Pranab Bardhan sobre as elites burocráticas na Índia:

“In a country where the overwhelming majority are illiterates or drop-outs at the primary education level, the educated elite enjoy a high scarcity value for their education and profession. By managing to direct educational investment away from the masses, they have been able to protect their scarcity rent, and by acquiring licence-giving powers at various levels of bureaucracy some of them have increased their capacity to multiply this rental income.”

E ainda:

“It seems the old rentier class […], deriving its income from absentee landlordism, has now been replaced by the new rentier elements in the privileged bureaucracy.”

Pranab Bardhan. The Political Economy of Development in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 52.