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Indian Democracy (Political Science)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. Indian democracy calls into question many presumptions that theorists have held about the historical evolution and comparative development of democracy. It is, for instance, generally assumed that the historical conditions in which democracies arise include industrial development, a reasonably cohesive and homogeneous society, a strong middle class, and a civic culture. When India became independent in 1947, none of these conditions obtained. Though the Indian Constitution of 1950 made India a democratic republic with universal adult franchise, the country’s deeply unequal society based on caste hierarchy, low levels of economic development, and a large rural population mired in poverty and illiteracy suggested that this was inhospitable soil for democracy to take root. Nevertheless, over the last six decades and more, Indian democracy has proved to be resilient and enduring (unlike its neighbors, which gained independence at the same time). It has witnessed the holding of regular, free, and fair elections in which the rural and unlettered poor actively participate, as also social movements and a vibrant civil society that make demands on the political system that political parties may not. Above all, the idea of democracy has strikingly captured the popular imagination.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6.  
  7. At least three types of literature provide a general overview of Indian democracy: Anthologies, Textbooks, and volumes of Edited/Authored Overviews that contain essays on selective but reasonably wide-ranging themes in Indian democracy.
  8.  
  9. Anthologies
  10.  
  11. While only the first anthology listed here, Jayal 2001, is specifically about democracy, the others also have democracy as their substantive focus. Jayal and Mehta 2010 covers both democratic institutions as well as ideological contestations over core concepts of democracy in India, such as equality, representation, and social justice. Kohli and Singh 2013 brings together essays on political processes, a focus on the politics of five Indian states, and a discussion of insurgencies, which Jayal 2001 and Kohli and Singh 2013 do not address.
  12.  
  13. Jayal, Niraja Gopal, ed. Democracy in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.
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  15. A fifty-page introduction surveys the major debates and frames the chapters, which explore the central puzzles of Indian democracy: its negotiation of cultural diversity, whether it has undermined the state’s ability to govern or been an obstacle to economic development, and the role of social movements in strengthening democracy even as they radically interrogate democratic institutions.
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  17. Jayal, Niraja Gopal, and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, eds. The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  19. Approximately forty essays on different aspects of India’s democratic politics, the constitutional architecture, institutional arrangements, political processes, and ideological contestations. Essays discuss the mechanisms by which India’s democracy has been sustained, despite deep social inequality, and reflect on how the working of democracy itself has modified and softened the harder edges of these inequalities.
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  21. Kohli, Atul, and Prerna Singh, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2013.
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  23. Essays on leaders, institutions, political parties, community identities, political economy, and India’s place in the world. The section on identities deals not only with caste, class, and minorities, but also with intercommunity violence and insurgencies. A useful section has case studies of five major Indian states: Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu.
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  25. Textbooks
  26.  
  27. Democratic politics in India have seen dramatic change since the 1990s. Ganguly and Mukherji 2011, as well as Chandhoke and Priyadarshi 2009, are more helpful for the subsequent period, but Brass 1990 provides a good introduction to the earlier period of institutional development as well as sources of conflict and contention in Indian democracy.
  28.  
  29. Brass, Paul R. The Politics of India since Independence. New Cambridge History of India 4.1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
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  31. Brass traces the continuities and discontinuities between pre- and post-independence India and focuses on three aspects of India’s political development: the political and institutional structure, including political parties and subnational politics; the challenges of constructing a nation presented by various types of ethnic and linguistic politics; and political economy.
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  33. Chandhoke, Neera, and Praveen Priyadarshi. Contemporary India: Economy, Society, Politics. New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley, 2009.
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  35. The Politics section of this undergraduate textbook has eleven chapters on different aspects of Indian democracy, covering institutions, processes, and ideological debates.
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  37. Ganguly, Sumit, and Rahul Mukherji. India since 1980. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  38. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511842283Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  39. A short and accessible account of India’s revolutionary transformation in four spheres: foreign policy, economic transformation, political mobilization, and secularism. The chapter on political mobilization provides a useful starting point with a chronicle of events and trends in Indian democracy since 1980.
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  41. Edited/Authored Overviews
  42.  
  43. Kohli 2001 and Ganguly, et al. 2007 are both wide-ranging collections reflecting the state of knowledge on Indian democracy at the time of their publication. Corbridge and Harriss 2000 provides summaries of the major writings and an overview of the important scholarly debates on Indian politics since the 1990s. Corbridge, et al. 2013, marshalling the relevant data and arguments, engages with select but important puzzles about Indian politics, economy, and society.
  44.  
  45. Corbridge, Stuart, and John Harriss. Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2000.
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  47. Argues that three trends have shaped the reinvention of India since the 1990s: economic reform, the politics of Hindu nationalism, and the empowerment of subaltern classes. Engages carefully with the major scholarly debates and provides a sharp analytical account that places democracy in the context of the multiple fissures in society.
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  49. Corbridge, Stuart, John Harriss, and Craig Jeffrey. India Today: Economy, Politics and Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013.
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  51. Structured on fifteen questions, such as: “Has India’s Democracy Been a Success?” and “Is Government in India Becoming More Responsive?” The authors argue that while India’s formal democracy has been successful in terms of human rights, rising participation, and competitive multiparty politics, networks of patronage based on caste and class inequalities have inhibited substantive democratization.
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  53. Ganguly, Sumit, Larry Diamond, and Marc F. Plattner, eds. The State of India’s Democracy. Journal of Democracy Book. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
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  55. The editorial introduction to this wide-ranging collection (including articles on the exercise of coercive power and the media) evaluates the record of India’s democracy, its achievements, and its limitations. The authors conclude that the robustness of Indian democracy lies in the fact that democracy is woven into the fabric of Indian political culture, making it the only game in town.
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  57. Kohli, Atul, ed. The Success of India’s Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
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  59. This collection has several essays of enduring value on almost every important aspect of contemporary Indian democracy, from institutions and the federal architecture to social movements and struggles for equality.
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  61. Bibliographies
  62.  
  63. Part of a multivolume survey of the discipline of political science in India, Suri 2013 is the only bibliographical survey of Indian democracy published in recent years.
  64.  
  65. Suri, K. C., ed. Political Science. Vol. 2, Indian Democracy. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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  67. Provides a survey of research, a useful summary, and a guide to the bibliography on the constitution and institutions of India; treats federalism, election studies, party politics, and civil society. The authors explore trends in existing research and interpret the literature in terms of theoretical breaks, asking whether concepts have been creatively reworked to better understand the non-Western world. Conducted under the auspices of the Indian Council for Social Science Research Surveys.
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  69. Journals
  70.  
  71. Studies in Indian Politics and India Review are India-specific journals, as is, for the most part, the Economic and Political Weekly. South Asia, as its name suggests, has a focus on other South Asian countries as well. The regional scope of the Journal of Asian Studies, Critical Asian Studies, and Pacific Affairs is wider still. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics covers the countries of the British Commonwealth. The Journal of Democracy deals with democracies everywhere.
  72.  
  73. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics. 1961–.
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  75. Founded in 1961 and with two name changes, this is a blind peer-reviewed and highly ranked journal with a long and distinguished tradition of publishing articles on the politics of the states of the Commonwealth of Nations, including India.
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  77. Critical Asian Studies. 2001–.
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  79. A peer-reviewed journal covering Asia and the Pacific region. Its hallmark is critique of global capitalism and the capitalist model of development and a scholarly as well as activist commitment to human rights, social justice, equality, and democracy. Published as the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars from 1968 to 2000.
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  81. Economic and Political Weekly. 1949–.
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  83. An iconic Indian journal published from Mumbai, founded in 1949 as the Economic Weekly, and since 1966 as the Economic and Political Weekly. An excellent resource for articles, commentaries, and book reviews on subjects relating to Indian politics, society, and economy. EPW is unique as it facilitates and encourages interdisciplinary conversations as well as dialogue among academics, activists, and practitioners.
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  85. India Review. 2002–.
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  87. A quarterly journal from Taylor and Francis that publishes articles on all subjects related to India, including politics and foreign policy. Articles characteristically test theory and have policy relevance. Apart from reviews, it also publishes roundtables on current issues.
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  89. Journal of Asian Studies. 1941–.
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  91. For more than sixty-five years this venerable journal of Asian studies from Cambridge University Press has published many seminal articles on Indian democracy; books about India are reviews regularly.
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  93. Journal of Democracy. 1990–.
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  95. Published by the Johns Hopkins University Press, this is the leading global journal on the theory and practice of democracy, in which both intellectuals and activists engage with the challenges of democracy worldwide, both in established and in more recently emerged democracies. It is the journal to go to for assessments of recent elections, and it is distinctive in that it addresses the general reader. Indian democracy is regularly and extensively reported and analyzed here.
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  97. Pacific Affairs. 1928–.
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  99. A peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal published by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver since 1961, with a focus on political, economic, and social issues throughout Asia and the Pacific. Extensive book review section as well as regular articles on India, especially dealing with elections.
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  101. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 1971–.
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  103. A quarterly referred journal on the history, culture, politics, economy, and society of the South Asian region, published by the South Asian Studies Association of Australia since 1971. One issue every year is dedicated to a particular theme. Published by Taylor and Francis from Sydney.
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  105. Studies in Indian Politics. 2013–.
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  107. A relatively young peer-reviewed biannual journal that publishes wide-ranging research articles on various aspects of Indian politics, including political ideas, institutions, and processes, from multiple methodological perspectives. Its editors belong to the Lokniti Network at the Centre for the Study of Developing Studies, Delhi, known for its surveys of elections and political attitudes.
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  109. Databases
  110.  
  111. Both the databases listed here relate to election data at the national and state levels. The Election Commission of India provides election data from 1998 onward, while the Programme for Comparative Democracy provides data on surveys, mostly conducted around election time.
  112.  
  113. Election Commission of India.
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  115. The Election Commission of India has digitized election results for the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India’s Parliament) and for state assemblies from 1998 onward.
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  117. Programme for Comparative Democracy.
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  119. This web page directs visitors to (a) aggregate data sets for all parliamentary and assembly elections in India since 1952; and (b) survey data sets, including national election studies, state assembly election studies, and state of the nation surveys.
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  121. Historical Evolution
  122.  
  123. The antecedents of Indian democracy can be traced to the gradual introduction of the principle of election to legislative institutions by the colonial state, under pressure from nationalists to provide representation to the Indian people. The legislatures were opened to modest Indian representation, the members of which were initially nominated and then partly elected. Chiriyankandath 1992 shows how, in 1919, 70 percent of the members of the Central Legislative Council were elected, but only 3 percent of the adult population were enfranchised. The electorate was constituted on the basis of property ownership and educational qualifications, with Muslims and women voting in separate electorates. However, an incipient urge for democracy also found expression in the nationalist demand for civil liberties and free speech. Sarkar 2001 focuses on the question of how and why Indian democracy was constituted rather than the question of its survival, and the author locates the democratic impulse in the Constituent Assembly. Contrary to the view that India’s deeply hierarchical and caste-ordered society would constitute the greatest challenge to the institutionalization of democracy, Manor 1990 identifies elements of indigenous cultural traditions and institutions of accommodation that promoted the emergence of liberal politics in India. Contrasting the endurance of India’s democracy with the fragility of Pakistan’s democracy, Tudor 2013 highlights the role of the social classes leading the nationalist movement and the strength of the Congress Party.
  124.  
  125. Chiriyankandath, James. “‘Democracy’ under the Raj: Elections and Separate Representation in British India.” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 30.1 (1992): 39–64.
  126. DOI: 10.1080/14662049208447624Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  127. The author discusses the evolution of democratic institutions under colonial rule and argues that, though the franchise was highly restricted, elections—along with the mass mobilization for freedom—encouraged and channelized political participation in the colonial era. Reproduced in Jayal 2001 (cited under Anthologies).
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  129. Manor, James. “How and Why Liberal and Representative Politics Emerged in India.” Political Studies 38.1 (March 1990): 20–38.
  130. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1990.tb00567.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  131. Argues that in addition to the representative institutions bequeathed by colonial rule, aspects of Indian culture and social structure also played a role in enabling liberal politics to take root. The Congress machine integrated the two main sources of social order: state institutions and the agrarian socioeconomic order, dominated by landowning elites. Recently reproduced in the Writings of James Manor: Politics and State-Society Relations in India (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2016).
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  133. Sarkar, Sumit. “Indian Democracy: The Historical Inheritance.” In The Success of India’s Democracy. Edited by Atul Kohli, 23–46. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
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  135. Locates the historical roots of Indian democracy in the movement for freedom, but especially in the Constituent Assembly. Shows how the particular combination of the democratic, the federal, and the secular in the constitution was born out of the experience of intercommunity violence.
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  137. Tudor, Maya. The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  138. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139519076Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. Explores the puzzle of why the postcolonial Indian state managed to consolidate democracy by contrasting it with the failure of Pakistan to do so and explains the divergence in terms of the social classes leading the nationalist movement and the strength of the dominant political party at the time of independence.
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  141. The Institutional Structure
  142.  
  143. The formal institutional structure of a parliamentary democracy encompasses, though it is not exhausted by, the electoral system, the political parties that populate it, and the legislature in which government formation according to the will of the people occurs. The scholarly literature on political parties in India is much larger than that on Parliament or the Electoral System. Parliament is increasingly of interest to scholars, and there is also now a small body of literature on the electoral system.
  144.  
  145. Parliament
  146.  
  147. Until very recently, few academic studies of the Indian Parliament were available, but recent years have seen a spurt of scholarly interest, especially with respect to the effectiveness of Parliament to exact accountability from the executive, the working of the revamped committee system put in place in 1993, and disruptions leading to huge losses of parliamentary time. Hewitt and Rai 2010, as also Shankar and Rodrigues 2014, document historical shifts in the role of the Speaker and the nature of legislative oversight on the executive. Recent work on this institution ranges widely to include studies of the disruption of parliamentary proceedings (Spary 2013) to the utilization of constituency funds by Members of Parliament (MPs) (Agrawal 2005) and even the participation of legislators with criminal records (Pai and Kumar 2014).
  148.  
  149. Agrawal, Arun. “The Indian Parliament.” In Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design. Edited by Devesh Kapur and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 77–104. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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  151. A crisp description of the structure and design of the Indian Parliament, including the new committee system and mechanisms of accountability. Examines data relating to the poor utilization of constituency funds by MPs to argue that representatives do not regard constituency service as critical to their reelection.
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  153. Hewitt, Vernon, and Shirin Rai. “Parliament.” In The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 28–42. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  155. An interpretation of the role of Parliament—its structure, functioning, and social composition—as the polity shifts from the era of one-party dominance to the era of coalition government. Attributes to the latter period an enhancement in the role of the Speaker, a decline in rule by ordinances, and an improvement in the quality of oversight exercised by Parliament over the executive.
  156. Find this resource:
  157. Pai, Sudha, and Avinash Kumar, eds. The Indian Parliament: An Appraisal. New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2014.
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  159. Covers virtually every important aspect of the functioning of India’s Parliament—from its effectiveness, bicameralism, delegated legislation, and the committee system of parliamentary oversight to the relationship between the legislature and the media and civil society. Also includes two essays on the criminal records of MPs and how this relates to their participation.
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  161. Shankar, B. L., and Valerian Rodrigues. The Indian Parliament: A Democracy at Work. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014.
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  163. Examining it in three historical phases, and contesting the argument of parliamentary decline, the authors argue that India’s Parliament has responded well to the changing needs of the times. They trace the relationship between the two houses as well as the role of the Speaker and the opposition over time.
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  165. Spary, Carole. “Legislative Protest as Disruptive Democratic Practice.” Democratization 20.3 (2013): 392–416.
  166. DOI: 10.1080/13510347.2013.786542Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. The article makes the case for viewing acts of legislative protest—their disruptive quality and their transgressions of “orderliness”—as significant and justifiable if interpreted in terms of debates on legislative conflict, deliberation, and representation in democratic theory.
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  169. The Electoral System
  170.  
  171. India’s record of holding free and fair elections has been considerably strengthened since 1990, when the Election Commission asserted its autonomy of the government of the day, a tendency that has been consolidated, along with the independence of the judiciary and the presidency. McMillan 2010 and Rudolph and Rudolph 2001 throw light on both these trends. India’s experience of sometimes unstable coalition governments through the 1990s has often been attributed to its adoption of the first-past-the-post electoral system, and Sridharan 2010 argues this point. Banerjee 2014 uses the ethnographic method to demonstrate the commitment of the Indian citizen to electoral democracy.
  172.  
  173. Banerjee, Mukulika. Why India Votes? New Delhi: Routledge, 2014.
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  175. An anthropological study of elections—from the campaign and the language of politics to the polling station and why people vote. Based on ethnographic research in ten Indian states, the author answers the question in the title by showing that people see their exercise of the franchise as both a right and a duty of citizenship.
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  177. McMillan, Alistair. “The Election Commission.” In The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 98–116. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  179. This article chronicles the transformation of the Election Commission (EC), once viewed as a pliable institution, to one that has become robustly independent. The more important achievements of the EC include innovations in the technical aspects of conducting elections.
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  181. Rudolph, Lloyd I., and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph. “Redoing the Constitutional Design: From an Interventionist to a Regulatory State.” In The Success of India’s Democracy. Edited by Atul Kohli, 127–162. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
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  183. Argues that a major shift occurred in the constitutional ideas and practices that distinguish the Indian state of the 1950s from that of the 1990s. This shift from an interventionist state to a regulatory state is best seen in an enhanced role for three state agencies: the presidency, the Election Commission, and the Supreme Court.
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  185. Sridharan, Eswaran. “The Party System.” In The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 117–135. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  187. The author explores the reasons for the fragmentation of the Indian party system and rejects the theory that social cleavages lie at the root of this fragmentation. His own explanation privileges the political-systemic theory, especially the first-past-the-post electoral system.
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  189. Political Parties
  190.  
  191. The literature on political parties in India is of two broad types. The first deals with the party system, which has moved from what Rajni Kothari famously described as the “Congress system” of the early post-independence era to a multiparty system. The essays in deSouza and Sridharan 2006 cover this shift well, apart from issues of election funding and gender representation, and include case studies of some regional parties. Hasan 2010 reflects on the lack of internal democracy in political parties. The second body of literature on political parties deals with individual political parties, tracking their histories and evolution as well as their ideologies, strategies, and fortunes in the competition for power. Hasan 2012, Pai 2002 and Jaffrelot 1996 are studies of three major political parties.
  192.  
  193. deSouza, Peter Ronald, and Eswaran Sridharan. India’s Political Parties. New Delhi: SAGE, 2006.
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  195. A wide-ranging reader that includes many classics of lasting importance on the subject, including Rajni Kothari’s article on the “Congress system.” Also includes essays on individual parties and on a range of issues, such as on the selection process of candidates in some parties, state funding for elections, and women’s representation.
  196. Find this resource:
  197. Hasan, Zoya. “Political Parties.” In The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 241–253. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  199. The author engages with the puzzle that while political parties have been crucial to the deepening of Indian democracy and its consolidation, the parties themselves are marked by a complete lack of internal democracy, with the imperative of seeking office defining party strategies more than ideology, a tendency reinforced by coalition politics.
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  201. Hasan, Zoya. Congress after Indira: Policy, Power, Political Change, 1984–2009. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  202. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195685978.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. The story of how the Congress Party returned to power at the head of a coalition in 2004. Shows how the organization and its leadership responded to the challenges of religious fundamentalism by reasserting secularism; of economic reform, by emphasizing inequality and the need for redistribution; and of coalition government, by being willing to enter into alliances.
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  205. Jaffrelot, Christophe. Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics. New Delhi: Penguin, 1996.
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  207. A detailed account of the emergence of Hindu nationalism in India since the 1920s, this book provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Shows how the ideology of religious nationalism is used by the BJP to reenter the political arena. The book covers events only until the 1990s.
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  209. Pai, Sudha. Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Revolution: The BSP in Uttar Pradesh. New Delhi: SAGE, 2002.
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  211. An account of the evolution, leadership, and organization of the Bahujan Samaj Party, and of its ideology of social justice as theory and praxis. Also analyzes the mobilization efforts and electoral strategies of the BSP and complements these with a field study in one district.
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  213. Coalition Politics
  214.  
  215. From 1989 to 2014, no single party obtained a majority of seats in the lower house of India’s Parliament, and hence India experienced rule by coalition governments at the federal level, except for the minority Congress government of 1991–96. Coalition government has also been a feature of many state governments. Between 1996 and the summer of 2014, India was governed by two rival coalitions of the National Democratic Alliance and the United Progressive Alliance, which led observers to suggest that the era of single-party rule was over and an era of coalitions had arrived, with multiple parties (often more than twenty) clustering around the two leading national parties, the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. In 2014, this thesis was called into question as the BJP achieved a majority on its own. Guha-Thakurta and Raghuraman 2008 describe the historical emergence of coalition politics and its implications for governance, while the essayists in Sridharan 2014 explore political competition and coalitions at the federal as well as state level.
  216.  
  217. Guha-Thakurta, Paranjoy, and Shankar Raghuraman. Divided We Stand: India in a Time of Coalitions. New Delhi: SAGE, 2008.
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  219. A readable journalists’ account of coalition politics in India, rejecting the view that India’s polity has ceased to be bipolar and affirming the persistence of coalitions. Covers major political developments in the coalition era of Indian politics, the changing support bases of different parties, their position on economic reform and the implications of coalitions on governance, federalism and corruption.
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  221. Sridharan, Eswaran, ed. Coalition Politics in India: Selected Issues at the Centre and the States. New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2014.
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  223. This volume discusses why multi-party minority governments have been viable in India, as also the nature of competition and coalition formation at the national level in India and in the states of Maharashtra, West Bengal, Kerala, Bihar and Punjab.
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  225. Democracy and Social Movements
  226.  
  227. India has, over time, witnessed a variety of social movements: from an earlier phase of workers’ and peasants’ movements to a later phase of movements related to the environment, livelihoods, peace, and gender equality. Omvedt 1993 interprets the latter as a reinvention of the class-based revolutionary movements of the past. That interpretation is challenged in Katzenstein, et al. 2001, which characterizes movement activism of the later period as having both interests and identities and also creating a new discursive civic space. Baviskar 2010 provides a historical overview along with reflections on the methodological challenges facing new research in this field.
  228.  
  229. Baviskar, Amita. “Social Movements.” In The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 381–390. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  231. Baviskar’s survey of social movements situates them both historically and in the theoretical literature on new social movements. She notes the ethnographic turn in the study of social movements in India and also identifies new research challenges in transnational movement activism and the complementarity between movements and more institutional political forms.
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  233. Katzenstein, Mary, Smitu Kothari, and Uday Mehta. “Social Movement Politics in India: Institutions, Interests, and Identities.” In The Success of India’s Democracy. Edited by Atul Kohli, 242–269. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
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  235. Contests the characterization of social movements in Omvedt 1993 through three propositions. Social movements mobilize around identities as well as interests, with these often being institutionalized in different political domains; the effectiveness of issue-based social movements is generally limited to the region in which they operate; and, despite institutionalization, movement activism has created a discursive civic space independent of state politics.
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  237. Omvedt, Gail. Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993.
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  239. Classic account of new social movements in India, interprets the anti-caste movement, the women’s movement, the farmers’ movement, and the environmental movement, among others, as a departure from the earlier phase of class-based movements. Shows how these movements reinvent revolution as they interrogate the modernist developmental paradigm and the role of the state in the continuing subjugation and exploitation of people.
  240. Find this resource:
  241. Democracy and Civil Society
  242.  
  243. In every democracy, the relationship of civil society and democracy is one of mutuality: a strong and vibrant civil society is generally acknowledged to be necessary for a democracy to function well; equally, only a robust democracy can provide the framework for civil society to play its role. Chatterjee 2004 triggered an influential theoretical debate about the relevance of the category of civil society for India, proposing the concept of “political society” as better describing the politics of the poor. Chandhoke 2011 identifies the features of civil society in India and, contesting the thesis in Chatterjee 2004, argues the usefulness of the category of civil society interpreted as a plural space and a set of values. Jenkins 2001 draws attention to the place of civil society in donor discourses. Varshney 2002 applies Robert Putnam’s thesis on social capital to the study of civic associations that prevent communal violence in Indian cities. Bhattacharyya, et al. 2004, on the other hand, interrogate the usefulness of the concept of social capital in explaining democracy and development in India.
  244.  
  245. Bhattacharyya, Dwaipayan, N. G. Jayal, Bishnu N. Mohapatra, and Sudha Pai, eds. Interrogating Social Capital: The Indian Experience. New Delhi: SAGE, 2004.
  246. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. A collection of essays interrogating the social capital argument based on village-level fieldwork in different parts of India—from Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to West Bengal and Orissa—and showing that no necessary or inevitable positive relationship exists between social capital and democracy in India.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Chandhoke, Neera. “Civil Society in India.” In The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society. Edited by Michael Edwards, 171–182. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  250. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. Explores the history and features of civil society in India, especially its professionalization and the phenomenon of “uncivil” organizations, and what this means for the transcultural relevance of the concept of civil society. Specifically responds to the Chatterjee 2004 thesis, arguing that civil society is a space and a set of values, mediated and modified by historical context and marked by plurality rather than a singular democratic essence.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
  254. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. Building on the distinction between an organized domain of elite politics and the unorganized domain of subaltern politics, Chatterjee argues that, in “most of the world,” democracy is not government of, by, or for the people. The mass politics of the governed, constituted (following Foucault) as populations, operate outside the sphere of civil society and on the margins of legality, in the sphere of “political society.”
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Jenkins, Rob. “Mistaking ‘Governance’ for ‘Politics’: Foreign Aid, Democracy, and the Construction of Civil Society.” In Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Edited by Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani, 250–268. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
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  259. An analysis of the idea of civil society as it appears in the discourse of aid agencies and as it informs the agenda of governance. Describes this version of civil society as depoliticized and bureaucratized.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Varshney, Ashutosh. Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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  263. A study of civil society and conflict in six Indian cities, three of which have experienced inter-community violence while the other three have not. The author argues that strong associational networks of business organizations, political parties, and trade unions have a greater potential in checking outbreaks of violence than everyday forms of civic engagement.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Democracy and Inequality
  266.  
  267. The anxiety that social and economic inequalities would, despite political equality, jeopardize the prospects of India’s democracy was pervasive at independence. This section provides a guide to literature that grapples with the issue of democracy and inequality in India, locating the Indian case in democratic theory. Mehta 2003 reviews the challenge of social inequality to democracy in India. Kaviraj 2011 shows how democracy has undermined inherited forms of inequality but facilitated the emergence of new forms. Alam 2004 interprets survey data from elections to explain the commitment of the poor to democracy. The two subsections that follow deal specifically with the inequalities of Caste and Class, and their relationship to the workings of Indian democracy.
  268.  
  269. Alam, Javeed. Who Wants Democracy? New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2004.
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  271. The question in the title is an attempt to answer the puzzle of why the poor continue to vote in large numbers despite the obvious failure of democracy to deliver them from poverty. Interprets election survey data to show that democracy is sustained not by those who populate democratic institutions but by the deep commitment of the poor to the idea and the promise of democracy.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Kaviraj, Sudipta. “Democracy and Social Inequality.” In The Enchantment of Democracy and India: Politics and Ideas. By Sudipta Kaviraj, 274–303. Ranikhet, India: Permanent Black, 2011.
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  275. A nuanced exploration of different forms of the impact of democracy on social inequality, arguing that while democracy has undermined traditional forms of social inequality, it has not resisted the logic of capitalist development and the newer forms of inequality associated with this.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Mehta, Pratap Bhanu. The Burden of Democracy. New Delhi: Penguin, 2003.
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  279. An accessible and passionately argued account of two major challenges facing Indian democracy: the persistence of social inequality and the misplaced faith in the state, its proper function, and organization. This is why even a deeply entrenched faith in democracy has not produced acceptable modes of governance.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Caste
  282.  
  283. Caste is a feature of Indian society that has consistently undermined the constitutional guarantee of equality. Not only does it order society hierarchically, but it is also associated with discrimination against the ritually “lowest” sections of society, the Dalits, or former Untouchables. Caste has played a significant role in Indian politics. Democratic politics based on the adult franchise shifted the base of political power in the countryside from the upper castes to the dominant middle castes. It also facilitated the forging of caste alliances and the linking of caste associations across regions, and well beyond the local level. In The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), Susanne H. Rudolph and Lloyd I. Rudolph show the role of caste associations as agents of modernity and argue that caste has transformed democratic politics as much as it has been transformed by it. In Caste in Indian Politics (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1970), a collection of essays edited by Rajni Kothari, the contributors show that it was not so much that politics was becoming caste-ridden as that caste was getting politicized. Shah 2002 brings together essays on caste, class, and power with several state-level case studies. Jodhka 2010 provides a useful overview of the debates on caste and politics and reflects on the future of caste solidarity in the context of recent social and political developments. In the 1980s, political power was gravitating definitively toward the middle castes. In subsequent years, the political mobilization of these middle castes, the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), as well as Dalit assertion have brought caste to the center of Indian democracy. Analyzing this phenomenon as a “silent revolution” and the “second democratic upsurge,” respectively, Jaffrelot 2003 and Yadav 2000 provide important accounts of this transformation of Indian democracy. Chandra 2004 enunciates the concept of “patronage-democracy” to explain the voter appeal that enables ethnic parties to succeed. Galanter 2002 and Weiner 2001 reflect on reservation policies and their deficits in terms of expanding opportunity and yielding more egalitarian public policy.
  284.  
  285. Chandra, Kanchan. Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Head Counts in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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  287. A study of the varying performance of ethnic parties in India, arguing that voters in “patronage-democracies” vote not on the basis of policy platforms or ideology but by registering a preference for the party that gives greatest representation to their co-ethnics. The central focus of the book is on the Bahujan Samaj Party.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Galanter, Marc. “The Long Half-Life of Reservations.” In India’s Living Constitution: Ideas, Practices, Controversies. Edited by Zoya Hasan, Eswaran Sridharan, and R. Sudarshan, 305–318. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002.
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  291. A review of policies of compensatory discrimination with a special focus on the later phase of reservations inaugurated in 1990. Galanter makes a case for improving effectiveness by providing more broad-based measures to enlarge opportunity.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. Jaffrelot, Christophe. India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Low Castes in North Indian Politics. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003.
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  295. This study of the post-1960s trend toward caste-based political mobilization in northern India provides evidence for the ascendancy of the lower castes in states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This silent revolution, the author argues, has transformed Indian democracy. Like Yadav 2000, Jaffrelot represents this phase as the “second age” of democracy.
  296. Find this resource:
  297. Jodhka, Surinder. “Caste and Politics.” In The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 154–165. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
  298. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. Surveys, reviews, and summarizes the major debates on caste and politics in India and reflects on the future of caste in Indian politics given the role played by individual leaders or political entrepreneurs as well as by migration and internal differentiation that weaken the sense of caste solidarity.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Shah, Ghanshyam, ed. Caste and Democratic Politics in India. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002.
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  303. A collection that includes not only classic writings about caste, the relationship between caste and class, and the diffusion of power, but also a set of studies of caste in state politics (Karnataka, Gujarat, and Bihar) and the politics of reservation policies.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Weiner, Myron. “The Struggle for Equality: Caste in Indian Politics.” In The Success of India’s Democracy. Edited by Atul Kohli, 193–225. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
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  307. An overview of caste and democracy, arguing that while India’s democracy has accommodated lower and middle castes and provided opportunities for their incorporation both through political representation and through quotas, more egalitarian public policies have not ensued, especially in the provision of basic public goods such as primary education and health.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Yadav, Yogendra. “Understanding the Second Democratic Upsurge: Trends of Bahujan Participation in Electoral Politics in the 1990s.” In Transforming India: Social and Political Dynamics of Democracy. Edited by Francine R. Frankel, Zoya Hasan, Rajeev Bhargava, and Balveer Arora, 120–145. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
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  311. Comparing survey evidence from the National Election Studies of 1971, 1996, and 1998, the author documents the deepening of Indian democracy in terms of the heightened participation of disadvantaged groups: dalits, adivasis, minorities, and Other Backward Classes.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Class
  314.  
  315. Class has always been a prominent axis of social stratification in India, even if relatively less represented in the literature on democracy than caste. The most influential account of dominant classes in India remains Bardhan 1998 (originally published in 1984). Harriss 2010 provides a useful survey of the literature on class structure and class formation. Fernandes 2006 is a study of the middle class, which has grown since the economic reforms of the 1990s. Fernandes and Heller 2006 is a theoretically nuanced account of middle-class ideology and hegemony. Harriss 2006 examines the relationship between the middle class and the informal working class. The weakness of the organizational power of the working class is explained in Chhibber 2005, while Agarwala 2013 shows how informal labor now mobilizes for social citizenship and welfare.
  316.  
  317. Agarwala, Rina. Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  318. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139198738Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  319. A study of the alternative movements of workers in the informal sector who organize not on the shop floor but in neighborhoods and who use the vote to demand not the usual benefits of job security and minimum wages but education, health, and housing. Informal labor is shown to make its claims in the language of citizenship rather than labor rights.
  320. Find this resource:
  321. Bardhan, Pranab. The Political Economy of Development in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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  323. Originally published in 1984. This classic on the political economy of India explores the relationship between the Indian state and the three dominant proprietary classes—the bureaucracy, the industrial capitalist class, and the rich farmers—and shows how democracy produces conflicting pressures for patronage and subsidies. The epilogue examines the political economy of the economic reforms and comments on the demands for group-based equity and the anti-market streak in India’s political culture.
  324. Find this resource:
  325. Chhibber, Vivek. “From Class Politics to Class Accommodation: Labor’s Incorporation into the Indian Political Economy.” In Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power and Politics. Edited by Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod Katzenstein, 32–61. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.
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  327. Explores the question of why labor in the formal sector is so weak in its organizational power, despite formal democratic freedoms having been secured. Explains this in terms of the manner in which the working class was incorporated into an ostensibly inclusive political regime, with the class compromise dictating the accommodation rather than the maximization of labor’s interests.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Fernandes, Leela. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.
  330. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. A study of the new Indian middle class of the post-reform phase in terms of its representation and the shaping of a consumer identity in relation to identities of religion, gender, and class. Show how its political identity is reconstituting meanings of citizenship and accentuating social exclusion as well as the implications for democracy.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Fernandes, Leela, and Patrick Heller. “Hegemonic Aspirations: New Middle Class Politics and India’s Democracy in Comparative Perspective.” Critical Asian Studies 38.4 (2006): 495–522.
  334. DOI: 10.1080/14672710601073028Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. Proposing a class analytics of democratic politics in India, the authors argue that the dominant fraction of the middle class plays a role in the politics of hegemony, uniting the diverse fragments of this class, and that this is a class in practice, defined by its reactionary politics, which combines market liberalism with social and political illiberalism.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Harriss, John. “Middle-Class Activism and the Politics of the Informal Working Class.” Critical Asian Studies 38.4 (2006): 445–465.
  338. DOI: 10.1080/14672710601073002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. Explores the relationship between the middle class and the informal working class in civil society in three Indian cities. Civil society appears as a space of middle-class activism and one from which the informal working class is excluded, which may account for the greater electoral participation of the latter.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Harriss, John. “Class and Politics.” In The Oxford Companion to Politics in India. Edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta, 139–153. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  343. Lucid and comprehensive survey of debates on class structure and class formation in India (with sections on capital/big business, the working class, the middle class, agrarian classes) and on the implications of the balance of class forces for democracy. Also comments on the politics of the new middle class in contemporary India.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Democracy and Diversity
  346.  
  347. The cultural diversity of India is not a composite of multiple ethnically distinct units but rather a product of crisscrossing and overlapping identities based in region, language, religion, sect, caste, and tribe. It is estimated that 96 percent of India’s population speaks nineteen of one hundred major languages (excluding English speakers). There are also, excluding Judaism and Zoroastrianism, six major religions. People belonging to the same religious but different language groups often have less in common with each other than with people who belong to the same language group but to a different religious community. Many of these identities have been politically mobilized to compete for policy attention, such as for the protection of cultural rights or for affirmative action.
  348.  
  349. Language
  350.  
  351. The reorganization of the Indian states in the 1950s was done on the basis of language. In the 1960s, linguistic politics took the form of protests, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, against the imposition of Hindi as the national language. On the whole, the management of linguistic diversity by the Indian state has been fairly successful. Sarangi 2010 brings together essays on every possible dimension of the topic.
  352.  
  353. Sarangi, Asha, ed. Language and Politics in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  355. A wide-ranging reader on language and politics, with essays on its historical evolution, the constitutional compromise, and the centrality of language in the linguistic organization of the Indian states. Includes articles on language and region, language and identity politics, and language and the politics of metropolitan and vernacular India.
  356. Find this resource:
  357. Religion
  358.  
  359. The major fault line of religious identity has been that between the dominant Hindu majority and the largest minority, the Muslims. The term secularism is commonly used to represent the point of view that the state should be equidistant from religion and not partial to any religious community. Its obverse, communalism, has come to represent an attachment to a form of politics that privileges the interests of a particular religious community. These ideas have competed for supremacy in India’s democratic politics and have often been a central motif in it. The debates in the Constituent Assembly are analyzed in Bajpai 2008, while the distinctiveness of the Indian idea of secularism is discussed in Bhargava 2010. Wilkinson 2005 brings together both constructivist and primordialist explanations for the conditions under which communal violence occurs. Shani 2007, a study of the 2002 violence in Gujarat, shows how caste unity was forged to foster religious divisions and the role of the state in facilitating these. Emphasizing everyday religious practices rather than episodes of communal violence, Chhibber and Shastri 2014 uses survey data to show how religion can provide the social resources for enabling democracy.
  360.  
  361. Bajpai, Rochana. “Minority Representation and the Making of the Indian Constitution.” In Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution. Edited by Rajeev Bhargava, 354–391. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  362. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. An account of the debates in India’s Constituent Assembly on defining minorities, as also on the question of what sorts of political and cultural safeguards were appropriate for religious minorities and why particular forms of representation were preferred over others.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Bhargava, Rajeev. “Indian Secularism: An Alternative, Trans-cultural Ideal.” In The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy. By Rajeev Bhargava, 63–105. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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  367. A comprehensive discussion of India’s secular democracy, situating it both in a discussion of political theory as well as in the experiences of Western societies.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Chhibber, Pradeep K., and Sandeep Shastri. Religious Practice and Democracy in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
  370. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139649735Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. Based on survey research, the authors argue that everyday religious practice is the most common form of associational life in India. By enabling a sense of community and identic ties that negate hierarchy between citizens and their political representatives, it is positively associated with democracy.
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Hansen, Thomas Blom. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. Argues that Hindu nationalism is a product of India’s democratic transformation rather than something antithetical to it. Drawing upon political theory and using the ethnographic method, the author uncovers the appeal of majoritarianism to middle-class anxieties of preserving class privilege, as also to the aspiration of the lower class for a narrative of cultural and national pride.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Shani, Ornit. Communalism, Caste and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  378. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511607936Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. A state-level study of the interplay of state policies, caste, and religious divisions, showing how caste unity was accomplished by the politics of unitary Hindu nationalism and expressed in violence.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Wilkinson, Steven I. Religious Politics and Communal Violence. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. A collection of essays reflecting on communal violence, the circumstances under which it gets politically mobilized (such as impending elections), and why some forms of mobilization lead to intercommunity violence or riots and others do not. Essays represent both primordialist as well as constructivist perspectives on communal violence.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Tribe
  386.  
  387. Officially labeled as “Scheduled Tribes” and described as adivasis (“original inhabitants”) in political discourse, tribal people constitute approximately 8 percent of India’s population, a fifth of whom live in the northeastern region of India and a very large proportion in the hill and forest regions of central India. The northeastern region has witnessed political discontent, some of it fueled by the desire for greater autonomy or for being governed by indigenous institutions and some of it by secessionist motivations. In central India, the large-scale displacement and dispossession of adivasis from their homes and livelihoods by development projects like dams and mining has led to a growth in Naxalite (Maoist) politics that often takes a violent form. Baviskar 1995 is an ethnographic account of conflicts over development in the context of the displacement of tribal people by the Narmada dam project. Prakash 1999 tracks the evolution of the discourse of tribal identity in the run-up to the creation of Jharkhand state. Two essays examine the impact of the reservations for the Scheduled Tribes: in Jharkhand, Corbridge 2000 shows how these benefits have been captured by the local tribal elite; in northeastern India, Baruah 2003 points to possible tensions between reservations and the new political economy of the region. [Readings on the Maoist movement are in the section on Violence and Democracy.]
  388.  
  389. Baruah, Sanjib. “Protective Discrimination and Crisis of Citizenship in North-East India.” Economic and Political Weekly 38.17 (26 April–2 May 2003): 1624–1626.
  390. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  391. An interrogation of the politics of protective discrimination for the Scheduled Tribes in northeastern India on the grounds of justice, fairness, and legitimacy. Argues that a two-tiered system of citizenship is at odds with the political economy of the future, in which ownership of land and businesses is no longer exclusively tribal- or clan-based.
  392. Find this resource:
  393. Baviskar, Amita. In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over “Development” in the Narmada Valley. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995.
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. An account of the struggles by adivasis to counter their displacement and dispossession by the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in the Narmada Valley. An insightful discussion of how tribals get represented by the intellectuals and activists who claim to speak on their behalf.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Corbridge, Stuart. “Competing Inequalities: The Scheduled Tribes and the Reservations System in India’s Jharkhand.” Journal of Asian Studies 59.1 (February 2000): 62–85.
  398. DOI: 10.2307/2658584Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. An interpretation of the effect of job reservations for Scheduled Tribes in the Jharkhand region of South Bihar, arguing that the reservations have been partly captured by a preexisting tribal elite, which has used reservations in education to leverage economic and political power.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Prakash, Amit. “Contested Discourses: Politics of Ethnic Identity and Autonomy in the Jharkhand Region of India.” Alternatives 24.4 (October–December 1999): 461–496.
  402. DOI: 10.1177/030437549902400403Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. Published just before the formation of the state of Jharkhand on the basis of its distinctive tribal identity, this article explores the historical and discursive evolution of this particular claim of tribal identity in relation to democracy and development.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Democracy, Development, and Economic Reform
  406.  
  407. At independence, India adopted a dirigiste model of development in which the state-owned public sector took the lead in shaping industrial development, and economic growth remained at rather modest levels. In 1991, and to some extent in the decade preceding it, policies of economic reform and liberalization were inaugurated, giving the private sector a larger role in India’s development and resulting in growth acceleration. The emphasis on privatization has been politically contested as many have questioned (a) the impact of the new policy orientation of the state on public spending in general, and welfare in particular, and (b) the human costs of the dispossession and displacement entailed by policies allowing for land acquisition by industry without proper compensation and inadequate environmental safeguards. The classic historical account of India’s political economy is Frankel 2009. Rudolph and Rudolph 1987 presents a theory of the Indian state and its centrism in relation to private capital and organized labor. Jenkins 1999 argues that India’s democracy constrained economic reforms, which, therefore, could be introduced only by stealth. Kohli 2009 reflects on the state-capital relationship that generated growth but also increased inequality and argues that India’s reforms were pro-business rather than neoliberal. Kohli 2012 provides a succinct and comprehensive thesis on the continuance of poverty amid plenty in post-reform India. Finally, Kapur 2010 examines the role of the Indian diaspora in democracy and development.
  408.  
  409. Frankel, Francine. India’s Political Economy: The Gradual Revolution, 1947–2004. 2d ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. A classic on India’s political economy that provides a comprehensive historical account of India’s strategies of economic and social transformation. Shows how the failures of implementing social reform placed limits on India’s economic growth and also contributed to the fracturing of the social and political consensus underlying democracy.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Jenkins, Rob. Democratic Politics and Economic Reform in India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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  415. This book’s argument, that economic reforms in India were introduced by stealth, modifies the assumption of democracy’s inherent virtues by showing that democratic governments have to resort to underhand ways to bring about change and neutralize political resistance to policy shifts that are seen as necessary.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Kapur, Devesh. Diaspora, Development, and Democracy: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. This book argues that emigration, under conditions of globalization, has paradoxically and inadvertently strengthened India’s democracy by providing attractive exit options to upper-caste elites who would otherwise have opposed and resisted the new political ascendancy of social groups that were hitherto marginalized.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Kohli, Atul. Democracy and Development in India: From Socialism to Pro-business. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.
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  423. A collection of Kohli’s essays, using a state-society framework, on democracy and development. Three sections explore why democracy has not yielded better quality governance, how the state-capital relationship has underpinned both growth and rising inequality, and why different states have had such different trajectories of development.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Kohli, Atul. Poverty amid Plenty in the New India. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
  426. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139015080Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  427. An accessible introduction to the challenge of “poverty amid plenty,” this book shows the limited impact of India’s recent prosperity on poverty reduction and also offers reasons for suggesting why the prospects for redistribution in the future are not bright. The last section compares models of development in three states: Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and West Bengal.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Rudolph, Lloyd I., and Susanne H. Rudolph. In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
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  431. A classic on India’s political economy that offers an understanding of the Indian state as simultaneously weak and strong, a third actor along with organized labor and private capital. The centrism of the state marginalizes class politics, which is also not pursued by any political parties, though other types of social mobilization produce equity and enhance legitimacy.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Multilevel Democracy
  434.  
  435. India is a federation of twenty-nine states (the newest of which, Telengana, came into existence in 2013) and seven Union Territories. The federal question has been an important issue in Indian democracy, which started life as a rather centralized polity and became more robustly federal as regional political parties acquired power, at first in the states and later by becoming significant players in federal politics as well. Decentralization to the village level is also a recent phenomenon.
  436.  
  437. States
  438.  
  439. The first phase of state creation was undertaken in the 1960s when the Indian polity was highly centralized. Subsequently, as Frankel and Rao 1990 shows, within a still largely centralized polity, state politics departed from a national template and previously nonelite groups and social classes began to acquire political power. The entry of lower castes in significant numbers, along with the new salience of regional political parties, effected a major shift in national politics. Some mobilizations of regional identity even led to demands for new states, based not on language but on developmental neglect, and Tillin 2013 explains the emergence of the three new states created in 2000. Jenkins 2000 compares politics across pairs of states on specific issues such as political leadership or economic reforms. Pai 2013 brings the experiences of regional political parties, social movements, and economic reforms to bear on the question of politics in the Indian states.
  440.  
  441. Frankel, Francine R., and M. S. A. Rao, eds. Dominance and State Power in Modern India: Decline of a Social Order. 2 vols. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990.
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  443. Using a state-society framework, in this collection of detailed historically situated state-level studies the authors show how democratic politics have undermined the traditional social order and older patterns of political dominance. State-level studies illustrate the changing relationship between the emergence of new social formations, political mobilization, and state power.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Jenkins, Rob, ed. Regional Reflections: Comparing Politics across India’s States. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. A collection of essays on the politics of thirteen states, organized in four sections dealing with economic policymaking, subaltern politicization, civic engagement, and political leadership. Each of the essays compares two states.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Pai, Sudha, ed. Handbook of Politics in Indian States: Regions, Parties, and Economic Reforms. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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  451. A collection that shows that the regionalization and federalization of the Indian polity was a product not only of electoral politics, but also of social movements and economic reforms. Along with an opening section on the history of the reorganization of the Indian states, these form the three rubrics of the book.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Tillin, Louise. Remapping India: New States and Their Political Origins. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  454. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199336036.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. Analyzes the emergence of the three new states—Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand—in 2000, and in which language politics played no part. Instead, the rise of lower caste groups, Hindu nationalist politics, and a multilevel federal structure in which the Congress no longer exercised centralized power contributed to the creation of these states.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Villages
  458.  
  459. The recognition of the inadequacy of one-size-fits-all development policies in a large and diverse country led, in 1992, to a constitutional amendment for democratic decentralization through empowering the Panchayati Raj institutions of local governance and providing for quotas in these for historically disadvantaged groups as well as for women. Mathur 2013 provides a short but comprehensive overview of the Panchayati Raj institutions and their functioning. Raghunandan 2012 brings together writings on various aspects of local governance in both urban and rural areas. Local politics beyond the panchayats are explored in Mitra 1992 and Krishna 2007, both of which document and explain, in different states and at different times, the similar phenomenon of local leaders who mediate between citizen and state.
  460.  
  461. Krishna, Anirudh. “Politics in the Middle: Mediating Relationships between the Citizens and the State in Rural North India.” In Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Edited by Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson, 141–158. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
  462. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511585869.006Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  463. An account of the naya netas (new leaders) who mediate between rural citizens and the state in a context in which parties are weakly organized and other channels of institutionalized communication are largely absent. Politicians and parties also rely on these leaders to garner support.
  464. Find this resource:
  465. Mathur, Kuldeep. Panchayati Raj. Oxford India Very Short Introduction Series. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  466. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. A brief but comprehensive overview of the philosophy and evolution of decentralization, this book provides a succinct account of the successes and continuing challenges—in particular, the democratic and institutional deficits—in the functioning of the Panchayati Raj institutions.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Mitra, Subrata Kumar. Power, Protest and Participation: Local Elites and the Politics of Development in India. London: Routledge, 1992.
  470. DOI: 10.4324/9780203221686Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. A study of local elites (gaon ka netas) in Orissa and Gujarat, their social composition, how their power base is shaped by processes of social and economic change, and how they intervene in development, including through radical protest.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Raghunandan, T. R., ed. Decentralisation and Local Governments: The Indian Experience. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2012.
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  475. A collection of essays, all previously published in the Economic and Political Weekly from 1966 to 2012, many of which discuss issues of local democracy, rural as well as urban, in relation to diverse phenomena such as political participation, political awareness, clientelism, and women’s quotas.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Violence and Democracy
  478.  
  479. The assumption that violence and democracy are antithetical to each other, and that violence is an exception or an aberration in a democracy, is examined by the essayists in Basu and Roy 2007. Broadly speaking, at least three types of political violence have been encountered in India. First, intercommunity violence, mostly between the Hindu and Muslim communities, taking the form of what are called communal riots is discussed in Basu 2015, Brass 1997, and Berenschot 2011. Second, ethnic violence in pursuit of separatism or secession, as in the Khalistan movement in Punjab or the nativist movement in Assam (Baruah 1999). Finally, insurgencies countered by state violence, as in Jammu and Kashmir or the Maoist movement in central India, are the subject of Guha 2007 and Corbridge, et al. 2013. Chandhoke 2012 provides a normative perspective on the Kashmir question.
  480.  
  481. Baruah, Sanjib. India against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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  483. An interpretation of Assamese subnationalism and its expression in ethnic violence and insurgency, which are attributed to India’s nominally federal, but actually highly centralized, polity. The book claims that, in a society marked by such great diversity, a looser federation would make for a stronger democracy.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Basu, Amrita. Violent Conjunctures in Democratic India. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  486. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781316105719Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. Explains the conditions under which Hindu nationalist anti-minority violence is likely to occur, in terms of conjunctures among the state, political parties, and social movements. Examines, in four Indian states, the interactions among the state, the Bharatiya Janata Party (political party), the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (social movement), and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (“India’s oldest nongovernment organization”), to illustrate variations from moderation to militancy.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Basu, Amrita, and Srirupa Roy, eds. Violence and Democracy in India. Kolkata: Seagull, 2007.
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  491. Explores the mutually facilitative and transformative relationship between democracy and violence; as also between extreme forms (such as genocide and ethnic cleansing) and everyday practices of violence, including its symbolic forms. Essays range geographically, from Ladakh to Gujarat to Bangladesh, and thematically to include the role of the media and the judiciary.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Berenschot, Ward. Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State. London: C. Hurst, 2011.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. An ethnographic account of the actual mechanisms, or “riot networks,” through which political actors mobilize, instigate, and coordinate violence. Argues that, as intermediaries between citizens and the state, politicians effectively leverage the discontent of the poor, who depend on them for facilitating access to state institutions.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Brass, Paul R. Theft of an Idol: Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
  498. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  499. An examination of different forms of violence—from Hindu-Muslim riots to confrontations between the police and citizens to rape—in rural and urban locations, interrogating primordialist explanations of violence in northern India.
  500. Find this resource:
  501. Chandhoke, Neera. Contested Secessions: Rights, Self-Determination, Democracy, and Kashmir. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  502. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198077978.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  503. A normative exploration of the Kashmir issue through concepts of core and contingent moral rights, national self-determination, democracy, pluralism, and justice. The author revisits, theoretically and comparatively, existing understandings of secession by asking what kind of a right it is and under what sorts of circumstances it might be justified.
  504. Find this resource:
  505. Corbridge, Stuart, John Harriss, and Craig Jeffrey. “Rural Dislocations: Why Has Maoism Become Such a Force in India?” In India Today: Economy, Politics and Society. By Stuart Corbridge, John Harriss, and Craig Jeffrey, 197–217. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013.
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  507. A brief and lucid account of the Maoist insurgency, explaining why it has gathered force in the 21st century. The authors highlight the tragedy that the politics of armed struggle has emerged as a response to the structural violence historically perpetrated against adivasis and Dalits, leading to an apparently endless spiral of violence.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Guha, Ramachandra. “Adivasis, Naxalites and Indian Democracy.” Economic and Political Weekly 42.32 (11–17 August 2007): 3305–3312.
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  511. A historically situated discussion of the challenge posed by Naxalite (Maoist) violence in the tribal areas of central India, showing that the tribals are betrayed both by their self-styled protectors and by the state. The author asks how a democratic state that sponsored a vigilante army can fight the rise of Maoist extremism.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Comparing Indian Democracy
  514.  
  515. The recognition that India’s democracy is sui generis has often fueled the thesis of its exceptionalism. However, a critical mass of scholarship now provides comparisons of India with other countries of the subcontinent, namely Pakistan and Bangladesh. Jalal 1995 suggests that the contrast with Pakistan has been overdone because India’s own record of democracy has been less than robust and there exist strong structural similarities between these countries. This thesis is challenged in Oldenburg 2010, which highlights the differences in the two nationalist leaderships, their management of the civil service, and their ability to institutionalize (or not) civil-military relations. Center for the Study of Developing Societies 2008 is a report on a survey conducted across South Asia to ascertain popular attitudes toward democracy. Dréze and Sen 1991 compares hunger in India and China to argue the value of democracy in bringing public action to bear on the issue. Essay-length studies are also available comparing specific aspects of Indian and American democracy. Bajpai 2007 has essays comparing language policies, federal practices, political parties, and other issues, while Chatterjee and Katznelson 2012 explores deeper questions of democracy and social inequality through a Tocquevillian prism.
  516.  
  517. Bajpai, K. Shankar, ed. Democracy and Diversity: India and the American Experience. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  518. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  519. A collection of essays comparing India and the United States on themes such as the nation-state, federalism, linguistic diversity, minorities, political parties, and local government.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. State of Democracy in South Asia: A Report. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  522. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  523. A survey-based study of popular perceptions of democracy in five South Asian states—Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Concludes that, by transforming people from subjects to citizens, cultures of democracy have transformed South Asia more than democratic institutions have. A common failure of South Asian democracies has been their inability to protect the rights of minorities.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Chatterjee, Partha, and Ira Katznelson, eds. Anxieties of Democracy: Tocquevillian Reflections on India and the United States. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  526. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  527. Using de Tocqueville’s work on America as the springboard for their reflections, nine American and Indian political scientists explore the trajectories of democracy in their two countries: the one moving from relative social equality and racial inequality toward equal civil rights but economic inequality, and the other moving from deep social and economic inequalities to contests over equal citizenship.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Dréze, Jean, and Amartya Sen. “China and India.” In Hunger and Public Action. By Jean Dréze and Amartya Sen, 204–225. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
  530. DOI: 10.1093/0198283652.003.0011Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. Dreze and Sen compare hunger in India and China, arguing that public action, adversarial politics, and a free press in India have successfully prevented famines and the loss of life on a mass scale as experienced by China in the absence of democracy.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Jalal, Ayesha. Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  534. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511559372Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. Why has the common legacy of colonial institutions in postcolonial South Asia led to democracy in India and military authoritarianism in Pakistan and Bangladesh? Political authority in all these countries has faced similar threats in terms of conflicts of class, caste, religion, and subnationalism; hence, more decentralized forms of government would better manage regional and ethnic discord.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Oldenburg, Philip. India, Pakistan, and Democracy: Solving the Puzzle of Divergent Paths. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2010.
  538. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  539. Oldenburg also asks why India is a democracy and Pakistan is not one as of yet. He argues that it is a combination of historical, political, and external factors and the specific nature of their state systems that have contributed to their different political trajectories.
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