Ph D Scholar,
The concept of developmental state has been transformed over the course of the last thirty years. The notion of the developmental state has been one of the most celebrated and magnetic concepts in development theory and governance now. The successes of the East Asian countries not only brought the concept into vogue in the 1980's and 1990's but changed the conventional notions of having a single predetermined route to development. It challenged the attributes of democracy itself being the road leading to developmental success. While placing the State at the centre of the discourse on development, it is really the capacity of the State to penetrate society and extract resources to become a strong State. Urbanization has always been a part of this development process but now the pace of urbanization poses an unprecedented managerial and policy challenge in India and many East Asian countries. The problem however, becomes much more prominent when it comes to countries like India, where the web like society is heterogeneous and plural, so social control by the State becomes much more fragmented and difficult.
Developmental State, Politics, State-Society Relations, Urban Growth
