Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230231166184
A. E. Ruud
Both Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte stand out as leaders that epitomise their respective reigns in ways that previous leaders did not. A juxtaposition of their political personae allows us to investigate a contemporary political phenomenon, that of the elected strongman leader. This article makes three points from this juxtaposition: (a) They presided over a period of ‘democratic backsliding’. (b) They came with social media. (c) They are their own message and that message is that they are extraordinary leaders, above ordinary constraints. This article concludes that they represent strongman politics—where they as their people’s representative engage in acts symbolic of the people’s sovereignty. In an age of discontent with democracy, new and social media have allowed them to portray themselves as true defenders of ‘the people’.
{"title":"Strongman: The Extraordinary Leaders of India and the Philippines","authors":"A. E. Ruud","doi":"10.1177/23210230231166184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231166184","url":null,"abstract":"Both Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte stand out as leaders that epitomise their respective reigns in ways that previous leaders did not. A juxtaposition of their political personae allows us to investigate a contemporary political phenomenon, that of the elected strongman leader. This article makes three points from this juxtaposition: (a) They presided over a period of ‘democratic backsliding’. (b) They came with social media. (c) They are their own message and that message is that they are extraordinary leaders, above ordinary constraints. This article concludes that they represent strongman politics—where they as their people’s representative engage in acts symbolic of the people’s sovereignty. In an age of discontent with democracy, new and social media have allowed them to portray themselves as true defenders of ‘the people’.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"11 1","pages":"27 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43771151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230231168931
Suhas Palshikar
{"title":"Editorial Note","authors":"Suhas Palshikar","doi":"10.1177/23210230231168931","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231168931","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"11 1","pages":"7 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47038122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230231166197
Mukul Sharma
This article analyses the environmental politics of Hindu nationalism in India after 2014, which is deeply enmeshed with aggressive nationalism. Taking as its case study articles, newspaper reports and visuals published in the Organiser, a leading magazine of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), it focuses on four ubiquitous environmental themes—imagination of a great Hindu motherland; icons of mother embodied in river and animal; climate change and renewable energy and the idealization of Prime Minister Modi as an environmental saviour—that are visible in its pages. Through these themes, India is projected as a great ancient ecological Hindu nation while hatred and violence are directed against ‘polluted’ Muslims. The ascendancy of Hindu nationalists to power since 2014 has indeed resulted in radical changes which have signalled multiple governmental ‘green’ initiatives and brought climate change and renewable energy to the centre stage. However, and as this article illustrates, these are couched in an optic of purity and pollution, as well as caste and religion, on the one hand, and mobilization of corporations and mega ‘clean’ industrial projects, on the other, which are propagated in the name of people, development and environment.
{"title":"Hindu Nationalism and Right-wing Ecology: RSS, Modi and Motherland Post-2014","authors":"Mukul Sharma","doi":"10.1177/23210230231166197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231166197","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the environmental politics of Hindu nationalism in India after 2014, which is deeply enmeshed with aggressive nationalism. Taking as its case study articles, newspaper reports and visuals published in the Organiser, a leading magazine of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), it focuses on four ubiquitous environmental themes—imagination of a great Hindu motherland; icons of mother embodied in river and animal; climate change and renewable energy and the idealization of Prime Minister Modi as an environmental saviour—that are visible in its pages. Through these themes, India is projected as a great ancient ecological Hindu nation while hatred and violence are directed against ‘polluted’ Muslims. The ascendancy of Hindu nationalists to power since 2014 has indeed resulted in radical changes which have signalled multiple governmental ‘green’ initiatives and brought climate change and renewable energy to the centre stage. However, and as this article illustrates, these are couched in an optic of purity and pollution, as well as caste and religion, on the one hand, and mobilization of corporations and mega ‘clean’ industrial projects, on the other, which are propagated in the name of people, development and environment.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"11 1","pages":"102 - 117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49348628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230231166179
Tanweer Fazal
to the historian’s mind
历史学家的想法
{"title":"‘Documents of Power’: Historical Method and the Study of Politics","authors":"Tanweer Fazal","doi":"10.1177/23210230231166179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231166179","url":null,"abstract":"to the historian’s mind","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"11 1","pages":"140 - 149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47838568","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230231166196
Rahul Govind
This article analyses B. R. Ambedkar’s works written between 1941 and 1948, and it discerns a central set of concerns and arguments in this otherwise diverse corpus. It argues that since universal franchise as a political principle is uncontroversial, Ambedkar’s primary concern is geared towards the danger of democratic majoritarianism in a society riven by historically, legally and ideologically determined forms of inequality and their logic—a danger that can only be addressed at the dual levels of institutional design and ideological critique. Reading together Pakistan or the Partition of India and What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables, the initial sections argue that Ambedkar was critical of Congress and Muslim league politics because he saw in them both, albeit in distinct ways, the affirmation of religious identity as central to the formulation of political identity. Such an orientation, in the actual mechanics of mass politics and constitutional negotiation, is therefore read as inevitably leading to conflicts including demands for Partition, but at the same time such politics avoided fundamental questions of internal critique and instituted forms of socialized inequality. It is in this context, and the imminence of Partition, that the article analyses Ambedkar’s argument for the need of both a specific institutional design (constitutional provisions) and an ideology critique (his historical research including Who were the Sudras and The Untouchables). The analysis of the demand for partition and the category of the minority can only be understood through Ambedkar’s acute historical and theoretical understanding of the nation and its history, as well as the normative demands required for institutional justice, as will be shown through a reading of this corpus.
{"title":"Anticipating the Threat of Democratic Majoritarianism: Ambedkar on Constitutional Design and Ideology Critique, 1941–1948","authors":"Rahul Govind","doi":"10.1177/23210230231166196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231166196","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses B. R. Ambedkar’s works written between 1941 and 1948, and it discerns a central set of concerns and arguments in this otherwise diverse corpus. It argues that since universal franchise as a political principle is uncontroversial, Ambedkar’s primary concern is geared towards the danger of democratic majoritarianism in a society riven by historically, legally and ideologically determined forms of inequality and their logic—a danger that can only be addressed at the dual levels of institutional design and ideological critique. Reading together Pakistan or the Partition of India and What Congress and Gandhi have done to the Untouchables, the initial sections argue that Ambedkar was critical of Congress and Muslim league politics because he saw in them both, albeit in distinct ways, the affirmation of religious identity as central to the formulation of political identity. Such an orientation, in the actual mechanics of mass politics and constitutional negotiation, is therefore read as inevitably leading to conflicts including demands for Partition, but at the same time such politics avoided fundamental questions of internal critique and instituted forms of socialized inequality. It is in this context, and the imminence of Partition, that the article analyses Ambedkar’s argument for the need of both a specific institutional design (constitutional provisions) and an ideology critique (his historical research including Who were the Sudras and The Untouchables). The analysis of the demand for partition and the category of the minority can only be understood through Ambedkar’s acute historical and theoretical understanding of the nation and its history, as well as the normative demands required for institutional justice, as will be shown through a reading of this corpus.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"11 1","pages":"66 - 84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47919163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230221135837
Anupama Roy
The long durée narrative of the state in independent India is one of accumulation of incremental and aggregate power relations arrayed in and through political institutions inhabiting a field of power. These relationships are protean, exhibiting conflicts and contestations among institutions that compete for power within the domain of the state. The ‘ebbs’ and ‘flows’ in power are visible in the state-space represented by institutional arrangements and the patterns of relationship among them. While institutions perform the function of legitimation for the state, they also manifest the crisis that besets the state, reflecting dissonance between its moral–political goals of bringing about socio-economic transformation and its ability to achieve them through ‘state-bureaucratic’ practices. The constitutional state in India can be seen as the setting where the state-idea as limited by law and as an ‘instrument’ for bringing about transformative change was situated. Institutional crises during the emergency and the uneven trajectories of institutional presence in the ensuing period show the marginalization of institutions such as Parliament and the ambivalence of the judiciary in articulating the principles underlying the constitutional consensus. A dominative presence of the executive corroding deliberative spaces making them sites of adversarial combat and the populist appeal of the ‘leader’ drawing upon communitarian emotions has paved the way for a majoritarian state.
{"title":"Institutional ‘Presence’ and the Indian State: The Long Narrative","authors":"Anupama Roy","doi":"10.1177/23210230221135837","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230221135837","url":null,"abstract":"The long durée narrative of the state in independent India is one of accumulation of incremental and aggregate power relations arrayed in and through political institutions inhabiting a field of power. These relationships are protean, exhibiting conflicts and contestations among institutions that compete for power within the domain of the state. The ‘ebbs’ and ‘flows’ in power are visible in the state-space represented by institutional arrangements and the patterns of relationship among them. While institutions perform the function of legitimation for the state, they also manifest the crisis that besets the state, reflecting dissonance between its moral–political goals of bringing about socio-economic transformation and its ability to achieve them through ‘state-bureaucratic’ practices. The constitutional state in India can be seen as the setting where the state-idea as limited by law and as an ‘instrument’ for bringing about transformative change was situated. Institutional crises during the emergency and the uneven trajectories of institutional presence in the ensuing period show the marginalization of institutions such as Parliament and the ambivalence of the judiciary in articulating the principles underlying the constitutional consensus. A dominative presence of the executive corroding deliberative spaces making them sites of adversarial combat and the populist appeal of the ‘leader’ drawing upon communitarian emotions has paved the way for a majoritarian state.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"10 1","pages":"185 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46209844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230221135826
C. Elliott
This study looks at the vibrancy of local democracy through linkages between local tax collection and accountability: When villagers pay taxes to the village panchayat are they more likely to hold the panchayat accountable? Fifty villages in Andhra Pradesh were surveyed through 500 structured interviews. The study found that in the low-tax environment where panchayats generally follow government-established minimum tax rates, the level of taxation is not politically salient and has no acknowledged impact on panchayat elections. Tax-paying villagers are more likely to participate in the panchayat when residents have connections to outside parties and officials. Except in questions regarding the fairness of internal distributions of works and services, panchayats appear more as the lowest end of the state system than as local democracies. Local government in Andhra Pradesh has a democratic deficit.
{"title":"Taxation and Accountability in Local Government: A Democratic Deficit in Andhra Pradesh","authors":"C. Elliott","doi":"10.1177/23210230221135826","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230221135826","url":null,"abstract":"This study looks at the vibrancy of local democracy through linkages between local tax collection and accountability: When villagers pay taxes to the village panchayat are they more likely to hold the panchayat accountable? Fifty villages in Andhra Pradesh were surveyed through 500 structured interviews. The study found that in the low-tax environment where panchayats generally follow government-established minimum tax rates, the level of taxation is not politically salient and has no acknowledged impact on panchayat elections. Tax-paying villagers are more likely to participate in the panchayat when residents have connections to outside parties and officials. Except in questions regarding the fairness of internal distributions of works and services, panchayats appear more as the lowest end of the state system than as local democracies. Local government in Andhra Pradesh has a democratic deficit.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"10 1","pages":"201 - 213"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41747635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230221135850
P. Bardhan
Capitalism is usually associated with inequality. The Indian variant of capitalism creates its specific structure of inequality. The recent trends of capital concentration in India, facilitated by the political decision-making, shape particular patterns of the rise in inequalities. The nature of capitalism in India is linked to the nature of capital concentration and the low bargaining power of the labour. The article discusses these links. The article discusses the recent attempts at social and political legitimization of the prevailing kind of capitalism under the current political regime. The focus is on long-term issues, and instead of a detailed account, the attempt is to paint a picture with a very broad brush.
{"title":"Inequality and Capitalism in India","authors":"P. Bardhan","doi":"10.1177/23210230221135850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230221135850","url":null,"abstract":"Capitalism is usually associated with inequality. The Indian variant of capitalism creates its specific structure of inequality. The recent trends of capital concentration in India, facilitated by the political decision-making, shape particular patterns of the rise in inequalities. The nature of capitalism in India is linked to the nature of capital concentration and the low bargaining power of the labour. The article discusses these links. The article discusses the recent attempts at social and political legitimization of the prevailing kind of capitalism under the current political regime. The focus is on long-term issues, and instead of a detailed account, the attempt is to paint a picture with a very broad brush.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"10 1","pages":"176 - 184"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47554550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1177/23210230221137633
Taruna Arora, Katie Pyle
Conventional sampling methodologies for citizens/households in urban research in India are constrained due to the lack of readily available, reliable sampling frames. Voter lists, for example, are riddled with errors and, as such may not be able to provide a robust sampling frame from which a representative sample can be drawn. The Jana–Brown Citizenship Index project consortium (Janaagraha, India; Brown University, USA) has conceptualized a unique research design that provides an alternative way on how to identify, categorize and sample households (and citizens within) in a city in a representative and meaningful way. The consortium consists of the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, based in India, and the Brown Center for Contemporary South Asia, part of Brown University, USA. The methodology was designed to enable systematic data collection from citizens and households on aspects of citizenship, infrastructure and service delivery across different demographic sections of society. The article describes how (a) data on communities that are in the minority, such as Muslims, scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST), were used to categorize Polling Parts to allow for stratified random sampling using these strata, (b) geospatial tools such as QGIS and Google Earth were used to create base maps aligning to the established Polling Part unit, (c) the resulting maps were used to create listings of buildings, (d) how housing type categorizations were created (based on the structure/construction material/amenities, etc.) and comprised part of the building listing process, and (e) how the listings were used for sampling and to create population weights where necessary. This article describes these methodological approaches in the context of the project while highlighting advantages and challenges in application to urban research in India more generally.
{"title":"Sampling and Categorization of Households for Research in Urban India","authors":"Taruna Arora, Katie Pyle","doi":"10.1177/23210230221137633","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230221137633","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional sampling methodologies for citizens/households in urban research in India are constrained due to the lack of readily available, reliable sampling frames. Voter lists, for example, are riddled with errors and, as such may not be able to provide a robust sampling frame from which a representative sample can be drawn. The Jana–Brown Citizenship Index project consortium (Janaagraha, India; Brown University, USA) has conceptualized a unique research design that provides an alternative way on how to identify, categorize and sample households (and citizens within) in a city in a representative and meaningful way. The consortium consists of the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, based in India, and the Brown Center for Contemporary South Asia, part of Brown University, USA. The methodology was designed to enable systematic data collection from citizens and households on aspects of citizenship, infrastructure and service delivery across different demographic sections of society. The article describes how (a) data on communities that are in the minority, such as Muslims, scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST), were used to categorize Polling Parts to allow for stratified random sampling using these strata, (b) geospatial tools such as QGIS and Google Earth were used to create base maps aligning to the established Polling Part unit, (c) the resulting maps were used to create listings of buildings, (d) how housing type categorizations were created (based on the structure/construction material/amenities, etc.) and comprised part of the building listing process, and (e) how the listings were used for sampling and to create population weights where necessary. This article describes these methodological approaches in the context of the project while highlighting advantages and challenges in application to urban research in India more generally.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"10 1","pages":"254 - 274"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43285720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: Shekhar Pathak, The Chipko Movement: A People’s History","authors":"Pushpa Singh","doi":"10.1177/23210230221135828","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230221135828","url":null,"abstract":"Shekhar Pathak, The Chipko Movement: A People’s History. India: Permanent Black. 2021. 371 pages. ₹895. ISBN: 9788178245553.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"10 1","pages":"298 - 299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41637596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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