without running water.” In a nutshell, as Sharan notes, the story illustrates both, how far Dalits have come in two generations (from being forced to stand up and remove chappals at the sight of upper-caste landlords to being elected ward members in the panchayat) and how much more needs to be done.
Overall, the book deals with the functioning of four large programmes over the past decade — MGNREGA, the nal-jal yojana (provisioning of piped water), the nali-gali yojana (for drains and lanes), and the Bihar Right to Public Grievance Redressal Act (BPGRA). The second and the third schemes are part of Nitish Kumar’s Saat Nishchay (Seven Resolves). The last one is worth noting since Bihar is the first state in the country to make grievance redressal a right. But the lessons go far beyond these welfare programmes and also beyond Ratnauli and Bihar. Sharan has given the English-reading (and therefore largely urban) audience a closely observed, scholarly, and empathetic account of the struggle to make constitutional promises a reality in rural India.
Last Among Equals: Power, Caste and Politics in Bihar’s Villages; M.R. Sharan, Westland Books, ₹599.
The reviewer teaches Economics at Azim Premji University.
