Humanities & Social Sciences

This paper examines the role of non-government organisations (NGOs) and the implications for democratisation in India. By analysing one such organisation, this paper argues that NGOs do not always contribute positively to the democratisation process. It shows how Seva Mandir, an NGO working in the tribal areas of Rajasthan, has adopted a purely technocratic and apolitical service delivery approach and promoted a neo-liberal model of development. The unintended consequence of promoting this model has been the growth of a culture of ‘organised dependency’ at the grass-roots level, which has adversely affected the larger objectives of empowerment and democratisation.

Globalisation has had far-reaching implications for the dynamics of liberal democracy and governance in India. With the opening of the Indian economy in the 1990s, global market forces and private sector organisations have played an increasingly significant role in the political life of the nation. Given this background, several central questions are addressed. How has globalisation affected the way that state and civil society relations in India are constituted? In particular, what are its political implications for the poor who had previously relied on the services provided by the post-colonial state that carried out significant welfare-orientated functions? The paper argues that the contradictions of globalisation have transformed the dependent identity of the poor and marginalised toward a greater propensity for collective mobilisation. While the longer-term outcomes of such mobilisation remains unclear, the hegemonic position of entrenched elites is more clearly being challenged by the emergence of new agendas of inclusion, welfare rights and social justice appearing under conditions of neo-liberal globalisation.

Despite the long history of democratic transition, democracy in India has not been successful in including the excluded. A majority of the marginal populations are still confined to the vernacular arena and are deprived of their citizenship rights. It is, however, observed that since the 1980s, the vernacular publics have increasingly been asserting themselves in electoral politics. They tend to participate in voting more than the middle classes and the rich. This paper, however, examines the participation of the vernacular publics not in the sphere of electoral politics and political parties but in civil society. It argues that the vernacular publics have utilized the civil society arena as a medium to challenge the imposed hegemony of the elites as well as to engage with the state institutions to influence development policies. Such active participation of the vernacular publics in the civil society arena has transformed not only the nature of state-society relationship but also the nature of democracy and development in India.

Hans Joas, a German sociologist and social theorist, is Permanent Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany and a Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where he also belongs to the influential interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought. In conversation with Dr. Sarbeswar Sahoo, Joas explains how he got into the discipline of Sociology and what has motivated him all these years. This interview provides important insights into Joas's personal as well as academic life. Sahoo asks him about his early education, his Catholic working class background, his motivation for studying sociology, and his work on Historical Sociology and Sociological Theory, particularly on George Herbert Mead and American Pragmatism. Joas today is one of the most influential social theorists in Germany and has written extensively on Sociological Theory, Communitarianism and Pragmatism, Creativity of Action, Religion and Secularism, and War and Modernity. In addition to explaining his work, this Interview Joas also explains the state of German Sociology in current context.

Developing a distinctive theoretical framework on civil society, this book examines how Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) contribute towards democratization in India and what conditions facilitate or inhibit their contribution. It assesses three different kinds of politics within civil society – liberal pluralist, neo-Marxist, and communitarian – which have had different implications in relation to democratization.

By making use of in-depth empirical analysis and comparative case studies of three developmental NGOs that work among the tribal communities in the socio-historical context of south Rajasthan, the book shows that civil society is not necessarily a democratizing force, but that it can have contradictory consequences in relation to democratization. It discusses how the democratic effect of civil society is not a result of the "stock of social capital" in the community but is contingent upon the kinds of ideologies and interests that are present or ascendant not just within the institutions of civil society but also within the state.

The book delivers new insights on NGOs, democratization, civil society, the state, political society, tribal politics, politics of Hindu Nationalism, international development aid and grassroots social movements in India. It enables readers to understand better the multifaceted nature of civil society, its relationship with the state, and its implications for development and democratization.

This book, a part of a six-year research project on electoral integrity, “is the first of a planned trilogy on the challenges of electoral integrity around the world, including why it matters,
why electoral integrity fails and what can be done to address these problems”.

Rethinking secularism is an attempt to understand the complex and dynamic relationships between the secular and the religious in contemporary world. The central questions in this
book are: are these categories constant and fixed or are they contingent upon the socio-historical context of a specific society? And, how do the religious and the secular interact with
politics, state and democracy? Addressing these questions, this book brings together 13 essays by eminent scholars from a range of disciplines.

David Mosse’s The Saint in the Banyan Tree is a product of more than three decades research in south India. The book examines Christianity’s encounter with caste society and the way it has negotiated with Tamil ‘culture’ for its localization. The central questions in this book are: What are the processes through which Christianity has become localised? How has it affected the institutional structures and practices of caste in local society and what implications have these had for politics of secularism and democratic rights in India?

How has neo-liberalism transformed the economic structure and policies of India? And what are the politico-economic implications of such policies for marginalised populations? Following Karl Polanyi’s theory of “double movement”, this paper argues that while market liberalism has helped India overcome the slow so-called “Hindu rate of growth”, it has adversely affected the economic interests of the poor. It further argues that the expansion of the market (first movement) has led to various social dislocations in the lives of the poor. Such dislocations have generated several countermovements (second movement), which have found expressions not just in electoral politics but also in various grassroots movements. While it may be true that such countermovements have not always been successful in overturning the tide of neo-liberalism, they have certainly influenced the policy priorities of the state in favour of the poor and the marginalised in India.

The business of matchmaking, performed in open-market matrimonial negotiations, has not just helped brides and grooms find their ‘perfect match’, ‘soulmate’, ‘right person’, ‘life partner’, ‘true happiness’, and so on, they have also helped strengthen the ‘community’ through what Dumont called ‘endo-recruiting’. The modernity of matrimonials has reinvented the traditional marriage system, combined the best of both love and arranged marriage, and provided ‘individual’ as well as ‘social’ compatibility to candidates and their families.

This book studies the politics of Pentecostal conversion and anti-Christian violence in India. It asks: why has India been experiencing increasing incidents of anti-Christian violence since the 1990s? Why are the Bhil Adivasis increasingly converting to Pentecostalism? And, what are the implications of conversion for religion within indigenous communities on the one hand and broader issues of secularism, religious freedom and democratic rights on the other? Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork amongst the Bhils of Northern India since 2006, this book asserts that ideological incompatibility and antagonism between Christian missionaries and Hindu nationalists provide only a partial explanation for anti-Christian violence in India. It unravels the complex interactions between different actors/ agents in the production of anti-Christian violence and provides detailed ethnographic narratives on Pentecostal conversion, Hindu nationalist politics and anti-Christian violence in the largest state of India that has hitherto been dominated by upper caste Rajput Hindu(tva) ideology.

This entry discusses the transformation of caste in the Indian context. The entry starts with a discussion of the Indological and anthropological accounts of caste and then examines whether “caste” is essentially unique to Hinduism. Furthermore, the entry discusses the possibility of mobility within the ritual hierarchy of caste. In the final section, the entry shows how caste, once described by the Christian missionaries and the colonial state as an irrational traditional institution, has transformed into a modern entity and become a vital instrument of democratic mobilization in contemporary India.

Why has India remained economically underdeveloped and politically ungovernable? This chapter argues that it is not the form of regime, but the form and nature of governance that matters for the economic and human development of a particular country. A country is poor not because of the kind of regime it has, but because of the kind of governance its governments/state, markets, and civil societies implement and practise.