Structural inequality and political engagement in rural Punjab: A summary

This book has been concerned with how and why differently placed rural citizens vote under conditions of extreme socio-economic inequality in an emerging democracy. It was organised around three questions: what happens to the political power of the traditional landed elite in a context where competitive politics co-exists with unequal social and economic structures; how is the political engagement of voters and leaders with one another at the village level affected; and what explains the variations we are able to observe in this engagement across different villages? The conceptual, empirical and comparative analysis of rural politics in a group of villages presented here provides us with a few answers.

We know now that vote bloc leaders are almost all landed, are from upper-caste groups, and almost always belong to village proprietary biradaris. All this seems to support what people generally believe about rural voters in Punjab – that their electoral decisions are controlled by the landed elite, so that they vote as they are told rather than as they would like. Indeed, if I had simply interviewed vote bloc leaders this is the impression that we would be left with, for amidst their complaints about not having as much control over village votes as they would like are numerous other stories that the landed elite tell of the extent to which they determine the general fate of their village. And on first glance, the outward deference shown to them by village residents may well convince the visitor that these stories are accurate. But I did not just speak to the village elite. I flipped the question about how complete the power of the landed elite is in rural Punjab and focused instead on how and where it is incomplete, looking beyond just the emergence of new leaders to the internal dynamic of vote blocs and the relationship between leaders and members within these in different types of villages.

We asked voters in village after village about why they join vote blocs. And these stories are different. They show important gaps in what may look at first glance like the pervasive authority of Punjab's rural landed elite.