Undervalued Dissent: Informal Workers' Politics in India by Manjusha Nair

Author:Manjusha Nair [Nair, Manjusha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Labor & Industrial Relations, Social Science, India & South Asia, Political Science, Asia, History, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781438462479
Google: o7KODQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 31149362
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2016-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

In this chapter, I demonstrated the changes that occurred after the new state of Chhattisgarh was formed—the increased integration of the local economy into the market and the heightened role of the state and business elite in promoting a growth ideology. I concluded, following Peter Evan’s typology of states, that the Chhattisgarh state’s mode of governance is that of a developmental state. Chhattisgarh has achieved commendable economic growth; I demonstrated that the accumulation taking place in Chhattisgarh was through the extraction of natural and mineral resources at the expense of the population that lived among or depended on these resources. I suggested that “accumulation by dispossession” is the key to understanding the current investment drive in Chhattisgarh. This accumulation is accomplished by the partnership between the regional state, local entrepreneurs, Indian business groups, and multinational capital. In the multiple networks that are formed as a result, it is difficult to distinguish the local investor from foreign, political elite from business elite, or indigenous capital from global—since many firms are joint ventures with foreign multinationals, apart from being multinationals themselves.

Political legitimacy for these new partnerships was derived by securing consent to the new ideology of development and its potential to deliver employment and development to the skilled urban population, and additionally through the deliberate communalization of politics. Caste-based associations, clientelist politics, and right-wing mobilization created and maintained the mass base for BJP rule in Chhattisgarh, a momentum that opposition political parties such as the Congress have not been able to emulate yet. In this new political culture, where service provision and communalization were legitimized, old forms of politics were pre-empted. My analysis in this chapter threw some light on the complex process of how the BJP gains legitimacy in Chhattisgarh—by combining Hindutva and welfare.

Though the Bhilai workers’ movement began in 1989, long before the new state of Chhattisgarh was formed (in 2000), the analysis in this chapter is essential for understanding the failure of the movement, which I describe in chapter 6. First, this chapter shows how the neoliberal state materialized in Chhattisgarh through the long-established strong links between private capital and government. The processes that eventually resulted in the formation of a new federal state, such as a local elite interest in fencing off the mineral riches from the bigger state of Madhya Pradesh, were already underway since the 1980s, when neoliberal policies were informally introduced in India. The Bhilai workers were contesting with a new business elite and a new local state that had strong, though not yet institutionalized, connections with the former. Second, it points to the changes the new regime brought about in governance and electoral politics, and in people’s capacities to organize as social movements. In the new political culture that came to being in Chhattisgarh, caste and communal associations seemed to have a legitimacy that old forms of social and labor movements lacked.

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