Burying grass-roots democracy

Educational cut-offs and other norms like two-child norm and toilet at home for panchayats discriminate against women and the poor

Why meddle with a system that has been functioning reasonably well since 1993 when the 73rd amendment was passed to facilitate direct elections to panchayats? More than 22 years later, why have the Governments of Rajasthan and Haryana felt compelled to amend the law?

By laying down a minimum educational level for candidates, both governments have undermined the fundamental spirit that led to the passage of this amendment in the first place. While Rajasthan has succeeded in pushing through the changes by first passing an ordinance, quickly holding elections and thereafter passing the law, Haryana has been stopped in its tracks.

The Supreme Court is currently hearing a challenge to the law. Even as the case is being argued in the apex court, it is important to look at the compulsions that led these governments to introduce these changes. States have enacted their own laws in line with the 73rd amendment and over time several states have included additional eligibility criteria.

For instance, in Odisha, knowing how to read and write Odia is a requirement even though the same does not apply to elected members of the Legislative Assembly or Parliament. In Haryana, Rajasthan, Bihar and Karnataka, having a functional toilet is a precondition to standing for elections.

Other, more bizarre, conditions include provisions in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu where a “deaf-mute” cannot contest; in Odisha and Rajasthan a person suffering from leprosy is ineligible; in Odisha a person afflicted with TB cannot stand; and in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Maharashtra, anyone with more than two living children is ineligible to stand for panchayat elections.

While the two-child norm was withdrawn by Himachal Pradesh and Haryana after it was challenged as being discriminatory, especially to women, Rajasthan and Haryana are the first states to set educational criteria. In both states, the eligibility criteria are matriculate in the general category, Class 8 for women and Scheduled Caste (SC) men, and Class 5 for SCwomen.

As a result, it is already evident who will be automatically excluded. In Haryana, for instance, as the majority of Dalit women are illiterate, most of them will be unable to contest unlike in the past when any of them could. The same applies to Rajasthan where the literacy rate ofSCs/Scheduled Tribes (STs) is abysmal.

This alone violates the spirit of the law that was designed to facilitate grass-roots democracy by giving a voice to the poorest and the most marginalised… The Haryana and Rajasthan governments argue that educational cut-offs will improve the “quality” of elected officials… Education has never guaranteed either honesty or efficiency.

In fact, all such criteria will guarantee is that only the better-off get elected while the poor, and especially women, are left out. It is also clear from the recent panchayat elections in Rajasthan, held immediately after the ordinance amending the law, that far from reducing corruption, the new conditions have opened up greater opportunities for corrupt practices.

Already 64candidates have been arrested for using fake documents to meet these criteria… When the Rajasthan government passed its ordinance, two former Chief Election Commissioners, James Lyngdoh andS Y Quraishi, wrote to the state’s Chief Minister pointing out that going by the 2010 panchayat election results, more than 70% of elected members would be disqualified, 77% of SC elected members would not be able to stand again and 55% of elected zilla parishad members did not meet the minimum educational standards…

Even a criterion like having a functional toilet, introduced apparently to discourage open defecation, denies the reality that the landless and many SCs/STs cannot meet even this precondition… In a country, where one-third of the population is already economically excluded, such an eventuality will be the final nail in the coffin of a genuine grass-roots democracy.