Over decades, the talk about India being a soft state has found reasons to persist – only becoming more visible in a pixelated world and reinforced through a clumsy or meek state response to street violence in recent months and years.
First used by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal in 1968 to refer to several infirmities in South Asian countries, the phrase has been handy for commentators discussing state capacity in everyday India; more glaringly in matters of rule-enforcement and public obedience. It’s ironic at the same time because India, like most of these countries in the region, is a post-colonial polity inheriting an “overdeveloped state” – to use Hamza Alvi’s pithy phrase.
