Power, Protest and Participation

Local Elites and the Politics of Development in India

Subrata K. Mitra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000424447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book, first published in 1992, examines the attitudes of local elites – the hinge between Indian state and rural society – towards protest and participation in development, illuminating arguments about the nature of the state as well as the development process. It looks at the role of local elites in India both as the representatives of the state and of the rest of rural society, and explains their importance in the country's development. The book deals with the elites' contribution to the credibility of the state and examines the strategies through which they manipulate the allocation of resources and influence the pace and direction of social change. It contrasts the rural elites in two areas, one more economically advanced than the other. The elites in the first area were shown to be capable of combining institutional participation with radical protest, whilst in the other they tended to rely on state channels to achieve reform. The author concludes that despite the different settings, both groups were informed, active and responsive to political conditions. This contrasts with the conventional view that local elites of the dominant castes oppress the lower ones by obstructing reforms, for reasons of self-interest.

1

Local Elites and the Politics of Rural Development

The Problem Defined

Thanks to modest but steady economic growth, mass communication and political competition, Indian society has changed greatly during the four decades since independence. Though per capita income has remained low by the standards of the rapidly industrialising countries of East Asia, the economy has practically doubled its volume during this period in aggregate terms. Economic change has affected traditional social bonds, without, however, irrevocably disrupting either the stability of the state or the democratic character of the political system. India’s relative success in securing stability, democracy and economic growth simultaneously has made her an exception to the turbulent history of most post-colonial states. This remarkable achievement has come under increasing strain during the closing years of the 1980s. But, in spite of the unrest in Punjab, Kashmir and Assam, the stability of the democratic political structure remains largely intact. The larger implications of this singular achievement go beyond the narrow domains of the area specialist. The book explores this broad theme, drawing primarily upon the experience of rural netas — drawn from the ranks of local leaders and elected representatives — who occupy the key position of intermediaries between the state and rural society.

Rural India to-day has been affected as much by attempts to change its political and economic form in recent decades as by its historical inheritance. Almost every State in India was affected by land reforms in the early 1950s, by the experiments in local self-government through panchayati raj in the late 1950s, by the institution of highly localised territorial constituencies since 1951 and government policies aimed at the steady expansion of the market of agricultural commodities and labour, particularly since the 1960s. In each such initiative, a significant variation of normative theory was used. The socialist aspirations of Nehru and the myth of the independent peasant producer were intertwined in the policies of land reforms. The neo-Gandhian approach, embodied in panchayati raj, the myth of the nuclear village and community development were juxtaposed with an equally powerful belief in the rational individual as the basis of voting decisions. Much reliance was placed on the ability of such individuals to identify both parties and candidates with reasonable certainty about the relationship of issues to voting choices. The market as the driving force behind production, consumption, credit and communication was promoted with equal vigour as central planning and bureaucratic implementation also aimed at achieving the same objective. These ideas, whether indigenous to India or gleaned from elsewhere, were formulated at the apex of the system and applied in a highly standardised form that took little account of regional and subregional variations in social structure and agrarian economy.¹

The major objective of field research on which this book is based was not to find out whether any one of these initiatives has been successful or not, but simply to discover whether the process has left the local elites confident of their ability to use the new resources and new conditions of modern India. This concern can be expressed in terms of three distinct but related sets of issues.

The first issue refers to the interaction between the process of externally stimulated change and local elites, strategically placed at the interface of rural society and the institutions of the modern state.² Local elites, through a repertoire of political strategies, seek to manipulate the allocation of resources and to influence the pace and direction of social change. This poses a range of questions for field research. What evidence if any do we have of the filtering down of the ideas aimed at rural India from the national and regional centres? What kinds of ‘echoes’ have they created at the lowest level of the system, measured in terms of the agenda of development formulated by local elites? What conclusions can we draw from the kinds of ‘problems’ of development the rural netas formulate, the solutions they envisage, the developmental agency they prefer and the political action, both institutional and radical, that they undertake in their efforts to their objectives?

The second issue, introduced in chapter two and used throughout the text as a significant source of variation in the attitudes of local elites, is the remarkable regional diversity of India. To what extent does the regional variation in the material and social conditions and historical legacies lead to different responses to the stimuli of development policies and projects, conceived and in many cases diffused centrally? How does the knowledge of the parts help us to comment on the ability of the whole to cohere and to generate sufficient momentum to ensure future development?

The third set of questions, concerning the legitimacy and resilience of the state, follows from the first two. How successful has the political system been in achieving its goals of political participation, economic development and social change? What is at the origin of social protest and how does this relate to institutional participation? What implications can we draw from the responses of local elites to the issues of participation, mobilisation and mass protest, for democracy and development in India, and what are the limitations of this model?

Putting Local Development in the Context of Social and Economic Change

The early literature on political protest related radicalism to mostly a sense of relative deprivation.³ These conjectures have subsequently been modified, taking into consideration the extent of benefit that the individual can expect from the alternative strategies of participation or radical action. These considerations involve other factors like the perception of risk, the cost of failure, and the sense of efficacy on the part of the actor and the state of organisation of the potential beneficiaries.⁴ Yet another issue involved in the transition from the sentiment of relative deprivation to political action is the nature of the reward sought. For, if the prize is a public good which will benefit many potential beneficiaries, then it might be irrational for any given individual to take the initiative for radical action. The issue of perception is critical to the action that might or might not follow. Do the leaders of local communities perceive the potential rewards in terms of individual good, welfare of the people of their social class or group, or of the village community as a whole?⁵ These issues come within the scope of the book because the overall objective is not merely to describe the empirical reality at the local level but to look for relationships between the political process and the transformation of social and economic relations at the level of the village.

This is more complicated than might appear at first sight because Indian data on development indicate conflicting trends. On the one hand, the record of achievements of the past forty years in key areas such as literacy, life expectancy and the infrastructure of a modern economy, seen against the stagnation of the centuries preceding independence is truly impressive. ‘The image of India as a hopelessly poor society no longer reflects reality’, says an influential article in Foreign Policy. ‘Major economic progress, especially in the last ten years, has brought not only economic growth but also increased diversification and reduced vulnerability to bad weather and other shocks.’⁶ While the average rate of growth has been rather low in comparison to the newly industrialising countries of East Asia, its result has been ‘some truly significant changes in the structure of the Indian economy, attributable partly to the planning mechanism, partly to secular forces’.⁷ On the other hand, hidden behind the façade of these impressive indicators of growth at the macro level, there is the other face of development in India. Statistics released by the government itself show about 40 per cent of the population living below a modestly defined poverty line of an annual income of less than $100 per capita.⁸ The slow rate of growth and uneven distribution of prosperity have led to a lively debate between the advocates of growth through better technology, management and investment on the one hand and the partisans of radical change on the other. A large group of Indian economists despair of the benefits of development ever reaching the poor and needy. In addition to their structural exclusion from the growing sectors of the economy, even public welfare meant for them hardly reaches the target, for it is alleged that standing between the deprived and the state is a human wall of the locally powerful and socially dominant who have managed to corner most if not all of the fruits of progress.⁹

The fact remains however that whereas Indian development has exacerbated the economic and social vulnerability of some sections of the population and brought greater prosperity to some than others, the growth of democratic institutions has given a voice and the political means to those with a grievance to launch a protest movement of their own. V. S. Naipaul, long critical of the post-independence record of India, has noticed the change:

the idea of freedom has gone everywhere in India. Independence was worked for by people more or less at the top; the freedom it brought has worked its way down. People everywhere have ideas now of who they are and what they owe themselves.

However, the growing sense of empowerment, enfranchisement and entitlement manifest themselves as much through enthusiastic participation in voting and political campaigns as in radical protest.

The liberation of spirit that has come to India could not come as release alone. In India, with its layer below layer of distress and cruelty, it had to come as disturbance. It had to come as rage and revolt. India was now a country of a million little mutinies.

(Naipaul (1990), p. 517)

This is the major difference between India and other post-colonial societies with representative institutions on the one hand and the stable, industrial democracies of the west on the other. In the latter, mass participation was introduced after the industrial revolution had pulverised the rights and life-styles of the parochial peasant and integrated them to the urban industrial society and economy. In the former, on the other hand, universal adult franchise was introduced by the post-colonial regimes as a logical culmination to the anti-colonial movement. The post-colonial state was thus caught in a paradox where its democratic credentials required it to turn to the society for political support and legitimacy, whereas its agenda of development and nation-building involved the destruction of the customary rights and parochial ways of parts of the society.¹⁰

How successful has the state been in reconciling the twin goals of the removal of mass poverty and the diffusion of economic democracy on the one hand and the continuation of democratic liberties and political competition on the other? The large measure of agreement which prevailed among the specialists of Indian politics during the 1950s and 1960s on this issue has given way to a sharp polarisation. Both Kothari and Morris-Jones, whose early works laid the foundations of the theoretical knowledge of the flexibility and strength of India’s political institutions, appear less sure of this in their more recent works.¹¹ With the sole exception of the Rudolphs, a large number of writers on India’s institutional structure share this scepticism.¹² Field research on which this book is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Glossary
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 LOCAL ELITES AND THE POLITICS OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT
• 2 THE REGIONAL CONTEXT: THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKGROUND OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT
• 3 THE ELEMENTS OF DESIGN
• 4 SETTING THE LOCAL AGENDA: THE PROBLEMS, PROGRESS AND AGENCY OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT
• 5 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF LOCAL CONFLICT: UNEQUAL BENEFITS, RADICAL PROTEST AND SOCIAL COHESION
• 6 INSTITUTIONAL PARTICIPATION AND RADICAL PROTEST: THE STATE, SOCIETY AND ROOM FOR MANOEUVRE IN THE MIDDLE
• 7 CONCLUSION: THE TWO FACES OF DEVELOPMENT: PROTEST AND PARTICIPATION IN INDIA
• Appendix: The Background of the Survey
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index