Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope

by M. Rajshekhar

The story of democratic failure is usually read at the level of the nation, while the primary bulwarks of democratic functioning—the states—get overlooked. This is a tale of India’s states, of why they build schools but do not staff them with teachers; favour a handful of companies so much that others slip into losses; wage water wars with their neighbours while allowing rampant sand mining and groundwater extraction; harness citizens’ right to vote but brutally crack down on their right to dissent. Reporting from six states over thirty-three months, award-winning investigative journalist M. Rajshekhar delivers a necessary account of a deep crisis that has gone largely unexamined.

Genres: India, Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Indian Literature, Journalism, Ebooks

300 pages, Paperback

Published January 18, 2021

Reviews

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the State is part of and extends the grammar of a genre of writing that has emerged this past decade: reportage which combines fieldwork, research and argument, and transforms into an extended essay. Each individual story in this book—say, on sand mining in Tamil Nadu or arsenic poisoning in Bihar or, what appears to be a bit of whimsy, the popularity of Korean soaps in Mizoram—constitutes an individual narrative moment. This moment opens back in time as well as tips into the present, connecting to other social, political and economic events and developments as these have unfolded within a particular geography and history. Meanwhile, Rajshekhar offers his gloss on the moment, citing ideas and concepts drawn from studies in political economy, finance, sociology, environment and literature. The result: a generous and thoughtful reading experience. Rich detail sits easily with provocative ideas, and description is stirred into argument.

So writes V. Geetha in the afterword to this brilliant book by M. Rajshekhar - and I agree wholeheartedly. This story of a veteran reporter's journey through six states (plus a brief detour into a seventh) tells us how India has failed as a democracy. But it's not just reportage; the author analyses each of the problems he reports on, and provokes us into thinking.

The six states he reports on in detail - Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Gujarat - are all different from one another but share one common trait: they have failed as democratic states. Mizoram, an impoverished hill state whose traditional culture is all but destroyed and which is dependent upon the centre's handouts for paying salaries even; Odisha, a state rich in mineral resources which wasted them through improper management by a state with a feudal mindset; Punjab, a state rich in agriculture run as a private fiefdom by a family; Tamil Nadu, once a model state which was successful in destroying caste inequities to a certain extent, but now mired in leadership cults and populism; Bihar, a state where governance is practically absent; and Gujarat, the "model" state as touted by Prime Minister Modi, but a state which is actually run on the lines of merciless majoritarianism. (There is also an epilogue on the seventh state Manipur, permanently under occupation by the Indian Armed Forces who do what they want under the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act [AFSPA]).

Is there a common cause for this failure? Once we dig deep, we find that there is - the abdication of the state from its responsibility of governing. The state just becomes an arm of vested interests (whether it be religion, family, feudal landlords or corporate entities), serviced through political parties which have become institutions by themselves.

I slowly started to see political parties not as emissaries of regional, religious or caste-class interests but as self-interested institutions that sourced electoral power from their constituencies. In state after state, political parties seemed to share four traits: they were extractive, dominant, centralised and clientelist.

Being extractive means diverting wealth from the larger society to benefit themselves; being dominant means seeking to ascertain their absolute dominance wherever they had control; being centralised means real power being concentrated in the hands of very few people; and being clientelist means doling out benefits to supporters in exchange for votes. (Though Rajshekhar does not say it, I feel that our political parties are like the street toughs shown in Indian movies who extract protection money from roadside vendors!)

How do they manage to do this and retain legitimacy? Rajshekhar has an answer for that.

And so, moving from state to state, I saw five ways in which parties tried to retain legitimacy—denial, diversion, cultism, elections and endorsements.

1. Denial means the manipulation of data to hide problems - this was painfully evident during the second wave of corona when states massively undercounted deaths and corpses were dumped into rivers.

2. Diversion happens in two ways: political parties blame others for any crisis; or distract people a with a new crisis which they can pretend to address. (This is why everything is Nehru's fault nowadays in India, and there are so many "jihads" popping up!)

3. Cultism is when political parties idealise their leader and describe them in heroic and worshipful terms. This image, inevitably exaggerated, is projected through a party’s communications. (Lately, we have come to a stage where we have even temples built to Modi and Sonia Gandhi!)

4. Elections are what our parties are built for! All their energies are spent on it, so nothing is left for governing.

5. Political parties gain legitimacy through endorsements from media, the judiciary and religious leaders. Of late, this has become sickening with a section of media working as propaganda centres for the ruling party, and charlatans like the so-called Sadhguru giving opinion on government policies and even attending rocket launches.

Rajshekhar says:

Each of these responses compounds India’s problems. Data fudging blinds us to reality. Diversion deepens fissures in the country and pushes us closer to communal, caste and ethnic conflagrations. Cultism accentuates political centralisation, weakens party democracy and sets the stage for demagogues to come to power.

Seeking legitimacy from elections not only keeps parties in constant campaign mode but also reinforces the short-term bias built into democratic politics in which politicians are always under pressure to show quick results. This, coupled with weakening State capacity, pushes politicians towards populist schemes that do not demand a lot from the State.

Growing links between politicians and religious bodies create their own problems. As the illegalities of the self-proclaimed godpersons grew, politicians helped ward off serious crime investigations against these religious leaders. Similarly, when the media starts legitimising the government, not only does its watchdog function take a pounding, but also consensual reality suffers. People, increasingly unsure what to believe in, replace understanding with blind trust in the leader.

The frightening thing, the author says, is that people have normalised this condition. Protests happen only when things become unbearable. Otherwise, the populace accepts this as their lot in life and go ahead with their lives.

Coups are not the only threat to democracy. They can wither away from within in so many ways.

First came the belated realisation that coups are not the only threat to a democracy. The world also has, as the political scientist Nancy Bermeo says in Runciman’s book, ‘executive coups’, when those in power suspend democratic institutions; ‘election-day vote fraud’, when the electoral process is fixed to produce a particular result; ‘promissory coups’, when democracy is taken over by people who then hold elections to legitimise their rule; ‘executive aggrandisement’, when those already in power chip away at democratic institutions without overturning them; and ‘strategic election manipulation’, when elections fall short of being free and fair, but also stay shy of being stolen outright.

...What India has experienced under Modi is executive aggrandisement.

Yes. Every day, our constitutional rights are being taken away slowly, democratic institutions like central agencies and the judiciary are subverted, and a narrative is built wherein democracy is identified with a 'benevolent dictatorship'. In fact, as in Russia and Turkey, the land we stand on is slowly being washed away by the rising waters of authoritarianism.

Can we stem the rot? The author does not seem confident, and I don't blame him. The current erosion of democracy we face has its roots the way our country has been governed ever since it got independence in 1947. The cancer was growing inside all the time; it has become visible only now.

Yet, as V. Geetha ends her afterword:

Despite the State, the people are.

The people survive. They will forgive the wiping out of their bank balances through an ill-conceived demonetisation exercise; they will suffer silently the destruction of their livelihood through the shoddy implementation of the GST regime; they will endure uncomplainingly the unbearable treks through inhospitable landscapes because of a lightning nation-wide lockdown. They have given up on the state, seemingly.

But a nagging question remains: how long before the worm turns?

[E.T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 Indian (TV) news media is derogatorily referred to by non-BJP / left-liberals as "Godi Media". The intended meaning is that they are pets of the PM Modi. Personally, I think most of the media (including the "non-Godi" wale) is just lazy and ideological. And so we have a lot of "gyaanis" offering opinions which is mostly predictable based on their ideology. And good reports from the ground are scarce.
Or consider the various reports indicting India for its falling standards of democracy and press freedom. Again the political opposition and the "left-liberals" lay the entire blame on the Modi Govt. Meanwhile the state govts of India keep getting increasingly authoritarian and intolerant of dissent.
So, a non-partisan book like this, containing ground reports from 7 states including the North-East is rare. So, for the first time, I read a report on Mizoram and the dire financial straits of its state govt. While I have read on Bihar and Manipur, the author examines the supposedly well-governed/well-off states like Punjab, Odisha, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu in some detail. Usually these states govts escape scrutiny.
I was reminded a bit of the excellent and under-appreciated The Absent State: Insurgency as an Excuse for Misgovernance which I read a decade or so earlier. I hope more such books keep coming out and we finally learn to look at the deep systemic rot across party lines.

[Vaidya · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much needed book in current times. It reminded me of Sainath's Everybody loves a good drought, mainly for its take on how everything is a result of a process and not events happening by themselves.

Travelling across 6 states Rajshekhar chronicles how badly the states have been letting people down in various but eventually similar ways. Again these are long drawn out processes that influence the dysfunction on the ground.

It is hard not to despair about how we are squandering whatever advantage we had or worked to over the decades.
A must-read.

[Chandar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding! Journalism that goes beyond mere reportage, analysing and tracing the fault lines in our deeply flawed democracy. As India gets panned for slipping in its 'democracy quotient', Rajshekhar's book shows us how India has been a failing state for quite a while now. A must-read for anybody who values democracy in India.

[Gowtham · Rating 4 out of 5]

BOOK REVIEW

சில புத்தகங்கள் நாம் கட்டமைத்து வைத்திருக்கும் முன்முடிவுகளை அடித்து நொறுக்கும் அப்படிப்பட்ட நூல் தான் “Despite the state”, இதெல்லாம் ஒரு பிரச்சனையா என்று சுலபமாக கடக்கும் விசயங்கள் ஒரு மாநிலத்தின் தலையெழுத்தை மாற்றியமைக்கும் வல்லமை படைத்தவை. இதற்கு முன் இது போன்ற உணர்வை P.sainath எழுதிய “Everybody loves a good drought”, Josy joseph எழுதிய “A Feast of vultures”, Arundathi roy எழுதிய “capitalism- A ghost story” போன்ற புத்தகங்கள் ஆழமாக எடுத்துரைத்தன. இத்தகைய புத்தகங்கள் அரசின் தவறுகளை வெளிச்சம்போட்டு காட்டினாலும்,அரசாங்கம் இதற்கான தீர்வுகளை முன்னெடுக்கிறார்களா என்பது கேள்விக்குறி தான்.

ஒரு ஜனநாயக அரசின் கடமை என்பது தனது குடிகளை ஏற்றத்தாழ்வுகள் இன்றி நீதியின் பால் வழிநடத்தி பண்பட்ட சமூகமாக வளர்த்தெடுப்பது தான், ஆனால் நடைமுறை தலைகீழாக உள்ளது.

புத்தகம் 7 மாநிலங்களின் அரசு எந்திரத்தை பற்றி ஆழமாக பேசுகிறது, அந்தந்த மாநிலங்களின் வரலாறோடு அரசின் நடவடிக்கைகளை பிணைத்து சீரிய ஆய்வுகளுக்கு பிறகு எழுதப்பட்ட நூல் என்பது வாசிக்கும் போது தெரிகிறது. நூல் ஆசிரியருக்கு வாழ்த்துகளும் அன்பும்.

Mizoram, Odisha, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Gujarat, Manipur ஆகிய 7 மாநிலங்களின் உண்மை முகத்தை வெளிக்கொணர்ந்துள்ளது.

பிற மாநிலங்களுடன் ஒப்பிடும்ப���து தமிழகத்தின் நிலை பரவாயில்லை என்ற போதிலும், மாநிலத்தின் எதிர்காலம் பற்றிய அச்சத்தை அதிகமாக்குகிறது. ஒரு காலத்தில் மக்கள் நல திட்டங���களை செயல்படுத்தி வந்த கட்சிகள், பின்னாளில் வாக்குவங்கிக்காக நீண்ட நாள் திட்டங்களை கண்டுகொள்ளாமல், தேர்தல் வந்தால் மட்டும் வெளியிடப்படும் கவர்ச்சி அறிவிப்புகள் தமிழகத்தின் சாபக்கேடு தான். அதிலும் ஜெயலலிதா தலைமையிலான அதிமுக அரசின் நிர்வாக திறன் அனைத்தும் ஒரு தனி மனிதரின் பிம்பத்தை கட்டமைக்க பயன்பட்டது என்பதை படிக்கும் போது மனம் பதபதைக்கிறது. அரசாங்க அதிகாரிகளும் திட்டத்தை செயல்படுத்தவதை காட்டிலும் அந்த பிம்பத்தை கட்டமைப்பதில் மும்முரம் காட்டியதும், அதற்காக அவர்கள் செய்த தகவல் குளறுபிடிகள் எல்லாம் கொடுமையிலும் கொடுமை. தமிழகத்தில் சாதிய வேறுபாடுகள் கூர்தீட்டப்பட்டதும்,அதற்கான சமூக காரணிகளையும் விரிவாக எழுதியுள்ளார். மேலும் கனிமவள, மணல் கொள்ளை அதில் அரசியல் கட்சிகளின் பங்கு என மற்றுமொரு ஆய்வு விவரிக்கிறது.

தமிழகத்தின் நிலைமை இவ்வாறென்றால். பீகார், மிசோரம் போன்ற மாநிலங்களில், போதிய அளவில் மருத்துவர்கள் இல்லா மருத்துவமனைகளும், ஆசிரியர்கள் இல்லா பள்ளிக்கூடங்களும், சாலைகள் இல்லா கிராமங்கள் என மோசமான நிலையில் தான் மக்கள் அன்றாட வாழ்க்கையை கழித்து வருகிறார்கள்.

குஜராத் மாடல், மோடியின் வெற்று பிம்பத்தை ஊதி பெருக்கவும், வெகு சில முதலாளிகளுக்கு நன்மை செய்ததே ஒழிய, அங்குள்ள சிறு குறு நிறுவனங்கள் எல்லாம் GSTக்கு பிறகும் பணமதிப்பிளப்பிற்கு பிறகும் நிர்கதியாக விடப்பட்டன என்பது தான் உண்மை. குஜராத் கலவரம் அங்குள்ள மக்களிடையே மிக பெரிய அளவில் பேதத்தை விதைத்து சென்றது. அதையும் தாண்டி சிறுபான்மையினரை விரோதிகளாகவும், எதிரிகளாகவும் கட்டமைத்து அதன் பலனை பாஜக அரசு அறுவடையும் செய்தது. அதே பாணியை இந்தியா முழுக்க செயல்படுத்த தொடங்கியுள்ளது இந்த பாஜக அரசு. மேலும் பாஜக ஜனநாயகத்திற்க்கே உலை வைக்கும் நடவடிக்கைகளில் ஈடுபட்டு வருகிறது. முடிவுரையில் நூல் ஆசிரியர் “The battle with the congress is to deepen democracy. The battle with BJP is to protect democracy.” என்பார்.

பின்னுரையாக ஊடகவியலாளர் V.Geetha எழுதியுள்ள கட்டுரை சமகால தமிழக அரசியலை உற்றுநோக்குபவர்களுக்கு ஒரு துருப்பு சீட்டு. மாநில அரசுகளின் இதுபோன்ற நடவடிக்கைகள் பற்றி எல்லாம் மக்கள் கவலை படுவதில்லை, கவலைப்படாத அளவுக்கு இங்குள்ள ஊடகங்கள் அவர்களை அறியாமையில் வைத்துள்ளன என்பது நிதர்சனம். இந்தியா ஒரு ஜனநாயக நாடக தொடரவேண்டுமானால் நாம் அனைவரும் அறிவு தளத்தில் கடினமாக உழைக்க வேண்டும், மக்களிடையே பரவியுள்ள பிம்பங்களையும், அறியாமையையும் கட்டுடைத்து அறிவொளி பாய்ச்சி அவர்களை விடுவிக்க வேண்டும் என்பது நூல் கூறும் செய்தி.

நூல் ஆசிரியர் முன்னுரையில், பிற மாநிலங்களிலும் இது போன்ற ஆய்வுகளை மேற்கொண்டு அவற்றை பதிவுசெய்வதாகவும் கூறியிருந்தார், அவர் நிச்சயம் செய்ய வேண்டும், இது போன்ற நூல்கள் தமிழிலும் வெளிவர வேண்டும் என்பது என்போன்றவர்களின் ஆசையும் விருப்பமும். இந்த புத்தகம் 50க்கும் மேற்பட்ட நூல்களை நமக்கு அறிமுகம் செய்து வைக்கிறது, அந்த விதத்தில் நூல் ஆசிரியரை பாராட்டத்தான் வேண்டும்.

அனைவரும் அவசியம் வாசிக்கவேண்டிய நூல் தோழர்கள் மற்றும் நண்பர்கள் தவறாமல் வாசியுங்கள்.

BOOK: Despite the state - why India lets its people down and how they cope.
AUTHOR: M. Rajshekar

#Do_read

[Riya Krishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My takeaway here is that India is a country that adopted democracy prematurely- before it achieved a sufficient standard of development for all people, established an efficient administrative system to attract foreign capital, and before it insulated itself from vested political interests. I had never considered the country’s problems to be so structural. The result is that any sort of meaningful change to health, education, or poverty is is extremely slow due to administrative inefficiency, and that political parties siphon wealth from welfare programs, hospitals, tax collections, or any state revenue generation at truly insane levels- Shocking to read that Punjab has only one cardiologist in the entire state- there’s no incentive for professionals to stay and never get their salaries which is going to lead to a massive brain drain. Makes me think that if only Indians could invest in the political parties as an asset class- poverty would probably be gone in no time!

[Achyuth Sanjay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very incisive book documenting the grassroots level processes taking place as our government machinery seems to be failing the people it exists to serve, showing alarmingly little progress since Independence. And the author points out that a significant factor in this ‘drain’ of the benefits of economic growth is the rise of political parties as the single most powerful set of institutions in the public and political sphere that can influence all other systems directly or indirectly. The author does a great job of on ground reporting and capturing the voice of the dispossessed, the ones who have been failed by the state and then systematically synthesising them into broader themes and also connecting the dots across states as he goes along. My only qualm with his writing style was his excessive usage of quotes from a wide range of authors - some of the concluding passages of his essays on each state are simply one quote after another. While it does seem to indicate the source of the lucidity of the authors writing in the breadth of the sources that he is drawing from, I would much rather have heard the author be more direct in his concluding statements, offering a little more coherence. But an otherwise engrossing and extremely eye opening read, kudos again to the depth of the research that’s gone into this.

[Deepak K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely well researched work. The author picks up few states, goes in depth into a problem the state has and gives us a feel of how the India state works.

Some notes:


Mizoram: The State That Could Not Pay Salaries

The author discussed in details, the issues of funding from the Central government and the issues with economic management while competing with Manipur & Tripura.
Lunglei - the second largest town in Mizoram
Laldenga - Mizoram’s first chief minister. In 1986, the Mizo Peace Accord was signed. The next year, as part of the accord, Mizoram became a state, and Laldenga, its first chief minister.
• At Dampa Tiger Reserve, poaching occurs by groups like Shanti Bahini (fighting for the autonomy of the Chakma people in Bangladesh) and National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLTF) militating for Tripura to be an independent, Christian country.


Orissa:

The author discussed in details, how mining helped the politicians, but failed the people.
The country, and the state, should have helped mid-sized steel makers invest in R&D, or it should have created a competitive field by doing away with the extant arrangement where large business groups had captive mines, while small and medium ones did not. ‘Instead of making Rs 4,000 per tonne exporting ore, we could have made Rs 45,000 per tonne exporting steel. That would have made domestic manufacturers more competitive and created a more robust industrial economy in the state,’ Patel said. But that is not what happened. Like Goa and Karnataka, Odisha exported raw ore, a decision Patel described as ‘a silent accommodation of mining interests’.

Two lakh crore rupees in exports. Such marginal uptick (people started wearing chappals) in people’s lives.

Like Mizoram, Odisha was failing to deliver healthcare and education. The reasons, however, were different. Mizoram had cash-flow problems because government spending had outpaced revenues, making it divert funds from programs in health and education for more expedient needs like repaying loans and staff salaries. Odisha was different. In 2014–2015, state government revenues were a shade over Rs 30,000 crore. With funds coming in from the centre too, total revenues swelled to Rs 83,181 crore. In fact, the state was aiming to close 2015–2016 with a Rs 5,100 crore revenue surplus. Yet, there was such understaffing and neglect. The reason, said bureaucrats at the state and the centre, was Odisha’s fixation on fiscal conservatism. Afraid of going broke, it hesitated to spend.

Despite the persistence of debt-induced migration, the state did not implement the central government’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). It gave students cycles but not teachers. It gave people doles when someone passed away but no paediatricians. It fretted about fiscal conservatism but did not maximize gains from the iron ore boom. Despite this litany of failures, outcry from its people seemed to be surprisingly muted.

One reason for this passivity to the state’s history. An agglomeration of small princely states, Odisha was always feudal. This mode of thinking persisted, said Mishra. ‘You get a mindset which says, “I don’t want to understand politics, rights, political rights, democracy, etc. I operate on the belief that the people I am choosing understand them.” It’s a very lethargic society.’


Punjab:

Here the author provides details of how one family came to control the entire state machinery.
Into the mid-2000s, Hero, Atlas and Avon made some parts—like frames, handlebars and forks—in-house and outsourced the rest to suppliers. This was how cities like Ludhiana came to have thousands of companies making pedals, spokes, ball bearings and more. This complex produced about 90 per cent of all cycles sold in India. Since 2008, however, cheaper Chinese imports have replaced indigenous manufacturers of cycle parts, most of which have shut down too.

India failed to prepare small and medium enterprises for import liberalisation, leave alone exports.

High electricity cost due to Octroi, cess, including cow cess. This was administrative jugaad. During the insurgency years, tax collection, like agricultural extension and other government functions, had crumbled in the state. When peace returned, successive governments did not revive these systems. The only state bill the people of Punjab paid was for power. So, whenever strapped for funds, the state government turned to PSPCL, with its 99.9 per cent collection rate, and got it to add cesses, duties and surcharges. Cow cess came in because cities like Ludhiana faced a problem of abandoned cows. As ‘gau rakshaks’, or cow protectors, moved around, farmers struggled to sell ageing cattle and abandoned them in the cities. Ludhiana’s municipal corporation, consequently, had to set up more cow shelters, but it was cash-strapped. People might not voluntarily give money for the shelters but, as a municipality official said, ‘Electricity is a compulsion.’

States in India have three major sources of revenue, as K.R. Lakhanpal, a former chief secretary of Punjab, explained when I met him in Chandigarh. ‘There is excise [like on alcohol], transport [like motor vehicle tax] and real estate [like levies on construction materials such as sand and stone]. Some states also levy professional tax and payroll tax.’ After coming to power in 2007, the Badal family, of the then ruling Akali Dal’s Parkash Singh Badal, and those close to it took over these three sectors

Most cases of corruption in India are about politicians misusing power to enrich themselves. In Mizoram, politicians made money from road building. In Odisha, they grabbed the gains from the iron ore mining boom. Punjab was different. What one saw here was not just political rent extraction but an ambition to take over the state itself.

’Wherever the Congress won, the former transport minister Master Mohan Lal told me, ‘not one paisa worth of work gets done as per the instructions of the local MLA.’ Even in police matters, nothing got done without a nod from the halka in-charge, who, however, sanctioned action only if politically favourable. With this, the Akali Dal ruled every constituency, whether it had won or not.
.Village life in Punjab had become faction-ridden and hard, said Jagrup Singh Sekhon, a professor of political science at Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University. At the same time, formal institutions for welfare, like administration and healthcare, and grievance redressal, like the police and judiciary, had weakened.‘In such a construct, who can save people from the police and patwari? That is what takes people to the sants.’ They form a protective buffer between the powerful and the individual, since local leaders listened to the sants.

If its politicians had not annexed road building, Mizoram’s state revenues would have been higher. If Odisha had retained more of the revenue from the iron ore boom, it could have spent more on teachers. Had Punjab mopped up revenues from liquor and stone crushing, it could have had more than one cardiologist for the entire state. Each of these were choices made, not by the bureaucracy, but the political leadership. In all three states, political parties, voted to power to find solutions to the problems facing these states, had made choices that helped them grow at the cost of their people.


Tamil Nadu

This is the state that embraced messianic populism
Erstwhile village elite moved to cities. Vanniyars, buying out the land of those leaving, sought to replace them in central Tamil Nadu. Gounders, another dominant caste in regions around Coimbatore, forayed into manufacturing. Arundhatiyars, a dalit sub-caste in northern and western parts of the state, turned to industrial work. Parayars, another dalit sub-caste spread across both Tamil Nadu and Kerala, moved out of villages.These gambits yielded unequal results. The farm crisis thwarted the vanniyars’ hopes of upward mobility. Gounders struggled as the state’s manufacturing clusters slipped into trouble.In contrast, dalits, who fled villages for education, construction or industrial wage-work, saw their conditions improve.

If we don’t have the material resources to assert our power, what do we fallback on? The cultural idea of a caste

By 2005, Tamil Nadu had three different schooling systems—government schools, matriculation schools and CBSE schools. Each differed in important ways. Government schools followed the state syllabus and taught in Tamil. CBSE schools followed their countrywide curriculum and taught in English. Matriculation schools, the fastest-growing segment of the state’s school sector, set their own syllabus, also in English, and held their own examinations.

In Mizoram, Odisha and Punjab, I had traced back the failure to deliver health and education to underfunding and administrative incapacity. What I saw in Tamil Nadu was different. Here, a functional administration had begun ignoring systemic improvements in favour of ploys that made the elected political party look good at the cost of the state’s people.

Over the years, the role of money, as cash given to voters and funds spent on campaigning, had gone up in Tamil Nadu’s elections.38 This was the state’s notorious ‘Thirumangalam formula’. In 2009, M.K. Alagiri of the DMK was said to have paid, according to the US Embassy cables leaked by Wikileaks, as much as Rs 5,000 per voter in the Thirumangalam assembly by-election.39 The biggest spenders were the DMK and the AIADMK.

For bureaucrats, said Thennarasu, the cost of disobeying politicians was greater than disobeying the judiciary.


As an addendum, the author also makes notes his observation of couple more states.
Bihar:
Indeed, under Yadav, Bihar did not see more riots like the Bhagalpur one. The ones it did see, like Nawada (1990) and Sitamarhi (1992), stayed local. As a corollary, however, as dalits and other marginalised groups gained political power, the state saw a rise in caste violence. Dominant-caste militias like the Ranvir Sena and Sunlight Sena (reminiscent of detergent ads) attacked dalits. In turn, dalits joined Naxal groups that attacked dominant-caste people.

This void does not stay empty for long. Society steps in, creating imperfect replacements to the State. In Bihar, one of them was local strongmen. In When Crime Pays, the political scientist Milan Vaishnav writes about Anant Kumar Singh, the leader from the bhumihar caste in Mokama near Patna and bahubali, local strongman. Despite the many criminal cases against him, people voted for Singh as he got their work done in a town where the government functioning was weak.


Gujarat

Surat - midway between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, was India’s largest producer of synthetic fabrics.
If MSMEs and groundnut production were two pillars of Gujarat’s economy, Amul was a third.
As expected, minorities were not doing well in Gujarat. The odd thing was, as the patidars’ protest, the travails of MSMEs and the decline in Amul showed, the majority community was not doing well either. Who was gaining from Gujarat’s majoritarian project? Ghanshyam Shah had an answer to that question. It served the interests of a few.


Manipur
The state—with the Naga community dominating the hills to the east, north and west of the valley; the Meitei community in the valley; and the Zo people, known as Kukis here, in the hills to the south—is one of the most violent parts of the country.

AFSPA continued as ever. If its continuation is one puzzle, the zones of its imposition is another. The act, which confers judicial insulation upon the Indian army, is not in force in Imphal, which sees the most violence, but in all the hill districts where the ethnic groups, and not the Meiteis, are numerically dominant. This pattern of selective imposition transcends Manipur.

Conclusion:

Fish stocks were falling in Tamil Nadu because sea surface temperatures were rising globally. Odisha’s ore export boom ended when the US sub-prime crisis hit China. The centre’s decision to redirect payments to state treasuries hurt Mizoram’s HIV programme. And yet, none of these states took even the adaptive or mitigative steps they could. Tamil Nadu could have stopped the flow of effluents into the sea. Odisha could have boosted its steel sector. Punjab could have strengthened farm extension. Bihar too could have strengthened disease surveillance.A reason for this inaction lies in the four traits—centralisation, extractiveness, dominance and clientelism—that reduce political parties into weak problem-solving agents. And so, moving from state to state, I saw five ways in which parties tried to retain legitimacy—denial, diversion, cultism, elections and endorsements.

[Raghav Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is like sunlight reaching the dark recesses of our political system. It is the self-evident truth of the perversions of democratic system where lumpen elements have captured the State and political parties. It is the moral decline, degradation and rot that has set inside the individual. There is no way out because many of us are apathetic while others have been co-opted. This is the reality:

 Government. Government suffers from ‘tragedy of commons’ (collective loot) and governance suffers from ‘comedy of errors’ (lurching from one crisis to another).

 Development. The asset created out of the ever-shrinking balance left after deduction of the profits of an ever-growing number of thekedars’ (servants of the people who may not necessarily be work contractors). This asset finally becomes a liability due to the lack of maintenance.

 Government recruitment at staff level. Genocide of skill and quality.

 Funds. A thing which is not available with any department for a genuine work of public interest.

 Problem solving. Government works on the basic principle of homeopathy: only a bigger problem can resolve a smaller problem. If you still can’t fix it, hollow it out and let it dissipate by corrosion.

 Outsource. If you can’t destroy it yourself, outsource the job. Replace your incompetence with shoddily drafted contracts with private thekedars and poor accountability structures.

 Rules. Rules are made but are not intended to be known. The design of rules allows ‘development’ to take place.

 Merit. Sifarish from a bigger fish.

 Administration. A blind-folded walk through darkness on a zig-zag mountainous road. Keep calm and carry on until the next fall.


Read this to just know the truth behind all the misinformation. Though I didn’t like that the author targets one political party at the end when we know that हमाम में सब नंगे हैं ।

[Sandeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

India is often referred to as the world's largest democracy, and this book by M.Rajashekhar dissects that claim and gives us a well researched and critical analysis of a democracy that is constantly being ripped free of its founding values and hijacked by power structures. It is a state that js declining into disorder and unaccountability along with the rising communal tensions and the attempts to stifle dissent.

Expanding on his series for Scroll.in, ‘Ear to the Ground’, beginning 2015, Rajshekhar studied six States, one in the Northeast (Mizoram), one rich in minerals but poor (Odisha), one with irrigated agriculture (Punjab), another with rain-fed farming (Bihar), one relatively industrialised (Gujarat) and another from the south (Tamil Nadu). It brings readers face to face with realities far removed from what is expected in or projected for a democracy.

A very important book that serves as a reminder and an indictment of India's democratic project.

[Prakash Jha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched and documented plight of 6 chosen Indian states. Exploring the truth about why the Indian states keep struggling with lack of drinking water, lost revenue, unemployment, polarisation, malnourishment.

How the ruling state governments of the chosen states deliberately choose clientelism over governance, state welfare above private profit.

An engaging and interesting book will hold your attention throughout.

A must-read for anyone who wonders for obvious topics such as ‘why the public health centres are in such a bad state?’ ‘Why Tamil Nadu faces such an acute drinking water problem even though surrounded by rivers?’

[Ayush Anand · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of research seems to have gone in the making of this book. An interesting concept where 6 states from different parts and having different structures of society/economy have been chosen to highlight how the “state” continues to let its people down in different ways. Be it underspending, or favouring the rich. Good read and not too academic in nature.

[Anurag M · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book has given words to Stark realities and astonishing co-relations between many events and processes that are shaping our "democracy". Given Mr. Rashekhar did gather real world evidence, the work that has gone into this book seems commendable.

[Prathyush Parasuraman · Rating 4 out of 5]

M. Rajshekhar, a journalist, did a 33-month long reporting project for Scroll.in, Ear To The Ground, where he traveled to 6 different states—Mizoram in the North-East, Odisha in the East, Tamil Nadu in the South, Punjab in the North, Gujarat in the West, and Bihar in Central India—reporting about them by living among them. Those essays became the base for his book Despite The State published last year, which in conjunction with Snigdha Poonam’s Dreamers — where she travels to and reports about what young people in tier 2 and tier 3 cities are doing— make for a great portrait of an India whose stories are never given front-and-center attention.

The book is so detailed, and tries to extrapolate greater conclusions from granular details. It doesn't work sometimes, and the details itself sometimes are so deeply convoluted I just felt lost. I wish the book was edited better - there are page-length footnotes, and the details are so granular they stop adding meaning to the narrative. But even at these points, the book is so relentlessly true to its idea of wanting to report from the ground, I was in awe of the time and effort involved.

I wrote about what the book says about What India Is Watching here: https://prathyush.substack.com/p/on-w...

[N Kalyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A timely and remarkable work. It renders intelligible the present state of our democracy in unprecedented ways. It identifies the defining characteristics of the state as it exists today thru a field study of six states. It also maps the processes by which political parties manage the context of an electoral democracy while they establish and sustain a predatory state. Of course, the impact of this transformation on the people and their well-being is also described at length. A must-read book.

[Anil Dhingra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very well written book by Rajshekhar based on his reportage over 33 months in six states for his project Ear to the Ground.
Moving and staying for months at each of these states, the author writes about the experience of the people living there, the fate of the government programs and writes his own commentary about the key issues and the way they have been tackled.
It is a disturbing reading as failure of the democratic institutions and the helplessness of the ordinary people is the running theme, irrespective of the political party in power.
Thus we learn about how the Badal family ran Punjab enriching only themselves by depriving all others by abuse of the state machinery. In Orissa the absolute power of a single leader and his cronies were responsible for the people not getting the infrastructure benefits from the mining industry. Similar stories abound in Mizoram, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat.
In comments on Gujarat he also elaborates on the similar model moving to the centre after the move of Modi from CM to PM. His comments on the BJP are brutal but true as he sees the country moving to religious extremism and suppression of the minorities, whether religious, caste based or economic.
Despite the goverments the people survive even as the institutions meant to protect them-- police, judiciary, the connissions, babus, are all made subservient to the central government.
A most disturbing read but a must read for those who follow India and it's democracy.

[Pranjal Awasthi · Rating 5 out of 5]

M. Rajshekhar’s Despite the State is a quietly searing indictment of the Indian state’s chronic dysfunction. With journalistic precision and a researcher’s eye for systemic patterns, Rajshekhar lays bare the deep structural rot that transcends political parties and regions. This is not just a book about corruption—it’s about the many forms of state incapacity: from mismanaged public funds to the bureaucratic fetish for fiscal conservatism, to the entrenched networks of crony capitalism.

What makes the book especially powerful is its geographic and political breadth. Rajshekhar traverses six states—each representing different political dispensations (Congress, BJP, BJD)—to show how failure is not partisan, but structural. His storytelling is immersive, his prose clear and restrained, and his reporting reveals a consistent pattern of institutional erosion, elite capture, and democratic decay.

This book can definitely unsettle you, and that is its point. Rajshekhar doesn’t offer easy villains or policy prescriptions. Instead, he offers a slow, deliberate peeling back of the layers that explain why, in so many parts of India, development happens not because of the state but despite it.

A must-read for anyone who wants to understand Indian governance beyond the headlines. Disturbing, vital, and deeply thought-provoking.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's one of the best books that I have read on the Indian State. It not only provides a summarized modern political history of six states but also through sampling provides how the Indian State has decayed over time and ended up deepening the roots of age-old evils while failing to protect against modern problems like climate change, etc.

The only complaint I have with the book is that while correctly diagnosing the problems of the Indian State through the Western Liberal Democratic Framework. It still proposes solutions based on the same framework that has resulted in these systemic inefficiencies. It doesn't try to see the failures of our founding fathers in imposing a democratic setup on a highly hierarchical society. Also, like Josy Joseph's The Silent Coup, another brilliant book, it raises the boogeyman of Hindu Majoritarianism under the present administration without failing to provide the historical context of its rise. These blinders prevent this otherwise great book to provide a complete picture of our Indian State.

[Mugunth Krishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"How Indian citizens live, despite the state"

This was one of my first proper polity books.. The book was my introduction to the social life and struggles of fellow indian states.. It manages to highlight the striking similarities and drastic differences in the problems and governance in our country. Being in India, I was surprised to discover how little i understood about these issues and in general how our democracy is weakening. It's high time we try to understood these political and economic jargon which the politicians use to evade from the questions of the politics.. In simple, the book is all about ' How Indian citizens live, despite the state'

[Akshay Cm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that intially I was not getting the flow of his writing, it felt abrupt. Half way through, it gets way better. This some solid journalism backed by seeping real experiences of getting know the country. I was especially fascinated by the Gujarat study and how sects within a single caste worked. I really wished the author had a chapter or more on the pandemic especially the cover carried the photo of the migrant labourer during workdown, I was thinking thu highlight of the book might be that. But I'm sure the author is drafting one about the harshest lockdown and it's effect on the migrant workers.

[Diwakar Vadapalli · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author takes us on a trip that’s depressing, infuriating, and frustrating. Connecting what meets the eye to their often invisible underlying causal pathways this book pairs a vivid picture of our faltering journey as a democracy. A must read for anyone interested in the political economy of India.

The narrative is at times choppy because of the origins of the book. That doesn’t take anything away from the weight of the subject matter.

The authors’ attempt at theorising helps in thinking at a macro level. Overall a fantastic book.

[Jitendra Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that changes your perspective of India’s democratic functioning. The book goes into deeper details of state failure’s on different fronts in 6 chosen states and shows how the democracy in India has been captured by the ruling elite and the democratic institutions are functioning for the benefit of choosen few. Overall a must read for better understanding of various issues gripping the Indian society like the health education etc. and why Indian state has not been able to respond to them promptly.

[Prashanth Nuggehalli Srinivas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely well researched book that moves analysis beyond political party binaries to the realm of history, data and political economy analysis. State case studies blend authors own experience of covering news from the state with his meticulous research, extensively referenced and wider analysis citing and leveraging social and political theories judiciously. Richly footnoted and meticulously referenced. A must-read for anyone who wishes to have a strong foundation on post-90’s India, federalism in India and post-colonial studies in India

[Sudipt Roy · Rating 3 out of 5]

We, in India, know the extent of state indifference. even outright hostility, one has to endure to get by. Therefore, it needs a lot more than what this book has to offer to get truly shocked. That said, it is good that the author has documented state-supported or sponsored atrocities. It might enlighten a few who still have open minds but closed eyes.

The chapter on Punjab lucidly captures the greed and misrule of the ruling dispensation. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the chapter on Gujarat. Could it be a reflection of our times, I wonder.

[Aaditya Pandey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combining extensive fieldwork, meticulous research and well-informed arguments, this book goes beyond the grammar or the genre of journalistic reportage. Drawing through studies, from political economy, finance, sociology, history, environment and literature, observations and personal interactions, Rajshekhar investigates and elaborates how unitary federalism has failed to deliver on the disillusioned fronts of growth, development and justice.

[Sricharan AR · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bhanwer slammed a file with power bills on his table and jabbed a finger at the column next to octroi. 'What is this?' It read cow cess. Levied on power consumption."

"Another response, however, was to spend more, for consumption suggests credit-worthiness and makes it possible to borrow more"

"A college investing Rs 10 crore in a campus will recover that money in a little over a year."

[Nishchal Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well researched book bringing out the systematic failure of states in terms of policy making, implementation, ground realities mixed with a deadly concoction of personality cult, dynasty, majoritarianism to gain votes pictured out through detailed case study of six Indian states of myriad size, political narrative, socio-economic indicators.

[Amartya Gupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written based on the research during the Ear to the Ground campaign of Scroll.in, M Rajashekar has gone to great lengths to get the necessary research for his book. In no way can the book be faulted for not being well researched, as the author has gone to the grassroots to show the plight of the forgotten Indians.
I have to also compliment the author's journalistic writing styles. He has stitched together the stories in a very powerful manner, bringing alive the grim picture of the states in question.

Throughout his book, the author has focussed to highlight six states (seven if you count the one in the appendix). He starts the conversation with Mizoram, a state which is walking the tightropes of economic viability. He calls it the State that could not pay salaries.
Next, he moves to the State that wasted its iron ore boom - Orissa. He highlights how the state frittered away its wealth because it put the business before the people.
Punjab, a state controlled by one family represents how a single political family can hollow out the institutions of an entire state. Over a short period of time, various sectors came under the predatory clutches of the political family led to the degenaration of an entire society.
In Tamil Nadu, the state that embraced messianic populism is no exception when it comes to states that have failed their people. Its lofty claims in welfare policies are rotting away in ignorance, whether it is their healthcare systems or the education system.
Bihar fits the apt description of the absent state. Once known for its prosperity and commercial importance, the state has fallen into a state of disdain. Its political elite constantly siphon funds from the welfare schemes, and the law and order mechanism is falling apart.
The state that chose majoritarianism, Gujrat is often hailed as a model state. But the centralization of power and political pandering to communal forces, has taken its toll on the state and its people.

The author draws certain similarities across these states, that shed light on the ugly underbelly of Indian development. He describes political parties in India to be extractive, dominating, centralized and clientelist. And that is just the beginning of this book.

The book has highlighted a lot of negatives at the ground level, all in the true spirits of journalism. And maybe that is my problem with the book, that it does not talk enough about the positives. But I guess this is not that kind of a book. It has done its job in highlighting the ground reality and for that i applaud the book.

Highly recommended book to read!

[Anushka · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an example of absolutely stellar journalism by M.Rajshekhar. Please read it if you can. The struggles of so many of Indians are so great, but with things that shouldn't be struggle at all. An extremely informative read for anyone who is remotely interested in how things runs in this country and how the people cope; despite the State.

[Apoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent reportage — I learned so much. 4 stars because it’s entirely missing an anarchist framework. it tells us the variety of ways in which the state fails but then what? I know the point of the book isn’t the offer solutions but invoking anarchism would’ve helped round it off a bit. if you’re gonna be critical of the state might as well go all the way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯