| Their discovery of India began in 1956 when they piled into a Land Rover and decided to drive down here. Today Lloyd I Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, professors emeriti from the University of Chicago, share a good laugh when they recount those days. "Do you think all those borders would be passable now?" they ask. |
| The Rudolphs settled down in Jaipur, to study India, especially its democracy. A broad selection of their work on India has now been compiled into a three-volume series called Explaining Indian Democracy: A Fifty-Year Perspective, 1956-2006. It features selections from their books and numerous essays and lectures. |
| How would you encapsulate your time in India? |
| When we came we were young pipsqueaks. India had a very colonial frame of mind and we were generously received in high political quarters. From the '60s, which saw de-colonisation of India's mentality, we started having a very hard time. Now we are in the third phase where we get dealt with as Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph rather than as Americans or non-Americans. India has sense as a country now and with democracy in a bad shape around the world, an example that it can be done [sic]. |
| Is it fair to say that 1991, more than any other year, was the biggest turning point? |
| Since 1991 obviously the economy has changed strikingly. The reforms resulted in growth. We regard ourselves as political economists. We wrote a book called In Pursuit of Lakshmi, a very big book on the Indian economy, which also included politics. The huge change, apart from the social revolution, is the change from being a centrally planned economy to market economy. The Nehruvian model came a cropper, and explaining that involves a very complex set of stories. The reforms transformed the federal system. The states as units had to attract private investment. So you had a phenomenon of state chief ministers travelling around the world and Bill Gates coming to Hyderabad. Thus the political side saw the movement from one-party dominance to multi-party coalitions. |
| The Gandhi family is inextricably entwined with Indian political history and you dwell a lot on it, especially Rajiv Gandhi... |
| We gave lectures for two years in the US that Rajiv's combination of free enterprise and what remained of the old socialist regime was just the right combination. We said he was leading a new generation. But then we had to rewrite everything. He came in as Mr Clean and two years later he gave a fantastic speech that the Congress needs to clean its act first. Bofors happened and he pulled back from party reforms which would have included internal elections. He started like a meteor but ended severely compromised. But he did have a sense that the market was going to do a lot of good. |
| Where do you see the Congress party today and the role of the Gandhi family in it? |
| Why do people think pushing in a dynasty makes sense? Succession is a period when there is terrible confusion in a political party. Going the dynastic way is avoiding the conflict. The problem is the political capital question. Post-independence, Nehru-Gandhi had a lot of political capital. Indira Gandhi pumped it up and used it up. Basically, in the long term the political capital of the Congress has been in a downturn. Rajiv for a short while again brought it up. But now it might be a problem in the longer run because they have to renew their political capital. In 2004, people give Sonia Gandhi credit for pulling the party together and ensuring that it is still the single largest party. But in 2009 where does the party stand? |
| Do you see the emergence of a third force or probably a multi-polar era, especially with the likes of Mayawati in the picture? |
| Periyar is a great hero for Mayawati as he was against the domination of the upper castes. She is trying to build across caste lines and trying to go national. By erecting a statue of Periyar in Lucknow and then going to Bangalore to rally support, she has managed to bring the south to the north. |
| In the old days the Congress could pull in the Muslim vote because it had a secular identity. The scheduled caste votes came because of Gandhi and reservations. But they have lost that hold now and upper caste votes too. Why? The reasons include a lack of credibility, among others. In the upcoming elections, the BJP is not in good shape either, and for the coalitions to work you need a single largest party. So, you have a situation where the system can spiral out of control. Take Madhya Pradesh for example, you can have it cut between BJP, BSP, SP and Congress. So a shift of 1-2 per cent can give a lot of leverage to caste communities. So if the BJP and the Congress can't pull, say, 30 per cent of the votes each, you could reach a critical point. Coalitions will form but will have no single largest party. |
| There is significant discontent among those left behind by the economic boom. What would you say about that? |
| There has been a shift from the ascetic, Gandhian, simple-living India to a consumer's India. But farmers are in a bad shape because the post-green revolution boom is over. The share of agriculture in the GDP has dipped to 27 per cent but the number of people engaged in it is still 67 per cent. People say the Congress benefited in 2004 because of the anti-India Shining arguments. It has done its part with the schemes, including the rural employment scheme, but people in 2009 are going to vote for a lot of different reasons, including caste. And Mayawati is going to places where the Congress isn't going. Whether she is going to succeed or not is a question. |
| The Realm of Ideas: Inquiry and Theory Pages xvi + 324 Price Rs 695 |
| The Realm of Institutions: State Formation and Institutional Change Pages xiv + 344 Price Rs 695 |
| The Realm of the Public Sphere: Identity and Policy Pages xviii + 436 Price Rs 750 |
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