Scaling Up: Beyond the Subnational Comparative Method for India

Abstract

It no longer makes sense to talk of India without analyzing its infra-national diversity. Yet, this article not only argues for the need to build upon but also go beyond the subnational comparative analysis for India. I make three related points. 2 While scholars exploit the variation easily found at the provincial level in India, they must also take their subnational insights and generalize about India as a whole. Users of the subnational method must ask: How do the conclusions of subnational variation change or modify our understanding of India? Second, with economic liberalization and integration of markets within India, a focus on the subnational level makes forces that span across states and cities invisible. Is India becoming more integrated even as variation across its sub-state units is increasing? How can we understand both these phenomena in one analysis? 3 In order to understand both spatial differentiation and integration, we need to analyze diffusion and horizontal competition and processes of convergence across subnational units (Jenkins, 2000;Saez, 1999;Sinha, 2004). We can no longer look at policies at the subnational level without examining how policy innovation and e-governance spread across states. Last, the complexity of India's internal variation makes us hesitate to do cross-regional and comparative studies. What can we learn from the subnational diversity of India, Brazil, China or Mexico studied comparatively? Can we compare such different countries especially when their internal variation makes easy national-wide descriptions suspect? While difficult to do, I would encourage more crossregional and comparative studies that do not ignore the internal variation within India. 4 Overall, disaggregating the state to its lower levels may not be enough, and this article urges the need for a ʻscaling up framework' as a complementary strategy to scaling down. Such a ʻscaling up framework' must try to craft larger inferential statements about India, while keeping in mind its subnational diversity, the national or global context and the interstate experimentation relevant for the phenomenon under study.

Towards a Comparative Subnational Perspective on India

“…4In the Indian context, this point has also been noted by Tillin (2013)—subnational comparisons can counter ‘false universalism’—and recently again by Sinha (2015). …”

“…Comparative subnational analysis belongs within the larger domain of spatial comparisons. In making an influential case for subnational comparisons over a decade ago, Snyder (2001) had noted the methodological potency of this approach for expanding the units of analysis (addressing the ‘small-N’ problem), while simultaneously providing more controlled comparisons, thereby also enabling exploration of federal structures and their spatial dimensions (Kailash, 2011b; Sinha, 2015). The approach typically involves less conceptual straining and stretching.…”

“…Among social scientists working on India, there is a renewed interest in taking subnational comparisons seriously; recent articles in the ‘Methods’ section of Studies in Indian Politics also attest to this (Sinha, 2015; Tillin, 2013). 2 As a substantive matter, subnational comparisons in India are important because of the growing power of the states, especially in the last quarter century, both in setting their own agendas as well as in influencing national-level outcomes.…”

“…20Besides the need for establishing comparability, there is a second methodological challenge: states have (horizontal) interactions—for instance, diffusion and competition—that can complicate inter-state comparisons (Sinha, 2015). Sinha also points out that the centre–state relation may vary across states.…”

Political Processes under the Microscope: Comparative Ethnography as an Approach to Understanding Democracy and Elections in India

“…The issue of water specially demonstrates the value of studying elections at different levels, and the understanding of variations. Water is now a very important matter of assertion by ordinary people in ‘India as a whole’—a ‘scaling up’ demand that Sinha (2015) makes of comparative studies in India. However, the variations also show that the same ‘national’ issue has significant variations—spatially and also at different levels of the political system.…”