CHANGING PATTERNS OF RURAL LEADERSHIP IN

CONTEMPORARY TIMES

ABSTRACT
Rural leadership has undergone significant transformations in recent times, driven by factors
such as globalization, technological advancements, and evolving societal dynamics. The
village panchayats at the grassroot level are the agencies through which most of the
developmental works are carried out. Therefore, the leadership of these village panchayats
plays a vital role in the successful implementation of these programmes. The aim of this paper
is to study and to know about the changing pattern of leadership in rural society. This research
is descriptive that is it is based on secondary sources. In ancient India rural leadership was
hierarchy based but in the present time more importance is given to education, democratic
power came as the backbone for leadership, Panchayati Raj Institutions provides a strong
power structure which is based on restitutive law, one can also see participation of women at
grassroots level. With the help of 73rd and 74th Amendment one-third reservation of seats is
provided for SCs / STs Women. Also, in states Bihar, UP, Haryana reservation is 50% for both
male and female.

INTRODUCTION
Leadership is a behaviour that affects the behaviour of other person. It is an activity of
influencing people to cooperate to some goal which they came to find desirable. According to
Oxford dictionary leadership is “The action of leading a group of people or an
organisation.”
There are four main components of leadership:
• Leader
• Follower
• Situation
• Task
A leader is someone who leads, inspires and govern someone. Has sizable following and has
significant influence over that following. Leadership is a collective action:
• It is an interactive process.
• Continuous course of act Leadership in rural areas requires particular traits .involving
many elements that interact with each other is referred to as a process.
When we talk about the power structure of rural India. There are 2 types of power structures
these are:
• Traditional power structure depend on leaders based on caste and hereditary means
position will be transferred from generation to generation. Leaders were more and more
into religious thinking means conservative nature.
 • Modern power structure is based on 3 modern values liberty, fraternity and equality.
Here hereditary is replaced by eligibility, caste was replaced by achievements, leaders
have rational thinking means here leaders are liberal who wanted to bring changes in
society rather than being conservative.
In order to modernize the power structure 73rd amendment was brought in 1994. when
democratic decentralisation came in 1992 the lowest unit of country that is village was included
in decision making process in order to ensure the development of village also known as
decentralisation of power. The local democratic decentralisation also introduced us with the
three tier system also known as the local self-government. Where the decisions were taken
at the district level then it goes to the state level and after that to the central level.
Leadership in rural areas requires particular traits. It is an interesting social phenomenon. In
villages, the degree of interaction between the leader and villagers is high. Various groups in
villages determine the pattern of leadership in villages.
Leadership in rural areas functions amidst of small groups. The human relations approach is
also important, as most of the villagers are ignorant, innocent, needy and sensitive. Various
writers have tried to define the term ‘leadership’. However, still a comprehensive definition for
the term does not exist.
According to Lindeman, ‘a leader is an individual whose relations, judgments and feelings are
accepted (responded to) by the group, as the bases of belief and action.’ In the view of Allport,
‘leadership according to our present usage means the direct, face-to-face contact between
leader and followers; it is personal social control.’ From the above definitions, leadership may
be described as the interaction between leaders and followers in a particular situation. It
involves attempts on the part of the leader (influence) to affect the behaviour of followers in a
situation.

Some of the essential characteristics of leadership are as follows:

1. Leadership traits—though there is no general agreement on the qualities of leaders in all

situations, still there are certain personality traits, which will be helpful in all situations. Dwight
Sanderson emphasizes on some qualities such as good physique, strength and stature, self-
assertiveness and self-confidence, superior mental ability, amiability, friendliness and
sympathy. Tead also mentions ten qualities of a leader—physical and nervous energy, a sense
of purpose and direction, enthusiasm, friendliness and affection, integrity, technical mastery,
decisiveness, intelligence, teaching skill and faith.
2. Leadership is related to situation. It functions only in accordance with the prevailing
conditions.
3. Leadership involves group mechanism. All our behaviour, ideals, and thoughts are mold in
terms of the group, which we belong to. Particularly, the rural leaders are essentially a part of
group mechanism.
A leader has to perform the following functions:
a. He represents the whole group.
b. He speaks on behalf of the group.
c. He co-ordinates the groups activities.
d. He helps the group in sorting out the plans for achieving the goals.
e. He is responsible for the evaluation of the progress of group.
4. The behaviour of the leader and the relationship of the leader with people may differ from
situation to situation.
The rural leadership may arise due to prestige of any sort, social or economic status, heredity,
seniority, election and recognition of training or technical ability. Before Independence, there
were informal leaders, who belonged mostly to the higher privileged castes, which do not have
numerical strength but were dominant in all aspects of life. This group occupied an important
position in the social and political fields.
The numerically large group belonged to lower castes and did not possess much power and
money to compete with these privileged classes. With the spread of education, introduction of
adult franchise enabled the people belonging to lower-middle and backward castes to voice
their interest and participate in the political activities of the country.
Villagers, today, have become aware of the politics due to the introduction of elections for
public offices and penetration of party politics into the village level. As a result, coalitional and
linkage politics have gained prominence.
New leaders elected were young, educated and belonged to the middle-class agriculturists and
were successful in political mobilization through which they could gain positions at Village
Panchayats and cooperatives.
As they were prepared to build coalitions, which would cut across caste, class and kinship
bondages were disturbed. The new leaders were more receptive in adopting innovations and
were more cooperative with the government officials in implementing various community
development programmes.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
To study about the changing pattern of leadership in rural society and further to know about
the changing patterns of rural leadership in contemporary times.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Descriptive research is done that means it is based on secondary source.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Smart, (1919) in his study “Training a socialised rural leadership” present a tentative outline
of how the training of elementary teachers of rural schools has been replaced from temporary
basis to permanent basis. Here both primary and secondary data is been used. Given with the
help of the certain studies like ‘The report of the united states commissioner of education’,
‘The Maryland survey report’. The study area of this research was Minnesota where the
majority of trained teachers entering in the rural schools are graduates from the teacher training
departments in high school. There were 1121 of these graduates in 1914, 1318 recommended
for certification in 1915 and 1559 certificates granted in 1916. This study basically talks about
that how new teacher training institutions are expensive today but still important steps has been
taken by the state in rural education is to take these schools under supervision and further talks
about the outline of plan of organisation where it talks about that more scientifically organised
rural education should be present present and a firm foundation should be built for future
development in the most promising field.
Sirsikar, (1964) in his study “Leadership patterns in rural Maharashtra” the purpose of this
study was to know about the leadership pattern in rural Maharashtra. Here primary data was
collected through questionnaires in order to study the leadership pattern in rural Maharashtra.
The government of Maharashtra with the help of Gokhale Institute organised a series of
seminars in 1962 for all the office holders of the three tier system. Number of those who
attempted the seminar was 418, 306(73.2%) filled questionnaire which was present in their
regional language that is Marathi there was no possibility of pretesting the questionnaires. This
survey of the leader in rural Maharashtra points out that there is a perceptible trend towards the
concentration of social, economic and political power. The democratization of power has not
been reached to the poorer sections of society like the landless labours and schedule caste. It
also talks about that the power structure in Maharashtra has a mixed character both modern
(the leaders are elected through party ticket, by secret ballot and defined procedures) and
traditional (kinship and caste are evidence and the party structure itself is threatened with
infiltration by these traditional elements)
Oommen, (1970) in his study “Rural community Power Structure in India” the main focus on
studies on community power structure till now is on the methodological aspects of the problem.
While a number of important contributions on community power structure have come from
United States, this is relatively a non- touched area of research in non -American particularly
non-western societies namely India. In this paper power structure of four Indian villages is been
studied (Baranpura, Rajpura, Durgapura and Raghupura) with an objective to understand the
relationship between the community characteristics and power dispersion by collecting the
primary data.
Fritz, (1974) in his study “Community Development and Panchayati Raj Leadership in
Mysore” analyses the background characteristics of Panchayati Raj and community
development leaders at the Taluk level in Mysore state. The focus here is on Mysore Taluk
Development. The purpose is to compare BDO’s and Presidents background characteristics to
understand the type of values that bring to their roles and to determine the extent to which they
come from non-westernized or westernized segment of society. Data used in the analysis was
gathered between December 1970 and June 1971 when the president and BDO in each of 173
of the 175 Taluks that blanket rural Mysore were approached to participate in the study. Here
primary data was used by the means of either personal interviews or mail questionnaires. These
findings lent support to M.N. Srinivas contention noted earlier that both non-westernized and
westernized values are present in rural elites and both played a part in the processes of
determining rural leadership in India.
Gupta, (1966) in his study “Changing pattern of Rural Leadership” the evolution of leadership
in a village in the Sagar district of MP is the subject under the study. The village is situated on
the border of Sagar district. The ne4xt village is sumar in raisen district of erstwhile Bhopal
State this is a multi- caste village. Like Ahir, Daangis, Lodhis and Kurmis who all are
cultivators. There are three persons striving for leadership in this village Mr X Ahir, Mr Y
Brahmin, and Mr Z Lodhi. The aim is to study how these persons acquired, maintained and lost
their leadership. Using primary data one can see that Mr X was an institutional leader, Mr Y
rose from the position of hermit to political heights and Mr Z is a frank ruralist, and he has
fellow feelings for villagers and can challenge both Mr Y and Mr X by virtue of his valour.
Valour matched with financial soundness and high caste membership strengthen the claim of
rural leadership.
Ballard, et.al.,(2000) in their study “Mentorship and the Development of Rural Leadership”
focus on the experience of a 21-year mentoring relationship between two rural school
administrators, this paper describes 11 components of an effective working mentorship. These
elements are: establishing the relationship, the communications process, setting goals,
determining skills, time commitment, broadening the protégé’s horizons, additional benefits to
the protégé, types and extent of interventions, leadership versus teamwork, linkages and
connections, and benefits to the organization. By using analysis, reports and descriptive
methods. This experience reflects current trends in the business community in which job-
embedded learning, which includes mentoring, is considered to be a new paradigm for staff
development. There is a need to develop more formal recognition of mentoring as a tool or
avenue within a rural administrator's professional development program. Mentoring presents
educators with an alternative to workshop-based professional development and other more
traditional in-service learning programs and is more relevant to the situation of rural
administrators and educators. The real challenge, however, is to find the way by which this
entire activity can be incorporated into the academic accreditation process in a manner similar
to that utilized by proponents of prior learning assessment.
Ahmad W, et.al.,(2008)in their study “Women’s Political Participation and Changing Pattern
of Leadership in Rural areas of Uttar Pradesh” the objective of this paper is to know about the
women’s political participation and changing pattern of leadership in rural areas of UP. The
study is conducted on rural areas of UP, as regards to the state of UP, there was no
representation of women before 1885 in Panchayati Raj Institutions but after 1995 they
occupied 29.6% presentation. On the basis of the primary data collected in this study concludes
that leadership of women in the context of Uttar Pradesh is still at a growing stage. They are
still in the learning process to take up leadership roles.
Yadav, et.al.,(2016) in their study “Emerging forces in Rural Leadership” the objective of this
article is to examine the emerging forces in rural leadership. This paper talks about how till
now the communities or rich who guided by the destiny of rural leadership is now challenged
by the new developing class that was neglected or confined to its own caste. Talks about that
how the village leadership earlier is confronted by the new upcoming class. Even inter-rivalry
among rural leaders may be seen on the basis of caste and class alliances but with more and
more number of educated class in rural society helps to provide facilities in villages, sense of
quality, women participation all these have contributed in good direction.
Basera, et.al.,(2018) in their study “Opinion Leadership among farm women in hill district of
Uttarakhand State, India” aims to identify opinion leaders among farm women in hill districts
of Uttarakhand, who may not only enhance the pace of development by ensuring effective
extension but can also play a significant role to promote development initiatives at various
levels especially in agriculture and allied sectors. Besides, the present study analyzes the extent
to which opinion leadership is exhibited by these opinion leaders in the study area. Total 24
farm women were identified as opinion leaders with high in-degree centrality scores and
occupying the central positions in the communication network. While, the maximum
percentage of the opinion leaders (58.34%) showed low opinion leadership followed by 25 per
cent and 16.66 percent of opinion leaders who had high and low opinion leadership
respectively. Therefore, rather than delimiting the outcomes of the present investigation to
identification of opinion leaders and determination of their extent of opinion leadership, it
become more imperative to draw the possible reasons behind the selection of these opinion
leaders and hence provides a way for others to effectively select and involve these few
prominent individuals in successful planning and implementation of any developmental
programmes and strategies.
Ali,(2021) in his work “Women Leadership and Its Impact on Panchayati Raj Institution: A
Study Based on India's 6 Poorest Rural Regions (Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh” A landmark reform was made by India's Government during
1993 at 73rd Amendment of Constitution. The new law formally sanctioned functional
authorities for Panchayati Raj Institutes (PRIs) as a subject of State legislature and encouraged
easy women participation in grass root politics. Due to a number of socio-economic and
political complexities, initially, women participation in rural areas showed slow or no progress
in many States of India. Particularly, both women voting and participations were seen to be
scanty. Gradually, with great effort from Government and associated Capability Enhancement
Bodies, vision of 73rd amendment began taking a real form. The research objective works to
justify this constitutional reform. . Under this research six States of India are choose with the
poorest rural economy for this comparative analysis so that we can identify the most vital key
factors that are obstructing or else stimulating rural development by means of women
reservation in grass root politics. Analysis is done using statistical tools to observe the progress
of fluctuation trends that are happening in these six rural zones after implementation of 73rd
Amendment in Constitution.

CONCLUSION
In ancient India rural leadership was hierarchy based but in the present time more importance
is given to education, democratic power came as the backbone for leadership, Panchayati Raj
Institutions provides a strong power structure which is based on restitutive law, one can also
see participation of women at grassroots level. With the help of 73rd and 74th Amendment one-
third reservation of seats is provided for SCs / STs Women. Also, in states like Bihar, UP,
Haryana reservation is 50 the changing patterns of rural leadership offer immense potential for
rural development. However, addressing the existing loopholes is essential by investing in
capacity building, improving access to resources, promoting good governance, empowering
women, and engaging youth, we can create a more effective and inclusive rural leadership.
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