Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T09:56:32.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Pursuit of Social Welfare

Citizen Claim-Making in Rural India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2017

Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner
Get access

Extract

Who makes claims on the state for social welfare, and how and why do they do so? This article examines these dynamics in the rural Indian context, observing that citizens living in the same local communities differ dramatically in their approaches to the state. The author develops a theory to explain these varied patterns of action and inaction, arguing that citizen claim-making is best understood as a product of exposure to people and places beyond the immediate community and locality. This social and spatial exposure builds citizens’ encounters with, knowledge of, and linkages to the state. This in turn develops their aspirations toward the state and their capabilities for state-targeted action. The author tests the theory in rural Rajasthan, drawing on a combination of original survey data and qualitative interviews. She finds that those who traverse boundaries of caste, neighborhood, and village are more likely to make claims on the state, and that they do so through broader repertoires of action than those who are more constrained by the same boundaries. The article concludes by considering the extensions and limitations of the theory and the role of the state itself in establishing the terrain for citizen action.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 122 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahuja, Amit, and Chhibber, Pradeep. 2012. “Why the Poor Vote in India: ‘If I Don't Vote, I Am Dead to the State.’” Studies in Comparative International Development 47, no. 4: 389–410. doi: 10.1007/s12116-012-9115-6.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 2004. “The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition.” In Rao, Vijaydendra and Walton, Michael, eds., Culture and Public Action. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press: 59–84.Google Scholar
Banerjee, Abhijit. 2004. “Who Is Getting the Public Goods in India? Some Evidence and Some Speculation.” In Basu, Kaushik, ed., India's Emerging Economy: Performance and Prospects in the 1990s and Beyond. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bénit-Gbaffou, Claire Oldfield, and Oldfield, Sophie. 2011. “Accessing the State: Everyday Practices and Politics in Cities of the South.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 46, no. 5: 445–52. doi:10.1177/0021909611403703.Google Scholar
Besley, Timothy, Pande, Rohini, Rahman, Lupin, and Rao, Vijayendra. 2004. “The Politics of Public Good Provision: Evidence from Indian Local Governments.” Journal of the European Economic Association 2, no. 2–3: 416–26. doi: 10.1162/154247604323068104.Google Scholar
Béteille, André. 2011. “Caste and the Citizen.” Science and Culture 77, no. 3–4: 83–90. At http://scienceandculture-isna.org/mar_apr_11/01%20Andre%20Beteille.pdf.Google Scholar
Brulé, Rachel. 2016. “Accountability in Rural India: Local Government and Social Equality.” Asian Survey 55, no. 5: 909–41. doi: 10.1525/as.2015.55.5.909.Google Scholar
Burns, Nancy, Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and Verba, Sidney. 2001. The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bussell, Jennifer. 2015. Clients or Constituents? Citizens, Intermediaries, and Distributive Politics in India. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Chandra, Kanchan. 2004. Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chattopadhyay, Raghabendra, and Duflo, Esther. 2004. “Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India.” Econometrica 72, no. 5: 1409–43. doi: 10.1162/154247604323068104.Google Scholar
Chauchard, Simon. 2017. Why Representation Matters: The Meaning of Ethnic Quotas in Rural India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep K. 1999. Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Chhibber, Pradeep K. 2002. “Why Are Some Women Politically Active? The Household, Public Space, and Political Participation in India.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 43, no. 3–5: 409–29. doi: 10.1177/002071520204300310.Google Scholar
Corbridge, Stuart, Williams, Glyn, Srivastava, Manoj, and Véron, René. 2005. Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Deshpande, Ashwini. 2011. The Grammar of Caste: Economic Discrimination in Contemporary India. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Drèze, Jean, and Sen, Amartya. 2002. India: Development and Participation. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Drèze, Jean, and Sen, Amartya. 2013. An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Dunning, Thad, and Nilekani, Janhavi. 2013. “Ethnic Quotas and Political Mobilization: Caste, Parties, and Distribution in Indian Village Councils.” American Political Science Review 107, no. 1: 35–56. doi: 10.1017/S0003055412000573.Google Scholar
Fernandes, Leela, and Heller, Patrick. 2006. “Hegemonic Aspirations: New Middle Class Politics and India's Democracy in Comparative Perspective.”Critical Asian Studies 38, no. 4: 495–522. doi: 10.1080/14672710601073028.Google Scholar
Gang, Ira N., Sen, Kunal, and Yun, Myeong-Su. 2017. “Is Caste Destiny? Occupational Diversification among Dalits in Rural India.” European Journal of Development Research 29, no. 2: 476–92. doi: 10.1057/s41287-016-0011-1.Google Scholar
Gaventa, John. 1980. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gidwani, Vinay, and Sivaramakrishnan, K.. 2003. “Circular Migration and Rural Cosmopolitanism in India.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 37, no. 1–2: 339–67. doi: 10.1177/006996670303700114.Google Scholar
Government of Rajasthan. 2016. Rajasthan Economic Review 2015–16. Jaipur, India: Directorate of Economics and Statistics.Google Scholar
Granovetter, Mark. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties.” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6: 1360–80. doi: 10.1086/225469.Google Scholar
Gupta, Akhil. 2012. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hardgrave, Robert L., and Kochanek, Stanley A.. 2008. India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation. Belmont, Calif.: Thomson Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Harriss, J. 2005. “Political Participation, Representation and the Urban Poor: Findings from Research in Delhi.” Economic and Political Weekly 40, no. 11: 1041–54. At http://www.jstor.org/stable/4416334.Google Scholar
Heller, Patrick. 2001. “Moving the State: The Politics of Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre.” Politics and Society 29, no. 1: 131–63. doi: 10.1177/0032329201029001006.Google Scholar
Heller, Patrick. 2009. “Democratic Deepening in India and South Africa.” Journal of Asian and African Studies 44, no. 1: 123–49. doi: 10.1177/0021909608098679.Google Scholar
Heller, Patrick. 2013. Challenges and Opportunities: Civil Society in a Globalizing World. New York, N.Y.: United Nations Development Programme.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Houtzager, Peter P., and Acharya, Arnab K.. 2011. “Associations, Active Citizenship, and the Quality of Democracy in Brazil and Mexico.” Theory and Society 40, no. 1: 1–36. doi: 10.1007/s11186-010-9128-y.Google Scholar
Isaac, Jeffrey C. 2011. “Boundaries.” Perspectives on Politics 9, no. 4: 779–82. doi: 10.1017/S1537592711004051.Google Scholar
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1998. “The Bahujan Samaj Party in North India: No Longer Just a Dalit Party?” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 18, no. 1: 35–51. doi: 10.1215/1089201X-18-1-35.Google Scholar
Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2003. India's Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Jayal, Niraja Gopal. 2013. Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jayaraman, Rajshri, and Lanjouw, Peter. 1999. “The Evolution of Poverty and Inequality in Indian Villages.” World Bank Research Observer 14, no. 1: 1–30. At http://www.jstor.org/stable/3986536.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Rob, and Manor, James. 2017. Politics and the Right to Work: India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Joshi, Hemlatta. 2008. Human Development Index Rajasthan: Spatio-Temporal and Gender Appraisal at Panchayat Samiti/Block Level, 1991–2001. Delhi, India: Concept Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Joshi, Shareen, Kochhar, Nishtha, and Rao, Vijayendra. n.d. “Does Caste Still Matter? Empowerment and Inequality in Three States of India.” Manuscript.Google Scholar
Kapur, Devesh, Shyam Babu, D., and Prasad, Chandra Bhan. 2014. Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs. New Delhi, India: Random House India.Google Scholar
Kapur, Devesh, Mukhopadhyay, Partha, and Subramanian, Arvind. 2008. “The Case for Direct Cash Transfers to the Poor.” Economic and Political Weekly, 43, no. 15: 37–43. At http://www.jstor.org/stable/40277336.Google Scholar
Kapur, Devesh, Prasad, Chandra Bhan, Pritchett, Lant, and Shyam Babu, D.. 2010. “Rethinking Inequality: Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in the Market Reform Era.” Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 35: 39–49. At http://www.jstor.org/stable/25742020.Google Scholar
Kapur, Devesh, and Witsoe, Jeffrey. 2011. “Spatial Mobility and Political Change in India: A Case Study of Migration from Rural Bihar.” Manuscript. Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Kitschelt, Herbert. 2000. “Linkages between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities.” Comparative Political Studies 33, no. 6–7: 845–79. doi: 10.1177/001041400003300607.Google Scholar
Krishna, Anirudh. 2002. Active Social Capital: Tracing the Roots of Development and Democracy. New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Krishna, Anirudh. 2003. “What Is Happening to Caste? A View from Some North Indian Villages.” Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 4: 1171–93. doi: 10.2307/3591763.Google Scholar
Krishna, Anirudh. 2011. “Gaining Access to Public Services and the Democratic State in India: Institutions in the Middle. Studies in Comparative International Development 46, no. 1: 98–117. doi: 10.1007/s12116-010-9080-x.Google Scholar
Kruks-Wisner, Gabrielle. 2017a. “Replication Data for: “The Pursuit of Social Welfare: Citizen Claim-Making in Rural India.” Harvard Dataverse, V1. doi: 10.7910/DVN/VL6E3Q.Google Scholar
Kruks-Wisner, Gabrielle. 2017b. Supplementary material for “The Pursuit of Social Welfare: Citizen Claim-Making in Rural India.” At https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887117000193.Google Scholar
Kruks-Wisner, Gabrielle. Forthcoming. Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lanjouw, Peter, and Stern, Nicholas, eds. 1998. Economic Development in Palanpur over Five Decades. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lerner, Daniel. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. New York, N.Y.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1959. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy.” American Political Science Review 53, no. 1: 69–105. doi: 10.2307/1951731.Google Scholar
MacLean, Lauren M. 2011. “State Retrenchment and the Exercise of Citizenship in Africa.” Comparative Political Studies 44, no. 9: 1238–66. doi: 10.1177/0010414010374704.Google Scholar
Manor, James. 2000. “Small-Time Political Fixers in India's States: Towel over Armpit.” Asian Survey 40, no. 5: 816–35. doi: 10.2307/3021178.Google Scholar
Mathew, George. 1994. Panchayati Raj: From Legislation to Movement. Delhi, India: Concept Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Milbrath, Lester W., and Lal Goel, M.. 1977. Political Participation: How and Why Do People Get Involved in Politics? Chicago, Ill.: Rand McNally & Co.Google Scholar
Moore, Barrington. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Nayar, Baldev Raj. 2009. The Myth of the Shrinking State: Globalization and the State in India. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Oldenburg, Philip. 1987. “Middlemen in Third-World Corruption: Implications of an Indian Case.” World Politics 39, no. 4 (July): 508–35. doi: 10.2307/2010290.Google Scholar
Pande, Rohini. 2015. “In Indian Villages, the Power of a Powerful Woman.” New York Times. January 14.Google Scholar
Przeworski, Adam, and Limongi, Fernando. 1997. “Modernization: Theories and Facts.” World Politics 49, no. 2 (January): 155–83. doi: 10.1353/wp.1997.0004.Google Scholar
Ramachandran, V. K. 1991. Wage Labour and Unfreedom in Agriculture: An Indian Case Study. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Rao, Vijayendra, and Sanyal, Paromita. 2010. “Dignity through Discourse: Poverty and the Culture of Deliberation in Indian Village Democracies.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 629, no. 1: 146–72. doi: 10.1177/0002716209357402.Google Scholar
Sanyal, Paromita. 2014. Credit to Capabilities: A Sociological Study of Microcredit Groups in India. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sen, Amartya. 1990. “Development as Capability Expansion.” In Griffin, K. and Knight, J., eds., Human Development and the International Development Strategy for the 1990s. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sheth, D. L. 1999. “Secularisation of Caste and Making of New Middle Class.” Economic and Political Weekly 34, no. 34/35: 2502–10. At http://www.jstor.org/stable/4408346.Google Scholar
Singer, Wendy. 2007. ‘A Constituency Suitable for Ladies’ and Other Social Histories of Indian Elections. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Prerna. 2015. How Solidarity Works for Welfare: Subnationalism and Social Development in India. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Singh, Swati, and Cready, Cynthia. 2015. “Microloans and Women's Freedom of Physical Mobility: Evidence from India.” Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 14, no. 3: 333–55. doi: 10.1163/15691497-12341349.Google Scholar
Stokes, Susan C., Dunning, Thad, Nazareno, Marcelo, and Brusco, Valeria. 2013. Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sukhtankar, Sandip. 2017. “India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: What Do We Really Know about the World's Largest Workfare Program?” Brookings-NCAER India Policy Forum 13: 238–86.Google Scholar
Suryanarayana, M. H., Agrawal, Ankush, and Seeta Prabhu, K.. 2011. Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index for India's States. New Delhi, India: United Nations Development Programme.Google Scholar
Thachil, Tariq. 2014. Elite Parties, Poor Voters: How Social Services Win Votes in India. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles. 1999. “Conclusion: Why Worry about Citizenship?” In Hanagan, Michael and Tilly, Charles, eds., Extending Citizenship, Reconfiguring States. New York, N.Y.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney, Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and Brady, Henry E.. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ziegfeld, Adam. 2016. Why Regional Parties? Clientelism, Elites, and the Indian Party System. New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Kruks-Wisner supplementary material

Kruks-Wisner supplementary material 1

Download Kruks-Wisner supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.1 MB
Supplementary material: File

Kruks-Wisner supplementary material

Kruks-Wisner supplementary material 2

Download Kruks-Wisner supplementary material(File)
File 17.7 KB