Venue: YHM Room, Level 1, Sidney Myer Asia Centre
Presenters: Professor John Harris
Leaders with strength and force are highly valued by many Indians. This is one reason why such a high proportion of elected politicians have criminal charges standing against them. But force is only one dimension of power. There is also the subtler capacity to manipulate and influence decision-making – a second dimension of power as the sociologist Steven Lukes describes it – and beyond this, a third dimension, too, the capacity to secure the consent to domination on the parts of willing subjects. Reflection on these aspects of power in modern India leads to consideration of the contending influences on public policy of different social classes, and to the question of why there is not more forceful resistance to their exclusion and oppression, on the part of the masses who have been left behind in the course of India’s dramatic surge of economic growth.
Professor John Harris became interested in the anthropology of India and in the political economy of development as a result of a journey overland to India, and of travels in Punjab, in 1969, just as the ‘green revolution’ was taking off.
from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/8038-power-keywords-for-india
