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8. Do Political Regimes Matter?: Poverty Reduction and Regime Differences Across India
- University of Michigan Press
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8 Do Political Regimes Matter? poverty reduction and regime differences across india John Harriss India constitutes something of a laboratory for the study of political factors that in›uence the development and implementation of pro-poor policies. Its major states have different political histories and contemporary patterns of politics, yet, contained as they are within the framework of a federal democracy, they also have important features in common. This combination of difference and commonality makes possible a comparative analysis to identify the political factors that have signi‹cantly in›uenced poverty reduction in India. This chapter focuses on how different subnational political regimes of the major Indian states affect (1) factors that are instrumental in reducing rural poverty (notably how they may in›uence the rate and nature of agricultural growth) and (2) the adoption and ‹nancing of pro-poor public policies. I ‹rst identify what there is to explain: variation in the performance of the different states in poverty reduction. In accounting for different levels of, and trends in, poverty, I take into account a strong historical path dependence. I then de‹ne the different regime types found in the states in terms of the balance of caste/class power and the nature of party organization . The third section reviews evidence on the possible in›uence of regimes on policies, expenditure patterns, and poverty outcomes. The focus throughout is on “poverty” conceived in the limited sense of income/consumption poverty levels, measured conventionally by the head count ratio (the proportion of the population below a de‹ned “poverty line”). A starting point for this study is Kohli’s work The State and Poverty in India, which is one of two substantial attempts to date to explore the Indian “laboratory,” as Kohli himself refers to it (1987, 3–4). Kohli’s strong conclusion, based on a comparison of the performances of West 204 Bengal, Uttar Pradesh (UP), and Karnataka in poverty reduction policies (land reform, small farmer support, and wages and employment supports for the landless), was that “a tightly organized ideological party can penetrate the rural society without being coopted by the propertied groups.” Conversely, he found that “multi-class regimes with loose organization and diffuse ideology are not successful at reformist intervention” (8).1 In other words, it is most likely that pro-poor redistribution will be accomplished by regimes dominated by well-organized left of center parties exactly like the one that has held power in West Bengal since 1977. According to Kohli, such a party regime has the following critical characteristics: (1) coherent leadership, (2) ideological and organizational commitment to exclude propertied interests from direct participation in the process of governance, (3) a pragmatic attitude toward facilitating a nonthreatening as well as a predictable political atmosphere for the propertied entrepreneurial classes, and (4) an organizational arrangement that is simultaneously centralized and decentralized so that the regime is both “in touch” with local society and not being subjected to local power holders. These regime attributes, Kohli argues, “make the institutional penetration of society possible, while facilitating a degree of regime autonomy from the propertied classes” (1987, 11).2 By contrast there is, he says, “little evidence in India’s experience—including that of Punjab— to suggest that, over time, growth ‘trickles down’” (225). These ‹ndings, he suggests, show that there is “room for manoeuvre,” even in the context of a democratic capitalist polity with a regime at the center that is “incapable of imposing authority (and) typically provides economic incentives to propertied groups to buttress its own political support and at the same time to stimulate productive activities” (8). Kohli argues emphatically, therefore, that politics does make a difference . Others perhaps disagree. In summing up the ‹ndings of comparative studies of public intervention and rural poverty alleviation in nine states, Vyas and Bhargava, for example, argue emphatically that “success in poverty alleviation efforts was not signi‹cantly affected . . . [at least] by the professed political ideology of the ruling parties in the different states” (1995, 2572).3 Against this, I ‹nd a good deal of evidence to support Kohli’s conclusions. Extending Kohli’s work, I argue in this chapter that there are other types of regimes, beyond the left of center ones of West Bengal and Kerala, that have been relatively successful in poverty reduction . In particular, those states where populist politics have been institutionalized —Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu—appear to have performed more strongly in reducing poverty than might have been predicted. The exercise that...