Editorial: The Next Batch of Panchayats

By the time this week ends, the people would have sealed the immediate political aspirations of candidates in the running for the 70 [out of 108] zilla panchayat wards and 420 [out of 987] gram panchayat wards in the State which go to poll on Saturday. The new week will begin with the counting scheduled for 05 November and after the celebrations wind up, the new batch of panchayats will begin a tenure in office with the aspirations of rural Sikkim riding heavy on their shoulders. The new term will also be interesting because more panchayats will come to office after contesting elections this time than in the past. This will make them even more accountable to the people with whom the small size of panchayat units in Sikkim accords them even more immediacy. One hopes that they will use every power already devolved to them to take the State forward from the grassroots onwards and power a future that learns from the past, not obsesses over it. There will be a whole fresh round of workshops, awareness meets and sensitization programmes laid out in the near future to keep the Panchayats occupied, but because they enjoy an immediacy with their voters, one hopes that the theory classes do not curtail their inherent pragmatism, which, one hopes is the character trait that led to their victories and not party affiliations alone. The fact that half the panchayats will now be women, one also looks forward to even more sensitivity in how rural affairs are managed in Sikkim. One hopes that the Panchayats grow more powerful in the coming years and rural Sikkim better informed. This, because development plans drafted by city-bred minds in department offices and ministries in Gangtok and Delhi have not been as inclusive and workable as would have been good for Sikkim. As the Panchayats become more powerful, rural Sikkim will find a stronger voice in dictating affairs of the State and that can only be good. For all their well-meaning, West-inspired and semi-educated interventions, urban folk, even in Sikkim, do not really have the connect with the land and its ways to fashion practical solutions for the future. That is something only the people who live in the real Sikkim, in the bastees, can deliver. Thus far, rural pragmatism has been overpowered by city-bred ideas of inferred political correctness. Now there is a fighting chance for the rural aspirations to come to the fore and get heard. That is the responsibility that the fresh lot of Panchayats carry on their shoulders, a responsibility that the municipal corporation and nagar palika types need to assist for once, not direct like always.