Urban Politics in India: Area, Power, and Policy in a Penetrated System.

Abstract

Those looking for a survey of urban political systems in India in this work will find instead a finely detailed study of Indore, a of 500,000 people in central India. Having presented the setting of the study (The City in Politics and an economic and social profile of Indore), Jones describes the three facets of what he calls the city arena: the Princely State Heritage, Congress party factions, and a history of state from the viewpoint of Indore. He then deals with several arenas within Indore, dividing the discussion into two parts: first, the arena in which the Municipal Corporation governs; second, a series of intracity arenas-town planning, labor, and (briefly) agricultural markets, education, and the underworld. All of these arenas, Jones argues, are penetrated by the state: Decision-making crucial to the is primarily centralized at the summits of the two vertical structures [electoral and bureaucratic], usually outside the at the state level of politics (p. 12). Linkages within the administration have centered on civil servants from the princely state of Indore who were absorbed into the state civil service after 1947; linkages in the electoral structure center on three factions of the dominant Congress party. These three factions lie at the core of in Indore, in Jones's account. He tells us an incredible amount about their composition, their bases of support, and their competition in Indore and in the state for more than twenty years (the field work for the study was completed in 1969). We are given names, dates, and detailed narrative; more detail, perhaps, than even the most determined Indianist will be able to absorb. Jones gives us, essentially, a well-informed insider's view of Indore politics, and since we cannot question his judgment on which of his informants were telling the truth and which press reports were accurate (these together constitute the core of his data), there is no standard of verification for the general reader to apply. If Jones wished only to illustrate his points, the size of the book could have been reduced, perhaps by half, with a salutary effect on its price. In a few pages at the end of the book, Jones indicates how his data fit into a comparative framework-he uses the policy-process analysis of Robert H. Salisbury-but the importance of his contribution lies in the case for assigning state government the major role in urban arenas. Jones makes a good case for Indore being a typical in this respect, and the linkages between state and systems (I would say local rather than urban, since it remains to be seen whether Indian rural politics would look any different), do provide a focus of analysis, an alternative to the unit of the municipality, which must be considered, and not only in the context. The value of arenas for political actors who are not part of the state government is made clear, however, and the influence of actors on state systems-since the linkages are