There are so many articles out in the cloud today that gives meaningful clues of issues related to the mixed-up state between the civic players and the politics. The essay touches on the question about how political nature of India influences the relations between social classes and economy in the country.
India’s political system was mainly centralized, which means that power was highly concentrated in the hands of a few men from elite classes. As a result, there was now a hierarchical structure of administration in place, where decisions were frequently imposed on local entities without consideration for their wishes and objectives. The dissociation of ideas between the governing society and the citizens leads to a lack of trust in institutions. The dominant impact of the political culture in this situation is that only individuals at the pinnacle of the political hierarchy have access to resources and opportunities. Class and caste hold significant social and economic importance in India. Despite this, lower classes continue to encounter barriers in achieving their desired destiny. The political class which was in power in the past for too many years did not move towards taking the necessary actions to solve the problems, which in its turn led to the grow of inequality and tension in the society.
Therefore, this sort of power concentration was also responsible for the glossing-over of local disparities, thus generating unbalanced development in the different parts of the country. On the one hand, the economic development and urbanization of regions like Bangalore have witnessed a tremendous growth; on the other hand, some regions like a big central city could give rise to poverty and lagging behind. This has generated the condition where few sectors of society gained the great opportunity to be prosperous because of India’s progress while the others remain behind.
Also, another consequence of India’s political nature is the pervasiveness of corruption and clientelism. There has been collusion as a result of politicians, bureaucrats and business men and women that has in return made it easier for only the interest of certain groups to be served. This has ended up compromising the rule of law and the continued practice of crony capitalism. Therefore, this led to the eroded trust of the institutions, creating an environment where personal connections and favors matters more than meritocracy and fair competition.
Subsidies and populist policies have grown fundamental to Indian politics as another manifestation of the economic and political interaction. The populist measures which include hand-outs like loan waivers, free electricity, and so on, can temporarily ease matters but pose greater problems for the future as well as distort the market mechanism. These policies have indeed played an important role in fiscal stress and financing ineffectiveness, driving the respective economy away from sustainable development.
The impression that politics plays the reason for the country’s economic situation can be seen in the way the power group groups bring about policy decisions. Giants of industry and elite individuals largely dictate political phenomenon that is not always good for small and medium enterprises, agrarians. As a result, the plan led to measures for business at a large scale (tax reduction, land acquisition, and the easing of labor rules) that mostly assisted the large corporations, thus making the income gap even bigger and reinforcing the present power structures.
In nutshell, the political tendency which prevailed in India manifested itself by matrix where the society and economy were involved. Currently, the hegemony of a centralized government besides the factual standards like caste and classes, regional disjointedness, corruption influence, populist policies, and corporate intervention all sum up to create a robust web of issues that the civil society actors have to deal with. To tackle these predicaments, it is pertinent that the administration develops clear policies directed towards major and minors through better governance which will lead to the needs of the citizen’s evaluation. Envisaging such holistic model, India can find a road towards more equitable and sustainable development while also promoting social justice.
About the Author
Srinath Venkatesan,
Chennai Localite
