26 Governmentality and the patron- client state.

Varun Patil

Introduction

In this module we will look at one of the most important form of social relations in India, the patron client relations and focus on how this form is changing in independent India, especially under the impact of governmentality mechanisms. First we will look at what do we mean by patron-client relations. Then we will look at the various ways in which patron-client relations has been understood in sociology and political science. Then we will look at the study of patron-client relations in India drawing examples from village ethnographies in India, especially Jan Breman’s pioneering study of Patronage relations in South Gujarat. Then we will look at the concept of governmentality given by Michael Foucault and look at its employment by Partha Chatterjee to understand the functioning of developmentalist state in India, especially in the agrarian rural sphere. Finally, using Barry Michie’s pioneering ethnography in Rajasthan, we will look at what has been the impact of welfare policies ushered in by the developmentalist state on the patron-client relations in India.

Section I: Patron client relationship model

A patron-client formation consists of networks of dyadic relations centred on power figures, the patrons who control the resources essential to the survival and well-being of dependent groups, the clients. Such a social formation cross-cuts class and primordial ties, such as caste and provides a framework for organizing activity at the local level and articulating it with the wider society. People of disparate status, wealth and power are vertically integrated below patrons who in turn may be clients of patrons at higher levels. Patrons and clients may interact on several dimensions—economic, political and ritual that take in the whole person. The patron client relationship is enduring and often involves the following structural features: hereditary ties between families, mutual trust, confidence, mutual expectations, community support of values and the conception of a moral bond (Scott, 1977).

The patron-client formation finds its fullest elaboration where there are gaps between a state’s centre and periphery. This implies situations of localised power and the organisation of production and distribution based on local resources: in short, in situations of local, political economy and subsistence economy (Michie: 1981). Also, implied is the distance of national and state institutions, although they may help define, support and regulate local arrangements and are in turn dependent on an upward flow of resources on which the state apparatus rests. In this arrangement, there is the local absence of impersonal i. e. state-enforced, guarantees for physical security, status and wealth. The major reason for the development of such relations is to provide security for both patrons and clients.

Relations between patrons and clients are by definition lopsided with unequal and non-comparable reciprocities, e.g. Tenancy and employment for loyalty and services. Clients’ minimum needs are for basic subsistence meals. The bond neither implies the lack of client grievances nor the absence of patron exploitation and coercion, nor does it imply a state of romantic harmony and virtue upon which changes wreak havoc. The patron-client system is thus a paradoxical set of elements combining inequality and asymmetry in power with mutual solidarity and a combination of potential coercion and exploitation with voluntary relations and compelling mutual obligations. Thus although there are rights and obligations on both sides, the relationship of patronage is an asymmetrical one in which there is an inherent element of exploitation. The system can be quite brutal, especially to those at the bottom although dependent groups may receive little more than enough to feed them, clothe and sheltered, they are assets for patrons.

Given the dynamics of local autonomy and subsistence economy, the tendency is to give rights of participation and share to all, however unequal or minimal in the community’s economic life. Although they monopolize land and employment, patrons are subjected to structural limitations regarding the degree to which they can turn economic processes solely to personal consumption and/or material gain. Resources and goods are distributed locally to build a following and a power base. In fact, it is imperative that they do so to maintain their positions and avoid loss of status, power and control material and possibly physical security.

Section II: The sociology of Patron-client relations

The analysis of patron-client exchanges was initially developed to record and explain the repeated exchanges between patrons and clients who were distinguished by status, power or other characteristics. Patronage first came to the fore of the social sciences in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly in Mediterranean and Latin American peasant studies. It was given theoretical importance in the west by scholars such as Ernest Gellner (1977), Eisenstadt (1980), Eric Wolf (1977) and James Scott (1977). Since then patronage has been an important concept in anthropology and political science especially.

In early liberal conventional understandings, patronage was seen as a residual element in the acceptable structuring of social, political and economic outcomes. Patronage was a regressive force inimical to democracy, civil society and the market’s free flow. Patronage in this literature—was a means of exploitation, a vestige of feudalism, a governmental pathology, a politics of the poor or an ancillary institution—it was never been a site of positive value in its own right. Patronage appeared as the cause or symptom of political infirmity. It was portrayed as a retrograde, oppressive or at best ancillary, institution destined to vanish the moment modern, democratic states take proper hold of the world. Time and again analysts forecast its disappearance, time and again lamenting its refusal to go away.

Marxist scholars saw patronage as a sentimentalisation of class inequality (e. g., Leeds 1964; Galjart 1965; Alavi 1973). For them, patronage was a ‘myth’ or the ‘ideology’ of the elites, endorsed by those social analysts who dared to present it as anything but power struggle. The language of kinship, friendship and sympathy, they claimed, concealed behind it the brutal mechanisms of dependence and exploitation. Sociologist Anthony Hall, for example, wrote that however one may approach patronage, ‘the important fact is the inherently coercive nature of patron-clientage’ (1977: 511).

Later anthropological and political science studies began to challenge the Liberal and Marxist narratives and argue that patronage was not everywhere plainly bad news (Piliavsky, 2014). Patron-client relations did not necessarily propagate inequality or sent modern politics back into feudal darkness, but often achieved the obverse: social mobility and political participation. It was argued that we face not a feudal residue, but with a current political form vital in its own right. That ‘patronage’ cannot be seen as an unchanging, timeless ‘phenomenon’, a transactional arrangement with a fixed and predetermined content. Rather, we need to see it as a living moral idiom that carries much of the life, especially in South Asian politics, and society at large (ibid: 2014). Ties of patronage might assist the poor to wrest resources from the elites or help immigrants access state services.

Political scientists took a kinder view of clientism and argued that patron-client exchanges were not confined to pre-modern societies but in fact frequently took place in societies well on the way to becoming modern and which had many modern institutions. Patron–client relations formed the backbone of ‘traditional’ politics and were seen as the main political tool of tribals, peasants and the urban poor. That patronage and electoral politics often went hand in hand; patronage promoted electoral participation, which in its turn generated fresh patronage bonds. As modern politics spread into far corners of society and the globe, patronage became a link between governments and ‘social peripheries’ culturally unfit for or otherwise excluded from direct engagement with the state. Because patronage connected bureaucracies to traditional politics, cities to villages and governments to citizens through patron-politicians and broker bureaucrats, it could paradoxically modernise ‘developing’ states (Schmidt 1974). In a context where the emerging capitalist system does not enjoy political stability and general acceptance, where the state is not strong enough to enforce order by force and where civil society is failing to create the ideological support for the emergence of capitalism, patron-client networks which organise payoffs to the most vociferous opponents of the system are an effective if costly way of maintaining political stability.

Understanding the patron-client system in India

In India we have has studies of kingship, the history of colonial relations, ethnographies of village exchange and ‘big-men’ in urban centres, and the more recent work on fixers, whichhave all focused centrally on patronage. In this module we will focus on the study of agrarian and inter-caste relations, the jajmani system and its variants, the local-level politics and other forms which deal with vertical dependency of groups and individuals based on unequal distribution of resources.

In the era of ‘classic’ ethnography (1930s–1980s) South Asia’s anthropologists focused chiefly on the jajmani, a system of inter-caste village exchange (Wiser (1936), Mandelbaum (1970, 159–180) and Dumont (1980: 98). In the ideal jajmani model each village revolved around a land owning patron family (the jajman). Each service-caste (the kamin) performed a unique economic and ritual role—priests conducted rituals, sweepers swept floors, barbers shaved beards—and each caste, in return, received payments and gifts, along with a share of the village harvest. This was what anthropologists termed ‘total exchange’ (after Mauss 2002 [1925])—at once economic, political, ritual, and moral— which constituted multi-dimensional social bonds.

The jajmani studies argued that in South Asia patronage was never a purely economic or ‘top-down’ power relation. Crucially, it was a relation of status difference. Status asymmetry in this relation was expressed in the language of ‘services’ and ‘gifts’—terms which defined the normative principles organising the relationship and identities of those involved. The donor-servant relation was a profoundly mutual and socially constitutive bond in which all participants were defined relative one another. One was never simply a drummer, barber or priest, but a drummer, barber or priest for this or that patron. Servants, in turn, maintained their patrons’ ritual purity, authorising their pre-eminence and the authority through which they ruled. Both ritually and economically, servants turned landholders into patrons. In their turn, patrons passed down their identities to their servants together with the payments and gifts. Patronage was seen as the heart of society, encompassing its hierarchical principles and the ways in which communities, political or otherwise, were composed and related to one another.

Jan Breman’s(1974) landmark study of the Halapati system in South Gujarat (Chikhligam Gandevigam) gives a useful and detailed picture of the functioning of patron-client system in agrarian rural India. He studied the patron-client relations between the Anavil Brahmin landowners who lived in the village centre and the tribal Halpatis, a caste of agricultural labourers, also known as dublas, a much larger population, which lived in self-built mud huts on the outskirts.

The relations between Anavils and Dublas were characterized traditionally by patronage and exploitation. The Anavil master kept as many servants as he could, not merely to get more work done, but also in order to enhance his prestige and power; people sought to increase their wealth in order to increase the number of their dependents. While the Anavildhaniamo aspired to have many servants, the Dublahali could have only one master. A Dubla entered into a relationship of servitude with an Anavil through a debt which, characteristically, went to pay for the Dubla’s marriage. The debt was such that it could normally not be repaid in his lifetime. As Breman shows, it was, in fact, a legal fiction, manipulated by the master as long as it was to his advantage (1974). In the traditional set-up pre-independence, the hali relationship was of some advantage to the servant and not just to the master, although the advantages were very different in the two cases. No matter how low the level at which he was maintained, the Dubla was assured a measure of security by the relationship into which he entered. Thus, compared to unattached Dublas, the halis were in a marginally superior condition. Breman quotes a translation from a Gujarati source which says: “It has become a matter of prestige in the Dubla community to be a Hali, to work for a Dhaniamo. As a woman without having married a husband has no prestige in society, similarly a Halpati without a Dhaniamo as his master has no prestige in his community” (1974: 62). This is one reason why the hali system took so long to break down.

Independence actually solidified the power of the landowners. They became more dominant than they had been before. In the fifties, after the very modest Congress Tenancy Act, land was supposed to revert to some extent to the tillers. In these villages the lower-caste Kolis lost their land, but the Anavils kept theirs, with average holdings of 10–20 acres, including most of the richest soil. Ultimately, the halpatis benefited in no way at all from the land reforms. The few tenant farmers among them generally lost the land that they had sharecropped on an informal basis. The reforms were designed and implemented in such a way that the share of land owned by land-poor farmers was given priority above allocating plots of land to the landless masses (1974: 167). Anvils also captured the local Credit Cooperative and the panchayats, the village councils. The Dublas had numerical strength but no real political power. In fact, devolution of governance to village level has hardened the hegemony of the upper-caste landowners.

The system was finally broken down at the initiative of the Anavils or, rather, when it ceased to be consistent with their interests. The Anavils initiated a new pattern of cultivation based on fruit crops—mainly mango, and, more recently, chiku—in which the requirements of labour are different from those in the old. The new crops are profitable up to a point, but more important, according to Breman, is the fact that their cultivation gives the Anavils greater leisure to pursue a more highly esteemed style of life (1974). The Dublas appear to have come off rather worse than they were. They have lost much of the security they enjoyed without gaining an appreciably better standard of living. They cannot now find all the employment they required within the village, and have to look for it outside. But they cannot depend on outside employment for the full year, and have to return to the village for part of the year. Many of the Dublas of Chikhligam now lead a trans-human existence, abandoned by their former masters and yet partly dependent on them. Thus though Patronage is clearly breaking down, it does not necessarily lead to a decrease or an increase in exploitation. “In the endeavour of the members of the dominant castes to attain more esteem and influencewithin and outside the village, the Dublas have been changed from subjects into objects” (ibid:221).

Section III: Governmentality and the developmentalist Indian state

In this section we will look at the concept of governmentality given by Michael Foucault and look at its employment by Partha Chatterjee to understand the functioning of developmentalist state in India, especially in the agrarian rural sphere.

The concept of governmentality was introduced by Foucault (1991) to differentiate it from the traditional logic of power that is sovereignty. For Foucault modernity entails the emergence of governmental forms of power. His work shows how in the late 16th and early 17th C, the “problematic of government” emerges, which can be clearly distinguished from “sovereignty”, the concept that had concerned political theory until then. Earlier, from the Middle Ages to the 16th C, there had been a “juridical principle” that “defined sovereignty in public law: sovereignty is not exercised on things, but on a territory and consequently on the subjects who inhabit it.” In contrast, what government has to do with is not territory but rather a sort of complex composed of men and things. The things with which in this sense government is to be concerned are in fact men, but men in their relations, their links, their imbrication with those other things which are wealth, resources, means of subsistence, the territory with its specific qualities, climate, irrigation, fertility; men in their relation to other kinds of things, customs, habits etc.(1991: 93). To govern a state will therefore mean to apply economy, to set up an economy at the level of the entire state, which means exercising towards its inhabitants, and the wealth and behaviour of each and all, a form of surveillance and control as attentive as that of a family over his household and goods (ibid: 92).

Legitimate sovereignty is about ensuring the common good, which Foucault points out, consists of a state of affairs where all subjects obey the laws, accomplish the tasks expected of them, respect the established order. This means that the end of sovereignty is circular. The good is obedience to the law, hence the good for sovereignty is that people should obey it. With government, we see “emerging a new kind of finality. Government is defined as a right manner of disposing of things so as to lead not to a form of the common good…but to an end which is ‘convenient’ for each of the things that has to be governed”. This implies a plurality of specific aims: for instance, government will have to ensure that the greatest possible quantity of wealth is produced, that people are provided with sufficient means of subsistence. In order to achieve these various finalities, things must be disposed (1991: 95). With sovereignty, the instrument that allowed it to achieve its aim (i. e. obedience to the laws) was law itself. But with government, it is not a question of imposing the law, but “of disposing things” – “that is to say, of employing tactics rather than laws, and even of using laws themselves as tactics – to arrange things in such a way” that certain ends may be achieved.

Central to Foucault’s argument for the emergence of governmentality is a distinction between “citizens” and “populations.” He was one of the earliest philosophers to recognize the crucial importance of the conceptual move from the idea of society as constituted by the elementary units of homogeneous families to that of a population, differentiated but classifiable, describable, and enumerable. This new concept, Foucault noted, was central to the emergence of modern governmental technologies (2002: 173). Many Indian scholars have tried to apply the framework of governmentality to understand the nature of social and political relations in India.

Partha Chatterjee (2004, 2011) argues that the history of Governmentality in the global “South” is quite different as a result of the colonial encounter. In the West the story of citizenship moves from the institution of civic rights in civil society to political rights in the fully developed nation-state and only then developing the techniques of governmentality. But that order was reversed in the colonies, where the “technologies of governmentality (e. g. anthropometryin India) often predate the nation-state” (2004: 36). Looking at India, one also finds that early governmental practices, including those of rational bureaucracy, rule of law and the knowledge of populations, were motivated mainly by politics: it was the creation and maintenance of the sovereign power of British colonial authority that was the objective (Chatterjee: 2004). Chatterjee notes that in the 19th century, notions of liberal governmentality were introduced by officials influenced by utilitarian ideas to make Indian society the target of policy in order to improve productivity as well as morality.

Indian nationalists in the 20th century rejected colonial governmentality and demanded full rights of sovereignty over the state. However, the postcolonial state retained the colonial apparatus of security based on realpolitik while expanding liberal governmentality to include an agenda of welfare of the people. In the more recent period, the spread of governmentality alongside the politics of electoral representation has produced in India forms of claim-making and resistance that go well beyond Foucault’s framework (Chatterjee, 2004). Postcolonial states in recent times thus have deployed the latest governmental technologies to promote the well-being of their populations, often prompted and aided by international and nongovernmental organizations.

Chatterjee (2008) chronicles in detail how the spread of governmental technologies in India in the last three decades has transformed the rural and agrarian sphere. There is a growing sense now that certain basic conditions of life must be provided to people everywhere and that if the national or local governments do not provide them, someone else must, whether it is other states or international agencies or non-governmental organisations. As a result of the deepening reach of the developmental state under conditions of electoral democracy, the land reforms, even though gradual and piecemeal, the state is no longer an external entity to the peasant community. Governmental agencies distributing education, health services, food, roadways, water, electricity, agricultural technology, emergency relief and dozens of other welfare services have penetrated deep into the interior of everyday peasant life. Not only are peasants dependent on state agencies for these services, they have also acquired considerable skill, albeit to a different degree in different regions, in manipulating and pressurizing these agencies to deliver these benefits. Institutions of the state, or at least governmental agencies (whether state or non-state), have become internal aspects of the peasant community.

Chatterjee (2008) also notes that this governmentality has been crucial in countering the effects of primitive accumulation unleashed by capital transformation in rural India. He notes how, governmental agencies have to find the resources to, as it were, reverse the consequences of primitive accumulation by providing alternative means of livelihood to those who have lost them. The passive revolution under conditions of electoral democracy makes it unacceptable and illegitimate for the government to leave these marginalised populations without the means of labour to simply fend for themselves. That carries the risk of turning them into the “dangerous classes”. It is not uncommon for developmental states to protect certain sectors of production that are currently the domain of peasants, artisans and small manufacturers against competition from large corporate firms. Hence, a whole series of governmental policies are being, and will be, devised to reverse the effects of primitive accumulation.

Thus, as in other countries, government agencies in India provide some direct benefits to people who, because of poverty or other reasons, are unable to meet their basic consumption needs. This could be in the form of special poverty-removal programmes, or schemes of guaranteed employment in public works, or even direct delivery of subsidised or free food. Thus, there are programmes of supplying subsidised food-grains to those designated as “below the poverty line”, guaranteed employment for up to 100 days in a year for those who need it, and free meals to children in primary schools. There are many examples in many countries, including India, of governments and non-government agencies offering easy loans to enable those without the means of sustenance to find some gainful employment. All of these may be regarded, for Chatterjee, as direct interventions to reverse the effects of primitive accumulation (2008).

Section IV: Changing Patron Client system in India

In the final part of the module we will look at how the patron client system in India is changing since independence due to the impact of the governmental state. We will use Barry Michie’s work in Rajasthan (1981) to elaborate this process of transformation.

Barry Michie looks at the transformation of patron-client relations in two villages of Rajasthan in India, mainly due to changes induced through development programmes and politico-administrative reforms. He examines the system’s transformation in terms of its changing institutional properties and attendant shifts in its rational-logic imperatives, arguing that a multi-purpose patron client system is not incompatible with these new circumstances. He says we do not see demise of patron-client relations per se, but of it taking a new form. The old patron-client system does not move towards a new equilibrium point, which changes on the order of simple additions to or replacement of content within elements. Rather, the very relations that characterize it internally and externally with its environment undergo change with elements added and others deleted. They not only move the local system towards integration with higher levels but also replace the old with a new set of relations, purposes and evaluation criteria at the local level. With the active involvement of state and national government in local affairs, patron-client structures are forced to respond to a new set of circumstances like the introduction of commercialised agriculture during green revolution, state and national electoral national politics, development administration and institutional reforms. The traditional patron client system tended to address how all people make a livelihood, are integrated into social life and obtain security. The new system narrowly restricts this dimension to specific groups, particularly landowners who are the only ones who can make use of agricultural development resources-the new major currency of patronage (Michie: 1981). Land, agricultural employment and produce are removed from the patronage network due to the change in the calculus of production and distribution wrought by commercialisation. As a result, patron-client clusters become differentiated, focused on single interests and lose their all-purpose function of integrating all groups into production and distribution.

The influx of inside resources adds patronage to be dispensed but also creates a new dependency on outside links. The effect is loss of autonomy in the system. This diminishes the patron’s monopoly unless they can capture control of the new resources, as through wining elected office and/or bargaining local political support for resources distributed by politicians and administrators at higher levels. As a result, patrons become less subject to local structural constraints as they turn to and become dependent on outside resources and support. This changes the local power equations as they become less dependent on clients for personal support.

Patrons are also presented with alternative uses other than patronage for their personal resources. These increasingly do not have to be or cannot be shared with clients as patrons enter commercialised production and become subject to its imperatives. Given the lack of alternative sources of income and diminishing access to productive resources, dependent groups are even more dependent on whatever little they receive from patrons. Currently patrons bargaining positions are strong vis-à-vis clients and those at higher levels. Similarly politicians and policy makers at higher levels must listen to the local elites and cater to their demands if they want to retain their positions. Accordingly, clients become liabilities instead of assets in the operation of the patrons’ personal enterprise (Michie: 1981).

Clients do remain important however on the political dimension. But to enlist their support, patronage shifts to the distribution of public goods and services. Controlled by political parties and administration. Collective goods such as schools and health centres are used to appeal to various client goods but these do not provide widespread employment opportunities (Michie:1981). In fact many of these things build an infrastructure from which clients do not, but others will derive benefits. Similarly non-agricultural divisible goods such as housing loans and scholarships help the life chances of but a select few. These may be paralysed into productive income earning assets but the spread effect is minimal. The centripetal force of commercialisation is strengthened by non-local sources of legitimacy and support for local elites. Neither can they nor need they be concerned about the welfare of dependent groups and garnering their personal support as under traditional conditions. And what clients demand stands as a threat to patrons personal enterprises. The only thing clients have to offer is votes, for which they receive minimal payoffs.

Michie (1981) argues that thus the changes introduced by the developmentalist state take place on a social base marked by inequality. Without redressing the imbalance, the initial and subsequent moment is towards greater inequality, concentration and polarisation as the few in dominant positions disproportionately reap the benefits of change. Even though planned changes is seen as a means for eliminating inequality and poverty, due to intervention the emerging forms feed back into and strengthen initial trends, with the result being the opposite of avowed intent and beyond the control of the initiators. Given the realignments and new structures bought into being by the development process itself, benefits are monopolised by the few. They thus strengthened further the trend toward greater inequality. The mechanical notion widespread among the national leadership with regard to the transition from agriculture to industrial development – that the rural poor has to be shifted ultimately to the urban centres – also weakened the voice for formulating and implementing any radical measure for land reform and thus democratising social relations. Contrary to conventional development wisdom there is very little trickle-down effect induced due to development programs. Thus, though the patron-client system changes, it does not usher in the democratisation of social relations.

Further reading

Alavi, Hamza. (1973). Peasant Classes and Primordial Loyalties.’ Journal of Peasant Studies 1(1):23–62.
Breman, Jan. (1974). Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South
Gujarat, India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chatterjee, Partha. (2004). The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. ——(2011). Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dumont, Louis. (1980). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Eisenstadt, S.N. and Louis Roniger. (1980). Patron-Client relations as a model of structuring social exchange.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 22:42-77.
Foucault, Michel (1991) “Governmentality” in Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon and Peter Miller, ed. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Harvester/Wheat sheaf London, Toronto, Sydney.
Gellner, Ernest, and John Waterbury. (eds). (1977). Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies. London: Duckworth.
Hall, Anthony. (1977). ‘Patron-client Relations: Concepts and Terms.’ In Friends, Followers and Factions: A Reader in Political Clientelism. (Eds) by Steffen W. Schmidt, James C. Scott,
Carl Landé, and Laura Guasti. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Leeds, Anthony. (1964). ‘Brazil and the Myth of Francisco Julião.’ In The Politics of Change in Latin America. (Eds). Joseph Maier and Richard W. Weatherhead, 190–204. New York: Joseph A. Praeger.
Mandelbaum, David. (1970). Society in India (2 volumes). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Mauss, Marcel. (2002 [1925]). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W.D. Halls. London: Routledge.
Michie Barry (1981). The Transformation of Agrarian Patron-Client Relations: Illustrations from India American Ethnologist, Vol. 8, No. 1. pp. 21-40
Piliavsky Anastasia (ed). (2014). Patronage as Politics in South Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, Steffen W. (1974). ‘Bureaucrats as Modernizing Brokers? Clientelism in Colombia.’ Comparative Politics 6(3):425–450.
Scott, James. (1977). “Patron-Client politics and political change in southeast Asia.” Pp. 131-46 in Steffan W. Schmidt et al. (eds.) Friends, Followers and Factions. Berkeley: University of California Press.Wiser, William H. (1936). The Hindu Jajmani System: A Socio-Economic System InterrelatingMembers of a Hindu Village Community in Services. Lucknow: Lucknow Publishing House.
Wolf, Eric. (1977). “Kinship, friendship, and patron-client relations in complex societies.” Pp.167-77 in Steffan W. Schmidt et at. (eds.). Friends, Followers and Factions. Berkeley:University of California Press.

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