6 - Electoral Competition and the Expansion of Social Policy to Rural Areas

Summary

Under Nehru, there had been no attempt to introduce publicly financed social policies for the rural poor. Instead, social policy focused on activating a ‘duty to work’, while the absence of a model of labour-intensive industrialisation ensured there was no mass movement from rural areas into urban employment. The green revolution in the mid 1960s initiated a new form of agrarian capitalism but also drove rising inequality and endemic unemployment. This created pressure for new social policies to address rural poverty and support rural consumption. The erosion of patron-client relations in rural areas intensified competition for the votes of the rural poor as the Congress Party’s dominant position came under serious pressure for the first time. It was the emergence of stronger multi-level, or Centre-State, electoral competition that provided the political impetus to expand social policy into rural areas as political parties competed for the votes of the rural poor, without alienating agrarian producers. The chapter explains why employment on rural public works became the dominant approach to social security in this context.