Democracy And DiscontentBy Atul KohliCambridge University Press.Pages: 420Price: Rs 495Any book on the pressures of democracy and the quality of discontent which does not once mention the name of Lal Krishna Advani must have a serious problem somewhere. There is something Unreal about reading a work on the growing crisis of governability which does not once refer to Ayodhya, or a treatise on the caste equations of Bihar which does not talk of the Laloo Prasad Yadav phenomenon. Actually, this is not really the author's fault. He got the topic right, but the timing all wrong.The gestation period of a book based on fleldwork is a long one, and at some point the author has to stop collecting data and get on with the composition of the arguments. This point came for Mr Kohli in 1986, and you can in fact easily discern the later attempts to produce pastiche judgments on some of Rajiv Gandhi's initiatives on the economy and Punjab where lack of depth is sought to be compensated by fashionable name-calling. It does not sit well with the good work in analysis and comment that marks the more serious parts of this book. But frankly, such major changes have taken place in the political consciousness of India in the years since 1986 and 1987 that many of the "empirical materials" used by the author must be for serious reconsideration, if not outright rejection. .preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}You keep wondering all through how relevant all this is to the India of 1990, where such a large proportion of discontent against the Congress-shaped nation state has articulated itself in what might,be called an alternative nationalism. Riots in Kashmir: Skipped overThis development has side-stepped not only the original Congress spectrum, but also the caste-coalition which Dr Ram Manohar Lohia offered as the answer to Congress electoral hegemony, and which has become a favourite panacea of a powerful school of intellectuals.In fact, while the Congress does retain a formidable presence everywhere except Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the Lohia modus has been electorally successful only in Laloo Yadav's state. Even Uttar Pradesh has not lived up to Lohiaite expectations, despite Mandal - another name, incidentally, which does not figure in this study.Part of the problem lies in the preferred structure of the book. Atul Kohli has built his main thesis around a study of five districts from non-Hindi India. The districts are Kheda in Gujarat, Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, Madurai in Tamil Nadu, the urban sprawl of Calcutta in West Bengal, and something called Belgaun in Karnataka. The change of Belgaum to Belgaun might have been a minor irritant on the same level as, say, the rather sloppy renaming of B. Shankaranand to Sankranand, but as a chapter heading in a scholar's exercise, it leaves a worrying feeling.Kohli traverses the same ground in an attempt to understand why the Congress has withered away, a conclusion he reaches on page 1 3 so that we may have no doubts on this score over the next 407 pages: "India's Congress Party was the midwife for the new nation-state. Having performed that crucial role, the party has now withered away." The general elections after that judgement apart, we might note that, as in the case of Mark Twain, rumours of the death were exaggerated. However, to point out that the Congress is suffering from a serious illness which could yet be thoroughly fatal is perfectly legitimate.But the basic question which the author asks is a critical one: can the Indian state, wracked by the turmoil that is almost obligatory during periods of change fraught with imbalanced growth, remain governable? What are the institutional strengths necessary to ensure a degree of administration, or is the whole of India headed towards the Bihar syndrome? Kohli sees some hope in the example of West Bengal, which moved from chaos to order.The structures of the state must mesh with the formal mobilisation of community power to become the cells of a complex political beehive. These are the sections of the book which are incisively argued. But in the end a nation is an idea: if the idea weakens then the structure becomes a skeleton, without flesh or life. India is once again in the middle of an ideological struggle: what shall be the motivating rationale of a modern Indian state? The '90s will decide whether India will remain the land of the tricolour or the country of the bhagwa (saffron). There will be other flags, but on this fundamental issue they must line up behind one or the other.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jun 21, 2013--- ENDS ---
