Journal of Social Science and Human Research Studies (JSSHRS)

Constructing A Sub-National Developmental State: Political Leadership and State Capacity in Telangana

Gandi, Mahathi

30 July 2026 · Vol. 2, Issue 7, pp. 1400-1408

DOI: 10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E7/2026-45

Abstract

The decade of Telangana’s statehood offers an unusually clear window onto a question that the developmental state has rarely asked at the sub-national level: can a regional government, within the constraints of a federal democracy, deliberately build the administrative capacity, coordinating authority, and strategic orientation of developmental states? This article approaches Telangana as an example of sub-national developmental state formation rather than a case of welfare populism and asks how political leadership under K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) translated the political capital generated by a successful statehood movement into durable state capacity. The article traces the mechanisms through which the new state sought to compress its own institution building-bureaucratic restructuring, cabinet-centred coordination, mission-mode implementation and targeted public investment. It also argues that the Telangana experience extends developmental state theory beyond its point of origin in East Asia, showing that the coupling of political authority with administrative discipline can occur within, rather than despite, democratic and federal constraints, even as this coupling generates its own contradictions of centralisation and accountability.

Keywords: Developmental state, State capacity, Sub-national governance, Political leadership, elangana, India.

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Gandi, & Mahathi (2026). Constructing A Sub-National Developmental State: Political Leadership and State Capacity in Telangana. Journal of Social Science and Human Research Studies, 2(7), 1400-1408. https://doi.org/10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E7/2026-45

@article{Gandi2026,
  title   = {Constructing A Sub-National Developmental State: Political Leadership and State Capacity in Telangana},
  author  = {Gandi and Mahathi},
  journal = {Journal of Social Science and Human Research Studies},
  year    = {2026},
  volume  = {2},
  number  = {7},
  pages   = {1400-1408},
  doi     = {10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E7/2026-45},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.65150/EP-jsshrs/V2E7/2026-45}
}

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