Manor, James. "Small-Time Political Fixers in India's States: 'Towel over Armpit". Asian Survey, Vol.40, No.5 (2000): 816-835.

Manor, James. "Small-Time Political Fixers in India's States: 'Towel over Armpit". Asian Survey, Vol.40, No.5 (2000): 816-835.

• "The phrase 'towel over armpit' is commonly used in [...] the southern state of Karnataka, to refer to members of a sizable army of small-time, freelance political 'fixers' who operate there. They are called that because of their habit of draping a long cotton cloth, [...] over one shoulder. The towel gives them a rakish look, but it is also practical. They use it to wipe away sweat from their foreheads as they shuttle back and forth between grassroots communities and government offices at higher levels in the system, seeking benefits for the rural dwellers they seek to represent. These people are middlemen (and nearly all are still male) who serve as crucial political intermediaries between the localities and powerful figures (bureaucrats and, especially, politicians) at higher levels. Their attire and their air of self-importance make them figures of fun, but they have their uses for local groups, as the latter well understand. They also provide critically important assistance to politicians, especially but not only at election time. These fixers are a major national resource, which India possesses in greater abundance than just about any other less-developed country" (816-817).
• These fixers usually have some education and often spent their whole lives living in the rural areas they represent, although some have lived in urban areas for a brief time. Most fixers are from middle-class backgrounds, but since the 1990s a growing number have been from poor families. Their job as a fixer is normally part-time, heating up around elections then cooling down as they take other work. Some of the best fixers, however, are put on retainer by political parties (818-819).
• Many fixers aspire to become politicians, providing motivation for their poorly-paid part-time profession. Very few, however, ever enter the legislature; a recent survey suggests the number is under 10% of all fixers (819).
• Fixers almost always represent poor rural areas of India. Although urban slum-dwellers are in desperate need of more political representation, which fixers could provide, fixers do not usually exist to serve these areas (818).
• Fixers are valuable to the Indian political system because they provide a mixture of knowledge, skills, and attitudes not otherwise existing. Fixers know about local needs, preferences, and economies as well as the functioning of higher government, providing an invaluable intermediary between local groups and politicians. Fixers are socially integrated into both spheres of politics, allowing them to provide amicable relations between groups with divergent interests, helping them forage more compromises (819-820).
• Although most fixers admit to not reflecting about the democratic process or their role in it during their duties, their actions further the democratic system in India. Their views towards political leadership also support democracy, as they possess a strong dislike of 'control freak' leaders who seek to dominate the political hierarchy beneath them (820-821).
• Similarly, fixers tend to be a controlling factor on political corruption. They recognize that they are less likely to benefit from corruption than higher-level politicians, and are more likely to face backlash at the local level from rural residents angry at mismanaged projects (821-822).
• Andhra Pradesh mainly has fixers in its relatively wealthy coastal belt, with very few fixers existing in the massively poor and uneducated rural inland region. With a literacy rate of around 30%, communities in rural Andhra Pradesh are generally unable to produce the kind of educated individuals who become fixers. Instead, activism in these communities usually manifests in violent communist insurgencies, who label fixers as collaborators and attack them, further reducing the presence of fixers in rural areas (824).
• There are limited opportunities for fixers in Andhra Pradesh, even in urban areas, as the Chief Minister of the state, Chandrababu Naidu, is domineering and actively seeks to impose control from above on every office his party controls, actively weakening and defunding the local grassroots associations which he does not control and which sustain fixers. This results in limited opportunities for fixers outside of the party system (824-825).
• The ruling Telugu Desam party, however, is a open organization which does not require office-holders to have experience or loyalty towards the party. This creates more opportunities for fixers to enter regular politics. Many fixers are worried about joining Telugu Desam, however, as the highly partisan environment in the state means that doing so would mean forfeiting a position in any future Congress government (825).
• The prospects for fixers in Madhya Pradesh are mixed, as the devolution of power to village governments, panchayat, has both created more low-level positions in government and created official institutions to replace the unofficial roles of fixers. Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Digvijay Singh, has allowed local governments to be largely self-governing, including with generous financing, even when controlled by the opposition (826).
• Orissa has almost no fixers, primarily because western Orissa is extremely poor, unable to provide the level of wealth or education which can enable fixers, and many tribal groups are politically dominated by outside interests rather than local fixers. Fixers can also not developed in the wealthier coast, largely as a result of the general domination of state politics by a tiny political elite (827).
• The political elite in Orissa are drawn from a very small number of high-caste groups along the coast. Interestingly, whereas in most of India, the dominant landowning classes had managed to control the political system by the 1950s, the wealthy landowning classes in Orissa are still politically excluded by the high-caste political elite (827).
• The political leadership in Orissa is out of touch with the local populace and usually rules in an authoritarian and ineffective fashion. The state is badly governed, and currently both the BJP Chief Minister, Navin Patnaik, and the Congress candidate, Giridhar Gamang, are foreigners in the region and do not speak the local language of Oriya. This highly distant rule leave few opportunities for fixers to insert themselves in state politics (827-828).
• There are very few opportunities for fixers to operate in Tamil Nadu, despite the relatively high level of socioeconomic development and educational allowing opportunities for fixers to emerge. Both major political parties are deeply hostile to the local power that fixers exercise. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is authoritarian and refuses to work with local government not staffed by party loyalists, and the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam is corrupt to the point of being almost totally uninvolved in the kind of development projects which fixers enable (828-829).
• Until 1999, fixers were excluded from politics in Maharashtra by the coalition government of the BJP and Shiv Sena. This government was both corrupt and incompetent, reducing Maharashtra to near insolvency through a combination of unrealistic populist promises and corrupt implementation of projects. Both parties sought to monopolize implementation through their own ranks, with Shiv Sena sometimes using violence to reinforce its hold on the local level (829-830).
• As a result of the minimal opportunities for fixers to work with the Shiv Sena-BJP government, the fixers instead began to work with local governments controlled by off-shoots of Congress. Their support in campaigning was crucial to bringing a Nationalist Congress Party-Indian National Congress coalition to power in 1999 (830).
•  In previous decades, fixers were an important part of political life in Uttar Pradesh, especially for mediating between government and local populations in the poor rural areas of the state. In the 1990s, however, the disruption of state politics in Uttar Pradesh prevented fixers from making necessary connections at the same time that local governments became increasingly centralized by corrupt parties disinterested in communicating with local communities (830-831).
• Karnataka is a generally positive environment for fixers to operate in, since its political parties recognize their need for fixers in rural areas and the parties have generally cordial relationships with each other due to an absence of intense caste, wealth, or ethnic divides existing in other states. The use of fixers has only increased since the 1992 reforms brought an end to a period of highly decentralized government down to the panchayat level, leaving many rural peoples with greater demands on their government, demands now communicated through fixers (831-832).
• The author identifies the six types of political leaders in India based on their relationship with fixers:
• Pluralists, who are generally chill about lower levels of government and are willing to both give resources to opposition-controlled institutions and employ fixers (833).
• Partisan control freaks, who attempt to dominate the state structure through a disciplined and centralized party. They will only support local governments staffed by party loyalists and refuse to work with outside fixers (833).
• Leaders of penetrative and disciplined parties, who allow for a significant amount of decentralized decision-making at the local level, but have a strong ideological message that guarantees that party members at all levels will make similar decisions without necessitating central control (833).
• Vastly corrupt leaders, whose disinterest in actually helping distant communities meant that their only interaction with fixers was occasionally demanding huge bribes to actually implement any projects (833).
• Incapable leaders, who are so incompetent at running governments that cooperation with fixers is rendered impossible since the government cannot accomplish anything even with help (834).
• Leaders preoccupied with spite, who exist in heavily partisan environments and are mainly focused on preventing other parties from coming into power. The deeply partisan environment means that working with one party will exclude fixers from cooperating with the next government (834).
• Fixers will also disappear from Indian politics if either disciplined parties take over, since they can supply their own methods of communicating with local communities, or more states radically devolve powers to the panchayat so that informal means of communication are no longer necessary. Since neither of those things looks like its going to happen, fixers will likely remain an integral part of Indian politics (834-835).