ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes the important effects of prior movements and patterns of
state formation upon the social policy regimes that developed in Kerala and West
Bengal in the post-independence era. A ‘policy regime’ is a ‘situation … in which
major parties, regardless of their partisan stripes, propose and implement similar
policies’ (Przeworski 2000). This means that policies become taken-for-granted
and despite ideological differences opposing parties and governments cannot
easily remove them. The institutionalization of a policy regime is the product of
what Jessop (1990) has called a ‘hegemonic project’ of parties and movements,
that is, their ability to exercise moral and political authority in claiming the
centrality of equality-enhancing or redistributive policies (or their opposite, as
the case may be). In Kerala, beginning from a position of greater strength, and a
hegemonic claim to represent the interests of agricultural labourers, poor tenants,
lower castes and some sections of the middle classes, the left initiated a social
policy regime that surpassed the regime initiated by the communists in Bengal
over several decades of dominance. But the communists in Bengal have also
avoided many of the problems of their Keralan counterparts. First, they have
ruled more consistently for an unbroken six terms. They have tackled crucial
issues of land control, implemented local government councils, and have
managed to keep relatively high rates of economic growth in the rural sector. Yet
their success in reducing forms of poverty, measured in terms of Sen’s index of
‘capabilities and functionings’, is not as marked as in Kerala.
