Ideas of State and Power

Abstract

Abstract Ambedkar draws attention to the pervasive presence of power at all levels of a social ensemble. Power shapes our idea of the human, informs social institutions and practices, and directs modes of representation and constitutional and legal order. It is important to diagnose and contend against the complex and overladen working of power to make social relations be in sync with justice and democracy. However, the state being the nodal anchor and ultimate site of power, there cannot be a decisive alternative to the prevailing entwinement of power without decisively shifting state power in this direction. Democracy, representation, and constitutionalism are precisely geared to subserve this end. Given the way Ambedkar constructs the idea of state as the power of the political community as a whole, he squarely rejects such notions as a withering away of the state. He also proposes a distinct genealogy of the Indian state.