ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the study to the range of action that the gaon ka netas undertake to influence decision-makers at higher levels in order to achieve their development goals. The gaon ka netas are expected to look after the well being of their local community by virtue of local tradition even as the customary pressure on them to do so is itself on the decline because of the larger process of social and economic change. India’s local elites have themselves helped the process gain momentum through their complex repertoire of institutional participation and radical protest, based on culturally recognisable categories and sanctified by the halo of Gandhian satyagraha. The institutional apparatus and process of democracy, which during the four decades since independence have promoted new notions of entitlement, have affected the basic terms of discourse and the values which govern behaviour.
