“Surplus Humanity” and the Margins of Legality - Chapman University

Do Not Delete 12/12/2010 7:34 PM
34 Chapman Law Review [Vol. 14:1
However, declining growth rates, escalating fiscal crisis of the
state, and fragmentation of the legitimacy of political elites ruled
out the implementation of refurbished welfare policies.
As the development project faltered in India, as elsewhere in
the global South, the World Bank started to question the
accumulation- and growth-centric approaches to development
and turned toward alleviation of poverty as a goal distinct from
growth. 219 Funding patterns were recalibrated to target agriculture,
education, infrastructure, and low-cost housing. 220 In
the new approach, the developmental state was to address
poverty by direct intervention. 221 Kalyan Sanyal argues that as a
result there emerged ―governmentalization‖ of the state in
India—management of the social body through direct intervention
of the state in terms of rationally-designed efficient
technologies of administration aimed at promoting the welfare of
society. 222 This was combined with the rise of ―entitlements‖—a
relation connecting one set of ownership to another through
certain rules of legitimacy. 223 In the sixth Five Year Plan of
1980, ―a number of poverty eradication measures were introduced.‖
224 They proved easier to design than to implement.
Sanyal claims that the blows of primitive accumulation were
softened during this period by the emergence of ―welfarist
governmentality.‖ 225 He acknowledges, however, the exponential
growth of the informal sector and the fact that formal and
informal economies ―are locked in an asymmetric relation . . . of
dominance and subordination,‖ which leaves the ―need economy‖
219 See ROBERT L. AYRES, BANKING ON THE POOR: THE WORLD BANK AND WORLD
POVERTY 1 (1983).
220 See id. The new approach
posed some serious challenges to the prevalent Bank ideology. The result was
a somewhat ambiguous pastiche of concepts and approaches. . . . The
result . . . was a rather tenuous gluing together of some markedly divergent
approaches. Poverty-oriented emphasis sometimes seemed to have been
pasted on the prevalent ideology, without, however, altering its fundamental
slant.
Id. at 75.
221 SANYAL, supra note 77, at 170.
222 Id. at 170–73. Sanyal‘s claim is that ―in a simultaneous process, the dispossessed
are rehabilitated through the ‗pastoral functions‘ of international organizations and the
development state, [and that] governmentality is actively engaged in forming a needeconomy
be reversing the process of dispossession.‖ Id. at 220.
223 Id. at 178. Sanyal deploys Amartya Sen‘s notions of entitlement that ―refer to a
set of alternative commodity bundles that a person can command in a society using the
totality of rights and opportunities.‖ AMARTYA SEN, RESOURCES, VALUES AND
DEVELOPMENT 497 (1984).
224 SUKHAMOY CHAKRAVARTY, DEVELOPMENT PLANNING: THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE 36
(1987).
225 SANYAL, supra note 77, at 221.