After six decades of Independence, for many Indians and observers of India, ‘community’ remains an elusive goal. Each community riot comes across as a violent invocation of the memory of partition of the country into two nations in 1947. It seeks to compartmentalise the local political and social spaces on the lines of religion, caste and tribe. Both the Panchayati Raj and formation of States on linguistic basis are post-Independence creations that assume a special significance to the building of civil society in India. Formal democracy and universal adult franchise, right from the outset, have brought the legal right of participation in public affairs to all existing social groups, sectional interests and spaces. Not surprisingly then, Panchayati Raj drew a lot of criticism from those committed to structural change as a precondition of democracy and development in India. Democratic decentralisation in India has been the result of an incremental evolution, rather than a revolutionary creation.

A perusal of the history of the relation between the central governing force in India and the administration at the local level over the past centuries shows the manner in which the two have worked largely hand in hand with each other. However, with regard to the local government and its relation to the local political system and beyond, Indian politicians have gone through radical changes of policy from time to time. The local government, which had already acquired a rudimentary presence under the British rule in the 1880s, made a formal appearance after Independence in terms of the legislative enactment by the provincial governments.

India has achieved a social revolution within the span of the six decades following Independence. During the relatively short time, the country has witnessed tumultuous changes in social hierarchy, literacy, relation of gender and power, urbanisation and most importantly, in political participation of marginalised social groups. The Indian history, one-fifth of mankind in effect, is a major contribution to the history of democracy and social change of the twentieth century. It is an important political phenomenon in its own right. In contrast to the liberal democratic states of Europe where social change had preceded democratisation, India has experienced democracy and social change concurrently. This simultaneous rather than sequential occurrence of social and democratic change makes the Indian scenario particularly interesting for the comparative politics of democracy and social change.

The book When Rebels Become Stakeholders 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 examined are of general interest. In contrast to the majority of post-colonial states, India has achieved both democratic and social change. The focus here is on the political skills of India’s voters and their leaders instead of the essence of Indian culture to explain this remarkable phenomenon. The book draws on public opinion derived from three national surveys of the Indian electorate, held in 1971, 1996 and 2004.

Opinions, attitudes and values of ordinary people form the basis of this book. When Rebels Become Stakeholders has been written keeping in mind the students of Indian democracy, as also of comparative politics.