Hope beyond the squalor—the police panchayat of Mumbai

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article discusses an informal dispute settlement body, the “police panchayat”, that has been flourishing in Mumbai since the early years of this century. The police panchayat is entirely staffed and run by unpaid community workers in and from the slums, most of them women of little education. At the same time, the organization has the imprimatur of the Mumbai police force—so in a sense it is a hybrid body, not entirely a creation of civil society. These community workers are drawn from a wider body of women, and some men too, who are part of an organization founded by Jockin Arputham, a long-time organizer of the poor in Mumbai.The police panchayat was conceived as a body to resolve “petty disputes” in the slums and to liaise with the police force. Instead, its major efforts have been to resolve family conflicts in the context of a judicial and social landscape where such support and mediation have been almost entirely lacking.The future of the police panchayat is far from assured and there are manifest tensions in its make-up—not least, the importance and value of the connection with the police. But the record of the panchayat does suggest that there are important possibilities for bottom-up community action in the slums, and perhaps elsewhere in India, that take a fresh and inclusive approach to achieving peace and harmony, if not always justice, in particularly challenging circumstances.