Panchayat

 Subject: Panchayat

India is an anomaly, it lacks the Confucian hierarchical subservience of the Chinese, relying instead on a religious hierarchy, a mystical mix of gods and caste rules which impose there own order. The extension of craft skills into ‘make do and mend’ is one of their remarkable gifts the sight as the man sitting on his haunches hammering away with only the basic tools to frame a repair. This ingenuity lies all around with the unending regurgitation of repair and reuse. The rules of implementation, the health and safety regulation we so slavishly adhere to and which ties our hands in making repair too expensive is cast aside as people manufacture their own consideration of what’s safe and what’s not. The cables slung across an open space rather than burying them, the extension on an extension of an extension of a electrical socket as it sags from the wall under its own weight, the exposed connections waiting to give the unwary a shock. The cows and the dogs mixing in the street with equal irresponsibility, the humans and the cars forever reminding the pedestrian that in this chaotic democratic coming together, no rules apply.

The caste and community lend the Indian his place and his acceptance of that place. It’s designated by a higher power the power of tradition and is stronger than rational argument because without it, in all this confusion where would the individual be. Such is the emotional security, India’s deeper order, everything fixed and sanctified, people have their being in this chaos because it goes unchallenged.

In the enjoyable Indian comedy "Panchayat" the setting is that of a village in which the true character of rural India lives unaffected by the young city trained government administrator.  Little men little schemes, the comedy of restricted lives and highly philosophical speculation, real power long surrender, Hindu equilibrium confidently maintained. The high pitched jabber of what sounds like hysteria  is overlaid by the structure the roles people play in the village hierarchy and the government diktat, down to schemes about fertility and it's place, amongst many things is the proper importance of the administrator. It's a loverly comedic insight into the working of the Indian mind.