Journal Articles | indrajitroy

2019, Class politics and social protection: A comparative analysis of local governments in India. Journal of South Asian Development.

In this article, I direct attention to the role of class politics in shaping the implementation of social protection by local governments that implement India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Based on a synthesis of official data, interviews with beneficiaries of social protections and elites, and direct observations in two Indian States, the author illustrates the ways in which variations in class politics influence the supply of employment works. This article departs from existing analysis of factors that favour the implementation of social protections, namely commitment of bureaucrats and politicians, political party linkages and clientelism, and civil society activism. It also nuances extant class-focused analysis which tend to adopt a polarized model of class conflict between dominant classes and the laboring poor. This article, by contrast, appreciates the conflicts within dominant classes, and emphasizes the role of coalitions and competitions between elite fractions.

Keywords: Social protection, class relations, balance of class power, local government, India, Asia

2019, Disjunctions of democracy and liberalism: Agonistic imaginations of dignity in Bihar, South
Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.

In this paper, I make a case for appreciating the ‘agonistics of democracy’ by reflecting on political changes in the state of Bihar in eastern India since 1990. These changes compel us to appreciate the substantive deepening of democracy in Bihar despite the absence of values commonly associated with liberalism. I first highlight the emergence of ‘Backward Caste’ assertion in the state, which sought to construct the broadest possible alliance against the so-called ‘Forward Castes’ and culminated in the ascendancy of the Janata Dal government of Lalu Prasad Yadav in 1990. I next point to the inchoate antagonism harboured by poor people against the privileged who seek to assert their caste supremacy. Describing the vocabularies of dignity in which such supremacy is contested, I demonstrate that conflict is entwined with co-operation in poor people’s quotidian engagements with the privileged classes. In conclusion, I argue that an ‘agonistics of democracy’ allows us to step beyond the limitations of existing approaches to theorising democracy.

Keywords: Agonism, Bihar, caste, democracy, dignity, liberalism

2017, Emancipation as social equality: subaltern politics in contemporary India , FOCAAL: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 76: 15-30.

The ethnographies presented in this article point to the ways in which members of oppressed communities imagine emancipation. Instead of analysing emancipation as stemming from statist precepts of citizenship, I want to direct attention— along with other articles in this special section—to the “arcadian” spaces in which exploited, marginalized, and discriminated populations forge membership in the political community in contentious engagement with both state and society. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork with Musahar landless laborers in the Indian state of Bihar during the winter and spring of 2009–2010, with follow-up visits in September 2013 and July 2014. I focus on their engagement with two organizations, one a leftist political party and the other a cultural organization, to advance my claims. Th e ethnography reveals that, for the Musahar laborers, ideas of emancipation are anchored in reclamations of social equality rather than a telos of state-centered citizenship.

Keywords: Bihar, caste, class, Dalits, emancipation

2016, Equality against hierarchy: Imagining modernity in subaltern India, Contributions to Indian Sociology, 50(1): 80-107.

How do subalterns engage with the disjunctures between the alleged ‘inner tradition’ of India’s sociocultural sphere and the ‘outer modernity’ of the political-economic sphere? It is often argued that the stranglehold over subaltern populations of hierarchical traditions marking the sociocultural sphere can be most effectively weakened by the percolation and diffusion of egalitarian ideals of the political-economic sphere. Against these views, a range of commentators identify the modernising impulses of the political-economic sphere as a greater threat to subaltern populations. Consequently, they valorise the socio-cultural sphere as a zone of resistance for subalterns.

Intervening in this debate, recent research has enlivened us to the possibility that the political-economic sphere of the state cannot be unambiguously mapped onto modernity. Nor, for that matter, can the sociocultural sphere be regarded as singular realm of uninterrupted tradition. This paper is offered as a contribution to this last strand of the scholarship. By exploring endogenous egalitarian impulses among subaltern groups in India, I seek to interrogate the widely-prevailing notion that ideas associated with modernity are the preserve of and emanate from elites in the political-economic sphere of the Indian state.

Keywords: Bihar, Musahar, modernity, egalitarian ideals

2015, Utopia in crisis? Subaltern imaginations in contemporary Bihar, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 45(4): 640-659.

The Subaltern Studies Collective inaugurated an important point of departure in Indian historiography and social sciences by demanding that attention be directed to subalterns (a term adapted from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks) as makers of their own destinies. Their scholarship raises three issues, which are discussed in this paper. The first of these relates to the empirical observation about subaltern resistance to elites. The second pertains to the analytical dichotomy between elite and subaltern modes of conducting politics. The third centres on the valorisation of a putatively coherent fragment that seeks autonomy from the totality of the state. The fundamental problem with the perspective advanced by the Subaltern Studies Scholars stem from the implicit assumption that utopian ideals centred on reclaiming dignity and asserting social equality are necessarily derivative of European Enlightenment ideals.

Key words: Bihar, ethnography, Musahar, agricultural labour, agonistic politics

2014, Reserve labor, unreserved politics: Dignified encroachments under India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(4): 517-546.

The rural proletariat constitute a substantial proportion of the global poor. Leading better lives is central to their political practices. In this paper, I aim to elaborate the political practices that attend to these aspirations, interrogations and contests. I examine existing approaches to studying political practices of the rural proletariat. I do this with a focus on India, where the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is in force since 2005. I locate the program against the backdrop of neoliberal transformations in India. I then examine the ways in which the rural proletariat engage with the program, even when other opportunities in the agricultural sector are available. Based on these examinations, I argue that the practices spawned by the program are to be understood as ‘encroachments’ into the extant social customs, norms and habits of rural India. This perspective, I contend, is more fruitful than locating the rural proletariat’s engagement with the NREGA as a coping strategy or a tactic of resistance against rural elites. The data which this paper draws on include official sources, in-depth interviews with workers in rural Bihar and West Bengal and ethnographic observations.

Keywords: rural proletariat; work; encroachments

2013, Development as dignity: Dissensus, equality and contentious politics in Bihar, Oxford Development Studies, 41(4): 517-537. (Sanjaya Lall Award for Best Graduate student paper).

This paper makes an analytical case for the understanding of development as a process that enables people to reclaim their dignity and interrogate inegalitarian social relations. It is motivated by the ongoing debate within development studies between those who propound a teleological view of development and those who adopt the opposing view that the process must not obliterate historical and cultural difference. The former view is informed by an assumption that the human condition can and should be improved, and the trajectory of such improvement is predetermined and predictable. The latter view is ambivalent, not only about the possibility of improvement, but also about its desirability. Against this dichotomy, this paper urges scholars of development to consider that people might envisage that the social inequalities they experience

could be reduced, irrespective of “improvement”. The ethnography on which the paper draws cover show the way in which a group of agricultural labourer households stigmatised as “untouchable” — and alleged to be illegally squatting on public property—stand their ground violent opposition by local elites. While servility to and quiescence with elite opinion would allow them to “improve” their lives by relocating to a less contentious space, community members assert their ethical claims on the disputed property without flinching. They do this not because they like to live in squalid conditions, but because complying with elite diktats is an affront to their dignity.

JEL Classification: D63, D72, P48, Q15

2013, Contesting consensus, disputing inequality: Agonistic subjectivities in rural Bihar, South Asia Multidiscilinary Journal, online. (In lieu of an abstract, reproduced below are the first two paragraphs of this paper.)

Within minutes of my meeting 35-year-old Gunvati Yadav outside her hut in the locality I will call Sargana Ward 1 during the winter of 2009, I was struck by her steely resolve against her neighbour, 50-year-old Ram Singh, whose mansion was the largest in the neighbourhood. She said she could not stand the sight of either him or his wife because of a long-standing dispute with them. When I ventured to ask what kind of dispute they were embroiled in, her husband reported it was over a piece of property. Gunvati was quick to contradict him—forcefully: ‘Don’t listen to him. It’s all about barabari (equality).’

The literature on the politics of the ‘poor’ has pointed to the manner in which the disputes they are embroiled in are about access to and control over resources, or defending what little they have from encroachments and infringements by the rich and the powerful. Other strands in the literature have drawn attention to their incorporation into ‘identity’ politics, mediated through categories of caste, religion and community. While the analytic salience of these approaches may be justifiably questioned, I contend that they are also motivated by a desire to assert their social equality and accomplish their political imaginaries.

2011, New Lists for Old: (Re-)constructing the poor in the BPL Census. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(22): 82-91.

This paper aims to understand the implications of implementing the Saxena Committee's recommendations in respect of identifying the poor in India. Relative to the one currently in use, the application of the proposed methodology appears to be more beneficial in general to social groups such as scheduled tribes, most backward classes and mahadalits, as well as those landowning households that might suffer from specific debilitating conditions. However, in some cases it is less sensitive to Muslims, non-mahadalit scheduled castes and agricultural labourers. These observations are based on the results of a census survey covering 4,500 households in 18 rural wards of Bihar and West Bengal. By comparing the subset of households classified as poor according to the 2002 and the 2009 methodologies, the paper analyses "moving in" and "moving out" of poverty lists according to occupational categories, caste groups and landowning profile of the poor.

2008, Civil Society and governance: (Re-)conceptualizing the Interface, World Development, 36(4): 677-705.

Civil society action is thought to be a prerequisite for good governance, as well as an indicator for it. The assumption of a positive correlation has guided many development interventions. However, considering political synergies, frameworks of accountability and mobilization of communities to claim their entitlements as key elements of how civil society and governance interface, we find this hypothesis to be problematic. Evidence from two contiguous regions in rural north India suggests that where community organizations are assertive, the governance structures and institutions are not necessarily better oriented to their demands. Rather, where such organizations are able to exploit intra-elite conflict and forge alliances with a section of the elite, they are better able to influence service-delivery. However, even this strategy does not help to expand the political spaces available to poor people.

Key words: South Asia, North India, community organizations, synergy, political space

2006, Representation and development in urban Peripheries: Reflections on governance in Ahmedabad suburbs, Economic and Political Weekly, 41(41): 4363-4368.

Pro-poor and democratic development processes demand, among other things, the integration of revenue appropriating and fund expending institutions. Experience from the metropolis of Ahmedabad, recently ravaged by inter-religious civil strife, indicates that a number of village and town councils continue to exist within urban limits, saddled with functions that they are not authorised to execute. Moreover, urban development agencies compete with these bodies to provide services to citizens. Having neither representative membership nor tax based income, these agencies implement programmes with the support of the state government, thereby consistently limiting the scope for local bodies to emerge as institutions of self-governance.

2005, Good Governance and the dilemma of development: What lies beneath, Socio-Economic Review, 3(1): 83-116.

Ideas unleash human imaginations, as well as hold these imaginations on a leash. However, they are scarcely disarticulated from material realities. Together with these realities, they take on the form of discourses—words, concepts and thoughts that characterize how we live. ‘Good governance’ has come to occupy such a space in the practical and theoretical discussions on development. This paper attempts to put current understanding into perspective, by locating specific trends in government reform and public expenditure. It realizes that the nature of the Indian state, international finance and fiscal prudence, rather than responsiveness to democratic demands of poor people, inform the discourse on ‘good governance’. Such thinking among the key players poses a dilemma to the theory and practice of development, because it reflects the tendency of the state to shy away from responsibility to its citizens. The discourse on ‘good governance’ must articulate democratic aspirations.