ECONOMIC LIBERALISATION AND AGRICULTURE 19 diminution in the flow that the rural rich currently get from the government's gravy train. In other words, rural India is likely to see increased income disparities both within and across regions while, simultaneously, the sources of patronage by which the rural elites are currently linked to the national political system is likely to get weaker. The implication of this is that the ability of the Central Government to carry out distributive transfers will decline even as the need for such redistribution increases. More generally, the clout of the existing modernising state, whether liberalising or dirigiste, over the rural elites will decline further. And new, more local, mechanisms of coercion and patronage will almost certainly become more important. Moreover, since the rural elite is unlikely to be able to develop these on its own, and since the need for mechanisms for conflict resolution in the countryside will become more acute, the role of the mofussil elite and middle classes is also likely to become more important.v Short of a reassertion of the Centre through some form of dictatorship, which is unlikely, only two outcomes seem possible. One of these is the possibility of heightened sub-nationalism leading to more Punjabs, but another is a natural move away from the type of top-down political culture of the Congress towards the more diffused style of the non-BJP, non-communist Opposition today. These groupings have hitherto played the politics of distributional coalitions, with little by way of a programme for mobilising resources or development. This, and the fact that they are almost all currently opposed to or ambivalent about the liberalisation moves being carried out today, is likely to be an obstacle to the liberalisers who, whatever their protestations to the contrary, are even more dependent than their opponents on the centralised State that they seek to dismantle. Equally, the opponents of liberalisation are likely to face far more complex challenges in the future on their agenda for agrarian reforms and public investment. The outcome of the tussle between these two variants of modernising influence will depend ultimately on which of these can cope better with complexities that liberalisation will introduce into a polity where the established urban interests have so far only just about managed to hold back the political challenge of the emerging middle castes.