“Explain the role of community power structure in the political decision-making processes in the society. Are power and authority getting broad based in India today?” (1984)
A community power structure is the stable pattern of influence among the individuals, groups and institutions of a community. It matters for political decision-making because formal bodies such as councils, legislatures and panchayats decide only what informal structures allow onto the agenda, and their decisions are carried out through those same structures. Power is broad based when many groups can shape decisions. Authority is broad based when that capacity is also legitimate, grounded in law and consent rather than birth or wealth.
Role in political decision-making
- Setting the agenda. In Floyd Hunter’s Atlanta (Community Power Structure, 1953), a business elite settled policy on urban renewal informally and politicians then enacted it. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz (1962) showed that such structures also produce non-decisions, keeping inconvenient issues off the agenda.
- Brokering between village and state. F. G. Bailey (Politics and Social Change: Orissa in 1959, 1963) described brokers: local men who translate villagers’ demands into the idiom of parties and officials, and deliver votes in return.
- Factional bargaining. Paul R. Brass (Factional Politics in an Indian State, 1965) showed that Congress factions in Uttar Pradesh, built on caste and landholding alliances, decided ticket distribution and the fate of policies.
- Converting old authority into new office. Anand Chakravarti (Contradiction and Change, 1975) found that in a Rajasthan village the traditionally dominant Rajputs first captured the new panchayat. Electoral competition later obliged their leaders to court lower-caste voters.
- Pluralist variant. Where structures are dispersed, as Robert A. Dahl (Who Governs?, 1961) found in New Haven, different coalitions prevail on different issues, and decision-making becomes bargaining among them.
Are power and authority getting broad based in India?
Yes, in form and increasingly in substance:
- The 73rd and 74th Amendments (1992) created about 32.29 lakh elected panchayat representatives, 46.6% of them women, with reserved seats for SCs and STs.
- PESA, 1996 makes the gram sabha’s consent central in Fifth Schedule areas.
- The RTI Act, 2005 lets citizens question decisions, and subaltern-led parties turned numerical strength into governmental authority.
But unevenly:
- Proxy authority. A Ministry of Panchayati Raj advisory panel (report, 2025) found that the effective participation of elected women remains low in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Rajasthan, where husbands and male relatives often exercise power. It recommended exemplary penalties for proven proxy leadership. Authority has widened faster than power.
- Elite capture. Where land and caste inequality is sharp, the gram sabha is not a level forum, and dominant groups continue to set the agenda.
- Devolution without resources. States have transferred functions to local bodies without matching funds and staff, so key decisions still move upward.
- Centralised parties. High commands choose candidates, which confirms Robert Michels’s iron law of oligarchy at the apex even as the base widens.
Conclusion
Community power structures remain the hidden layer in which decisions are shaped before, and after, they are formally taken. In India, the circle of those holding legitimate office has widened remarkably. Control over agendas, money and implementation lags behind, however. Power becomes broad based fastest where social inequality has already fallen, as Kerala’s People’s Plan Campaign (1996) showed.