Studies in Indian Politics

- Publisher:
- Sage Publications, Inc.
- Publication date:
- 2021-09-06
- ISBN:
- 2321-0230
Issue Number
- Nbr. 10-2, December 2022
- Nbr. 10-1, June 2022
- Nbr. 9-2, December 2021
- Nbr. 9-1, June 2021
- Nbr. 8-2, December 2020
- Nbr. 8-1, June 2020
- Nbr. 7-2, December 2019
- Nbr. 7-1, June 2019
- Nbr. 6-2, December 2018
- Nbr. 6-1, June 2018
- Nbr. 5-2, December 2017
- Nbr. 5-1, June 2017
- Nbr. 4-2, December 2016
- Nbr. 4-1, June 2016
- Nbr. 3-2, December 2015
- Nbr. 3-1, June 2015
- Nbr. 2-2, December 2014
- Nbr. 2-1, June 2014
- Nbr. 1-2, December 2013
- Nbr. 1-1, June 2013
Latest documents
- Behind the Popular Narrative: Negotiating Life and Political Engagement in Conflicted Kashmir
The article focuses on the subaltern system of micro appropriations or Jugaads used by young Kashmiris to survive within precarious situations inflicted due to armed conflict. More particularly, it argues that such Jugaads are invoked by the subaltern consciousness of Tehreeq-e-Azadi, which offers space for not just the negotiation with the state but also the creative improvisation of daily political actions. It is illustrated that young people’s political participation is entangled with the attempts to overcome the uncertainty around their lives, thereby offering them pragmatic solutions in advancing their interests. It is further elaborated that the existing polarization between separatism and mainstream is obscure at the experiential level, living within precarious situations has taught young people to silently craft possibilities of a good life without looking confrontational to either side. The article argues that localized forms of engagement are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of how modern states operate.
- Book review: Elizabeth Chatterjee and Matthew McCartney, eds. Class and Conflict: Revisiting Pranab Bardhan’s Political Economy of India
Elizabeth Chatterjee and Matthew McCartney, eds. Class and Conflict: Revisiting Pranab Bardhan’s Political Economy of India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2019. 299 pages. ₹1,395
- Of Caste and Indian Politics: A Detour Through D. L. Sheth and Beyond
Stemming essentially from D. L. Sheth and the work embodied in his 1999 essay ‘Secularisation of Caste and Making of New Middle Class’, the article attempts to outline the pathways for an alternative engagement with caste and politics. In perspective is what is termed the ‘triumphalist’ mode of encountering caste identities; and, along this course, the extant possibilities of the constructivist understanding of caste are addressed. The stakes of the exercise are largely theoretical and conceptual, although a further thought is thrown in about the contemporary ground of caste politics in India as well.
- Bypassing the Patronage Trap: Evidence from Delhi Assembly Election 2020
Scholars have long theorized on the limits of patronage politics and the possibility of counter-mobilization it produces against clientelist strategies. Analysing the recent win of the Aam Aadmi Party in the 2020 Assembly election in Delhi, this article shows that programmatic policies of welfare can help parties to circumvent this trap and avoid targeted patronage networks. We find that this broad-based appeal increases the social base of the party to even include those segments of voters who remain aloof to patronage-based exchanges. Additionally, we test the salience of majoritarian issues in the presence of universal welfare. We find that by locating themselves on issue positions of relative advantage, and reducing the ideological distance with their chief competitor, a policy-focussed party may capture not just ideology-agnostic, but also peripheral voters who might be opposed to the other challenger. Using a logistic regression model, we find that policy concerns catapulted AAP to victory, while its ideological distance from the BJP added to this. Our analysis has significance for understanding the underlying changes to patronage-based linkages, especially in the presence of heightened ethnic appeals that increasingly characterizes electoral contexts in the country.
- Did the Poona Pact Disenfranchise the ‘Depressed Classes’? An Analysis of the 1936–1937 and 1945–1946 Provincial Elections
This article contests the conventional view that the ‘Depressed Classes’ lost out on representation by agreeing to joint electorates in the Poona Pact. It analyses the results of the elections to the provincial legislatures in British India that took place in 1936–1937 and 1945–1946 under the Government of India Act, 1935, to concretely appraise the working of the Poona Pact. The article argues that reserved seats, primary elections and cumulative voting redeemed the ability of the Poona Pact to provide both descriptive and substantive representation for the ‘Depressed Classes’.
- Book review: Sanjib Baruah, In the Name of the Nation
Sanjib Baruah, In the Name of the Nation (New Delhi: Navayana Publishers, 2020), 278 pp. ₹599.
- Book review: Shirin M. Rai and Carole Spary. Performing Representation: Women Members in the Indian Parliament
Shirin M. Rai and Carole Spary. Performing Representation: Women Members in the Indian Parliament. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2019. 398 pages. ₹995.
- The Double Life of Dissent: Art, Politics and the Predicaments of Democracy in India
The article focuses on two moments in India’s political history, in which out-rightly expressed dissent underlines analytical shifts in the nature and course of the country’s democracy. It asks two questions: First, what does a self-proclaimed, democratic state do with peaceful dissenting artists? The second question follows from this. If indeed the state stigmatizes and suppresses that dissent, what does the artist do? By foregrounding the relationship between the dissent and offence-taking, the article shows the increasingly complex changes in the nature of the democratic state, role of the art market therein, the dynamic patterns of dissent itself, which underline the cyclic outbursts of violence against artists.
- Dhirubhai L. Seth 1936-2021: Commemorating Intellectual Politics
- New Education Policy: Notes from Academic Hinterlands
Featured documents
- Affirmative Action for Muslims? Arguments, Contentions and Alternatives
India is one of the most unequal societies of the world. At the same time, it has the distinction of having the longest history of affirmative action programmes for alleviating socio-economic inequalities. Currently, three social groups—the Scheduled Castes (SCs), the Scheduled Tribes (STs) and the ...
- Conservative in Practice: The Transformation of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh
Political conservatism in India is usually associated with right-wing traditionalist positions infused with religion, or with forms of economic liberal conservatism, the kind of which the Swatantra Party briefly incarnated. This article asks if the notion of conservatism can be useful to study non-H...
- India’s Digital Poll Battle: Political Parties and Social Media in the 16th Lok Sabha Elections
This article analyzes the use of social media platforms by select political parties (BJP, BSP, CPI(M), INC, NCP and AAP) during the campaign in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The methodology of data collection for the study includes the content analysis of Twitter and Facebook postings on social...
- How has Indian Federalism Done?
Two tropes have dominated discussions of Indian federalism: fiscal and constitutional. Isolated exceptions aside, scholars have not linked India’s federalism to comparative theories of nationalism, or to a comparative exploration of national identities. To examine how India’s federalism has done,...
- The State, Networks and Family Raj in Goa
Goa achieved statehood in 1987. While from 1963 to 1989 there were only two legislators with ‘dynastic ties’, since 1990, there have been 23 political families contesting elections, with 10 dynastic candidates voted to the assembly. How might we understand the rise of ‘family raj’ in Goa’s politics?...
- Mind the Gap?: Navigating the Quantitative and the Qualitative in Survey Research
- A Distinctive Indian Political Economy: New Concepts and a Synthesizing Framework
This article discusses Rudolphs’ contribution to the study of India’s political economy. Taking off from the ideas they presented in their work, In Pursuit of Lakshmi, the article argues that certain concepts, such as Bullock capitalists, demand-led growth, involuted pluralism, federal market...
- Book Review: Mobilizing Restraint: Democracy and Industrial Conflict in Post-reform South Asia
Emmanuel Teitelbaum, Mobilizing Restraint: Democracy and Industrial Conflict in Post-reform South Asia. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd. 2011. 244 pages. ₹ 795....
- Book review: Elizabeth Chatterjee and Matthew McCartney, eds. Class and Conflict: Revisiting Pranab Bardhan’s Political Economy of India
Elizabeth Chatterjee and Matthew McCartney, eds. Class and Conflict: Revisiting Pranab Bardhan’s Political Economy of India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2019. 299 pages. ₹1,395...
- Gujarat Elections: The Sub-Text of Modi’s ‘Hattrick’—High Tech Populism and
the ‘Neo-middle Class’
This article, while it will pay attention to the opposition parties—the Congress and the GPP—intends, in its first part, to scrutinize the mainstays of Narendra Modi’s election campaign with special references to high tech populism, his banalization of Hindutva, his ...