Revisiting Raag Darbari After Fifty Years: A Conference Report

Vision and Objective

Some of the key questions around which the conference revolved were as follows: where are we today in our understanding of administration and politics, five decades after the publication of Raag Darbari? Have we managed to get local institutions to deliver welfare? Do we have a handle on dealing with corruption? How are the constitution and state institutions regarded and their promises upheld? What tools can we deploy to analyse the new forms of local politics? The convener of the conference, Professor Satyajit Singh clarified, ‘This gathering was an attempt at reviewing existing administrative theories and literature on policy and governance as well as bureaucratic practices and micropolitics in rural India, through the prism of the text, Raag Darbari.’ Professor Singh inaugurated the 2-day programme by sharing his ideas, approach and the collective endeavour of all participants behind envisioning and conceptualising the theme. He also reflected that as political scientists, one remains constrained with one’s disciplinary methods and the fiction provides yet another method. It is the blend of both that perhaps gives us a better method.

Institutions and Local Politics

The first day of the conference was divided into four sessions. The opening session contextualised Raag Darbari through the lens of Corruption, Inequality & Administrative Theory. The session was chaired by Shri Shakti Sinha. Professor Philip Oldenburg’s paper titled The Folklore of Corruption in U.P. Villages, in Fiction & Fieldwork based on his study on Chakbandi (land consolidation) in UP highlighted the issue of corruption through the role played by dalals or middlemen. Oldenburg briefly discussed Akhil Gupta’s analysis of Raag Darbari through the lens of political ethnography and concluded with how he differed with Gupta. Dr Vinita Mathur’s paper titled Water Inequity in the land of Raag Darbari was based on her doctoral work conducted in Lucknow district during the 1990s (later updated in the early 2000s). The objectives of her study were to identify areas of water scarcity in both rural and urban parts of Lucknow, investigate the impact of unequal access and deteriorating water quality as factors in accelerating water resource scarcity and discuss potential management alternatives about the question of how to meet growing urban needs while protecting the rights of residents of rural areas.

Professor Satyajit Singh presented a conceptual–theoretical paper titled Revisiting Administrative Theory from Village India. According to Singh, ‘Shukla’s satirical depiction of realism does not share the acceptance of the dystopian Indian state and it provides an ethnographic account while acknowledging multiple issues of welfare without keeping bureaucrats as the central characters.’ He stressed that the ‘administration of policy requires a policy of administration’—it is political and not normative, and it is about contestations of resources and power by multiple actors through both formal and informal mechanisms. He concluded, ‘One belongs to a post-truth world now, where fiction becomes reality and politics is driven by a fictionalised future; also social media has flattened the difference between news, opinion and falsehood, it has become easier to make untruth, a truth’.

The second session of the day explored the dynamics that operate within villages in India through a discussion of its institutional politics. This session was chaired by Professor Ujjwal K. Singh. Professor Sudha Pai presented a paper titled, Enduring Relevance of Raag Darbari: Democratic Politics & Bureaucratic Functioning in Uttar Pradesh. The paper focused on the higher bureaucracy, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), and how it served the state of UP since Independence. From being one of the best governed states at the time of Independence, to becoming one of the most backward states of the Indian Union, UP has become a den of corrupt politics, poor governance with breakdown in law and order and rising communalism. She concluded by reiterating the continuing relevance of Raag Darbari and its story of the impact of poor governance on the lives of people in UP.

Professor Shailaja Fennell in her paper Networks, Narratives & Village Life: Revisiting Models of Rural Development through an Institutional Lens reflected on the nature of India’s agricultural political economy and how rural institutional reforms have affected the development of Indian villages over the last century. Through different case studies, she discussed the impact of these institutional reforms on rural poverty, market opportunity and rural industrialisation in the context of globalising India. Dr Vibodh Parthasarathi in his paper titled A Dystopian Publicness, or the Genesis of Our Media Economy discussed the different forms of mediated publicness and mediums of publicity in the context of a village like Shivpalganj. He contextualised and compared the media scarcity in rural India of the 1960s with the media abundance of contemporary times. He observed that Raag Darbari is replete with vivid experiences of publicity in all its social forms, vis-à-vis commercial advertising, public service campaigns, government outreach and even propaganda. Dr Mekhala Krishnamurthy presented her paper titled Reconceiving the Grain Heap: Margins and Movements on the Market Floor which is based on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork in an agricultural market (mandi) at Harda in Madhya Pradesh. Moving beyond existing discourses on the post-harvest grain heap and commodity markets, Krishnamurthy observed that it is along the seams or internal margins of the market, at routine sites of physical transfer and exchange, assembly and dispersal, integration and disruption, that heaps of agricultural produce materialise. While studying the economy of the grain heap within the market, Krishnamurthy locates the unnoticed shifts in the sources and distribution of economic and social margins, and their diverse and differentiated effects in market life and livelihoods.

Welfare and Policy Implementation

The third session witnessed a discussion on local politics at the district level and the manner in which policy-making and implementation work in practice. Professor Rekha Saxena chaired the session. Professor Pampa Mukherjee in her paper Classical Texts & Contemporary Realities: Understanding Development through Raag Darbari argued that apart from representations of rurality, institutional functioning, local governance and corruption, Raag Darbari also needs to be taken as an important source of knowledge to understand development and its experiences in contemporary India. Dr Yamini Iyer in her paper, The Post Office Paradox: Understanding the State from the Frontlines, discussed the role of elementary education administrators at the block level, through case studies of education delivery system based on primary field work in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh. This research study probed the administrator’s perspective in resolving the implementation problem of the last mile. She also put forth the fact that these administrators perceive themselves as disempowered cogs in a hierarchical administrative culture that renders them powerless. Dr Saroj Giri in his paper Dalits & New Voices from the Ground in Gujarat drew upon recent instances of dalit resistance movements in Gujarat and how one witnessed the emergence of a new alliance between Patels, Thakors and dalits against the BJP government. He considered this to be a characteristic feature of the resistance movement, where both populist radicalism for land and caste-based social antagonism are criss-crossing each other.

The last session of the day was based on the theme ‘Welfare, Vikas and Localism’ and it was chaired by Professor Shri Prakash Singh. Dr Saurabh Gupta’s and Dr Rajeev Verma’s paper, titled Everyday Politics & Delivery of Services in Anganwadis in Bihar, was based on an empirically grounded, in-depth case study of the functioning of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) in the state. This study was based on the observation of the everyday politics of service delivery while bringing in the voice of frontline workers. The objective was to unravel the causes of systemic corruption in the case of ICDS during policy implementation at the ground level. Their conclusion refutes the conventional literature on good governance and indicates that the vigilance-focused reforms along with community-based monitoring have not been successful in curbing systemic corruption. Ms Paroma Ray presented a paper, entitled Women & Their Interactions with Formal & Informal Institutions of Governance, through which she highlighted the ways in which formal and informal spaces are organised and various networks are engaged in order to negotiate for power by women and other marginalised groups. She argued that a strict separation between the formal and informal is neither possible not desirable. The key institutions that she focused were as follows: the panchayat, educational institutions, the family and the police. Through this paper, she drew a parallel line between Raag Darbari of the 1960s and contemporary India through depictions like corrupt police practices, youth mobilisation and creation of factional interests in the garb of education as well as the long-windedness of the bureaucratic and judicial processes. Shri Manashvi Kumar presented a paper entitled Negotiating Governance & Energy Access: The Local Energy Conundrum whose central theme was around the political interplay in respect of distribution of electricity in the hamlet Motichur of Sitamarhi and Rampur Village in Uttar Pradesh. This paper incorporates political as well as sociocultural dynamics at the local level to understand the challenges faced by decentralised structures of governance in creating more equitable institutional mechanisms for electricity governance in rural India.

Literature, Politics and Margins

The second day of the conference was spread over three sessions. The first session entailed a critical discussion on the politics of margins through the lens of literature. The session was chaired by Professor H.M. Sanjeev. Professor Gopal Guru in his paper reflected on Raag Darbari as a masterpiece of fiction that depicts the concrete reality, through the performative tool of language. Its language is one of satire and irony. The theoretical discourse on the ‘State’ in political science in general and political theory in particular has categorised it as an abstract and epistemic entity, existing outside the realm of society. However, what one finds in Raag Darbari is the existence of the ‘State’ rooted in the midst of the social dynamics of Shivpalganj. He appreciated the manner in which the State is produced and reproduced in Raag Darbari through its various characters and tools like documentation, procedures and certificates. Professor Jean Dreze presented a paper titled Was Shivpalganj Universal? Institutions & Welfare. He began with the assertion that Shivpalganj as a village is not universal. It is characterised by corruption, inequality, patriarchy, narrow-mindedness and so on. But this does not hold true for large parts of India. Shivpalganj is not a template to understand India in general, but it is symbolic of a large part of Uttar Pradesh. To substantiate this claim, he drew a parallel between the two villages—Shivpalganj and Palampur (Moradabad District in Western UP). He identified common issues linked to the comprehensive breakdown of public services, public institutions and public action. Shri Gunjal Munda presented a paper titled Social Movements, Adivasis, Youth & the Village in Jharkhand in which he discussed the role of the tribal youth as agents of change in social movements. He presented a historical overview of the issues faced by tribal movements in India until the contemporary times. According to him, the tribals continue to tackle similar issues in contemporary India, but the methods have changed over a period of time. ‘Autonomy’ and ‘Identity’ have continued to remain central to the tribal movement.

Text and Contemporary Politics

The second session of this day was based on a reflection on Raag Darbari, the text through the lens of contemporary politics. This session was chaired by Professor Madhulika Banerjee. Prof. Balveer Arora discussed his paper titled The Federal Polity between Fiction & Reality. He assessed the journey of the federal idea of India through the binary of fact and fiction, how federalism as an ideology becomes pure fiction and a cover for inconvenient facts. While tracing the journey of federalism through the nationalist movement, he considered the initial federal impulse as a generous one where the goal of justice was intertwined with the idea of unity. According to him, one cannot separate one from another as they are intertwined with each other. He made another distinction between progressive and regressive state governments. Dr Ulka Anjaria discussed the relevance of Raag Darbari as it has completed 50 years. In her paper titled The Contemporaneity of Raag Darbari, she appraised the literary fiction; its distinct formal, stylistic and thematic features which give it a contemporary touch amidst the body of Indian literature in English in the 1980s and the 1990s. She finds a re-emergence of provincial aesthetics suggesting the vernacularisation of even so seemingly elitist a form as the Indian novel in English. Shukla provides the readers a new style of understanding satire through what Anjaria terms ‘Ulti Batein’, an indirect means of political critique. Professor Ashutosh Kumar discussed the novel and its plot in the light of its continuing relevance and claimed universalism, in the context of contemporary Indian villages. In his paper Hindi Heartland then & now: Reading Raag Darbari, Professor Kumar shared some observations on how one still finds remnants of the bygone era and how it remains relevant even after more than six decades. Professor Kumar raised key questions regarding the universality claim and the atypical nature of Shivpalganj as a village of the 1960s India; how it succeeds or fails to capture transition in Hindi heartland villages; also, how democratic politics and development administration of postcolonial India interact with the feudal caste-ridden agrarian villages in North India.

Administration, Politics and Challenges for Reforms

The last session of the conference was a round table discussion entitled Raag Darbari: Administration, Politics & Challenges for Reforms. This session witnessed a confluence of voices and opinions from the fields of academia, literature, bureaucracy and civil society. The session was moderated by Smt. Dipa Bagai. Professor Abhay Dubey through his paper titled Literature, Society & Politics discussed the mechanisms through which power equations have changed in rural India. He attributed these changes not to governmental policies or the processes of globalisation, but to the ongoing social revolution, which are the vital reasons. Shri T. Raghunandan appraised Raag Darbari through the perspective as an ex-bureaucrat. According to him, the bureaucracy has become highly dysfunctional. The Indian Administrative Service is one of the least reformed institutions; hence, one finds political dysfunctionality as an aspirational behaviour. Also, it is equally important to understand the financial aspect. He shared an example of the ‘Paisa for Panchayats’ programme of Accountability Initiative in Karnataka and how it tracks down finances to the ground level and questions the government directly about its expenditure. Smt. Priyanka Singh shared experiences of Seva Mandir, an NGO located in Udaipur and its neighbouring areas over the last 50 years of its existence. The alliance of power and politics through institutions like the panchayats has reduced citizens to beneficiaries and clients. Caste is no longer the defining factor to determine political elitism; instead, there is a new network of alliances between the powerful mechanisms of businessmen, politicians and individuals. According to her, more administrative and financial devolution of power to Panchayats (in their present form) is not a viable solution. Professor Shailaja Fennel discussed and shared experiences regarding how a lot of substantial changes are taking place, especially in the metropolitan cities. Development is lacking in tier III and tier IV towns. She acknowledged that in order to understand development, one needs to understand it through the local spaces. The interactions between the block and cluster of villages have to shape the new notion of theorisation because the identities are shaped at the local level itself. According to Smt. Dipa Bagai who also chaired this session, in Raag Darbari, Shukla never brings to the forefront, IAS officers as a protagonist. Shukla himself never let his personal perspective as an IAS officer lend colour to any of the characters in the story. She touched upon the issue regarding ‘disruptive power of technology’, an element which was absent when Shrilal Shukla conceptualised and wrote Raag Darbari in the 1960s. In contemporary India, technology is a symbol of utter hopelessness as well as sheer hope. For instance, in the age of the technology-driven mandatory Aadhaar Card, one does fall into the trap of crisis. When this technology fails to work effectively, it will make citizens (or customers) helpless to access their accounts for public good.