‘This is Gordha, not Godhra’

This village in a remote corner of the world’s biggest democracy does not believe in elections: it prefers consensus. The results: an all-women panchayat, Dalits and Muslims living cheek-by-jowl with upper caste Hindus, and progressive farming in a suicide-prone region.

Make no mistake with the spelling. “No, not Godhra, this is Gordha,” repeats the wrinkle-faced farm labourer wearing a clean Gandhi-cap and white kurta. Since its formation in 1966, this village of 800 people never elected its sarpanch even once; it selects its head consensually, by what its veterans call “ekmat”. “We choose our sarpanch in five minutes,” says Tulsiram Laxman Thorat, a septuagenarian landless Dalit from Gordha.

There’s no particular reason for electing their sarpanch unopposed. Way back, Pandhari Tohare, a respected veteran, had to honour the villagers’ decision to anoint him as the first sarpanch. Tohare is no more, but his legacy lives on. In the assembly and parliamentary elections, each villager is free to vote for any party or candidate as per his wisdom, villagers say.

About 60 km from Akola in the district’s Telhara block, in western Vidarbha’s suicide-ravaged belt, Gordha is living Mahatma Gandhi’s vision: “A consensus-seeking democracy is a more mature system of government.” As ardent Gandhians say, consensus is quintessentially persuasive; elections are necessarily coercive.
Gandhi believed nature was fundamentally cooperative, not competitive. Things cooperated with one another for the good of the one whole.

It is Gordha’s character of cooperation that has scripted the transformation in the village. What strikes you first is the cleanliness, spacious roads, well-marked houses with enough frontage and backyard, and solar street lamps. Each house has a nameplate bearing the names of husband and wife as joint owners.

This one’s a different world. They follow their castes and religions, yes, but they don’t discriminate or hate each other. Muslims join Hindus in the Ganesh festival; Hindus join Muslims in Eid. There are no separate colonies for Dalits, tribals and OBCs. A Deshmukh has a scheduled caste or a Muslim in his neighbourhood. There’s no place for divisive politics. There is politics, if you want, but it’s of the consensual kind. Villagers take decisions after consultations.

In 2005, when the post of sarpanch got reserved for women, an all-women panchayat came into being. The villagers decided there should be members from the SC and Muslim communities as well - though there was no reservation at play here - besides OBCs and Marathas.

“We decided on having an all-women panchayat with representation from all castes and religions,” says the present sarpanch, Shalinitai
Deshmukh. Her ailing husband, Ganesh Deshmukh, a former sarpanch, is the man largely credited with the Gordha transformation.

Villagers insist Shalinitai was selected not because she is a Maratha, but because she had qualities. “She is strong, articulate and loving,” says Devkabai Hatekar, 60, a Dalit farm labourer. “The village you see today is all her hard work.”

Evidently, the decision to have an all-women panchayat has paid off. First, the women members brought cleanliness, which has reduced health problems. They also banned liquor and open defecation.
Secondly, the village invested in water supply schemes to ensure that the women did not have to walk for miles to fetch water. So all houses now get tap water. While the rest of Akola faces scarcity this summer, villagers here are relaxed because the women members decided to harvest rainwater to recharge wells and bore-wells.

“We won’t face water scarcity,” says Santosh Ghodke, a gram sevak (assistant) who aides the panchayat members in drafting projects and completing bureaucratic procedures. “In the past four years, we’ve won several awards instituted by the government,” he says with obvious pride. “We’ll utilise the prize money to make underground sewer systems, and improve roads and productive assets.”

The all-women panchayat has also shifted the village to organic farming. “We follow biodynamic farming,” says Jyoti Pagdhune, a widow, whose husband died two years ago. “It reduces our production costs,” she says, adding, “it also fetches better prices for our chemical-free farm produce, be it cotton or soybean.” Jyoti, a mother of two, has taken admission in a distance education course this year, thanks to the support from the village veterans.

A majority of the villagers have been to school, and they understand the importance of education. So they scouted for a good teacher, and when they found Tulshidas Khirodkar who matched their requirements, they fought for his transfer from the nearby Danapur village school to their own village. “The villagers were so insistent that I had no option but to come here,” says Khirodkar. “They take complete care of us.”

When they found their children sitting on the floor in the village primary school, all the villagers - from landless poor to the big landholders - contributed small sums to buy desks and benches for the students, and beautify the school premises.

Gordha is leading by example, and a few villages in the vicinity are following its footsteps. A village five km away, Hiwarkhed, for instance, elected its sarpanch unopposed last year. Hingni, 10 km away, too has adopted the consensus model. “Gordha is a role model for us,” says Prakash Patil, from Hiwarkhed.

The village owes much of its success to communal harmony. A centuries-old shrine of Hazrat Shahdawal Sahab, which is open to all, gives them strength to overcome problems, says Samiuddin Mumtazuddin Inamdar, 25, a villager. Paradoxically, just a few km away is Belkhed village, which witnessed clashes between Dalits and dominant castes four years ago during Pola festival.

“Progress follows where there’s unity and a collective consensual vision,” says Shankar Tohare, whose wife Mainabai is deputy sarpanch. “Most feuds are a fall-out of the political divides created by leaders. We avoid such divisions.” Even as the country braces up for what would be one of the fiercest Lok Sabha elections, Gordha demonstrates that democracy is not merely a numbers game.