“Help the Plan—Help Yourself”: Making Indians Plan-Conscious

Menon, Nikhil

doi:10.5040/9781350038660.ch-013

Cited by 22 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…With scarce resources at its disposal and limited capacity, however, the government also started to transfer the responsibility for achieving the common good to its citizens. Thus, the state sought to make Indians, as Nikhil Menon shows, “plan‐conscious” and active participants in its execution (Menon, 2018, p. 222). The government's strategy of motivating citizens' self‐help, or their call, as Srirupa Roy suggests, “for people to ‘help the state’” manifested across various fields of state building and governance (Roy, 2007, p. 110).…”

Section: Part Ii: Democratic Politics and Its Limitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

India's democracy before the democratic discontent, 1940s–1970s

Shani

2022

History Compass

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The last decade and a half saw what we can call a historical turn in the study of India's democracy. By drawing on some of these new works and on archival materials, this article offers a new way of thinking about the rooting and workings of democracy in India and its endurance. The article explores how India and Indians produced a concrete and convincing notion of a shared functioning purpose, a common good, for their deeply plural society, while allowing a meaningful space for the conflicts and inherent contradictions that underlay their democracy. I suggest that the persistence of these conflicts was important for the resilience of India's democracy. I examine three interrelated processes that with independence contributed to this outcome: the nature of the constitution and its making; the first election and the preparation for them between 1947 and 1952; and the articulation of the principle of state resource distribution and its development projects. The conclusion reflects on the significance of the historical turn to our understanding of post-independence India.

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Section: Part Ii: Democratic Politics and Its Limitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

India's democracy before the democratic discontent, 1940s–1970s

Shani

2022

History Compass

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“…From its inception, the postcolonial state was focused on surveying, controlling, and mass‐producing domestic sources of energy, particularly coal and hydropower, in order to fuel the new industries of India's import substitution industrialization program. India's adoption of a “mixed economy” model based on state‐led economic planning has been the subject of a rich body of research focused on the significance of planning to the political legitimacy of the postcolonial ruling class (Chatterjee, 1998; Menon, 2018; Roy, 2007). What remains less clear in these studies is exactly what factors, aside from entrenched ideology, compelled Indian technocrats to assign the state such an interventionist role.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%