The nationalist elites of the South Asian states who inherited power at the time of independence enjoyed enormous prestige and a certain sense of purpose and were committed to economic growth and social transformation. The ruling elite looked at institution-building as a part of the developmental process that would enable the society to govern itself effectively, facilitate mass participation in the political process that would provide legitimacy of the system, and ensure political stability to achieve economic growth and social justice.

The optimism of the ruling elite was based inter alia on an assumption that rapid economic development, diffused through all levels of society, would inevitably reduce the potential for violent conflict. The processes of economic development, urbanization, social mobilization and politicization were expected to break down and erode proximate identities and fissiparous tendencies. The first decade or so of post-colonial history, seemed to bear out this theory. Beginning in the late 1960s, however rising ethnic and class tensions in most of the South Asian states cast doubts on this optimistic scenario. This virtually brought to centre stage the reality that development and conflicts were inter-linked. The nature of development itself, both in terms of institution-building and economic progress, had sowed the seeds of discontent and conflict.¹  Since the state is pivotal in the developmental process in post-colonial societies, it is essential to examine the nature and the role of the state and the relationship between state and society to understand the roots and causes of violent conflicts.

Historical Context of South Asian States

The antecedents of the territorial boundaries of contemporary South Asian states are of recent origin. Prior to the advent of colonialism, the subcontinent was characterized by tribal and feudal social formations and encompassed a multitude of principalities and kingdoms. The colonial power devised certain strategies to deal with nationalist aspirations and prolong its rule. The strategy of coping with multi-ethnic India was to divide and rule. In the context of Sri Lanka, it was co-option of the ruling elites of both the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups. By the time of the withdrawal of the British ethno-religious difference became the basis of state creation culminating in the creation of India and Pakistan as two separate states.²  The proponents of the two-nation theory had hoped that such religious nationalist sentiments would override all other types of ethnic divisions in the newly established state.³  Jinnah had thought that “the diversities and particularisms of regions, castes, communities and sects would all be swept away in the future state of Pakistan if certain forms of state apparatus were built speedily and methodically.”⁴ But this soon gave way to another principle of nationalism — the assertion of ethno-linguistic identity by the Bengalis inhabiting East Pakistan, which culminated in the creation of the state of Bangladesh.

Structure of Ethnic Group Relations

The states that were to emerge out of the British colonial system were heterogenous states comprising of various ethnic groups. Only Bangladesh that emerged independent later in 1971 could claim to be largely, but not entirely, homogeneous. The structure ofethnic group relations or the position of an ethnic group in the socio-economic stratification can be understood by Donald Horowitz’s schema of the centralized and dispersed ethnic systems. Urmila Phadnis uses this schema to characterize India as an ethnically dispersed system as there is no preeminence of any ethnic group. The rest of South Asia she describes as ethnically centralized systems.⁵  However, both centralized and dispersed systems among South Asian states, have been prone to ethnic violence of various hues and intensity.

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Nature of the South Asian States

The paradox of the nation-state building enterprise was that it was rooted in the European tradition, and unlike the largely homogeneous nation-states of Europe, the heterogeneous post-colonial state-nations of South Asia in the process of the management of a national identity imparted to their states, a hegemonic role over their multi-ethnic societies.⁶  Certain continuities with the pre-colonial state structure could also be discerned. The historical context and developmental processes of South Asian states also evolved in such a manner as to lead to divergent types of regimes.

The hegemonic role of the state was not only due to the imperatives of nation-building but also because it has taken upon itself, for historical reasons, the role as a provider for its citizens. Consequently, there has been increasing state penetration into the civic society as well as centralization of initiatives and resources on the one hand, and the rising expectation of the people from the state on the other. Although the state has relative autonomy in relation to society, in several respects it embodies and reflects the values of the dominant social classes.

In the case of India, the concern for law and order in the immediacy of partition and the desire to build a strong, welfare oriented state, laid the foundations for the centralization of powers in the state. However, the dilemma of building a nation-state in a complex plural society was circumvented by creating a secular, “non-ethnic state”.⁷  The political arrangement envisaged in the Indian Union constituted several provincial states organized on the principle of quasi-federalism. Subsequently, the re-organization of states in 1956 on the basis of language accommodated the ethno-linguistic aspirations of a number of groups. 

There were two factors that contributed to the strengthening of democracy in post-independence India. The first was Nehru’s vision and influence. Under him elected institutions enjoyed preeminence over non-elected institutions. Secondly, the Congress party played the role of an intermediary between state and society. However, all this was to be undermined later. Since the 1970s two seemingly contradictory processes appear to be at work in India. One is the sharp tendency towards centralization in the running of the state and in the management of power. The other is a gradual decline in the authority of those in positions of power and a loosening grip on the national situation by the leadership.⁸  Consequently, there is both an increase in the repressive character of the state and the vulnerability of the state apparatus.

     This process has largely to do with the deinstitutionalization of the Congress party and state structures done by Mrs. Indira Gandhi. The autonomy and professionalism of the state institutions — independence, professional standards, and procedural norms of the parliament, courts, police, civil service and federal system — were eroded. Erosion of the state’s capacity to mediate effectively between contending interests and manage conflict was also due to increased political mobilization of highly fragmented social forces that threatened governability. Mrs. Gandhi’s response to the crisis of governability was by centralizing power in her own person and secretariat.⁹  Mrs. Gandhi increasingly became intolerant of opposition and those opposition groups who felt that they had lost decisively developed a tendency to take political issues outside the political process itself for settlement and thus was the origin of assorted militancies in various regions.¹⁰ 

In Pakistan, the death of Jinnah, soon after independence, weakened the Muslim League profoundly and was to leave a lasting impression on the development of political institutions. For almost nine years after independence the state was to pass through political uncertainty, even finding it hard to put a legitimate government in place. Soon, the military assumed a pre-eminence in the power structure, dominating and controlling the political system.

Developmental theorists in the sixties acclaimed military regimes as agents of modernization in the developing world. Democracy resting on the mobilization of masses was believed to be detrimental to both political stability and economic growth. On the other hand, it was perceived that the military institution with its hierarchical structure, established chains of command and rigid discipline seemed well equipped to provide political stability and ensure efficient economic management.

There are some theoretical explanations for the nature of the Pakistani state as it emerged. According to Hamza Alavi, the post-colonial state is relatively overdeveloped in relation to society owing to its origins in the colonial system. Post-colonial society, along with the bourgeoisie and the landowners are also less developed than the state. Consequently, the state has to mediate the competing and conflicting interests of the metropolitan bourgeoisie, the indigenous bourgeoisie and the land-owning class. The state is, therefore, not simply an instrument of any particular class. Rather it is relatively autonomous vis-a-vis the three dominant classes. Alavi’s analysis of the Pakistani state as an overdeveloped state argues that a predominantly Punjabi military bureaucratic oligarchy dominates Pakistan. This oligarchy is linked to the powerful landowning class and the bourgeoisie.¹¹  The Pakistani state has also been described as a “Praetorian state” — a society without effective institutions and in which corruption is rampant among those who are entrusted with guarding it.¹²  There is one explanation which de-emphasizes the role of the military and gives more importance to the bureaucracy in the process of state formation. According to this argument the Pakistani state is a “bureaucratic polity” which has sought economic development and modernization through its “involuted paternalism”. That is a belief that the masses cannot represent themselves so they must be represented. And due to a detestation of non-bureaucratic institutions, the argument goes that, the masses must be represented by the bureaucracy.¹³ 

The composition of the military-bureaucratic oligarchy has been changing over the years. Initially, urdu-speaking Muslims or Muhajirs, were over-represented in the Civil Services of Pakistan. Their influence declined with the assassination of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951, and the hold over the state was strengthened by the Punjabi bureaucrats. With the rise to power of Gen. Ayub Khan in 1958, a Punjabi-Pakhtun Military Bureaucratic oligarchy was on the ascendancy. After Gen. Zia-ul-Haq came to power in 1977, the predominantly Punjabi army eclipsed the bureaucracy. Even now substantial representation of Muhajirs still remains in the bureaucracy. In terms of the class composition of the military and bureaucracy, there has also been changes. Since the late sixties, there are more recruits to the officer core from the middle classes in the urban and rural areas as against the land-owning background of the earlier officer corps.¹⁴ 

In Bangladesh, the coming to power of the Awami League after independence signified the assumption of state power by an alliance of intermediate classes, which was the support base of the Awami League. But the Awami League’s compulsions to dispense patronage to its support base — the intermediate classes — resulted in a rift between the ruling classes and the masses. This resulted in a crisis of legitimacy for the ruling classes and undermined the Awami League and strengthened the Military Bureaucratic oligarchy.¹⁵  Moreover, a strategy of capitalist development through foreign aid further entrenched the bureaucrats in the power structure. External dependence of the state has resulted in a lack of accountability which has diverted politics and development towards the enrichment of a narrow class of beneficiaries. Governments are less accountable to people and more dependent on donors for securing their patronage in order to retain state power.¹⁶ 

Centralization of state power was inherent in Mujib’s conception of a unitary system for Bangladesh from its inception. Mujib refused to recognize the Chakmas as a distinct ethnic group and grant them provincial autonomy when a group of Chakma leaders met him in 1973. Soon thereafter, the massive mandate that Mujibur Rahman received in the elections held in March 1973 was to result in a kind of democratic autocracy.¹⁷  Without any effective opposition, for that matter any opposition at all, parliament became endangered, if not obsolete.¹⁸  Mujib was faced with a grave political-economic crises by the mid-seventies which he tried to cope through a constitutional coup. The multi-party parliamentary system was replaced by a one party presidential form of government. All political parties were banned and were cajoled to join a newly formed party called the Bangladesh Krishak Shramik Awami League (BAKSAL Bangladesh Peasants and labourers National Front). Firstly, Mujib tried to undermine the opposition through constitutional means, and secondly, appropriated for himself the role of the Presidentwith overarching powers. This has been a legacy unabashedly appropriated by his military successors. The decision of the military to intervene in the political process was an effort to mediate between the power blocs and alter the nature of the state itself in which the military bureaucratic oligarchy had dominance in the exercise of state power.¹⁹ 

Although the struggle against Pakistan was expressed in terms of linguistic nationalism, but nation-building in the relatively homogeneous Bangladesh has contained an underlying religious dimension. Gen. Ziaur Rahman asserted the Islamic cultural identity of the state. The principle of secularism was replaced under a constitutional amendment in 1977 and a drift towards greater conformity to Islamic symbols and values has taken place. Fifteen years of military rule has weakened political institutions and the civil society. Even the most modern of the state apparatuses, the military suffers from weaknesses as it is not a centralized hierarchical structure but is constituted by several groupings and factions.

The multi-ethnic character of Sri Lanka became a central issue in defining the state structures as it moved towards independence. Initially, the Sinhalese political elite stood for some composite Sinhalese-Tamil nation. However, the emergence of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism as a dominant political force, particularly since the elections of 1956 which led to the formation of a government with a hegemonic Sinhala Buddhist ideology, was to result in the erosion of safeguards for the minorities. It is a highly centralized state because there is no devolution of power to the local bodies. Consequently, it is the majority Sinhala community that enjoys state power in Sri Lanka. After 1956, Sinhala Buddhist nationalism became the dominant ideology of the ruling class. The governments that havecome to power have been populist in order to sustain their support base in society and build up a system of patronage and reward. Such an approach has inevitably undermined the autonomy of the state.²⁰ 

Majority domination on one hand, and the increasing authoritarian character of the state on the other have played a significant role in promoting the divide between the Sinhala and Tamils.²¹  Right from the Citizenship Act of 1948 disenfranchising one million Tamils, to the Sinhala Only Act of 1956, to the 1972 republican constitution granting Buddhism the foremost place it has been perpetuating the divide between the Tamils and the Sinhalas. This divide between the Sinhala and Tamils and also within the Sinhalas was furthered by some strong measures taken by the Jayewardene regime since 1977. His tough measures like the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979 and the Sixth Amendment (4th August 1983) only invited defiance from the Tamil youth. Preponing of Presidential elections in 1982 and the referendum of 1983 for the extension of the UNP regime resulted in the increasing erosion of the competitive party system and ensured the continuance of the UNP till 1989.²²  It was since Jayewardene’s regime that the modes of protest and dissent have increasingly taken recourse to extra-constitutional means with the worst manifestation of this being in the ethnic realm.

The nature and character of the South Asian states, therefore are more immediately rooted in the legacies of the colonial period. These post-colonial states tried to pursue modernization and development within a capitalist framework with a view to generating more wealth, consolidating the nation and making the state strong against internal and external threats.²³  But they have not been able to ensure political stability and promote loyalty to the state from all sections and groups within their societies. 

The Development Processes

Most states in the post-colonial world had laid emphasis on planning for development in the initial years. With the dawn of decolonization the state’s role in development came to pervade the theory and practice of development economics. Development was to be overseen by the centralizing state which had two primary tasks — one was to ensure economic growth and the other was to level the multitude of diversities rooted in developing societies. By planning for development and monitoring the production and distribution of economic resources in society, the centralized state was expected to expedite the processes of national integration.

The capacity of the state to engage in redistributive reforms is intricately dependent on the support of atleast a fraction of the dominant social classes or relatively autonomous from the dominant social classes. The ideological leanings of those exercising power within the state apparatus bear upon development policies adopted by the ruling coalitions. An analysis of the state-class relationship in the different phases of the post-independence history of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka would help us in understanding their relative capacities in addressing and redressing the longstanding problems of economic disparities and social injustices. The absence of significant restructuring of prevailing relationships of dominance and privilege in civil society have since the late sixties served to intensify competition and conflict in expanding political arenas and increased the transactional costs of governance, forcing greater reliance on the state’s coercive apparatus, irrespective of its formally democratic or authoritarian facade.

Although the countries of South Asia have had diverse regime patterns, they basically have followed the same economic system, that of a mixed economy. Mixed economymay be described as an eclectic system, based on a mechanism of interaction between the private (market) and public (state) sectors. The system of a mixed economy was adopted in stages since independence through planning. The choice of a mixed economy emerged from the underdeveloped nature of the South Asian societies and thus the entire planning process was geared to overcome underdevelopment in the region. This strategy of economic development had come under attack from Left critics as vacillating between capitalism and socialism and reflecting lack of a coherent plan, purpose and direction.²⁴  Economic planning was concentrated in the hands of the national bourgeoisie and foreign capital which resulted in retarded social and economic development.

The post-colonial Indian state enjoyed relative autonomy from the dominant social classes. The state was not the instrument of any particular class but was balanced between, what Pranab Bardhan calls, the dominant proprietary classes — the industrial capitalist class, the rich farmers and the professionals both civilian and military including white collar workers.²⁵  The proprietary classes are not homogeneous and none is more powerful then the other class. This is partly due to the retarded growth of capitalism in India. The industrial capitalist class has not yet been strong to undermine the economic interest of the rich farmers, neither has it succeeded in taming the professional classes to pursue its goals.

This heterogeneity and class balance while determining resource distribution assured the stability of the Indian state and helped preserve a liberal democratic tradition. The interest of the proprietary classes in the maintenance of a democratic process could be attributed to the need for a system which could provide the best medium for bargaining in the coalition.²⁶  However, this democratic tradition co-existed with authoritarian strains due to the institutional structures inherited from the colonial period.²⁷ 

The earlier Congress leadership, especially Nehru, avoided conflict with the dominant social classes and made measured and subtle uses of state coercion. Nehru succeeded in the abolition of Zamindari or the feudal landlord classes. Abolition of intermediary landholdings reduced tenancy from 60 to 25 per cent and increased proportion of owner cultivators from 40 to 75. About 20 million tenants became owners and about 14 million acres were acquired and distributed.²⁸  This transformed agrarian relations by shifting the locus of power from feudal landlords to medium and rich farmers — a class which was diverse socially ranging from high caste Rajputs to low-caste Hindus. However, proposals initiated in 1959 to lower ceilings on landholdings — to redistribute surplus land to tenants and landless labourers failed terribly due to faulty legislation. Implementation couldn’t take place except in Kerala and West Bengal, which were anyway ruled by Marxist governments.²⁹ 

The fourth five year plan instead of initiating redistributive programmes for the rural poor, went for a technological package aimed at inducing the medium and rich farmers to enhance production. Increased use of fertilizers and high-yielding varieties of seeds were supposed to usher in a green revolution. But since land-reforms in the early 50s had barely grazed the agrarian power structure, the technological innovations in Indian agriculture at best produced regionally disparate results. Parts of north-western India with better irrigation facilities, Punjab and Haryana in particular, saw rapid growth in agricultural output. Rural India was simply bypassed by the Green Revolution of the late 1960s. India as a whole was able to shore up its food grain production, but in the process accentuated existing inequalities in the distribution of rural power and resources, and created greater disparities in the development of the different regional economies.

In regard to industrialization also, even though it strengthened the national economy, but it was at the cost of intensifying regional inequalities. Industrial dominance was in the Northern and Western regions bypassing the eastern and the north-eastern states.³⁰  The contemporary articulation of regional identities in India is a product of inequalities created and perpetuated by the operation of capitalism in the last four decades. Capitalist development has intensified both class and regional inequalities and intensified anger against “a modernist elite”.³¹ 

The present sense of alienation on the part of a large segment of India’s diverse population is linked to a large number of factors, but more pertinently to democracy and distribution. The centralized state apparatus has thwarted many of the substantive political goals of democracy and the inability of India’s democratic system to bring about redistributive reforms and an even pattern of regional economic development has resulted in what one may call in V.S. Naipaul’s term “a million mutinies.”

Pakistan’s economy has been conditioned by the socio-economic structure inherited at the time of partition. After independence, Pakistan had almost no industrial infrastructure. Its economy was basically a feudal dominated agrarian economy. The leadership of the Muslim League party which headed the Pakistan movement was dominated by a feudalistic aristocracy and a group of professionals and rich merchants.³²  Over a period of time the trading classes, were able to gain control of industries with the support and patronage of the bureaucracy.

Since Pakistan did not have an industrial capitalist class at the time of independence, the state followed a deliberate policy of creating one even at the cost of creating inequalities of income and wealth in the commercial and industrial sectors. This policy was followed because of a perception that such a class was very essential for the economic development of the country.³³  This resulted in the expansion of the private sector but concentrated wealth in some families or groups of merchant capitalists belonging to certain ethnic communities. A study of distribution of industrial assets in 1959 showed that there were twenty-four industrial houses owning 45.9 per cent of private industrial assets and 31.9 per cent of sales in the corporate sector.³⁴ 

The planning process not only helped the rise of the industrial bourgeoisie in the urban areas but strengthened the feudal landlords in the countryside. The trading class, which developed into an industrial bourgeoisie, was unable to challenge the landlords. On the other hand, the feudal classes controlled state power either directly or through their links with the military-bureaucratic oligarchy. This led to the co-existence of semi-feudal and capitalist relations — which gave rise to an uneven pattern of development.³⁵ 

In the agricultural sector, serious land reforms could never take place till the mid-1960s. Land reforms had only a nominal effect on land distribution. As early as 1952-3 Punjab’s bigger landlords subverted an attempt by the more progressive wing of the Muslim League to initiate redistributive reforms by refusing to bring their produce to the market and precipitating a man-made famine in that province. This pattern continued during the late fifties and the sixtieswhen Ayub’s military regime attempted to bring about a land reformfavouring the medium range landlords. Special care however, was taken not to unduly ruffle the bigger landlords. Ayub’s land reforms announced in 1959 fixed the ceiling on landownership at 500 acres of irrigated and 1,000 acres of unirrigated land. But as in the Indian case of land reforms of the early fifties, the ceilings were on individual rather than family holdings. This allowed most of the larger landlords, concentrated in the Punjab and Sindh where the agrarian structure is far more skewed than in Pakistan’s other provinces, to retain land well in excess of the ceilings. Land reform measures under Ayub Khan in 1959, had touched only about 1.6 percent of the cultivated land.³⁶ 

Much radical rhetoric adorned Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s land reform of 1972. As in 1959, the drafters of the legislation were more concerned about winning popular legitimacy than delivering substantial benefits to the poor. Again, the ceilings were on individual rather then on family ownership. An individual landowner could hold upto 150 acres of irrigated and 300 acres of unirrigated land. These reforms made no impact on the power of the larger landlords. Only a mere one per cent of the landless tenants and small peasant holders directly benefitted from the reforms.³⁷ 

Thirty per cent of all farm area is still owned by this landlord class. Landholding sizes are more than 150 acres and this class constitutes less than one percent of total landowners. Since these landed elites dominate major political parties they are a major stumbling block in building democratic institutions. Only proper land reforms can shift the power base of the feudal landlords and their hold over the state apparatus.³⁸ 

The economic programmes also increased disparities between economic classes as well as among regional and ethnic groups. In Pakistan, the disproportionate representation of Punjabis in the military and civil bureaucracy and concentration of enormous powers in their hands resulted in its structural domination of the economies of East Pakistan, Sindh, Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province.³⁹  The Punjab and the Sindh provinces, which had relatively more developed infrastructures, attracted a larger proportion of industrial investment than the other provinces. In Sind however, the growth of income was mainly in Karachi and Hyderabad. Thus the economic disparities widened not only between East and West pakistan, but also between the other provinces. During the 60s the factor which accelerated the growth of regional income disparities within what is today Pakistan was the differential impact of agricultural growth associated with the so-called green revolution. Since the yield increase associated with the adoption of high yield varieties of foodgrains required irrigation, and since the Punjab and the Sindh had a relatively larger proportion of their area under irrigation they experienced much faster growth in their incomes, compared to Baluchistan and NWFP.⁴⁰  Regional disparities worsened and sharpened the polarized nature of development and growth.⁴¹ 

Extended periods of military rule in Pakistan have also distorted its political economy. Due to its convoluted origins Pakistan has been devoting a disproportionate share of its resources to security since its creation. The defence budget coupled with the costs of administration, expenditure on para-military forces as well as interest payments on military debt accumulated over the years has greatly limited Pakistan’s policy options in regards to its development programme. Given the centralized nature of the state structure, Pakistan’s political economy has been portrayed as defence-oriented than development-oriented, i.e., a large part of resources go to non-productive expenditure. So it is the entrenched interests of the non-elected institutions, the military in particular, within the state structure which has resulted instead of development into a political economy of defence.⁴²  Pakistan’s political economy has seriously frustrated the state’s development agenda, particularly with its scarce economic resources. 

The Pakistani military has been able to translate its dominance over the state structure to become deeply entrenched in the political economy. This dominance over the state structure has provided the opportunities for legal and extra-legal priveleges. The military-bureaucratic oligarchy has been able to use government jobs as ladders to making private fortunes. The military owns some of the richest foundations and some of the best health and educational facilities in the country.⁴³ 

In the newly independent Bangladesh, there was a lack of a big landlord class and an indigenous Bengali capitalist class — the emergence of which had been blocked under the Pakistani regimes. There were some medium range producers who advanced to constitute the capitalist class after independence. The emerging capitalist class had the support of the state and the Military Bureaucratic Oligarchy. By 1975, the Bangladesh state was pushed towards authoritarianism as effective support of the state became necessary for the further growth of this class and capitalist development.

But what concerns many is the role aid plays in the economy of Bangladesh. Rehman Sobhan calls it an aid driven market economy.⁴⁴  This particular pattern of dependent development has contributed little to eradicate poverty. Rather it has accentuated concentration in the ownership of wealth, and inequality in the distribution of income without leading to significant expansion of the productive forces within the economy. Aid dependence has in fact been self-perpetuating as it has overthe years served to reinforce a system which has been inimical to the mobilization of domestic resources and the effective use of productive capacities.⁴⁵ 

Praetorianism is probably more rampant in Bangladesh. The privatization of the state has been for the benefit of the ruling classes who have used the state to make wealth. “What passes for the government of Bangladesh has degenerated into an aggregation of a large number of individuals and groups moved by their own private agendas rather than the direction of an omnipresent state.”⁴⁶ 

Sri Lanka had a self-sufficient peasant economy before it was colonized. This was destroyed with the introduction of a plantation economy, organized on modern commercial lines, by the colonial rulers.⁴⁷  Even after independence, the indigenous rulers continued with this classical export economy. The ruling elite was economically and socially a product of British colonialism and came from the land-owning propertied classes who had commercial interests in the plantation sector. The continuation of, more or less, the colonial economy suited the interests of the ruling class, but became dependent on the export of certain primary agricultural products only. 

A favourable balance of payments position immediately after independence allowed the Sri Lankan government to introduce social welfare measures like subsidies on food, education and health. Successive governments financed these measures with the help of foreign capital and loans. Although these measures improved the quality of life in Sri Lanka, they were not in tune with hard economic realities. The excessive emphasis on welfare was at the cost of development. There was an imbalance between expenditure on ‘human investment’ and investment in capital goods to increase production and employment.⁴⁸ 

The continuation of the plantation economy and immigrant labour adversely affected employment opportunities for the Sri Lankan peasant. As a result, the peasants or their descendants were rendered landless due to the gradual development of capitalism in the countryside and demographic and economic pressures on the land. The increasing pressure of population had created an adverseman-land ratio and the number of people dependent on the same acre of land grew because of acutefragmentation of land. Within a generation or two, a class of landless and semi?landless grew in the rural areas. In the 1960s, 30 per cent of the peasantry was landless and working as share croppers.⁴⁹ 

In 1958, the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP) government had passed aminimal landreforms act — the Paddy Lands Act.This was meant to guarantee certain tenurial safeguards to the tenants and a provision for reduced rents.But it was never implemented properly due to severe opposition from the members of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), who considered some of its provisions as inimical to their interests. The act was passed only after making favourable changes, which diluted some of its substantive content.⁵⁰ 

In the absence of any meaningful agrarian reforms, thegovernments failed to resolve problems of indebtedness, landlessness and poverty of the peasantry.At the same timeexternal borrowings were being used to finance import of consumer goods and for building costly public works. By the next decade, Sri Lanka was in the throes of a serious economic crisis. This was compounded by a steep rise in population, domesticunemployment and an extremely high literacy rate.

Militarization of State and Civil Society

The contradiction of the South Asian region is that it sustains high levels of militarization though it is one of the poorest regions of the world. While a large majority lives in abject poverty in South Asia, a large part of the productive resources are consumed by the militaries.⁵¹  The poor basic social indicators are inversely matched by the affluence of the weapons system some of the states of the region possess.

Traditional rivals like India and Pakistan, who have gone to war thrice, justify their high levels of defence expenditures due to external threats to their security from within the region or outside the region. Small states like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka who have no tangible external threat also have disproportionate resources devoted to maintain a military machine, which is predominantly used in resolving domestic conflicts. The monopolization of scarce resources by the military negatively impinges on resources which could otherwise have been diverted for social and economic development.

The disproportionate resources allocated to defence is also linked to the institutionalization of the military in the state structure. The peculiarities of the state-formation process in Pakistan had militarized the state since its inception. The reasons for Pakistan’s high defence expenditures in its initial years has been explained by the inheritance of a debilitated defence structure arising out of division of assets between India and Pakistan as a consequence of the partition.⁵² 

Conflict with India and long periods of military rule in Pakistan contributed to the high levels of militarization in the South Asian region. Military regimes in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, in the absence of popular support, militarized the state structures. However, the level of militarization which took place under Gen. Zia in Pakistan was unprecedented and fundamentally different in character. In the absence of domestic popular support, he sought political, economic and military support from the United States. He was more than willing to make Pakistan a ‘frontline state’ in the US’s Afghan war.

While the benefits to the military in shoring itself up with some of the state-of-the-art weapons against a formidable adversary was a major consideration, but the indirect fallout of being a conduit in America’s proxy war has been too severe not only on Pakistani society but on the region as a whole.⁵³  Between 1977 and 1987, a large proportion of weapons meant for the Afghan guerrillas filtered into the illegal arms market. A steady flow of Afghan refugees contributed to the large illegal arms market and a burgeoning heroin trade injected both weapons and syndicate organizations into the social life of the major urban centres in Pakistan.⁵⁴ 

During Gen. Zia’s regime, with political parties banned and all venues for protest through legal means closed, polarization within civil society had intensified.⁵⁵  A lack of public confidence in the ability of the state to provide security of life to its citizens motivated more and more people to seek alternative support mechanisms in their communities to obtain security against physical threat. It was not difficult for such groups to acquire a high degree of firepower from the illegal arms market.⁵⁶ 

However, the Afghan war was not the only reason for the diffusion of small arms in the South Asian societies. Indigenous production in small cottage industries have been carrying on for years in places like Darra Adam khel in NWFP and Bihar. Even in Bangladesh a large number of weapons are in private hands. Some estimates put the number of weapons in private hands at the time of liberation as 1,00,000,⁵⁷  most of which have not been recovered so far. Where the pilfered arms meant for Afghan Mujahedin made a significant difference was in its firepower capabilities. Overnight the lethal capabilities of the firearms dramatically increased.

In plural and multiethnic societies, the predominance of a single ethnic group in the military establishment militates against nation-building. For whatever structural reasons, the predominance of the Punjabis and the Sinhalas in their respective military establishments have been detrimental to their nation-building process and heightened the levels of conflict. In the case of Sri Lanka the ethnic divide has been reinforced by their secular armed forces acquiring a strong Sinhala-Buddhist orientation. The present army is for all purposes an ethnic Sinhala army subjected to the ideology of Sinhala-Buddhism.⁵⁸ 

South Asian states have made no less contributions to militarization of civil society of their neighbouring states. This is due to their competing strategies of nation-building aligned with their strategic and security interests.

Appraisal of South Asian States Systems

Despite diverse regime patterns, certain general trends can be discerned in the states system of South Asia. With the growing momentum of modernization, the historical legacies of peripheral capitalism and uneven development have been compounded by increasing centralization of power and scarce resources. Initially, there has been an expansion of state-sponsored and state initiated activities for development, equity and justice by the post-colonial leadership. Besides, a strong centre was necessitated to cope with the issues of identity and territoriality. Military regimes by their very nature do not provide much scope for decentralization which has been the bane of Pakistan and Bangladesh in varying periods. However, even in non-military regimes like India and Sri Lanka, the centralizing tendencies have loomed large, weakening in the process the centre by eroding the intermediate institutions which often act as a cushion for dissent and protest.

The states role in the development process has been significant. The capitalist class was extended ample help with finance and infrastructure. While India possessed a relatively strong indigenous bourgeoisie, Pakistan didn’t have a bourgeoisie of its own. It had to be fostered by the state. In Sri Lanka most of the central political elites belonged to a class of rich commercial plantations owners. But none of the South Asian states and the bourgeoisie except for India in the early years, were able to push rapid industrialization. This was largely due to the relative autonomy of the state from the dominant classes. The position of the other dominant classes on such transformation had to be taken into account. Soon after independence except for Pakistan where big landowners constituted a powerful political factor, in India and Sri Lanka where the elites adopted social democratic ideology, the traditional landlord system was abolished. Under the so-called Green revolution strategy adopted by India and Pakistan agricultural modernization promoted by the state encouraged commercial farming. And at a later stage a broad section of medium range capitalist farmers, not only survived but were assisted to consolidate and expand through the so-called Green revolution strategy. To these landowning classes, concessions had to be made since they exercised considerable political clout at the local level and therefore important for electoral purposes as well as the general maintenance of control. Thus modernization was sought in alliance with rural property owning classes.Thus substantial benefits accrued from industrialization, based on the import substitution strategy and agriculture modernization to the propertied classes.

 On the other hand, the impact of modernization and development on the poor was much more complicated. Initially, a part of the poor peasantry released from agricultural activity was absorbed by the nascent industrial sector. Some from the disadvantaged sections from both the rural and the urban areas could experience upward mobility due to the benefits of state-sponsored education. 

The impressive achievements in higher education during the 1960s produced a large number of college and University degree holders, mostly in the field of humanities. For them employment opportunities grew only slightly, so unemployed young men were to be found in large numbers during the late 1960s and early 1970s. These recently arrived members of the intelligentsia, often of peasant and lower middle class origins, were not willing to return to their humble surroundings. By that time the disruption of the subsistence economy had proceeded in some depth and the restoration of the old order was wellnigh impossible. The state was therefore compelled to continue expanding its instrumentalist role as the main solver of the societal social crisis, but it failed to meet the increasing volume of demands due to a weak economic base. Unemployment therefore rose sharply. In Pakistan the economy firstly expanded rapidly between 1959-60 and 1964-65, then slowed down and declined sharply in 1969-70.⁵⁹  Unemployment, especially among young educated men was also an acute problem in Sri Lanka in the late 60s and early 70s. In 1969, there were 14,000 university graduates and 112,000 young adults with the general certificate of education, ordinary level qualification without employment.⁶⁰  The incapacity of the states to maintain a congruence between social capital formation and physical capital formation was to result in a crisis of the state by the 1980s — when a volatile educated but unemployed youth was readily available in large numbers for political mobilization. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Rajni Kothari, Rethinking Development: In Search of Humane Alternatives (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1988), pp. 214-19.

2. Although the appeal of a Muslim homeland in the subcontinent played a crucial part in the emergence of Pakistan, it is probably true that the concerns of many who migrated from the more developed areas of British India had some material basis as well. The Muslims, particularly from the urban areas of North India, feared Hindu domination of government and commerce in a country in which they, because of their small number, would have been marginalized. On the other hand, an independent Muslim state offered attractive opportunities and less competition. That religion was not the only motivating factor explains why a large number of Muslims still remained behind in India after partition. See, Shahid Javed Burki and Robert LaPorte, Jr., “The Political and Social Environment for Development,” p.5; and Shahid Javed Burki, “A Historical Perspective on Development,” p.31 in Shahid Javed Burki and Robert LaPorte, Jr. (eds.), Pakistan’s Development Priorities: Choices for the Future (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1986); and G.H. Jensen, Militant Islam (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p.135. 

3. The concept of the ‘Muslim Nation’ had been strongly contested even prior to independence by Baluch leaders. While after independence in West Pakistan there were four nationalities — Punjabi, Sindhi, Baluch and Pashtun, this has been further complicated by the assertion of new ethnic identities by the Siraikis, Hazaras and the Mohajirs. 

4. In this regard, Jinnah seems to have largely stressed on economic development. See, Khalid B. Sayeed, Politics in Pakistan: The Nature and Direction of Change (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980), p.25.

5. Urmila Phadnis, Ethnicity and Nation-Building in South Asia (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990), pp.45-49.

6. ibid., p.32.

7. D.L. Sheth, “State, Nation and Ethnicity,” Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay), vol.25, no.12, 25 March 1989, p.624.

8. Atul Kohli, “Centralization and Powerlessness: India’s Democracy in a Comparative Perspective,” in Joel S. Migdal, Atul Kohli and Vivienne Shue (eds.), State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp.89-106.

9. Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and also see, Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp.6-7.

10. Sudipto Kaviraj, “Democracy and Development in India,” in Amiya Kumar Bagchi (ed.), Democracy and Development (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), p.111.

11. Hamza Alavi, “The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh,” in Kathleen Gough and Hari P. Sharma (eds.), Imperialism and Revolution in South Asia (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), pp.145-95.

12. See some of the contributions in Hassan Gardezi and Jamil Rashid (eds.), Pakistan: The Roots of Dictatorship, The Political Economy of A Praetorian State (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983).

13. Mohammad Waseem, Politics and the State in Pakistan (Islamabad: National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, 1994), pp.150-60.

14. Shahid Kardar, “The Political Economy of Contemporary Pakistan,” Unpublished Paper, pp.11-12.

15. Ali Riaz, State, Class and Military Rule: The Political Economy of Martial Law in Bangladesh (Dhaka: Nadi New Press, 1994).

16. Rehman Sobhan, The Crisis of External Dependence: The Political Economy of Foreign Aidto Bangladesh (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1982).

17. Awami League won 282 out of 289 seats.

18. Rehman Sobhan, Bangladesh: Problems of Governance (New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1993), pp.12-28.

19. Riaz, Op.Cit.

20. James Jupp, Sri Lanka: Third World Democracy (London: Frank Cass, 1978), see Chapter 8.

21. Sumantra Bose, States, Nations, Sovereignty: Sri Lanka, India and the Tamil Eelam Movement (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1994).

22. W.A. Wiswa Warnapala and L. Dias Hewagama, Recent Politics in Sri Lanka: The Presidential Election and Referendum of 1982 (Delhi: Navrang, 1983).

23. Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation andEthnicity in Contemporary South Asia (London: Pinter, 1996), pp.42-3.

24. See, A.K. Bagchi, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Also see, Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957).

25. Pranab Bardhan, The Political Economy of Development in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp.40-53.

26. Pranab Bardhan, “Dominant Proprietary Classes and India’s Democracy,” in Atul Kohli (ed.), India’s Democracy: An Analysis of Changing State-Society Relations (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1991), pp.214-24

27. For detailed argument of this view see, Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.134.

28. Rudolph and Rudolph, Op.Cit., p.315.

29. Even thirty-six years after independence less than 0.6 per cent of total cultivated area had actually been distributed among the landless. See, Bardhan, The Political Economy of Development in India, Op.Cit., p.59.

30. For an argument that the north-eastern states (provinces) served as sub-colonies for the Indian state, see, Gough and Sharma (eds.), Op.Cit., pp.8-9.

31. “The nation-state as it emerged through the Nehruvian design of the fifties can survive only if it allows its dominant imagination to admit amendments, and strive to achieve greater equity between classes and regions, and try to surmount and heal the great cleavage of dispossession by the processes of the cognitively arrogant, socially uncaring, brutal form of modernity.” Quoted from, Sudipto Kaviraj, “Crisis of the Nation-State in India,” in John Dunn (ed.), Contemporary Crisis of the Nation-State? (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), p.128.

32. Jamil Rashid and Hasan Gardezi, “Independent Pakistan: Its Political Economy,” in Gardezi and Rashid (eds.), Op.Cit., pp.4-5. According to Hamza Alavi, the trading classes were not significant amongst the class of people who were behind the Pakistan movement. He calls the class which was behind the Pakistan movement as the salariat class. This class emerges in colonized societies, comes from urban educated classes who qualify for employment in the colonial state along with the professionals who emerged in the context of the colonial transformation of Indian society. These were the lawyers, journalist, urban intellectuals, etc. See, Hamza Alavi, “Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology,” in Fred Halliday and Hamza Alavi (eds.), State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan (London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1988), pp.65-7.

33. Khalid B. Sayeed, The Political System of Pakistan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), p.48.

34. Gustav F. Papanek, Pakistan’s Development: Social Goals and Private Incentives (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp.67-68; also see, Rashid Amjad, “Industrial Concentration and Economic Power,” in Gardezi and Rashid (eds.), Op.Cit., pp.230-31. However, the position of the monopoly industrial houses was drastically affected by the separation of East pakistan and the nationalization of some industries and the banking and insurance sectors by the Bhutto regime.

35. Omar Asghar Khan, “Political and Economic Aspects of Islamization,” in Asghar Khan (ed.), Islam, Politics and the State: The Pakistan Experience (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1985), pp.158-160.

36. Hamza Alavi, “Class and State,” in Gardezi and Rashid (eds.), Op.Cit., p.60.

37. Akmal Hussain, “Land Reforms in Pakistan: A Reconsideration,” in Iqbal Khan (ed), Fresh Perspectives on India and Pakistan (Lahore: Book Traders, 1987).

38. Akmal Hussain, “Land to the Tiller: First Steps towards Democracy,” News on Friday (Lahore), 8 December 1995.

39. B.M. Bhatia, “Economic Disparities in Pakistan,” in Urmila Phadnis, S.D. Muni and Kalim Bahadur (eds.), Domestic Conflicts in South Asia, Vol. II (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 1986), pp.61-81.

40. Naved Hamid and Akmal Hussain, “Regional Inequalities and Capitalist Development: Pakistan’s Experience,” in S. Akbar Zaidi (ed.), Regional Imbalances and the National Question in Pakistan (Lahore: Vanguard, 1992)

41. Shahid Kardar, “Notes on National Unity and Regional Imbalances,” in Iqbal Khan (ed.), Op.Cit., p.226.

42. Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origin’s of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1991).

43. Kardar, “The Political Economy of Contemporary Pakistan,” Op.Cit., pp.3-4.

44. Sobhan, Bangladesh: Problems of Governance, Op. Cit., p.275

45. Sobhan, The Crisis of External Dependence, Op.Cit., p.vii.

46. Sobhan, Bangladesh: Problems of Governance, Op.Cit., p.264.

47. The economic system which evolved under colonial rule has also been termed as a dual economy. The modern sector which centered around the plantation economy depended on foreign entrepreneurship, immigrant labour and foreigncapital. It was technologically advanced but at the same time highly land and labour intensive. On the other hand, the traditional sector centered around subsistence agriculture, handicrafts, petty trade and small scale commodity production for domestic consumption. There were no linkages between these two sectors and therefore, the traditional sector was underdeveloped. See, Donald R. Snodgrass, Ceylon: An Export Economy in Transition (Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1966), pp.4-15.

48. Satchi Ponnambalam, Dependent Capitalism in Crisis: The Sri Lankan Economy, 1948-1980 (New Delhi: Vikas Publishers, 1981), p.37.

49. Fred Halliday, “The Ceylonese Insurrection,” in Robin Blackburn (ed.), Explosion in a Subcontinent: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ceylon (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p.180.

50. Mick Moore, The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp.55-63; and Urmila Phadnis, “Sri Lanka: Crises of Legitimacy and Integration,” in Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds.), Democracy in Developing Countries: Asia, Vol. 3 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), p.149.

51. For details refer to Mahbub ul Haq, “The Subcontinent of Sub-Saharan Asia,” pp.15-16; Mitu Varma, “Guns `n’ Rotis,” pp.18-20; Manik de Silva, “Ploughshares into Swords”, p.24; Beena Sarwar, “Skewed priorities in Pakistan,” pp.28-30 in Himal South Asia, vol.9, no.1, March 1996.

52. Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule: The Origin’s of Pakistan’s Political Economy of Defence, Op. Cit. 

53. For details see, Chris Smith, The Diffusion of Small Arms and Light Weapons in Pakistan and Northern India (London: Brassey’s, 1993).

54. Akmal Hussain, “The Crisis of State Power in Pakistan: Militarization and Dependence,” in Ponna Wignaraja and Akmal Hussain (eds.), The Challenge in South Asia: Development, Democracy and Regional Cooperation (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1989), p.231.

55. Shireen M. Mazari, “Militarism and the Militarization of Pakistan’s Civil Society: 1977-1990,” in Kumar Rupesinghe and Khawar Mumtaz (eds.), Internal Conflicts in South Asia (London: Sage Publications Ltd., 1996), pp.102-3

56. Akmal Hussain, “The Crisis of State Power in Pakistan: Militarization and Dependence,” in Wignaraja and Hussain (eds.), Op.Cit., p.231.

57. Sobhan, Bangladesh: Problems of Governance, Op.Cit., p.14.

58. The Sri Lankan army has been Sinhalized by various measures. The creation of a Sinha (Lion) regiment, Sinhala as official language and the use of the terms ‘Vam-Dak’ instead of Left-Right in marches, western band music replaced with Sinhalese folk music, the marginalization of Tamil officers all created a Sinhala atmosphere in the army. See, Newton Gunasinghe, “Community, Identity and Militarization in Sri Lanka: Social Origins of the Armed Forces and Tamil Militants, Sri Lankan Armed Forces,” in Wignaraja and Hussain (eds.), Op.Cit., pp.245-48.

59. Viqar Ahmed and Rashid Amjad, The Management of Pakistan’s Economy 1947-82 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp.77-90.

60. A.J. Wilson, Politics in Sri Lanka (London: Macmillan, 1974), p.62.