Emergence of the Intelligentsia as a Ruling Class in India

Ashok Rudra
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Ashok Rudra: Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan

Indian Economic Review, 1989, vol. 24, issue 2, 155-183

Abstract: It has been generally accepted that the big industrial capitalists and the big land-owners have been the two Ruling Classes in India. This paper makes a case for the hypothesis that over the last four decades, the intelligentsia have emerged as the third member of the Ruling Coalition. Although two intelligentsia are made up of apparently diverse elements, they are a class because along with the capitalists and the landowners they stand in a contradictory relationship with the rest of the society. This class has not acquired its position of power through any struggle with the other two preexisting Ruling classes but has been coopted by them into the coalitions. It is argued that the state acts like a funneling mechanism for transferring to the intelligentsia a part of the surplus generated by the working classes and appropriated by the other two Ruling Classes.

Date: 1989
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