Class and ConflictPub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199499687.003.0008
Elizabeth Chatterjee
{"title":"All Shook Up?","authors":"Elizabeth Chatterjee","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199499687.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199499687.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Political Economy and Development of India (PEDI) outlined highly influential theories of both the Indian state and its bureaucracy. Professionals within the public sector were one of Bardhan’s three competing dominant classes, yet he was also clear that the state was an autonomous actor distinct from the rent-seeking officials who populated its lower ranks. Three decades later, economic reforms have ostensibly challenged the public sector’s economic, ideological, and policy dominance. This chapter argues that the Indian system remains more statist—and correspondingly less ‘pro-business’—than many scholarly interpretations today allow. Nonetheless, elite public sector professionals have become fragmented that challenge their coherence as a class, while new obstacles to effective state autonomy have arisen from the nexus between politicians and the petty bureaucracy.","PeriodicalId":323722,"journal":{"name":"Class and Conflict","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125686527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Class and ConflictPub Date : 2020-02-20DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199499687.003.0002
P. Bardhan
{"title":"Reflections on Indian Political Economy","authors":"P. Bardhan","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780199499687.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199499687.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In the more-than-three decades since The Political Economy of Development in India (PEDI) appeared, there have been many changes in the Indian economy and polity. But the principal theme of the 1984 book about the enormous difficulty of collective action in taking long-term policy decisions and implementing them in India’s complex heterogeneous society remains valid. This is reflected in governance issues around infrastructural investment, education, public health, and sanitation and environment. The chapter also considers other structural problems that were not discussed in the original book such as the legitimization crises arising out of the various unequalizing forces of capitalist development and the scattered social movements in reaction; the paucity of jobs for the burgeoning unskilled labour force even when the economy is growing relatively fast; the regional asymmetry in job creation; and the tension between rentier and entrepreneurial capitalism exacerbated by the growth process itself.","PeriodicalId":323722,"journal":{"name":"Class and Conflict","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125528496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}