On the Redistribution with Growth Strategy: A Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This essay analyses the constitutive relations between the emergence of the global discourse on poverty and welfare state, and the ‘Redistribution with Growth’ strategy that had characterised Indian policy-making since the 1970s, following the discourse method. In Section I, it interrogates the theoretical underpinnings behind the welfare-oriented redistributive policies of employment generation and income transfer in reflection to the evolution of the subaltern discourse based on basic needs as characteristically distinct from the accumulation-based logic of the modern industrial capitalist sector. Section II brings forth the discourse of redistributive development as complex hegemonic as opposed to that of planning as simple hegemonic, as in Gramscian sense, to reconceptualise the concept of post-colonial capitalism in the Indian economy. Section III extends the discussion with certain reservations regarding the theoretical underpinnings of such a non-essentialist rendition of Gramsci’s theory of complex hegemony towards a more nuanced notion of displaced hegemony.