  This work has two intertwined components: first, as part of a research
programme it introduces a new methodology for identifying `power-centres' in
rural societies of developing countries in general and then applies that in the
specific context of contemporary rural India for addressing some debates on the
dynamics of power in rural India. We identify the nature of `local' rural
institutions based on primary data collected by ourselves (in 2013 and 2014).
We took 36 villages in the states of Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh - 12
in each of these states - as the sites for our observation and data collection.
We quantify nature of institutions from data on the day-to-day interactions of
households in the spheres of economy, society and politics. Our household
survey shows that there is substantial variation in power structure across
regions. We identified the presence of `local elites' in 22 villages out of 36
surveyed. We conducted a follow-up survey, called `elite survey', to get
detailed information about the identified elite households. We observe that
landlordism has considerably weakened, land has ceased to be the sole source of
power and new power-centres have emerged. Despite these changes, caste,
landownership and patron-client relation continue to be three important pillars
of rural power structure.
