ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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MALAYSIA- Electoral Arrangements to Fudge Class Lines

Vol. 9, Issue No. 45-46, 09 Nov, 1974
Ratna Dutta

THE National Front, which recently won the general elections in Malaysia, is the outcome of sustained efforts to dilute communal tension by giving to the leaders of such opposition adequate representation in government. This Malaysian method of containing communal rivalry makes interesting study. The communal conflict in Malaysia is among the three national 'minorities' of the Chinese, the Indians (mainly Tamilians), and the Malay Muslims who are in fact the original inhabitants of the Peninsula. The Malays constitute 46.8 per cent, the Chinese 34.1 per cent, and the Indians 9 per cent of the population (1970 census). The rivalry, however, is mainly between the Malays and the Chinese, and stems from the fact that whereas the Chinese hold the economic levers in their hands the Malays dominate the government and politics of the country. The communal calculus thus plays a major role in the electoral process.

The Active Residue

Vol. 7, Issue No. 28, 08 Jul, 1972
Ratna Dutta


any of the matters dealt with in the report and the Council shall be bound to comply with such directions.' These stringent requirements have been provided for, it may be noted, in spite of the fact that even the 18 non-official members of the Council along with its chairman will be nominated by the government of India.

Social and Economic Compulsions behind Communalism-A Case Study

Vol. 7, Issue No. 5-6-7, 05 Feb, 1972
Ratna Dutta

Communalism A Case Study Ratna Dutta Based on fieldwork in a small town in the Deccan, this paper examines the social and economic compulsions behind communalism. It is part of a larger comparative study of communalism and economic and political development in Asia. The broad hypothesis of the comparative study is that economic compulsions generate communal conflict in Asia, and that the religious, cultural and/or ideological idiom, in which the conflicts are sustained, is a mere expression of the more basic economic cleavages.

Misdirected Analysis

Vol. 6, Issue No. 7, 13 Feb, 1971
Ratna Dutta

Misdirected Analysis Ratna Dutta Political Parties and Political Development edited by Joseph La Palom- bara and Myron Weiner; Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1969; (paperback) S 3.45.

The Party Representative in Fourth Lok Sabha

Vol. 4, Issue No. 1-2, 04 Jan, 1969
Ratna Dutta

The ideology and social base of a long-established, well-organised party are continuously diluted by the need to coalesce many different and conflicting interest groups within itself. Thus Congress fuses within itself a far more complex structure of interest groups and ideological viewpoints than the new opposition parties which are relatively simple interest aggregating organisations.

Electoral Competition

Vol. 3, Issue No. 30, 27 Jul, 1968
Ratna Dutta

Political Preferences in Kerala by K G Krishnamurthi and G Laksh- mana Rao; Radhakrishna Prakashan, Delhi, 1968; pp 99, Rs 12.
THAT the Communist party is suffering some erosion in its support structure in Kerala whereas the Congress has been making gains is not new information. Both scholarly and journalistic impressions have confirmed this trend. (See, for instance, "Communist and Congress Prospects in Kerala" by Bashiruddin Ahmed in "Party Systems and Election Studies", Centre for Developing Studies, Occasional Papers, No 1, pp 243-258.) But such quantitative questions as "how much?" "where?" "whose support?" are not often tackled by social scientists in India. While it is true that there are quite a number of studies at district levels, enough information is not available yet for making macro generalisations at State levels. Krishna- murthi and Rao's contribution in the work under review is significant in this context FORMIDABLE OBSTACLES The Indian "data bank" for electoral preferences does not lend itself to easy manipulation for arriving at quantitative answers. Changes in the delimitation of constituencies, both at the State and the national level, lack of published data on voter turn-out by polling booths, unstable political alliances, fissiparous tendencies within the dominant political parties resulting in the emergence of rebel parties, are some of the formidable obstacles which must be overcome for assessing changes in political preferences in quantitative terms. The sociologically trained authors tackled these obstacles typically in the manner of their profession: They searched for ways and means by which meaningful relationships could be posited between political preferences and sets of other social-demographic attributes of the Keralan polity. The attributes finally selected for study were the size of the community (rather than the degree of urbanisation), the labour-cultivator ratio (i e, the ratio between those who own their land and those who work as hired labourers), and the party/ candidate

Values and Economic Development

Vol. 3, Issue No. 1-2, 06 Jan, 1968
Ratna Dutta

This paper explores the relationship between economic growth and the structure of values and motives in developing societies.
Part I deals with the set of data on the relationship between values and economic growth, presented in McClelland's studies of achievement motivation.' An outdated perspective which regards the international stratification system as the expression of inherent differences between peoples and cultures, has resulted in an erroneous interpretation of data. A more meaningful picture of the data is then presented in terms of the dynamics of social change.

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