The dust kicked
up during the recently held Panchayat elections in Goa has almost settled down.
As in all elections, this Panchayat election also witnessed massive power
struggles. While it is true that the way power operates would continue in ways
that destroy Goa’s natural and human resources, yet in the meanwhile, we can
still think why the system stays the way it does. One thing is very clear, a
large number of people by participating in ‘grass-roots democracy’ are staking
their claim for power – power that is otherwise concentrated in the hands of a few. One of the commonest
reasons given for such power struggles, and the fair and foul means employed to
gain power, is greed of the people. But is there more to the story? Can there
be another explanation for the way the masses behave as they do?
The British
labor historian, E. P. Thompson wrote extensively about labor movements in Britain.
Of his many celebrated works, his essay on ‘The Moral Economy of the English
Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’ (1971) has some relevance when we talk about
the nature of how power is brokered through an economy of gifts and favors.
Thompson spoke about the public disturbances involving the working class and
peasants, and argued that rather than viewing such violence as riots, they were
in fact demands to safeguard customary and other rights that the state had
failed to protect. Thus, the term ‘moral economy’ as understood by Thompson
referred to the unwritten codes that bound the masses and the authorities in a
system of recognizing the basic rights to food and fair prices.
As far as
elections in Goa – as in many other parts of India – are concerned, one can suggest
that there exists an ‘amoral economy’. While Thompson’s moral economy can be
considered as political action against authoritarianism, an amoral economy can
be considered to do the opposite. In an amoral economy dominant power cannot be
easily subverted. Though flawed in its very structure, such an economy promotes
a form of power that gets concentrated in the hands of the few. The masses that
participate in this economy or are drawn in this economy are not necessarily
the ones who control the reins of power. At the lowest level, say the Panchayat
level, it is a person who, for various reasons, has a decent amount of ‘supporters’.
This hierarchy progresses upwards to Zilla Parishad members, municipality
councilors, MLAs, Ministers, and other community leaders who are present at
each of these levels. At all levels, the position of leadership and influence
depends on one’s caste and class location and in some cases, on the financial resources
available to negotiate this hierarchical game of power.The person who wants to
be at the top of this hierarchy has to ensure that he has the backing of
persons at each level of political representation. This is basically
trickle-down politics!
What happens
once elections are announced is that the masses, hitherto left out from power
and influence, suddenly acquire a value because they can cast their vote. The
vote, therefore, becomes a tangible resource that can be exchanged for short
term gains and alliances. How this economy works for a large part of the masses
– those that fall outside the boundary of the political class – can be gleaned
from Sujay Gupta’s article
on how favors were exchanged in four localities of Goa prior to the recently-concluded
Panchayat polls.
In this article
we hear about a candidate who feasts his supporters or potential supporters at
a village tavern, as is the case in several other elections in the past. The
next day this candidate approaches a “middle level but influential politician”
for a hefty sum of a couple of lakhs, which he receives as “a grant or a loan”.
Similarly, other candidates either seeking a re-election or a fresh mandate were
reported to have purchased a large number of electronic items, such as LCD TVs,
phones, tablets, and refrigerators. One thing is very clear, gifts and favors
need to be exchanged. However, it is not necessary that the person at the lower
level (for instance) will have the required resources and as such this person
has to approach someone (mostly a few levels higher than him) to ensure that the
unwritten codes are followed. On the other hand the person(s) at the higher
levels receive the support from those at the lower level, as the latter owes a
favor to the former.
I do not want to
offer a sanitized picture of a well-tuned economy in which political and social
relations exist in harmony. However, one needs to ask how does one survive, and
in fact negotiate one’s basic aspirations – jobs, clean water, electricity etc,
if one is stuck in an economy of unequal power relations. If there are multiple
levels through which power is negotiated and brokered then the individual is
often held hostage to the multiple levels of power. So the way towards gaining
power and fulfilling aspirations for those at the lower levels of this
hierarchy is a tortuous and winding one.
There is, I
think, an element of greed in the amoral economy. But the further one goes down
the hierarchy it isn’t so much about greed but about survival, and ensuring
that certain expectations and aspirations in life – such
as accessing basic amenities – are fulfilled.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 5 July, 2017)
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