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This article was downloaded by: [Moskow State Univ Bibliote]On: 17 December 2013, At: 16:48Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
The Journal of DevelopmentStudiesPublication details, including instructions for authorsand subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjds20
The ‘Anti-politics machine’ inIndia: Depoliticisation throughlocal institution buildingfor participatory watersheddevelopmentDr Vasudha Chhotray aa School of Development Studies, University of EastAnglia , NorwichPublished online: 05 Jun 2008.
To cite this article: Dr Vasudha Chhotray (2007) The ‘Anti-politics machine’in India: Depoliticisation through local institution building for participatorywatershed development, The Journal of Development Studies, 43:6, 1037-1056, DOI:10.1080/00220380701466526
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220380701466526
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The ‘Anti-Politics Machine’ in India:Depoliticisation through Local InstitutionBuilding for Participatory WatershedDevelopment
VASUDHA CHHOTRAYSchool of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich
Final version received November 2005
ABSTRACT This article investigates the rationale and implications of creating non-electedcommunity-based bodies for India’s national watershed development programme in 1994. Adiscourse of depoliticisation is in use to justify the creation of ‘apolitical’ watershed committees incontrast to ‘political’ panchayats, ostensibly unsuitable for participatory development for theirembodiment of political contestation and vested interests. The discourse masks conflicts betweenkey actors in India’s development process and is highly malleable, acquiring pertinent meanings inspecific contexts. Case-study evidence from two project villages in a south Indian district showsthat the attempt to depoliticise this programme of panchayat politics fails, but sets up the groundfor depoliticisation of another sort, by distancing watershed project spaces from pro-poorprogressive politics.
I. Introduction
In the 1990s, two different policy initiatives for decentralisation were taken in India.The 73rd constitutional amendment was passed in 1993, granting constitutional statusto three-tier locally elected bodies or panchayats with a view to strengthening localgovernment. A year later, in 1994, the Union Ministry for Rural Development issuedthe ‘Common Guidelines for Watershed Development’, a programme designed toregenerate rural livelihoods through soil and water conservation using ‘communitybased’ participation. The guidelines recommended the creation of non-elected localbodies called watershed committees (WCs) for this purpose. This measure provokeddebates regarding the seriousness of the constitutional recognition of panchayats.Successive policy revisions of the national watershed guidelines, especially the most
Correspondence Address: Dr Vasudha Chhotray, School of Development Studies, University of East
Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ. Email: [email protected]
Journal of Development Studies,Vol. 43, No. 6, 1037–1056, August 2007
ISSN 0022-0388 Print/1743-9140 Online/07/061037-20 ª 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00220380701466526
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recent in 2003, which has done away withWCs and handed powers of implementationto panchayats, have further polarised practitioners and policy-makers alike.The attempt by the 1994 watershed policy to create a ‘new’ local institution is
underpinned by a discourse of ‘depoliticisation’. WCs are seen to be free from theforms of political contestation that commonly characterise panchayats, and areconsidered to be more appropriate for participatory development on this basis. Thissort of rationalisation represents a new form of depoliticisation, the theorisation ofdevelopment as a wholly economic activity that has been highly conducive to theemergence of planning discourses and the attendant technocratic rationality of thestate. This phenomenon is well known in critical thinking about developmentfollowing James Ferguson’s pioneering work on Lesotho in 1990, leading to anumber of related studies (Harriss, 2001; Kamat, 2002; Tordella, 2003). But whatprecisely does such a discourse mean in the Indian context, and what are itsimplications for decentralised and participatory development through localinstitution-building in India? To borrow Ferguson’s expression, what does the‘anti-politics’ machine look like in India?This article addresses this important question. It first explores how depoliticisation
is sustained as a discourse within the watershed development (WSD) programme inIndia, even though politicisation has been an undeniable aspect of Indiandevelopment since independence. Second, it draws from empirical research inKurnool district in Andhra Pradesh (AP) in south India to demonstrate how specificregional sociopolitical and bureaucratic conditions reinforce this discourse. Third, itpresents village-level fieldwork from Kurnool to illustrate how the attempt to createa ‘depoliticised’ institution actually engenders the accommodation of dominantpolitics, while constraining the chances for progressive, pro-poor politics, engineeredby the lower castes and classes. Ultimately, the article argues that the real issue indevelopment in India, and perhaps more generally, is how to alter the nature andcontent of its inevitable politicisation.
II. What the Depoliticisation Debate Means in India
James Ferguson’s powerful thesis on the ‘anti-politics machine’ as the twofold‘instrument-effects’ of a World Bank- and CIDA-funded development project inLesotho has irrevocably influenced scholarly analysis of state power and thedevelopment discourse (Ferguson, 1990: 256). Ferguson argued that planneddevelopment interventions functioning under the guise of ‘neutral’ and ‘expert’power produce unintended effects, which exceed the original intended outcomes intheir significance. These unintended or ‘instrument’ effects are of two types: one, the‘institutional’ effect of expanding bureaucratic state power, and two, the ‘ideological’effect of depoliticising both poverty and the state. Ferguson’s own analysis is shapedby an older academic critique of the ‘invention of the economy’ as a domainindependent of ‘politics, morality and culture’ (Escobar, 1999). Equally, Ferguson isinspired by Michel Foucault’s ideas about ‘authorless strategies’ and goes on tomake the vital link between the ‘intentionality of planning and the strategicunintelligibility of outcomes’ (1990: 20).More recently, Ferguson has been criticised precisely for overstating the case for
the ‘anonymous automaticity of the machine’. Mosse considers that Ferguson’s
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approach diverts attention from the ‘complexity of policy as institutionalpractice . . . and the diversity of interests behind policy models and the perspectivesof actors themselves’ (Mosse, 2004: 644). Ferguson is also attacked for assuming adegree of inevitability of the depoliticisation of development interventions, withoutquestioning their underlying assumptions (Tordella, 2003). Others are uneasy withhis argument that ‘failed’ development projects are repeated because they producethe unintended effect of entrenching bureaucratic state power – a viewpoint that sitsuncomfortably with Ferguson’s later ‘demotion of intentionality – in both its‘‘planning’’ and ‘‘conspiracy’’ incarnations’ (Ferguson, 1990: 256, 275). Kumar andCorbridge (2002: 95) point out that such a hypothesis would simply not work inIndia, where the state has more direct ways of establishing its power than bydesigning new generations of ‘failed’ projects.
Taking this as a starting point of departure from Ferguson, this section asks whatspecifically the depoliticisation of development debate means in India. While it mayhave been clear to Ferguson what the ‘politics’ being disregarded throughdepoliticisation meant in Lesotho, it is far less so in the Indian case. This sectionargues that in India the ‘politics’ that development is ostensibly being depoliticised ofneeds to be specified, since there is no a priori consensus on whether it is partypolitics, elite politics, low-caste politics or pro-poor mobilisation and so forth. Itdiscusses the different types of politicisation that have occurred since independenceand their implications for development.
An ideology of national development constituted the foundation of the newlyindependent Indian state, and development planning was the most importantinstrument adopted for this purpose (Chatterjee, 1998: 86). Scholars of Marxist andliberal-democratic persuasions are agreed that the essential orientation of the Indianplanned exercise was to operate outside the domain of ‘politics’.1 Importantly,however, these scholars also agree that the attempt to segregate politics from(planning) development, or depoliticisation, did not quite succeed and, moreover,produced enduring contradictions that have crippled the efficacy of the state and thedevelopment process. A number of leading scholars have commented extensively onthe nature of the ‘accommodative politics’ that ensued within the first decade afterindependence and continued until long after (Frankel, 1978; Bardhan, 1984;Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987; Kaviraj, 1988; Kohli, 1988). The ruling Congress Partyrefrained from launching a direct attack on India’s propertied classes, jeopardisingits stated goals of social transformation. It also actively built vertical politicalnetworks through the landowning ‘upper’ castes, exchanging state patronage forelectoral mobilisation, which steadily eroded state resources and turned planninginto a profligate process. Neoliberal scholars have characterised this aspect of Indianpolitical economy, albeit perhaps simplistically, as ‘excessive government regulationof the economy’.2
Such politicisation of development planning followed from the politicisation ofsocial relations through successive decades. The democratic system createdincentives for political mobilisation along the lines of caste, religion and language.Electoral politics have been organised around caste lines since independence; insouth India since the 1960s and in north India soon after (Varshney, 2000). Whilethis meant the accommodation of landowning ‘upper’ castes initially, it was not longbefore a vast array of newly politically mobilised groups came into the scene
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(including the scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST), the large and amorphousBackward Castes, and Muslims). The Congress strategy of building vote banksamong the SC/STs and Muslims has been matched by the counter-strategy of non-Congress parties throughout India to win support among the backward castes, so asalso to build their own caste-based alliances. Affirmative state policies throughreservations extended access to education and government employment to the otherbackward classes (including Hindu and non-Hindu communities) and the SC/STs.3
‘Lower’ caste political mobilisation has been characterised by three broad trends.First, internal differentiations within lower-caste categories and the specific local andvernacular meanings of respective castes pose serious hurdles to lower-caste solidarityand extra-local or extra-regional alliances. Second, while lower-caste mobilisation hasprimarily been directed to tackle inter-caste hierarchies, intra-caste differences havesteadily widened, producing an elite middle class that has effectively used casteidentities in politics. Third, the focus of lower-caste mobilisation, includingDalit or SCactivism, has been to fight for social justice, respect and dignity rather than to press forimprovements in the material condition of the lower castes (Varshney, 1999, 2000;Weiner 2001). Accordingly, class-based mobilisation around issues of materialdisadvantage and poverty has not been predominant in Indian politics, since thepoor are scattered within numerous different caste groups (Varshney, 1999).Thus, in India, development was politicised by elite-driven accommodative politics
soon after independence, limiting the state’s ability to make difficult developmentdecisions (Kaviraj, 1988; Kohli, 2001). Low-caste politics and political mobilisation(of which low-caste poor people and women are a part) facilitated the intensiveelectoral networks of the Congress and its rival political parties, promoted thepolitical careers of low-caste elites and opened new arenas of conflict between ‘lower’and ‘upper’ castes in rural and urban areas. As for such politics facilitating pro-poordevelopment and public policy, the evidence is mixed, and I will return to this pointlater. Clearly, then, the circumstances producing the ‘anti-politics’ machine in Indiaare strikingly different from those that Ferguson encountered in Lesotho. Fergusonassumed the inevitability of depoliticisation and focused his analysis on the‘intentionality of planning’ and the ‘strategic unintelligibility of outcomes’. In India,a discourse of depoliticisation has accompanied development planning from thestart. However, signs that the attempt to depoliticise development were not entirelysuccessful came early on. In this context, whether or not planners really intended todepoliticise development, and whether the inability to do so complemented theirpurposes in unintelligible ways (as Ferguson may argue), is the less interestingquestion.4 Instead, given the existing context of Indian political economy, the moreinteresting and relevant issue is to examine how depoliticisation continues to work asa discourse: the debates it shapes, the mechanisms that are deployed to sustain it andthe implications it bears especially for pro-poor development. This is the subject ofthis article.
III. Depoliticisation in the Watershed Development Programme and the Debate on
Local Institutions
The watershed development programme is India’s premier state intervention forcomprehensive rural livelihoods development. The term ‘watershed’ above any point
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on a defined drainage channel is used to denote all the land and water areas thatdrain through that point, leading to the ‘normalisation’ of a ‘micro-watershed’ as a‘rational’ unit of planning (Tideman, 1997: 7). In India, micro-watersheds in therange of 500–1,000 hectares typically form project units. These are geo-hydrologicalunits, and therefore often do not coincide with actual village boundaries.
In line with this gradual shift in focus, the Union Ministry of Rural Development(MoRD) became the nodal ministry for WSD in India in the early 1990s. In 1994, itstreamlined different competing SWC (Soil and Water Conservation Programmes)programmes under a new set of ‘common guidelines’. These set out an impressivearray of programme objectives: agricultural productivity increase from improvedrainwater harvesting and in situ soil and moisture conservation, regeneration ofvillage commons, checking migration and intensification of employment options,especially for the landless, among a host of others.5 The programme emphasisedequity both at macro levels (between irrigated and dryland areas) and micro levels(within a community). Moreover, the new guidelines espoused a ‘community-based’approach to participatory decision-making for meeting complex programmeobjectives. Coinciding with MoRD’s policy, a number of prominent NGOs suchas MYRADA and the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme pursued WSD as partof a larger set of rural development approaches, and various donor agencies, notablyDFID, followed their cue. By the 1990s, WSD in India was synonymous withpoverty alleviation.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new guidelines embodied familiar tensions betweendevelopment and politics. The major problem lay in the guidelines’ conceptualisationof participatory watershed development based on the notion of community as a self-sufficient, harmonious entity, unstratified by factors such as landownership and casterelations and in apparent isolation, unaffected by wider political and economicrelationships. In the tradition of the Community Development Programme of the1950s, the ability of ‘communities’ to engage uniformly in co-operative behaviourand develop their ‘own’ institutions, i.e. WCs, was exaggeratedly depicted throughlengthy descriptions of procedure (MoRD, 1994: 27–30). Such conceptualisation ofWCs as organic local bodies reflected widespread support for ‘self-governing’ localinstitutions that build on coherence within local communities (Hulme andWoodhouse 2000: 227).
These aspects reveal the predominance of new institutionalist theories in agencydiscourse about the social science of community.6 New institutionalist theorists areprincipally concerned with the problems of collective action and therefore a largepart of the literature has developed in relation to common property regimes, i.e. ‘theproblem of understanding and developing principles which would encourage collectiveaction to conserve common pool resources’ (Johnson, 2004: 412).7 Taylor (1987) andOstrom (1990) have separately theorised the characteristics that qualify collectivitiesas ‘communities’, creating conditions where individuals would find it rational to co-operate. All this has contributed to the development of a ‘hypothetico-deductivemodel’ based upon assumptions of individual decision-making and rational choice.Subsequently, new institutionalism has been fiercely criticised as a ‘predictive andgeneralising theory’ of the economic and social conditions for collective action(Mosse, 2003: 274). Its implicit ‘universalism’ creates expectations of ‘community-like’ behaviour that may be unsubstantiated within particular contexts (Sinha, 1994).
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These critiques have produced a rival scholarly tradition that emphasises ‘thehistorical struggles that determine resource access and entitlement, and the ways inwhich formal and informal rules create and reinforce unequal access to thecommons’ (Johnson, 2004: 409).In contrast, the new institutionalist focus of the 1994 guidelines attempts to
depoliticise WSD. It does so by disregarding the ways in which power – political,social and economic – is exercised in the context of WSD, shaping processes as wellas outcomes. Micro-watersheds essentially include multiple property boundaries(both private and common), and diverse as well as competing uses of naturalresources. The size, location and quality of land owned greatly impacts the extent towhich landowners may benefit from programme interventions; the landless are moreprecariously poised to gain, if at all. Access to and use of common pool resources –both land and water – within the watershed are often highly inequitable andcontested. Moreover, the new policy does not seriously consider caste relationships,which fundamentally shape the exercise of local political and socio-economicpower.8 In effect, the guidelines equate a male landholder with a landless woman.There is little thinking on how class/caste/gender based stratifications within acommunity and the resulting politicisation of social life would potentially impact theparticipatory processes envisioned for the programme.Against this backdrop, the 1994 guidelines have engendered a specific discourse of
depoliticisation to rationalise the constitution of WCs. They are contrasted withpanchayats, elected bodies at the district, block and village levels that are frequentlyintegrated with mainstream party politics and may be characterised by contest,violence and factionalism.9 A senior civil servant, among the principal architects ofthe 1994 guidelines, stated: ‘Panchayats are not participatory, but representativeinstitutions. It is precisely due to this that they end up representing sectional andvested interests. Political factionalism finds easier conduits of reflection in thesebodies.’10
The accompanying notion, that WCs can be insulated from politics, has beenexpressed more widely too.11 Manor (2005: 205) dismisses this as a dangerous mython the grounds that ‘‘‘Politics’’ or the interplay of interests and forces in pursuit ofpower, resources, status etc., is pervasive’. The ‘politics’ being associated withpanchayats pertains to the contestation for political power on the basis of socialcleavages of caste, class and ethnicity, all of which follow the intensive politicisationof social relations. If politics and the politicisation of social life are pervasive, then asManor contends, any attempt to ‘exclude’ politics from the watershed arena can onlyensure that a certain type of politics dominates (ibid.).Even so, the debate on the appropriateness of panchayats versus WCs for
participatory watershed development hinges on this very issue of politics. Manorcomments that ‘many people continue to cling to the myth, some out of naivety,while others do so out of cynicism’ (ibid.). The 2003 guidelines that handed powersof implementation to panchayats have only polarised the debate further. It ispossible to argue that this debate is significantly shaped by the interests of key actors,wherein the stakes they hold lend meaning to the ways in which panchayats and WCsare being portrayed.To begin with, the historical rivalry between bureaucrats and elected representa-
tives has contributed to acrimonious debates between two rather fluid camps over
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the WC issue. The first accused the 1994 guidelines of being another attempt byregional politicians and bureaucrats to deprive panchayats of legitimate power;12 thesecond dismissed such views as ‘panchayat-purism’ and further justified why pan-chayats were not appropriate as direct implementers of WSD. Typical arguments thatwere explicitly made included the assertion that panchayats are rather over-burdenedor too ‘big’ to focus on a single development activity (Baumann, 1999). Fears thatpanchayats would divert watershed money (to the tune of 2 million rupees for a singleproject over five years) into other activities were less openly articulated. The formercamp argued that panchayats are enduring local bodies with constitutionalrecognition and ought not to be marginalised for this reason alone (ibid.).
In the meanwhile, between 1994 and 2003, there was a tremendous rise in creativethinking about the role of non-elected local bodies – such as WCs, user and self-helpgroups – in the WSD programmes. States such as Andhra Pradesh led the way, witha leading UK bilateral agency, DFID, and a number of proactive NGOs attemptingto promote local involvement through user and self-help groups. So when the UnionMinistry issued the 2003 policy guidelines, reversing key facets of the previous policywithout any significant consultative process with the large NGO and donorcommunity, it only polarised the camps further. Besides doing away with WCs, thelatest guidelines also prioritise block and district panchayats over NGOs to act asproject implementing agencies (PIAs). NGOs, unsurprisingly, are particularlypiqued.
In what followed, the debate on panchayats versus WCs has been transposed intoa covert tussle between the bureaucracy and NGOs. NGOs’ ire over theabandonment of WCs is being interpreted by MoRD officials at New Delhi asnothing but disappointment about losing their own privileged PIA position underthe 1994 guidelines.13 NGOs and other policy analysts have retorted that the newguidelines are not really about empowering panchayats, as the executive functions ateach tier of panchayat institutions are vested in a non-elected government official.14
The bureaucracy has emerged as a champion of the panchayat cause, which itself issuspect given its historical resistance to panchayat institutions. The official discoursewithin MoRD is simply that ‘The [1994] Guidelines did not provide a pivotal role tothe PRIs and it is time to do so by bring in suitable revisions’ (MoRD, 2003:Foreword). On further probing, some mid-level ministry officials stated that thechange was a hurried pre-election move by the ministry’s top political leadership tocurry favour with panchayats and their local constituencies. Given the timing andthe rather isolated and secretive formulation of the 2003 guidelines, this is theexplanation for policy change that finds the widest currency, certainly outside thegovernment, and perhaps even inside it.15
The inclusion of panchayats as direct implementers of the WSD programme isbeing viewed within different camps either as expedient or, contrarily, as theconscious reaffirmation of faith in elected local bodies. It is still far from clearwhether the new guidelines will actually empower panchayats, or if the involvementof panchayats – any more than WCs – would either facilitate or deter thesubstantiation of participatory processes. This question becomes important alsobecause there is no other perceptible shift in the policy, which continues to disregardthe multiple ways in which power is applied in the context of WSD; and could be thesubject of future research.
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This article investigates further the discourse that projects panchayats as politicaland WCs as apolitical. It draws from field research conducted in Kurnool district inAP between January and April 2001, before the 2003 guidelines came into effect.16 Ina context where the politicisation of social relations is an inescapable reality, it showsempirically how the ascription of selective meanings to politics by key actors engagedin programme implementation is at the core of the depoliticisation discourseproduced by the 1994 guidelines. The next section discusses the particular regionalconditions in AP that make it conducive for such a discourse to be sustained.
IV. Conditions for Politicisation and ‘Depoliticisation’ in Andhra Pradesh
The politicisation of social relations in AP has been characterised by large-scalepolitical mobilisation both of the prosperous peasant castes (mainly Reddys andKammas) and the agrarian poor, many of whom are also from amongst thescheduled castes. The Reddys and Kammas are of the Sudra varna, the lowest withinthe traditional Hindu hierarchy, but steadily gained dominance in local and statepolitics following their numerical and economic (land-based) preponderance (Elliott,1990). The steady co-optation of Reddys and Kammas by Brahmins, who were the‘incumbent leaders in party politics’, greatly reduced their need to form casteassociations to organise political mobility (Elliott, 1990: 151). Wealthier members ofthese communities were able to draw upon traditional factional networks withinvillages to organise support from other castes. A faction denotes ‘a ‘‘vertical’’organisation that typically comprises members from different castes, who are held by‘‘transactional’’ ties to a leader’ (Hardiman, 1982: 199).The politicisation of caste-class relations intensified in the 1980s with the
emergence of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). The rural rich in the coastal districts,predominantly Kammas, had long felt politically marginalised during three decadesof Reddy-dominated Congress rule, and easily gravitated to the TDP (Srinivasulu,2002). The rise of this new regional party provided a legitimate organisational basisfor factional politics within the dominant castes and thus continued patterns ofpolitical co-optation already established by the Congress. The absence ofaccompanying economic and social reform for the benefit of the backward castesand lower classes, coupled with the need to dispense state patronage in order toaccommodate dominant caste representations, strained state resources. Simulta-neously, the TDP government adopted populist pro-poor policies, notably the publicfood distribution system (Moore and Putzel, 1999). In the meanwhile, growingatrocities on Dalits or SCs, especially in Kamma-dominated coastal districts, led tothe development of Dalit horizontal solidarities. Like elsewhere in the country, theDalit movement here rapidly became a movement for dignity and self-respect, butthere was no ‘sustained engagement with the materiality of cultural degradation’(Srinivasulu, 2002: 50). In later years, the growing electoral importance of the Dalitsin AP has been marred by internal caste-based divisions within the SCs andcontinuing attempts both by the Congress and TDP to exploit and deepen these(Srinivasulu, 2002).Amidst such politicisation, two aspects of recent political history in the state
have offered a conducive environment for the depoliticisation discourse of the1994 guidelines, leading to official endorsement of WCs for participatory WSD.
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First, since the 1980s, successive state governments have subordinated panchayats toparty interests, undermining them in the process. After decades of Congress rulegave way to the TDP, its leader, N.T. Rama Rao, tried to strengthen his party at thegrassroots by ‘capturing’ panchayats (particularly the positions of district or zillapanchayats’ chairmen), which were dominated by local supporters of the Congress.His political successor, Chandrababu Naidu, continued this trend and importantpro-panchayat measures in the aftermath of the 73rd amendment were not takenthroughout Naidu’s eight-year stint until 2004 (Manor, 2002). The fear thatstrengthening panchayats would enhance the local political leverage of the Congress,which controls as many panchayat bodies as the TDP, has posed a constant dilemmafor the latter.
In addition, Naidu actively promoted development initiatives that did not involvepanchayats directly.17 In 1997, he launched the Janmabhoomi, which proposed tobring government to the people (through public discussions of the performance ofgovernment schemes in the presence of mandal-level officers18), was based onvoluntary labour contributions and involved micro-planning at the grassrootsthrough village-based self-help and user bodies (Reddy, 2002; Mooij, 2003). Inpractice, however, Janmabhoomi expediently strengthened TDP’s local supportersthrough the domination of local committees and privileged receipt of contract works(Manor, 2002).
The second conducive aspect was Chief Minister Naidu’s unequivocal emphasis ontechnocratic efficiency, bureaucratic strengthening and transparency in governance.Naidu professed a desire to make politics ‘more professional’ (Naidu with Ninan,2000: 17–18). He emphasised the need to allow the bureaucracy to work without‘political interference’ and to monitor it obsessively, which yielded in an overtlytarget-oriented approach (Mooij, 2003: 11–12).19 This emphasis has enabled intimatebureaucratic involvement in development programmes. In the case of WSD, the stategovernment has created exclusive district-level project offices. This is unlike otherstates that implement the programme either through district rural developmentagencies (DRDAs), which being the sole bodies routing all development programmesin a district are overburdened already, or through zilla panchayats (ZPs), which toohave a multitude of responsibilities. In AP, however, a single bureaucratic authorityis able to concentrate exclusively on the WSD programme, facilitating theformulation of a distinctive technocratic rationality.
V. Kurnool Watershed Office (KWO): A Planners’ Project
The administrative head of the district watershed office in Kurnool is the projectdirector, who works along with an advisory multi-disciplinary team (MDT). Together,they supervise a team of PIAs that are directly responsible for the implementation ofmicro-watershed projects with the assistance of multidisciplinary watershed develop-ment teams (WDTs). There is a clearly laid out system of monitoring and reporting.While senior officers in the district office have permanent jobs and are often fromthe elite civil services, junior level officers such as PIAs (often small NGOs) andWDTsare typically drawn from the open market on temporary contracts.
Like any other district office, the Kurnool Watershed Office (KWO) experiencespressures from elected representatives and politicians, who seek to influence the
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selection of project areas as well as PIAs. The WSD programme is attractive topoliticians for its tremendous voter appeal, both because it has elements of a ‘catch-all’ development programme as well as prospects for devolution of financial controlto the village WC. Such pressures are not uncommon; a recent research study in theAnantapur district of AP, adjacent to Kurnool, reveals how village-level politicalleaders with connections at the district were able to influence the securing of WSDprojects for their areas (Jenkins et al., 2003).KWO’s project management, however, is determined to resist such attempts at
‘politicisation’ of the WSD programme. Its project director claimed that theorganisation adheres to the 12-point selection criteria fastidiously,20 and does notinvolve the elected political representatives (MPs, MLAs and members of zillapanchayats) who comprise the district watershed advisory committee.21 Referring tothe elected political representatives from the advisory committee, KWO’s projectdirector asserted: ‘They cannot influence the selection even of a square inch ofland.’22. He also clarified that ‘requests’ from political leaders for PIA appointmentsare not heeded, and internally devised criteria of selection are followed. This postureof strict ‘neutral’ selection procedures is an integral part of planned developmentinterventions. KWO’s stance demonstrates the application of a technocraticrationality that valorises neutrality of expert power to steer the programme clearof political influences. In this framework, politics – in the sense of arbitrary politicalinfluences by individuals seeking to further their electoral interests – is expungedfrom the programme.Taking a cue from the 1994 guidelines, KWO further espouses a normative view of
participatory WSD projects as ‘apolitical’. Moreover, given its own institutionalhistory as a bureaucracy inexperienced in participatory project management, andgiven also the rigid requirements for target completion of the state government,participation itself is posed to KWO as a time-bound objective. This considerationhas led to the evolution of specific procedures within KWO to distance WSDprojects from any kind of unresolved conflict within a village that may interfere withthe project’s pace of progress.The sociopolitical characteristics of villages in Kurnool, however, make this task
particularly challenging. Kurnool is a part of the Rayalseema region in western APwhere, like the rest of the state, factional networks and caste-based alliances havepenetrated deep into society. Villages in Rayalseema are predominantly mixed-caste,and it is common for Reddys to be numerically and economically preponderant.23
The Boyas, a backward caste, have gained in influence as a result of the state’sreservation policies and have frequently posed a challenge to the dominant Reddys.They are well known in the region for their proclivity for aggression and violence.Conflicts between factions are common and can often be very violent.24 It is commonfor factional disputes to occur between members of a single dominant caste orbetween rival dominant castes, with supporters from other subordinate castes; suchdisputes do occur frequently among low-caste members as well, but these may notenter the wider public domain ‘unless they are adopted by the dominant caste leadersas their own’ (Elliott, 1990: 134).KWO borrows the term ‘faction-village’ liberally, using it to identify ‘problem
villages’.25 It meticulously avoids villages that have ongoing factional conflict. Itdoes not include villages that are not ‘united’, or more importantly appear to be so.26
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In this respect, the depoliticisation discourse following the 1994 guidelines acquires ahighly specific and regional flavour. KWO frowns upon conflictual forms offactional politics, and since this sort of politics is amply reflected within localpanchayats, the guidelines’ exclusion of panchayats from direct programmeimplementation finds favour here. Moreover, WCs clearly fit into KWO’stechnocratic orientation, as institutions that can be created, and their workingprocedures codified and monitored, without the ‘messy politics’ that continues inpanchayat forums. The larger political environment in the state, where panchayatshave hitherto not occupied centre stage in decentralised development, greatlyfacilitates such a rationalisation.
VI. Project Interface in Two Kurnool Villages
The formation of the WC is an important moment in the life of the project, especiallysince it offers the first opportunity for project officials to secure the project fromfactionalism or indeed contest of any kind. However, it is also the first act in howpower related to the WSD project is distributed or indeed claimed in a village; butKWO, following the 1994 guidelines, in effect seeks to portray this as an apoliticalprocess. A team of officials typically arrives at a public venue in the villageorganising a convivial event marked by song, dance and drama to announce theproject. In these ‘entry-point’ meetings, project officials interact with villages in amanner that tends to downplay power relations. Further, in tune with the guidelines,KWO requires the WC to be formed in a ‘consensual’ process, in striking contrast tothe elected panchayat. Indeed, the demonstration of consensus during the formationof the WC becomes critical to the continuation of the project in the village.
The key point, however, is that factional politics and contestation, so oftenwitnessed in panchayat forums, is an integral aspect of the politicisation of socialrelations in villages here. Therefore the attempt to exclude factional politics from theWSD programme commonly results in accommodating situations where factionalgroups have arrived at some form of compromise in sharing power. This was true forboth Lilapuram and Malligundu villages in Veldurthi mandal.27 Here the formationof the WC proved to be the critical opportunity during which the obtaining powerstructures of the village, indeed the very actors who were central to panchayatpolitics, were officially incorporated into the project morphology. Equally interestingis that different class and caste dynamics in the two villages affected the politicisationof the respective WCs in different ways.
Lilapuram and Malligundu are typical dryland villages, with negligible commonwater resources. Single crop agriculture in the rain-fed kharif season is the majoritypractice. In Lilapuram, large Reddy farmers alone own private wells for irrigatedcultivation and are the largest employers of wage labour in the village. The relativeabsence of accessible alternative employment options, both of farm and non-farmtypes, exposes small and medium farmers to low wage rates (compared to thegovernment minimum). In Malligundu, by contrast, the marked absence of verylarge farmers, intensive cross-hiring and greater proximity to Kurnool town togetherinsure farmers against exploitative wage relations. Further, caste relations inLilapuram are rigidly hierarchical: the dominant Reddys and other ‘upper’ castespractise untouchability against the small SC community. This is not the case in
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Malligundu, where potential Reddy domination has been checked by the assertion ofpower by the Boyas. Moreover, the relative homogeneity of economic deprivationacross all castes has led to a greater fluidity in caste relations. Seasonal migrationduring the summer to the wetter, coastal parts of the state is confined to the SCcommunity in Lilapuram, but not so in Malligundu, where practically the entirevillage is deserted during lean agricultural months.Factional politics in both villages is also manifested differently. In Lilapuram, a
split in the dominant Reddy family in 1985 led to the formation of two Reddy groupswith their own loyal supporters drawn from other castes. The two groups havekeenly contested panchayat elections ever since, but only one group has consistentlybeen victorious. In 2001, when I first visited the village, Satya Reddy managedpanchayat affairs on behalf of his mother, who occupied the reserved seat. Thesituation was scarcely different in 2004, when Satya Reddy officiated as the vice-sarpanch, given that his nominee occupied the reserved backward caste seat.However, members from the rival Reddy camp are well respected too, and there is noevidence of any clear-cut division within the village.In Malligundu, factional politics has occurred outside the village rather than inside
it. Until 1995, Malligundu was a hamlet to neighbouringMagarpalli panchayat, whichin turn was dominated by a single Reddy family. When Shiva Chandra Naidu, a smallbut politically ambitious Boya from Malligundu, demanded a share in panchayatpower, he was denied it. He subsequently lost the panchayat elections and retaliatedviolently against the Magarpalli Reddy family, drawing support from other Boyaswithin Malligundu. After incessant spiral killings between the two groups for sevenyears, Malligundu was finally granted a separate panchayat in 1995 andNaidu becameits sarpanch. Interestingly enough, despite this Reddy-Boya conflict, Reddys inMalligundu did not get involved, out of fear or indifference or both.28 By 2004, Naiduwas challenged by his nephew Ramachandrudu, but the contest was resolved amicablywithout a split in Boya support. Naidu no longer holds an official panchayat position,but he continues to wield a palpable influence over the village.In both villages, factors internal to the prevailing balance of power ensured that
WCs could be formed peacefully. In Lilapuram, the covered area was large andrequired two micro-watershed projects, thus fortuitously allowing for twocommittees, which were then manned by each rival Reddy group. In this case, theallocation of two projects to one village followed purely from the size of the coveredarea (given KWO’s rigorous criteria) and not political influence at the district level.However, this is not necessarily the case elsewhere in the state, where village-levelleaders frequently exploit their political connections to influence project allocation(Jenkins et al., 2003). In Malligundu, which also had two committees owing to thesize of its treatment area, Naidu’s position ensured near total compliance from thoseselected. In either village then, the relative adequacy of political resources – of powerexercised through the WSD project – helped contain the factional rivalry andproduced the resulting veneer of consensus. Even the slightest alteration in thedistribution of power among dominant groups (as for example, the presence of asingle committee in Lilapuram, or a single committee to share between Malligunduand Magarpalli) might have upset this fragile balance.Finally, political parties had a limited role to play in influencing the formation of
WCs in these villages. Although dominant groups in both villages professed distinct
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political identities – TDP and Congress – such affiliations were no more than a sortof branding. Yet, despite being fairly tenuous at most times, these affiliationsassumed a sharp identity during elections. In other parts of Kurnool district, it is notuncommon for party politicians at higher levels to attempt to influence the selectionof project areas and PIAs and to ensure that village committees are packed with theirparty supporters.29 Whatever the case, the political appeal of WSD is typically foropportunistic reasons, and politicians clamouring for projects soon lose interest inthem. This is primarily because of the nature of WSD projects, which unlike roads orlarge dams do not yield an impression of instant gain.
VII. Implications of KWO’s Depoliticisation Discourse and Strategy
In both Lilapuram and Malligundu there can be little doubt that the WCs werepoliticised from the start, and precisely by the factional politics that KWO sought toexclude from its WSD projects. In fact, KWO’s strategy of securing consensus onlyexpedited the accommodation of factional interests and the availability of adequateproject resources made this possible. The internal bureaucratic culture within KWOacted as a powerful factor, prompting its local project staff to secure the active supportof dominant interests so that projects could be initiated and legitimised. Withtemporary contracts and the fear of redundancy, they were acutely aware that theycould ill afford to arouse the ire of the Reddys in Lilapuram or Naidu in Malligundu.
Further, WCs that were conceived as genetically different entities from thepanchayats ended up obtaining the same co-ordinates. The Reddys in Lilapuram werekeen to enhance their traditional basis of dominationwith official authority, supposedlyembodied by the project committee. The acting sarpanch Satya Reddy was doublythewinner, with his dual control over the village panchayat andone of two villageWCs.In Malligundu, Naidu’s interest in the project stemmed from his wish to distractattention from his suspect acts and appear as a benign village leader, as opposed to acaste leader among the Boyas alone. Being sarpanch, he could not have been appointedas an office-bearer in the WC, but this did not particularly bother him. He wasconcerned with securing cuts in project works, and as long as these were secured, hewas content for the WC to carry on its activities without his direct involvement.30
With the same actors at the helm of affairs in the WSD project, particularly inLilapuram, there was little reason to expect the WC to function any differently fromthe panchayat. The panchayat, which is supposed to be the repository of wide-ranging duties and functions, restricts its functioning in practice to a fewconstruction-related tasks. In both villages, and also more generally, panchayatworks are entrusted to local contractors selected by the sarpanch on the basis oftenders, instead of engaging villagers (Naidu himself is the contractor). Neither doesthe panchayat convene to decide matters collectively, as the acting sarpanch wieldstotal power; nor does it hold public meetings.
In this scenario, the use of public meetings as essential spaces for collectivedeliberation for the WSD project acquired a rather different purpose in the projectvillages. Public meetings are precisely the sites that mask the ‘real structure of power’and ‘where the selective presentation of opinion is most likely’ (Mosse, 1994: 510).Local project officials were well aware of this, but were bound by the constraintsof their official position to value the ‘public’ rather than the ‘hidden’ transcript
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(Scott, 1990). In Lilapuram for instance, angry SC women spoke of discrimination inthe allocation of project work by Reddy landholders, not at a public meeting, butduring a private conversation with a sympathetic WDT member in my presence. Theconcerned member however refrained from interfering, thus preserving the project’sstatus quo and veneer of consensus. Project officials themselves trivialised projectpublic spaces by using most of the time to display project paperwork, as a sign ofaccountability, but not really making these available for scrutiny.31 Importantly,public meetings in both villages were held infrequently, declining remarkably afterthe initial project months.KWO’s depoliticisation discourse and strategy precluded its projects from being
particularly responsive to the needs of socially and economically disadvantagedpersons. It would require a separate article to detail precisely how the WSD projectsfailed to improve the lot of the poor from the BC and SC communities in thesevillages. Nevertheless, it is possible to argue that such an orientation permits littlescope for the growth of an arena where informal, non-institutionalised forms ofconfrontation, contestation and conflict between subordinate and dominant groupscould occur to resolve iniquitous issues of resource access and entitlement underlyingWSD. This curtails the possibility of subordinate demand-led processes within theproject to influence the distribution of a watershed’s resources. An appropriateexample is that of common pool resources (CPRs), access to which is frequentlygoverned by informal rules and is unequal, to the disadvantage of subordinategroups. While CPRs may often be of poor quality with ‘unstable and low productionlevels’ following continuous use by a privileged few, they continue to be vital for thesurvival and livelihoods needs of marginal groups such as women, the landless andthe poor (Johnson, 2004: 415). Perhaps in recognition of this, the regeneration ofcommon lands is among the stated objectives of successive WSD guidelines. WSDprojects clearly need to promote open and, if necessary, contentious reviews of CPRaccess arrangements to ensure equity. However, this is not encouraged by theguidelines, despite their emphasis on participatory decision-making. In cases likethat of KWO, where ‘consensus’ is prized over all else, this approach becomesimpossible to pursue on the ground.The politicisation of WSD projects is akin to the politicisation of development
through elite-driven accommodative politics more generally in India. However,KWO’s strategy does depoliticise its WC projects of potential subaltern politics,which may bolster the power of the lower castes and classes. Would it be possible tomake a case for politicising development with politics of this sort? What implicationsmight that have for pro-poor development? The evidence to this effect is mixed.Varshney has argued that the intensification of low-caste subaltern politics in Indiahas not produced effective pro-poor policies for two reasons: ethnicity and class donot coincide; and, even if the poor were to mobilise and demand political action, theywould demand direct methods of poverty eradication such as asset/income transfers,which are ‘less economically effective, but politically more appealing in the short run’(Varshney, 1999: 24). Even so, he submits that ‘whether or not economic inequalitieshave gone down (as a result of lower-caste mobilisation), social inequalities certainlyhave, even for the scheduled castes’.32
Taking a more positive stand, the arguments in favour of promoting pro-poorpolitical engagement with the state and its development process are compelling.
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Atul Kohli’s influential 1987 study focused on the qualities of a political regime thatimpact the scope and possibilities of poverty reduction. Taking on from Kohli, JohnHarriss (2000) has recently demonstrated how the mobilisation of lower class/castegroups around stable parties has led to their clear pursuit of a direct approach topoverty reduction (through investments in the key social structures of education andhealth, and by means of food subsidies) when in government. More generally, MickMoore and James Putzel have argued that ‘the space for the poor to organise withindemocratic civil society can contribute to poverty reduction. . . . despite theambiguous poverty reduction record of democracies in developing countries’(Moore and Putzel, 1999: 13).33 In their view, the extent and ways in which poorpeople are mobilised politically depend to a large degree on the ‘effectiveness andcoherence of states and the policies they pursue’ (ibid: 1). Kohli states conclusively:‘Organised political change under democracy offers limited, but probably the onlyrealistic, hope of mildly egalitarian socio-economic development for modern India’(Kohli, 1988: 5). All this suggests that the only way to counter a discourse ofdepoliticisation that works in tandem with a self-perpetuating technocraticrationality of the state is to consciously work towards the intensification of pro-poor politics in development.
VIII. Conclusion
The analysis contained in this article rests on two arguments made at the outset: first,the politicisation of social relations has been an integral part of Indian democracysince independence and has steadily encompassed larger sections of the population;and second, the politicisation of development planning has accompanied this processfrom the start, producing elite-driven and accommodative development strategies.This context has guided the focus of this article, which explores therefore how adiscourse of ‘depoliticisation’ is sustained in practice, and its implications for pro-poor development in India. Such an investigative focus represents a slight departurefrom Ferguson’s key concerns, which assume the inevitability of the depoliticisationof development. The article seeks to demonstrate that the ‘anti-politics machine’ inIndia is sufficiently more nuanced in its operation than that in Lesotho, as it is verydifficult to assume that the depoliticisation of development does indeed occur, or atleast occur in an uncomplicated sense.
The recent reformulation of the WSD programme and subsequent debatesregarding the virtues of ‘new’ local institutions versus panchayats illustrates this. The1994 policy guidelines attempt to depoliticise WSD by disregarding critical factors ofstratification that underlie the exercise of power in watershed villages. In this sense,they are no different from previous development strategies which have ultimatelysuccumbed to accommodating elite politics. Unsurprisingly, this is not the focus ofthe depoliticisation discourse ensuing from the policy change, which has transformedthe debate into the virtues of ‘apolitical’ local institutions. The key propositioncontained within this discourse is suspect, as WCs share the same social context aspanchayats, where the deep politicisation of social relations contributes to the‘political’ character of the latter.
In response, the article first shows how the debate over local institutions is greatlycoloured by the interests of key actors engaged in programme implementation.
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In this respect, a description of panchayats as ‘political’ and WCs as ‘apolitical’serves to mask old and new conflicts as well as fears. Second, the article empiricallydemonstrates how the attribution of contrasting traits to local institutions acquireseven more specific meanings in particular contexts depending on the political formsmost commonly witnessed in those regions. In Kurnool, the depoliticisationdiscourse was substantiated by project strategies aiming to keep WCs away fromfrequently occurring ‘factional politics’. The fieldwork evidence from Lilapuram andMalligundu amply confirms that the very same politics ascribed to panchayatsequally assail the WCs, despite their stringent design principles. These argumentstogether illustrate that in India the depoliticisation discourse survives on selectmeanings ascribed to politics.Further, the article shows how complex factors contribute to the substantiation of
this discourse by planners and implementers at different levels. At the national levelof policy formulation, the new institutional theorisation of community and collectiveaction has been influential. Its inherent tendency to disregard the effects of powerdifferentials on the possibilities of local collective action and participation mergeswell with the older tradition in Indian development policy-making of accommodat-ing elite politics under a shroud of ‘neutral’ and ‘technical’ planning. The outcome isa watershed policy that claims to be pro-poor but simultaneously underplays thefactors that are likely to inhibit pro-poor outcomes. The case study reveals that suchfactors range from locally exploitative relations of domination to bureaucraticfastidiousness about consensus at all cost.It is much harder to explain why particular individuals in the government
supported the idea of WCs as apolitical. Were they just being politically naive inbelieving that WCs were a better way to manage a watershed’s resources, or did theytruly aim to depoliticise WSD? Manor (2005) argues that such a belief may ariseeither out of naivety or cynicism, but in either case it dignifies a discourse that heregards as dangerous. This article has been less concerned with intentionality andmore with the conditions that allow a discourse of depoliticisation to be sustained. InAP, the rise of a particularly aggressive brand of technocratic governance underNaidu complemented KWO’s own history as a bureaucratic organisation. Thisprompted its innovative project director to attempt the formulation of ‘participa-tory’ institutions and processes within a technocratic, target-oriented, framework.Besides, the historically inhospitable environment for panchayats here furtherallowed the discourse to be adapted in opposition to commonly occurring factionalpolitics, granting it new and pertinent meanings.The technocratic rationality evident in KWO’s strategy was particularly important
in influencing the actions of its local project officials. Low-paid temporary WDTofficials refrained from challenging the locally dominant for fear of subverting theproject’s participatory processes. While they were amply aware of the politics thatdominated project implementation, they sought refuge precisely within KWO’stechnocratic format, and interpreted their designated roles minimally. As long as theWCs could be formed ‘consensually’ and project work accomplished on time, theywere content to ignore the ‘real politics’ of WSD projects, particularly thedisadvantages experienced by subordinate groups.While the article shows how allegedly depoliticised institutions were politicised by
local politics, it also proves that in effect only one type of politics dominated the
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WSD project whereas the other type was suppressed. It reiterates Manor’s (2005)insightful observation that attempts to exclude politics – or depoliticisation – canonly mean that one type of politics will prevail. Technocratic strategies unleashed bythe depoliticisation discourse in effect curtailed the use of project spaces for subalternpolitics, which could potentially strengthen the power of lower castes and classes.This is particularly worrying, not the least because such politics is imperative ifdevelopment policy – at its highest levels – is to be genuinely locally driven. The useof such politics in development is not just imperative but also ‘rational’, if ‘statepower is to be used in socially responsible ways’ (Echeverri-Gent, 1993); indeed, suchuse must counter the technocratic rationality underlying development policy-makingand planning. As for local institutions – whether watershed committees orpanchayats – a positive change in their orientation can only occur if pro-poorpolitics is allowed to influence, dominate and disrupt development as we know it.And for those impatient to meet targets, it is useful to remember that the eventualsuccess of pro-poor policies must be considered not only over a single project cycle,nor even a single generation, but over several generations.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stuart Corbridge and two anonymous reviewers from theJournal of Development Studies for their helpful comments on this article. I wouldalso like to gratefully acknowledge the Economic and Social Research Council forawarding me a Postdoctoral Fellowship 2004–5 (Award number PTA-026-27-0360)which allowed me the time to write this article from my Ph.D. research.
Notes
1. See Frankel (1978) and Chatterjee (1998) for seminal representations of the liberal and Marxist
positions on this issue respectively.
2. Bhagwati, 1982; for critiques of neoliberal explanations, see Roy, 1998.
3. The Hindu component of the OBCs includes the ‘low castes whose traditional social and ritual status
has been above the ex-untouchable scheduled castes, but below the upper castes’ (Varshney, 2000: 8).
4. See also Kumar and Corbridge, 2002.
5. Despite the broadening of objectives, the particular concerns of WSD projects around the world can
take very different forms, depending on local agro-climatic and topographic conditions.
6. See Johnson, 2004, and Mosse, 2003, for succinct critiques.
7. See also Taylor, 1987; Ostrom, 1990; Baland and Platteau, 1999; and Agrawal, 2001.
8. Obligatory and rather vague references have been made, however: ‘While making nominations, it may
be ensured that the Watershed Committee has adequate representation of women, members from the
scheduled castes/scheduled tribes, shepherd community etc’ (MoRD, 1994: 16, emphasis added).
9. There is a large literature on the subject. See Mathews (1995) for a good overview and Lieten (1999)
for a particularly insightful study of panchayats in Uttar Pradesh.
10. Interview, 2000, New Delhi.
11. See Baviskar (2005) for accounts of how this view was expressed by administrators and officials of
WSD projects in Madhya Pradesh, and Manor (2005) for descriptions of user bodies like watershed
committees, in Zambia, South Africa and Bangladesh as well as several Indian states, as ‘apolitical’.
12. WSD is one of 29 subjects identified by the constitution for transfer to panchayats.
13. Interviews with MoRD officials, 2005, New Delhi.
14. Interview with a number of NGO officials in AP and a policy analyst at the Centre for Economic and
Social Studies in Hyderabad, 2004.
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15. ‘To say that there was ‘‘no consultation’’ is an understatement’, said an official in the Department of
Land Resources, MoRD (Interview, 2005, New Delhi). ‘The Hariyali Guidelines were not debated;
they were formulated within closed-door settings’, said a member of WASSAN, a leading network of
NGOs in Andhra Pradesh (Interview, 2004, Hyderabad).
16. My doctoral fieldwork in 2001 aimed to understand the practical interpretations of the 1994 policy in
AP and to situate these meanings within the local and regional politics of my fieldwork sites. The topic
being addressed in this article thus emerged in course of my research. Fieldwork methodology
included secondary literature reviews, policy analysis at the state and district levels as well as village
level fieldwork over six months. Given the subjective nature of my concerns, I used mainly qualitative
forms of data gathering, particularly personal interviews, group discussions and triangulation within
the villages. I also conducted textual analysis of written project documents and all project-related
communication. I acquired essential project-related information from other relevant records such as
village crime records and agricultural information. A postdoctoral revisit in 2004 lasted a month,
during which time I investigated state and district level reactions to the 2003 policy change. I mainly
conducted personal interviews with a range of officials and NGO personnel. I also revisited my case-
study villages where I conducted group discussions and interviews.
17. Two prominent instances are participatory irrigation management, implemented through locally
constituted water users’ associations, and thrift and credit groups for women.
18. A mandal is a sub-district unit of administration in AP.
19. Frequent performance assessments proved to be time-consuming and led to considerable
disgruntlement at nearly all levels of the state bureaucracy. For instance, WSD project officials had
to submit figures of how many projects were completed, how many watershed structures were
constructed and so forth on a regular basis. This often led to formalistic compliance with assessment
procedures (Interviews with district officials in Kurnool, December 2004).
20. A point that was separately confirmed by the project director of the Integrated Mission for
Sustainable Development (National Remote Sensing Agency), that prioritises areas across the country
for watershed treatment (Interview, 2000, Hyderabad).
21. The project director when my fieldwork was conducted in 2001 has since been transferred. My
postdoctoral trip to Kurnool in 2004 revealed that successive project directors have not necessarily
continued the emphasis on project procedures devised by their predecessor.
22. Interview, March 2001, Kurnool.
23. See Wade (1994) for accounts of Reddy domination in Kurnool.
24. See Jenkins et al. (2003) for descriptions of factional politics in four villages in neighbouring
Anantapur district.
25. The term is freely used by PIAs and WDT members.
26. This is not formally articulated as a criterion of selection, although past instances confirm this practice.
27. The names of villages and all village-level characters have been changed to preserve anonymity.
28. There were a number of inter-village disputes with Magarpalli, such as the sharing of common stream
waters, which Naidu had tried to resolve, earning him wider support in Malligundu. At the same time,
Naidu’s penchant for violence was well known (Police records, Veldurthi police station).
29. Conversations with journalists in Veldurthi mandal (March 2000).
30. In fact, Naidu continued to meddle with the WSD project in Magarpalli by instigating the dominant
Reddy family’s Boya supporters, in an attempt to secure cuts there as well.
31. However, it may also be true that the public emphasis on record-keeping can be empowering precisely
through its symbolism.
32. Mendelsohn and Vicziany, 1998 as cited in Varshney (2000: 20).
33. Sam Hickey (2003) has argued for a more rigorous theorisation of ‘political space’ to understand the
institutional channels through which the chronic poor can gain access to policy processes, and also the
political discourses within which the chronically poor are represented.
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