Indian Institutions in the Early 1980s: The Pre-history of the Great Transformation

Maiorano, Diego

doi:10.1017/S0026749X13000255

Request a copy

Article (Scientific journals)

Indian Institutions in the Early 1980s: The Pre-history of the Great Transformation

Maiorano, Diego

2014 • In Modern Asian Studies

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2268/151041

DOI
10.1017/S0026749X13000255

Files (1)Send to Details Statistics Bibliography Similar publications

Files

Full Text

maiorano-Indian institutions pubblished version.pdf

Publisher postprint (229.4 kB)

Request a copy

All documents in ORBi are protected by a user license.

Send to

RIS BibTex APA Chicago Permalink X Linkedin

Details

Keywords :

India; Institutions; Indira Gandhi

Abstract :

[en] In 1989 India’s political system underwent a process of profound change which affected the entire institutional setup of the country. Power was radically redistributed, as it began to flow from the central government to the states, and from the Prime Minister Office to the other institutions of the state. The paper seeks to show how things worked on the eve of such a redrawing of India’s institutional setup, by analysing the sever institutional crisis which occurred during Mrs Gandhi’s final term in office as India’s Prime Minister. In addition, an effort is made to link the working of India’s institutions to the configuration of the party system, thus stressing the importance of political dynamics in the functioning of parliamentary democracies.

Disciplines :

Political science, public administration & international relations

Author, co-author :

Maiorano, Diego ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Institut des sciences humaines et sociales > Socio-anthropologie du développement

Language :

English

Title :

Indian Institutions in the Early 1980s: The Pre-history of the Great Transformation

Publication date :

2014

Journal title :

Modern Asian Studies

ISSN :

0026-749X

eISSN :

1469-8099

Publisher :

Cambridge University Press

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Additional URL :

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=9152754&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0026749X13000255

Available on ORBi :

since 21 June 2013

Statistics

Number of views

78 (2 by ULiège)

Number of downloads

5 (0 by ULiège)

More statistics

Scopus citations^®

Scopus citations^®
without self-citations

OpenCitations

OpenAlex citations

Bibliography

James Manor, 'What Do They Know of India Who Only India Knows?', Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2010.
Sanjay Ruparelia, Sanjay Reddy, John Harris and Stuart Corbridge (eds), Understanding India's New Political Economy - A Great Transformation?, Routledge, London and New York, 2011.
Wyndraeth Humphreys Morris-Jones, 'India after Indira: A Tale of Two Legacies', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1984, p. 246.
Rajni Kothari in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 8 June 1984.
Atul Kohli, Democracy andDiscontent: India'sGrowing Crisis of Governability,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991.
This is indeed one of the main factors identified by Atul Kohli as the root of the crisis of governability. See Kohli, Democracy and Discontent. Note: in 1978 the Congress Party split. The faction that followed Mrs Gandhi was named Congress (I)-'I' for 'Indira'.
For example, James Manor, 'Anomie in Indian Politics', Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 18, No. 19/21, 1983;
Paul Brass, The Politics of India Since Independence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994, Chapter 3;
Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi - The Political Economy of the Indian State, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987, Chapter 4;
Sudha Pai, 'The Congress Party and Six National Elections: 1964-1984' in Pranab Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee (eds), A Centenary History of the Indian National Congress, Vol. V, Academic Foundation, New Delhi, 2011.
W. H. Morris-Jones The Parliament in India, Longmans Green, London, 1957.
Ramachandra Guha, India after Gandhi, MacMillan, London, 2007, p. 535.
The Hindu, 20 September 1981.
S. K. Mishra, interview, Delhi, 21 December 2010.
Naresh Chandra, interview, Delhi, 14 December 2010.
Indian Express, 7 September 1979 and 21 November 1979.
Indian Express, 4 June 1980;
Nihal Singh, My India, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1982, p. 83.
Indian Express, 10 August 1981.
Indian Express, 1 July 1980.
See James Manor, 'The Electoral Process Amid Awakening and Decay:Reflections on the Indian General Election of 1980', in P. Lyon and J. Manor (eds), Transfer and Transformation: Political Institutions in the New Commonwealth, Leicester University Press, Leicester and New York, 1983.
Indian Express, 9 March 1980.
S. K. Mishra, interview, Delhi, 21 December 2010.
Indian Express, 16 January 1981. This is particularly true for the Hindi belt.
Hindustan Times, 2 February 1982.
Indian Express, 2 January 1981.
Prem Shankar Jha, In the Eye of the Cyclone: The Crisis in Indian Democracy, Viking, New Delhi, 1994, p. 38.
See E. Raghavan and J. Manor, Broadening and Deepening Democracy: Political Innovation in Karnataka, Routledge, New Delhi, 2009, Part II.
The Hindu, 15 November 1981.
India Today, 1 May 1983.
Further details about this sordid operation can be found in Raghavan andManor, Broadening and Deepening Democracy, Chapter 7.
Krishna K. Tummala, 'Democracy Triumphant in India: The Case of Andhra Pradesh', Asian Survey, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1986, p. 391.
K. P. Krishnan and T. V. Somanathan, 'Civil Service: An Institutional Perspective', in Devesh Kapur and Pratab Bhanu Metha (eds), Public Institutions in India - Performance and Design, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005, p. 299.
Krishnan and Somanathan, 'Civil Service', p. 306.
One of the best accounts of the relationship between Mrs Gandhi and the judiciary is that of Granville Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution - A History of the Indian Experience, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999.
Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, 'Redoing the Constitutional Design: From an Interventionist to a Regulatory State', in Atul Kohli, The Success of India's Democracy, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2001, p. 187.
Pratap Bhanu Metha, 'India's Judiciary: The Promise of Uncertainty', in Kapur and Pratab Metha (eds), Public Institutions.
A. G. Noorani, 'The Prime Minister and the Judiciary', in J. Manor (ed.), Nehru to the Nineties, Hurst & Co, London, 1994.
Indian Express, 2 August 1980.
For example, Indian Express, 2 October 1980.
Hindustan Times, 7 January 1981.
Times of India, 15 January 1980.
The note is reproduced in Noorani, 'The Prime Minister and the Judiciary', p. 108.
Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution, p. 532, note 55.
Indian Express, 5 December 1980.
Mrs Gandhi quoted in Noorani, 'The Prime Minister and the Judiciary', p. 111.
Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution, p. 532.
Indian Express, 26 November 1980.
Indian Express, 13 November 1980.
Times of India, 15 October 1982.
Indian Express, 16 January 1981;
Hindustan Times, 22 February 1982.
Indian Express, 27 March 1982.
Times of India, 14 August 1982.
India Today, 16 March 1983.
Hindustan Times, 1 May 1982.
J. Manor, 'The Presidency', in Kapur and Pratab Metha (eds), Public Institutions.
G. Austin, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 140.
J. Manor, 'The Prime Minister and the President', in Manor (ed.), Nehru to the Nineties.
Reddy had been chosen by the Congress to be the Party's candidate for the presidency in 1969, but in the course of the dramatic struggle for power between Mrs Gandhi and the 'Syndicate', which eventually led to the split of the Party, she decided instead to back V. V. Giri. Zareer Masani, Indira Gandhi: A Biography, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1975;
Inder Malhotra, Indira Gandhi: A Personal and Political Biography, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1991, provide two richly detailed accounts of this episode.
India Today, 1 April 1984.
Indian Express, 15 October 1979.
Indian Express, 17 December 1980.
Indian Express, 22 June 1984.
Indian Express, 15 July 1984.
Seminar, No. 302, October 1984.
Diego Maiorano, 'Mrs Gandhi's Final Term and the Remaking of the Congress (I)'s Social Base', India Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2012.
Essential Service Maintenance Act 1981, article 2.17.
Minister of Finance, Budget Speech Before the Lok Sabha, 1981.
Indian Express, 23 April 1983.
Times of India, 18 September 1982.
Times of India, 8 September 1982.
The central government backed another piece of legislation introduced in the Orissa Legislative Assembly - controlled by the Congress (I) - which threatened to subject newspapers to the will of the state government; see Chittaranjan Alva, 'What the Bihar Press Bill Means', Social Scientist, Vol. 10, No. 12, 1982.
Times of India, 12 November 1982.
Indian Express, 14 August 1982.
India Today, 16 June 1983.
India Today, 16 August 1983.
Maiorano, 'Mrs Gandhi's Final Term'.
The following brief summary of the debate is largely drawn from A. G. Noorani, The Presidential System - The Indian Debate, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1989
Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution.
Indian Express, 19 October 1979.
It later turned out that the author of the paper was A. R. Antulay, Congress (I) chief minister of Maharashtra in the early 1980s.
Indian Express, 4 June 1980 and 8 June 1980.
Indian Express, 10 June 1980.
Indian Express, 22 June 1980.
Indian Express, 8 December 1980 and 29 January 1981.
The Hindu, 2 March 1981.
Indian Express, 15 December 1980.
Indian Express, 29 April 1984;
Times of India 27 August 1984;
India Today, 16 June 1984.
Mrs Gandhi in Indian Express, 28 January 1981.
Times of India, 29 April 1984.
Indian Express, 4 May 1984.
Blitz, 2 June 1984.
India Today, 16 May 1984.
Indian Express, 27 August 1984.
India Today, 16 June 1984.
Indian Express, 28 August 1984.
Indian Express, 31 August 1984.
India Today, 16 August 1984.
Economic and Political Weekly, 20 October 1984.
Arun Shourie, Mrs Gandhi's Second Reign, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1983, p. 224.
Indian Express, 14 June 1980.
See Jessica Wallack, 'India's Parliament as a Representative Institution', India Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008;
D. Douglas Verney, 'From Quasi-Federation to Quasi-Confederacy? The Transformation of India's Party System', Publius, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2003.
For example, Mahendra P. Singh and Douglas V. Verney, 'Challenges to India's Centralized Parliamentary Federalism', Publius, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2003.
For some references, see Amaresh Bagchi, 'Rethinking Federalism: Changing Power Relations between the Center and the States', Publius, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2003.
Douglas V. Verney, 'Federalism, Federative Systems, and Federations: The United States, Canada, and India', Publius, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1995.
Balveer Arora, 'Adapting Federalism to India: Multilevel and Asymmetrical Innovations', in Balveer Arora and Douglas V. Verney (eds), Multiple Identities in a Single State - Indian Federalism in Comparative Perspective, Konark Publishers, New Delhi, 1995.
Ved Marwah, 'Use and Abuse of Emergency Powers: The Indian Experience', in Arora and Verney (eds), Multiple Identities, and the Sarkaria Commission Report (hereafter SCR). The report is available on the Interstate Council's website: < http://interstatecouncil.nic.in >, [accessed 4 October 2013]. The Sarkaria Commission was appointed in mid-1983 to investigate the state of centre-state relations.
P.K. Bhargava, 'Transfers from the center to the states in India', Asian Survey, Vol. 24, No. 6, 1984.
Asok Chanda, quoted in Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution, p. 620.
Rajni Kothari, 'The Congress "System" in India', Asian Survey, Vol. 4, No. 12.
SCR, Chapter 10.
Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution, p. 619, note 20.
J. Manor, 'Centre-State Relations', in Atul Kohli (ed.), The Success of India's Democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001.
Bhagwan D. Dua, 'Presidential Rule in India: A Study in Crisis Politics', Asian Survey, Vol. 19, No. 6, 1979.
Ved Marwah, 'Use and Abuse of Emergency Powers: The Indian Experience', in Arora and Verney (eds), Multiple Identities, p. 142.
Malhotra, Indira Gandhi, p. 70.
W. H. Morris-Jones, TheGovernment and Politics of India, Hutchinson&Co, London, 1964, p. 152.
T. V. Sathyamurthy, 'Impact of Centre-State Relations on Indian Politics: An Interpretative Reckoning 1947-1987', in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1997, p. 245.
J. Manor, 'Parties and the Party System', in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India.
Christophe Jaffrelot, India's Silent Revolution - The Rise of the Lower Castes, Hurst & Co., London, 2003, Part 2.
Indian Express, 19 February 1980. The precedent had been set by the Janata Party in 1977 when it dismissed nine Congress-led state assemblies, on the grounds that as Mrs Gandhi at the centre had been badly rejected by the people, her Party could not legitimately govern in the states. The Supreme Court had endorsed this view. In the Janata Party's defence, one could argue that the post-emergency context was completely different from that of early 1980.
For example, Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soils - Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1978;
Sanjib Baruah, India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality,University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999.
Indian Express, 4 December 1979.
Indian Express, 26 February 1980.
Indian Express, 22 October 1980.
Times of India, 9 March 1982.
Indian Express, 28 January 1980.
President's Rule was imposed from December 1979 to December 1980; from June 1981 to January 1982; and fromMarch 1982 to February 1983.
India Today, 1 May 1983.
Times of India, 3 November 1982.
Economic and Political Weekly, 29 November 1983.
India Today, 1 May 1983.
India Today, 1 March 1983.
India Today, 16 May 1983.
Interview, New Delhi, 16 January 2011.
India Today, 16 May 1983.
Reported in Baruah, India Against Itself, p. 131.
Indian Express, 8 January 1983.
India Today, 16 May 1983.
Baruah, India Against Itself, p. 133.
India Today, 1 May 1983.
Two very detailed accounts of the Punjab crisis are: Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, Amritsar - Mrs Gandhi's Last Battle, Jonathan Cape, London, 1985;
Kuldip Nayar and Khushwant Singh, Tragedy of Punjab - Operation Bluestar and After, Vision Books, New Delhi, 1984.
Paul Wallace, 'Religious and Ethnic Politics: Political Mobilization in Punjab', in Francine Frankel and M.S.A. Rao (eds), Dominance and State Power in Modern India - Vol. 2. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1990.
This had been promised by Mrs Gandhi as early as 1969, when Sant Fateh Singh, an Akali Dal faction leader, threatened to burn himself to death if Chandigarh was not handed over to Punjab. See Tully and Jacob, Amritsar, p. 51.
Robin Jeffrey, What's Happening to India? - Punjab, Ethnic Conflict, Mrs Gandhi's Death and the Test for Federalism, MacMillan, London, 1986, Chapter 8.
Mark Tully, interview, New Delhi, 10 December 2010.
Francine Frankel, India's Political Economy 1947-2004, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, p. 671.
India Today, 1 December 1982 and 16 December 1982.
Prem Shankar Jha, interview, New Delhi, 2 December 2010.
Nayar and Singh, Tragedy of Punjab, p. 45.
Jeffrey, What's Happening to India?, p. 154.
M. J. Akbar, India: The Siege Within, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1985, p. 196.
Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution, p. 541.
The Hindu, 24 January 1983.
Economic and Political Weekly, 26 March 1983.
India Today, 1 April 1983.
The Hindu, 6 April 1983.
Indian Express, 1 April 1983.
Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution, p. 542.
Collection of statements presented at the Srinagar Meeting, 5-7 October 1983, printed as Centre-State Relations, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1984.
SCR, Chapter 6.
Austin, Working a Democratic Constitution, p. 627.
Arun Nehru, quoted in Malhotra, Indira Gandhi, p. 297.
B. K. Nehru's view that the Congress (I) deliberately created chaos in order to destabilize the government is shared by many observers, such as Tavleen Singh, quoted in Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War, I. B. Tauris, London, 2003, p. 146.
Arun Shourie in India Today, 16 September 1983 and 1 September 1983.
Sten Widmalm, 'The Rise and Fall of Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir', Asian Survey, Vol. 37, No. 1, 1997, p. 150.
Ashok Mitra in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 5 January 1986.
Economic and Political Weekly, 8 September 1984.
Krishna K. Tummala, 'Democracy Triumphant in India: The Case of Andhra Pradesh', Asian Survey, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1986, p. 391.
Indian Express, 19 July 1984.
The Hindu, 16 August 1984.
Raghavan and Manor, Broadening and Deepening Democracy, Chapter 7.
Illustrated Weekly of India, 8 June 1984.