The Political Economy of the Emergency Looking for Ideology
The chapter presents a balance sheet of the political economy during the Emergency. It focuses on the divergence between the socialist rhetoric of Mrs Gandhi’s Twenty-Point Programme and her dirigiste corporatism in practice. It also denotes the complementarity of authoritarianism and populism, as populism has no ideology either. This depoliticization, which is described as a major characteristic of authoritarian regimes by Linz, helped to bridge the class divide in order to maintain the status quo. This was followed by policies to allow some redistribution, such as land reforms and by keeping essential commodities affordable to prevent mass protests. However, the chapter concludes that the little progress that was made due to redistribution policies was offset by the class war, with the elites eventually maintaining the status quo.