IS THE INDIAN STATE WITHERING AWAY IS THE INDIAN STATE WITHERING AWAY?
By Anil A Athale, Co-ordinator INPAD. The activities of sandlewood smuggler Virappan has again put in bold relief the failure of Indian state to uphold the law. Negotiations with a bandit are the ‘nadir’ of state power and prestige. A deeper reflection is needed to go to the main cause of this phenomenon. Ever since the decade of 1980s, India has been witness to mass violence and killings. In Punjab, buses were regularly stopped, Hindus separated, and shot. In 1990, nearly 200,000 Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of their homes and have become refugees in their own country. In Western Uttar Pradesh and in Haryana, there have been cases where caste based Panchayats have sentenced to death people for the crime of marrying outside their caste! Is India becoming ungovernable? Many sociologists and political scientists have explained this away as part of the process of industrialisation that India is going through. Some (notably Dr. Rajani Kothari) attributed the violence to late Indira Gan
