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Amid political fractures, a global economic crisis and rising social tensions, this term of the United Progressive Alliance government is coming to an end. To many, there has been little to distinguish this period in Indian history, and indeed if anything it is marked by a lack of change. Yet the UPA period has been one of tensions and contradictions, a period that threw up in sharp relief some of the developing tendencies of the Indian polity. In the few days left before we deal with the results of the elections, it may be time to consider these tendencies. The hypothesis that emerges is both hopeful and disturbing: India's ruling class appears to be heading towards an intensifying hegemonic crisis.
What does one mean by this? Hegemony, in Gramsci's sense of the term, is the maintenance of ruling class power through a combination of coercion with the consent of the oppressed, won by a “concrete coordination” of the material interests of the ruling class bloc with other social sections. At its most basic, a hegemonic crisis is thus a crisis of legitimacy. But it is also more than that. Hegemony is not a one way flow between rulers and ruled, a deceit perpetrated by the one upon the other. If we accept the proposition that the capitalist state is a social relation, one function of which is to organise the ruling bloc of class fractions (Poulantzas 1978), hegemony provides the ideological facet of this relationship, serving to discursively define social power. While legitimating the power of the ruling bloc of class fractions, the hegemonic ideology also inherently defines for that ruling bloc who its legitimate members are, and provides an “explanation” for how it achieved that power. Second, by defining the parameters of thinking about society, it shapes the perspective and limits within which both the oppressed and the ruling class fractions approach the polity. What this means is that a hegemonic crisis produces not only a crisis of legitimacy; it also produces an increasing incoherence of the ruling bloc and its fractions, as the ideological frame that identified their common sociopolitical interests ceases to “work.” The net result is a disarticulation of social power, as both the legitimacy and the coherence of the dominant bloc deteriorate. My argument here is that we are witnessing a shift in this direction in India today, and the resulting conjuncture presents both dangers and possibilities for left and democratic forces.
The 2004 Elections
An analytical starting point for such an approach is the 2004 elections that brought the UPA to power. The 'shock' defeat of the NDA were both less and more significant than they were often believed to be at the time. It was less significant than it was made out to be by those who saw these elections as a decisive rejection of the NDA. The received “common sense” about this election, weaker now in light of the UPA's pronounced neoliberal inclinations, was that this was a vote against “reforms” and, to a lesser extent, Hindutva. Indeed, for several months afterwards, the English media saw repeated and increasingly ludicrous attempts to defend neoliberal reforms against this perceived setback ("a revolution of rising expectations", "it's all anti-incumbency", etc.).
Yet in fact the 2004 election results were by no means a 'wave' against the NDA. Though widespread and deep-rooted discontent existed, there was no political formation in the elections that focused such discontent beyond the regional and the issue-specific. The confusing result is best summarised by Yogendra Yadav: "The case that this was a mandate against policies of economic reforms is an overstatement... having said this, it is equally necessary to realise that... if this election could [have been] a referendum on economic reforms, the policies of liberalisation would have been rejected" (Yadav 2004). Nor was there any sense of an overwhelming defeat for the social bloc that had supported the NDA, a combination of upper castes and upper classes (Yadav 1999).
This reality, and the intensity with which the UPA has embraced neoliberalism, has led many on the left to argue that there was no significant difference between the two periods. But it is here that we underestimate the importance of 2004. For the consequence of an electoral result need not only be in direct shifts of political power; it can also operate at the discursive, ideological and political levels. In this sense, the elections of that year did indeed have a significant impact.
For a decisive defeat was indeed suffered in that year - not by the ruling coalition, but by the ruling class intelligentsia, and in particular by the key ideological forum of the “new India": the English media. The defensiveness of neoliberals in the English media was not merely an overreaction. This intelligentsia had steadfastly predicted the return of the NDA and, in a symbiotic partnership with the bureaucracy and the party leadership, crafted the understanding whose preeminent symbol was “India Shining.” 2004 not only showed that this ideology had failed to secure hegemonic or even dominant status in Indian politics; it also demonstrated a more fundamental failure. Indeed, 2004 was both a transition for elements of the ruling bloc and a symptom of a deeper failure.
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The full article is available at: http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/101/39/.