Between research and storytelling

Last Among Equals: Power, Caste and Politics in Bihar’s Villages

Author: M R Sharan

Publisher: Context

Pages: 235

Price: Rs 599

The lockdowns of Covid-19 have produced a disproportionately large number of books – bringing closet writers into the open and giving people who had books in them time to reflect and write. There may well be some research to be done on the (positive) impact of Covid-19 on the publishing industry – including some fascinating and insightful books that have come out of the forced isolation, reflection and release from the treadmill of life. That pause, extracting not only creativity but directing it towards an organised and fascinating treatise, is evident in M R Sharan’s book Last Among Equals.

The book is an account of his reflections from the field. That the title and chapters have an interesting wordplay is indicative of Dr Sharan’s ability to package his story in an interesting way. But just that would not have sufficed. The challenge for a researcher on how to put the insights that comes his way (with all the attendant methods, jargon, metrics and, worse still, econometrics!) into a simple narrative is not easy. For an academic, retaining credibility while telling stories is difficult. There is always a danger of being branded a pop-economist or of not being ethnographically rigorous.

This is a book of stories that could not make it into a serious research paper. It has all the ups and downs of life, emotions, aspirations, frustrations, hope and serendipity.

How does one understand the impacts of large-scale policy interventions? The style of a particular chief minister? The impact of a scheme and the ground-level issues it opens up? How do these, in turn, inform policy makers? Are the people who designed the programme and know exactly what it is expected to deliver able to intervene in case of an individual violation? Is the chief minister really powerful at the granular level? How do grand programmes pan out at the implementation level and what are the adjustments that are made?

Two incidents in the book show how intent is blunted as it moves down to field level. A violation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is brought to the notice of the top officer in the bureaucracy in the rural development department. The action, however, is to be taken through the very hierarchy that implemented the scheme in the first place. Is it possible for the top officer to follow up on an individual case and its resolution to a logical end?

Similarly, the chief minister launches a grievance redress and accountability scheme by passing a law. The scheme and its beneficiaries get consumed by the transaction costs involved in invoking the provisions of the law! Can a petition to the chief minister avoid the bureaucratic rigmarole? The slip between the cup of intent and the lip of the bureaucratic accountability framework is there for us to see. At the same time, there are instances to celebrate this new framework where the redress actually occurs.

Dr Sharan brings in many of these layered questions without much ideological baggage. The book revolves around the activist Sanjay Sahni and the implementation of one large scheme of the Union government – the MGNREGA. That is a peg. There are real people asking for work under the scheme. There are politicians and officers implementing the scheme. There is data being fed into a centralised system. There are questions of accountability and all this feeds back into the system of politics, implementation, corruption and (even) crime. As these stories unfold, one also gets a sense of the macro impact of the intervention.

Mr Sahni works closely with mazdoors (in particular, women) who ask for work under MGNREGA and helps them get their dues. As he enters electoral politics he discovers that his zone of influence is restricted to a handful of polling booths where he has worked intensely over the years. The other candidates have a much larger recall value — backed by the glitz and marketing campaign of the party they represent. Mr Sahni, though an effective activist, fails as a candidate contesting the election. His performance is much below the rather conservative and sceptical estimate of people supporting him, while still expecting him to lose. Dr Sharan brings out this frustration very well. The zone of influence when one undertakes intense interventions is limited in comparison to the span of an Assembly constituency. There could be a perception in the minds of the voter that an activist is better suited to be on a confrontational role than on the other side.

Dr Sharan’s narrative is deceptively easy to read. At the same time, it is intense and nuanced. He is able to strike a fine balance between a personal story and a macro phenomenon. Moving away from frameworks and jargon to storytelling is not an easy transition for an academic. Dr Sharan does that without much compromise. This book is a compelling read.
mssriram@pm.me
The reviewer is faculty member at IIM, Bangalore