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Editorial

            There are many ways in which the State is transformed in the era of neoliberalism. In the lead article of this issue Prabhat Patnaik examines one of the less discussed changes in the nature of the State during this era in developing countries such as India. This he identifies as a change in the "texture" of the State, reflected in a transformation of the nature of the bureaucracy, other State personnel, and the "organic intellectuals" at large.

            Capitalism, Patnaik notes, differs from feudalism inasmuch as there is a degree of opacity in the nature of the relationship between the State and civil society, with the State appearing as standing apart from or above the directly visible process of exploitation. This ability gives the State the social legitimacy which is necessary for the stability of capitalism.

            But, for the State to appear as acting in the interests of society as a whole, the State personnel must internalise this ideology, despite the fact that the essential tendency of capitalism is to assimilate all into its agenda of operating for profit. Thus a major contradiction in capitalism is the fact that its spontaneous tendencies undermine the conditions for its social legitimacy.

            This contradiction posed a problem in the era of monopoly capitalism when a profound change occurred not just in the policies but also in the personnel of the State. This was the period when there was a degree of coalescence between finance capital and the personnel of the State, when the social legitimacy the latter derives from its image as an entity standing above society and guarding its overall interests got undermined. This was the period when, as under fascism, legitimacy was sought to be acquired through other means: by invoking an enemy that is a common foe of the entire society, against which the State is projected as engaging in struggle; or by uniting society for a common purpose behind some imperialist project of acquiring "glory" or "national pride".

            These were problems that were resolved otherwise in the post-War world of Keynesian demand management in the developed countries and State-led, import-substituting industrialisation in the developing world, when imperialism was in temporary retreat. But with the recent rise to dominance of globalised finance, when

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Social Scientist enormous increases in disparities in income and wealth have occurred both in the metropolis and in the third world, the issue of the social legitimacy of the bourgeois State has reasserted itself. In the current context, as in India, the State is predominantly manned by personnel whose ideological predilections are closely aligned to the views of the Bretton Woods institutions, and who are also deeply enmeshed with the world of finance and big business.

            This necessitates quest for alternative sources of legitimacy. In India's case this is partly realised, through the concoction of a mixed brew of two notions, of the "nation" becoming a superpower ("India shining"), and of the "nation" being under threat from external enemies supported by an internal "fifth column".

            The strategies adopted by those who build the idea th-?.t the nation is under threat, is investigated by Rajeev Dhavan in his article or. the campaign by the 'Hindutva' right against India's renowned painter M.F. Husain who has been profiled as a target because he is a Muslim. Identifying the campaign as a coercive intimidation strategy, Dhavan traces in detail in this case the pre-Htigative and litigation stages of the campaign. When the intimidators initiate the process using lawyers to file a criminal case, the latter becomes the province of the police and the state prosecutors. Even though these may appear to be independent and fair persons, that need not be the case. They are both part of the 'State' as well as 'society'. And the 'State' is also enmeshed in the prevailing social, financial and political structures and is therefore subject to their pressures.

            Dhavan analyses the Hussain case as an instance illustrating the rise of Hindutva as India's new politicized religious faith as part of the reinvention of India. In this agenda, the reclamation of Hinduism requires, among much else the denigration of Islam. In time, this agenda is extended to include the electoral conquest of India. For this, what was needed was a continuous stream of events including those that physically and mentally attacked others so as to gather the Hindutva faithful. Hussain being Muslim provided the basis for one such set of events. According to Dhavan, what the Husain case sets up is a pattern for the future. In his view, to correct this tendency, the Indian law on hate speech needs to be reviewed and changed.

            The third paper in this issue focuses attention on one aspect of the phase of neo-liberal growth: the growing disproportionality between the rates of growth of the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. The fact that this tendency persists and even intensifies is surprising when examined in the light of the early debate on the constraints to development in India and the rest of the developing world. That debate had focused on the agrarian constraint to development in countries where, inter alia, the agrarian transition had not been completed by means such as radical land reform.

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            The article by C.P. Chandrasekhar examines the nature of the structural shift in the pattern of recent growth in India when compared with the first three decades of post-Independence development. Besides increased access to international finance during the period of globalisation, there are three elements of the pattern of growth under the neoliberal policy regime that seem to have made persisting disproportionality possible. One is a change in the pattern of demand and production, involving a reduction in the direct agricultural-input dependence of the non agricultural sector. The second is that the pattern of manufacturing growth under an open economic regime is such that the responsiveness of employment growth to the growth in output tends to decline. This obviously reduces the dependence of the non-agricultural sector on wage goods supplied by the agricultural sector. The third is that the pattern of growth in the modern services sector, which accounts for an important source of aggregate growth is such that here too employment growth is very much slower than the growth of output.

            The consequence of these recent trends is that the Indian economy can record the observed creditable rates of non-inflationary growth of aggregate GDP even when the agricultural sector languishes. It appears that a feature of the growth process in a more open and liberalised environment is that the peasantry has a much smaller role in sustaining economic growth and can thus be partially excluded from development. What is disconcerting is that the self-correcting mechanism that existed in the earlier period to restore a semblance of balance between agricultural and non-agricultural growth are no more operative. This leaves the adjustment to political developments that are neither guaranteed nor the least disruptive.

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