ISAS (Institute of South Asian Studies)

We argue that the 2007 state elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India's largest state, were the first "mass mobile phone" elections in India. The paper charts the spectacular growth of the cheap cell phone in India and in Uttar Pradesh, documents the organizational strengths of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and explains how a party once based on Dalit (ex-Untouchable, or Scheduled Caste) support was able to cooperate with Brahmins. In these processes the mobile phone acted as a remarkable "force multiplier" to the existing BSP organization and helped party workers to circumvent the general hostility of mainstream media. The paper does not contend that the mobile phone won the 2007 elections; rather, it argues that the BSP was able to exploit a potent new tool, ideally suited to poor people who often were limited in their ability to travel. The paper points to similarities with the Obama campaigns of 2008 and notes that though other political groups in India attempt to imitate the methods, they may lack the essential organization and dedicated workers. I N THE FIRST SIX months of 2012, the largest state in India's federation, Uttar Pradesh (UP or "northern province"), will go to the polls at the end of the five-year term of office of its elected government. UP is so populous that if it were sovereign, it would be the sixth largest country in the world. 1 For the five years between 2007 and 2012, a single party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), founded on the support of Dalits or "untouchables," 2 formed the state's government. The 2007 election victory of the BSP was a landmark in India's social and political history as the first occasion on which the potential of the

The cheap mobile phone is arguably the most significant personal communications device in history. In India, where caste hierarchy has reinforced power for generations, the disruptive potential of the mobile phone is even more striking than elsewhere. The book probes the whole universe of the mobile phone from the contests of great capitalists and governments to control radio frequency spectrum to the ways ordinary people build the troublesome, addictive device into their daily lives. Matt Birkinshaw hopes the broad scope and rich empirical detail found in this book will prompt a range of further, narrower, investigations in its wake.

ROBIN JEFFREY This essay attempts to bring greater subtlety to our understanding of the role that print and newspapers play in the shaping of modern society. The essay begins by focusing on the centrality that Jürgen Habermas and Benedict Anderson give to print and newspapers and examines the applicability of their ideas to Kerala, India's most newspaper-consuming state, over the past 200 years. The essay suggests that by conceptualizing print and newspaper development in three stages, we arrive at a more accurate understanding of the impact of print consumption on societies and their politics. S INCE THE BEGINNING OF the modern social sciences, scholars who write about politics and society have emphasized the importance of print and newspapers in shaping human activity. "Reading the newspaper in early morning," Hegel wrote in about 1805, "is a kind of realistic morning prayer. One orients one's attitude against the world and toward God [in one case], or toward that which the world is [in the other]. The former gives the same security as the latter, in that one knows where one stands" (Rosenkranz 1844, quoted in Buck-Morss 2000). In our time, scholars such as Benedict Anderson, Jürgen Habermas, Marshall McLuhan, and Amartya Sen have theorized about the role of printing and newspapers. Often, however, such theorizing has treated printing and newspapers as if they were unchanging and undifferentiated. Such theorizing has often neglected the workings of newspapers-the economics that drive them, the technologies that bind or free them, the personalities that produce them, and the readers to whom they must relate in order to succeed. This essay takes two scholarly concepts that assign a central place to print and newspapers and applies them to the Indian state of Kerala, where newspapers have been an important part of life for more than 100 years. Out of this testing of the concepts, the essay develops a typology of newspaper development. The concepts are the "print-capitalism" of Anderson (1983) and the "public sphere" of Habermas (1991). Printing and newspapers are central to both (Schudson 2003, 64-71). For Habermas, "the press" is "the public sphere's

Peter Reeves, who died in Perth after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease, was a champion of the study of modern South Asia for more than fifty years. He was responsible for an array of students who imbibed from him a passion for all things South Asian and a commitment to the highest standards of scholarly rigour, diligence and fellowship. Born in Sydney and raised in Devonport in Tasmania, he completed a BA and MA at the University of Tasmania where he was attracted by the teaching of George Wilson, one of the pioneers of serious study of Asia in Australian tertiary education.

This essay attempts to explore a missing aspect of the large literature that has grown up around coalition governments in India and then to include that aspect in a discussion of the consequences of coalition governments. Are they good or bad for economic development, social change and honest, effective government? Do they work better at the state level rather than the national? The missing aspect is the 'educational process' by which Indian politicians have learned the benefits and requirements of coalition governments and then how to make them work. I argue that such a process began in the state of Kerala, took nearly a generation to 'learn' and partly depended on the availability (and talents) of individual leaders. The same educational process that fostered understanding of the rewards that coalitions can bring also sensitised politicians to the need to deliver goods to their constituents. This need to satisfy voters leads to consideration of questions about the 'goodness' or 'badness' of coalitions. In arguing that the educational process has been overlooked in study of coalitions in India, I am not discounting other aspects. I would particularly acknowledge the fragmentation of Indian politics as sub-regions and previously marginal and illiterate groups have produced people who understand the political system and are able to work effectively within it. Potent local political parties emerge and it becomes difficult to create a powerful statewide party, much less a powerful national party. 2.1 Coalitions in Kerala: Learnership and Leadership Although the state of Kerala accounts for less than three per cent of India's population (about 32 million out of 1100 million), it has acquired notoriety for its 'model' of economic development and for its election of a Communist government in 1957. Kerala also 'learned' coalitions before the rest of India. Kerala had to. The composition of the state and its social structure were in some ways a microcosm of India. To begin with, Kerala state of the Indian Union was created only in 1956 by the joining of two old princely states (Travancore, the large southern half, and pint-sized Cochin in the middle) and the British-ruled district of Malabar in the north. In each of the old units, sentiments and interests made people conscious of 'their' particular place, however much the Malayalam language and an overarching Malayali culture may have made a united Kerala seem a good idea.

We argue that the 2007 state elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India's largest state, were the first “mass mobile phone” elections in India. The paper charts the spectacular growth of the cheap cell phone in India and in Uttar Pradesh, documents the organizational strengths of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and explains how a party once based on Dalit (ex-Untouchable, or Scheduled Caste) support was able to cooperate with Brahmins. In these processes the mobile phone acted as a remarkable “force multiplier” to the existing BSP organization and helped party workers to circumvent the general hostility of mainstream media. The paper does not contend that the mobile phone won the 2007 elections; rather, it argues that the BSP was able to exploit a potent new tool, ideally suited to poor people who often were limited in their ability to travel. The paper points to similarities with the Obama campaigns of 2008 and notes that though other political groups in India attempt to imitate the...

This article scans the effects of mobile-phone communication, particularly in South Asia. It focuses on three important areas: political economy, politics and social practices. By 2012 India had more than 900 million telephone subscribers, 96 percent of them on cell phones, and the majority of users were the poor. At the other end of the social scale, the mobile phone provoked bitter struggles among some of India's biggest business houses and branches of government, and was responsible for criminal cases against politicians at the highest level. The essays in this volume are a reminder that technology is anything but neutral. The essays examine the many facets of mobile phone communication and the institutions, agents, mechanisms and networks such communication relies on. The essays contribute to efforts to interpret the effects of this technology and to gain insight into the most important aspect of the mobile phone: the sheer variety of activity (political, social and cultural) on which it impinges.

Member of the Legislative Assembly Member of Parliament, the national legislature Other Backward Castes Patiala and East Punjab States' Union, the state, which existed from 1948 to 1956, made up of territories ruled by Indian princes during British times Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (Hindu revivalist organisation) Shiromani Gurdwara, Parbandhak Committee, the election committee established in 1925, which oversees Sikh temples. Uttar Pradesh (northern province); under the British, the United Provinces (same territory in both cases) xi Preface to the Second Edition I am grateful to Ian Dawes for his help in assembling materials to allow me to write the new introduction for this edition and to the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University for a grant to pay for such research assistance. Dipesh Chakrabarty, John Miller, Talis Polis and Peter Reeves generously read and commented on versions of the new manuscript.

Over the last decade India and Brazil implemented waste policy reforms to tackle the constraints of their waste management. This study compares those reforms using the methodological framework proposed by Wilson where waste policy evolves through a series of subsequent stages, depending on two aspects: local circumstances; and stakeholders’ groups. The current research is exploratory in its scope, adopting this method to describe, compare and evaluate both Indian and Brazilian cases, and also verifying how the model performs when applied to developing countries. The paper confirms Wilson’s conclusions, and adds a perception that in developing economies a special local circumstance is to be considered the point of departure, that is, the particular starting point of Wilson’s evolution. In addition, the research concludes that participation of diverse stakeholder groups throughout the political process is fundamental, and could be key to overcoming the risks of policy setbacks.

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This article examines the ideological and structural foundations of Indian broadcasting policy as it developed from the 1920s to the 1990s. The article argues that the failure of Indian governments to make the most of radio and television for economic and social development stemmed from three sources: (i) the restrictive policies inherited from a colonial state; (ii) the puritanism of the Gandhian national movement; and (iii) the fear, made vivid by the 1947 partition, of inflaming social conflict. The policies and institutions established in the 1940s and 1950s shaped Indian broadcasting for the next 40 years and have been significantly subverted only since 1992 as a result of the transformation effected by satellite television.