Empowering India's localities: Unleashing developmental potential of where you're born

Mohan is among the top pentile of Indians; he is from the prosperous picturesque Kangra valley. Driving taxis in Delhi with children and wife back home, he thinks where he was born is responsible for stifling his dreams.

Successful Indians globally including in India have a personal statement of individual ascension, apart from famous ones like that of Abdul Kalam or Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Countless others with education, will, grit and talent ensure they break free of the broken social elevator. These personal narratives of exceptional courage, hard work, luck and blessings hide the plain fact of how many are left behind and condemned to much bleaker future. In every Kalam we have failed Dhanushkodi, in every Rajendra Prasad, we have the glacial pace of Ziradei. 

Data shows where you are born is most critical to what you become. “Returns of Locality" is a combination of things that shape inter-generational mobility and most important to these is human capital; vicious confluence of poor educational opportunities, health as low accessible service, low skills and limited employment prospects trap particularly poor people in these “multi-dimensionally low equilibrium” localities. Most lack the means, wherewithal or God’s gift to escape the barriers, mobilise investments on their own and next generation’s future and abilities to succeed…“to be born equal” is fundamental first step to conception of human rights.

Locality as social elevator may appear rich when we know in our society what Babasaheb famously decried “sink of localism” chaining millions in a dark abyss of fatalism. Has something changed, New India sees opportunities dramatically changing and with smarts the accessible modernity of new job roles – gig, BPO and otherwise. Flattened digital spaces now giving wings to new learning and expressions – TikTok stars and countless making success in arts, culture, there is shifting ground to walk. Key to this is “locality” or “neighbourhood”. Pincodes some decades back was one of the most accurate predictors to “Lifetime Earning" and “Inter-Generational Mobility”. It had a combination of public infrastructure, services, connectivity - mobility (mail volume) and logistics (rail connectivity) and most importantly proximity to powers embedded in the simple 6-digit. Making “localities” deliver to their residents an opportunity to claw their way out to better future is measure of how successful a society is.

The early signs from the new wave of “Locality Based Approach” to strengthen economy, society and settlements being attempted by governments in Scotland, Canada have creatively shown its efficacy for community rejuvenation, mobilisation and infusing new vitality. This is not new, India has a rich forgotten legacy of Vaijjian Confederacy that had commoners, nobility, guilds coming together to solve their problems and negotiate with external powers; in the era of Mahajanpads, confederacies lost to the might of empires and State formation in India accelerated through colonial rule has evolved a state-society compact notwithstanding exceptional development achievements with high reliance on clientism and paternalism.

During the pandemic reshaping of the state-society compact punch marked with people-pacts in rural areas across India, we had women collectives, local panchayats, frontline health service providers and local administration coming together to create the “safety and healthy bubble” as migrants returned, they managed local isolation, quarantine, educated each other, fed each other; with the big state safely in lockdown. This is big society play, and key imperative for this is “locality”. Like the Swiss municipalities show they can take care of basic human development infrastructure and services with accountabilities, citizens participate in governance, in management, the invisible state become visible. Well, the resourcing structure in Swiss municipalities and cantons are very different and we can’t have this structure in India today. However, as resources are getting progressively placed with local bodies, the 15th Finance Commission increased financing to local bodies there is an opportunity to build new locality compacts which has local governance, citizen or community groups and frontline of public infrastructure and service delivery together. We have to accept that fact that rural in terms of its economy, society and habitat will not be same. It needs a new deal, the habitat development structure which addresses the human capital, economic development and social development is required. As citizen, as resident; my return from locality is this opportunity to grow and ensure my next generation is better off.

The counterpoise of “sink to localism” is emerging in multiple ways. First the public funded digital welfare delivery architecture has significantly reduced the role of patronage. Second, strong community institutions are challenging these unequal relations and monopoly. Women collectives seem to have engaged with entrenched interests of caste, patriarchy, and wealth – all of the issues that Dr Ambedkar feared were at the heart of the Indian village. Women collectives challenge norms, unequal social relations and engage with local leadership, creating conditions for social equality. Related to second, is increased appreciation of differentiated role of elected representatives in local bodies carrying out executive functions thereby reducing their monopolistic gatekeeping role making to direct citizen government interface.

Fourth is, a young demography with formal schooling – employability skills or not who are yearning for better prospects for themselves with digital connectivity they also know what they don’t have, related to this an emerging next-generation from the entrenched local elite and merchant class who are better educated but lack of jobs and thus are looking for economic growth beyond the old exploitative feudal-merchant economy in rural and peri-rural. The locality approach is central lynchpin to the counter-poise solutions engagement: keeping people and communities as the focus, working with elected representatives in instituting community action and provision of social services (e.g., in schooling, health, water and sanitation) or of local economic activities. This is solving the classical principal-agent problem, bringing locus of power and decision making closer to their locale, together all who have skin in the game and ready to implement programs that matter to them without layers of bureaucracy that separates the locus of decision making from the locus of action, with better understanding of local needs, idiom and the cultural ethos. Localities can mobilise the local initiative, agency and shift mute supplicants of the state officers doling out patronage to stakeholders in development that matters to them.

I will like to bring a remarkable example from remote corners of tribal central Indian district of Badwani; in Rajpur sub-district, women collectives together with Panchayats and frontline public officials prepared comprehensive Locality Development Plans including Health & nutrition, Education, Social security, Individual Beneficiary Schemes and one for themselves, Community Action Plan. These plans once approved are being regularly monitored by the Gram Panchayat Coordination Committee (GPCC) involving PRI-CBO-FLW triad and at the Block level Coordination Committee (BLCC) meetings. This is now a templated for Localisation of SDGs; local area plans have been integrated with development departments converging efforts and resources with local institutions.

Returns of Locality, heuristically makes sense, but is there a way of indexing it and using that index for public policy and investments. In Indian context various initiatives in last few years including a revamped welfare delivery architecture which has reduced leakages, rent seeking and massively improved targeting and has created the right tailwinds for communities’ taking charge of their “localities”. That famous professor of risk engineering, Nassim Taleb, keeps pointing out why future is local, giving space of mass flourishing of creativity, innovation, commerce and better life.

As Taleb points out when you have locals discussing issues – they will talk of roads, schools, hospitals unlike planners sitting far away worried about politico-administrative or high economy challenges, making for better localities. Government of India is planning to come with ‘Model Rural Transformation Act’ for states to plan, develop and regulate land use in rural areas for economic growth, sustainable development and to enhance the standard of living. Together with legislative enablement there has been additional financial resources made available to state governments for localised planning and investments in infrastructure. These together with rising aspirations and technologies, will translate the intent of devolution of decision-making powers to local communities in Indian context, just as we have seen with new opportunities opening with Localism Act in England or Regional Community Development Act in Scotia facilitating community-based planning for economic, social and institutional change. The author is Secretary, Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying (GOI), and spoke at a session themed ‘Change the Picture: Where You’re Born = What You Can be’ at the ongoing India Rural Colloquy in Delhi from 1-8 August, 2023. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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