Grass-Roots Stirrings and the Future of Politics

Abstract

This paper explores the possibility of the prevailing widespread frustration and disillusionment with modern politics, as much for its failure to make good the promise it had held out as for the incapacity of its structures and institutions to find even token solutions to the problems and crises which beset the present-day world, being canalized towards a new politics of the future. Frustration and disillusionment are all too plain to be either ignored or denied; they are writ large in the world-wide discontent, unrest, turbulence and turmoil. They find expression in a variety of popular movements focused on particular issues, for the most part spontaneous and lacking formal organizations but all having broken out of the conventional framework of modern politics. The bankruptcy of modern politics is equally plain; it is writ large in the crisis of global economy, world-wide stagflation, low growth rate even in ‘advanced’ capitalist countries which swear by growth rate, rising unemployment everywhere, fast growing disparity between the North and the South and between the rich and the poor in both North and South, and the resource crunch which has propelled militarization and arms race to the point where the survival of the human race is at stake. That the straining at the leash should be the hardest at the periphery of periphery is not surprising; for it is there that the combined structural weight of inequity, injustice, exploitation, oppression and social terror bears most heavily; but popular movements have sprouted also in societies of the centre. The case study of one particular Third World country presented here is only illustrative. The paper examines a number of grass roots movements, classifies them by the issues they agitate and by the forms agitations take and speculates about how far, with their growing awareness of the vertical links between the structure at the micro level and macro level, and under what conditions, they may be said to be moving towards laying the foundations of new politics.

Cyclone Mitigation, Resource Allocation and Post‐disaster Reconstruction in South India: Lessons from Two Decades of Research

“…Many social scientists and economists recognise that poverty is caused by forces governing access to and distribution of resources, enshrined in power relationships (Mitra, 1977;Lipton, 1977;Chambers et al, 1981) which the poor are unable to alter (Chambers, 1982(Chambers, , 1983(Chambers, , 1988. Some Indian NGOs in the early 1980s promoted social activism and civil rights as an alternative to providing economic resources (Kothari, 1983;Sheth, 1983Sheth, , 1987Lewis, 1991) but most NGOs kept away from overtly political issues and concentrated on social welfare, health-care and the provision of cheap credit (Hashemi et al, 1991;Black, 1992;Hulme and Montgomery, 1994;Lipton, 1996;Yunus, 1998). One prominent NGO (Action India) after 10 years' work concluded that the most useful activity for an NGO to engage in was to organise the poor to get government resources themselves instead of the NGO providing them (Lewis, 1991).…”

On the crisis of political institutions in India

“…It has been forcefully argued by some (Kothari 1970;Nandy 1980;Sheth 1982) that a crucial feature of traditional Indian society was its ability to marginalise the political order. It developed a complex determination of its structure such that the logic of political change remained isolated from the logic of social order.…”

“…Secondly, the relation between the Congress as the central party and the political world around it went through a dramatic transformation-reflected in its disastrous electoral performance in 1967. Finally, it soon faced a crisis of legitimacy (Sheth 1982).22 In combination, these led to a reversal of the most fundamental relation in Indian politics; between the state, on the one side, and the social structure and structures of traditional ideology, on the other. The state lost its superordinant position between the two instances of the social totality; and the relationships which constituted the 'historic bloc' were renegotiated.…”

“…Recently, political observers have persistently reported two kinds of developments. First, there is a growth, in my view somewhat overestimated, of grassroots movements whcih seek 'non-state' solutions to political questions (Sheth 1982(Sheth , 1984Kothari 1984a).27 This, in itself, is fraught with potential dangers. For problems which are of local origins are not necessarily of localisable consequences.…”

“…For three recent accounts of these, seeSheth (1982),Manor (1983) andKothari (1984b).25 The Ulysses myth brings out clearly the preconditions of a precommitment strategy: a fair knowledge about what might come, which is based on a knowledge of the self, and of adversaries and environment(Elster 1978).at University of British Columbia Library on July 10, 2015 cis.sagepub.com Downloaded from…”