Across India’s immense and diverse geography, democracy exists not only in the grand halls of parliament, but it also rests firmly in the small corners of village life, which is often, tied to the conventional “Panchayati Raj” system. However, some villages have even gone beyond the structures of that system and developed their own constitutions, expressing their neighbors, family, and the community in what self-governance means in an agrarian society, without district engagement or insecurity. The objective of the village constitution is not revolution as the villager simply value agreement over violence, justice, and harmony. In these instances, democracies are profound, deepening the experience of what individuals can care about within a community, love in those community settings, and practice local culture and justice through tradition.
In Mendha Lekha in Maharashtra, Hiware Bazar in Ahmednagar, or Mawlynnong in Meghalaya, the local arrangement of governance has institutional purposes that the community knows. Initially, it begins as a motivation to address a contextualized issue in the community or where there are issues a traditional political assignment could not solve. These issues were mostly decided through consensus as local rules emerged as written and ratified; residents completely acknowledged the governance of the village produced their own developed written rules governing the village by neighborhood residents. For Mendha Lekha, which translates to “the place where the village children play,” the villagers stated, “we are the government in our village.” They showed their complexity of meaning through the constitution by dictating how resources were shared; how decisions would be agreed upon and made as a democratic process by consensus; and how any local development had to be sustainable without affecting forest density.
These local constitutions clearly arose from a fundamental understanding of an environment and community. Instead of solely depending on top-down methods of governance, those communities developed procedures and regulations that actually represented their own cultures and environments. In large swathes of tribal villages in central India, for instance, a constitution emerged that reflected the principles of the Gram Sabha, which is the village assembly and is the paramount decision-making body within the village. All adult villagers, regardless of gender or social standing, had a voice and a vote.
In some instances, the impetus for enacting a village constitution has been experiences of failures in top-down governance. Bureaucratic delays, corruption, and neglect prompted some villagers to conclude that if they were to conserve their rights, they should codify their own independence. The constitution created for Hiware Bazar, for instance, codified restrictive practices toward alcohol use, enshrined water conservation, and codified collective farming. The results are impressive – this village, originally suffering from extreme drought and poverty is among the wealthiest in the region. Mawlynnong is labeled Asia’s cleanest village and has a constitution that governs cleanliness, environmental protection, and collective decision-making. Mawlynnong embodies the intersection of tradition and modernity.
These micro-democracies do not conflict with the Indian Constitution but identify with its spirit. Article 40 of the Directive Principles of State Policy drives the establishment of village panchayats as units of self-governance. The 73rd Amendment in 1992 sought to enable local bodies to administer their matters. The villages which wrote their constitutions took that enablement seriously. They showed the ability of true grassroots democracy to lead towards sustainable development when it is born out of shared responsibility rather than imposed power.
In addition to governance, these constitutions also have a cultural dimension. They preserve local knowledge, languages, and patterns of ethics or ethics that can be systemically lost in modern political structures. By establishing their own codes of conduct, dispute resolution methods, and environmental ethics, they protected their autonomy and their identity. Their constitutions operate as dynamic documents, expanding into the community’s needs while rooted in their values.
The self-governing villages of India remind us that democracy is not a top-down product but rather a bottom-up practice. When communities assemble and begin to develop their own governing structures, they achieve the most fundamental type of freedom: the possibility of establishing their own collective futurity. These emergent informal democracies also challenge us to reconsider what a governing system even means. Even in a world with 1.4 billion people, we understand that real power can be at the hands of the governed (and the governed do have real power), one village at a time.