Books
WOMEN HEROES AND DALIT ASSERTION IN NORTH INDIA: Culture, Identity and Politics by Badri Narayan. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2006.
THE past few decades have seen a flourishing of popular Dalit Hindi literature in North India and its most impressive analysis has emerged in the writings of Badri Narayan. This book is an exciting extension of his earlier work, its central aim being to investigate how and why Dalits have been stressing their distinct culture, identity and politics in North India through effective use of myths, legends, local heroes and histories. Here the emphasis is on examining how Dalit women heroes (viranganas), particularly of the 1857 revolt, have emerged as central icons, not only for Dalit assertion in Uttar Pradesh (UP) but more importantly for building the image of Mayawati, leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Narayan successfully provides us with an understanding of the relationship between cultural politics and the democratic participation of marginalized communities of UP. The first four chapters tell us through extensive field work how various caste groups among Dalits are creating new narratives, and relying on certain dissenting cultural icons and symbols that provide them with glory, pride and self-worth; how in the process oral and print culture are criss-crossing each other; how visuals, cultural performances and myths are central for the Dalits to challenge the hegemony of the upper castes; and why the 1857 revolt has become particularly critical for Dalit contentions in contemporary times. What makes the reading truly a delight are the local stories, widespread field work, interviews and songs interspersed with the narrative. The retention of local language and poetry, and details of local visual imagery used by the Dalits to promote their heroes, gives the book a flavour rooted in the ground and based extensively on oral empirical evidence.
The nerve centre of the book are the next three chapters which highlight the significant use of Dalit women heroes of 1857, for example Jhalkaribai (Kori) of Bundelkhand, Udadevi (Pasi) of Lucknow and Mahaviridevi (Bhangi) of Muzaffarnagar by the BSP for its mobilisation and for establishing Mayawati as the most inspiring leader. The linkages between Mayawati and these heroic women icons are established strikingly, where she acquires miraculous courage and power of a goddess and a devi through these icons. These case studies critically link myths, memories and histories of Dalit viranganas with the meteoric rise of BSP. Today these Dalit viranganas of 1857 stand as given, visible truths, with stamps issued in their name, many statues constructed, public rallies and meetings organised, and celebrations and festivities conducted. The language developed by BSP here emerges as more creative than even that used by the Maharashtrian Dalit movement, as it is tinted by the local culture of Dalits.
The book is remarkably competent, insightful and fulfilling in the arenas mentioned above. At the same time, the very same arenas leave one with certain unanswered and troubling questions. It has been effectively argued by scholars that Dalits had an ambivalent relationship with both Indian nationalism and British rule in the colonial past. The paradigmatic shift, where contemporary Dalits have felt the need to establish their nationalist credentials and the role that they played in the freedom struggle, can be understood but is not explained in the book, with nationalism of the Dalits taken as given. Narayan also repeatedly argues how Dalit assertion can be understood as ‘democratization of history as a discipline’, where ‘the distinction between a myth and a verifiable fact is becoming blurred’ (88) or where ‘myths are more influential than reality’ (15). However, this can at times have dangerous repercussions if extended logically. Can myths be seen as alternate histories? Can myth and history be conflated? How then do we differentiate between myths, for example those that revolved around the Babri mosque during the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign by the Hindu Right and those perpetuated by the Dalits? If both are using it for the contention of political power, how do we justify its use by the Dalits? Does the voice of the oppressed make certain myths more ‘politically correct’? Of course, they are a powerful means to combat the prevailing derogation of Dalits, but an uncritical celebration can create an unrealistically positive identity in the form of myth making rather than historical investigation.
Here it is important that Dalits themselves are keen to prove the historical credibility of their viranganas, and constantly search for sources from literary accounts, British narratives, archaeology and oral histories. While Narayan covers the ground of oral narratives post 1960s remarkably well, he does not dwell into the archive or dig deeper into historical accounts to uncover or recover Dalit voices and roles. Given that during 1857 many of the sepoys as well as participants in the revolt were Dalits, surely an innovative search of historical archives will strengthen Dalit claims, and not just make it an exercise for claims to power. It will be also interesting to attempt and search how Dalits talked in their oral accounts and narratives about 1857 prior to 1947.
Last, the book does not tell us what a focus on Dalit women heroes of 1857 might mean for feminist histories. What are its implications for the vast majority of Dalit women, particularly from a gendered perspective? The last part of the book intriguingly links images of goddesses and masculinization of these Dalit viranganans with the aura of Mayawati. However the section is too brief. Are Dalit women heroes highlighted only to build the image of Mayawati or can we recover through them the silences and/or muted voices of Dalit women in history? Further, can this literature be seen as emancipatory and liberatory for Dalit women at large? The book though competent when dealing with BSP and the image of Mayawati built through these icons, falls short of linking it to gender politics from a Dalit perspective. Do these narratives simply replace Dalit women’s victimhood with a new archetype of heroism or can they be seen as ‘positive engendering’, provoking reflection on the enabling potential for women’s real lives of ubiquitous icons of Dalit feminine power?
However, these questions do not take away the value of the book. We need a practice of writing which neither disregards history nor, in its insistence on legitimacy, is completely oblivious of myths and memories. Such a practice would not question how far narratives approximate to what was once reality but consider the adequacy of those representations within the circumstances in which they are generated. Narayan uses these devices engagingly to highlight Dalit politics of dissent, which uses historical and cultural resources as identity markers in political mobilization. Dalit assertion of women heroes of 1857 may be regarded thus as counter histories, creating a counter public sphere.
Charu Gupta
REGION, NATION, ‘HEARTLAND’: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic by Gyanesh Kudaisya. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2006.
THIS book situates the politics of Uttar Pradesh during 1930 and 1954, a period bracketed by two Kumbh Melas; the venue of these melas, Allahabad, marked the centrality of Uttar Pradesh as a region and the duration between them signified a transition from the colonial to post-colonial era. It argues that UP as a political region can be viewed as a ‘heartland’ in five different ways: a ‘colonial heartland’, a ‘nationalist heartland’, a ‘Hindu heartland’, a ‘Muslim heartland’ and a ‘postcolonial heartland’. According to Kudaisya these ‘heartlands’ are distinct and overlapping constructions developed in UP over a period of a century, contesting each other leading to the emergence of one construction as dominant in the end. This became the basis for postcolonial ‘heartland’.
For the sake of brevity, we can divide the period covered in the book into two parts – one, from 1930 till 1947 dealing with the colonial period, and two, from 1947 till 1954 related to the postcolonial period. The principal focus of the first part is on formations and contestations of the colonial, nationalist and the Muslim ‘heartlands’ and that of the second are on the construction of the postcolonial ‘heartland’ in the absence of the colonial authority. The first is mainly concerned with the challenges to the colonial authority from the nationalist forces and the strategies on its part to meet them; undermining of the colonial authority and its allies, the landlords, by Congress in the 1930s and 1940s, and finally, with the contest between the nationalist and the colonial ‘heartlands’ in the context of the changed public order.
Kudaisya argues that concerned with the maintenance of the public order in the wake of the 1857 revolt, the colonial state sought to construct the ‘colonial heartland’ by institutionalizing the army and police, and by undermining traditional criminal laws through codification. The institutionalisation of police was more intense in the cities than in the villages. Maintenance of public order rather than the welfare of society became the main concern of police. Departing from the traditional responsibilities to engage in external wars, the army was assigned the responsibility to maintain internal security as the troops were garrisoned in the cities. The crimes were divided into cognizable and non-cognizable offences and the police was given enormous powers to deal with offenders.
With the erosion of the position of chaukidars and mukhias, the authorities came to depend on the landlords for gathering information and maintenance of public order in the villages. This led to an intensification of the control of landlord in the villages. The colonial authority also transformed the public space of the towns and cities by attempting to make them riot proof. The institutionalised police and army, and new crime laws were used by the British to meet the challenge to its authority throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
The colonial ‘heartland’ view was contested by the Congress from the 1930s by constructing a ‘nationalist heartland’ in different ways: mobilising masses into the civil disobedience movement and the no rent campaign; emerging as a parallel authority through the formation of the Congress government during 1937-1939 by enacting laws which sought to undermine the authority of the government; holding activities in prohibited public places and by celebrating ‘Independence Day’ and other national symbols; under-mining the allies of the colonial state, the landlords, through enacting tenancy laws; releasing political prisoners and honouring those designated as criminals by the colonial authorities; refusing to comply with the protocol due to British officers, and so on.
The colonial authority in turn used the special powers of the governor to thwart the move of the Congress government by enacting civil-martial laws. It also prompted the landlords to organize aman sabhas. In certain areas these sabhas even sought to divide the people along caste lines. However, in the face of a strong national movement and the assertiveness of the Congress leadership, the authorities were forced to adopt an assuaging attitude towards the Congress and the government led by it.
The interwar period saw changes in the context of public order. In order to win the support of the people in the war which the Congress opposed, the British authority enforced the emergency provisions of the Defence of India Rules prohibiting anti-government activity. The Congress responded by taking recourse to individual satyagraha. With the eclipse of the Muslim ‘heartland’ and the end of colonial rule, the Congress politicians of UP sought to construct the Hindi and Hindu ‘hinterland’ of the state. They not only advocated the adoption of Hindi as the official language but also opposed according Urdu even the status of the second language in the state. Their Hindu bias was visible in the nomenclature of UP as the Aryavrata, disregarding the opinion of a section of the Congress. Only the intervention of the central Congress leadership could help retrieve the situation.
Though the period covered in the text terminates almost when the first state reorganization occurred, the book serves as a helpful reference to understand the contemporary issues of UP. The focus of the book on an analysis of the state apparatuses like police and army, public order and contestation of ‘heartland’ constructions makes it relevant as these issues still matter in the politics and society of the country. This is the novelty of the book. However, some of the well-known facts about UP are relegated to the background. For instance, given the role of marginalised groups in the history of the country, including that of UP, it would have been useful to know more about their impact on the constructions of or contestations for the ‘heartlands’. Including them in the discussion would perhaps have considerably enriched the book.
Jagpal Singh
THE REGIONAL ROOTS OF DEVELOPMENT POLITICS IN INDIA: A Divided Leviathan by Aseema Sinha. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005.
THE question of differential levels and pace of industrial development in developing countries has long been a preoccupation of comparativists across disciplines. In Political Science, there have been periods of paradigmatic dominance – the modernization school in the 1960s, and the dependencia in the 1970s. By the mid-1980s, the limitations of modernization and mechanistic class analysis as presented by dependencia theorists had been acknowledged. Comparative Politics then shifted to the statist phase and the centrality of the state in the success or failure of development became the predominant starting point of analysis for scholars studying a large diversity of countries across Asia, Latin America and Africa.
But even as the state’s importance in the developmental effort was underlined, there was paucity of genuinely comparative work which could explain why different states in the developing world have behaved and performed so differently, despite the universally shared, overarching goal of industrialized development. By and large, scholars in the discipline continued to be preoccupied with specific countries. Then again, country studies of industrial development primarily assumed the state to be a homogeneous entity, focusing mainly on central (that is, federal) state institutions to explain trajectories of development. There have, of course, been notable exceptions. Atul Kohli’s early work provided a framework of comparing sub-national entities within national states, asking the question why some states in India have had more success with redistribution than others. In his later work, Kohli extended the comparative framework to a cross-national comparison of India, Brazil, South Korea and Nigeria, to examine the question of differential performance in industrial development. Similarly, Joel Migdal sought to address the question of reform and development in a comparative study of state-society relations in four countries. Thus, while both sub-national and cross-national comparisons are not unknown, these have been rare, more so in the Political Science/Development Studies literature.
Aseema Sinha’s book certainly fills this gap. It belongs to the category of research that seeks to develop a genuinely comparative framework for examining developmental issues. The singularity of her work, however, lies in the effort to construct a framework where the sub-national entity, that is, the regional state, becomes a unit of analysis and comparison. This approach has far-reaching implications for extending our conceptual and empirical universe to issues, ideas and institutions that have a direct bearing on developmental matters but which have so far been either ignored or subsumed under a broader, umbrella-like framework of the national state.
The analysis Sinha provides, as also the broad range of empirical material to support her arguments, is indeed rich. Taking private investment patterns in the domain of industrial change as a crucial variable, she examines the performance of three regional states. West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, all three relatively well-developed states at the start of independence shared many similar conditions. There are, however, significant divergences in their growth patterns. While Gujarat has attracted a higher share of investment over time, both West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have shown a marked decline in the rate of investment as also in other industrial indicators. Further, while investment patterns and the institutional organization of industrial investment are the central dependent variables in this work, Sinha weaves through an impressive array of political, historical and institutional factors to explain their divergent and contrasting industrial outcomes.
The theoretical framework she proposes borrows from and combines several theoretical and conceptual frameworks in contemporary Political Science. At the broadest level her theoretical perspective is guided by the concepts of ‘nested game’, widely used by scholars in International Relations, where actors face different choices and constraints from different domains. Sinha effectively employs this framework to conceptualize the handling by regional elites of the different sets of challenges and constraints from regional and central domains. Combining this with concepts from ‘neo-institutionalism’, she uses the notions of institutional credibility and asymmetric information to enrich her concept of the sub-national state as a critical actor in industrial development.
The management of industrial investment at the level of the three states was governed by very different approaches towards the central state. In the case of Gujarat, the political system and the bureaucracy worked in synergy to develop an effective structure of communication with the central government in order to ease the regulatory process, acquire information on projects and investments, and create a favourable context for investors. This positive framework was entirely lacking in West Bengal, where from the early years of independence there developed a confrontational approach towards the central government, further intensified in the long years of leftist rule since 1977. In Tamil Nadu, sub-national politics created a strong anti-centre rhetoric which prevented systematic lobbying for projects and licenses; at the same time, the political elite in Tamil Nadu also engaged in opportunistic alliances with the Congress party when it suited their regional electoral chances. This created a general context for an unstable and inconsistent approach to the question of industrial investment, and prevented the kind of systematic, sustained and structured bureaucracy-political linkages to the centre which were the hallmark of Gujarat’s industrial development. This analysis is supported by a discussion of the politico-historical background of each state, the class and caste underpinnings which framed the development of an aggressive developmentalism in Gujarat, contrasted by declining investment patterns in the other two cases.
The book is obviously an important addition to the existing literature on the political economy of development in India. Sinha’s research effectively deepens our conceptualization of state capacity to include a nuanced understanding of micro institutions and politics, while at the same time providing a framework for comparison of state capacities. Perhaps what one misses here is a closer engagement with the issue of causality. In other words, while multiple factors explain the divergent approaches of regional states to development, the analysis does not step back to provide a more theorized consideration of factors that underpin a sustained thrust on development, or the lack thereof. Second, while the theoretical framework indeed is about unbundling or disaggregating the state, the burden of the argument remains anchored, somewhat paradoxically, on the central state itself. Thus, according to the author, ‘In states where the regional populations reward anti-centre actions, as in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, the anti-centre strategy of state leaders produced political benefits of re-election, but at the cost of reduced investment flows. In states where the trade-off between regional incentives and central transfers was convergent, the state elite could pursue bargaining strategies leading to higher investment flows’ (p. 15).
Thus at a certain analytical remove, the central state, and its relationship to the regional state, indeed remains the most critical causal factor in explaining divergent industrial trajectories in three different states. Finally, within the author’s framework, it would be difficult to examine, for example, questions such as the central government’s near complete control of macro-economic policy issues, the absence of regional state voice in international agreements such as GATT or WTO, and so on. In other words, while the book makes a significant contribution towards understanding the regional politics of development, there is a certain lack of engagement with theorizing the federal relationship in the changing context of globalization which in many ways reinforces the powers of the central state vis-a-vis regional states.
Supriya RoyChowdhury
INDIA’S POLITICAL PARTIES edited by Peter Ronald deSouza and E. Sridharan. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2006.
THE volume under review is a ‘reader’ on political parties in India consisting of twelve previously published essays, two exclusive chapters and an editorial Introduction that attempts to place the institution of political parties in theoretical, ideological and processual perspectives, aside from presenting a justification for their selection. The selections range from Jayaprakash Narayan’s (JP) Gandhian argument of reconstructing the Indian polity on a partyless basis (written in the late 1970s), a similar perspective by M.N. Roy in his Radical Humanism phase, to contributions on parties, party politics, emerging bases and institutional dynamics of the party system written over four decades (1966-2004). Research on the parties and party system of the world’s largest, the most dynamic and boisterous democracy is a continuing process, where analysts and scholars are continually mapping phases of political evolution and social churning that lead to party building from processual and organisational perspectives. In such a situation, editor(s) of a reader have to make the difficult choice of selecting writings woven into a perspective. The task of the reviewer of such a volume consisting of classics on India’s political parties and current, well-researched analyses, therefore, is also not easy.
The writings of JP and M.N. Roy at the beginning of the volume wisely introduce the students of Indian politics to the current stage and state of the country’s party politics. JP, an ardent Gandhian, a socialist and ‘sarvodayist’ of the 1950s and 1960s, was the hero of the 1970s, who rose against pervasive political corruption in India to take on the Congress monolith led by Indira Gandhi. He was also instrumental in laying the foundation of the first alternative to the Congress with an amalgam of existing parties across the ideological divide, barring the Left, an experiment that failed miserably. No wonder he was disillusioned with both parliamentary democracy and the party system that operated it. For him ‘demagoguery’, lack of ‘political ethics’, ‘aptitude for manipulation and intrigue’ characterising party politics leads to preference for ‘party interest’ over ‘national interest’; hence he recommends a communitarian system in place of a parliamentary system based on partisanship characterizing the party system (p. 49). Writing two decades earlier in a similar vein, M.N. Roy too regarded party politics as antithetical to democracy. He argued that ‘…the rejection of party politics means a resolution to practice politics on a much wider field, so that the entire people may actively participate in it.’ He further says that, ‘Under the party system, the people can do no more than vote for this or that candidate who is nominated by respective parties. Political practice cannot truly be democratised unless the people can nominate as well as vote for a candidate.’ One could not agree more with the editors that the similarity in the points of view of these two Indian political thinkers, though separated by a couple of decades, injects fresh debate on the role of political parties in the current stage of Indian politics, when the parties are under scrutiny on issues like criminalisation of politics, electoral malpractices and deinstitutionalising the Parliament and legislatures with noisy protest inside their haloed precincts.
Rajni Kothari’s classic essay (Asian Survey, 1964) outlining the contour as well as dynamics of what he described as the Congress ‘System’, or one-party dominant system, forms the backdrop for three essays in the volume – by Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar, Myron Weiner, and Ramashray Roy. Rajni Kothari attributed to the Congress, the Indian independence movement’s vanguard, characteristics of a party system on a five point scale (p. 64) – ‘positive and overwhelming role to government and politics in the development of society’, power as the key instrument of ‘national survival’, consensus, legitimacy and political participation. Though virtually developing a monopoly on political power in the country for the first two decades since independence and a decade and a half since the electoral process got underway, it not only governed the Indian republic, but also released democratic energies at different levels, creating intra-party opposition dynamics (factions) in the absence of a credible opposition either within the legislatures, or without. In discussing the role of Nehru ‘(i)n giving to the country and its institutions such strength and character’, he examines the role of leadership in party building and party politics, a factor which has not been taken into account as comprehensively as it should have been in future studies of political parties in India. His reappraisal of the Kamraj Plan in this essay also focuses on the leadership and its priorities in directing, if not controlling intra-party politics. In fact, Kothari is prophetic about the future shape of the party system in India, ‘The one party dominance system in India, with its factions and its support and communications networks, may yet well be a transitional system, suited to the special period of national growth, but one that would transform into a more "normal" party system later on’ (p. 69).
As compared to Kothari, who theorized on the Indian party system in the early 1960s, Yadav and Palshikar in their comprehensive essay of 2003, look at the party system in India as it gets ‘reconfigured’ from the ‘one-party dominant’ system through the ‘one salient party system’ to coalition politics with the states emerging as the central and decisive arena of party politics. This essay significantly paints the emerging ‘messy’ picture of Indian politics rather neatly in an era in which participatory upsurge and electoral volatility become the defining factors of politics with the states and the grassroots becoming much more salient and caste and ethnic mobilisation crystallising into parties. A must read for the students of contemporary Indian politics, the essay paints party politics on a large canvass of the emerging processes of party competition and popular participation. The importance of party organisation and political leadership are not factored in significantly enough, which would facilitate a more nuanced understanding of the party system.
Myron Weiner’s study of party politics and electoral behaviour till the 1980s is comprehensive and complete in several respects. First, in a broad sweep it gives the reader a complete picture of the parties and party system from evolution till the 1980s. He not only discusses the Congress, which is naturally central to the analysis, and the BJP, which had by then begun to emerge as an important player in national politics, but also regional parties and the bases of their organisation and politics. Two significant indicators of party politics of the 1980s which he points out are the strategy of co-option resorted to in addressing the challenges of insurgency and terrorism in the North East and Punjab, and weakening of the organisational structure of the Congress in the states.
Though the editors have put Ramashray Roy’s classic and unreplicated study of the selection process of Congress candidates in the 1960s along with systemic and organisational issues of the party system later in the volume, it deserved a place soon after Rajni Kothari’s chapter with a postscript either by the author or by the editors for two reasons. First, the changes in the Congress’s organisational structure and functioning during the 1970s and 80s witnessed a demise of the formal processes that were its institutional strengths and, second, no other party adopted these institutional processes in future. Since both Yadav-Palshikar and Weiner have analysed the transformations in the organisational culture of the parties and political culture of the country which do not put premium on such formal processes, the chapter with a postscript would have better fitted in earlier.
Bruce Graham’s excellent study of the BJP and Achin Vanaik’s perceptive analysis of communalisation of Indian politics go in tandem to provide critical organisational and processual perspectives on the rise of political Hindutva in India. However, comprehensive though it is, providing an historical analysis of the origin, ideology, policies and electoral strategies of the party, Graham’s analysis stops in 1987, when the BJP had shed its right of centre ideology (Gandhian Socialism) adopted after the 1980 reincarnation (from the Bharatiya Jan Sangh) under the leadership of Atal Behari Vajpayee and embarked on the Hindu nationalist journey under the leadership of Lal Krishna Advani, a stance which made it the national ‘alternative’, leaving a void in understanding the party in the contemporary socio-political and economic contexts. Subsequent developments necessitated a more updated analysis that would have linked well to the Yadav-Palshikar analysis of the emerging trend of coalition politics, since the credit for creating a basis for a stable coalition politics at the national level goes to the BJP. Vanaik’s chapter in the volume is excerpted from his 1997 book, The Furies of Indian Communalism. Though Vanaik situates the rise of communal politics in the decline of the Congress and the BJP’s desperate attempt to capture this space by beading together Hindu votes in a religio-cultural-nationalistic thread, inventing in the process an ‘other’ within, the chapter somehow appears uneven.
‘The Communist Parties in India’ by Valerian Rodrigues, completes the analysis of national parties. Writing exclusively for the volume, Rodrigues presents one of the most comprehensive appraisals of the communist parties in India in recent times, both from an ideological and organisational perspective, taking account of the decisive vertical splits in the 1960s and the trajectories the two parties as well as the CPI(ML) and its various splinter groups since then. Indeed, Rodrigues’ is a comprehensive and commendable effort.
Regional and state parties are today integral parts of India’s political process and no political and powersharing arrangement is complete without them. The editors have selected the Shiv Sena (Maharashtra) and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) (Andhra Pradesh), two parties originating in different states and regions, at different times and with different political objectives, for inclusion. The Shiv Sena began as a chauvinist Marathi group in the Bombay metropolis in 1966 and grew into an influential political party through the speeches, writings and organisational ability of Bal Thackeray, who kept inventing the ‘other’ – first non-Marathis, then Muslims – to further its sectarian politics, which unscrupulously followed violent protest politics in Mumbai and urban Maharashtra. The TDP, on the other hand, was founded in 1982 by the popular Telugu cine star N.T. Ramarao, who championed Telugu atma gauravam (self respect) in the face of growing centrism of the Congress (I) variety. Despite following different trajectories of organisational growth, political mobilisation and electoral strategies, as well as the road to power in their respective states, both parties have used their electoral success as the vehicle to powersharing at the national level in the era of coalitions. Suhas Palshikar and K.C. Suri take the readers through the historical and political events that led to the founding of the two and their emerging political stake and electoral strategies as well as performance. These two, however, are part of a varied universe of regional parties, all of which cannot be discussed in a volume of this kind. The editorial Introduction should nevertheless have presented a theoretical perspective on regionalism and regional parties and located these two parties in that perspective.
The three other issues, critical to the party system as well as to the electoral process and the system of representation in India today, presented in the volume are the system of political financing in India (E. Sridharan), women’s representation in Parliament and legislative assemblies (Madhu Purnima Kishwar) and the issue and problem of defections. Sridharan takes the readers through the questions and policy options of financing political parties, necessary to free the system of representation of political corruption, even criminalisation of politics. His is one of the earliest and among the few contributions on this critical question. He not only locates the question in a comparative perspective, but also proposes a series of policy options with their pros and cons. Kishwar analyses and discusses the vexed question of women’s quota in representative bodies that has been debated without a solution for nearly a decade. Beyond critiquing the proposals contained in the parliamentary bills, she also lays bare the hypocrisy of political parties and gives her own proposal to ensure gender representation. Peter deSouza attends to another critical problem dogging contemporary Indian politics – defection. He draws three clusters of issues from the study of the phenomenon of ‘political nomadism’ in Goa – the first relating to representation, the second to the party system and the third to the political culture of democracy. Each of the three issues is important not only to political parties but the entire range of political institutions in India.
The volume is a timely addition for students of political science, giving them a reader, which goes beyond traditional treatment of political parties to institutional and processual issues. Discrepancies pointed out in organising issues are natural in putting together a volume of this kind. However, the editors need to ponder over the organisation of the chapters and issues afresh when they go for the next edition.
Ajay K. Mehra
THE PUZZLE OF INDIA’S GOVERNANCE: Culture, Context and Comparative Theory by Subrata K. Mitra. Routledge, London, 2006.
THE recent decades have been witness to a regionalization of politics in India as the states have increasingly emerged as key units of analysis in Indian political theory. However, the presence of well-defined geographically, culturally and historically constituted distinct regions within the states that show sharpened ethnic/communal/caste as well as other social, economic and political cleavages, have contributed to an extreme fluidity in the nature of state politics. At the same time commonalities are also discernable in the form of the emerging trends at the level of more than one state. Against this backdrop, there is a critical need to explore both the commonalities as well as the distinctive features in a comparative mode for the purpose of undertaking concrete analyses of the internal dynamics of the states, especially to look closer at the micro-level mechanisms that are shaping political action and processes in a decentring polity so as to link the local and regional with the national.
A review of existing literature ironically reveals that despite the recognition of the significance of the state as a unit of analysis, as also the need to have a comparative framework, there have been few such studies in the arena of state politics. One can count on ones fingers the works that have come up since the volumes edited by Atul Kohli (1987) and Francine Frankel and M.S.A. Rao (1990) on state politics. Most of the studies that are available have been state specific without making an effort to compare the comparables across regions within the state(s). Among the recent volumes that focus on state politics in a comparative perspective, reference can be made to studies by Ashutosh Varshney (2004), Rob Jenkins (2004) and Aseema Sinha (2005).
The book under review fortunately falls into this rare genre. Mitra, a noted comparativist, who works in a foreign institution associated with CSDS, Delhi, like most West-based India specialists views India as a comparative arena in which the regional states represent ‘distinguishable universes’ that ‘commands attention as a challenging site for a theoretical and comparative inquiry into politics.’ Again, Mitra grapples with the puzzle as to how the Indian state has been able to sustain democratic governance while undergoing significant social, economic and political changes especially in the wake of the advent of Mandal, Mandir and Market, despite lacking most ingredients that in conventional wisdom make for a successful democracy. It leads him on an inquiry into the factors that account for what he refers to as the remarkable resilience of political institutions in India which, unlike their counterparts in many other ‘changing societies’, including those that share the same legacy, are characterised by a high level of durability, elasticity and innovativeness.
Mitra suggests that effective governance in the form of orderly rule, more than ‘the innate cohesion of society and culture, or the specific context of colonial rule and transfer of power’, has been a key to the resilience. To substantiate his contention, Mitra has collected a dense web of quantitative, qualitative and discursive data from as many as six states representing the four corners of India, namely Punjab, Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat. His research findings are based on a study of formal constitutional provisions; analytical narratives of the emergence of distinctive features in the six states and the centre; CSDS national election survey data of 1996; and interviews of regional elites – political leaders, bureaucrats and police officers. The states here have been purposefully selected to take into account India’s regional heterogeneity in terms of governance through a concrete analysis of the different patterns, such as ‘reform from below’ (West Bengal), ‘masked coercion from above’ (Maharashtra and Gujarat), ‘stalemated conflict’ (Bihar), ‘identity established’ (Tamil Nadu), and ‘identity contested’ (Punjab). As a governance specialist, Mitra pays special attention to the role of policy and its implementation by the regional elites, the role of police as a critical element in governance, the religious dimension of communalism, and finally, the relationship between party and governance as they have evolved across these states.
Mitra concludes that the ‘orderly conduct of affairs’ in the Indian state is to be attributed to four factors: first, the ability of its modern institutions to tap into the historical memory of colonial state traditions; second, the evolving political processes that have a propensity to cut across ethnically diverse groups rather than conflating conflict in a manner that would deepen the rift that divides them; third, the collective legacy of colonial rule and the nationalist struggle that has in many ways prefigured certain positive features of Indian democracy; and fourth, the elasticity of political institutions shown in accommodating embedded cultural values, undergoing strategic reforms and maintaining the difficult balance between coercion and persuasion in the management of law and governance.
More than his research findings which are particularly useful for governance studies, Mitra’s work deserves attention for its use of a range of methodological approaches that substantiate the argument that instead of having a ‘segmented’ polity, a federalizing India provides an ‘ideal environment’ for undertaking a comparative analysis based on ‘one nation, many units’ sampling frame provided that the units are ‘autonomous and homogeneous for the purpose of the study and that the cases are selected in a manner that minimises bias.’ The present work should enable the comparativists to become familiar with sophisticated analytical and statistical research tools, as also encourage the sceptics to rethink state politics from a governance perspective.
Ashutosh Kumar
References
Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Headcounts in India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004.
Francine Frankel and M.S.A. Rao (eds), Dominance and State Power in Modern India, Oxfort University Press, Delhi, 1990.
Rob Jenkins (ed), Regional Reflections: Comparing Politics Across India’s States, Oxfort University Press, Delhi, 2004.
Atul Kohli, The State and Poverty in India, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987.
Aseema Sinha, The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan, Indiana University Press, Indiana, 2005.
