Civil Society

I have been following the recent protests against corruption spearheaded by Anna Hazare with some confusion. The demand for participation of 'civil society' in anti-corruption vigilance is the cause of discomfort for me. Who decides who is a representative of civil society? In a democratic society, isn't all of us part of civil society and isn't our elected representatives the members representing civil society?

Partha Chatterjee of Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta and Columbia University has written about the need for a new conceptual framework of "political society" for a country like India. http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/12162.pdf. I pick a quote from this article here...

"...It would be a mistake, however, to think that the result is a convergence of the Indian political system with the classical models of capitalist democracy. The critical difference, as I have pointed out elsewhere, has been produced by a split in the field of the political between a domain of properly constituted civil society and a more ill-defined and contingently activated domain of political society [Chatterjee 2004]. Civil society in India today, peopled largely by the urban middle classes, is the sphere that seeks to be congruent with the normative models of bourgeois civil society and represents the domain of capitalist hegemony. If this were the only relevant political domain, then India today would probably be indistinguishable from other western capitalist democracies. But there is the other domain of what I have called political society which includes large sections of the rural population and the urban poor. These people do, of course, have the formal status of citizens and can exercise their franchise as an instrument of political bargaining. But they do not relate to the organs of the state in the same way that the middle classes do, nor do governmental agencies treat them as proper citizens belonging to civil society. Those in polit ical societ y make t heir claims on government, and in turn are governed, not within the framework of stable constitutionally defined rights and laws, but rather through temporary, contextual and unstable arrangements arrived at through direct political negotiations. The latter domain, which represents the vast bulk of democratic politics in India, is not under the moral-political leadership of the capitalist class.

Hence, my argument is that the framework of passive revolution is still valid for India. But its structure and dynamic have undergone a change. The capitalist class has come to acquire a

position of moral-political hegemony over civil society, consisting principally of the urban middle classes. It exercises its considerable influence over both the central and the state governments not through electoral mobilisation of political parties and movements but largely through the bureaucratic-managerial class, the increasingly influential print and visual media, and the judiciary and other independent regulatory bodies."

Isn't this an interesting take on Civil Society?

Ever since the British left, we as a nation (are we a nation?) have been finding it difficult to introspect inwards and need scapegoats for our troubles. Depending on our political persuasion we blame Paksitan, IMF/WorldBank, MNCs, USA etc etc. The latest goat is the political class. Is it very hard to accept that as a people we don't care much about setting up common rules and following them for the benefit of everyone? One look at our roads would give you the answer.

Our "democratic" politics has been a politics of negotiation for special entitlements and privileges. When people vote for cash to elect their representatives, why are we so indignant when our representatives demand cash for votes?

While being at it, may be Anna Hazare should fast in Tirupati too to stop bribing Balaji for special favours.

Development in Tamil Nadu

I have revived my blogging after eons. I would now use this space mainly to write or quote about Tamil Nadu. My information mostly comes from Economic & Political Weekly.

To begin with I pick a longish quote from an article on Women's Empowerment through micro-finance in Tamil Nadu (http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/15883.pdf). The interesting part of this research is that the research have conducted surveys in the concerned villages over several decades. This kind of research gives us an understanding of how things are changing relative to time. In spite of the deafening roar of pessimism I hear all around me, I remain a rational optimist. Going by the evidence available I think things are improving for people of Tamil Nadu.

Here is a quote from the article

"Tamil Nadu belongs to that part of India that has experienced fairly stable economic growth and social development in the past 25 years. In our panel study of six villages in Karur and Tiruchirapalli districts, we have documented this development in various ways. The most important findings relate to a doubling of average real incomes, rapid growth of non-farm activities and a reduction of inequality in terms of operated area and income among the land operating agrarian households in our sample (Djurfeldt et al 2008a).

We have identified the two most important driving forces in this transformation as industrialisation with its side effects and state social policy interventions.

Being close both to the Tiruppur-Karur textile industry belt and the growing city of Tiruchirapalli, many of the households we studied have been able to diversify their economic activities into a number of non-agricultural activities. The actual number of factory jobs is still small, but the number of workers now engaged in shops, various services and modern professional occupations, building industry, etc, is quite significant. Almost 70% of the studied agrarian households have one or more members so engaged. Our statistics on income shows that it has increased faster than farm income over the past two and a half decades. Today 64% of household income derives from the nonfarm sector, that is, the secondary and tertiary sector of the economy. In 1980, this proportion was only 34%.

The development of a rudimentary welfare state is also part of the story. Despite the neoliberal policies at the centre and the pressure on the Tamil Nadu state government to lower spending

on social welfare, we still find functioning state run low price shops in all the villages which supply basic provisions of rice kerosene, and sugar to more than three-fourths of the population. There are more and better government schools than earlier in all the villages and in all of them there are also crèches and centres for the care of pregnant mothers and infants (angan­wadis). All schools and nurseries serve a midday meal to all the children, which helps in improving nutritional standards. Thus working parents are freer to work full time than earlier. This now also provides a larger number of jobs for people in the villages, not just as teachers but also as auxiliary nurses, pre-school assistants, literacy workers, etc, than was the case in 1979-80. However, recruitment to regular public service employment has been at a standstill through more than a decade and a half. Recently, there has been some recruitment of teachers.

It is this development coupled with a somewhat slower but still steady growth of agricultural production that makes up the basis for the material improvements that we have observed. "