John R. Wood - State Politics in Contemporary India: Crisis or Continuity?

State Politics in Contemporary India

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State Politics in Contemporary India: Crisis or Continuity?

edited by John R. Wood

Although the Congress Party has dominated Indian national politics in recent years, a more uncertain picture has emerged at the level of India's twenty-two states. Tensions resulting from modernization and increased popular participation in politics have aroused unprecedented factionalism in Congress-run states and brought opposition parties to power in others; in a few states, democratic government has been forced to a standstill. Prior to her assassination in October 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi strove to control state politics, but her efforts brought charges of interference and manipulation and, in some states, triggered massive violence.

Does this unrest point to a profound crisis in the politics of the world's most populous democracy? The evidence from some of the states suggest a continuation of past trends while current developments in others seem more ominous. The articles in this book examine the politics of seven of India's major states during the Indira Gandhi years to assess the effects of central government's intervention and the intensification of political conflict. Among the themes covered are the political results of social and economic change, the rise of previously disadvantaged groups in politics, struggles over agrarian benefits, electoral strategies and performance, the fragmentation and "deinstitutionalization" of political parties, and the changing nature of the relations between the states and the central government.

Dr. John R. Wood holds a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University and is associate professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

Crisis or Continuity?

edited by John R. Wood

First published 1984 by Westview Press, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wood, John R.
State politics in Contemporary India.
(A Westview replica edition)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. State governmentsIndiaAddresses, essays,
lectures. 2. Political partiesIndiaStates
Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title.
JQ298.8.W66 1984 320.2'0954 84-15243

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28870-9 (hbk)

This volume grew out of a panel on Indian state politics presented at the thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 1984. Brass, Kohli, Manor and Wood gave papers and Church served as discussant; subsequently, Blair, who chaired the panel, and Lele and Varkey generously offered to participate as well. All of the papers were revised and edited speedily in order to take advantage of Westview Press' rapid publication and distribution through the Replica Edition process.

Our wish to make these papers directly available to a wider audience is motivated by an awareness that 1985 will be an important year for Indian politics. In 1985 it is expected that the Indian electorate will, for the eighth time since Independence, go to the polls in a national election; as well, 1985 marks the centennial of the Indian National Congress, whose current incarnation governs India under Indira Gandhi's leadership. We believe this is an appropriate occasion for students of Indian public life to take stock of the Indira Gandhi years and to assess the performance of the party which has dominated Indian politics almost uninterruptedly since 1947. Our contribution to this enterprise is to examine politics in the Indian states, where Indira Gandhi and the Congress(I) face many challenges and challengers in a continual struggle for power.

Apart from a few memorable studies of individual states, the systematic analysis of Indian state politics was largely neglected until 1967 when two pioneering efforts, one by Iqbal Narain and the other by Myron Weiner and both entitled State Politics in India, emerged to set the standard for symposia on state political activity. While in this collection we have discussed recurring themes and patterns of political change in the states we have studied, we have not tried to emulate Narain's or Weiner's efforts to construct an overall comparative framework for the analysis of Indian state politics. Such a framework might now be too confining. This is because Indian politics, particularly at the state level, have become vastly more complicated in recent years. Not only has India created more states, but major developments, such as the Congress Party splits of 1969 and 1978, the de-linking of national and state elections, the proliferation of new parties and "fronts," the imposition of Emergency rule during 1975-77, and the trial of Janata Party government during 1977-79, have altered many landmarks in the Indian political scene. In addition, remarkable changes in Indian social and economic life have created new and divergent contexts for political behavior in each state. All of these changes, plus an unprecedented outpouring of literature by social scientists who have struggled to keep up with them, have made the task of understanding Indian state politics in the 1980s more daunting than it was in the 1960s.