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Module Detail

Subject Name Political Science

Paper Name 02: Indian Politics: II

Module Name/Title Evolution of State Politics as a Discipline

Module Id

Pre-requisites

Objectives The module mentions the growing importance of

constituent states in Indian Union which has led to

the emergence of state politics as an autonomous

discipline after considerable period of academic

neglect. The effort in this module is also to go deeper

into varied traditions including the emergent ones of

academic focus in the discipline of state politics, and

look for some of the most important insights gained

by each of them.

Keywords State Politics, Political Processes, Economic

Processes, State Specific Studies, Comparative State

Studies, Sub-State Regions

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Module: Evolution of State Politics as a Discipline

Key Words: State Politics, Political Processes, Economic Processes, State Specific Studies,

Comparative State Studies, Sub-State Regions

Objective: The module mentions the growing importance of constituent states in Indian Union

which has led to the emergence of state politics as an autonomous discipline after considerable

period of academic neglect. The effort in this module is also to go deeper into varied traditions

including the emergent ones of academic focus in the discipline of state politics, and look for

some of the most important insights gained by each of them.

Role Name Affiliation

Principal Investigator Professor Ashutosh Kumar

Panjab

University,

Chandigarh

Paper Coordinator Prof. Sanjay Lodha;

Prof. Rekha Saxena

MLS,University,

Udaipur

Delhi

University,

Delhi

Content Writer/Author

(CW)

Professor Ashutosh Kumar Panjab

University,

Chandigarh

Content Reviewer (CR) Prof. Pampa Mukherjee Panjab

University,

Chandigarh

Language Editor (LE) Professor Ashutosh Kumar, Panjab

University,

Chandigarh

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Introduction

The module argues that the greater level of recognition of constituent states in the Indian Union

as the primary units of political and economic analyses has led to the emergence of state

politics as an autonomous discipline. Ironically, the new found exalted status of the discipline

of State Politics is in sharp contrast to its earlier dismal status of a mere sub-discipline, an

appendage of the discipline of Indian Politics. Even in the discipline of Comparative Politics,

state-level variances have of late received much more focus in the discussion of themes like

ethnic movements, party systems, developmental experiences, political institutions, and

democratization, unlike in the past when within the discipline India was always referred as an

unit in cross-national perspective. There has been a new awareness that Indian states with their

diversity provide laboratory like situation for comparative studies and can be focus of even the

discipline of Comparative Politics. This revelation has also helped in bringing attention to state

politics as a discipline.

While summarizing the various traditions of scholarship on the politics of state/sub-state

regions and looking into their insights and contributions, the module takes up the following

interrelated sets of questions for discussion. How can one explain the relative academic neglect

of states as distinct units of analysis by India specialists for a considerable period after

Independence, as state-level studies started in earnest only in the 1960s? Second, what have

been the different traditions relating to state level political studies ranging from single state

focused studies to the inter-state comparative studies. What have been the contributions of the

state-specific studies undertaken in the first phase which emerged in the form of state-specific

essays in edited volumes and were followed by full-fledged, single state-level books in the last

two decades, to the understanding of politics at the state and national levels? Third, to what

extent has the latest phase of inter-state/two-state comparative studies been able to take this

forward, and in what way?

Neglect of State Level Studies

The newly found importance of states, state-level parties and their leadership makes it

imperative to develop a coherent theoretical framework for study of state-level politics. Such

attempts have long been discouraged, mainly on the ground that, because of the ongoing

de-centering of India’s polity, each state is of late showing its own political specificities. As a

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result, a broad-brush analysis that can do justice to state level political analysis becomes

difficult. This argument got credence due to India’s enormous size and complexity and also the

states’ volatile politics. Ironically, even as the ongoing process of federalization/ localization of

politics and economy has turned the states into ‘mini republics’,1 the state specific studies have

surged as would be discussed in the following sections of the module.

Three possible explanations for the lack of focus on states in the first decades of Independence

can be mentioned here. First, the neglect of sub-national-level studies in the1950s and 1960s

can be attributed to the spell of area studies undertaken for the comparative study of 'new'

democracies in Asian, African and Latin American countries. Grand comparative analytical

frameworks developed by the liberal schools of modernisation and political development

considered the “developing state” the unit of analysis. The area studies literature neglected the

fact that these “third world” countries had different histories, social structures and economies.

As for the writings on Indian politics from the academic Left perspective, they remained firmly

under the influence of the neo-Marxist literature that had emerged as a critique of the

modernisation/development literature in the form of underdevelopment/dependency theories.

For the dependency/world economic system theorists, the “dependent/ peripheral/

post-colonial” state remained the unit for their analysis of what they called the “third world”.

Second, with the Congress being the dominant party under the “'Congress system”, politics and

the economy at the state level at the time were very much guided by the “dominant centre” with

the “high command” pulling the key strings of power. Way back then, states were “regarded as

little more than subordinate components of a highly centralized governmental structure” and

there was little realization that they were “evolving as powerful political arenas in their own

right”.2 State politics thus appeared to India analysts merely as “a poor carbon copy” of the

politics unfolding at the national level, dissuading them from focusing on state politics.

Third, in the then euphoria of the “Nehruvian era”, when the whole emphasis was on achieving

“institution-building/state-building/nation-building”, it was inevitable that politics at the state

level would be studied from the “national perspective” even at the cost of missing “esoteric

details” concerning the states.3 “Too much attention to state affairs” in the academic research

and teaching was considered a “mark of parochial attachments” or possibly a sign of academic

incompetence or laziness.4

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State Politics Literature: Evolution

The academic literature on the state politics can broadly be divided into three phases

chronologically and in terms of their different research focus and scope. The effort in this

module is to go deeper into varied traditions of academic research, look for some of the most

important insights gained by each of them, and to suggest ways to move forward to enrich the

discipline further.

State-Level Studies: Early Phase

The defining moment for the discipline came in the form of the general elections held in 1967

which marked the beginning of the veering away of different states, at different points of time

and in different ways, from the “Congress system”.5 The grudging recognition of states also

facilitated the emergence of state politics as a discipline in its own right. The first generation of

state-specific academic literature arrived quite late, beginning with the publication of academic

volumes on state politics consisting of state-specific chapters, edited by Myron Weiner, Iqbal

Narain, and John R. Wood, and followed by Francine Frankel and M.S.A. Rao.6 The first three

volumes included state-specific essays that were basically focused on enumerating the

determinants of state-level political dynamics in minute empirical detail. For the academics

contributing to these volumes, states provided a more or less self-contained universe (called a

“microcosm” as well as a “macrocosm”) within which their politics (mainly electoral) were

conducted and analyzed. Based on state-specific empirical details about their geopolitical

location, demographic character in social terms, political history, politico-administrative

structure, changing patterns of political participation, nature of their party system and

performance of their political regimes, the volumes' essays presented descriptive analyses of

the nature and dynamics of the political processes in particular states. Employing a political

sociological approach, which was greatly inspired by the modernisation/ development theory

literature on developing societies, the essays in these volumes essentially privileged the

“political” while relatively ignoring the “economic”. The state chapters in Rao and Frankel’s

edited publication focused on the historical patterns of political transformation taking place in

particular states. While adopting a political economy approach, the essays in the volume

explored varying relationships between caste and class indifferent states, especially in terms of

the land, while trying to unravel the problem of “the decline of (the) dominance” of traditional

elites in the rural hinterlands.

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Almost all the essays in these edited volumes, though empirically very rich, studiously avoided

employing a comparative inter-state framework or developing a theoretical framework that

could be employed for their kind of empirical analyses. Commonalities, if any, discernible in

the nature of emerging trends in state politics, were not taken up for discussion,7 as only the

distinctive features received attention in the studies even when these seemed to be in the minds

of the editors.8 The volumes' contributions lie in providing a wealth of information and laying

bare hitherto hidden specificities of states, which paved the ground for the analytical studies

that came later. The authors in these studies while focusing on a single state as a unit for their

political analysis had the advantage of controlling for institutional characteristics which

allowed them to look closely into the ways in which the processes of identity formation had

begun, although these were still in fluid form. As is evident from the frequent citations of these

essays in future writings, their accounts and insights remained helpful as background material

for tracing the way the politics at the state level has evolved over the years.

State-Level Studies: Later Phase

The scholarly single-authored books that came up in the 1980s focusing on a particular state

have been comparatively richer than the academic essays published earlier in terms of not only

providing empirical details, but also in analysing the political processes that unfold at the state

level. The concrete analysis focusing on a single state was used to underpin larger theoretical

arguments that could possibly be applied elsewhere in India by readers, something that was not

attempted earlier.9

Studies on the nature of electoral politics at the state level, drawing extensively from the

CSDS-Lokniti-conducted NES survey data though mostly in the form of academic essays, also

deserve mention here. These “theoretically sensitive” studies are distinguishable from most of

the earlier writings on state electoral politics, which were either in the genre of “mindless

empiricism” or “impressionistic theorisations”.10 These writings are much more helpful in

understanding the larger forces and long-term changes taking place in the state party systems

and electoral politics in recent India.

A reading of the state-specific articles in this genre, written by the CSDS-Lokniti network

members for the Economic and Political Weekly,11 reveal not only the basic determinants of

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electoral politics in the state like demographic composition and nature of

ethnic/communal/caste cleavages as well as other socio-political cleavages like regional,

rural-urban and caste-class linkages, but also present an analysis of electoral outcomes

highlighting differences in major issues raised in manifestos, emergent trends, alliance

formations, seat adjustments, selection of candidates, campaigns and so on. The survey data

helps authors explain the opinions and attitudes of electorates with varying age, sex, caste,

community, class, and education profiles. Going beyond a mere journalistic task of counting

the votes/ profiling the electoral behaviour/assessing the gain of shift in support base,

predicting future political re-configurations/re-alignments, these essays refer to critical

questions such as: did voters have any real choice? Did electoral outcomes have a real impact

on public policies in relations to the substantive social and economic issues?

The above publications written over the past two decades covering different state elections

since 1996 confirm extreme fluidity in the nature of electoral permutations and combinations

that come to assume power at the federal or state levels. They, however, also indicate that

despite the region-specific nature of electoral politics and emergence of distinct identities,

emerging trends in Indian politics reveal some commonalities, albeit few exceptions, across the

country: historically constituted or merely administrative regions emerging as electoral

regions; the emergence of electoral bi-polarities at the state level conforming to Duverger's

law; and lastly the politicization and mobilisation of the “old, received, but hitherto dormant

identities”.12

Updated and revised versions of these state essays, earlier published in the EPW, have been

subsequently published in the edited volumes by the Lokniti team.13 There are other important

academic works, which also attempt to develop a coherent and systematic theoretical

framework based on NES data to make sense of the nature of the electoral democracy in India

in terms of participation, contestation and representation.

Inter-State Comparative Studies

While individual state-specific studies are by themselves important and useful, there have not

yet been many efforts to adopt a comparative method even in the “second generation” of

literature. The fact that the advantage of the comparative method has not been adequately

explored may be attributed to the “segmented nature of polity” (several patterns of state

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politics) as well as extreme fluidity in the nature of state politics.14 Terming any attempt to

compare states as an “unviable task”, Wood argued that “all of the Indian states are special

cases, each possessing particular historical, geographical, cultural, or economic conditions”.15

Arguably, any attempt at inter-state analysis is much more difficult in recent times because of

the ongoing “de-centering” of India's polity and economy, each state is becoming like a

“mini-democracy” with political processes taking distinct patterns, making it difficult to

compare or develop a general theoretical framework.

However, there has also been a distinct view gaining much traction at least in the realm of ideas

that there are grounds on which Indian states can be considered comparable. Atul Kohli, the

trendsetter among the comparativists in India, suggested that the “federal nature of Indian

polity allows for a disaggregated and comparative analysis within India”.16 Rob Jenkins has

also referred to the “robust form of federalism” that enables political analysts to undertake a

comparative analysis of the politics of India's “mini-democracies” that have “almost identical

institutional infrastructures” and which operate under similar “economic policy frameworks

and the legal protections enshrined in the Indian constitution”.17 Meenal Desai suggests that

India presents “an ideal ground for comparative analysis, for holding constant certain factors

such as its position in the sphere of international relations, geography, ecology, religion and

early political formations”.18 While emphasizing the autonomy of state politics from national

politics, Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar present a “preliminary frame” for inter-state

comparative analysis by presenting the critical issues for inquiry in the form of what they call

the “ten theses” on state politics in India.19 Referring to the commonalities across constituent

states in in electoral terms, Adam Ziegfeld considers India ideal for studying party systems in

on two grounds: first, India is comparable to western democracies for having a “lengthy

democratic history and record of free and fair elections”; and with its many parties which are

“short-lived, non-ideological, highly personalistic, and poorly organized” also compares with

the party systems of the “new” democracies. Second, India also presents an “unparalleled

setting” to study the “puzzling variation” in the success of regional parties as they “vary in their

age, ideological orientation, and support bases”.20

How does making comparisons help? What are the supporting arguments in favour of a

comparative method for research on state politics? First, while conceding the fact that studies

focusing on the politics of a single state which has been under the same administrative system

have distinct advantages in terms of enabling much more controlled experiments, sifting

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through much thicker empirical details and capturing the nuances of the state's politics in all its

social and spatial aspects. However, to learn about the validity of the 'exceptionalism' argument

that emerges due to the spatially uneven nature of processes having a national impact as they

unfold across states, one needs to compare a state with other states.21 Second, the comparative

method whenever it is deployed for inter-state analysis has helped identify commonalities and

differences in the politics of two or more comparable states and these findings have enabled

reflection and theorizing on a broader canvas to make them more relevant not only for studies

on India, but also for focusing on different but comparable states. Since the comparative

method allows a larger number of case studies to be undertaken, the research findings/causal

explanations/theory building exercises also receive greater credence/acceptance. Third, any

theoretical framework that would emerge from an inter-state or intra-state study would not only

help the comparativists undertaking the study of a larger number of states, but also be able to

re-frame the existing debate and interrogate successfully the cogency of conventional

formulations, often derived from an analysis that took the nation-state as the unit of analysis,

some of them going back to the 1950s and 1960s, still being considered relevant for

contemporary India. To suggest that a cross-state study enables the researcher to theorize about

national politics, however, is complicated, because there are important nuanced ways in which

the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Nevertheless, it has its methodological advantage

over an analysis that is much more intuitive than based on concrete studies across the country.

Fourth, the comparative method naturally allows for the use of multiple research techniques22

as well as the involvement of analysts from different disciplines of the social sciences, which

helps as the comparativists are most likely to stumble upon unexpected research questions and

findings.23 Fifth, the assumption underlying comparative studies is that the units under study

are selected in a manner that minimizes biases and allows for the use of more controlled

variables. Most of the literature in this category takes up research questions related to one

thematic area and selects purposely (and not randomly) states as the sampling units to keep the

study focused and also allow for comparison.24

Sub-State Regions

What should be the focus of the discipline in the future if it has to make advances? Our

argument is that there needs to be greater effort by comparativists to go beyond states and focus

exclusively on sub-regions within states, both as relatively autonomous units for political

analysis and also to compare two or more sub-regions within a particular state or across states,

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especially those sub-regions which straddle state boundaries. Recent decades have been

witness to the emergence of geographically, linguistically, culturally and historically

constituted distinct sub-regions,25 which have acquired political salience as democracy has

widened and deepened in India.26 These sub-regions have emerged as political regions after

long decades of democratization, and now show sharpened ethnic/communal/caste cleavages,

as well as other social-political cleavages like the regional and rural-urban ones, unevenness of

public and private investment, growth and development, and unequal access to political

power.27 The emergent sub-regional consciousness from a perceived sense of discrimination at

the hands of people and the leadership from the stronger sub-region, which has been

accentuated with the growing spatial economic disparity under a market economy that believes

in 'betting on the strong' strategy, has found expression in the demand for new states, providing

fertile ground for comparative research in studying the shifting bases of such demands

emanating from different sub-regions in the form of movements that receive support from

sub-region-level parties (and leadership), such as the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leading the

movement for the creation of Gorkhaland. Most of these sub-regions like Vidarbha,

Gorkhaland, Bodoland, Bundelkhand have been “poorer with more deeply entrenched caste

hierarchies and a faster growing population, and overall have fared less well in terms of human

development”.28 Ironically, sub-regions that are better connected by road or sea routes, or are

closer to buzzing marketplaces and business centres, have also been demanding preferential

treatment and even asking for separate statehood, as is the case with the demand for a separate

Harit Pradesh from affluent western Uttar Pradesh. Yet outcomes of the new economic policies

have been the emergence of distinct “economic regions” like the national capital region (NCR),

straddling state and Union Territory boundaries as well as the emergence of “happening” cities

like Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad as economic mega-centers, inviting inter-city

comparisons within the country and beyond.

As India undergoes the process of decentring under the shadow of globalization, sub-state units

taken for focused studies in a comparative perspective have assumed greater significance.

Long back, Atul Kohli had chosen district as the unit for the study of local politics while

studying “India’s growing crisis of governability” in a period when the institutional decline set

in the Congress.29 Of late, uniformity in the institutional sense, brought about by the 73rd and

74th Amendments, 1992, has made it possible to analyse the success or failure of affirmative

policies at the grassroots level across states in a comparative manner. Measuring democracy

across states is also possible by focusing on local bodies at work. For the purpose of election

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studies, an assembly constituency could be a possible unit of analysis, as it enables analysts to

observe electoral contests and the role of local leadership much more closely and therefore

enables them to “make sense of power politics”.30 Banerjee has focused on an even smaller

unit, taking polling booths across 11 states as her units of analysis, to “observe the various local

processes” at work which influence people's voting decisions in India.31

Within the state studies, there has been of late focus on the studies of big /metropolitan cities.

The mega-cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad with their huge populations and strong

culture develop their own distinct political culture and choices which has a statewide impact,

even setting the political agenda and determining electoral trends with a sizable number of

assembly seats within the city itself. Varshney has taken the big city as the unit of analysis for

his study of the interrelations of civic (everyday/associational) life with ethnic conflict/peace,

using the sizable populations of two ethnic communities (the Hindus and Muslims) as the

controlling variables, while comparing the three sets of two cities, one being peaceful and other

prone to ethnic violence.32

Why there is a dearth of academic research employing an intra-state regional perspective in a

comparative mode? This may be due to the fluid nature of the sub-regions, as many of these are

more administrative constructs, as in Haryana where districts have gradually emerged as

political/electoral regions and many sub-regions are geographic and economic entities, but are

not political, like the NCR region comprising Delhi and parts of its three adjoining states. Thus,

unlike states that have emerged as stable political units after more than four decades of states'

reorganisation, sub-regions are still in the process of becoming closely identifiable political

units.

The advantages that accrue from intra-state comparative studies that focus on sub-regions or

other smaller units are greater than those from an analysis of inter-state or two-state studies, as

the former approach allows/enable comparativists to undertake a deeper study of the

micro-level mechanisms at work in a state, and especially enables ethnographic studies.

Sub-regions as distinct analytical categories would automatically ensure that the smaller

pictures and narratives are not lost midst the larger ones. One can, of course, combine

inter-state analysis with intra-state comparative analysis for the study of state and sub-state

regional politics. 33 Reading different state-specific case studies in a comparative mode

(intra-state as well as inter-state) does help in understanding and explaining variations in the

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state-level policies and the leadership response,34 besides capturing the emergent “big picture”

at the national level. Interestingly, there have been a few studies that compare the politics of

specific regions in India with that of a region of another country, mainly focusing on

identity-based politics.35

Summing Up

As a note of caution, for a comparativist, the task of comparing disparate political phenomena

while attempting an inter-state or intra-state analysis in a diverse and complex polity like India

is always going to be a herculean task. Adopting a highly localized approach to bring out

regional/sub-regional distinctiveness invariably involves in-depth study of an entire range of

factors that make up a political situation. A study of the micro-level mechanisms, which are

shaping political actions and processes of mobilisation at the local level, has therefore become

imperative for an understanding of the internal dynamics of Indian politics and the economy, as

well as for drawing theoretical conclusions on a larger canvas. To avoid oversimplified, lazy

generalizations, comparativist working on states or sub-state regional units within them would

do well to undertake issue-particular concrete analyses of two or more sub-state regions

across/within two or more states and then look for the differences, and not merely add up the

similarities while theorizing. Thus, our argument is that the time has come to take up

comparative studies with greater vigour, if the “million mutinies” happening in the democratic

space of India have to be captured. In order to have a rigorous analysis, the political analyst

focusing on a state needs to make greater efforts to situate state-level specificities in a

multi-layered context. Such studies either focus on a single state or move beyond and begin

looking for inter-state or intra-state and cross-state sub-regional variations and similarities as

well, focusing on the historical-cultural sub-regions that have emerged as political (and

economic) sub-regions acquiring certain identity over the decades. So, in the case of inter-state

studies, several experiments in terms of selecting multiple units as well as different research

techniques straddling disciplinary boundaries may be attempted by the analysts.

NOTES

1 Arvind N. Das titled his classic book on Bihar as The Republic of Bihar (Delhi: Penguin,

1992).

13

2John R. Wood, State Politics in Contemporary India: Crisis or Continuity? (Boulder and

London: Westview Press, 1984), p.2.

3 Kothari refused to “get lost in the esoteric details” of India's states even as he aimed to study

“the characteristic patterns and interrelationships that inform(ed) the operation of the Indian

political system as a whole”. He, however, did refer to four factors that led to the emergence of

“'alternative patterns of regional politics”: “pre-independence political configuration, the

nature and strength of opposition to the Congress, kinds of intra-state diversities that have

informed the politics of the Congress party in each state, and the differences in the social

structure of various regions”. Rajni Kothari, Politics in India (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1970),

p.121.

4 Y. Yadav and S. Palshikar, “From Hegemony to Convergence: Party System and Electoral

Politics in the Indian States, 1952-2002” in Peter Ronald de Souza & E. Sridharan, eds., India's

Political Parties (New Delhi: Sage, 2006), pp. 73-115.

5 Rajni Kothari described the party system of India until the 1967 elections as the “Congress

system” as he underlined the Congress organizational ability to create a wider social coalitional

support base, enabling the party to win elections both at the state as well federal level. The

Congress acted also as a hegemonic party representing the ideological consensus around what

were then termed as the foundational features of India’s democratic politics. The Congress

centric “one-party dominant system” was widely understood in academic analyses as the very

essence of the political system of India in the first two decades of independence. Rajni Kothari,

“The Congress ‘System’ in India”, Asian Survey Vol. 4, No.12, (1964), pp. 1163-1173.

6 Myron Weiner, ed., Sate Politics in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); I.

Narain, ed., State Politics in India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1976); John R. Wood, State

Politics in Contemporary India: Crisis or Continuity? (Boulder and London: Westview Press,

1984); Francine R. Frankel & MSA Rao, eds., Dominance and State Power in Modern India:

Decline of a Social Order, Vol. 1 &2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

7 Church did contribute a paper based on a comparative study of seven states (clubbed in three

pairs). Writing about the “participation crisis”' in “Indira Gandhi's India”, one of his prediction

about “small and widely dispersed” lower castes comprising “marginal farmers, sharecroppers

and landless labourers from low-status agricultural castes together with the traditional service

and artisan castes” likely to be “the last stratum to be brought into politics” has come true.

Roderick Church, “Conclusion: The Pattern of State Politics in Indira Gandhi’s India” in J. R.

Wood (ed.) State Politics in Contemporary India: Crisis or Continuity (see note 61), p. 231.

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8 Weiner had desired the essays in his volume to “analyse and compare the political processes

of selected states within the Indian Union” since the states in India shared “a common legal

system, a common constitutional framework, a common administrative structure” even as “

their internal political patterns vary considerably”. Weiner , ed., State Politics in India, p. 4-5.

9 Some of the recent single-authored books include: Jagpal Singh, Capitalism and

Dependence; Agrarian Politics in Western Uttar Pradesh 1951-1991(New Delhi: Manohar,

1992); Zoya Hasan, Dominance and Mobilization: Rural Politics in Western Uttar

Pradesh 1930-1980 (New Delhi: Sage, 1998); Narendra Subramanian , Ethnicity and Populist

Mobilization: Political Parties, Citizens and Democracy in South India ( New Delhi: OUP,

1999); Sanjeeb Baruah, India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality, Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 1999); Gopal Singh, Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case Study of

Punjab (London: Macmillan, 2000); Navneeta Chadha Behera, State, Identity and Violence;

Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000); Pradeep Kumar, The Uttarakhand

Movement: Construction of a Regional Identity(New Delhi: Kanishka Publishers, 2000); Amit

Prakash, Jharkhand: Politics of Development and Identity (Hyderabad: Orient Longman,

2002); A. Yagnik, & S. Sheth, The Shaping of Modern Gujarat: Plurality, Hindutva and

Beyond (New Delhi: Penguin, 2005); Kudaisya, Ganesh (2006), Region, Nation, Heartland:

Uttar Pradesh in India's Body Politics (New Delhi: Sage, 2006) Meenal Desai, State

Formation and Radical Democracy in India. London: Routledge, 2007); Monobina Gupta, Left

Politics in Bengal: Time Travels Through Bhadralok (New Delhi, Orient Blackswan, 2010);

Manish K. Jha and Pushpendra, eds, Traversing Bihar: The Politics of Development and Social

Justice (New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2014); Santosh Singh, Ruled or Misruled: Story and

Destiny of Bihar (New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015); Chowdhary, Rekha (2016).

Jammu and Kashmir: Politics of Identity and Separatism (New Delhi: Routledge, 2016).

10 Aditya Nigam and Yogendra Yadav, “Electoral Politics in Indian States, 1989-1999” ,

Economic and Political Weekly, (August), 1999.

11 There have three special issues of EPW covering the last three Lok Sabha elections. EPW

Vol. 39, No.51 (December 18-24, 2004); Vol. 44, No. 39 (November 26, 2009); Vol. 49, No. 39

(September 27, 2014). Another special issue of EPW that deserves mention was on State

Parties, National Ambitions, Vol. 39, Nos. 14 &15 (April 3-9, 2004). Special issue of Journal

of the Indian School of Political Economy, Vol.14, No. 1&2 (2003) included state election

papers and also lot of information about the elections.

12 A. Kumar, Rethinking State Politics in India: Regions within Regions (New Delhi:

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Routledge, 2011), p. 8.

13 S. Shastri, K.C. Suri and Y. Yadav (eds.) Electoral politics in Indian States: Lok Sabha

Elections in 2004 and Beyond (New Delhi: Oxford university Press, 2009); S. Palshikar, K.C.

Suri and Y. Yadav, eds, Party Competition in Indian States: Electoral Politics in Post-Congress

Polity (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014); S. Palshikar, S. Kumar , S.

Lodha , eds., Electoral Politics in India: The Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party (New

Delhi: Routledge , 2017).

14 I. Narain (1976, p. xvi) referred to the fact that one had “to deal here not with one pattern but

with several patterns of state politics which (were) emerging, if at all, through none- too-steady

pulls and swings of politics at the central and state levels”.

15 J. R. Wood, ed., State Politics in India, p.6.

16 Atul Kohli, The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1987) 1987), p. 3.

17 R. Jenkins, ed., Regional Reflections: Comparing Politics across India’s States, p. 3.

18 Meenal Desai, State Formation and Radical Democracy in India, pp. 22-23.

19 Y. Yadav and S. Palshikar, “Ten Theses on Indian States”, Seminar, No, 591 (November

2008), pp. 14-22.

20 Addressing the puzzle regarding the variations in regional parties' successes or failures over

“time and space”, Ziegfeld selected three states for his studies namely Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu

and West Bengal on the basis of their “varying in the extent to which regional parties are

successful and in the kinds of regional parties that are successful”. So Rajasthan is the classic

case of a state where state-based parties have failed whereas Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are

states where they have long succeeded but, then unlike West Bengal, it is the “regionalist”

parties with an ethnic support base that have succeeded in Tamil Nadu. Ziegfeld, Why

Regional Parties: Clientelism, Elites, and the Indian Party System, pp.19-20.

21 Louis Tillin, Remapping India: New States and Their Political Origin (New Delhi:

Routledge, 2013), p. 235.

22 Prerna Singh inquiring into the causal explanation of sub-national variations in the nature

and outcome of social welfare policy with a focus on education and health within India in the

twentieth century, uses mixed methods combining qualitative and quantitative methods

through “a nested research design, in which the intensive within and cross-state case study

analysis of five states is nested in a statistical cross-state analysis of all Indian provinces”. She

argues that Indian provinces/states that witnessed the “emergence of a shared sub-national

16

solidarity, or subnationalism, were more likely to institute and maintain a progressive social

policy and, relatedly, witness better developmental outcomes”. Prerna Singh, How Solidarity

Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2015), pp.2,5; 16-22.

23The essays written by researchers from different disciplines in the Tillin, Deshpande &

Kailash co-edited volume explore “the politics of welfare across Indian states in the context of

rapid economic growth, and against the backdrop of new social legislation introduced by

India's central and state governments led by many different political parties”. Using “a set of

paired comparisons” the essays shows the linkages between electoral politics and policy

processes as they unfold across the states. L. Tillin & R. Deshpande & K. K. Kailash, eds.,

Politics of Welfare: Comparisons across Indian States (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2016). P.238.

24 The essays in the Jenkins edited volume, for example, employ a two-state comparative

method to take up four sets of thematic areas, namely economic policymaking, subaltern

politicization, civic engagement, and political leadership studies. Rob Jenkins, (2004). Suhas

Palshikar and Rajeswari Deshpande (2009) suggested studying the politics of Maharashtra

while situating it in the “larger context of the all-India”, in one of two ways: either through a

two-state analysis by comparing “those dimensions that find a comparable resonance” or by

studying a theme of Indian politics that has relevance/comparability for both Maharashtra as

well as the state selected for comparison.

25 Asha Sarangi, “Languages(s), Culture(s) and Region(s): Identity Politics in independent

India” in N. K. Das and V. R. Rao, Identity, Cultural Pluralism and State : South Asia in

Perspective ( New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers, 2009).

26 Regions are formed on different criteria and hence they differ in their features. For exploring

different ways in which a region has been conceptualised and defined i.e. geographical,

historical, linguistic, cultural and structural regions refer Benjamin B. Cohen & S. Ganguly ,

“introduction: Regions and regionalism in India”, India Review, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 313-320.

27 While arguing that states have taken the form of political communities, Yadav and Palshikar

concede that this “has not suppressed the rise of sub-regional consciousness” as “whenever

economic grievance and availability of a political instrument have combined, the sub-region

constitutes a more salient basis of local politics”. Y. Yadav and S. Palshikar, “Ten Theses on

state politics in India”. Seminar, No. 591(November, 2008), pp. 14-22. (Sathyamurthy, 2000,

p. 33).

17

28 Louis Tillin, Remapping India: New States and Their Political Origin, p. 3.

29 Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 11. Earlier Brass had also used districts as

the analytical units in his study of the working of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh. Paul Brass,

Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1965).

30 S. Palshikar & R. Deshpande, “Redefining State politics in India: Shift towards

comparisons”, http://www.lokniti.org/newsletter/theme_note.pdf

31 Mukulika Banerjee, Why India Votes? (New Delhi: Routledge, 2014), p. 36.

32 Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus & Muslims in India (Delhi,

Oxford University Press, 2002).

33Rob Jenkins has edited a volume that has comparative essays by authors covering 11 states

where special economic zones (SEZs) have been established. Each essay focuses on a state and

makes a comparative study of two SEZs belonging to two different sub-regions of the state.

Rob Jenkins, Regional Reflections: Comparing Politics across India's States (New Delhi:

Oxford University Press, 2004).

34 Assema Sinha following on the footstep of Kohli has made a three-state comparative

analysis of Gujarat, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu to show that “ regional politics and national

policy are inextricable interrelated”, The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A

Divided Leviathan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), p.4.

35 Sumantra Bose, States, Nations, Sovereignty: Sri Lanka, India and the Tamil Eelam

Movement (New Delhi: Sage, 1999).

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