George, Anisha <br/><br/>
Gharoghari Pudhari : The transformation of political competition in villages 

 - Economic & Political Weekly   
 - 60(49), Dec 6, 2025: p.52-62 
<br/><br/> Democratic decentralisation, while widely appreciated in principle, is similarly panned in practice for its suggested ineffectiveness in transforming village power structures. Drawing on village ethnography and longue durée analysis, this paper finds the above notions untenable in the past and present, suggesting that power has always been contested in the village. Further, reform, far from ineffective, has managed to formally end centuries of feudal authority and expand the scope of political competition within a few decades, however unevenly. Such competition is notable not only in relation to village structures in the past but also higher tiers of the polity in the present.- Reproduced <br/><br/>https://www.epw.in/journal/2025/49/review-rural-affairs/gharoghari-pudhari.html<br/>