Democratisation without representation? The power and political strategies of a rural elite in north India

Abstract

This paper examines how an agrarian elite in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), India, seek access to the local police force. I argue that rich farmers belonging to the intermediate Jat caste have been quite successful in perpetuating their economic and social advantage through placing relatives in the police force and nurturing political networks that link them to the police and politicians. The analysis complements macro-structural political economic accounts of India's flawed democratisation by offering a ‘thick description’ (Geertz, C. (1983). Local knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology. New York: Basic Books) of local state/society relations, including attention to spatial and symbolic dimensions of political networks. The paper provides a basis for re-evaluating popular accounts of the relationship between rural people and the local state in India and highlights the broader relevance of this research for political geography.

Introduction

“If you're with me and you see a policeman you don't like, just punch him in the face: you'll come to no harm.” This advice was given to me by the son of a rich farmer, belonging to the intermediate Jat caste, early in my research into politics and agrarian change in western Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), India. This man maintained that his links with the local police force are so strong, his power over the local state apparatus so absolute and inviolable, that he and his friends are effectively insulated from arrest. This was not an idle boast. A class of rich farmers in western U.P. has been reasonably (but not completely) successful in co-opting the local police force. Through manipulating this local state institution, these rich capitalists are able to isolate, exploit and abuse poorer sections of agrarian society.

This paper examines the relationship between the formal democratisation of politics in the north Indian State of U.P. and the means by which rich farmers seek access to the police as a form of employment and assistance. Drawing on field research in north India, I shall explore how rich farmers perpetuate their dominance through informal political networks linking them to police officials, politicians and other political intermediaries. I provide a counterpoint to the macro-structural political economic focus of most accounts of India's flawed democratisation by offering a ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1983) of local state/society relations.

The paper also seeks to provide insights of relevance to political geographers more generally. There has been a proliferation of studies exploring the relationship between state institutions and the social and economic strategies of state and non-state actors within political geography (Glassman & Samatar, 1997, Das, 1998, Jones, 1998, Goodwin & MacLeod, 1999, Robbins, 2000). This is usefully addressing an historical tendency within social science research on the state to focus on large-scale structures, epochal events and major government policies (Gupta, 1995: 376). Bob Jessop's neo-Gramscian conception of the state as an institutionally and territorially dispersed set of social practices, strategies and conflicts has been particularly influential in this respect (Jessop, 1990, Jessop, 1997). Jessop's theoretical framework has provided a basis for geographical research into the state as a set of institutions that is constituted through social and political struggles at multiple scales (see, especially, Jones, 1998, Goodwin & MacLeod, 1999). The paper contributes to this exciting area of research by demonstrating how spatialised networks of corrupt practice involving rich farmers and state officials are implicated and embedded in local processes of class and cultural reproduction.

The paper is structured into five sections. The first section introduces the recent political economy of U.P. and research into the local state in India to identify a growing concern with informal political networks of corruption. The next section outlines my methodology and the nature of social inequality in the three settlements in which I worked. This provides a basis for exploring, in the subsequent two sections, the relationship between class and access to the police as a form of employment and assistance. In the concluding section of the paper, I draw out the wider relevance of my research for our understanding of the relationship between democratisation and local political economy.