Abstract
Summary Hans Blomkvist, ‘Is the State in India particularistic?’, Forum for Development Studies, 1995:2, pp. 285–308. Is it meaningful and illuminating to describe the state in India as ‘particularistic’ or ‘soft’? In two recent works my earlier studies (1988, 1992) of the Indian state have been questioned; explicitly by Ella Ghosh (1994) in relation to administration in Rajasthan, and implicitly by Cedric Pugh (1990) in relation to housing in India and Madras. Adhering to Harry Eckstein's call for cumulativeness, the article discusses the arguments against the ‘particularistic state’ by closely scrutinising the empirical evidence. Four important kinds of evidence—macro-studies of Indian economy and politics, Indian opinion polls, the character of housing politics in Madras, and micro-studies of politics in Madras—all give support to my argument that the state and public administration in India is best understood as ‘particularistic’. The discussion is also related to new research on policy implementation and ‘rent-seeking’, showing that this institutional pattern is found in many other Third World settings as well.
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