SELF-LIMITED EMPOWERMENT - DEMOCRACY, ECONOMIC-DEVELOPMENT AND RURAL INDIA

This study deals with two questions: (i) what accounts for the rise of the countryside in India's polity? and (ii) how has rural power in th e polity affected economic policy and economic outcomes for the peasan try? The rural sector is typically weak in the early stages of develop ment. A powerful countryside, therefore, is a counter-historical occur rence, Universal franchise and a competitive democracy in a primarily agrarian India have led to the empowerment of the countryside. The pow er of the rural sector is, however, not unconstrained. The first princ ipal constraint is, ironically, the size of the agricultural sector it self. Beyond a point, subsidising a large rural sector is fiscally dif ficult. The size of the rural population thus cuts both ways: it makes the countryside powerful in a democratic political system but checks this power economically. The second principal constraint on rural powe r stems from the cross-cutting nature of rural identities and interest s. Farmers are also members of caste, ethnic and religious communities . Politics based on economic interests can potentially unite rural Ind ia and push the state even more: politics based on caste, ethnicity an d religion cuts across rural and urban India, and divides the countrys ide. Both kinds of politics are vibrant, neither fully displacing the other. The refusal of farmers themselves to give precedence to their f arming interests over their other interests and ascriptive identities means that the power of rural India is ultimately self-limited. The ur ban bias view ignores that farmers, like most of us, have multiple sel ves and there is no reason to assume a permanent superiority of the ec onomic over the non-economic. As a result, even when farmers become po werful politically, the possibilities of which were underestimated or ruled out by the urban bias theorists, they may not be able to change the economic outcomes completely. They may certainly be able to preven t the worst-case scenarios, but find it hard to realise the best-case scenarios.