Riot Politics by Ward Berenschot

Riot Politics by Ward Berenschot

Author:Ward Berenschot [Berenschot, Ward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788129123756
Publisher: Rainlight Rupa
Published: 2013-01-06T18:30:00+00:00


Conclusion

With a number of illustrations I have discussed in this chapter the different strategies that local actors around politicians employ to increase their political prospects and their incomes. I have discussed how these strategies are structured by their need to establish a certain degree of control over the functioning of government institutions. Even if the practices and exchanges that shape this ‘political society’ do not always conform to the (Western) normative models of civil society and democracy, that is no reason in itself to view its operations as negative. As Chatterjee emphasizes (2004: 67), through political society poorer citizens are able to mitigate harmful laws and policies, and by using their vote instrumentally they are able to build local coalitions that can go against the distribution of power in society as a whole. By doing so, ‘they have expanded their freedoms by using means that are not available to them in civil society’.

But these smaller freedoms come at the expense of a larger freedom. For the sake of this negotiated capacity to bend the implementation of government laws and policies, the capacity to influence the shaping of these laws and policies is sacrificed. The dependence of poorer citizens on political actors to access state services has engendered forms of politics that, besides being violent (as we will explore in the following chapters), also severely limit the capacity of poorer citizens to affect the overall distribution of power within society (Kothari 2005). The dependence of poorer citizens on hierarchical patronage channels undermines their capacity to press for reforms that would go against the interests of political and economic elites. Most of the political energy is taken up in the struggle to gain access to basic services. If any energy is left to fight for substantial reforms—for, say, adequate budgets for basic services, implementation of minimal wage regulations or the development of a welfare state—then such demands can hardly be effectively voiced because poorer citizens cannot risk upsetting the relationships with political patrons that are so central to their security and livelihoods.

In such a context it is misleading to attribute the political strategies of India’s poorer inhabitants to a limited incorporation of democratic values or associational skills.9 Such arguments fail to perceive how the political practices of the less privileged sections of society are shaped by their dependence on various (political) intermediaries. The political attitudes that poorer citizens might display—such as the ‘tendency to rally around strong men’ (Ruud 2001: 132), the respect for masculine, violent behaviour, or admiration for those who manage to bend the law to their advantage—are not the result of a limited experience or knowledge about the functioning of democratic institutions. On the contrary, these attitudes are consistent with a daily experience of the functioning of state institutions that are generally unresponsive to the needs and demands of citizens who lack influential contacts or money. In that context the strategies of local political actors are shaped by the need to develop some control over the distribution of state resources.



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