For Dr Ravi Nagarajaiah, God, clearly, is in the details. While other panchayats in Karnataka welcomed the state government’s recent decision to distribute money for cleaning up tanks, the Tumkur zilla (district) panchayat president rejected it after poring over the proposal. He factored in the expenses, including the costs of possible pilferage, and concluded that only a few truckloads of silt could be removed with the money the government had promised.

“There was no scope for quality work,” explains Nagarajaiah. “This is what happens when you let clueless bureaucrats take decisions on rural areas,” says the 36-year-old doctor.

The government was forced to reconsider the amount — giving a boost to Nagarajaiah’s reputation of a man who gets work done. Not surprisingly, his office is teeming with villagers who have come with their demands from all parts of Tumkur, 70 kilometres from Bangalore. From a retired village headmaster who wants a drinking water pipeline to his former school to a parent who needs a scholarship for his academically-inclined daughter, Nagarajaiah encounters all sorts of issues.

But Nagarajaiah never dreamt this would be his work — not even a year ago when representatives from villages where he organised regular medical camps urged him to fight for a panchayat post from Amruthuru. “I was happy with my practice and was teaching in a medical college. The money was decent and life was quite good. But that was then; this is now,” says Nagarajaiah, recalling how his father, a former minister in the Karnataka government, had opposed his entry into politics.

Parvez Ali Mir (third from right), software engineer and sarpanch of Lachipora in Kashmir’s Baramulla district

But Nagarajaiah is no longer an oddity in panchayats. Across the country, and especially in Karnataka, well-heeled professionals like him have rolled up their sleeves and jumped into the electoral fray at a level where they feel they can make a difference — in rural India.

Rural politics, by all accounts, is not what it used to be. With cities extending their boundaries, former villages are part of towns. And urban dwellers are taking a plunge into rural politics.

“Not just at Tumkur, we have engineers, doctors, lawyers and PhD holders in Bangalore (Rural), Mandya, Mysore and other districts,” says Karnataka rural development and panchayat raj minister Jagadish Shettar. He points out that most members of zilla panchayats are graduates. “Even gram (village) panchayats have graduates.”

Almost 20 years after Rajiv Gandhi introduced the devolution of power through amendments to the Panchayati Raj Act, the face of the Indian panchayat is slowly changing. Edging out the old politicians who ran the village, block and district-level bodies are young professionals. Around 80 per cent of all the elected members in the recent panchayat elections in Karnataka are newcomers.

“One of Rajiv Gandhi’s major objectives was to encourage qualified youngsters to take up politics at the grassroots level. And I see that dream being fulfilled now,” says member of Parliament and former Union panchayati raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar.

ON RURAL TURF: Sudhakar Lal (centre), a mechanical engineer in Koratagere zilla panchayat constituency, 65km from Tumkur.

Karnataka is not alone in introducing young professionals to the dust and grime of rural politics. In Haradaspur Diyara in Bihar’s Patna district, Ajay Kumar, a final-year engineering student, has been elected panchayat chief. Gurmeet Singh Bajwa, an England-returned MBA, became the sarpanch of his village Bajwa in Kashmir. Raja Parvez Ali Mir, a 27-year-old software engineer and actor, won the sarpanch’s election from Lachipora in Kashmir’s Baramulla district.

“My village had seen no progress despite scores of government programmes,” says Mir. “I wanted to change it. Now people expect everything from me. I don’t even have the time for a quiet lunch or dinner at home.”

Kumar has a busy schedule too. “I am in constant touch with my village and once I complete my studies, I will be back there full time and concentrate on its development,” says the student of a Jamshedpur engineering college.

But for the professionals who have never tasted politics, fighting elections was not easy. “Caste equations, money and several other factors are considered before one can file one’s nomination. Some people spent between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 1 crore for a single seat in our district,” says N.C. Kala, a 26-year-old Bangalore-based software engineer who won from Tumkur’s Chikthotlukere constituency.

Sitting in her father’s farmhouse surrounded by coconut trees and mango orchards in Nelahal village on the Tumkur-Pune Highway, Kala — who has 20 people working in her software firm — says she is learning the ropes of her new job. “I was not in favour of joining politics. But when my father said I should give it a try, I thought why not. Now I understand the satisfaction of serving the people,” says Kala, who travels to her constituency every weekend.

FIRM TO FARM: N.C. Kala, a software engineer who won from Tumkur’s Chikthotlukere constituency

But unlike Kala, who comes from a political family, it was an uphill task for H.S. Ravishankar, an electrical engineer and a first time zilla panchayat member. He faced a string of electoral losses before finally winning a seat in the December election. “I never gave up. I kept visiting villagers and listening to their problems, and I also unearthed a few corruption cases involving road contractors and that had a good effect on the voters,” says Ravishankar, 42.

Deve Gowda, a sarpanch from Murkondally in Tumkur district, maintains that fresh-faced technocrats — who are backed by different political parties — have won the confidence of people within a very short span of time. And they are better at their work, he says, because they are not as “shameless” as most politicians. “They are worried about being abused by the people if they don’t deliver,” reasons Gowda.

The vigour with which many professionals have been working in the districts is also being appreciated. “They have a vision for their constituencies. More importantly, they have been asking the right questions,” says Shivayogi Kalasad, CEO, zilla panchayat, Tumkur. This thought is endorsed by G. Sathyavathi, CEO of zilla panchayat, Mysore. “They earn everybody’s respect because they study the problems of their constituencies very closely, which helps solve problems.”

Elected members also say that people tend to have more faith in them because of their education and relative affluence. “Our powers are limited, but people still believe that we can deliver as the propensity for corruption among the educated is less,” says Kala. Sudhakar Lal, a mechanical engineer and first time panchayat election winner, says, “I earn a fair bit of money through agriculture and small-time contracts. Money is not an issue for me. My only aim is to serve the people and earn a name for myself.”

Money, however, is an issue in rural India these days. The 2011-2012 Union Budget allocated Rs 87,800 crore for rural schemes that include the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Indira Awas Yojana. These programmes are monitored through locally elected bodies. Karnataka alone has allocated around Rs 38,000 crore for such programmes.

“Many people think that we are here to feather our beds, but the responsibility is ours to prove them wrong,” says Nagarajaiah.

Since each zilla panchayat has a budget of Rs 500-800 crore, politicians understand the importance of controlling the purse strings. Arehalli Ramesh, a zilla panchayat member and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker, says the control of these bodies is considered important by political parties.

“These are seen as cash cows, with even gram panchayat elections being fought unofficially on party lines,” says Ramesh. And for this support, elected members pay back with loyalty, posts for party workers and development work in party strongholds.

With so much money at stake, the question being asked by a cynical few is how the professionals expect to recoup the money they’ve spent on the elections. C.R. Umesh, a 42-year-old civil engineer from Naduru constituency, however, sees it as a one-time expense. “Fighting an election is more about prestige and not about money. I look at the expenses as a one-time spending. Now the onus is on me to show results on the ground to win elections in the future,” he says.

Some see the panchayat as the first step towards national politics. “I hope that I will rise to the national level some day,” Bajwa says. “That obviously is my ambition.”

Aiyar believes that’s the way a politician should grow. “Very good careers can be made by those fighting elections at the three stages (see box) of the panchayati raj. By the time they make it to the state and even the national levels, they will have a sound grounding in local politics,” he says.

But Bhagvan Das, head of the Citizen’s Alliance for Rural Development and Training Society, a Bangalore-based non-government organisation that has worked extensively with elected representatives in rural areas, says it is too early to pass judgement on the efficiency of the new members.

“We motivated around 20 women to fight gram panchayat polls a few years ago. Most of them won but many lost enthusiasm and then became unpopular,” he says. Das stresses the elected members have to deliver. “Let us wait and see,” he says.