STATE AND SOCIETY IN INDIA

Rudolph and Rudolph: In Pursuit of Lakshmi

INTRODUCTION : THE WEAK-STRONG STATE AND THE RICH-POOR ECONOMY

India is a political and economic paradox: a rich-poor nation with a weak-strong state. The strength of this state derives from the institutions and expectations created by 350 yrs of Mughal and British sub-continental rule. Centrist pattern of partisan politics Suppression of class politics Dominance of state Sources of strength of Indian State The permanent government the bureaucracy Non-alignment in foreign policy Developments that weakened the Indian state: deinstitutionalization of increasing level of political unofficial civil wars between Cong party and state structures by mobilization with greater demands castes and classes in mid-70s Indira Gandhi which the state has been unable to fulfill religious fundamentalism and secessionist demands

India as a rich-poor economy High GDP, GNP, combined with high percentage of population under ppverty FYPs have been unable to achieve the desired level of economic progress State control over economy and aim of self-reliance has given way to privatization, liberalisation, globalisation in the 90s.

CENTRIST POLITICS, CLASS POLITICS AND THE INDIAN STATE

Striking feature of Indian society despite strong cultural, social and economic variations, there has been no significant stress on Indian unity. Features responsible for the above: Class politics The Electoral system and Centrism Constraints of social pluralism and cultural diversity Imperatives of National Politics Confessional politics

Minority Politic s Bullock Capitalists and Backward classes

Class Politics - India's parties do not derive their electoral support or policy agendas from distinct class constituencies or from organized representatives of workers and capital. Class politics restrained by presence of dominant state in the organization of the economy. Even after the decentralization of the economy, the state continues to maintain a strong hold in the major industries. Confessional Politics The Cong, as the leading political party post-independence, maintained a strong secular ideology in order to create a large and broad national base. The 70s saw the rise of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar, which propagated a Hindu ideology, and the creation of its political arm, the BJP in the 80s, saw much debate regarding the secular politics of India. By mid-80s, centrist policies suffered a major setback with the growth of communal and confessional politics and their use by political parties to further their own political agendas. The Cong under Indira Gandhi did not shy from the same.

Minority Politics - Because minority support is vital to electoral success, gaining or holding it has become a common feature of party strategy and ideology. India's minorities seem to share a 'group consciousness' that helps to explain higher levels of political participation than individual measures of their social and economic status would lead one to expect. Parties that rely primarily or exclusively on class appeals to reach the poor and disadvantaged have been less successful than centrist parties that seek to represent minority interests and identities. Bullock Capitalists and Backward Classes - In the 60s, two producer gps occupied the dominant posn in the countryside left vacant by the zamindars and the jagirdars the landlords with variously sized holdings who, having successfully blocked or evaded land ceiling legislation, rented to sharecroppers or tenants or employed attached or casual labor; and bullock capitalists, small to medium-sized self-employed independent agricultural producers who were the principal beneficiaries of intermediary abolition. Overlapping bullock capitalists, an eco category, were the 'backward classes' (read castes), a status group that came of age politically in the 70s. Most imp for consciousness and centrist politics, the eco circumstances of bullock capitalists unite the interests of capital, management, and labor. Their ideological propensities are familial and communitarian rather than state collectivistic or capitalist. Since bullock capitalism is based on small enterprises, where the worker is himself owner of land, it will foster democracy. The political coming of age of bullock capitalists runs parallel with and is strengthened by the first wave of the so-called backward classes movement in northern Hindi Heartland states and Gujarat and the second wave in the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra. The interests and ideology of the political class formed by bullock capitalists and backward castes strengthens centrist politics in India. The Imperatives Of National Power - The goal of capturing power in Delhi or wielding political influence nationally impels parties and factional leaders to occupy centrist ideological and policy positions. Since power in Delhi requires a Parliamentary majority, the powerful tendency toward party fragmentation is met by a countervailing tendency toward party consolidation or coalition formation. The Constraints of Social Pluralism and Federalism - India's cultural diversity and social pluralism, reinforced and compounded by its federal sys, further motivate parties seeking national power to adopt centrist ideologies and policies. Issues and symbols highly salient for one or a few states are irrelevant to others. National parties must adopt ideologies and advocate policies that articulate and represent the formidable range of eco, cultural, and social differences that exist among and within India's states and UTs. They often adopt different strategies - and attract different supporters - to cope with variations among state political systems.

The Electoral System and Centrism - The formal rule governing electoral competition among parties has also favoured centrism. The first-past-the-post rule rewards the party with the highest plurality by inflating its seat percentage over its vote percentage. The rule has helped broad-based parties that appeal to a wide spectrum of classes, communities, regions and interests more than those that limit their appeal to a single class, community or caste. It has helped such parties win a majority of seats without the support of an electoral majority. Over 60 years, no party has won a majority of the national vote. Without a majority party, India has regularly produced majority govts.

STATE FORMATION IN INDIA : BUILDING AND WASTING ASSETS

Immediately after independence India was an autonomous state, but from the 70s onwards, it has become more constrained. Historical Legacies : The sub-continental Empires - Their proximate determinant was the vice-regal state of British Raj. Their more distant determinants included the Mughal empire, and the imperial states and regional kingdoms of ancient and medieval India. The founders of mod India's constituion benefited from the legacy of stateness bequeathed by the Hindu, Mughal and British subcontinenatal empires. They combined centralized rule wiht a parallel state form, the regional kingdom. These paradigms and parameters strd the possibilities and choices of those who created independent India's state. Historical Legacies : Liberal and Authoritarian Options in the Founding Period - The liberal state created at independence was not merely the result of 4 yrs of deliberation in the Constituent Assembly, or the political legacy of 4 decades of gradual parliamentary growth. The historical circumstances and accidents that made Nehru the principal founder of the state and that enabled him to shape its conventions also played an imp part in determining its character. The deaths of SC Bose and Sardar Patel removed powerful spokespersons for authoritarian state ideologies. Nehru shaped the liberal state in ways that accommodated it to the 1950 constitution's new commitments to universal suffrage, a federal system, and socialist objectives. The State and its Permanent Govt - After independence the immediate question was how was the civil services to be shaped? Under Nehru, the bureaucrats became co-authors of the new state policies of independent India. After Nehrus death, circumstances changed, worsening under Indira Gandhi, when the very definition of the neutrality of the civil servants began to be questioned. Wasting Assets :The Erosion of State Institutions - While under Nehru, state institutions could be said to flourish, under his daughter, they increasingly became institutions to be exploited by the party in power for their own political gains. The institutions that suffered included the military, the police, the electoral process, the Parliament, and Federalsim.

THE STRUGGLE OVER STATENESS : JUDICIAL REVIEW V/S PARLIAMENT SOVEREIGNTY

India's legal sys has not been immune from the erosion that has affected the autonomy and professionalism of the civil service and police and marginally touched the military services. The courts have struggled on 2 fronts against institutional erosion, the larger constitutional front of judicial review v/s parliamentary sovereignty and the related but separate front of the independence of judges from executive manipulation and control. The Changing meaning of Parliamentary Sovereignty - In JLN's time and in the early years of his Daughter's Prime Ministership, the struggle between parliament sovereignty and judicial review was translated into a conflict b/w socialism and property rights, b/w the legislative authority required for progressive social policies, particularly land reform, and the court's power to protect the principle of meaningful compensation against efforts to render it nominal. As IG's support ebbed, and she was threatened by the JP movement, and as the executive democracy of 71-4 gave way to the emergency rule in 75, the struggle took on a new cast. Parliamentary sovereignty eventually became a means to protect those in power from accountability and competition and a doctrine to legitimate authoritarian rule and repressive govt. In the end, it was used to strengthen the executive's power of preventive detention (through the Maintenance of Internal Security Act [MISA]) and then, under the emergency, to remove all restraints on the state's authority to deprive citizens of their fundamental rights. Judicial Review : Protection of property or protection of Liberties? - "Progressive" opinion in India often accused the court of using judicial review to protect the interests of propertied classes from Cong govt policies that threatened them. To counter the courts, the Cong conceived the 24th, 25th and 26th amendments, which struck back at Golak Nath and other decisions that by establishing Parliament's supremacy, enable it to enact progressive measures endorsed by the people.

Arena of Struggle : The power to Amend and the power to Destroy The issues of the scope of Parliament's authority to amend the constitution and its relationship to judicial review and fundamental rights were most seriously joined in the Golak Nath case of 67, which held that fundamental rights cud only be amended by a new constituent assembly, not by Parl. Parliament responded with the 24th amendment which made fundamental rights amendable by Parl. In 1973, the battle was rejoined by Keshavananda Bharati case which established an acceptable ground for judicial review. It legitimized constrained versions of both principles: parliamentary sovereignty in the service of state purposes and interests and judicial review in the service of fundamental law and a govt of laws. It provided a framework for accommodating a hard and/or socialist state with a liberal one. According to Keshavananda, the amending authority of Parliament is limited by the Constitution's "basic structure" or "essential features", which included judicial review, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India, the federal system, free and fair elections, and other disputed or as yet unspecified features. Nor can judicial review be eliminated or compromised, as it was in the 25th and 26th amendments, by parliamentary professions that particular laws give effect to the directive principles of state policy generally, or to those particular ones providing for state ownership, control, or redistribution of the "material resources of the community". On the other hand, Keshavananda recognized what the court affirmed 7 yrs later in Minerva Mills, that in certain specified areas of stipulated state purposes, those that provide for control or redistribution of the "material resources of the community", the DPSP might override fundamental rights subject to the court's review. Self-restraint : will saving the court save a govt of laws? - Since Golak Nath, the court has learned to read the election returns in ways that attend to long-run political currents as well as short-run opportunities. Its conduct since 1977 suggests a politically responsive and self-restrained strategy that seeks to protect the principle of judicial review while recognizing that the executive, acting through or with the support of parliamentary majorities and in the name of state purposes and interests, can make claims that constrain citizens' rights, the federal system, or even the rule of law. State issues in the 1980s - The 80s brought new issues. Attention shifted among legal observers and actors, from the macro-drama at the national level of the conflict b/w the SC and the Parliament to the myriad micro-dramas at the local level b/w the disadvantaged and the petty oppressive agents of the state: police rape, police blindings, social agency corruption, jail inhumanity. Legal aid, PIL, and voluntary agencies intervening on behalf of poor clients victimized by state agencies flourished in the post-emergency climate.