¹ Franda argues that “a number of outstanding issues in rural development . . . could conceivably be carried out within a democratic framework. . . . What would seem necessary before politically difficult measures can be implemented, and justice made more prompt, would be the effective organization of the bulk of rural society.” See Small is Politics: Organisational Alternatives in India's Rural Development (New Delhi: Wiley Eastern Limited, 1979), 279Google Scholar. The American edition of this book is to be published soon by Indiana University Press under the title India's Rural Development: An Assessment of Alternatives.

² According Co Krishna, who was a member of India's Planning Commission, “it is critical for achieving the distributive goals of the new plan that political workers, social workers and trade union leaders immediately undertake the task of unionizing the poor throughout India. . . . I have been advocating the establishment of a public fund which should subsidize some of the expense involved in organizing the rural poor.” See “The Next Phase in Rural Development,” mimeo., 19. Also published in Seminar, No. 278 (New Delhi), August 1978Google Scholar.

³ India's planners have recently argued that “critical for the success of all redistributive laws, policies and programmes is that the poor be organized.” See Government of India, Planning Commission, Draft Five Year Plan, 1978-83 (1978), 15.

⁴ The Politics of Aristotle, ed. by Barker, Ernest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 261Google Scholar (Book VI, chap. 3, sec. 3).

⁵ Dahl has recently argued that there is no reason to believe “that organizational pluralism is a dynamic force with a more or less steady thrust toward the reduction of inequalities. I am not aware of any theoretical reasoning that has been advanced on behalf of the existence of such a dynamic force.” On the contrary, “organizational pluralism can produce a stable system in which mutual vetoes prevent the reduction of inequalities and more generally, structural changes in the status quo.” See “Pluralism Revisited,” Comparative Politics, x (January 1978), 199Google Scholar.

⁶ To be fair, many economists have for some time now continued to write on the Indian situation from a perspective that situates the economic processes within a larger social framework. An incomplete list would include Pranab Bardhan, P. C. Joshi, A. N. Khusro, Michael Lipton, B. S. Minhas, Gunnar Myrdal, K. N. Raj, and Ashok Rudra. While the sociological insights of these economists have often been useful, systematic political analysis has not been their strong point.

⁷ Thus Frankel argues, “the fact is that theories calling for revolutionary actions are ‘non-theories’ under Indian conditions once they are tested against political constraints. . . a revolutionary solution in Indian conditions . . . holds out the possibility for incalculable levels of destructive violence” (p. xii).

⁸ The significance of a cohesive social structure for the absence of radicalism in India has been suggested in the chapters on India and on peasants and revolution in Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966)Google Scholar. An account of India's nationalist movement emphasizing the role of the colonial framework remains to be written. Scattered evidence to support this argument can be found in such general historical accounts as. Spear, Percival, A History of India (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970)Google Scholar; Overstreet, Gene and Miller, Marshall Wind, Communism in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Wolpert, Stanley A., Tilak and Gokhale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

⁹ We may recall that Gunnar Myrdal concluded, after balancing various pros and cons of land redistribution as an approach to agricultural development, that under Indian conditions it would be preferable to make a deliberate policy choice in favor of capitalist farming. See Asian Drama, II (New York: Pantheon, 1968)Google Scholar, chap. 26, sees. 23 and 25.

¹⁰ Thus Frankel argues that “from 1955 to 1964, Nehru's pivotal position permitted a handful of men [chosen by Nehru] to determine national economic and social policy and methods of development” (p. 114).

¹¹ Nehru's broad vision for the future of India is quoted by Frankel in his own words: “The picture I have in mind is definitely and absolutely a socialistic picture of society. . . . I mean largely that the means of production should be socially owned and controlled for the benefit of society as a whole” (p. 117).

¹² Moore (fn. 8), in his chapter on India.

¹³ For example, see Kochanek, Stanley A., “Mrs. Gandhi's Pyramid: The New Congress,” in Hart, Henry, ed., Indira Gandhi's India (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1976), 93–124Google Scholar; and Kothari, Rajni, “Democracy without Consensus,” Seminar, No. 283 (New Delhi), January 1979Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See , Frankel, “Compulsion and Social Change,” World Politics, xxx (January 1978), 217Google Scholar and 234. The concept of a “soft state” was introduced by Myrdal (fn. 9), 66. In his usage, a soft state was a state that could not carry through the proclamations and desires of its leadership. He argued that, whether democratic or authoritarian, the states of South Asia are generally soft.

¹⁵ The experiences of Western democracies, such as that of Britain, might be said to contradict this argument. While this objection would stem from a widely shared belief about the consequences of franchise on social and political inequalities, the evidence on this issue remains highly ambiguous. The extent to which democratic politics in the West has facilitated the reduction of socially rooted inequalities is at best limited. For a recent balanced review, see Maravall, Jose M., “The Limits of Reformism,” British Journal of Sociology, xxx (September 1979), 267-90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Dahl (fn. 5).

¹⁶ For example, in a society such as India, while the interests of the landless agricultural laborers and the small farmers who occasionally need to employ them may be in conflict over the issue of agricultural wages, they are both likely to be on the same side on such “upper versus lower class” issues as the redistribution of the land of large landowners.

¹⁷ For a perspective that stresses that organization can be a moderating, or even a conservative, rather than a radicalizing force for the lower classes, see Piven, Francis F. and Cloward, Richard A., Poor People's Movements (New York: Pantheon, 1977)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Frank Myers analyzes how this process has been at work in established democracies in “Social Class and Political Change in Western Industrial Systems,” Comparative Politics, II (April 1970), 389–412Google Scholar.

¹⁹ See Huntington, Samuel, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, esp. 1-92. While Huntington equated “institutionalization” with “political development” in his earlier works, over the years he has dropped all references to political development.

²⁰ “Traditional” social forms are of course not only obstacles, but may even facilitate an interest-group type of politics. See , Lloyd and Rudolph, Susanne, The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967)Google Scholar, esp. 17-154.

²¹ As modest gains are certainly better than no gains, I do not wish to imply here that organizational efforts should not be encouraged. My argument does not have any clearcut “policy” implication. It is meant primarily to neutralize the undue optimism stemming from a left-liberal world view.