Society and Business

Session 8

Salamah Ansari
 Module

The Media and Indian society

• Theories of media and society

• Strengths and weaknesses of present-day Indian media

Media is no longer about Journalism

1. Means of telecommunications have converged e.g Washington post

2. Doom of advertisement based revenue model

3. Technological advancement

4. Digital Monopolies

5. Social media: a misnomer

6. Rat race is over: non-technological convergence

7. Expense of news gathering e.g. Kerala floods

3
Information Age: or Democracy without citizens?

 Breakthroughs in information and communication technologies

 Impact on economy and culture

 Rise of media firms- News + entertainment e.g Universal Studios

 Decline in interest in civic issues

Elementary understanding of social and political affairs has declined

4
Media Democracy Paradox

 Wealthier the media house, poorer the prospects of participatory

democracy

 Not the only cause but an important interlinking and overlapping cause

 Increasingly concentrated and conglomerated: Poison pill for democracy

1.Accentuates the core tendency for profit maximization

2.Hyper-commercialism: Advertising supported media system

3.Denigration of journalism
5
Corporate Media Explosion

Increasingly concentrated and conglomerated: Poison pill for democracy

4.Depreciation of public service

5.Closely linked to capitalist system rather than democracy

6.Formal democracy [tyranny of majorities] + tyranny of minorities

7.Depoliticizes the citizenry

8.Privileges of the few: ‘natural’ and immutable

9.Political decisions taken by the corporations, not by the many

6
Crawling when asked to bend…
2. Journalism and journalists subservient to this ‘system’

3. Independent reportage shrinking

4. Journalism still draws the youth and the idealists

5. Receding public activism

7
Incestuous convergences

1. Giant business house have stakes in media and political parties

2. Political families/parties have entered businesses in a big way

3. Media giants in business and politics

8
Society and Business
Session 9

Salamah Ansari
 Module

Rural India and the Peasantry

• Introducing the peasantry

• Peasant indebtedness and its causes

Farmer Suicides

1. Planned economy: Gradual ascension of agrarian interest in National

Policy Agenda

2. Economic Reforms 1990

3. Marginalization of Peasantry
a) Shrinking sovereignty (Agreement on Agriculture)
b) Ethnicization and communalization of political discourse

4. Agrarian crisis

5. Paradox: Powerful rural lobby- 1980s

a) Economic constraints (Green Revolution)
b) Self- limitation to collective action
11
Policy Changes

1947-1964
Institutional Model

Agricultural Output Growth- 12%

Population Growth- 40%

Farm and Services co-

Land Reforms Local Self- Government
operatives

12
Policy Changes
1965-1967 [Droughts]
Technocratic Model

High Yielding Variety seeds

Fiscal Demands
Technology
Taxation: Politically unfeasible
Fertilizers

Price incentives Technological advancement Organizational Support

13
Minimum Support Price
• Swaminathan Committee Report: 2004

• MSP= Cost of Production + 50 %

14
Green Revolution
• Regional disparity increased
• Increasing wealth + Political power
• Demand for increased subsidies

Was this process revolutionary?

1. Landless against the landed?

2. Reformist: Pressurizing the Govt.

a) Remunerative prices
b) Loan waivers
c) Resource allocation

15
Way forward…..
• Minimum wage for agricultural laborers

• Investment in rural development

1- State
2- Government Benefits

1- Capital
2- Corporations/ firms

16
Society and Business
Session 10

Salamah Ansari
 Module

Rural India and the Peasantry

• Land reforms

• Assessing the success of land reforms

LAND REFORMS

• Twin Objectives

1. Productivity

a) Increase agricultural productivity

b) Raise farm incomes

2. Equity:

a) Fix unequal agrarian structure (zamindari system)

b) Secure social justice and eliminate exploitation

c) Guarantee equality of status and opportunity to all sections of the rural population.

19
A MULTI-PRONGED APPROACH

Abolition of Intermediaries

Tenancy Regulation

Tenancy Settlements

Land Ceilings

Consolidation of Landholdings

Farm cooperatives

20
Karnataka’s Land Reforms

Most promising non-communist regional experiment…..Really?

21
URS REGIME…..

1. Strong leadership with huge political following based:

 Neither on charisma
 Nor primordial sentiments/identities

2. Rudimentary organizational structure

 Social roles and interest influence political behavior

 Existing social structure mirrored in the political party: INC

3. Patronage system as a basis of Political support

 Loyalty to the leader

 Co-option of opposition

4. Populist

 Catering to the ‘masses’ as opposed to the ‘elites’

 Man of the poor
22
LAND REFORMS

• 1974: Amendments to existing legislation

• Redistribution of surplus land

• 1975: 183 Special Land Tribunals

• High land ownership ceilings- 8% of surplus land was redistributed

• Redistributed land- Less than 0.2% of cultivated land

Socio-political constraints or leadership intentions?

23
LAND REFORMS

• Commitment to redistribution only within the framework of existing class

structure

• Gap between political rhetoric of ‘socialism’ and political action to

safeguard ‘right to property’

Bureaucrat [Assi. Commissioner]

• Rationalize unequal agrarian social structures

• Land Tribunals:

Political Appointees
24
THE PROCESS…..
• Rush of applications without any mobilization from below

• Well intended policy enhance participation

• 1980: 3.8 million acres land- 70% applications were processed

• 60% decision in favor of tenants

Democratically conceived attack on the landed classes in order to benefit the poor…..

25
TENANCY PATTERNS
• Richer landowners to poorer tenants?

• Composition of the tribunals

• Appointments to supporters

• Factional pattern of implementation

• Intra-regional disparities

• Role of bureaucrats

• Caste dynamics during field visits

• Redistribution of surplus land above land ceiling not attempted

26
POLITICAL AGENDA
• Oust the older ruling alliances

• An alternate broader political base

• Patronage based political support

27
Society and Business
Session 11

Salamah Ansari
 Module

Technology, business and society

• The history of land acquisition laws

• Industrial growth and its impacts
Right to Property
Modern Constitutions

• Property: Legal Social Institution

• Right to Property: Natural and inherent right

• Conflict: Right to Property v. Eminent Domain

A person has a right not to be deprived of his property except through due process of law.
30
Some Concerns….

1. Control the destiny of the country

2. Adopt a new social and economic order

3. Rapid economic development

4. Social redistribution: acknowledgement of existing inequalities/ disparities

5. Prevent a revolution

6. Individual interest v. collective development [financial limitations of State]

31
The Land Acquisition Act 1894
1. Land acquisition from a private person for “public purpose”

a. Public purpose
b. Procedure
c. Just compensation
i. no individual should have to bear the burden of public good disproportionately
ii. Market value of land
iii. Payment for damages sustained
iv. Solatium of 30% market value
v. Compensation for built structures
vi. Prohibits intended value

2. Over 100 laws enacted so far post-independence

3. Intra-regional specificities maintained

Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 32
 Limitations

1. Rights and interest of land holders only

2. Definition of Public Purpose- inclusive

3. Jurisprudence has ousted judicial review of quantum of compensation payable

4. Delays + lack of participation+ determination/ payment of compensation

5. Regional disparities

6. Federal disparities

33
 LARR 2013

• Overlaps and voids…..

a. Article [46 + 244]+ Trusteeship in 5th – 6th sch. [Land transfer regulations]

b. Consultation with gram sabha/ panchayat

c. Consent 80% to 70%

d. Social Impact Assessment committee [Bureaucrats, not independent experts]

e. Urgency Clause

f. Exempted Acts: Electricity and Railways Act, Coal Bearing Areas Act, Special

Economic Zones Act

34
Against Acquisition
• Nothing can compensate the farmers for their loss of livelihood if the farms
are sold

• India’s food security

• Crony Capitalism

• Abdication of judicial review of acquisition cases since 1980s

• Tribal lands

• Overlapping tribal lands/ mineral resources/ forest lands

35
For Acquisition
• Raising agricultural productivity

• Supplementary infrastructure/ more robust PDS

• Integrated approach to agriculture

• Post harvest technology and industry

• Need to create greater avenues for employment

• Bolster manufacturing sector

• Farmer centered approach

• Maharashtra SEZ example: referendum to seek the views of farmers

Real Estate Business 36

Society and Business
Session 12

Salamah Ansari
 Module

Technology, business and society

• Defining ‘development’
• The role of the middle class
Imperatives of Rapid Economic Growth
• Hegemonic hold of corporate capital

• Global flows of capital, products and people

• Continued primitive accumulation

• Disassociation of labor from means of production

• Position of peasantry
• Altered and muted

• Primary producers continue to loose means of production

• Absence of confrontation with exploiting class except in small pockets

• Agitations against acquisition
• Dependence of peasant economies on external institutions: State/ dominant classes
• Solidarity of local moral communities
• Always in transition: Feudalism to capitalism/ pre-capitalist backwardness to socialist modernity

39
Dangerous classes to Passive revolution
Transformed Class Dominance

• Civil society and Political society

• Civil Society represents the domain of capitalist hegemony

• Political Society represented by rural population and urban poor
• Similarities: para-legal arrangements with politicians

• Rise of non-agricultural activities

• Ensure livelihoods of dispossessed peasants

• Operating within circuits of capital
• Street vendors
• Private transport vehicles
• Prominent local politicians

40
Transformed Class Dominance

• Cities of populism:
• Logic of corporate capital among urban middle classes

• Favorable attitude towards private ownership, privatization

• Corrupt political system

• Inefficient bureaucracy

• Professional and committed corporates

• Mindless imitations

• Consumer neuroses

• Freedom from guilt

41
Imperatives of Rapid Economic Growth

• Dispossessed unlikely to be absorbed in the industrial sectors

• Dispossessed are marginalized/ rendered useless

• Rapid urbanization: migration + non-agricultural occupations

• Move to industries: not contingent upon pauperization and forced evictions
• Voluntary choice
• Escape from caste based discriminations

42
Transformed Structures of Political Power

• Reverse the effects of primitive accumulation

• Govt. instrumentalities no longer external to peasant societies

• Peasant societies redefine their relationship with State and Capital

• Considerable manipulation and pressurizing of Govt. agencies

• Political strength greater than eco. Importance
• Sharing: Push and Pull

• Negotiation with capital inadequate and unsure

• Primary producers integrated into market

43
Way forward……

• Large scale investment in cold storage chain, transportation, marketing

networks

• Imperative to undertake a major community-level organizational change

• Stringent Labour laws: crowded informal sector

44
Marginal Groups

• Underbelly of political society

• Exclusion from peasant society

• Low-caste laborers, Tribals

• Declined access to local commons

• Devoid of strategic leverage of electoral mobilization

• Ineffective in claiming benefits of governmentality

45
Society and Business
Session 13

Salamah Ansari
 Module

Nationalism and its manifestations

• Defining nationalism

• The competing definitions of Indianness

Nationalism…..

• Functional response to modern society

• Civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism

• How State structures choices?

48
 Understanding National Identity…..

• Primordialism:

1. Natural, unaffable, continuous, stable

2. What one is born into….

3. Cannot be altered

4. Strength of ethnic identities: precedes us

5. Present from beginning so will exist forever, you don’t have a control over it

6. Kinship: deeply tied emotion that is uncontrollable rather than rational

7. Powers decides what is passed on as long standing

8. Elites v. disenfranchised

49
Primordial Identities are…..
1. Socially constructed

2. Spiritual, mystical, unchangeable phenomenon?

3. Criticized by modernists-

a) recent 200 years old

b) similar to capitalism, democracy, urbanization, industrialization

c) not natural or biological inclination

d) combination of capitalism and newspaper created this imagined

national network

e) framework for analyzing nationalism- different narratives

50
Role of Industrialization…..

• Pre-modern world and Modern economy- Need for shared understanding

• Industries: Crucible for Nationalism

• National identity is essential to modern industrial society

• Economic dev. - occupational specialization- economic integration- uniform educational

structure- interchangeable work force

 Basic framework that can be easily transferred for proficiency

 Modern society modern army: training, retraining, shared training, shared culture

 Regional economic policies

 Economic and political convergences are favorable for growth

51
Critiques

• What constitutes a nation?

• Boundaries of nation and State should coincide- creates friction

• Opposes multi-culturalism

• Fertile ground for sub- nationalism

• Conflict between groups claiming control of territory/ State

52
India…..

• Truncated colonial territories inherited by the Union of India

• India’s sense of itself: political conception

• Self invention of a national community

• Reliance on British history of India

53
 An exercise of self- interrogation

I. the explication of rules through codification

II. the existence of an overarching State

III. representation centered on individuals

54
I. Explication of Rules Through Codification

• Codification was necessary to explicate the rule of law

• A “pedagogical tool” to fashion common norms of democratic citizenship

• A framework for self-rule among a citizenry that had been colonial subjects

• A “political instrument” to direct legislators and judges

Territoriality of India
55
II. Centralized State Apparatus

• Establish clear external boundaries necessary to ensure political sovereignty

• Enable planned development

• Reorder the deeply unequal relations that marked everyday social life in the princely states and
myriad villages of the nation

56
III. Representation Centered on Individuals
• Fundamental freedoms

• Overcome the predefined collective identities of caste and religion, which

severely restricted individual freedom

• Departure from pernicious colonial group identity used to rule the colonies

• Political identity v. religious identity (immutable).

• Rejection of reservation based on religious identity

All three elements are parts of a puzzle, mutually supportive elements.

57
• Indians are by definition a diverse set of people

• Difference is taken for granted

• Tolerance v. acceptance

• Multiple identities: One Indianness

• Can we oversimplify ‘nationalism’?

How you stretch your hands out in prayer does not determine your citizenship.
58
Society and Business
Session 14

Salamah Ansari
 Module

Nationalism and its manifestations

• Sub-nationalisms and the State

Introduction
• Multicultural developing country democracies….Why?
• Ruling groups v. mobilized groups

• Cohesiveness

Self- Determination Movements

1. Tamils in Tamil Nadu-1950s- 1960s

2. Sikhs in Punjab- 1980s

3. Muslims in Kashmir- 1990s

61
Multicultural Developing Country Democracies

• Colonial moorings

• Introduction of democracy: Abrupt

• Democracy as an imported ideal: Weak institutions

• Political conflicts over short/medium term

• Universal suffrage v. local identities

• Conflict with the social system

• Late development: distributive, political, social

62
Multicultural Developing Country Democracies

• Power gets vested in individuals not institutions

• Greater demand for more equal distribution of power

• Power devolution: economic and political

• Intellectual Hegemonies: 1- Centralized State for welfare

2- Orthodox models of economic

development

63
Some Concerns…
• International factors

• Relatively high levels of generality

• Cost of aggregation

• Endorsements of State elites/ rights of ethnic movements

64
Basics of Self-Determination Movements
1- Political context: Institutionalization of central authority
willingness to share power/resources

2- Group characteristics: Total societies

3- Resource allocation

• Two way feedback loop

65
Democracy: a solution and also a cause of power conflicts
 Political Context and the Trajectory of Self-Determination
Movements

Central Authority
Well Institutionalized Weakly Institutionalized

Inverse U Peaceful
curve of breakup
Accommodating ethnic of the
politics State
Leadership
Strategy
Demands Turbulenc
Unaccommodating
and e and or
repression breakdow
cycles n
66
India is a Noisy Democracy
• Class, caste, parties, language, religion and region.

• Transition of India from well- institutionalized polity to a

populist regime

• Colonial remnants
• National movements
• Effective parliament
• National political party
• Strong central authority
• Rigid and segmented social structures

• Growing personalization of power

67
Tamil Nationalism

• 1950s- 1960s

• Tamil- language, social group, regional identity

• Tamil Leaders: Dravidian language, distinct racial and social group

• Greater power and control

• Tamil Nation- Secession from India

68
Tamil Nationalism

• Northern Aryan invasion

• Tamil- Brahmins 5%

• Congress- upper caste nexus

• Democratization came relatively early in TN

• Justice Party (1917- 1944)

• Dravidistan

69
The Politics of Tamil Movement

• 1956- Reorganization of linguistic states

• DMK to oust congress

• The injustice of caste system

• Glories of Tamil history

• Social need for Robin Hoods

• Winning elections

• Rise of populist regime

70
Society and Business
Session 15

Salamah Ansari

71
 Module

The Politics of Language in India

• India’s linguistic diversity and the debates on common language(s)

• The role of language as a medium of education

72
Uniformity over Unity
• Linguistic federalism

• Multilingual situation incompatible with Indian unity

• Domination of elite majority

• Rights of linguistic minorities compromised

• Linguistic fragmentation of national sensibilities

• Rise of regional languages also leads to a rise in sub-national politics

• Dualistic language hegemony: Centre and State

73
Indian Languages…..Hierarchy Codified

• Linguistic democracy in multilingual country

• Hindi India vs. diverse linguistic union

• Art. 15(1), 16(2)- ‘religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth, [or]
residence’

• Constitutional Scheme + Official Language policy- Hierarchical

• Discrimination reinforces cultural self reassertion and cultural pride

74
 Part XVII- Four Chapters

1. Official Language

2. Regional Language

3. Language of the SC and HC

4. Special Directives

3 Language Policy- Reductionist Policy 75

• Increasingly we are in danger of fragmentation

• National Level- Hindi and English

• Regional Level- Scheduled and non-scheduled
• Implications in Education
• Elitism in India has caste as a major constituents

• In a danger of unity that is tenuous and conducted

only at superficial level

76
The Need for a Link Language

• Colonial moorings of love for English language

• Obsession with English- Sankrant Sanu

• Casteless Society through a casteless language

77
Language Policy In Education

1. Access to primary education in mother tongue.

2. Four Language policy

a) Hindi States: Hindi, English, dominant regional language, one

southern language

b) Non- Hindi States: Hindi, English, dominant regional language,

minor regional language

How about the north- eastern Languages?

And tribal languages?
78
Society and Business
Session 16

Salamah Ansari
 Module

The Politics of Language in India

• The evolution of Indian languages and the role of the State.

80
Language Policy In Education
1. Importance of primary education in mother tongue

2. Two Language Policy: Tamilnadu, Singapore, Japan

3. Three language Policy

4. Four Language policy

a) Hindi States: Hindi, English, dominant regional language, one southern language

b) Non- Hindi States: Hindi, English, dominant regional language, minor regional language

How about the north- eastern Languages?

And tribal languages?
81
Erasing Centuries of History….

• Hindustani- Almost extinct

• Orientalist outcome:

1. Mutated attitude towards languages

2. Sanskrit:
a) Mother of all Indo-European L.
b) Linkages to Greek and Latin
c) Aryan – Dravidian L. are antithetical

• Demotion of dialects and vernaculars

• Removal of Persio- Arabic vocabulary, pronunciation

• Infusion of Sanskrit Vocabulary

82
Official Languages: Fabricated Histories

• Linguistic issues are metaphors for ethnic divides

• History of origin, purity, evolution, and uniformity

• Accommodative of new vocabulary

• Cobble a nation out of diverse and heterogeneous communities

• Refusal to recognize the L. of Islamic communities

• Status over substance

• Rush for Classical L.- from scholarly endeavor to political contestation 83

Hinglish

• The untouchable language

• Hindi in Roman letters

• Hybrid words native to neither Hindi nor English

• End of India’s resistance to colonialism

Embracing the very language that was once the embodiment of subjugation.
84