Politics of Governance: A Study of Gujarat

Abstract

This article is a study of political economy of Gujarat in the context of the issues pertaining to ‘good governance’. The article reviews Gujarat’s socio-economic development with respect to key indicators of environment, health, education and welfare programmes. It presents an argument that overall economic growth alone is not the adequate criterion for assessing good governance. Rather, broader issues of human development, reach and depth of welfare programmes and the approach informing the economic policy constitute the core bases for the assessment of a state’s claims to good governance. Gujarat, one of the states of the Indian union, is seen as a developed state that has made considerable progress in more recent times in the direction of good governance. This article seeks to critically examine this impression.

The funeralesque as the experience of workers at the margins of international business

“…It is interesting to note the implications of the alliances that international capital forges with the state – it is, indeed, these alliances which enable international businesses to structure marginality, as international financial institutions are often complicit with the mechanisms of corruption within nations that reproduce accumulation by dispossession (Rocha et al , 2011, p. 161). The same forces of international business rooted for Narendra Modi to become the Prime Minister of India, as they believed that he would help in accelerating neoliberal reforms and provide decisive leadership in deregulating and privatising the state, even as several issues of environment, health, education and welfare could remain unaddressed (Shah, 2013). Again, it is the promise of dismantling organisational capacities that is fuelling the leadership fiefdoms of Narendra Modi, and it was through a systematic dismantling of the organisational capacities of the police that riots against Muslims were facilitated in Gujarat in 2002 (Dhattiwala and Biggs, 2012).…”