The Indian ‘Anti-Politics Machine’

Abstract

Is there an ‘Anti-Politics Machine’ in India? This question may be justifiably asked. Is there, after all, an anti-politics machine in India? The Indian development machinery has for long served as a symbol of decisive state intervention to shape and regulate the economy. In the formative years after independence in 1947 it was the newly formed Planning Commission that provided a vehicle for the political leadership to take contentious decisions without these being subject to the wider political arena for debate. It was the planners'; ‘rationality’ and ‘expertise’ that made them suitable for taking decisions in the interest of the nation at large, as contrasted with political representatives who were expected to be partisan in their views. In subsequent years, the planning commission itself may have somewhat declined in significance, but development decision-making has been prominently carried out by the bureaucracy, which is itself a mammoth, multilayered, hierarchical and overstretched organization. Even though recent years have witnessed key trends relating to state reform, notably decentralization and participatory development, the terms of engagement between the bureaucracy and relatively new actors like NGOs or international donors continue to be heavily prescribed by the former. The presence of a highly bureaucratized state apparatus and a culture of development planning that has traditionally distanced itself from ‘politics’ together signify that the Indian state could serve as an archetypal example of the Fergusonian antipolitics machine.