LAST AMONG EQUALS : POWER CASTE & POLITICS IN BIHARS VILLAGES

About the BookA CAPTIVATING, OFTEN SEARING NARRATIVE OF HOW LIVES ARE LIVED IN THE VILLAGES OF BIHARAND INDEED IN MUCH OF INDIA.Sanjay Sahni was living an araam ki zindagi in Delhi, working as an electrician, until a chance encounter with a computer sent him hurtling into the labyrinth that is the NREGA (and the corruption within), one of the worlds largest rural poverty alleviation programmes. It led him back to his village, where eventually, he and his comradesprimarily women, mostly from the Dalit and most backward castesformed the anti-corruption group, Manrega Watch. Their tale is one strand of village politics, a story of resilience among citizens, those outside the system.But what of the insiders? The complex local-state unit of the village has at the top a mukhiya, who, like the one in Sanjays village, wields great power, even to do harm. Ward membersclosest to their constituents and the most socially representative group in the panchayati raj systemare at the bottom of this structure.Development economist M.R. Sharan brings these two interweaving strands of insiders and outsiders together to tell a tale of hope: that those on the margins can challenge entrenched hierarchies. Through government actionreservation, decentralisation, transparency measuresand through citizenly engagement, social movements and elections, change is possible, if not necessarily easy. Take the resourceful ward member, Kamal Manjhi, who repurposed the grievance redressal system to complain against the state: this was essentially a member of the local state, using a state mechanism to arm-twist another part of the state to do its job.Last Among Equals eschews the usual sweeping narratives of national and state politics, reaching instead for the swirling, vivid sub-narratives that escape easy categorisations, the darkness of the material leavened with deep empathy. The result is a captivating, often searing narrative of how lives are lived in the villages of Biharand indeed in much of India.About the AuthorM.R. Sharan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, studying questions centred on development economics and political economy. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2020 and was previously at the Delhi School of Economics and Hansraj College. His novel, Blue, was published in 2014. His writings have appeared across various publications, including the Economic and Political Weekly, The Hindu, The Times of India and The Economic Times. He is at www.mrsharan.com and on Twitter at @sharanidli.