Fourth
Critical Studies Conference
"Development, Logistics, and Governance"
Name
of the Session IV:
Resource
Use: Social Power and Elements of Development-II
Abstract
1947, in India, presented several moments of ruptures, many of them incomplete and the others relegated to the realm of unrealised possibilities. This paper intends to take up three of them, around the question of land and taken from the state of Bihar, in order to interrogate the process of the setting up of the nation-state. The three cases represent attempts by various players: The Kisan Sabha, the Zamindars and the newly in power Congress to intervene and remake the ‘new’ state according to their own respective visions and interests. Their ‘solutions’ show how these interventions were managed, not just through the use of rhetoric, but of the logic inherent in the politics of governance. In turn, these very acts of dealing with emergent situations also informed the nation-state.
In the first place, the three instances, The Sathi Case, the mobilisation undertaken by the Raja of Ramgarh and the abolition of Zamindari, demonstrate how the moment of ‘decolonisation’ held within it several possibilities. The very tumult of the moment prompted the various actors to not jus test the waters, but to present and pursue their own agenda of development. These agenda clashed with one another and with the state’s own received wisdom on the issue.
In the second, the way these three incidents panned out also presents an opportunity to see the logic of the state. The apparatus involved, the way they are deployed and the logic behind such deployment are shaped by the logistical machinery already put into place before 1947. At the same time, that very logistical machinery is informed by the possibilities opened up in 1947 and by the factors of democracy, popular movements and their like.
This paper intends to study the various visions of development and governance that clashed and combined in these three instances and to thereby highlight how development, governance and logistics effect and are effected by them, which could be a useful way of asking anew the question, ‘decolonised or postcolonial?’
Bionote
Having studied in Presidency College, Calcutta, and Calcutta University, Jishnu Dasgupta is currently teaching history in Serampore College. His unfinished PhD is on The Social Basis of Organised Politics: Bihar 1937-1979. He is also interested in issues of development, governance, civil rights, sexuality and is an avid follower of various passions including sports, walking, the city of Kolkata and books of various types.
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Abstract
Large-scale water transfers and privatization of water supply and management schemes is part of a larger trend towards urbanization and economic liberalization in India. Such schemes are embedded within the larger trajectories of development that privilege the rich and downplay livelihood and ecological concerns. The post independence Indian state increased the pressure on ecological traditions of prudence and regulation in the name of development. The state was considered a primary actor for advancing the agenda of development. Characteristic features included an international system of aid for infrastructure projects, agricultural productivity and livestock management. The state centric paradigm of development focused on the ‘social engineering’ top down model of development with a welfare approach that involved patriarchy and patronage. The dominant narrative supporting big dams repeated the slogan of “some will have to bear the cost of development.”
The era of the eighties saw the evolution of the ideological changes that weakened states as the principal tool of economic development and relegated them into back burner. Private sector rapidly took over the state in mainstream economic doctrine as ‘correct’ motor of development. In India this neo-liberal framework promoted development primarily as corollary to economic and social management. The managerial approach to development sought quick techno-economic solutions to the political problems of increasing inequality, marginalization and consequent political and social instability. This new policy framework, involving liberalization, privatization, free-market, structural adjustment exported from Washington, through an understanding with the State Department of the USA, IMF and the World Bank, dominated the development discourse since the 1990s as a solution for ‘third world development’. As these mega-institutions subject developing countries to the economic “medicine” of structural adjustment programs, they ensure privatization schemes and force the withdrawal of state subsidies and state intervention in economy. Public Private Partnerships began to be promoted at the global and local scale in India. This process of resource extraction by the state to fuel the global market and the disruption of local peoples and rural ecologies in the service of development began in the 1990s. This paper analyzes the logistics of developmental governance in India in the water sector through the discourses of power, knowledge and agency.
Bionote
Dr. Asthana was the Head of the Department of Political Science at Christ Church College, in Kanpur, and is currently Associate Professor, Government at Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA. She has a PhD in Political Science from Kanpur University and a PhD in Natural Resources and Environmental Science, from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She is a board member of the South Asian Studies Association, a California based nonprofit public corporation that works to connect South Asian scholars from all parts of the world through conferences, discussion panels and the Brown Bag Radio broadcast. Her areas of research are in South Asian security with a focus on nontraditional threats and human security with special reference to water, environment and development. Her publications include several books: Water Policy Processes in India: Discourses of Power and Resistance, The Politics of Environment, India's Foreign Policy and Sub continental Politics, Theory of International Politics and two edited volumes, Security in South Asia: Trends and Directions and Advances in Environmental Biopollution. She has published a large number of research articles in various journals and has contributed chapters in edited volumes. She has been on delegations of Track Two Diplomacy for confidence building measures between India and Pakistan. Dr. Asthana has been associated with premier think tanks in the region like Delhi Policy Group and has participated in the Ford Foundation projects in India and Sri Lanka on Comprehensive and Environmental Security in South Asia. She is the Founder member of the IC Centre for Governance, New Delhi, and the Founder Secretary and Member Advisory Panel of Eco-Friends, an NGO that works on water issues in India. She has served as consultant and completed a project for the Government of India on the Water Security of India. Her forthcoming books include Water Security in India: Hope and Despair.