Description
- Author : Sharan M R
- Publication : Westland
- Price : 599
- ISBN : 9789395073165
- Genre : Non-fiction
- Pages : 246
- Binding : Hardback
- Lang : English
ABOUT THE BOOK
A CAPTIVATING, OFTEN SEARING NARRATIVE OF HOW LIVES ARE LIVED IN THE
VILLAGES OF BIHAR—AND 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 world’s largest rural poverty alleviation programmes. It led him back to his village, where eventually, he and his comrades—primarily women, mostly from the Dalit and most backward castes—form 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 Sanjay’s village, wields great power, even to do harm. Ward members— closest to their constituents and the most socially representative group in the panchayati raj system—are 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 action—reservation, decentralisation, transparency measures—and 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 Bihar—and indeed in much of India.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M.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
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