Why India Votes? offers a fascinating account of the Indian electorate through a series of comprehensive ethnographic explorations conducted across the country Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. It probes the motivations of ordinary voters, what they think about politicians, the electoral process, democracy and their own role within it. This book will be useful to scholars and students of political science, anthropology and sociology, those in media and politics, and those interested in elections...

India's economic growth has brought opportunities for many but to what extent has it benefitted its ethnically-shaped underclass: the Dalits? Have Dalits fared better in a neoliberal India or have structural economic and social changes served to magnify Dalit disadvantage? This volume offers a varied picture of Dalit experience in different states in contemporary India. The essays draw on factual research in rural and urban areas by experts in the field. With case studies ranging from Dalit entrepreneurs in Bhopal to housewives in Tamil Nadu to ex-millworkers in Mumbai, the book contends...

This book offers unique insights into the changing nature of power and hierarchy in rural Pakistan from colonial times to present day. It shows how electoral politics and the erosion of traditional patron-client ties have not empowered the lower classes. The monograph highlights the persistence of debt-bondage, and illustrates how electoral politics provides assertive landlord politicians with opportunities to further consolidate their power and wealth at the expense of subordinate classes. It also critically examines the relationship between local forms of Islam and landed power.

This volume offers for the first time a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the making and maintenance of a modern caste society in colonial and postcolonial West Bengal in India. Drawing on cutting-edge multidisciplinary scholarship, it explains why caste continues to be neglected in the politics of and scholarship on West Bengal, and how caste relations have permeated the politics of the region until today. The essays presented here dispel the myth that caste does not matter in Bengali society and politics, and make possible meaningful comparisons and contrasts with other regions in...

Criminal Capital explores the relationship between neoliberalism, criminality and the reshaping of class in modern India. It discusses how the political vocabularies of urban industrial workers reflect the processes by which power is distributed across the region. Based upon field research among a casualised workforce in the industrial city of Jamshedpur, the book examines the links between the decline of employment security, and criminality in trade unions, corporations and the state.

The volume compares popular discourses of corruption against the ethnography of local labour politics,...