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Questions of the extent to which social movements are capable of deepening democracy in India lie at the heart of this book. In particular, the authors ask how such movements can enhance the political capacities of subaltern groups and thereby enable them to contest and challenge marginality, stigma, and exploitation. The work addresses these questions through detailed empirical analyses of contemporary fields of protest in Indian society - ranging from gender and caste to class and rights-based legislation. Drawing on the original research of a variety of emerging and established international scholars, the volume contributes to an engaged dialogue on the prospects for democratizing Indian democracy in a context where neoliberal reforms fuel a contradictory process of uneven development.
List of contents
1. Social Movements, State Formation and Democracy in India: An Introduction; Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Kenneth Bo Nielsen.- 2. The Slow-Motion Counterrevolution: Developmental Contradictions and the Emergence of Neoliberalism; Radhika Desai.- 3. The Politics of Caste and the Deepening of India's Democracy: The Case of the Backward Caste Movement in Bihar; Jeffrey Witsoe.- 4. Transnational Dalit Feminists in-between the Indian State, the UN and the Global Justice Movement; Eva-Maria Hardtmann.- 5. Feminist Efforts to Democratize Democracy: Insights from Four Decades of Activism in India; Manisha Desai.- 6. Women Workers, Collective Action and the "Right to Work' in Madhya Pradesh; Nandini Nayak.- 7. Turbid Transparency: Retelling the Story of the Right to Information Act in India; Prashant Sharma.- 8. Rights based laws in practise: A view from Southern Orissa; Minati Dash.- 9. Re-making Labour in India: State Policy, Corporate Power and Labour Movement Mobilization; Michael Gillan.- 10. Blind Alleys and Red Herrings? Social Movements, the State, Class Alliances and Pro-Labouring Class Strategy; Jonathan Pattenden.- 11. Disappearing Landlords and the Unmaking of Revolution: Maoist Mobilization, the State and Agrarian Change in northern Telangana; Jostein Jakobsen.- 12. Conclusion; Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Alf Gunvald Nilsen.
About the author
Kenneth Bo Nielsen is an anthropologist working at the Department of Sociology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and also coordinates the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies, hosted by the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment. His current research focuses on social movements and land dispossession in India.
Alf Gunvald Nilsen is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and Senior Visiting Researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His work focuses on social movements in the global South, with a particular concentration on India.
Summary
Questions of the extent to which social movements are capable of deepening democracy in India lie at the heart of this book. In particular, the authors ask how such movements can enhance the political capacities of subaltern groups and thereby enable them to contest and challenge marginality, stigma, and exploitation. The work addresses these questions through detailed empirical analyses of contemporary fields of protest in Indian society – ranging from gender and caste to class and rights-based legislation. Drawing on the original research of a variety of emerging and established international scholars, the volume contributes to an engaged dialogue on the prospects for democratizing Indian democracy in a context where neoliberal reforms fuel a contradictory process of uneven development.
