34 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Patnaik has not looked into some other possibilities which are as realistic as the possibility of the emergence of an authoritarian state. The Indian state has every administrative apparatus to respond in an authoritarian manner to deal with emerging social challenge but its administrative instruments suffer from serious internal cleavages and fragmentation. Can such state apparatus implement necessary policies to safeguard the programmes of the authoritarian state in India. Under normal circumstances, it is the duty of the state to defend territorial unity and integrity of India. The secessionist and terrorist movements in Punjab, the Kashmir valley and in some parts of northeast India revealed that the various armed forces of the country failed to win over the willing cooperation and support of the terrorised, innocent and patriotic citizens in their fight against terrorism. Terrorism cannot be fought if the local people are alienated from the instruments of the state. The local people willingly support the anti-insurgency role of the armed forces, if they have a genuine feeling that the instruments of the state are people-friendly and anti-terrorists. Many serious acts of omission and commission were committed by the armed forces in their anti-insurgency operations that the local people come to equate terrorists with state terrorism in India. This illustration shows that the Indian state lacks proper instruments to implement and enforce the goals of authoritarianism. The state apparatus in India suffers from serious cleavages and all its policies in the process of implementation get distorted. Under such a situation, emergence of social discontent leads to anarchic social disorder. India may witness ad hoc social outbursts on a large scale and a phenomenon of helpless state to maintain even 'law and order* in the country. During the last forty five years, the Indian state succeeded in tackling communal, terrorist and secessionist challenges because of its some welfare programmes, the absolute majority of Indians never came on the streets to fight street battles. The legitimacy of the Indian state, while it was weak, largely depended on its interventionist role in the form of some employment guarantee schemes. Integrated Rural Development Programmes, Jawahar Rozgar Yojna etc. The Indian state while subsidising the rich strata of society, also extended some subsidies to the poor in the form of 'food for work programmes' and mid-day meals for the school-going children of the poor. The 'retreating state* under the dictates of the IMF-World Bank and the domestic monopoly capitalist classes will have to abandon some of its essential 'pro-poor welfare schemes' in the process, it will lay down the foundations of serious social disorder. The dimensions of emerging social disorder cannot be accurately predicted but it may take the form of communal disorder, or inter-regional warfare or secessionism or directionless lumpenised rioting. The Indian state as it is constituted today is not capable of handling multiplicity of socially disturbed situations in the whole of India. A question worth probing is: will