Radical rhetoric & practice
VENKATESH ATHREYA
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“While the powerful feel well-served by the system, the weak do not feel totally excluded”
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DEMOCRACY AND DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA: Atul Kohli; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 850.
Atul Kohli has been writing on Indian politics and development for over three decades now. This book subtitled ‘From Socialism to Pro-Business,’ is a collection of previously published essays. Of the 15 essays in the volume, five were published during the 1980s, three during the present decade, and the remaining during the 1990s. Taken together, they thus cover a period of very significant changes in India’s polity and economy. The essays are organised thematically, with four dealing with political change followed by five on Indian political economy, and the last six on select States. All the essays are highly readable and collectively provide an interesting perspective on the political economy and sociology of Indian development since independence.
State-society framework
In the introduction, the author says that his scholarship is structured by the ‘state-society’ framework which he traces to Weber and Marx, the defining features of this framework being a rejection of methodological individualism and an insistence that “...markets and states are deeply embedded in societies.” While agreeing with Marx that economic (class) forces are important for social dynamics in the long run, he also shares the Weberian assumption that “…state and society, or patterns of authority and association, are empirically related but analytically autonomous.” He states that the state-society frame of reference he has adopted “…shares an elective affinity with social-democratic preferences.” The implication of this, according to Kohli, is that one can argue, while upholding democracy, for a vigorous role for the state in promoting economic growth and welfare, even while worrying about the increasing role and power of big business in social and political life.
Weak governance
Kohli argues that democracy has been consolidated in India but governance remains weak. The key to consolidation, says he, lies in the delicate balance repeatedly struck between the forces of centralisation and decentralisation and the fact that “... the interests of the powerful in society have been served without fully excluding the weaker groups.”
He correctly notes: “While the rhetoric of the Indian state has often been redistributive…political practice has been considerably more conservative, eschewing any decisive redistribution.” Yet he argues that this contradiction — radical rhetoric but conservative practice — may have strengthened Indian democracy because, while the powerful feel well-served by the system, the weak do not feel totally excluded. One is compelled to wonder at the democratic content of such a ‘democracy’!
Kohli is quite taken up with the idea of ‘competence’ and links it to the quality of ‘governance’. He does not define or clarify the two terms. Yet, he asserts that “...India’s ruling elite at the apex tend to be relatively competent.”
Political economy
Kohli is closer to the mark discussing India’s political economy. He notes that the state-business alliance for growth characterises India’s model for development since 1980. In the period of neoliberal reforms since 1991, while the Indian state has continued to support Indian capital strongly, he argues , “... investments into agriculture have not kept pace and the poorer States...have been left to their own resources.”
The author is at his best when analysing the concrete situation in several States. He notes that, while the rate of economic growth is a significant indicator of the rate of reduction of poverty in the States, State-specific redistributive policies make a big difference. He points out: “...one unit of growth in Kerala or West Bengal has been four times more ‘efficient’ in reducing poverty than...in Bihar or Madhya Pradesh.” Further, “The two States in which poverty has come down the most — Kerala and West Bengal — are States with long experience of left governments” — a useful reminder at a time of generalised Left-bashing in the media.
Drawing on the experience of several States, Kohli puts forward the hypothesis that “...poverty has been reduced the most in States where effective governmental power rests on a broad political base; in such cases, the rulers have minimised the hold of the upper classes on the State, successfully organised the middle and lower strata into an effective power bloc, and then used this power to channel resources to the poor.” While one can argue that terms such as class and strata have to be rigorously defined to test the hypothesis, it is a useful insight.
Insightful
Particularly insightful in this collection are two essays on West Bengal and one on Karnataka. The essays on West Bengal bring out the empowerment of the rural poor through land reforms and democratic decentralisation by the Left Front through the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. The essay on Karnataka shows the hollowness of the claims made for land reforms under the regime of Devaraj Urs.
What is strikingly missing in the understanding that underlies this collection is a comprehension of imperialism and the changed character of the global economy that makes the pursuit of neoliberal policies both possible and desirable for India’s rulers. It has not been possible in this short review to do justice to a very interesting collection of essays that are both scholarly and eminently readable.
This book will be of great interest both to scholars and the lay reader inclined to serious reading.
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