Title : When
Rebels Become Stakeholders
Authors : Subrata K Mitra and VB Singh
Publisher : SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, 2009
Pages : 338 HB
Price : Rs 750
The
sense of being someone who matters, and of having rules that correspond
to what one considers right and proper, are essential to one’s
definition as a citizen and stakeholder in politics. In a similar
manner, the experience of personal welfare and upward mobility are
necessary attributes of being a stakeholder in the national economy.
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, as it seeks
to partition the local political and social spaces on the lines of
religion, caste or tribe. Both the Panchayati Raj and the linguistic
states are post-Independence innovations that assume a special
significance to the building of civil society in India. Formal democracy
and universal adult franchise, right from the outset, has brought the
legal right to participate to all existing social groups, sectional
interests and spatial levels. Not surprisingly, 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 government of India and the
administration at the local level over the past centuries shows the
manner in which the two have kept in step with one another. With regard
to the local government and its relation to the local political system
and beyond, India’s 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 marginal social groups. The Indian history,
affecting one-fifth of mankind, 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.
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 here 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, to explain this complex theme.
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.
This book will be of interest to researchers and scholars of political
science, international relations, democracy, Indian politics, political
analysis, sociology, development studies, journalism, comparative
politics and public administration.
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