ABSTRACT
Introduction The political economy works of Bardhan and Mitra are part of a rich political economy tradition in academic writing about the Indian economy. The tradition continued after their works were published. Harriss-White (2003) finds that social structures of accumulation constrain the local state. Chibber (2003) argues that the urban bourgeoisie were crucial in undermining the developmental aspirations of the state in the 1950s. Byres (1981) argues that the rich peasantry exercised increasingly successful ‘class-for-itself’ action after the mid-1960s and generated a political economy of agricultural subsidy, draining the state of resources to feed politically necessary but economically unproductive transfers. Kohli (1990) argues that efforts at liberalisation in the mid-1980s failed because the balance of organisational strength and material interests in the Indian polity would lose out, and so opposed reform. Varma (1998) argues that the defining political economy feature of India has been the changing nature of the middle class and its growing baleful influence on the state. Herring (1999) argues that it is rather the incoherence of the class structure that presents the strongest constraint on the state. The central bureaucracy, he argues, is permeable to individual capitalists who can selectively manipulate the state through particularistic ties such as ties of family, school, marriage and caste. This ‘embedded particularism’ has worked against the sort of state-capital relationship that empowers the state to act against some in the interests of all, to pursue corporatism or enforce social compacts. Though political economy work has continued, it has declined in volume and influence over the past two decades, particularly that which is related to class. Concomitant has been the revival of free market ideology and, more broadly, neo-liberalism as a political project, and, on the left, the rise of post-structuralism and in area studies post-colonial theory (Chibber 2006). In a general sense this chapter represents a return to the rich tradition of academic writing on the political economy of India. More specifically, it is a response to the re-release of classic works by Bardhan and Mitra. Bardhan (1984) was re-released in 1998 as an expanded edition with an epilogue; Mitra (1977) was released as a new edition with a freshly penned introduction in 2005.
