Okabe, Jun-ichi, and Bakshi, Aparajita (2016), A New Statistical Domain in India: An Enquiry into Village Panchayat Databases, Tulika Books, New Delhi, pp. 382.

My review in Japanese appears in Statistics, the journal of the Japanese Society of Economic Statistics.

The review begins by introducing the book series, mentioning that the book is part of the Agrarian Studies Series of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies. Professor V. K. Ramachandran is the Series Editor and Professor Jun-ichi Okabe is a close friend and collaborator of Professor Ramachandran. Dr Aparajita Bakshi is also associated with the Foundation.

The subject matter of the book deals with the relation between village panchayats and the statistical data system in India. In the review I provide a brief explanation of the Indian system of local government, i.e., the panchayati raj system, and a brief summary of each chapter.

I suggest in the review that the current relationship between villages and statistical data systems in India is similar to the Chosonze system that was prevalent in the mid-Meiji era (1868-1911) in Japan. Chosonze, or the development plan for each village, was formulated based on survey data collected in individual questionnaires canvassed with each household. The items in the survey were very similar to those included in the “village schedule on basic statistics.” Why is it that a household-level survey could be conducted in Japan whereas the Government of India cannot carry out such a household questionnaire-based survey?

There are, in my view, two possible reasons. The first is the financial condition of villages. Villages in the Meiji era were not financially supported by the government, unlike villages in present-day India. Therefore Indian villages may be characterized as a branch of the distribution system rather than an independent local government, and the main issue is not “democracy” within a village but “democracy” in the distribution system. The second reason relates to the nature of relationships within the village. Farmers in Japan cultivated together because they used the same irrigation system and thus needed to work together. In contrast, farmers in India have a tendency to operate individually rather than collectively. This adds to the difficulty of data collection.