Moving to a new address now!
Dear subscriber. The Gentle Leviathan Newsletter has moved to a completely new address. You can read the dispatches here.
Gentle Leviathan
A newsletter dedicated to policy, politics and development with a special focus on India
From ‘Flailing State’ to ‘Dizzying State’?
In her 1994 essay titled ‘The Gentle Leviathan: Welfare and the Indian State’, political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal argued that the Indian state is more of an interventionist state than a welfare one. According to Jayal India followed the state-driven capitalist path of development rather than the welfarist approach that the west adopted. In the 1960s, economist Gunnar Myrdal called India a ‘soft state’. A soft state has a weak law enforcement mechanism, low state capacity, and high levels of social indiscipline within the society. In their book, ‘In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The political economy of the Indian state’, the Rudolphs argued that India is more of a weak-strong state. There are dual forces that govern India, one is the centralized strong state that determines its centrist tendencies and the other is the weak state that has a complex relationship with the society. The weak state gives legitimacy to ‘highly mobilized fragmented forces that threaten governability, political stability, and national purpose’.
Gentle Leviathan
Why we need Ambedkar now, more than ever before?
This was originally published here.
Gentle Leviathan
What Explains the Rise of a Strongman in a Democracy?
In this dispatch we will look at Paul D Kenny's book 'Populism and Patronage: Why populists win elections in India, Asia and beyond' and his take on populism in India
Gentle Leviathan
Systemic Backsliding of Democracy in India
Recently, commentators on Indian politics have argued that the single most predicament facing Indian democracy is an ‘authoritarian executive’ that enforces its writ on the citizens using brute majority. The citizen has been reduced to a ‘principal’ who is at the receiving end and is voiceless. A citizen who tries to raise her voice is either called an ‘anti-national’ or ‘parjeevi’ (parasite).
Gentle Leviathan
Why we should read Tagore to understand Indian Nationalism?
(This is a detailed curation of EPW’s reading list on Tagore and Nationalism)
Gentle Leviathan
Why is India a ‘Flailing State’?
The Indian state is a paradox.
Gentle Leviathan
India's 'precocious' development pathway-Part 3
This was first published here.
Gentle Leviathan
India's 'precocious' development pathway-Part 2
This was first published here.
Gentle Leviathan
India's 'precocious' development pathway-Part 1
This was first published here.
Gentle Leviathan
Democratic Backsliding
Harvard University political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in their book titled ‘How democracies die’ argue that the modern democracies do not descend into autocracies after a coup, civil unrest or battle tanks roaming around the streets, but they become autocracies in a more subtle manner through democratic processes under a democratically elected government. These democratically elected governments use the very institutions of democracy to subvert it. They claim that the erosion of quotidian constitutional norms is responsible for this ‘democratic backsliding’. It’s massive polarization in the society, not on policy issues but on identity related issues that has resulted into the erosion of constitutional norms and hence leading to democratic backsliding, argue the authors. Levitsky and Ziblatt have identified the following four key indicators to call a kind of government as authoritarian.
Gentle Leviathan