101. India's Modernizing Faction and the Mobilization of Power.
- Author
-
Nicholson, N. K.
- Subjects
SOCIAL change ,POWER (Social sciences) ,MASS mobilization ,SOCIAL institutions ,POLITICAL systems ,ELITE (Social sciences) ,SOCIAL structure - Abstract
Studies of India over the past decade have shared a sense of crisis and concern over the nation's future, which reflect a widespread doubt that any people can confront the inhibitions of tradition, the trauma of change, and the complexities of modern industrial society at one and the same time with any assurance of success. If it were merely a question of destroying the ancient regime and substituting for it a pre-fabricated and pre-tested modern nation state the task would be simple. The problems of social change are the problems of restructuring a people's activities into new patterns to meet new stresses and to pursue new goals, and the problems are intensified in an underdeveloped country such as India by a general mistrust of change, the parochial nature of its social institutions, and the highly diffuse power structure. At a number of points this paper stresses the need for considering the political system as an autonomous variable in social modernization. A corollary of this assumption, which has often been ignored, is that for the political system to operate in this fashion it must be possible for fundamental changes to take place in the power structure or the purposes of the power elite which, if not unrelated, are at least independent of social and economic revolutions.
- Published
- 1968
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