ISAS Working Papers

Within the overall framework of India’s political stability and democratic governance, political scenarios in India’s regions and localities present a contrasting picture. This includes violent mobs on the streets of Srinagar, insurgency and armed secessionist movements in India’s north-east, Naxalite violence in several states of India, and violent inter-community riots that, nevertheless, do not impair the overall stability of the state. How does India cope with these challenges to governance? Focused on a comparative analysis of regional governance, the paper answers this key question with reference to policies and administrative and legal structures at the regional level that promote governance. By drawing on the logic of human ingenuity, driven mostly by self-interest, the innovation of appropriate rules and procedures, and most of all – agency, of elites and their non-elite followers – the paper sheds light on policies, institutions and processes that enhance governance. It argues that ‘fundamentalism’, ‘ethnicity’, conflict and fragmentation, seen as characteristic of non-western politics, have political and not necessarily cultural and idiosyncratic origins and, as such, are amenable to a general explanation, and empirical policy analysis.