The central thesis of most analyses of State politics in India seems to revolve around the idea of plurality and diversity — in terms of regions, religions, culture, languages, premises of political mobilisation, identities and, not least, ‘levels of development’. Also central to a large number of writings on the issue is the idea of ‘development’ as a central defining feature of the political economy landscape of India. Thus, while one set of what is seen to be a central feature celebrates diversity and plurality, the second (and often much more dominant) factor — that of development — stresses uniformity and homogenisation.
This article seeks to analyse this paradox with the help of empirical datasets from Jharkhand and argues that the latter — homogenising notion of development — is perhaps ill-suited to an analysis of the dynamics of Indian politics, contoured as it is on geographical and political boundaries or ‘regions’ while much of the ‘real’ politics follows a socio-political trajectory, be it caste, identity, religion or, indeed, ‘region’.
The first section proposes some conceptual concerns of the article; the second section presents empirical datasets from Jharkhand; while the third section offers generalisations by way of conclusion.
I The Development Discourse and Challenges
The meaning, content and objectives of ‘development’ are a matter of increasingly intense debate in the social sciences. This term can and has been used to refer to a wide variety of processes in the socio-political sphere: qualitative change; development as an activity aimed at improvement; in an evaluative sense to denote progress; or to refer to the degree of progress in realising a particular version of capitalist system.1
The idea of development can be traced to at least the advent of capitalism in the 15th and 16th centuries, as also to the ‘advent of industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth century’, inspiring thinkers such as Condorcet and Kant to ‘conceive of a “universal history” which would disclose the cumulative pattern and meaning of it all.2 However, Hegel and Marx were the decisive innovators who can be seen as ‘true originators of development theory’.3
In the contemporary sense, what is seen as ‘development’ is of a much more recent origin: the body of literature that emerged in the post-World War era primarily concerned itself with the question of rebuilding Europe from its war-time devastation as also finding instrumentalities of transforming the economies of western Europe and making them more productive. With decolonisation, a part of this concern was also directed at transformation of former colonies into modern and vibrant economies.4 This literature essentially views development as being initiated in 1945 with the establishment of Bretton Woods institutions and offers a unilinear trajectory of growth of the paradigm comprising of ‘economic growth and modernisation theories, … theories of “underdevelopment”, … neo-liberalism and the Washington consensus’.5 Three features marked this paradigm of development:
- essentialisation of developing countries and their populations as homogenous;
- unconditional belief in the concept of progress and in the ‘marketability’ of society; and
- importance of the (nation) state as an analytical frame of reference along with political and scientific confidence posed in its role for achieving such progress.6
Important critiques from postcolonial studies, gendered perspectives and subaltern approaches along with alternative visions of ‘development’ have, over the past three decades, significantly pluralised this discourse of development. Rooted in the increasing disenchantment with the trajectory of growth-led development, which viewed inequity, adverse environmental and social impacts of such development and the resultant homogenisation as the costs of development, a number of robust critiques have emerged since the decade of 1970s. Starting with Ivan Illich’s7 critique of the school system, there emerged a series of incisive analysis of the notion, process and outcomes of the development paradigm. This literature, which is collectively called post-development theory,8 is often seen as ‘a radical reaction to the dilemmas of development’.9 This set of literature, ‘drawing inspiration from the discursive turn in the social sciences and local and indigenous knowledge’, aspires to ‘move away from the centring of economic relations’, thereby offering a wider critique of development.10 Important concerns of post-development literature, in addition of a plurality of approach to development, have been issues of rights, justice, gendered development and equity. It is here that the case of the tribals in Jharkhand links up to offer an alternative meaning to ‘region’, defined in terms of socio-political rights rather than in spatial/geographical regions.
Such rethinking of the ‘region’ must be premised on the following concerns:
- The idea that ‘development’ is merely a matter of correct modelling and can be seen in terms of imbalances between geographical or spatial regions is evocative of the modernisation theory-led paradigm put forward by the Princeton school theorists. In this paradigm, it was argued that societal groups would benefit equally from the fruits of development — an argument that has been found unsubstantiated all over the world. On the contrary, evidence suggests that it is possible that a particular region may develop (in terms of various economic indicators) but significant societal groups within the region may not benefit from such processes.
- Mainstream development literature often locates such developmental imbalances as the ‘root cause’ of identity mobilisation in the mainstream development literature. The kernel of identity, however, is not located in the developmental imbalances but in the socio-political and cultural processes of the relevant societal group. Hence, the stress on a socio-political redefinition of the ‘region’.
- Besides, much of political contestation at the state level in India seems to take the shape and form of politics of identity. The premises, boundaries, self-definitions and mode of articulation of such politics of identity may vary from region to region and case to case but there seems to be almost no serious contestation of the political space (with the state as well as with other similarly politically articulate groups) that is not rooted in (and often articulated through) the lens of politics of identity.11 Further, ‘development’ is often used as an additional ground for such politics of identity — another imperative for redefining the ‘region’ in socio-political terms rather than the spatial.
- The main issues in the question of development, as the post-development theory shows, are not merely those of the economic growth and development but of ensuring equity and justice in a participative framework for all sections of the socio-political landscape.
This concern becomes even more important when a historically marginalised section of the population such as the tribal communities is analysed.
The next part of this section offers some conceptual anchors to analyse the question of developmental imbalances before examining the empirical evidence from Jharkhand.
Theoretical Anchors: Liberal State and the Discourse of Autonomy
The fundamental principles of liberal democracies — basic individual civil rights and political rights — ‘are well-articulated both in the actual functioning of Western liberal democracies and in the tradition of Western political theory’. However, ‘it is difficult to define the basic features of a liberal-democratic approach to managing ethno-cultural diversity’,12 including the myth of ‘ethno-cultural neutrality’ of the state. This myth lies at the roots of the inability of the modern rationalist liberal state in dealing with the diverse claims of rights placed before it by highly mobilised identities premised on cultural factors and demanding autonomy. The state has responded in a rather ad hoc fashion with responses which cover the entire spectrum, ranging from conceding minority cultural rights to outright denial of all such claims.
‘The emergence of ethnicity and minority rights on the political theory mainstream agenda can be traced back to John Rawls writings on pluralism and consensus as the essence of liberal democratic thinking’, which created a large literature engaging with the liberalism–communitarian divide. Autonomy of the individual was pitted against the arguments in favour of ‘a broader communal socialisation in a historically rooted cultur...
