Appendix 2 - Relations between the developmental State and the intermediate classes

Summary

In a study of development discourse, Sudipta Kaviraj argued that policy is transformed in implementation ‘beyond all recognition’ (1988, p. 2440). This does not mean we cannot recognise patterns in the means and mechanisms by which those denoted as victims in the ‘grand discourse’ of development have become material beneficiaries and vice versa. The process of transformation in implementation is partly generated within the State. It operates at three levels. Within the central State, although the developmental bureaucracy is more shielded from political pressure, there is interdepartmental or ministerial competition over goals and resources. There, the multiplicity of levels of decision-making can check, distort or ignore the implementation of policy. State bureaucracies are more vulnerable to politicisation and state administrations may add to the entropy in policy implementation by ‘horizontal’ turf wars between departments. Geographical, political and socioeconomic distance also creates entropy (Landy 1998; Banik 1999).

In this appendix we note the transformations that are due to the interaction between the State and society. Unless these transformations are unravelled and exposed, there is no non-Utopian basis upon which to develop reforms. We list them from the perspective of state procedure (1 to 5) and progress to implementation by the State (6 to 14) and then to types of seizure, sabotage and other responses (14 to 19). We have 20 twenty kinds of pattern (of different analytical ‘status’), but no doubt there are more.