Q00 Human Ideals

'Competitive Authoritarianism To Electoral Autocracy': Yogendra Yadav Speaks At Brown University   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqpb0hNMGtg HT extract from

Yogendra Yadav — Reclaiming India’s democratic republic  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqpb0hNMGtg

https://watson.brown.edu/southasia/events/series/op-jindal-distinguished-lectures 

Youtube transcript (under edit)

.. I was unsure of what and how to speak in the US about India. ...
..  so been conflicted I must confess but after the developments in the last few years especially after the recent developments in this part of the world I felt a little easy I had a sense of possible comraderi  as they say the deepest bonds are bonds of grief. So I felt that there possibly may be something to share in what's happening across the universe and that's why I thought I would come and speak in the hope that
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some of what I have to say may be of some use outside India as
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well of some use to uh this
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country or at least I may get to learn something from what's happening in many other countries
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of the world
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disruption dismantling dystopia nowadays we get to hear these
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words in this part of the world in India these have been familiar
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words for well over a decade many other countries have never spoken
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about their political life without these words when we encounter these words our
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reflex action is to fall back on another set of words that express our
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hope reversal resumption
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revival this understanding informs much of the response of Democrats in the US
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in India and elsewhere too the title of today's lecture invites us
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to think of a different metaphor that of reclaiming in its generic meaning
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reclaiming appears to signal back it is about claiming back something that
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always belonged to us but reclamation uh those of us who come from
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cities where reclamation is a major real estate property project would remember that it also carries another
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forward-looking meaning it refers to a process of making something usually land
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suitable for some use typically farming or building by removing something very
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often water that made it us unusable
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this should also be used for recovering useful substances from waste or
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reforming someone typically delinquent child to the right course so reclaiming
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is not necessarily about gaining back claiming something we once had it is
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also about gaining forward claiming a potential claiming something we could
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have had reclaiming democracy in this sense may
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be the political project of our times i speak here about reclaiming
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something in India in the hope that this may not be only an Indian project that we could
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have fruitful conversations among democrats across different countries where we could learn from one another
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i do so in the conviction that there's some merit in turning to those parts of the world that have seen disruptions and
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dismantling as a regular feature of their political life that never could claim that
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democracy was the only game in town long discarded to the residual dust
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bin of democratic theory the experience of democracies in most parts of the world could now be a
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source of insight just as we expected the historically contingent trajectory of
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democracy in European and North American societies to throw light on the present
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and future of democracies in the global south it may now be worth entertaining a
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suspicion that experience of imperfect or even failed democracies may
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illuminate the recent experience of Europe and North America if there's any merit in this
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suggestion the US can learn something from India and both US and India could learn
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something from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka at any rate this would be keeping
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with the spirit of our times the demand for parity in international
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trade that has gathered steam of late like the trade in goods and
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services there may be a case for rebalancing the international conceptual trade as
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well i'm sure I would find some support here
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for a reciprocal tariff on societies that have long exported concepts and
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theories while erecting high barriers against any import of ideas and
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ideals that however is not the main point this afternoon besides that's beyond my
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competence and I can see many comparative theorists here who could do an infinitely better job than I could
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possibly attempt we need a new kind of comparative politics to make democracy great
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again i would confine my argument to India whose democracy I have tried to make sense of and intervene in over the
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course of my academic and political life a plea for
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reclamation invites us to ask several questions first what exactly do we seek
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to reclaim this is a question usually handled by political theorists democratic theorists or by historians of
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ideas what does democracy mean in a particular context second is this something we
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never had or did we lose it at some point this is a question of empirical assessment or political judgment third
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why did we lose it or fail to claim it so far this question requires explanatory models of comparative
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politics and finally how do we go about reclamation this is a practical question
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of political strategy and ideology i propose to address these big
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questions i know this is not what scholars are supposed to do i guess that's why I stopped calling
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myself an academic over a decade ago i would venture to suggest that we are in
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that moment in history where students of politics professional practitioners or
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amateur observers cannot but turn to such big questions of our time even if
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they suspect that their answers are far from clear and cogent let alone
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comprehensive that at any rate is what I feel about my own answers my own sense
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of what I'm going to say today but we cannot postpone it just because we don't
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have comprehensive answers just because our answers are not elegant enough uh
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the situation demands that we try and answer to the best of our ability good
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answers need not always be clever answers so let me anticipate my overall
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argument lest I lose you at some point in the details when I get into that
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i shall suggest that what we call democracy in India was a strange object
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masquerading under a familiar name that it carried a different promise
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a different meaning and indeed different substance from its namesake in Euroatlantic world i would suggest that
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democratic republicanism captures it better than just democracy or liberal democracy for
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far too long we've confused these things i've argued that political
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arrangement founded on this spirit of democratic republicanism has now come to an
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end that is what I call the end of India's first republic the 2024 elections did not
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reverse this the failure of the present regime to get a plebby mandate merely
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halted slide from competitive authoritarianism to electoral autocracy we are at this moment in a no
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man's land that's my assessment of where we stand i go on to suggest that this end
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of India's first republic was not just a bad accident nor was there anything
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inevitable about its collapse india experienced what I call democracy
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capture capture of democracy by using instruments of democracy while no democracy is immune
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to such possibilities the flip side of the extraordinary success of Indian democracy was that it's it was
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vulnerable to such an assault the implications of this reading to my mind is that reclaiming republican
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democracy is a political project this project requires reinvigoration of
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democratic resistance a cogent strategy careful identification of agents of
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change and coordination at multiple levels once the resistance offers us a
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breathing space then there is a need for restructuring of the democratic state to guard against similar democratic capture
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in future at the same time we must realize that reclamation is not just a matter of
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political strategy we require re-enchanting democracy in multiple ways
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conceptual normative and practical or to put it differently it calls for
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nourishing democracy with ideas ideology and
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idealism that's broadly the argument that I'm going to present today uh starting with the first part which
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is what does what was Indian democracy or what is Indian democracy what is the
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specificity specificity uniqueness of Indian democracy uh because when we say India is not
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democratic freedom house tells us India has fallen its score we all deploy we
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all assume that there is one standard model of democracy we know what it means to be democratic and we know what it
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means to slide back from that i would suggest we need to examine
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this a little more carefully not because there is anything unique about India because but because every democracy is
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unique in its own way let me begin therefore with some remarks on why the dominant theory of
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democracy does not help us make sense of the reality that confronts us drawing
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upon sudipto I've already said this was a phrase from him that Indian democracy
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he did not use it in the case of Indian democracy he made this a general remark about strange objects masquerading under
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a familiar name this is what so much of our modernity is all
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about much of the efforts of the dominant theory have been to name and map what it finds familiar that is
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similar to the institutions and practices in Euroatlantic world the trouble is that such an approach does
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not connect to the substance of democracy in societies like India it leads to serious misrecognition
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of the specificity of Indian democracy its strengths and its challenges
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this directly relates to a flaw inherent in the dominant orthodoxy on democracy which invites us to a universe of
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democracy a shared definition a universal normative standard and standard institutional
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checklist this stylized picture does not help us understand the real world of plurverse of democracy that's
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increasingly what we need to think about alternative approach would invite us to
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widen the conceptual apparatus of democracy to include diverse ways languages idoms theories in which
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democracy has been understood all over the world we need to enrich the normative standards embedded in the idea
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of democracy by taking into account the many histories and traditions of democratic thinking across the world it
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follows therefore that we need to expand the repertoire of institutions conventions and practices that go into
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the making of democracy in societies that are often quite different from each other the mythical story of transition
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to consolidation of and culmination into a finished product democracy that
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mythical story must give way to a real history of actually existing democracies
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both in the global north and the global south to reflect their radically different experiences and trajectories
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i'm not a comparativist unlike many scholars present in this room and cannot
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attempt such a revision of democratic theory but I cannot but recall the work
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of two intellectual giants with whom I had the honor of working the two persons mentioned by professor Vnne late
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professor Juan Lens and late professor Alfred Steppen whose approach could guide us in such a venture in mapping
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the actual experience rather than a certain mythical story that we like to
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tell about how democracies are let me come back to India such an
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approach to making sense of democracy demands that we look at India's democratic experience are fresh there is no doubt that the ideas
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and institutions that constituted Indian democracy drew upon the modern western experience there's obviously no doubt it
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was drawn from the west the Indian constitution follows the template of democratic constitutions set in
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Euroatlantic world yet Indian democracy in practice is
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radically different from its namesakes in this part of the world i have suggested elsewhere that the originality
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of Indian constitution is not like the originality of Indian classical music it should rather be compared to
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the originality of the Indian cinema or that of bread pakora if you prefer a more appetizing metaphor that
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uses a received technology to invent a new form if not a new substance
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altogether if Indian democracy is unique it is not because of some inherent genius unique to the sanatani Indian
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civilization as Kavira has reminded us this is so because modernity univers
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modernity's universalizing tendency cannot but produce plural outcomes this
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is inherent in modernity to produce pluralities multiplication of modern
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democracies cannot but produce multiple kinds of democracies for the simple reason that the initial condition in
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each society are different the nature of modern democratic stimuli is different
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and the exact sequencing of different aspects of modernity is different this
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is why all modern democracies are bound to be very very different from each
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other let's look at that in the Indian case first of all the initial condition
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in which democracy was instituted in India was radically different from that of Europe or America democracy did not
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replace a monarchy but a colonial rule a colonialism very different from the one experienced in the US this society had
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recently discovered its own republican past by way of ganatantras in ancient India this incidentally we came to know
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very recently this is not an old memory of India though the connect was largely in
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the realm of imagination more to the point a modern democratic state was being instituted in a society that did
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not have a continuous tradition of centralized political authority a society that inherited a system of
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graded inequalities the cast order in this
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background the encounter with modern democracy could produce a more radical outcome than
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elsewhere that's why Indian democracy became a more radical enterprise
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this radical potential was mediated by the other dimension of the historical context namely the sequencing of social
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cultural economic and political trajectories of modernity unlike Europe where the entrenchment of capitalist
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economy individualization and secularization of society and the consolidation of modern state preceded
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the gradual introduction of universal adult franchise the order was nearly reversed in India as Razni Kotari has
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recognized long ago politics was at the heart of India's trrist with
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modernity democracy was not just about insulate instituting a mechanism to hold the rulers accountable to the people the
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project of instituting democracy was intertwined with that of state building and nation building
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democracy became a primary mechanism for secularization of society for reordering
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of hierarchies of a cast order and laying down the foundations of a modern capitalist
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economy this primacy of politics was to prove a boon as well as a
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curse finally it is not just the context but the stimuli that we call democracy
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was also very different in India indian political thinkers in the first half of the 20th century were acutely aware of
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the democratic currents in the west indeed of all the major intellectuals and political tendencies across the
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globe they were quite familiar with all that yet with the exception of Dr raedkar there is a conspicuous absence
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of sustained reflection on democracy as a political form almost no one writes
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about democracy this is stunning in the 20th century they were all democrats yet
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democracy was not the principal object of desire nor the principal category to
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think through India's political future the rich and multi-layered idea of
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suaraj subsumed the idea of democracy the foundational principle and practices
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of democracy were shaped in India by two overwhelming political currents
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nationalism socialism these were the two currents that shaped what democracy was
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and what it began became indian nationalism was a source of ideas leadership and organized forces that
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lent stability and depth to the democratic enterprise indian version of nationalism offered a philosophy to
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connect deep diversity with democracy something which was not uh possible in
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many other parts of the world at the same time the quest for national resurgence in postcolonial India also
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instituted an anxiety around national unity and an enduring support for a
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strong state the Indian variant of socialism something I've studied for long uh from
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communism to Gandhian socialism served to radicalize the idea of democracy and
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ensured a pro people bias in democratic practices so I keep joking that uh the
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Indian uh communist movement uh did not create a revolution in this
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country but it actually uh it actually democratized democracy in
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India and this was the unintended consequence of what they were trying to do its focus on substantive outcomes
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rather than procedural norms was to become the strength as well as the weakness of Indian democracy
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so these are the this is why Indian democracy was to be and is unique
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different thus to go back to the idea of strange objects masquerading under familiar names political arrangement
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that was instituted by Indian constitution deployed the language of liberal democracy but there was a
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radical disjunction between the form and substance of this Indian democracy if
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you'd recall this was actually the title of Rajni Kotari's first famous essay on Indian politics form and substance in
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Indian politics or to put it differently the language of democracy was creed in
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India many of the familiar ideas practices and institutions were redesigned or rearranged to create a
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pattern that was unique indian democracy was centered around the idea of popular
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sovereignty people decide who to rule who people decide who rules them they
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expect the rulers to work for their welfare failing which they can punish the ruler that's the central idea notice
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that this concept is substantive not procedural or minimalist there's almost
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no popular support for any procedural or minimalist understanding of democracy
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democracy is about rulers ensuring everyone's welfare well-being and dignity people are not first about rules
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and procedures people value their right to choose and to punish the rulers they would not let go of it at least not
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knowingly but they do know but they do not put premium on what makes such a
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choice free freedom of expression autonomy of institutions or a level playing ground these do not occupy that
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kind of centrality freedom is valued but is understood in a non-liberal register
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that is not as a non-inference but as non-domination as freedom from arbitrary
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capricious rule rejection of hubris people
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compromised not individual the people comprised not individuals but
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communities either social communities based on birth such as family cast or religion or political communities who
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come together by working together in its Indian version democratic experience was
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shaped by practices that are not codified in the constitution while formal sphere sphere
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of constitutionally mandated institutions always remained anemic it
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was the informal sphere of what parti calls political society that filled in
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the vacuum and accounted for the vibrancy of Indian democracy the strength was not in the constitutional
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formal liberal apparatus the strength was elsewhere while political parties were ubiquitous
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their connect to the people was mediated by non-party political formations social movements community organizations
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people's campaign and citizens groups in this context elections came to play a
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vital role in the realization of the promise of democracy elections served as the hinge
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between the organized and the unorganized sector of India's political life we use this expression very often
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to understand the economy organized sector unorganized sector it may be profitable to use it in politics as
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well therefore elections carried a functional overload while it gave Indian
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elections their festive like quality this centrality of elections also carried a
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risk election capture could become an effective tool for democracy capture this was a danger
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that the structure of democracy always carry now this specificity of Indian
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democracy cannot be captured by calling it a liberal democracy and by judging its successes or failures by those yard
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sticks i suggest that it is better to describe Indian model of democracy as
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democratic republicanism this of course draws upon Philip Petit's suggestion of redefining liberty as
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non-domination and there's a lot of literature on neoreublicanism what is called
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neoreublicanism thus opens the door to recognize the pro people egalitarian and
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anti-power impulse implicit in the Indian model of democracy and also
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possibly in models of democracy in many other parts of the world i would like to believe that a
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republicanist reading allows us to connect India's modern democratic experience with the Ganatantra tradition
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in ancient India above all it allows us to conceptualize Indian practices of
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democracy in the last 100 years i would like to propose that Baba Sai Bombedkar
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arguably the only democratic theorist of the 20th century you know he was actually the only exception to the rule
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that I spoke about that people were not attentive to democracy uh Ambedkar arguably the only democratic theorist of
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20th century India should be read as a theorist of democratic
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republicanism so let me conclude this part by simply recalling Dr ambka's definition of democracy i you know we
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don't read it uh as often as we should he actually says I look I'm going to
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offer you a definition of democracy and the definition is this a form and a
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method of government whereby revolutionary changes in economic and social life of the
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people are brought without bloodshed that's his definition i believe that
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this rather startling and non-liberal conception of democracy lay at the heart of India's democratic republic
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so that's one part of what I wanted to say about what is India's model concept
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of democracy from which there is a departure from which there is a decline from which we have you know which has in
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a sense come to an end the second part is about that story coming to an end that's a recent story
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I'll summarize it quickly partly because we all know this uh partly as I said
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there's no point in uh repeating that dark story over and
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over again so I'll just offer you the sort of summarized part of what's
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happened you may have noticed that I kept slipping from the present to the past s tense in when I was speaking
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about Indian democracy uh that is because of my understanding that the democratic republic that I have
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been speaking about that many of us present in the room had interpreted and often celebrated has come to an end
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there are multiple interpretations of what has happened to India's democracy in the last decade or so and I speak of
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India after 2014 which is clearly a watershed moment
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i would only urge that calling it democratic backsliding does not quite capture what we have experienced of
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course it's democratic backsliding but this metaphor is just inadequate it tells you of a temporary slide back in
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an inevitably nice and you know lovely journey or sad backsliding on a scale
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that we know to be sure India was no model of democracy in the first six decades of Indian democratic experience
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it was at best an imperfect democracy judged by its own model of a democratic
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republic but we have slid from being an imperfect democracy to a system that
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cannot be meaningfully characterized as a democracy anymore i would prefer to describe it as
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a system of competitive authoritarianism a system that continues
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to claim that it is democratic that continues to hold elections that are not farcical as of now where the possibility
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of the ruling party losing a critical election is fast diminishing but has not
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been extinguished altogether but where all other elements
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of democracy are seriously compromised therefore I call it the end
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of India's first republic you could say it ended in 2014 i would probably say
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more like 2019 modi's second coming is clearly a watershed and then we can say
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well that that republic has now come to an end
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what we are witnessing is a transition from the first socialist secular democratic
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republic that's the language of the constitution to a quasi democratic firmly majoritarian and crony capitalist
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order that stands in sharp contrast to the promise of a democratic republic we could date the inauguration
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of the second republic to 2014 when BJP started consolidating its electoral
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ideological and coercive power into a new one party dominance system now one party dominance is not
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new to India all students of Indian politics would remember that but unlike the famous Congress system of consensus
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the new BJP system is based on a concentration of power a sectarian
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ideology and social exclusion of minorities this second republic need not
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have a new constitution and of course after the 24 experience it will not have a formal new
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constitution we know that as long as the regime can define and redefine the
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threshold of tolerance for deviations from constitutionallymandated
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procedures the constitutional form of parliamentary democracy may remain may
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be retained yet for all practical purposes India is drifting towards a
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Latin American style presidential democracy where the supreme leader draws power from the people and is answerable
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only to them i hesitate in speaking about Latin America and Richard's
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presence he knows infinity more than any of us does instead of being one among
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many episodes in a democracy elections have become the only available
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democratic episode any form of political contestation outside the electoral arena
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dissent protest human rights struggle civil society activism is ruthlessly
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suppressed for its survival and popular acceptance the ruling dispensation
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depends upon occasional electoral endorsement a massive propaganda machine
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formal and informal regimentation of non-state media indirect control of
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judiciary and other autonomous institutions continuous crusades against
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internal enemies and you know who and regular military adventures especially
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preceding an election india may never formally be declared a Hindu raashtra it would be
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unnecessary for the regime has successfully instituted a non- theocratic majoritarian
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order the new India is a negation of India's democratic republic where public
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is con continuously mobilized to undo the republic that in a sense is the name
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of the process mobilize the public to undo the republic
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speaking where I do today I hardly need to emphasize that India is not unique in this respect after decades of searching
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for a model of transition to democracy we now need an inventory of reverse
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transitions of how functional and stable democracies collapse but I would resist a global
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overarching theory of a neoliberal fascism or populism that sweeps across the globe an examination of the
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democratic erosion in India over the last decade suggests a distinct route
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what I call a democratic capture where the mechanism of democratic mobilization
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and election is used effectively against the ideal and institutions of democracy
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this democracy democracy capture is not an accident nor is it
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inevitable there is no guarantee that this is just a passing phase at the same time this is not
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irreversible its contingency invites us to a new democratic theory that is alive
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both to the risks and the possibilities inherent in the variety of political
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arrangements that use the label democracy india is not a case of
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democracy that never took roots this could be true of many other parts of the world you could say well democracy was
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formally instituted never took roots it is not the story of decline and fall of
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democracy it is the story of an unusual success and an unexpected collapse it's
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a very unusual story clearly the second decade of the 21st century was not the
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first time Indian democracy faced the real challenge of a democracy capture it
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could have been attempted in the mid60s in the aftermath of SinoIndian war or at the death of Nehu and the
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subsequent severe crisis including famine you know these are moments when democracy capture could have happened it
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happened and nearly succeeded during the emergency uh being thwarted largely by Indra Gandhi's self goal when her
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overweening self-confidence and misjudgment about her popularity led to her calling the elections of 1977 she
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could have done without it arguably the intersection of Mandal and Mandr with the sudden collapse of Congress and the
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economic crisis all around 1990 offered yet another possibility for democracy
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capture but as so often happens in history there was a road that could have
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been taken but was not taken in each of these instances a possibility that existed did not turn into an occurrence
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as a matter of fact 2014 was the least probable of all these moments and that
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is something students of Indian politics and history must answer one day why in
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2014 why not in the ' 50s why not in the 60s7s
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but I would suggest that each success of Indian democracy left jinks cracks or
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bigger gaps in the democratic enterprise and exposed it to the dangers of a capture it took a determined political
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player and a constellation of events to string many of the existing long-term
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vulnerabilities and turn a dire probability into a calamitous reality
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this is what happened in 2014 does this story hold after the
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extraordinary elections held last year because in 2024 things changed many of
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us our mood changed at least uh things looked very different i suggest that
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there's no qualitative change in the nature of the challenge to the republic though we are we had a better glimpse of
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the possibilities of politics of reclaimation i did not I do not mean to undervalue
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the significance of what happened in 2024 you know we were all in our small ways actors in that after all the
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election was about seeking public endorsement for dismantling the republic that is what was at stake in 2024 in
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that sense this was not an election but a plebbyite modi guarantee was the catch
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word to legitimize all that this regime had done and anything that it could have could possibly do
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this election was not about NDA not even about BJP it was about the supreme leader seeking unconditional approval
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hence the threshold of victory was kept very high charopar though
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unspecified it was not just a plebbyite it was a carefully orchestrated
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controlled plebbyite given the high stakes the regime left nothing to chance to
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eliminate the possibility of a contest where all legitimate semi-legitimate and illegitimate means were deployed this
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was the least free and fair parliamentary election in the history of independent
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India in a plebicide there are only two outcomes yes or no in this case it was a
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clear no and that's the significance of this election let us not be deceived by
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the clever play of uh numbers percentages coalition tallies and so on
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anything below 303 which is the number BJP had in 2019
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uh would have been a moral defeat for the regime anything below 272 was a
44:28
political defeat for the BJP and anything below 250 would have been a personal defeat for Mr modi that's
44:36
exactly what it turned out to be there was no way to evade the conclusion that
44:41
the regime cobbled up numbers but it failed to secure the mandate
44:48
so in a sense so there something big really did happen in 2024 but it does
44:55
not take away from the large challenge that we are speaking about if the outcome of Lok Sabha election had opened
45:01
up the sky of political possibilities the subsequent state assembly elections especially in Hiana and Maharashtra
45:08
indicated a shrinking back that is probably a slide back there have been serious question
45:14
marks over the integrity of these elections and I have here people in the room who know more about Maharashtra
45:21
than I possibly do uh at the same time it cannot be denied
45:27
that the ruling party has learned from the setback of 24 and has tightened up
45:33
its electoral machine in ways that are both foul as well as fair we notice the
45:38
foul part of it we talk about it as we should but it's also the fair part that
45:43
they have tightened up as they say in Hindi
45:49
number more to the point the regime has recovered from its political loss and is
45:54
back to governing in the way it had in the first 10 years while popular discontent continues
46:01
to simmer control of media and use of state power has ensured that the nature
46:07
of challenge to the republic is qualitatively no different than it was before 2024
46:16
now I come to the third part of what I wanted to say which is what is to be done as a political
46:23
activist that's really my central concern so everything I've said so far
46:29
is a prelude to you know what I'm thinking here what I'm going to say now
46:34
and that's something where I would really wish to learn invite suggestions because it's not merely about getting an
46:41
argument right it's about getting a country right you know how then do we go
46:47
about reclaiming the democratic republic everyone naturally thinks and with good reasons of mainstream
46:54
political parties and how they can get their act together before the next parliamentary elections of
47:00
2029 that has to be the cornerstone of any thinking about reclaiming at the same time any serious thinking on this
47:07
score must link various fields and sites of action the tactics need to weave the
47:13
familiar moves with new and surprising maneuvers the strategy must harmonize the immediate with the midterm and the
47:19
long-term the vision that guides it must recast the foundational vision of the republic for our times
47:26
so there are three levels at which we need to see this one is immediate
47:32
political electoral political second is underlying social creating a social
47:38
block and third is the deepest which is cultural and ideological there the we have to so
47:46
something needs to be done at all these three levels to combat the challenge
47:51
that the republic faces let's begin with the most w visible and
47:58
obvious issue of electoral alternative in the party political arena to my mind notwithstanding the serious setback to
48:04
the opposition in the recent state assembly elections that I alluded to that does not erase the basic lessons
48:10
that we had learned in 2024 that there is considerable if
48:15
latent popular unease if not resentment that has been building up for quite some
48:22
time that remains that people are waiting for an alternative that appears somewhat
48:28
credible that remains that Indian voters would not be willing would not willingly
48:35
accept their right to choose uh and not willingly give away their right to
48:42
choose and punish their rulers that's something I discovered in Bharata and
48:47
later after that all this still holds the simple lessons for the opposition
48:52
are for anyone to see the India coalition must hold if not expand till
48:58
2029 within the coalition the principal challenge and the principal
49:03
responsibility lies with the Congress party whose revival in North Indian Hindi states holds the key to defeating
49:09
the BJP in the coming parliamentary election this is these are just elementary things the combined
49:16
opposition may not need one face it already has one to the extent to which it needs but it needs a narrative a
49:24
shared agenda that can be put forward before the people so what there is something called the
49:30
India blog what exactly does it stand for much of this is discussed all the
49:36
time in the media and I can hardly add much more to it the question of course is whether the present regime can at all
49:42
be defeated in any national election that's a
49:48
question given the extent to which electoral process has been compromised
49:54
that's a tough question and not limited to the m much much hyped debate around the electronic voting machines
50:01
unfortunately every debate about electoral irregularity immediately reduces to EVMS somehow it triggers all
50:10
kinds of fancy things in our mind uh our all our science fiction stories start
50:15
playing and all kinds of things begin to happen as a result I mean I'm not saying there's not I'm not ruling out the
50:22
possibility of EVMS being tinkered all I'm saying is that there are so many things happening right in front of our
50:29
eyes which doesn't require any of those things what's happening what happened to the voters list in Maharashtra what
50:35
happens to enormous unimaginable amount of money that has been poured in Maharashtra election you know someday
50:43
professor Rana or someone should just give us a sense of how I mean the stories I've heard are you know beyond
50:51
astounding so voter list money straightforward buying of opposition
50:58
candidates right down to buying their booth agents uh the media uh control over mass
51:07
media misuse of state machinery at every stage of the electoral process is and
51:12
I'm sad to say the diminuation of the election commission of India as an independent
51:18
institution uh I say that with uh a lot of pain because there was
51:24
a time when I would come and speak about the integrity of Indian elections and
51:30
how Indian elections could teach a lesson or two to the rest of the world and I must say I did take some vicarious
51:37
pleasure after the Florida episode and said that you know maybe Indian election commission could
51:44
take over the American elections and run it better uh now the joke is on us
51:50
uh and uh sadly the election commission of India
51:55
uh doesn't seem to be an institution
52:00
which can be trusted and we have opinion polls that are now regularly showing just fall in levels of trust in election
52:07
commission there's some evidence of serious erosion of public trust in these institutions notwithstanding all that
52:14
the fact remains that the regime needs to prove and not just to the world outside its popularity in what it must
52:22
present as a fair elections that continues to be the constraint under which the regime so it's not it's not
52:29
Russia you cannot hold Putin like elections in India and get away with it still you have to persuade the people
52:36
that what happened was more or less fair that's a constraint that remains well
52:42
and gives us some hope elections may not be the principal arena of political contestations but they remain a relevant
52:49
arena still but let me focus more on the other
52:55
two dimensions which we don't talk about because this one is talked about endlessly in the
53:01
media let me focus on two other arenas of action to reclaim democratic republic contestations on the street and those in
53:08
the realm of ideas needless to emphasize when I say street contestation on the street
53:14
suddenly all kinds of strange imaginations start playing in people's mind the contestation that I speak of
53:21
here are democratic peaceful and constitutional protest movements the
53:26
word resistance itself now looks like such a strange word that it can be
53:32
twisted into anything and uh uh given that this is being live cast I always
53:39
remain aware of the possibility of any 20 seconds being taken out of this and
53:45
converted into this and this is not imaginary this has happened to me at least twice 10 seconds taken out and
53:53
converted into you know all kinds of weird stories uh so we are speaking only here
54:00
of peaceful democratic and constitutional protest movements my sense is that the thrust of
54:06
counterhmonic action needs to be on the proactive mobilization of two central issues and two key
54:15
constituencies issues of social justice and regional
54:21
equity you know and two constituencies namely
54:27
farmers and the unemployed youth uh I'm not here talking about those who
54:34
face those who face the brunt of the system i'm not speaking here of the social groups which have experienced
54:43
highest oppression that needless to say in this regime are the Muslims
54:49
minorities who have been effectively reduced to a second rate citizenship in our in India today uh just 10 days ago
54:57
was it 10 days ago uh terrorists pick up people on the
55:05
basis of religion they pick up Hindus kill them this invites a nationwide
55:12
outrage just as it should but almost every second day you have
55:18
instances of people being picked on the basis of their religion being lynched
55:23
houses bulldozed denied right to practice their profession denied a room
55:30
a house and now it has stopped making any news whatsoever it is normal
55:38
so but my focus right now is in identifying what are the sources of
55:45
resistance what is where does effective
55:50
counterhgemonic pressures can come from two issues and two social constituencies
55:55
I mentioned one is uh cast cast based
56:00
social justice over the last two years following the second bharat juror yatra the congress has raised the issue of
56:07
cast inequalities and social justice in a systematic manner around three-fold
56:12
demands of cast census removal of gap on reservations and expansion of
56:17
affirmative action in the private sector these are the three demands the Congress has pushed and as you know just day
56:24
before yesterday when I was in in Providence I hear that the government of
56:30
India has accepted the demand for cast census this decision can be of momentous
56:37
significance in this respect while it demonstrates the BJP's assessment that it can appropriate the social justice
56:44
agenda this can also open up a new window to a more vigorous politics of
56:50
social justice if the opposition can accommodate the demands of most disadvantaged groups within the SCST and
56:57
OBC and can create a connect with the Muslims who have been reduced to the level of second drunk minority second
57:03
drunk citizenship this could constitute the core of a social block of the bottom of
57:09
the pyramid that can take on the present regime so what we really need is to think of a social
57:15
block that's one issue social justice and cast the other issue that offers
57:22
space for resistance is that of regionalism uh while the BJP has made inroads in the
57:29
south and the east and the northeast these regions are not fully incorporated
57:34
in the hegemonic fold as yet recent debates around the imposition of Hindi
57:40
have demonstrated the depth of popular resentment uh and the power of regional
57:46
pride all this in fact there was another debate in Maharashtra as well not just in Tamil Nadu all this could come to a
57:53
head if the regime decides to go for a fresh delimitation that's a very big
57:59
issue coming up in Indian democracy following the census because following the 2026 census the
58:06
constitutional requirement as it stands today is that fresh allocation of seats
58:12
has to take place and if the fresh allocation of seats takes place according to population It would mean a
58:18
radical restructuring of balance of power in between the north and the
58:25
south this could be a pivotal moment leading to reconfiguration of political
58:30
forces and voters loyalties uh so these are two issues which need to
58:38
be where where a lot of action needs to happen where something is where there's
58:44
a promise of something happening in the medium run the challenge is to create a
58:49
social coalition that can take on the present regime who are the components of that social coalition apart from the
58:56
things that I've already mentioned if there is one class whose objective interest almost entirely matches the
59:03
political project of counter hedgemony it is the farmers structural contradiction of the
59:09
economy make it impossible to incorporate and retain farmers into the fold of the new hedgemony the agrarian
59:16
crisis a combination of economic ecological and existential crisis has
59:22
been around for a long time but an overlap of climate market and policy
59:27
induced disasters has pushed the agrarian crisis to a flash point this is
59:32
what led to the historic farmers movement something in which I had the honor of participating of late there are signs of
59:40
revival of the farmers movement and here once again there is a pivotal moment coming which is if India goes for a
59:48
trade agreement with the US which it will and if that involves or is seen to
59:54
involve a tradeoff for farmers against the IT or the corporate sector which may
1:00:00
well be the case then there is a very serious possibility of uh a major
1:00:08
farmers protest for which preparations are already in place uh major farmers protest happening in the
1:00:14
country this requires this would of course require a
1:00:20
historic project of uniting farmers movements across different regions varying crop patterns different classes
1:00:26
both genders various ideological shades and conflicting charters of demand this
1:00:31
is what has kept farmers fragmented uh farmers movement the famous farmers
1:00:38
movement partly compensated for that but the task still remains thus the
1:00:44
political challenge for the farmers movement is to become an all-encompassing movement for regeneration of rural India such a
1:00:51
movement can be the vanguard of counter-hedgemonic politics to defend the republic unemployed youth are at once
1:00:59
more powerful and more difficult agents of counter hedgemony at this point in history it's It's a very special
1:01:06
category youth movement is more powerful by virtue of the sheer energy speed and visibility that it can bring to
1:01:12
counteredgemonic politics yet it is far more difficult as the existing moment
1:01:18
movement is much weaker and fragmented than the farmers movement and it is tougher to find issues and sites that
1:01:25
can bring the various sections of the youth together the objective conditions
1:01:30
are as ripe in the case of farm as in the case of farmers in fact I would say more more present there riper than in
1:01:38
the case of farmers an extended period of jobless growth decline in real wages
1:01:43
possible shrinking of job opportunities contractualization of organized sector employment widening gulf between work
1:01:51
conditions of organized and unorganized sector workers an educational system that fails to provide skills or
1:01:56
knowledge and growing disparities in educational opportunities all these conditions remain you cannot go to any
1:02:04
Indian village or an urban basti speak for 2 minutes about
1:02:09
employment issue and not have people explode anywhere there I mean I can take
1:02:15
a bet go to any point close your eyes put your finger on some point in the map go there just ask this question and so
1:02:22
it's the conditions are there the subjective conditions are also on the balance favorable the crisis is seen and
1:02:28
felt by affected group take any opinion poll or an unemployed unemployment tops
1:02:34
the chart there's enough evidence of a latent youth unrest that occasionally
1:02:39
comes out in campus protests across the country clearly a significant section of the youth is uncomfortable with the
1:02:46
cultural politics of this regime as well the real challenge at this moment is how
1:02:51
to marshall this latent energy into counterhmonic politics creation of a
1:02:56
nationwide youth movement on the two issues of equal access to quality education and dignified employment is
1:03:04
all to all is thus a historic possibility and a historic challenge
1:03:10
now the third arena let me finally turn to the third arena for reclamation that of ideas and
1:03:16
culture because in the last instance as I keep reminding our friends that we've
1:03:22
lost our republic we've lost our democracy because we lost a battle of ideas and let's be honest about it
1:03:31
in the last instance the success of counter hedgeimog politics depends not so much on the short and the medium-term
1:03:37
action plans and strategies mentioned above but on the capacity to offer an alternative vision we need a long-term
1:03:44
strategy of counterhmonic ideology the heart of the challenge lies in creating a new vision of India that
1:03:52
can capture popular imagination this requires careful deliberations as the
1:03:57
defenders of republic need fresh moral cultural and intellectual resources today it would be imprudent to for
1:04:05
foreground counter hegemonic politics on the issues of nationalism secularism and culture since any contestation would end
1:04:12
up strengthening the present regime but an inability to take on these issues for
1:04:17
long would be fatal to counter hegemonic politics fortunately we need not begin in thin
1:04:23
air much of the resources needed for the counter-humionic project are available in modern India modern Indian political
1:04:32
thought is an extraordinary repository of moral intellectual and cultural resources that can help us collectively
1:04:39
renegotiate our present and since they are students of political science and political theory here this is really a
1:04:46
project that we need to get into you know creating uh creating a uh you know
1:04:54
converting modern Indian political thought into a repository that's
1:04:59
available for our future we can draw upon this tradition only and
1:05:05
first of all if we give up the insistence on any of the 20th century ideological labels or icons as the
1:05:11
starting point we must recognize that many of the ideological battles of the 20th century violence versus nonviolence
1:05:19
state versus market class versus cast are pointless today instead of carrying
1:05:24
on the deadwood we need to learn from all the major streams of modern Indian political thought specifically we need
1:05:32
to bring together two strands in the 20th century Indian political thought the modern egalitarian strand
1:05:38
represented by socialists communists ambitkarayites feminists and so on on the one hand and the ind indigenous or
1:05:47
uh decolonization strand represented by the Gandhians surviites environmentalist
1:05:53
and many other thinkers these are the two strands in the 20th century that do not speak to each other they they run
1:06:00
parallel to each other in the 20th century our challenge is to bring them together what we need is a new
1:06:05
ideological integration of both these trends under a capacious concept like
1:06:11
saraj this alternative ideological vision must not be tied to any one
1:06:18
thinker or text instead the constitution must become the key symbol for
1:06:23
countergemonic ideology now I come to the last part a very short
1:06:29
part of what I have to say which is about
1:06:36
re enchanting i began by talking of the global challenge of
1:06:43
democracy let me conclude by making a suggestion that may have relevance beyond
1:06:49
India what we call democracy today is three things rolled into one democracy
1:06:56
is a word one of the most used and abused words in our time a word with
1:07:01
amazing universal provenence the most potent term for claiming political authority in global political speech it
1:07:09
is also a charming political ideal that outco competes any foreseeable rivals a
1:07:14
vision of society where all citizens have equal effective control over all
1:07:19
significant collective decisions who can quarrel with that finally and most oddly
1:07:25
democracy also stands for a political mechanism usually that of representative
1:07:30
government through periodical elections that are decided by some form of a majority rule so we have these three
1:07:37
things an idea an ideal and a mechanism all rolled into one and they all called democracy
1:07:43
today we fe face face a gigantic slight of hand a conceptual trick that has
1:07:50
created an equivalence of these three meanings of democracy the word the ideal and the mechanism so the moral charm of
1:07:57
the ideal of democracy is used to reinforce the potency of the word democracy and their combined power is
1:08:05
deployed to justify the rulers who call themselves democratic who managed to tick enough
1:08:12
boxes in the institutional checklist of democracy these three are bundled so
1:08:17
tightly that any questioning of democracy as a form of government is presumed to be an attack on the very
1:08:24
ideal of democracy this leads to a hypnotic spell of
1:08:29
democracy that can be a moral moral cloak to cover dubious and dangerous
1:08:35
regimes and make us unsee the stark reality that stares us in our
1:08:41
face any serious engagement with democracy must unbundle democracy as an
1:08:47
idea and an ideal from democracy as an actually existing form of government a
1:08:52
lazy celebration of anything that passes for democracy is not just intellectually damaging it is also politically
1:08:59
disastrous in a world where everyone and everything seeks this label a conflation
1:09:05
of democracy as an idea and an adjective for actual regimes can only lead to
1:09:11
moral and political paralysis what do we do then there are
1:09:16
only two possible ways ahead one option powerfully argued by professor John Dunn
1:09:21
over the years is to break the spell of democracy that's what he wants us to do
1:09:27
you know don't be misled by this word this word has done too much damage
1:09:32
just uh you know switch off to break the spell of democracy
1:09:38
detach the regimes from the lofty ideals of democracy and then treat democracy just as one more form of government that
1:09:46
carries no special claim to moral authority that's the kind of suggestion he seems to be making this is
1:09:52
intellectually quite cogent approach as we would not live in denial anymore the
1:09:57
problem of course is the sheer normative power of the word the word today I mean
1:10:03
you cannot do things in this word by disavoing this word called
1:10:09
democracy also if we delegitimize democracy what is the
1:10:14
alternative to my mind therefore the other radically different option would be to re-enchant democracy
1:10:23
re-enchantment recalls the famous argument of Charles Taylor that the rise of scientific rationalism and the
1:10:30
decline of traditional religious beliefs associated with modernity has led to a
1:10:35
disenchantment the loss of a sense of the world inherent meaning and purpose that's his larger argument about
1:10:42
secularization in the world he says it has led to a disenchanted world
1:10:48
for him re-enchantment involves reclaiming the sacred without traditional ritual beliefs rediscovering
1:10:55
the values and wonder of the world and a renewed sense of the spiritual i propose something similar
1:11:02
has happened to the world of democracy that has been stripped of its meaning and
1:11:08
purpose democracy was a vehicle for something larger than itself the rise of
1:11:14
democracy as a modern deity has meant that it has become an end unto itself at
1:11:21
the same time democracy has been reduced to its minimalist definition as a form
1:11:26
of government where the rulers are elected through a process where they stand a fair chance of rejection democracy has become a
1:11:34
transactional business where political entrepreneurs trade for power
1:11:40
political scientists have legitimized and contributed to the process of degradation of democracy because this
1:11:47
business we have legitimized political entrepreneurs trading power is something we also agree now is democracy
1:11:55
re-enchanting democracy would mean taking the high ideals of democracy seriously and examining each actually
1:12:03
existing society that claims to be democracy against those powerful ideals
1:12:09
that would involve a willingness to acknowledge that the so-called democratic regimes do not offer to their
1:12:16
citizens anything that remotely resembles equal power to shape political policy or personal outcomes that matter
1:12:22
to the people it requires a willingness to say that we don't have any finished
1:12:28
product democracy any real model of democracy that what we have are at best
1:12:36
potential democracies that democracy is a work in progress a project of re-enchantment of
1:12:43
democracy would seek to recover and reinstitute the ethical core of
1:12:49
democratic ideals and the memory of radical struggles that led to the
1:12:54
foundation of democracy this would necessitate recovery of politics beyond
1:13:01
transactional activity bringing back idealism that was the glue of
1:13:08
democracy if democracy capture was contingent neither a pure accident nor
1:13:15
inevitable so is the project of re-enchanting of democracy neither assured of success nor doomed to failure
1:13:24
thank you [Applause]
1:13:37
these remarkable set of reflections and analytic
1:13:45
um interventions into um the really existing democracy uh incidentally the
1:13:51
phrase was used for um in the 1970s for really existing socialism and really
1:13:58
existing communism you know this is a
1:14:04
um so this is an interesting way to think about democracy in the world today and and and India in particular our
1:14:11
commentator is Patrick Heler um professor of sociology and uh my co my colleague in
1:14:22
research projects in India um my um my colleague at the Saxenna center of
1:14:31
the last 15 years and the incoming director of Saxenna center starting July
1:14:36
1st Patrick [Applause]
1:14:47
So thank you to Ugandra and to Madulika for traveling here and spending time
1:14:54
with us in your incredibly busy lives um and to Ugandra I won't repeat some of
1:15:00
the things Ashu said earlier but I I've been learning from your work for three decades and it's it's always um
1:15:08
extraordinary to hear you speak uh uh today you've given us a history you've
1:15:14
given us theories you say you're not a comparivist i don't buy that at all you've to me you've always thought
1:15:19
comparatively um and you've given us a a theoretical and empirical roadmap
1:15:28
of how to reclaim democracy so to me this is just an extraordinary set of
1:15:33
thoughts um and what what I'd like to do is is really uh push you to to go even a
1:15:42
little further in developing the argument because as you said um the the
1:15:47
story of Indian democracy is unusual you began your talk by saying you were even uncertain about what to say so if you're
1:15:54
uncertain the rest of us are completely confused by just the sheer complexity of
1:16:00
Indian democracy and the fact that as is true of all other democracies in the world and we're learning this the hard
1:16:06
way right now in the United States there's nothing teological about democracy even if all the thinking and
1:16:12
theorizing is we we haven't had such dramatic reversals in the trajectory of
1:16:18
democracy in the current period uh since the inter war period right and the inter war period gave us fascism um and now
1:16:26
we're seeing it not not just in India not just in Europe United States but we've seen it in the Philippines we've
1:16:32
seen it in Turkey across the world there was a moment in South Africa that was literally officially designated a state
1:16:39
capture by the national prosecution office because Zuma had personalized
1:16:45
total control of the state apparatus so this is this is indeed very much a global phenomenon and I I I I really
1:16:52
want to just gear my comments to uh building on everything that you've shared with us and in inviting everyone
1:16:59
um to help us even deepen the argument as as best we can so I want to begin
1:17:04
with um a his the same historical point that you begin with um for those of us
1:17:12
in comparative sociology most of us for better or for worse first encounter
1:17:17
Indian democracy through Barington Moore and Barington Moore of course was deeply skeptical as were all the observers at
1:17:23
the time i mean the the idea of introducing democracy into a society
1:17:29
that was deeply hierarchical mostly illiterate impoverished she said was seen as pure madness at the time um and
1:17:36
of course in retrospect it was it was an absolutely brilliant stroke but it still goes against all our received theories
1:17:43
of the conditions under which democracy might actually be successful so as you said uh this is a a state that's only in
1:17:51
a very incipient mode of formation um clearly uh in the Indian economy at that
1:17:57
point isn't sufficiently modernized to produce the kind of surpluses that would be the material base for you know modern
1:18:03
class compromised type democracies they're they're all the legacies of colonialism and and including and we
1:18:10
don't s I think say this often enough just this not just the bureaucracy but the sheer degree of centralization I
1:18:17
mean to this day the extraordinary weakness of the third tier of government in India is very much a legacy of
1:18:24
colonialism um and then of course uh on bedcar's point about you know the gap
1:18:30
between the idea of legal equality is enshrined in the constitution but the sociological reality
1:18:36
of deep pervasive hierarchies and inequalities in society so th this is
1:18:41
the most unusual story of democratization in the history of democracies and the emergency aside in
1:18:49
the current moment notwithstanding um Indian democracy has been uh
1:18:55
consolidated there have been moments of deepening um and it has certainly if nothing else held the nation together
1:19:01
which in of itself is an extraordinary development that said I I want to start
1:19:07
with a a provocation and an asterisk the provocation is Huntington um and Huntington you know
1:19:14
there's a lot of political scientists here and and this is it's a powerful argument the fa you know the first you
1:19:20
build the institutions then you allowed for for democracy right and the reasoning being if you allow for
1:19:27
democracy too soon given a weak state given the lack of economic resources given all these sort of legacies that
1:19:33
I've talked about um you're going to have this problem you called it functional overload huntington called it
1:19:38
demand overload um and you end I I can't remember if you said this in the talk
1:19:43
but you end the paper that you shared with me um by saying that democracy today in India has become and I quote
1:19:50
transactional business where political entrepreneurs trade for power which feels a lot like the kind of thing that
1:19:58
Huntington would have predicted right that the institutions were weak civil society wasn't welldeveloped so the
1:20:03
politicians become just these really powerful brokers and they sort of crowd out all the other civic and republican
1:20:11
dimensions of democracy um now I I'm the last person in the world who's going to defend Huntington um for the obvious
1:20:18
reasons that the whole theory that the institution builders can build the institutions and then democratize is a
1:20:24
complete contradiction in terms because if you control the institutions you have power and then you have absolutely no
1:20:29
incentive to democratize but that said even within India there are comparisons
1:20:36
one could make that would both support as well as overcome the Huntington
1:20:42
hypothesis so you could argue that in the north by and large and many people have said this because parties developed
1:20:49
at the expense of civil society and social movements there's been this kind of monopolization and
1:20:56
transactionalization of politics that you describe but in the south we see something really different and this is
1:21:02
my asterisk um you you you presented the story of IND and understandably given
1:21:08
the limited time etc as a story of Indian democracy but there are multiple stories and indeed in the south you
1:21:14
could argue that the sequencing was the reverse of the north that the movements
1:21:19
in particular the anti-cast movements the derivian movement uh the temple entry movement in Carerala that these
1:21:25
sort of bottomup mobilizations preceded democracy and so by the time democracy
1:21:31
is introduced the parties are all almost by definition social justice parties um and we have precisely
1:21:39
the kind of politics and social blocks that you're alluding to when you talk
1:21:45
about building a counter hijgemony in the current period right so I I just wanted to inject the usual north south
1:21:52
distinction to get you to reflect on that and what it means for how you're thinking about and this is the second
1:21:58
point the idea of reclaiming democracy which I I think is a brilliant way of rephrasing the current debate um but it
1:22:06
does beg the question in order to reclaim democracy and you you you do address this but again I just want to
1:22:12
push you a little bit more what are the sources of resiliency so Levitzki and
1:22:17
who who with um with Ziblot coined the whole idea and
1:22:22
term of democratic backsliding recently they've been talking about what are the sources of democratic resiliency and in
1:22:29
the standard mainstream political science literature resiliency has sort of three sort of normal identities one
1:22:38
it's the constitution right this is why we have constitutions to to have a mechanism that pushes back against
1:22:45
elected officials who might want to become autocrats um we have the checks
1:22:50
and balances of liberal medicineian democracy Congress the elected representatives the judiciary and then
1:22:56
political parties i mean if you have a strong political party opposition presumably they can be a counterveilling
1:23:02
force to authoritarian tendencies and and that's the usual sort of trifecta of
1:23:09
uh resiliency in a formal established democratic regime every day I you know like
1:23:16
everyone else I check my phone every 30 minutes to see if I still have rights you know because this is the moment we
1:23:22
live in and they're constantly being aggressed and assaulted um and for the
1:23:27
first time in my adult life the term civil society has become part of the almost dayto-day discourse in the US and
1:23:34
it reminds you what Grochi had to said about said he what Grochi said about democracy he says the fish never talk
1:23:39
about the water in countries like the United States where we take democracy for granted we we stop talking about
1:23:46
resiliency because we just assume it's consolidated now all of a sudden that it's threatened not only are we
1:23:52
discovering that the tra traditional tripod of resilience institutions the constitution political parties are not
1:23:58
enough we're rediscovering civil society and it's really interesting right and we could have learned a lot if we had been
1:24:04
paying a little more attention to what happened in Brazil under Bolsson or what's been happening with the current
1:24:09
regime in India because of course the one thing that for me defines an authoritarian regime more than anything
1:24:14
else is the frontal assault on civil society um and of course we're witnessing that in spades in in India um
1:24:23
to that I would also um add as you did I was going to say federalism you said regionalism but also pro-democratic
1:24:30
social forces um and in the Indian context you talked about farmers potentially the youth I want to add a
1:24:37
few more um but for me that's that's sort of the list right um six different
1:24:43
things and and again this is just an invitation for you to reflect mo again and more on where are the true sources
1:24:51
of resiliency because clearly at the inst when Rahul Gandhi was here last week about two weeks ago he basically
1:24:58
said the institutions are gone um and well maybe the Congress is a source of
1:25:03
opposition maybe it isn't but then that also begs the question of what is the current state of civil society um and
1:25:10
regionalism which you've already commented on and that leads me into a third set of
1:25:16
comments and here I I have to drag Groshi into the conversation because you
1:25:21
did you use the term social block Grochi counter hijgemony Grochi um and this
1:25:27
whole idea of bringing culture back into how we understand politics and of course Grochi's been a big part of the
1:25:33
conversation about politics in in Indian academic literature but I I do think that's exactly the right way of framing
1:25:41
it and so again I just want to push you a little so Grchi who by the way and this is really funny because in the
1:25:46
prison notebooks he never ever used the term counter hegemony but everyone one who reads Guamshi read into the theory a
1:25:54
theory of counter hijgemany and there was really two elements to it uh one is the cultural dimension which you spoke
1:26:00
about the other is what he called occupying the trenches of civil society um and specifically the the what he what
1:26:07
he also called using military metaphors the war of position so you don't want a frontal assault on the state but you
1:26:14
have to sort of build up your capacity in the trenches of civil society which is in a way precisely how the current
1:26:21
regime did come to power right before triumphing in the electoral arena they
1:26:26
occupied the trenches of civil society so that again raises a whole set of questions about the quote state of civil
1:26:32
society in the Indian context and here in particular I have a question about the Congress because when I if we're
1:26:40
going to think of the the Congress as the key formation in some sort of
1:26:45
counterhmonic social block it brings to mind for me uh parties like the workers
1:26:51
party in Brazil or or social democratic parties in the European context which
1:26:56
concretely coordinated interests across different class segments the famous red
1:27:01
green alliance in in Scandinavia and in Brazil what the bet did is a workers
1:27:08
party that that was rooted in the unions lula himself was a unionist but they built bridges to the rest of civil
1:27:14
society in fact a lot of the beta activists came out of civil society organizations that's not how the
1:27:20
congress is configured at all so that to me raises a lot of questions as a
1:27:26
central political actor that many would see as and and you yourself uh
1:27:32
identified it as such as being the the sort of nodal point in this counter hegemonic social block alliance can it
1:27:40
really get the job done given its historical lack of organic links to civil society organizations
1:27:47
and then on the cultural um question and again I think this is really powerful
1:27:53
set of insights and you have a quote in in the text that I want to read because I I think this really gets to the heart
1:27:59
of the the challenge that the left forces face in contemporary India you
1:28:04
say an open disavow of dassinated and culturally and sorry an open disavow of
1:28:12
a dassinated and culturally empty secularism that has to be at the heart of the new project cultural project of
1:28:20
reappropriating nationalism from the BJP and here again just to push you um what
1:28:27
does that actually look like so Grouchi has he and this is all translated from
1:28:32
Italian and God knows he was writing on toilet paper and it was being reproduced and but he throughout his text he uses
1:28:38
the word galvanize when he talks about ideologies it's got to galvanize people right it has to resonate with their
1:28:45
understandings of the world um and you pointed to recent developments just the
1:28:50
other day the government now being willing to uh brings Cass back into the
1:28:55
census and of course the conversation has been about social justice as this
1:29:01
kind of glue that's going to galvanize the masses and then you me you mentioned the cast census itself you mentioned
1:29:06
extending reservations into the private sector and I guess my question is is is that enough um because that politics has
1:29:15
been around for a while and in some ways it also fragments the counterhmonic
1:29:21
movement right and that all different groups are all pursuing their own immediate returns in the reservation
1:29:27
system as opposed to a logic that might be a little bit more encompassing and
1:29:32
here um I'm thinking in particular in terms and there's an Indian example
1:29:38
there are uh comparative examples but articulating a new identity around
1:29:44
rightsbased welfare and I mention this because of course under the UPA it
1:29:49
didn't really come from the Congress it came from this kind of moly coalition of NOS's and social movement actors but
1:29:56
they did not only generate a powerful discourse but a powerful set of new policies and Rega the right to food the
1:30:03
right to education etc and it really was trying to build a more encompassing
1:30:08
coalition around the idea of a rightsbased access to welfare um and of
1:30:14
course that has been in my view the glue that built the the social block the
1:30:19
progressive social block in Kerala and to a lesser extent but certainly significantly in Tamil Nadu as well and
1:30:25
I think in Latin America the last two decades um what's been most dramatic in
1:30:31
political life hasn't been what parties have been doing it's been the rise of of a social rights revolution that in some
1:30:37
cases has percolate percolated up into parties and in other cases hasn't but
1:30:42
has had a transformative effect in terms of how the so-called popular classes see
1:30:47
and understand themselves um and in particular the the thing to me that's most striking about political discourse
1:30:54
in India so there a lot of talk of social justice and reservations etc we don't hear much about education and
1:31:00
healthcare and again I' I'd like to hear more why why those two issues in particular uh aren't more problematized
1:31:08
in the political discourse and then two other quick and and then I'll be done
1:31:13
two other quick related issues so I I'm I take your argument about
1:31:18
farmers it was the only successful social movement of the last decade um
1:31:24
and structurally and sectorally uh as you say um they they have the most to
1:31:30
gain from challenging the new hegemonic order um but what about the urban
1:31:35
um again thinking about Latin America what drove the social rights revolution
1:31:41
of the last 2030 years were mostly urban mobilizations zeti is an urban political
1:31:46
party now India is not as urbanized but it's also a lot more urbanized than we think um it's definitely not 36% and in
1:31:56
terms of total exclusion in a context of extraordinary growth and opportunity the
1:32:01
urban in India is unbelievable i mean the the the informality the lack of
1:32:06
access to basic services uh the the the the the problems of housing the informal
1:32:14
job uh sectors um and yet all the welfare policies have been targeted to
1:32:20
the rural um isn't there a possibility there for yet another constituent
1:32:25
element of the counterhedgemonic social block of mobilizing the the urban poor
1:32:32
um and in the Latin American context of course this was literally called the politics of the rights to the city right
1:32:39
so again an extension of centering social rights as part of this counter-hedgemonic movement so uh again
1:32:46
um Yugendra thank you so much this has been so thoughtprovoking and extraordinary and I'm really looking
1:32:52
forward to this conversation thank
1:32:58
you yeah uh we have 20
1:33:03
minutes so what will be the best use would you like to hear more comments
1:33:09
from the audience or Yeah yes but um just one you use the
1:33:16
term competitive authoritarianism levitzky and we have a full book about there's a 300page book
1:33:25
levitzki built his career on that idea and here is the Let me just read out
1:33:30
from page 53 although elections are regularly held
1:33:38
and are generally free of massive fraud in the competitive authority regime
1:33:44
incumbents routinely abuse state resources deny the opposition adequate
1:33:50
media coverage harass opposition candidates and their supporters and in some cases
1:33:56
manipulate election results yet they fall short of fullscale
1:34:02
authoritarianism although incumbents may manipulate formal democratic rules they
1:34:08
are unable to eliminate them or reduce them to a mere facade
1:34:14
fits 100% to what we are looking this is the argument and in the latest essay that
1:34:21
he's written foreign affairs livitzky a month ago that came out March a month and a half ago he says now this
1:34:29
model applies to United States of America and Trump 2.0 O is competitively
1:34:34
authoritarian it's gone beyond he said what we would he also used the term democratic
1:34:40
backsliding with ziblat right that term was you know when when civilian
1:34:45
politicians use democracy to un undo democracy as opposed to military capture
1:34:51
right which used to be the way in the 60s and 70s the democracies would die
1:34:57
but now the civilian politics do that right politicians do that and then so now he's saying this
1:35:03
to when democratic backsliding reaches this stage let's simply call it
1:35:09
competitive authoritarianism not full-scale dictatorship and an inability to to
1:35:16
bring into being a full-scale dictatorship also which which has been your point actually right an inability
1:35:21
to do so there's something still about democracy that either institutionally or
1:35:27
culturally or in terms of belief system remains very valuable and at even if you clo the very
1:35:35
fact of cloaking your motives in a democratic uh clothing right is is is is
1:35:43
an indication of how hard it is to in so many of these societies to become a but how it is for hard it is for Mr modi to
1:35:50
become a beautiful right anyway with this uh just to go and other things we
1:35:56
can discuss later but let's open up Pa has uh has a question let's start with her and we'll come to you
1:36:03
thank you so much again it's always a pleasure um you know you began with this idea of uh of concepts masquerading as
1:36:10
becoming something else and so I think it's always interesting because you're described quite rightly as a as a
1:36:16
scholar as an activist but sometimes I think the kind of mass masquerading concept underneath which does come out
1:36:23
in the not so many years but the many years I've known you is a patriot and I think in many ways um it is a word that
1:36:30
is used and abused as you said um and so I just wanted to kind of take that part
1:36:35
of you which I think is perhaps less uh explicit but I think very important to the core uh of so much of what you've
1:36:42
done which is you know we have to get the country right so um I think you
1:36:47
rightly pointed out that the issue has been an ideational failure uh it is an ideological and ideational battle that
1:36:53
has been won uh we all know about the undermining of institutions the election commission and others but as
1:37:00
institutions have been undermined certain ideas that were unthinkable in the India that for instance I was
1:37:05
growing up in have become hegemonic so and I and I was really grateful to you
1:37:10
for kind of really emphasizing the kind of ideational challenge that lies ahead as well but I think in some ways I'm I'm
1:37:18
both grateful but also a little uneasy because I think where in many ways I'd like to push you towards is to kind of
1:37:24
think a little bit more deeply altogether about what that would look like and so you began by saying that you
1:37:31
know nationalism and secularism in some ways you give up on it ideationally because you say we can't use those terms
1:37:38
we can't go there conceptually because in some ways um wittingly or or unwittingly we are we are kind of we
1:37:46
can't play on that turf because just simply playing on that turf is going to strengthen the the kind of hegemonic
1:37:53
idea of of nationalism and I just wanted to kind of you know hear a little bit
1:37:58
more about that and in particular about to kind of link this to say okay so if the challenge is ideational um but where
1:38:06
the resources as Patrick said of kind of what is democratic resilience and you pointed to the farmers movements uh for
1:38:13
instance and you also pointed to the kind of regional divide and that the present regime has been less able to for
1:38:20
instance make inroads into the south but I think what joins the south and the
1:38:26
farmers protest which you highlighted separately and also links it to the east
1:38:31
is that almost all the resistance and the kind of counterhmonic mobilization has come from areas that don't speak
1:38:38
Hindi so the farmers movement as we know is a seek movement it's mostly a movement not only of course that's based
1:38:45
in Punjab we think of Bengal and we think in some ways also of the south and
1:38:51
so these are also linguistic identities and so do linguistic and so there is a kind of alternate idea so when you give
1:38:58
up on nationalism and you give up and we know going back to Benedict Anderson and
1:39:03
you know you're really a scholar of of political theory and you've written the book state nation which professor varsny
1:39:10
mentioned which is all about how India is a state nation because it doesn't have a single hegemonic language so to
1:39:16
kind of push you back to the state nation theory and to the fact that the resistance comes from these areas these
1:39:22
movements uh that in some ways are counter countering a kind of hegemonic
1:39:28
national narrative is it that we have to give up on nationalism itself or is
1:39:35
there the makings particularly by linking the possibility of resilience in
1:39:41
the farmers movements to that in the south to an alternative idea of modernity and you know Patrick mentioned
1:39:47
professor Banerjee but you know you have in-house someone who talks a lot about what does it mean to kind of have
1:39:53
modernity within tradition and so I guess I'm just like I I I completely agree that the challenge is ideational
1:40:00
the project is ideational but I'm not sure that we still quite have those building blocks of what that ideational
1:40:06
project is and that you know the challenge is to kind of link the ideational and the institutional um you
1:40:12
know we don't have a Carter based party in the congress Rahul Gandhi's visit made it quite clear that he's not
1:40:17
interested in investing in this enterprise so then you know how is it
1:40:22
that this kind of recovering a country reclaiming a country can happen would
1:40:28
you say something about whether farmers movement can be interpreted as an anti-Hindi movement would you like to
1:40:34
say something about that should I just take it together yeah yeah yeah any one more maybe one more question uh would
1:40:40
you Yeah would you also introduce yourself i introduced Pa because I know her i don't know you hi I'm Samyak i'm a
1:40:46
freshman at Brown University i'm from Singapore um and my question is really about the rural urban divide in India so
1:40:52
my parents are both from UP my mother grew up in Merit and that seat stayed with the BJP my dad grew up in Kiran
1:40:58
near Kirana in a kazba called Kandla and that seat flipped to um the Samwadi
1:41:04
party so I'm really curious about whether there are any patterns that can be elucidated between this divide that
1:41:10
exists between urbanized India and rural India because in most western liberal democracies the urbanized areas are the
1:41:17
ones that are to the left of the center whereas the rural areas are the ones that are to the right whereas in India I
1:41:22
would say um in so far as you can even define um Congress and BJP as having any kind of political ideology they it seems
1:41:29
to be flipped so what is your perspective on that especially through the par uh the parajoriatra
1:41:36
one more maybe yeah from data science institute at Brown so
1:41:43
I I mean first of all very enlightening lecture thank you so you talk about these various blocks okay i am not sure
1:41:51
that they have the same interests in common okay uh and then you talk about a
1:41:58
narrative okay a unifying narrative but what reason do you have to
1:42:05
think that they all would adopt that narrative and why would they what's I
1:42:12
mean I'm think of Maoism i'm not saying these people are Mauist but maism did pro in India did provide a narrative uh
1:42:20
to many groups that was not necessarily democratic so do you see I mean how do
1:42:26
you see this holding together so that it would become part of a reclaiming democratic project next round after
1:42:34
you's answers if we have we we should have time I think 10 minutes left uh thanks first of all to uh Patrick for uh
1:42:43
uh such careful reading and such supportive reading and yet pushing in his own gentle way uh I I I should begin
1:42:50
by saying something which is that you see honestly all that I'm trying to do
1:42:55
is to answer one question i used to be a political scientist i wrote about India i used to do the standard
1:43:04
stuff and then this India collapsed in front of my eyes
1:43:09
um and uh the question
1:43:16
is why did this happen the way it did and what can be
1:43:22
done uh all that I'm trying to do is simply trying to answer these two questions
1:43:29
some of which may produce some academic knowledge some of that may appear completely trashy and you know the usual
1:43:38
stuff u and as a result I've also been out of touch with the much of the
1:43:44
academic literature produced which I you know need to draw upon learn from uh but
1:43:49
all that is simply an attempt to answer this one question so I uh happily uh
1:43:56
take on that compliment of being patriot i I I do feel that uh I mean the word
1:44:04
patriot has been reduced in in many ways but uh uh that is
1:44:11
what our academic knowledge and wisdom etc should contribute to and
1:44:16
unfortunately no I don't of course I know I know that yeah sure sure so so uh
1:44:23
so all that so in a sense uh it's my my concern as a citizen
1:44:30
which drives whatever I'm saying here uh uh Patrick on the of the many questions
1:44:37
I'll pick only one or two on the civil society question that you raised uh it's a very important question about India uh
1:44:44
I think we need to divide civil society itself into many components each of
1:44:49
which has different uh strengths and weaknesses nos's which are funded they have
1:44:56
completely surrendered all of them without an exception
1:45:01
um trade unions have not surrendered but they have been sidelined by history
1:45:08
um community organizations is where some resiliency is there strangely I mean know this is
1:45:16
and nonparty political formations uh that's where they say very peculiarly
1:45:22
Indian term for political groups which do not call themselves party but which take a political
1:45:29
position so some parts of civil society have that resilience others have are not
1:45:36
uh but you are absolutely right uh uh you know parties like the Congress I
1:45:42
mean Congress is cannot simply be compared to PT that's you know the kind of linkages PT had with the you know
1:45:50
those social groups and so on i mean that that has to be a dream project for
1:45:55
the congress maybe a dream project for Rahul Gandhi as well but is nowhere there uh and that's the real problem
1:46:03
today uh so so the that's why you need to separate the political project
1:46:08
electoral political project from the building of social blocks project normally it should not be the case but
1:46:13
that's uh unfortunately the case today uh on uh uh huntingdom any thoughts on I think
1:46:24
I would I would reframe the question came from a surprising source that no
1:46:29
friend came from a surprising source but no no but but but it draws upon what I said so it's a very legit question I
1:46:35
think uh I I I would simply say that u you know instead of posing the question
1:46:42
like what is it what are the preconditions of the possibility of
1:46:47
democracy uh I would simply turn that into a descriptive condition which is
1:46:53
descriptive question which is to say when uh so the there the earlier
1:46:59
question used to be unless you have a preceding b and c preceding u you know a
1:47:05
and b you would not have x right u I don't think it was a good way of
1:47:12
posing the question but there was a historic insight in that which is to say
1:47:17
the manner in which the sequence in which A B and C appear has serious
1:47:23
consequences for X Y or Z that actually comes into being and which is the
1:47:28
insight we must retain however anti-honingtonian we are uh but the fact
1:47:33
that in India uh all our institutions were extremely fragile for the 70 years
1:47:40
it's not just m Mr modi or BJP our institutions have always been very fragile have always given into any
1:47:48
political pressure and that the work was done by movements by political practices
1:47:56
one amend only one amendment Huntington's own explanation for why Indian democracy was surviving survived
1:48:02
for 20 years when he wrote the book was that there was one institution obviously argument was about institutions one
1:48:09
institution of India which was very vibrant and had dur and had contributed
1:48:15
to the evolution of democracy in a very unlikely setting and that was Congress congress party that's right it it
1:48:21
appears again and again in his book there is nothing like Congress party in the global south he argues
1:48:29
uh on the uh whether rightbased
1:48:35
uh I mean is cast enough of obviously it's not uh whether right based why why
1:48:41
not think of uh education health right-based
1:48:47
movements etc i would like
1:48:52
to I don't see these issues having that kind of political potency that I would
1:49:00
like to see you know both you and I would like to have politics of education and health there have been one or two
1:49:06
examples where it has been done successfully uh in the context of the counterhmonic
1:49:13
project that we are that you know in the short-term counter-himmonic project
1:49:19
uh if you raise the issue of education by combining it with
1:49:27
unemployment then it has some this thing you know uh uh sadly
1:49:34
uh an ordinary Indian has bought into the
1:49:40
belief that uh health is his own problem that state is not you know it
1:49:47
it's beyond the range of possibilities it's it's a sad thing but
1:49:53
you the fact accepted as a fact of nature it'll probably change take another 20 years of a different kind of
1:49:59
politics to change it around so yeah and uh on the urban mobilization I
1:50:07
think that's a Very important point Patrick i think that's something uh I need to think harder about and thanks
1:50:12
for pushing me there uh I did speak about the youth and much of the youth protests are urban but urban poor that's
1:50:20
a category waiting to be uh to to be to be seriously mobilized brought together
1:50:27
and and thanks for pointing that out i mean that's something and there's lot of action there and the point is that any
1:50:32
urban action has enormous traction you know it immediately changes that so that's something I would uh uh take uh
1:50:40
on what you said about Titzky i mean it's actually almost entirely applies to
1:50:45
India you could be describing India that was the case u I and he does include India in the
1:50:52
latest foreign office article that this is India is heading towards or headed towards already there and that's where
1:50:57
United States under Trump too is headed uh I think I read him when I was trying
1:51:02
I mean I had not read him earlier but when I was trying to make sense of this very peculiar combination in India uh
1:51:11
that's when I think I had read him and got the obviously the phrase is not mine it's sort of picked up from that
1:51:17
literature uh praa on the nationalism question I think I miscommunicated
1:51:24
uh because I did not read those four paragraphs uh and just read the initial
1:51:30
uh the qualifying part of it actually my position is somewhat different in fact my position may be very close to
1:51:37
uh yours or uh is so my my position actually is that uh uh we should not
1:51:46
give up on nationalism my position is in fact my position is rather different from most of my progressive colleagues
1:51:53
uh in fact I believe that nationalism offers deep resources available to us
1:51:59
and giving up on nationalism was one of the biggest mistakes of the Indian progressive radicals in fact I go on to
1:52:07
say not just nationalism the three things that I should have spoken about is the the the you know in the in the
1:52:13
ideational recovery project there are three nodes to it one is recovery of
1:52:19
nationalism because Indian nationalism you know I mean we we we've vicariously taken on the guilt of German
1:52:27
nationalism it's not our problem indian nationalism is is a very different it's
1:52:32
a it's a positive nationalism my nationalism connected me to Palestine my nationalism connected me to South Africa
1:52:38
to to to Latin America my nationalism never pitted me against my neighbor so
1:52:44
why should I feel guilty or awkward about the word nationalism that's why I never use the word Hindu nationalism
1:52:51
because I don't want to give up on this word nationalism it's it's it's my strength uh so we with that on that uh
1:52:57
the other two things that I should have mentioned were uh uh in fact that would provoke even greater discussion at some
1:53:04
point uh second is about giving up on Hindu religion while uh secular
1:53:10
progressive people picked up positives from other religions
1:53:17
uh somehow I think largely because of the cast system and our critique of the cast
1:53:24
system there has been inability to relate positively to the various
1:53:31
cultural resources that come to us from Hindu religion uh that I think was also
1:53:37
a serious mistake uh because Hinduism is a lot is an ocean uh you can reject
1:53:44
1,000 things there and still pick up a lot uh so that's the second thing and
1:53:49
third was generally a sense of civilizational pride u every civilization has it every
1:53:56
civilization deserves it uh and having a sense of civilizational pride doesn't mean that you accept every nonsense that
1:54:02
comes from the past and that's a beautiful thing that Indian political modern Indian political thought did it
1:54:08
taught us how to put many things in the dust bin without being awkward about our
1:54:13
past and our cultural heritage so I really think that these three things uh
1:54:19
we I mean when I say we it is liberal secular progressive people in a sense handed it over to the BJP and uh are now
1:54:28
saying oh my god what do I do uh on the farmer movement uh and that language
1:54:34
connection I would have a different reading uh partly because I participated so I have some sense of that on that we
1:54:41
are probably slightly um I I uh but I but I do take the point that
1:54:48
uh that Indian nationalism providing space for
1:54:55
articulation of regional identities uh which were not seen to be
1:55:00
conflicting with nationalism is one of our biggest resources we need to use that uh two quick things uh urban rural
1:55:09
uh I mean the evidence actually in India is that uh uh BJP does better in urban
1:55:16
areas uh and it's not just urban rural actually if you simply map privileges
1:55:22
wherever you have privileges of any kind um urban rural economic cast gender BJP
1:55:32
does better there so that's the thing that we get and finally uh it's a very
1:55:38
interesting question sir why why why should we expect all these different
1:55:44
groups to buy into the same narrative normally they wouldn't normally farmers
1:55:50
you know um I was in the farmers movement within farmers
1:55:55
uh many farmers actually opposed mandrega many farmer unions appro
1:56:01
opposed mandrega as a scheme they said and that is meant for agricultural workers uh so to begin with all these
1:56:09
things do clash and to my mind the task of politics is precisely to articulate
1:56:16
things in such a way as to get them to align that's a political task it doesn't
1:56:21
happen automatically but with effort in farmers movement we finally got the the
1:56:26
famous farmers movement of 13 months outside Delhi the movement actually included that in its charter of demands
1:56:33
to say Mandrea should have 200 days it's an extraordinary thing for a farmers movement to say 200 days yeah they
1:56:41
demanded 200 days of Mandrea farmers movement earlier they used to
1:56:48
think but now they demanded it so it's about that's that's the task of politics yeah um Natalia and uh Pan can we extend
1:56:57
this for by How many minutes can we get five four
1:57:04
maximum 4:15 we have to clear out um so we have four or five let's see the
1:57:10
whether there's a next round of questions oh yeah there's contractual issues here but there's another another
1:57:16
meeting happening soon okay um another lecture or so uh anybody else
1:57:23
uh um so let on farmers movement uh let me
1:57:29
I think we've had this discussion before you were part of that webinar that we had
1:57:36
um there is this um historically
1:57:45
um robust um
1:57:50
development historically anchored development theory question um it's not just a theory
1:57:57
question it's a historically anchored development theory question um that
1:58:04
uh farmers you cannot benefit the farming population if it's
1:58:11
very large by keeping them on land it's a paradox of uh development theory
1:58:18
but it's uh the paradox is explained historically uh the land cannot support
1:58:27
um very large uh populations at a at an increasing
1:58:34
level of uh income of welfare as families become larger as
1:58:40
uh unless there is a transition to urban economy and I can give you since I've
1:58:46
written about this and and and so so me the question has always
1:58:52
This was a debate I ran into even with Jim Scott on weapons of the week with
1:58:57
one of the finest books I've written but with this problem the problem that I'm enlisting for you um so
1:59:05
for me the farmers protest issue or farmers welfare issue becomes in a in a
1:59:10
modernizing economy if that's not the right term a growing economy is how do we ensure
1:59:21
um um a successful transition which does
1:59:27
not make farmers miserable but allows them to transition to either a different
1:59:33
crop pattern cropping pattern which is probably cash crops right which is also well documented or towards an urban mode
1:59:42
of living and and migration to the city
1:59:48
uh in my work on on rural well on on rural
1:59:53
India I would repeatedly come across younger people younger rural people who
1:59:59
would not want to be in the village except for just emotional reasons we are
2:00:05
from village we like our village we would like our village to grow um and
2:00:10
and village is perhaps much more um much
2:00:15
closer to emotions than as the city can be but city is where the opportunities are right uh it's not only question of
2:00:23
wearing jeans and wearing you know t-shirts instead of ka pajama and all
2:00:29
that that's not not that's that's an unreal question the real question is
2:00:34
opportunities will be in the in in a growing economy in the city more of them
2:00:40
than in the and even China through through township village enterprises which we can talk about later we don't
2:00:46
have time here um managed to achieve that transition by
2:00:51
minimizing the costs of transition malaysia did that the the same Malaysia
2:00:58
that about which about which on which um on on the rural condition of which Jim
2:01:04
Scott wrote the famous weapons of the week those peasants who had according to him had no weapons except pilfering and
2:01:12
you know they actually migrated to the cities and Malaysian poverty is down to
2:01:17
1% is down to 1% so how would you respond to this
2:01:23
challenge for how do we bring a farmers protest is a real thing farmers welfare we should all be concerned about right
2:01:30
but can we achieve it by by not thinking about the urban as an al alternative or
2:01:38
or at least simultaneously an alternative to the rural yeah so uh someone pitily said it the
2:01:46
best way to help the farmers is to allow is to help them not remain a farmer uh
2:01:52
that was the main point that's the main point here uh there are three reasons why I disagree number one what appears
2:01:59
to be uh theory is actually a condensation of the historical experience of one part of the world uh
2:02:07
which need not be replicated which need not be binding on all of us uh in fact
2:02:13
uh uh the challenge really in thinking about our future is to try and see why
2:02:20
you know how how you know what happens is that the contingent experience of Europe and North America uh appears like
2:02:28
historical inevitability to the rest of I'm citing Malaysia and China also yes sir i'm just Malaysia and China also on
2:02:34
the on the are there alternatives i think there are two things that can be done uh I really do not think India has
2:02:41
that option for the simple reason that uh Indian urban areas have have uh you know they can only offer more misery to
2:02:50
anyone who migrates further into urban areas they are overpop populated crowded no space to live no air to offer no
2:02:57
water to offer uh and uh to push uh to to assume that we have no option except
2:03:03
to push more and more people into urban areas in a situation you know those historical situations sometimes I'm not
2:03:10
a very good student of history but they were driven by the pull factor urban areas had were pulling people out of
2:03:16
rural areas in India much of this migration is a push migration there's nothing for you here go out uh we have
2:03:23
to think what can be think are three things number one Indian agriculture
2:03:29
uh needs to be clearly the manner in which the agriculture is happening today is unsustainable uh it has already
2:03:35
reached a point of dead end in Punjab and once it hits that point in Punjab what can the rest of the country think of uh it is unsustainable we need to
2:03:43
think of uh alternative patterns of agriculture
2:03:49
uh which focus on small land holdings there have been many experiments once
2:03:54
again South India leads like everything else uh in many experiments especially
2:04:00
in South India across uh about how to make small holding farming viable some
2:04:08
of these are very and especially by organizing farmers cooperatives that's
2:04:13
one the second is a serious issue which is that we conflate agriculture versus
2:04:19
non-aggriculture with rural urban there's no reason why I mean number one
2:04:24
Indian civilization uh if you look back into history our villages were not agriculture alone village economy I mean
2:04:31
that we today think of village economy as principally agricultural economy is
2:04:37
probably a product of recent times uh village there's no reason why village
2:04:42
economy cannot be an uh industrial economy and by industry I don't mean
2:04:47
large scale factories and so on by industry you know lot of small enterprise so I completely agree that if
2:04:56
70% of India were to live only on agriculture that's It's a disaster it
2:05:01
simply cannot happen you know but uh and and uh what
2:05:07
made in urban urbanization inevitable for non-aggriculture was uh one uh
2:05:16
transport second electricity third communication uh today thanks to
2:05:22
technology all these three are available in rural areas why can't we think rural
2:05:27
areas as hub of industrialization other kinds of alternative occupational
2:05:33
opportunities that's that was the TV model in China we can discuss it later but we have to bring this quickly that's exactly the model in China actually TVs
2:05:40
um um yes so it's 4:15 almost there 4:13 we
2:05:46
have to clear out by 4:15 but I hope you'll agree with me we'll we've had a
2:05:53
truly intellectually and politically spectacular afternoon
2:05:58
um the ideas that uh Yogind has brought to attention on which he's been working
2:06:04
thinking for a long time and the the response that came from Patrick uh makes
2:06:10
us intellectually richer and and uh generates a thirst for more thinking
2:06:17
along those lines so thank you Yandra and thank you Patrick u