Hybrid Adivasi Leadership Patterns After PESA

Presenter:

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Abstract

In the proposed intervention, I will elaborate on the objectives and provisions enshrined in the 1996 Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, comparing its contents with the following Jharkhand Panchayat Raj Act (JPRA). The purpose of this comparison is in fact to underline how the JPRA, imposing a top-down model of decentralisation in which the role of the traditional village assembly was considerably downsized, did not completely fulfill the expectations tribal people harbored in it but, instead, because of some structural flaws, paved the way for further exploitation facilitating the control of the state and large corporations over traditional structures and local resources.
After describing the traditional administrative structures in these tribal areas, I will then analyse how the introduction of the Panchayati Raj system has changed the aspect, duties and scope of traditional leadership, reducing its power and intensely diluting its sphere of action, leaving room for the state to penetrate in the rural setting and disrupt traditional methods of governance and dispute settlement. Finally, building on the interviews I collected, I will highlight, on the one hand, how traditional leadership in Jharkhand is collapsing, being devoided of any power both by the top-down decentralisation system and from within, slowly losing its bases of legitimation and the hold over natural resources which used to be the economic and social glue of tribal communities. On the other hand, I will point at how it still plays a pivotal role in protecting the community and building up resistance strategies against state attempts to deprive indigenous communities of land and resources.