In this book, research leaders John Harriss, Craig Jeffrey and Trent Brown explore in depth the economic, social, and political changes occurring in India today, and their implications for the people of India and the world. Each of the book’s fourteen chapters seeks to answer a key question: Is India’s democracy under threat? Can India’s Growth be sustained? How are youth changing India? Drawing on a wealth of scholarly and popular material as well as their own experience researching the country during this period of major transformation, the authors draw the reader into key debates about economic growth, poverty, environmental justice, the character of Indian democracy, rights and social movements, gender, caste, education, and foreign policy. India, they conclude, has undergone some extraordinary and positive changes since the early 1990s but deeply worrying threats remain: increasing authoritarianism, growing inequality, entrenched poverty, and environmental vulnerability. How India responds to these crucial challenges will shape the world’s largest democracy for years to come.
Table of Contents
About the AuthorsPreface and Acknowledgements
1 Making Sense of Twenty-First-Century India
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Past and Present
1.3 The Impact of Colonialism in India
1.4 The Invention of Modern India
1.5 The Reinvention of India
Part One: Economy and Environment
2 When and Why Has India’s Economic Growth Accelerated?
2.1 Introduction: Thinking About Economic Growth
2.2 India’s History of Economic Growth
2.3 Economic Growth 1950-1992: A Story of Failure?
2.4 India’s ‘Economic Reforms’ and Growth in 1993-2001
2.5 ‘Superfast’ Growth, Slowdown and Questionable Recovery: 2002-2015
2.6 Conclusion
3 How ‘Inclusive’ is India’s Economic Growth?
3.1 Introduction: Economic Growth and ‘Development’
3.2 Constructions and Measurements of Poverty
3.3 Poverty Trends in India
3.4 Durable Inequalities in Indian Society, Mobility and the Missing Middle Class
3.5 Conclusion
4 Why Isn’t India Doing Better at Realizing ‘Inclusive Growth’?
4.1 Introduction: The Pattern of India’s Economic Growth
4.2 Has the Growth Process Ignored Indian Agriculture?
4.3 ‘Jobless Growth’, ‘Excluded Labour’ and ‘Make in India’
4.4 Conclusion: Binding Economic and Social Constraints
5 Can India’s Economic Growth Be Reconciled with Sustainability and Environmental Justice?
5.1 Introduction: The Costs of Environmental Degradation
5.2 The Environment and Development Debate: Must Growth Come First?
5.3 Environmental Conflicts: Capital, State, Civil Society and People
5.4 Environmental Policy and the Practice of Regulation
5.5 Conclusion
Part Two: Politics
6 Has India Become the Hindu Rashtra?
6.1 Introduction: ‘God Man’ to Government
6.2 The RSS, the BJP and the Struggle for Hindutva
6.3 Temples, Gods and Gurus: Banal Hinduism, Banal Hindutva
6.4 Banal Hindutva, Communal Violence and the State
6.5 Hindutva Rising
6.6 Authoritarian Populism and the Indian Case
6.7 Conclusion
7 Is India’s Democracy at Risk?
7.1 Introduction
7.2 India as a Formal Democracy
7.3 India as Substantive Democracy 1947-2014
7.4 Substantive Democratization Since 2014
7.5 Conclusions
8 Why Hasn’t Democracy Made Indian Governments More Responsive?
8.1 Introduction: Economic and Social Rights and the Indian Constitution
8.2 The ‘New Rights Agenda’
8.3 From Rights Legislation to Implementation
8.4 Social Rights under the First Modi Government
8.5 How Government Works
8.6 Conclusions
9 Is There a Countermovement against Neoliberalism in India?
9.1 Introduction: Polanyi’s Idea of the ‘Double Movement’ and India Today
9.2 Towards Social Movement Unionism?
9.3 Rural Struggles: Agrarian Crisis, and the ‘New’ Land Question
9.4 Middle-Class Activism
9.5 Conclusions
Part Three: Society
10 Is India Witnessing a Social Revolution?
10.1 Introduction
10.2 What is the Social Revolution?
10.3 Cultural Renaissance
10.4 Growing Prominence of Civil Society
10.5 Constraints on India’s Social Revolution
10.6 Conclusion
11 Does Caste Still Matter in India?
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Caste in Mid-Twentieth-Century India
11.3 The Decline of Caste Hierarchies
11.4 Caste, Identity and Politics
11.5 Caste as Habitus: Hierarchy Revisited
11.6 Conclusions
12 Why Does Gender Inequality Persist in India?
12.1 Introduction
12.2 Gender Relations and the Family
12.3 Gender Inequality in Education and the Workplace
12.4 Politicizing Gender Inequality
12.5 Conclusion
13 Can Youth Transform India?
13.1 Introduction: Ideas about ‘Youth’
13.2 School Education
13.3 Higher Education
13.4 Unemployment
13.5 The Politics of Youth Unemployment
13.6 Conclusions
Afterword
14 Afterword: Is India Now a ‘Leading Power’?
14.1 Introduction: India’s Transformations and the International Arena
14.2 Coming in from the Margins: India in the World in the Late Twentieth Century
14.3 After the Cold War: An ‘Emerging and Responsible Power’?
14.4 Conclusion: Still an Aspirant as a ‘Leading Power’
Glossary
References
Index
