Arvind Kejriwal came and spoke to some of us about the need for local self governance and direct democracy at grassroot levels. Essentially, why it makes sense for people to take decisions collectively, rather than through elected representatives, at the local level. As a living example of potential effectiveness of such a model, he shared this video about Hiware Bazaar. Over last twenty years, Hiware Bazar has transformed itself into a “model village” and transformed the lives of people there – right from per capita income to water adequacy, afforestation, land holdings and so on. Take a look (you might have to “Download Video” to watch it in its entirety).
Swaraj – Story of Hivre Bazar
Published by on July 4, 2009
in Citizen Engagement and Self Governance.
(11 votes, average: 4.64 out of 5)
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11 Comments
(11 votes, average: 4.64 out of 5)Loading...
Thanks for the article. This is quite interesting and encouraging. I do think of doing sth similar. We do have thousands of other villages waiting for similar trend. Infact, Hiware was lucky enough to receive govt. grant EnvPortal apart from intelligent mentor[Mr.Pawar].
Am assuming purpose of this blog is not to simply discuss/appreciate what others are doing. But may be we can think of doing sth similar in other states [Rajasthan]
Very inspiring. Hope many more of us could come forward in the manner the well meaning and spirited individuals of Hivre Bazar came forward in terms of contesting politically.
The 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments to the constitution paved the way for greater powers to local rural and urban bodies. But very little progress has been made on the ground in this regard due to unwillingness of State Governments to devolve power lower down, and due to other vested interests.
(Ref: the following paper by Mr K C WSivaramakrishnan from the center for policy research – http://www.cprindia.org/papersupload/1215102050-KCS_Growth%20in%20Urban%20India.pdf)
The more important lesson from this movie is not that we need greater local self-governance, but that we need more well meaning people to come forward and enagage politically – become leaders in their local areas…. panchas, corporators, MLAs, MPs…
Also – a word of caution regarding local governance and devolution of power. Local governance without local capacity building (capacity to self govern, capacity to engage all constituents in a transparent egalitarian manner in governance) could be disastrous (eg. may lead to capture of power by existing local elites, and eventually increase in corruption and loss of democratic accountability). As you may know, most of the leakage in public distribution systems takes place at the local government level (not at central level)
(eg. Refer this classic paper… http://www-2.iies.su.se/~svenssoj/p679.pdf)
In short, we need more Hivre Bazars, at rural as well as urban level. The bottleneck is not the framework for local self-governance (it exists already !) but well meaning citizens to come forward and take leadership in governing their immediate current local areas. Further, we need to check statistically how many self-governed places have led to improvements like Hivre Bazar, and carefully identify the reasons which seperate the failed self-governance local areas from Hivre Bazar …. one of the reasons is likely to be ‘local capture’.
Two sentences:
This is proof of how everyone wants to do well for themselves being part of a engaged & particpatory team.
What percetage of our Nation is reay to imbibe the good outcome demonstrated in this in Rural & urban India?
Alok: I appreciate your nxtindia.org endeavour just like your earlier ones.
Really encouraging. We want to visit the village. kindly guide us
Imagine every Village in India today prosper like Hivre Bazar, India would have been a Economic Superpower by now……
I want to visit this beautiful village.
really intresting and inspiring!!!!!!!
please can anyone give the details of hivre bazar location and how to reach there from Ahmednagar.
Local Self-Governance and Complete Self-Awareness are the needs of time, especially of our country and it’s high time that we have chewed on this matter for years. Now it’s time for action and supporting the activities like this with interactive communication and path-setting initiatives. We can no more leave our state-of-affairs in the dirty hands of the impotent politicians and the greedy businessmen or try to live on the mercy of bureaucracy. This is the most profound example of Mahatma Gandhi’s dream realized in it’s true sense and it should be regarded as the Model for all the villages and towns along the lengths and breadths of India and even beyond India. We – the people – should start a phenomenon to pressurize the governing bodies to adopt, empower and presume this Model for all the future policies, projects, decisions and constitutional activities.
I hope the least everyone of us can do is –
1. Visit Hivre Bazar with friends and family.
2. Encourage people to lead a self-governed life
3. Speak, write, publish in every available media about it
4. Be more proactive and aware about every single thing around us
5. Assuming the authority and accepting the responsibility of the social tasks
Three cheers for Hivre Bazar! Keep up the GREAT work!!
really inspiring. We need more Hivre Bazar.
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really inspiring,it is a beautiful village