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When Rebels Become Stakeholders: Democracy, Agency and Social Change in India explores the agency of ordinary men and women in the making of democratic social change in India. The study is specific to India, but the issues that it examines are of wider significance. The authors join the debate on democracy and development on the basis of case studies that showcase the opinions and attitudes of the Indian voter. They assert that mass perception of institutions, policies and processes-so often dismissed as mere false consciousness or as the conditioned reflex of a gullible public, manipulated by the rhetoric of populist politicians-is our only window to the inner dynamics of democracy and social change.
The authors have used the public opinion data from three national surveys of the Indian electorate held in 1971, 1996 and 2004 to focus on the political understanding of India's voters and their leaders. While agency is a much-discussed theme in contemporary social sciences, connecting the rationality of ordinary men and women to explain electoral participation and rapid structural change in the lives of people of this country is specific to this study. This book argues that the cohabitation of democracy and social change in India is not merely incidental or coincidental; rather the two are institutionally linked in a manner that is fundamentally causal, to the extent that the weakening of the one renders the other ineffective.
This book would be of interest to researchers and scholars of political science, international relations, democracy, Indian politics, political analysts, sociology, development studies, journalism, comparative politics and public administration.
List of contents
Introduction: Democracy and the Puzzle of Orderly Social Change
The Context of Social Change: Interfacing Society and State in India
Continuity and Change in Indian Politics: An Inter-generational Analysis
The Elements of Political Agency and the Limits of Consensus
Political Competition, Social Cleavages and Institutionalisation of the Party System
Re-inventing the Nation: The Dialectics of Nation and Region in India
Poverty, Welfare and Social Opportunity in India
Building Social Capital from Above and Below: Locality, Region and Trust in India
India at Sixty: Social Change and the Resilience of Democracy
Beyond India: Democracy and Social Change in Comparative Perspective
Appendix 1: Note on Methodology
Appendix 2: Survey Instrument, 1996 Survey Instrument, 2004
Appendix 3: Tables
About the author
Subrata K Mitra was trained as a political scientist at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, both in India, as well as at the University of Rochester, New York, USA. He is currently Professor and Head, Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University and was the coordinator, Area A (Governance and Administration), Cluster of Excellence-Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows (2008-2010). His publications include The Puzzle of India's Governance: Culture, Context and Comparative Theory (2005) and When Rebels become Stakeholders (2009). He is the academic editor of Advances in South Asian Studies, Heidelberg Series in South Asian and Comparative Studies and editor of Critical Issues in the Modern Politics of South Asia (2009).
