The State — Society Relation: The Case of an Antipoverty Policy

The state possesses the relatively autonomous power to give concessions to the lower classes, the poor. But the extent to which the poor will actually benefit from the policies designed to help them is influenced by three factors. First, it depends on the level of the material support for the policy through which the concessions are sought to be given. This level of material support is, in turn, influenced by the state's financial dependence on the private economy and by competing demands from different classes and groups on the state's resources. Second, the extent to which the poor will benefit from the antipoverty intervention also depends on the balance of power between state actors and the poor ‘on the ground’, that is, at the local scale of state – society interaction where the policies are implemented. There are two aspects to this balance of power. On the one hand, state actors have some relative autonomy which they use to bend the rules of the state, often in alliance with ‘dominant’ actors in the civil society, in order to pocket a part of the legitimate share belonging to the poor (bribes). On the other hand, these actions of state actors are also subject to the struggle of the poor. Finally, the economic structure within which both the state and its poor clients work also affects the ways in which the antipoverty policies operate. In this paper I argue that these three factors produce constant interactions between state and society. The state is to be seen as both a process and a relationship. To illustrate this argument, I make use of primary and secondary information on the implementation of a major poverty-alleviation programme in India.