UNSPECIFIED
(2022)
Does Identity Politics Subsume Local Governance! A Study of the Darjeeling Hills.
[Report]
Abstract
It is widely accepted that the idea of local governance in India, self-rule, in other words, got further prominence through the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendment Acts in 1992. While the 73rd amendment deals with the rural local bodies (Panchayati Raj Institutions – PRIs), the 74th amendment relates to urban local bodies (Municipalities). Interestingly, this study seeks to understand a self-rule struggle, despite being in vogue for more than a century, still stumbles to create the constitutionally guaranteed decentralised governance. It is said that the Darjeeling hills had been struggling for self-rule since 1907 when for the first time an ‘administrative set-up’ was demanded (Samanta, 2000; Sarkar, 2013b; Subba, 1992). Thereafter, this struggle, in varied forms continued till contemporary times. In its 116 years of struggle, it has witnessed the establishment of decentralised bodies like the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC) in 1988, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) in 2012, and finally, the formation of Development Boards since 2013. Even, a proposal to bestow the Darjeeling hills with 6th Schedule status – the provision for tribal areas, also came into prominence. Erstwhile DGHC and the present GTA, in a way, were established to socio-culturally and economically empower the areas under their respective jurisdictions. On the other, the recent Development Boards, which do not have any restricted territorial delimitation, are formed within the GTA to socio-culturally empower the individual ethnic communities under the Gorkha agglomeration.
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