[Dec 2007, Volume 4 Quarterly Issue] Pdf File size - The IIPM Think ...

REIMAGINING INDIA
‘native despot the people keep and enjoy
what they produce, though at times they
suffer some violence in the back. Under
the British Indian despot the man is at
peace, there is no violence; his substance
is drained away, unseen, peaceably and
subtly – he starves in peace, and peaceably
perishes in peace, with law and order!”
15 This was a clear recognition of
the differences among the type of States,
and it was a rendition of practices that
each of these States had on the economy.
Dadabhai, a civil society member, was
elaborating on the overreach by the
State and the manner in which its hegemony
overshadowed the development
of indigenous commercial class. The focus
of the drain theory was not on the
underdevelopment of the commercial
class per se. The State and Commercial
interest were locked into a symbiotic relationship
such as to benefit the British
economy. The loss to the peripheral
economy was a consequence. The indigenous
commercial class moved forward
instead on a stunted road.
If the State arose as a means to reduce
the violence among interacting individuals
and groups, the colonial State quiet
well performed on this attribute of Statehood.
Dadabhai clearly recognized this
at the empirical level and wrote about
this while elaborating on the arrival of a
more peaceful time over that which prevailed
earlier. The peaceful time that
the Colonial State brought in augmented
an increase in economic produce in the
form of raw material that the colonizing
economy required as inputs to its produce.
The peripheral economy also provided
the market that the Commercial
interests of the class in that economy
required. The peace that came in was
required for the market and yet there
was no getting away from the fact that
the Colonial State while engaged in doing
so was engendering growth of the
markets for the colonizing State. Dadabhai
wrote that, ‘There is security of life
and property in one sense or way, i.e.,
the people are secure from any violence
from each other or from Native despots.’
And yet this did not secure the economy
from the drain that the colonial State
had established. Accordingly, ‘What is
secure, and well secure, is that England
is perfectly safe and secure …to carry
away from India, and to eat up in India,
The State and Commercial interest were locked into a
symbiotic relationship such as to benefi t the British
economy. The loss to the peripheral economy was a
consequence. The indigenous commercial class moved
forward instead on a stunted road
her property at the present rate of
30,000,000 to 40,000,000 a year.’ 16
So clear were the State and Market
relationship recognized that other members
of the civil society too expressed
their dissension with the practices that
emerged out of this relationship. Writing
in the Indian People on 27 th of February
1903, Sachidanand Sinha, pointed out
that the effective administration practiced
during the governance of Lord
Curzon was more an outcome necessitated
by the requirements of commerce.
‘Trade cannot thrive without efficient
administration’, wrote Sinha and adding
that the ‘latter is not worth attending to
in the absence of profits of the former.’
Consequently, it is ‘always with the assent
and often to the dictates of the
Chambers of Commerce (that) the Government
of India is carried on’. 17
This is not a place for arriving at exhaustive
details of the manner in which
the colonial State worked around to address
the requirements of the markets.
Suffice it note that the thesis of Sate and
market reinforcing each other is quiet
clearly observable during this period
and that the members of the Indian civil
society had been able to identify this
relationship. It was recognition of this
relationship that brought the civil society
to debate about the relationship and
so as to arrive at what was required to
change the coordinates of the relationship.
It was the cohesion of the civil society,
which over the years gathered
members of the commercial class that
prompted the building of alternative
viewpoints of the manner that the economy
should function. The subsequent
participation by political parties as a
joint effort brought in the transition
from the colonial State to a State that
was part of the Indian scenario. This
constitutes the second issue that merits
recognition and it is that of the civil society
playing an important role in influencing
the changeover from the earlier
State mode to that of yet another one.
Post-Colonialism And The
Search For New Paradigms
The triad of State, market and civil society
as it were during the colonial pe-
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