An Indian Model of Aristocratic Patronage

Patron-client relations in traditional agrarian societies can be analyzed as informal vertically structured systems of insurance. This paper is more specifically concerned with situations, such as have been documented for some parts of India, in which patron-client ties are hereditary and non-exclusive. Special attention is devoted to the coordination problems that arise in such a framework of (non-competitive and non-dyadic) relations and to considerations of effective availability of the client workforce that bear upon these problems. Moreover, an effort is made to assess the impact of a number of recent changes in the environment of Indian rural societies.