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Civil Society and Exclusion:Partha Chatterjee on 'The Politics of the Governed |
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Swagato Sarkar |
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Partha Chatterjee has argued that the concept of civil society neither adequately describes nor is analytically helpful in understanding the democratic life in a post-colonial society like India. Civil society is the domain of the elites, who can claim full citizenship, and a vast number of people are excluded from such a process. He proposes the concept of political society: the actual domain of policy, where the government engages with the population. On the one hand, various governmental functions and apparatus approach the population as the targets of policies. On the other hand, the people participate in the political process by manoeuvring in this domain. This space for manoeuvring is not available within the liberal space of civil society. According to Chatterjee, this should be seen as a positive aspect rather than a pathological condition, since it provides a scope for realizing the popular demands. |
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