Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and H… (2024)

Despite the State is part of and extends the grammar of a genre of writing that has emerged this past decade: reportage which combines fieldwork, research and argument, and transforms into an extended essay. Each individual story in this book—say, on sand mining in Tamil Nadu or arsenic poisoning in Bihar or, what appears to be a bit of whimsy, the popularity of Korean soaps in Mizoram—constitutes an individual narrative moment. This moment opens back in time as well as tips into the present, connecting to other social, political and economic events and developments as these have unfolded within a particular geography and history. Meanwhile, Rajshekhar offers his gloss on the moment, citing ideas and concepts drawn from studies in political economy, finance, sociology, environment and literature. The result: a generous and thoughtful reading experience. Rich detail sits easily with provocative ideas, and description is stirred into argument.

The six states he reports on in detail - Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Gujarat - are all different from one another but share one common trait: they have failed as democratic states. Mizoram, an impoverished hill state whose traditional culture is all but destroyed and which is dependent upon the centre's handouts for paying salaries even; Odisha, a state rich in mineral resources which wasted them through improper management by a state with a feudal mindset; Punjab, a state rich in agriculture run as a private fiefdom by a family; Tamil Nadu, once a model state which was successful in destroying caste inequities to a certain extent, but now mired in leadership cults and populism; Bihar, a state where governance is practically absent; and Gujarat, the "model" state as touted by Prime Minister Modi, but a state which is actually run on the lines of merciless majoritarianism. (There is also an epilogue on the seventh state Manipur, permanently under occupation by the Indian Armed Forces who do what they want under the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act [AFSPA]).

Is there a common cause for this failure? Once we dig deep, we find that there is - the abdication of the state from its responsibility of governing. The state just becomes an arm of vested interests (whether it be religion, family, feudal landlords or corporate entities), serviced through political parties which have become institutions by themselves.

I slowly started to see political parties not as emissaries of regional, religious or caste-class interests but as self-interested institutions that sourced electoral power from their constituencies. In state after state, political parties seemed to share four traits: they were extractive, dominant, centralised and clientelist.

How do they manage to do this and retain legitimacy? Rajshekhar has an answer for that.

And so, moving from state to state, I saw five ways in which parties tried to retain legitimacy—denial, diversion, cultism, elections and endorsem*nts.

2. Diversion happens in two ways: political parties blame others for any crisis; or distract people a with a new crisis which they can pretend to address. (This is why everything is Nehru's fault nowadays in India, and there are so many "jihads" popping up!)

3. Cultism is when political parties idealise their leader and describe them in heroic and worshipful terms. This image, inevitably exaggerated, is projected through a party’s communications. (Lately, we have come to a stage where we have even temples built to Modi and Sonia Gandhi!)

4. Elections are what our parties are built for! All their energies are spent on it, so nothing is left for governing.

5. Political parties gain legitimacy through endorsem*nts from media, the judiciary and religious leaders. Of late, this has become sickening with a section of media working as propaganda centres for the ruling party, and charlatans like the so-called Sadhguru giving opinion on government policies and even attending rocket launches.

Rajshekhar says:

Each of these responses compounds India’s problems. Data fudging blinds us to reality. Diversion deepens fissures in the country and pushes us closer to communal, caste and ethnic conflagrations. Cultism accentuates political centralisation, weakens party democracy and sets the stage for demagogues to come to power.

Seeking legitimacy from elections not only keeps parties in constant campaign mode but also reinforces the short-term bias built into democratic politics in which politicians are always under pressure to show quick results. This, coupled with weakening State capacity, pushes politicians towards populist schemes that do not demand a lot from the State.

Growing links between politicians and religious bodies create their own problems. As the illegalities of the self-proclaimed godpersons grew, politicians helped ward off serious crime investigations against these religious leaders. Similarly, when the media starts legitimising the government, not only does its watchdog function take a pounding, but also consensual reality suffers. People, increasingly unsure what to believe in, replace understanding with blind trust in the leader.

Coups are not the only threat to democracy. They can wither away from within in so many ways.

First came the belated realisation that coups are not the only threat to a democracy. The world also has, as the political scientist Nancy Bermeo says in Runciman’s book, ‘executive coups’, when those in power suspend democratic institutions; ‘election-day vote fraud’, when the electoral process is fixed to produce a particular result; ‘promissory coups’, when democracy is taken over by people who then hold elections to legitimise their rule; ‘executive aggrandisem*nt’, when those already in power chip away at democratic institutions without overturning them; and ‘strategic election manipulation’, when elections fall short of being free and fair, but also stay shy of being stolen outright.

...What India has experienced under Modi is executive aggrandisem*nt.

Can we stem the rot? The author does not seem confident, and I don't blame him. The current erosion of democracy we face has its roots the way our country has been governed ever since it got independence in 1947. The cancer was growing inside all the time; it has become visible only now.

Yet, as V. Geetha ends her afterword:

Despite the State, the people are.

But a nagging question remains: how long before the worm turns?

BOOK REVIEW

சில புத்தகங்கள் நாம் கட்டமைத்து வைத்திருக்கும் முன்முடிவுகளை அடித்து நொறுக்கும் அப்படிப்பட்ட நூல் தான் “Despite the state”, இதெல்லாம் ஒரு பிரச்சனையா என்று சுலபமாக கடக்கும் விசயங்கள் ஒரு மாநிலத்தின் தலையெழுத்தை மாற்றியமைக்கும் வல்லமை படைத்தவை. இதற்கு முன் இது போன்ற உணர்வை P.sainath எழுதிய “Everybody loves a good drought”, Josy joseph எழுதிய “A Feast of vultures”, Arundathi roy எழுதிய “capitalism- A ghost story” போன்ற புத்தகங்கள் ஆழமாக எடுத்துரைத்தன. இத்தகைய புத்தகங்கள் அரசின் தவறுகளை வெளிச்சம்போட்டு காட்டினாலும்,அரசாங்கம் இதற்கான தீர்வுகளை முன்னெடுக்கிறார்களா என்பது கேள்விக்குறி தான்.

ஒரு ஜனநாயக அரசின் கடமை என்பது தனது குடிகளை ஏற்றத்தாழ்வுகள் இன்றி நீதியின் பால் வழிநடத்தி பண்பட்ட சமூகமாக வளர்த்தெடுப்பது தான், ஆனால் நடைமுறை தலைகீழாக உள்ளது.

புத்தகம் 7 மாநிலங்களின் அரசு எந்திரத்தை பற்றி ஆழமாக பேசுகிறது, அந்தந்த மாநிலங்களின் வரலாறோடு அரசின் நடவடிக்கைகளை பிணைத்து சீரிய ஆய்வுகளுக்கு பிறகு எழுதப்பட்ட நூல் என்பது வாசிக்கும் போது தெரிகிறது. நூல் ஆசிரியருக்கு வாழ்த்துகளும் அன்பும்.

Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Gujarat, Manipur ஆகிய 7 மாநிலங்களின் உண்மை முகத்தை வெளிக்கொணர்ந்துள்ளது.

பிற மாநிலங்களுடன் ஒப்பிடும்போது தமிழகத்தின் நிலை பரவாயில்லை என்ற போதிலும், மாநிலத்தின் எதிர்காலம் பற்றிய அச்சத்தை அதிகமாக்குகிறது. ஒரு காலத்தில் மக்கள் நல திட்டங்களை செயல்படுத்தி வந்த கட்சிகள், பின்னாளில் வாக்குவங்கிக்காக நீண்ட நாள் திட்டங்களை கண்டுகொள்ளாமல், தேர்தல் வந்தால் மட்டும் வெளியிடப்படும் கவர்ச்சி அறிவிப்புகள் தமிழகத்தின் சாபக்கேடு தான். அதிலும் ஜெயலலிதா தலைமையிலான அதிமுக அரசின் நிர்வாக திறன் அனைத்தும் ஒரு தனி மனிதரின் பிம்பத்தை கட்டமைக்க பயன்பட்டது என்பதை படிக்கும் போது மனம் பதபதைக்கிறது. அரசாங்க அதிகாரிகளும் திட்டத்தை செயல்படுத்தவதை காட்டிலும் அந்த பிம்பத்தை கட்டமைப்பதில் மும்முரம் காட்டியதும், அதற்காக அவர்கள் செய்த தகவல் குளறுபிடிகள் எல்லாம் கொடுமையிலும் கொடுமை. தமிழகத்தில் சாதிய வேறுபாடுகள் கூர்தீட்டப்பட்டதும்,அதற்கான சமூக காரணிகளையும் விரிவாக எழுதியுள்ளார். மேலும் கனிமவள, மணல் கொள்ளை அதில் அரசியல் கட்சிகளின் பங்கு என மற்றுமொரு ஆய்வு விவரிக்கிறது.

தமிழகத்தின் நிலைமை இவ்வாறென்றால். பீகார், மிசோரம் போன்ற மாநிலங்களில், போதிய அளவில் மருத்துவர்கள் இல்லா மருத்துவமனைகளும், ஆசிரியர்கள் இல்லா பள்ளிக்கூடங்களும், சாலைகள் இல்லா கிராமங்கள் என மோசமான நிலையில் தான் மக்கள் அன்றாட வாழ்க்கையை கழித்து வருகிறார்கள்.

குஜராத் மாடல், மோடியின் வெற்று பிம்பத்தை ஊதி பெருக்கவும், வெகு சில முதலாளிகளுக்கு நன்மை செய்ததே ஒழிய, அங்குள்ள சிறு குறு நிறுவனங்கள் எல்லாம் GSTக்கு பிறகும் பணமதிப்பிளப்பிற்கு பிறகும் நிர்கதியாக விடப்பட்டன என்பது தான் உண்மை. குஜராத் கலவரம் அங்குள்ள மக்களிடையே மிக பெரிய அளவில் பேதத்தை விதைத்து சென்றது. அதையும் தாண்டி சிறுபான்மையினரை விரோதிகளாகவும், எதிரிகளாகவும் கட்டமைத்து அதன் பலனை பாஜக அரசு அறுவடையும் செய்தது. அதே பாணியை இந்தியா முழுக்க செயல்படுத்த தொடங்கியுள்ளது இந்த பாஜக அரசு. மேலும் பாஜக ஜனநாயகத்திற்க்கே உலை வைக்கும் நடவடிக்கைகளில் ஈடுபட்டு வருகிறது. முடிவுரையில் நூல் ஆசிரியர் “The battle with the congress is to deepen democracy. The battle with BJP is to protect democracy.” என்பார்.

பின்னுரையாக ஊடகவியலாளர் V.Geetha எழுதியுள்ள கட்டுரை சமகால தமிழக அரசியலை உற்றுநோக்குபவர்களுக்கு ஒரு துருப்பு சீட்டு. மாநில அரசுகளின் இதுபோன்ற நடவடிக்கைகள் பற்றி எல்லாம் மக்கள் கவலை படுவதில்லை, கவலைப்படாத அளவுக்கு இங்குள்ள ஊடகங்கள் அவர்களை அறியாமையில் வைத்துள்ளன என்பது நிதர்சனம். இந்தியா ஒரு ஜனநாயக நாடக தொடரவேண்டுமானால் நாம் அனைவரும் அறிவு தளத்தில் கடினமாக உழைக்க வேண்டும், மக்களிடையே பரவியுள்ள பிம்பங்களையும், அறியாமையையும் கட்டுடைத்து அறிவொளி பாய்ச்சி அவர்களை விடுவிக்க வேண்டும் என்பது நூல் கூறும் செய்தி.

நூல் ஆசிரியர் முன்னுரையில், பிற மாநிலங்களிலும் இது போன்ற ஆய்வுகளை மேற்கொண்டு அவற்றை பதிவுசெய்வதாகவும் கூறியிருந்தார், அவர் நிச்சயம் செய்ய வேண்டும், இது போன்ற நூல்கள் தமிழிலும் வெளிவர வேண்டும் என்பது என்போன்றவர்களின் ஆசையும் விருப்பமும். இந்த புத்தகம் 50க்கும் மேற்பட்ட நூல்களை நமக்கு அறிமுகம் செய்து வைக்கிறது, அந்த விதத்தில் நூல் ஆசிரியரை பாராட்டத்தான் வேண்டும்.

அனைவரும் அவசியம் வாசிக்கவேண்டிய நூல் தோழர்கள் மற்றும் நண்பர்கள் தவறாமல் வாசியுங்கள்.

BOOK: Despite the state - why India lets its people down and how they cope.
AUTHOR: M. Rajshekar

#Do_read

Extremely well researched work. The author picks up few states, goes in depth into a problem the state has and gives us a feel of how the India state works.

Some notes:

Mizoram: The State That Could Not Pay Salaries

The author discussed in details, the issues of funding from the Central government and the issues with economic management while competing with Manipur & Tripura.
Lunglei - the second largest town in Mizoram
Laldenga - Mizoram’s first chief minister. In 1986, the Mizo Peace Accord was signed. The next year, as part of the accord, Mizoram became a state, and Laldenga, its first chief minister.
• At Dampa Tiger Reserve, poaching occurs by groups like Shanti Bahini (fighting for the autonomy of the Chakma people in Bangladesh) and National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLTF) militating for Tripura to be an independent, Christian country.

Orissa:

The author discussed in details, how mining helped the politicians, but failed the people.
The country, and the state, should have helped mid-sized steel makers invest in R&D, or it should have created a competitive field by doing away with the extant arrangement where large business groups had captive mines, while small and medium ones did not. ‘Instead of making Rs 4,000 per tonne exporting ore, we could have made Rs 45,000 per tonne exporting steel. That would have made domestic manufacturers more competitive and created a more robust industrial economy in the state,’ Patel said. But that is not what happened. Like Goa and Karnataka, Odisha exported raw ore, a decision Patel described as ‘a silent accommodation of mining interests’.

Two lakh crore rupees in exports. Such marginal uptick (people started wearing chappals) in people’s lives.

Like Mizoram, Odisha was failing to deliver healthcare and education. The reasons, however, were different. Mizoram had cash-flow problems because government spending had outpaced revenues, making it divert funds from programs in health and education for more expedient needs like repaying loans and staff salaries. Odisha was different. In 2014–2015, state government revenues were a shade over Rs 30,000 crore. With funds coming in from the centre too, total revenues swelled to Rs 83,181 crore. In fact, the state was aiming to close 2015–2016 with a Rs 5,100 crore revenue surplus. Yet, there was such understaffing and neglect. The reason, said bureaucrats at the state and the centre, was Odisha’s fixation on fiscal conservatism. Afraid of going broke, it hesitated to spend.

Despite the persistence of debt-induced migration, the state did not implement the central government’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). It gave students cycles but not teachers. It gave people doles when someone passed away but no paediatricians. It fretted about fiscal conservatism but did not maximize gains from the iron ore boom. Despite this litany of failures, outcry from its people seemed to be surprisingly muted.

One reason for this passivity to the state’s history. An agglomeration of small princely states, Odisha was always feudal. This mode of thinking persisted, said Mishra. ‘You get a mindset which says, “I don’t want to understand politics, rights, political rights, democracy, etc. I operate on the belief that the people I am choosing understand them.” It’s a very lethargic society.’

Punjab:

Here the author provides details of how one family came to control the entire state machinery.
Into the mid-2000s, Hero, Atlas and Avon made some parts—like frames, handlebars and forks—in-house and outsourced the rest to suppliers. This was how cities like Ludhiana came to have thousands of companies making pedals, spokes, ball bearings and more. This complex produced about 90 per cent of all cycles sold in India. Since 2008, however, cheaper Chinese imports have replaced indigenous manufacturers of cycle parts, most of which have shut down too.

India failed to prepare small and medium enterprises for import liberalisation, leave alone exports.

High electricity cost due to Octroi, cess, including cow cess. This was administrative jugaad. During the insurgency years, tax collection, like agricultural extension and other government functions, had crumbled in the state. When peace returned, successive governments did not revive these systems. The only state bill the people of Punjab paid was for power. So, whenever strapped for funds, the state government turned to PSPCL, with its 99.9 per cent collection rate, and got it to add cesses, duties and surcharges. Cow cess came in because cities like Ludhiana faced a problem of abandoned cows. As ‘gau rakshaks’, or cow protectors, moved around, farmers struggled to sell ageing cattle and abandoned them in the cities. Ludhiana’s municipal corporation, consequently, had to set up more cow shelters, but it was cash-strapped. People might not voluntarily give money for the shelters but, as a municipality official said, ‘Electricity is a compulsion.’

States in India have three major sources of revenue, as K.R. Lakhanpal, a former chief secretary of Punjab, explained when I met him in Chandigarh. ‘There is excise [like on alcohol], transport [like motor vehicle tax] and real estate [like levies on construction materials such as sand and stone]. Some states also levy professional tax and payroll tax.’ After coming to power in 2007, the Badal family, of the then ruling Akali Dal’s Parkash Singh Badal, and those close to it took over these three sectors

Most cases of corruption in India are about politicians misusing power to enrich themselves. In Mizoram, politicians made money from road building. In Odisha, they grabbed the gains from the iron ore mining boom. Punjab was different. What one saw here was not just political rent extraction but an ambition to take over the state itself.

’Wherever the Congress won, the former transport minister Master Mohan Lal told me, ‘not one paisa worth of work gets done as per the instructions of the local MLA.’ Even in police matters, nothing got done without a nod from the halka in-charge, who, however, sanctioned action only if politically favourable. With this, the Akali Dal ruled every constituency, whether it had won or not.
.Village life in Punjab had become faction-ridden and hard, said Jagrup Singh Sekhon, a professor of political science at Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University. At the same time, formal institutions for welfare, like administration and healthcare, and grievance redressal, like the police and judiciary, had weakened.‘In such a construct, who can save people from the police and patwari? That is what takes people to the sants.’ They form a protective buffer between the powerful and the individual, since local leaders listened to the sants.

If its politicians had not annexed road building, Mizoram’s state revenues would have been higher. If Odisha had retained more of the revenue from the iron ore boom, it could have spent more on teachers. Had Punjab mopped up revenues from liquor and stone crushing, it could have had more than one cardiologist for the entire state. Each of these were choices made, not by the bureaucracy, but the political leadership. In all three states, political parties, voted to power to find solutions to the problems facing these states, had made choices that helped them grow at the cost of their people.

Tamil Nadu

This is the state that embraced messianic populism
Erstwhile village elite moved to cities. Vanniyars, buying out the land of those leaving, sought to replace them in central Tamil Nadu. Gounders, another dominant caste in regions around Coimbatore, forayed into manufacturing. Arundhatiyars, a dalit sub-caste in northern and western parts of the state, turned to industrial work. Parayars, another dalit sub-caste spread across both Tamil Nadu and Kerala, moved out of villages.These gambits yielded unequal results. The farm crisis thwarted the vanniyars’ hopes of upward mobility. Gounders struggled as the state’s manufacturing clusters slipped into trouble.In contrast, dalits, who fled villages for education, construction or industrial wage-work, saw their conditions improve.

If we don’t have the material resources to assert our power, what do we fallback on? The cultural idea of a caste

By 2005, Tamil Nadu had three different schooling systems—government schools, matriculation schools and CBSE schools. Each differed in important ways. Government schools followed the state syllabus and taught in Tamil. CBSE schools followed their countrywide curriculum and taught in English. Matriculation schools, the fastest-growing segment of the state’s school sector, set their own syllabus, also in English, and held their own examinations.

In Mizoram, Odisha and Punjab, I had traced back the failure to deliver health and education to underfunding and administrative incapacity. What I saw in Tamil Nadu was different. Here, a functional administration had begun ignoring systemic improvements in favour of ploys that made the elected political party look good at the cost of the state’s people.

Over the years, the role of money, as cash given to voters and funds spent on campaigning, had gone up in Tamil Nadu’s elections.38 This was the state’s notorious ‘Thirumangalam formula’. In 2009, M.K. Alagiri of the DMK was said to have paid, according to the US Embassy cables leaked by Wikileaks, as much as Rs 5,000 per voter in the Thirumangalam assembly by-election.39 The biggest spenders were the DMK and the AIADMK.

For bureaucrats, said Thennarasu, the cost of disobeying politicians was greater than disobeying the judiciary.

As an addendum, the author also makes notes his observation of couple more states.
Bihar:
Indeed, under Yadav, Bihar did not see more riots like the Bhagalpur one. The ones it did see, like Nawada (1990) and Sitamarhi (1992), stayed local. As a corollary, however, as dalits and other marginalised groups gained political power, the state saw a rise in caste violence. Dominant-caste militias like the Ranvir Sena and Sunlight Sena (reminiscent of detergent ads) attacked dalits. In turn, dalits joined Naxal groups that attacked dominant-caste people.

This void does not stay empty for long. Society steps in, creating imperfect replacements to the State. In Bihar, one of them was local strongmen. In When Crime Pays, the political scientist Milan Vaishnav writes about Anant Kumar Singh, the leader from the bhumihar caste in Mokama near Patna and bahubali, local strongman. Despite the many criminal cases against him, people voted for Singh as he got their work done in a town where the government functioning was weak.

Gujarat

Surat - midway between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, was India’s largest producer of synthetic fabrics.
If MSMEs and groundnut production were two pillars of Gujarat’s economy, Amul was a third.
As expected, minorities were not doing well in Gujarat. The odd thing was, as the patidars’ protest, the travails of MSMEs and the decline in Amul showed, the majority community was not doing well either. Who was gaining from Gujarat’s majoritarian project? Ghanshyam Shah had an answer to that question. It served the interests of a few.

Manipur
The state—with the Naga community dominating the hills to the east, north and west of the valley; the Meitei community in the valley; and the Zo people, known as Kukis here, in the hills to the south—is one of the most violent parts of the country.

AFSPA continued as ever. If its continuation is one puzzle, the zones of its imposition is another. The act, which confers judicial insulation upon the Indian army, is not in force in Imphal, which sees the most violence, but in all the hill districts where the ethnic groups, and not the Meiteis, are numerically dominant. This pattern of selective imposition transcends Manipur.

Conclusion:

Fish stocks were falling in Tamil Nadu because sea surface temperatures were rising globally. Odisha’s ore export boom ended when the US sub-prime crisis hit China. The centre’s decision to redirect payments to state treasuries hurt Mizoram’s HIV programme. And yet, none of these states took even the adaptive or mitigative steps they could. Tamil Nadu could have stopped the flow of effluents into the sea. Odisha could have boosted its steel sector. Punjab could have strengthened farm extension. Bihar too could have strengthened disease surveillance.A reason for this inaction lies in the four traits—centralisation, extractiveness, dominance and clientelism—that reduce political parties into weak problem-solving agents. And so, moving from state to state, I saw five ways in which parties tried to retain legitimacy—denial, diversion, cultism, elections and endorsem*nts.