Post-colonial theory of State (Answer in 150 words)

- Post-colonial theory of State (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
The post-colonial state fits neither the liberal contract model nor the classical Marxist one. Its defining feature is a state apparatus inherited from colonial rule that is stronger than any class beneath it.

Body
1. Alavi's overdeveloped state: Hamza Alavi (1972) argued the colonial state was built to subordinate a whole society, so at independence its bureaucratic-military oligarchy stood above the native classes.
2. Mediation, not instrumentality: it enjoys relative autonomy, brokering between the metropolitan bourgeoisie, the indigenous bourgeoisie and the landed classes rather than serving one.
3. Bardhan's Indian variant: Pranab Bardhan (1984) named three dominant proprietary classes — industrial capitalists, rich farmers and the professional-bureaucratic elite — whose stalemate yields subsidy-heavy, investment-poor policy.
4. Chatterjee's cultural turn: The Politics of the Governed (2004) separates civil society from a political society where the poor negotiate entitlements rather than assert rights.
5. Fanon's warning: the national bourgeoisie as a parasitic intermediary.

Conclusion
The theory explains why southern states are at once overbearing and ineffective. Its weakness is an economism that underrates the democratic mobilisation which in India has remade the state from below.