Kohli, Atul (1987), The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Economic Reform, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

The Book

The present book is a study of state intervention in a developing society, which analyses the impact of authority structures and regime types on patterns of socio-economic development. In particular, the study discusses Indian state intervention for alleviating poverty among its lower classes focussing on the conditions under which public authorities of a developing society can effectively pursue redistributive reforms. Reinterpreting some of the major themes in India’s political economy, the study focuses attention on the political roots of redistributive failures in India. It argues that the failure of the Indian State to facilitate social reform has resulted from an alliance of domination between a weakly organised nationalist political elite and the commercially oriented propertied class who are in a position to stimulate economic growth. Emphasising the political and socio-structural characteristics as crucial for understanding the redistributive outcomes in India, the author argues that the loose and heterogeneous nature of the ruling coalition has made it difficult for the political authorities to intervene in a rigid, hierarchical society so as to benefit the poor. He further argues that as socio-structural constraints are not likely to vary significantly in the short run, poverty conditions will only alter with changing regime types and policies. This, however, is a strong claim the validity of which remains to be verified and established by further empirical research.

The significance of the book lies in the fact that it focuses attention on the nature of ruling political parties as an important factor influencing the success or failure of redistributive and welfare politics in a democratic capitalistic setting. The study makes a comparative political analysis of three Indian state governments such as: Communist Party of India (Marxist) regime in West Bengal (1977-83); the Congress (I) government under Devraj Urs in Karnataka (1974-80); and the short-lived Janata Party rule in Uttar Pradesh (1977-80). The author specifically chooses these three states on the ground that ruled by different political parties within a federal polity, these three states provide some similarities and some differences regarding regime ideology and organisation on the one hand, and the effectiveness of anti-poverty programmes on the other. Comparing these in terms of their success in three policy areas: land reforms, support of small farmers and efforts to improve the wage and employment prospects for the rural poor, the author argues that well-organised, left-of-centre parties in government- like in West Bengal- are the most effective in implementing reform.

Approaches/Theoretical Framework

While discussions on Government of India’s failure to alleviate poverty and the conditions under which it can be alleviated have rested mainly on two positions: (1) that poverty can only be alleviated in the long run when national wealth grows or (2) that revolutionary changes need to be made for meaningful redistribution, the author observes that the more sophisticated policy-oriented literature proposing “policy-packages” to alleviate poverty suffers from political naivete based on the belief that failure to adopt appropriate policies has been mainly due to the absence of “political will” (p.3). He, therefore, takes a different approach to focus the study on the conditions that broadens the state’s reformist scope within

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a democratic-capitalist model of development. In other words, it analyses the conditions under which a Third World regime is likely to posses a degree of autonomy from social constraints so as to facilitate economic gains for the lower classes.

Taking cognisance of the fact that an alliance of a nationalist elite with the entrepreneurial classes (with a balance clearly in favour of the propertied classes) would not automatically preclude redistributive concessions, the author argues that the lower-class gains remain solely a function of the pattern of state intervention in the economy. The pattern of state intervention is, in turn, largely determined by the ideology, organisation, and class basis of the regime that controls state power. The author argues that “as the ideology, organisation and pattern of class alliances underlying a regime can vary within a democratic–capitalist model of development, so can regime capacities to facilitate the lower-class redistributive gains” (p. 9).

Conceptualising the state and society as being in mutual interaction, the author adopts a state-society focus to analyse the role of state in development partially as being conditioned by socio-economic conditions and partially as reflecting autonomous choices made by political authorities. Focussing attention on the centrality of the state’s role in development within a statist framework, the author develops a theoretical framework by conceptualising state, state autonomy and regime type to analyse the performance of state intervention under different regime types. In fact, the concepts of state, state autonomy, and regime type have been structured in such a manner that leads to the conceptualisation of authority structures as a potentially significant force in socio-economic development.

Conceiving state as an “institutional arrangement”, i.e. a set of administrative and coercive institutions headed by an executive authority, the author discuses the Third World states and their potentials and weaknesses by characterising them as developmental capitalist states as distinguished from the communist and advanced capitalist states. He then elaborates state autonomy and regime types, which constitute the two main building blocs of his theoretical framework.

Describing state autonomy as the state’s relationship with the society specifically referring to the state’s capacity to restructure social relations and mobilise societal resources, the author observes that the clearest cases of state autonomy from society are revolutionary communist states, which retain the power to transform social structures fundamentally. According to the author, state autonomy refers to a macro-political-sociological condition whereby state authorities can (1) insulate themselves from social demands in general, but specifically from the demands of propertied classes, and (2) utilise state power to consciously alter socio-economic relations. An autonomous state thus contrasts with a reflexive or a captured state, where state actions are largely controlled by social forces. Patterns of leadership and ideology, and the organisation of the state power, as well as control over productive property, are some of the important varying conditions and resources that affect the state’s capacity to act autonomously vis-à-vis society. As these variables are all continuous and vary in degree, so does its autonomy. However, the author observes that compared to communist cases, state autonomy in class societies is always a relative matter.

Explaining state autonomy within a capitalist setting largely as a function of the type of regime wielding power, the author discusses varying types of regimes that control state power within the Third World. While regime types refer to how political rule is organised (e.g. patterns of legislative-executive relations) and the relationship of the rulers to the ruled

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(e.g. involving democratic participation or not), the author says that “as the leadership, ideology, organisation, and class alliances underlying specific regimes vary, so does the capacity of political authorities to define and implement state goals” (p. 29). He contends that the regime attributes (mentioned above) count for redistributive effectiveness and are significant from the point of view of explaining varying reformist capacities. Citing the concrete example of left-of-centre parties like CPI (M) led communist regime of West Bengal, the author observes that: (a) regime attributes such as ideology, organisation, and the class basis of the power holders make the institutional penetration of the society possible; (b) facilitate the degree of regime autonomy from the propertied class; (c) the organisational characteristics of such regimes create a degree of separation between political and social power; and (d) this margin of autonomous political power can be utilised to manipulate state intervention in the interest of the lower classes.

He, thus, analyses the distributive role of Indian states (on the basis of the empirical information collected from the three different states run by different political regimes) following the above theoretical framework.

Politics of Policy Formulation

Each of the three case studies (regimes) examined in this book are run by different political parties with their respective ideologies, party organisation, pattern of leadership, and decision-making style. Based on definite class support and the factors mentioned above determine their regime type, which had a decisive impact on their performance with regard to their redistributive reform.

As far as policy formulation is concerned, because of its class composition, the CPI (M) led West Bengal government could bring in well thought out redistributive reform policies like tenancy reform in a very strategic way without affecting the interest of any class lending support to the party. Rather, the particular reform helped in increasing its support base as large number of sharecroppers was obliged to CPI (M). Further, in case of giving tickets to persons for contesting elections to panchayats, in a strategic move the party preferred giving tickets to party sympathisers than party workers. While this served their political purpose of increasing their party base, the local level party workers were put in charge of supervisory role for the smooth functioning of the panchayats. This helped the party to penetrate into the countryside without being captured by the propertied class. As regards not going in for land reforms, i.e. distribution of ceiling surplus land, initially, while there were a number of problems involved in the process, the party chose to adopt a ‘pragmatic compromise’ approach and postponed it, though it was very much committed to land reforms. On the other hand, the Karnataka Government led by Devraj Urs of Congress Party by contrast was not committed to this goal. With landlord dominated local governments and no-party organisation, the Urs regime was certainly not in a position to the policy of appropriating surplus land for redistribution. It is because; pursuit of a policy of distribution of ceiling surplus land implies nothing less than a frontal attack by the state authorities on the rural class structure. And the Urs regime could not have been able to afford that as many of its party members belonged to the land-owning class. Though Urs’ populist regime had some commitment to redistribution, it was only within the framework of the existing class structure. Not surprisingly, the Janata government in UP eliminated the objective of land reform from its agenda. This was mainly because unlike West Bengal, it consisted of members representing land-owning peasantry coming from the middle castes.

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Politics of Implementation

While two out of three case studies examined in this book involved implementation of some kind of poverty alleviation programmes, the Uttar Pradesh Government ruled by Janata Party did not implement any specific antipoverty programme. Characterised by shifting alliances and political instability and fragmented leadership, a party committed to the land owning peasantry could do nothing for the rural poor. While land reforms were eliminated from its policy agenda, in spite of the rhetorical “rural tilt”, the small and marginal farmers remained neglected and ignored. Not only did the government fail to act on their behalf, but also the power of the state was occasionally turned against the poor to reinforce the already powerful land-owning groups. In fact, despite Janata’s rhetoric of “new beginning”, “decentralisation”, “rural tilt”, and concern for the “small man”, in practice, the Janata government in UP failed miserably as far as attacking rural poverty is concerned.

As far as the government of West Bengal ruled by CPI (M) is concerned, it made a concerted attack on rural poverty through programmes like (1) land reforms (especially tenancy reforms); (2) programmes for small farmers (mainly providing credit to the newly registered sharecroppers); and (3) employment and wage schemes for the land-less labourers. With a very clear-cut strategy, the party implemented its redistributive reform policies through the creation of “red panchayats”, “registration of sharecroppers”, “facilitation of credit for small landholders”, and by “mobilising the landless labourers for higher wages through unionisation”. This was all done with an aim to securing political position by improving the conditions of the lower classes.

The politicisation of panchayats or “red panchayats”, as they were otherwise called, constituted an important strategy in its implementation of antipoverty programmes as it played a crucial role not only in ensuring the successful implementation of programmes, but also in mobilisation of the poor for their personal gains indirectly leading to the penetration of the party deep into the remote rural areas. After coming to power in 1977, the CPI (M) was looking for consolidating its rural power base further. As such, in an attempt to incorporate the rural classes institutionally, it brought in the institutional innovation by allowing political parties to compete for the local government institutions. While this well calculated decision of the party leaders resulted in the return of around 80 per cent of candidates contesting on CPI (M) tickets, these newly created red panchayats played a catalytic role in CPI (M)’s over all political and developmental strategy.

Like any other political party, CPM too wanted to consolidate power and as such intended to accomplish this political goal by building its power base primarily on the lower and lower-middle classes. While this necessitated involving these groups in the political processes as well as transferring some of the benefits of power to them, in a well calculated move CPM decided to file party-sympathisers for panchayat elections by reserving the party cadres to play a crucial role in the supervision and monitoring of implementation of antipoverty programmes.

As catalytic agents, the panchayat members and presidents played a crucial role in each and every policy that the party implemented for the benefit of the poor. While the government placed the bureaucrats/administrators under the control of the political functionaries at each level of administration (i.e. state, district, block, and village) by treating them as executive arms of the government, they were devolved with the power to identify the targeted beneficiaries, i.e. identifying the sharecroppers for registration, identifying and

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assessing the crop area of the sharecroppers for enabling them to obtain bank loans at a lower interest, identifying the landless labourers for FWP and NREP programmes for providing wage employment, unionising the landless agricultural labourers for higher agricultural wages, etc. The panchayats also decided the projects to be undertaken under the FWP/NREP programme, location of the project and the people to be employed for administration of the project.

As the sharecroppers got themselves registered and their right to cultivate certain portion of land was fixed, this increased their involvement in the crop production. While the bank loan received with lower rates of interest (4%) through government mediation and the local panchayats further increased their productivity resulting in a perceptible improvement in their standard of living, they owed their obligation to the panchayats in particular and the CPM in general serving the political purpose.

Since most of the antipoverty programmes like FWP and NREP were implemented by the panchayats in conjunction with the local party cadres, the projects chosen fit better into the felt needs of the community than those selected in the past, which was based on the narrow preference of the village elites. While the projects implemented included building of roads connecting isolated villages to main roads, cleaning and fixing of village tanks, and the drainage and the cleaning–up of canals used by many members of the village community, compared to the past practices they benefited a broader population. Of course corruption was there, but not to the extent it was during the Congress regime earlier. The new red panchayats reduced corruption and class bias and were considerably more effective in facilitating mass-oriented rural development than the past institutional arrangements. Reducing corruption and class bias, the local panchayats proved to be more effective in facilitating the hitherto mythical development from below.

The question that arises here is that entrusted with so much of power, whether or not the panchayat representatives misused their power? The fact that as new political elites, who had just displaced the traditional local elites, the panchayat members owed their position and power to the party. Since their sharing of the benefits of power depended on the continuance of CPM in power, which in turn depended on its clean and effective administration of antipoverty programmes, their compliance with the central directives was very likely to be maintained. Another important factor with regard to the implementation of redistributive programmes is that had the members been from large land-owning backgrounds, the prospects of implementing programmes through them would not have been very good. They could have opposed it. But since majority of the representatives had come form lower-middle class background (as they were given the party tickets selectively), the possibility of their opposing the redistributive programmes did not arise. This is because; many of these programs did not directly affect the socio-economic interests of the panchayat members. On the contrary, it helped in effective implementation of redistributive programmes.

In addition to the above programmes, the CPM also attempted to unionise the landless labourers with a purpose to building organised political support and conducting wage struggles. In this political task, rather than state and local governments, the party and the Kishan Sabha (an important organ of the party) played an important role in forcing the landlords to increase the wages for the landless agricultural labourers.

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Compared to the tenancy reforms in Wet Bengal which was achieved successfully through the involvement of local panchayats, the tenancy reform in Karnataka pursued through the passing of a series of amendments to the existing land reform legislations under the Devraj Urs regime was not that successful. It was rather a piecemeal success. Regarding who is or is not a sharecropper, while the tenancy reform legislation of West Bengal had put the onus of proof on the landlord, in Karnataka, the tenancy reform legislations had left the burden with the poor tenants who had to prove their own right to land. This, in fact, proved to be an important problem in the process of implementation.

To facilitate the implementation of tenancy reform, the Urs regime had created a large number of land tribunals (at least one or more in each Taluka) with the power of receiving applications from the tenants, checking them for their validity, listening to conflicting evidence (without allowing any professional lawyer), making field visits for verification of necessary and arriving at final decisions regarding tenant’s occupancy rights. These tribunals consisted of five members with one bureaucrat as the chairperson and four other political appointees including the local MLA and a member from the backward classes. While this allowed Devraj Urs to pack most of the tribunals with his loyal supporters, most of the political appointees were landlords (owning more than 25 acres of land), and they belonged to middle and upper-rural class Congressman loyal to Devraj Urs. In fact, the land tribunals created by Urs for facilitating the implementation of tenancy reforms became an instrument in Karnataka’s large network of patronage and spoils supporting the Urs regime.

Rather than facilitating the smooth implementation of tenancy reforms like that of the panchayats in West Bengal, the organisational arrangement created by Urs interfered in the smooth implementation of the law by creating bottlenecks in the process. It provided an opportunity to the powerful local landlords, especially those who had personal relationship with the tribunal members, to evade the tenancy law. While the landlords close to Urs or Congress (I) often did not lose their lands, the other propertied factions, i.e. landlords belonging to the opposition party lost their lands. As the later constituted bulk of the landlords, they opposed the program. The opposition to the tenancy reform programme, therefore, took a factional rather than a class form. Labelling those opponents as “anti-people” and “reactionaries” Urs succeeded in presenting himself as a “people’s” man without alienating the landed groups that lent him crucial support. As a result, the programme achieved piecemeal success. The half of the tenanted lands, which legally changed hands, was because of this factional pattern of implementation.

Apart from the land reforms policy, which had only limited success, the Urs regime in Karnataka also introduced Small Farmers Development Agency (SFDA) programme with a purpose to channelling the agricultural inputs like credit, irrigation, and scientific inputs to the small farmers for making them economically viable and bringing improvement in their standard of living. Since the Urs regime did not have an organisational framework like that of CPM in West Bengal that linked the power centre to the lower classes and excluded the propertied from institutional participation, the programme ended in failure as larger landowners and those associated with the ruling faction went away with most of the benefits offered by the programme. In contrast to the case of West Bengal, the Urs regime made no efforts to bargain with the commercial banks. Without an organisational framework such as the red panchayats of West Bengal, Urs regime had nothing to offer to the banks that might induce them to become substantially involved in small rural loans. Mentioned must be made of the fact that when commercial banks in West Bengal were not willing to enter into the rural market in a large scale as wanted by the CPM, the government led by CPM entered into

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an agreement with the Banks for implementing the programme of subsidised credit (indirect subsidies to the Bank in the form of labour cost required for survey and verification, and direct subsidies to the sharecroppers to cover interest rates). As per the agreement, the local panchayats prepared the list of sharecroppers in their areas, identified their anticipated share of the yearly crop and passed on this information to the banks. Using this information, the banks decided who is eligible for loan and for what amount. While the sharecroppers were asked to pay only 4 per cent interest, the remaining was paid to the banks by the government. Moreover, if the sharecroppers could pay back their entire loan by 31st march of the next year, the loans were interest free; the total interest being paid by the government. But this was not the case in Karnataka.

As regards wage and employment schemes for the landless labourers, the implementation of Employment Affirmation Scheme (EAS), which in West Bengal was implemented as FWP, was not that effective as it was in West Bengal. The major problem was organisational which resulted I charges of corruption. Without any organisational framework, the Urs regime tried to implement the scheme through the already overloaded bureaucracy. Since the schemes were to be operated in selected taluks, it involved the role of the chairman of the Taluka Development Board, the Block Development Officer, and the local MLA. Since the taluk office and the taluk committee was already represented by people who were part of various patronage-corruption networks, entrusting decision-making power to the taluk committee for the for selection and location of the project, and the administration of funds and release of grain for EAS made the programme fail as it was very unlikely to cater to the genuine needs of the poor. In the absence of any organisational network, the Congress could not unionise the rural landless labourers for increased wage.

Political Mobilisation

The implementation of antipoverty programmes by different regimes had different mobilising impact on the people. While on the one hand, the implementation of land reform policies (tenancy reform) by the Devraj Urs government of Karnataka, which selectively favoured the landlords either close to Urs or belonging to Congress I, resulted in the mobilisation of landlords (who lost their lands) belonging to the opposition faction, on the other hand it did have a positive impact in terms of the sharecroppers who without any party organisation like that of West Bengal came forward with their applications in large numbers to stake their claim for registration as sharecroppers. Though the Janata regime in UP failed to bring about any redistributive reform, its failure to do so on the one hand, and the repression of the scheduled castes and the poor peasantry by the propertied class (to which the Janata rulers turned a blind eye) resulted in the mobilisation of the poor peasants and the scheduled castes leading to the emergence of backward castes as a dominant political force in the state. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Kansi Ram is nothing but a manifestation of the organisation of those backward scheduled castes once repressed by the land-owning big farmers.

Compared to the above two states, where the mobilisation of masses took place mostly as reaction to the policies pursued by the ruling political parties, the mobilising impact of the policies pursued by the CPM led West Bengal government was highly positive and overwhelming. Starting with the creation of red panchayats to the registration of sharecroppers till the unionisation of rural landless agricultural labourers, its policies had a positive impact. While it succeeded to a large extent in fulfilling the felt needs and requirements of the lower class, it also served the political purpose of CPM as the lower class

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was mobilised around CPM. While, the organisational network of the CPM particularly the panchayats played a major role in the mobilisation of the small farmers, sharecroppers, and landless labourers, the Kishan Sabha was instrumental in unionising the landless labourers for increase in agricultural wages.

Making a comparison of the performance of three different regimes on the implementation of redistributive reforms, the author comments that while the failure of the Janata regime in UP to carry out the redistributive reforms was a consequence of its political and class characteristics, the success of CPI (M) led government in West Bengal can be attributed mainly to its political organisation and coherent leadership. Ideologically, when CPI (M) was committed to alleviating rural poverty in West Bengal, the situation in UP was quite confused. Even within that confusion, there was a discernible commitment to the commercial farmers and a concurrent neglect of the lower peasantry. On the leadership front, when CPI (M) regime had a coherent leadership with clear policies, the Janata regime was fragmented. As far as organisation is concerned, the CPM and Janata regimes differed in terms of both structure and membership. As a tightly organised party, the CPI (M) could systematically penetrate into the countryside without being captured by the land-owning groups, which allowed the CPI (M) to reach the lower classes directly and mobilise them occasionally to facilitate the reformist goals. The Janata regime, on the other hand, had no such organisational framework. The Janata party had little rural presence and that was confined to the land-owning middle castes. Hence, the contrasting patterns of regime leadership, ideology, and organisation contributed to their differential performance in redistributive reforms.

Comparing the UP Janata regime with the Urs regime in Karnataka, the author brings out some similarities as well as differences. The author says that on the organisational dimension, while both were similar, i.e. they shared a weak organisation based on land-owning groups, this put a constraint on the reformist thrusts of both the regimes. Ideologically, while the populist regime of Urs in Karnataka was committed to the rural poor, the Janata was not. From leadership angle, when Janata regime was fragmented and guided by factional groups, Devraj Urs offered a strong leadership to Karnataka for nearly a decade and this allowed him to take long-range overview of the political situation. In his calculations, while he perceived that some rewards to the lower classes were politically beneficial, by virtue of his strong leadership, he could push through a modicum of reformism born out of calculations of political necessity.

By contrast, the fictionalised situation in UP led each faction within the Janata to protect its narrow interests against competitors which made governance impossible. The prominent role of Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) within the fictionalised political situation further allowed the interests of the land-owning peasantry to be pursued at the expense of the rural poor. The author observed that in contrast to the parliamentary–communist regime in West Bengal and the populist regime in Karnataka, the Janata regime based on fragmented leadership and middle-peasant interests had neither reasons nor the capacity to undertake redistributive reforms (p. 222).

Personal Comments

As mentioned above, this is a study of state intervention in redistributive reforms in India carried out in three different states during the year 1979-83. The failure of Indian state to improve the living conditions of vast mass of Indian population even after three decades of

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democratically guided planned economic development raises the crucial question: Why? And, more importantly, under what conditions is India’s poverty likely to be alleviated? While neither the “liberal” nor the “Marxist” worldviews provide a satisfactory answer to the question of why India’s mass rural poverty has not been mitigated, the author makes an interesting and excellent analysis of Indian situation by emphasising on the twin and interrelated impacts of regime type (political organisation of the ruling party) and social structure. The author raises a number of questions like: What kind of difference does the varying pattern of political rule (regime) make on the effectiveness of redistributive policies? Whether a particular type of regime can pursue antipoverty programmes for the poor people more effectively than other type of regimes? And, if so, what are the defining features of these regimes and what account for their relative success?

While these are very important questions from the point of view of successful implementation of redistributive and anti-poverty programmes in West Bengal when other states of the Indian union have more or less failed to do so, in this book, the author has made an attempt to seek answer to the above questions by focusing on the conditions that broaden the state’s reformist scope within a democratic-capitalist model of development. Based on the fieldwork carried out in three different states ruled by different regimes, the author comes out with ample evidence to suggest that the well-organised left-of-centre parties in government like the CPI (M) in West Bengal are the most effective in implementing redistributive reform for the lower classes. The CPI (M)’s coherent leadership with clear-cut policies, ideology, class composition and commitment, and organisational network enhanced its capacity to penetrate the countryside without being co-opted by the landed class. This facilitated the controlled mobilisation of the lower classes to buttress state power for carrying out redistributive reforms more successfully than others.

While Kohli’s framework of regime type and its impact on redistributive reforms is certainly an important contribution to the literature of comparative politics and can possibly be applied to independent states with more or less similar social structure, it is doubtful if the same framework could be applied to analyse the performance of states with regard to reforms in the economy, industrial or some other sectors which are in no way less important than the former, particularly in the context of the ongoing economic reforms in India or elsewhere. In fact, CPI (M)’s reluctance to carry out the land reform programmes pertaining to the redistribution of ceiling surplus land justifies the doubts. While the CPI (M) finds it easy to implement the redistributive programmes that serves the interests of the farmer and the lower class, it may not find it that easy to bring in reform in the industrial sector or other sectors of the economy as it might go against lower classes and antagonise them.

Stretching the imagination a bit far, it appears that while Kohli’s framework of regime type and its impact on redistributive performance can very well be applied to study the implementation of poverty alleviation programmes in the United States of America and the Indian States of Maharashtra and West Bengal (the study carried out by John Echeverri Gent), probably it won’t be possible to carry out a study of present type by applying Gent’s Organisational Environmental Perspective based on the resource dependence model. Though gent’s model looks very similar to that of Kohli’s framework of analysis, it falls short of explaining the impact of different regimes on redistributive reform.

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