The State at Play: A Neoliberal History of the Karnataka Golf Association

• In Event: 393 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Governance, Bureaucracy and the State

Abstract

The Karnataka Golf Association (KGA) golf course, in Bangalore, India, is an archetypical neoliberal space of excess and privilege. Finished in 1989, it sits on 125 acres of government land awarded by state officials at the request of industrialists. Despite a capital fund of $15 million (US), the club pays little in taxes and receives subsidies on water to treat the course and food and alcohol served in the clubhouse. Such an arrangement would seem to reinforce the notion that the state acts at the pleasure of elites to the exclusion of ordinary Indians. The founding and subsequent history of the KGA, however, gives a more complex and nuanced understanding of state and capital relations than standard accounts of neoliberalism might allow. While the state provided the land and resources to build the golf course, and gives free reign on day-to-day decision making, actual power and control over the club and the land on which it sits rests with the state, something that officials involved in early negotiations drafted into place. Drawing on ethnography, interviews, and archives of club records, the paper presents state officials as anything but willing dupes in thrall to capital. Rather, it shows them to be highly rational, even forward thinking, in respect to the club.

Author

• Patrick Inglis, Grinnell College