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| Understanding Indian politics |
| Harsh Sethi / Mar 10, 2010, 00:09 IST |
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For a country and a people so obsessed with politics, it is invariably a matter of surprise and regret that every time the interested reader actually seeks to investigate any question that bothers her in any detail, extant scholarship invariably comes short. It is another matter that this does not stop us from having sharply articulated views on every issue — be it meta concerns about the cultural roots of Indian democracy, commonplace assertions about voting behaviour, in particular of marginalised groups and communities, or the likely implications of different policies designed to alter the life chances of different segments of our society. Equally intriguing is the fact that the quality of scholarship/research seems to have little role in influencing the quality of public discourse on the question. If for no other reason, the publication of The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, admirably conceptualised and edited by Niraja Jayal and Pratap Mehta, should be welcomed by all interested readers, even if the price and the size of the collection work as a dampener. Both the range of the collection and individual essays offer sufficient material for considered debate.
Despite a commonplace desire among academics to somehow discern, if not impose, a common frame to bind together diverse but inter-related concerns and thematics, Jayal and Mehta have been judicious and light-handed in both their “selection” of authors and themes, attempting instead to provide a diversity of readings about a constantly evolving phenomena. For Indian politics, as indeed its many readings, remains deeply contested, with attributes of caste, class, ethnicity, gender and location deeply influencing our perception of not just what is but how it ought to be. It bears reiteration that both the nature and the working of the Indian political experiment appear radically different to the upper caste/class elite located in Delhi as contrasted with a Naga activist wedded to independence or indeed a tribal Maoist sympathiser struggling to retain rights over common community property in Chhattisgarh or Jharkhand.
Equally, it is difficult to deny that the idea of a democratic India, no matter how limited and flawed, has come to acquire a deep durability. That this has happened in a country of immense diversity and stratified inequality, low income and literacy, and with different segments of the population simultaneously occupying different worlds and time zones, remains an enduring puzzle. Interestingly, without falling into the trap of presenting India as an exception, a sui generis phenomena, both the editors and the various contributors prefer to focus on the various mechanisms — from the colonial legacy to the character of India’s inherited institutions, the beliefs of the leaders to the character of our social divisions — and how they interact to give substance to our polity and help maintain us as a democracy. In so doing, they free us from deterministic readings based on long-term structural features and provide space for “political improvisation”. At a time when so many of our commentators seem mired in a deep pessimism about the Indian enterprise, it needs to be underscored that we retain the ability, albeit constrained, of exercising choices which can open up spaces for improvement.
Divided into eight sections — The Institutional Setting; Social Cleavages, Identity and Politics; Political Processes; Ideological Contestations in India Politics; Social Movements and Civil Society; Politics and Policy; Indian and the World; and Ways of Looking at Indian Politics — the 38 essays cover a wide and impressive range of themes, concerns and methodological orientation. Moreover, and this is unusual, unlike the earlier ICSSR-sponsored surveys on politics, there is a conscious attempt to involve scholars from different disciplines to reflect on aspects of Indian politics. This, I believe, has immensely enriched our understanding, earlier limited to a focus on constitutions and structures of public administration. The essays by Steve Wilkinson (Data and the Study of Indian Politics) and by Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph (An Intellectual History of the Study of Indian Politics) provide a synoptic but engaging overview of the shifts in the manner of approaching the study of politics. Despite being dismissed by more ideologically oriented scholars as a “relapse into empiricism”, there is little doubt that the moves initiated by Rajni Kothari and his associates at the CSDS to carry out behavioural surveys of voter choice, examine issues of party identification and loyalty, seek views of the voters on what they consider worthwhile and why, and so on, radically altered our understanding of our political institutions and processes. Equally important was the realisation that these studies needed to be carried out in a comparative frame — within the nation and across countries. Only then can we develop the resources for an empirically grounded and reasoned public discourse.
Unfortunately, our higher education establishment continues to undervalue the importance of supporting such research. Worse, as surveys now become a favoured tool of the media, the focus of our questions seems to be moving away from an examination of deeper processes to contingent and trivial questions like the ranking of politicians. The study of Indian politics is far too important to be left to the vagaries of media-constructed popular discourse. Hopefully, the book under consideration will help counter this tendency of dumbing down.
The author is Consulting Editor, Seminar
THE OXFORD COMPANION TO POLITICS IN INDIA
Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Oxford University Press, 2010
XXVI plus 618 pages; Rs 3,500
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