Welcome to the Political Fix by Rohan Venkataramakrishnan, a weekly newsletter on Indian politics and policy. To get it in your inbox ever...
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The Big Story: Flailing state
The Indian state looms large over the lives of every resident. That is because it can be demanding, has tremendous discretionary power and is very hard to comply with. But being intrusive isn’t the same as being capable.
For all the talk of how big the state is here, India actually has very limited state capacity.
“When it comes to the state’s core sovereign functions – revenue collection, public goods provision, public order, and justice – the Indian story is one of scarcity rather than surplus,” wrote Milan Vaishnav in 2019.
Two weeks ago, on the newsletter, we discussed how the outbreak of coronavirus would put all of India’s state systems to the test.
At 8 pm on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that this test was coming much sooner than many expected.
Giving people less than four hours to prepare, Modi said that all of India was going into a complete lockdown from midnight for three whole weeks. There would be no flights, trains...
