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26 Governance: An Int'l J. Pol'y, Admin, & Institutions 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/gvnanlj26 and id is 1 raw text is: Commentary How Colonial Legacies Still Shape Indian Governance: Power and Telecommunications in Comparison SUNILA S. KALE* and RAHUL MUKHERJI** India's recent, spectacular power failure stretched over two days (July 31 and August 1, 2012) and blanketed large swathes of northern, eastern, and northeastern India. National and international pundits and analysts viewed the blackout as further evidence of systemic fail- ures in Indian governance. In this analysis, we offer a view of gover- nance in India as a more variegated phenomenon. In some sectors, Indian policymaking has been sharp and effective while in others dilatory and ineffectual. These differences owe much to the powerful effects of historical institutional arrangements. To make the point, we contrast experiences in two sectors of the Indian economy: telecommunications and power. They are alike in being vital to the country's economic and social health and yet have evolved very differently. Telecommunications in India is considered one of the coun- try's most vibrant economic spaces, populated by dynamic firms and efficiently regulated. The power sector, however, is considered a disas- ter, plagued by underinvestment, political mismanagement, and petty corruption and theft. In what follows, we trace the institutional contours of each sector before briefly describing how history shapes politics in the present. From 1947 to 1950, India's constituent assembly fashioned a new constitution for what would become the world's largest experiment with universal suffrage. Given the complexity of the task and the speed with which the constitution was drafted and promulgated, it is perhaps not surprising that the assembly canvassed other democratic constitutions as well as statutes from British India, including the India University of Washington *National University of Singapore Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions, Vol. 26, No. 1, January 2013 (pp. 1-4). © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.