This volume explores the transition from colonial to constitutional rule in India, and the various configurations of power and legitimacies that emerged from it. It focuses on the developmental structures and paradigms that provided the circumstances for this transition, and the establishment of the post-colonial state. Different articles interrogate the idea of liberal constitutionalism, the spaces it provides for rights and claims, the assumptions it makes about citizenship and its attendant duties, and the assumptions it further makes about what it can, or has to, become in the particular situation of India. The book locates these questions in the reconfiguration of society, power, and the economy since the shift in the identity of the state after Independence, and deals with issues of constitution-making in a historical and political setting and its outcomes, especially the centrality of law and legalisms, in shaping civil society. With a companion volume on the transition to a constitutional form of governance and the consequent moulding of the citizens, this book emphasises continuity and change in the context of the movement from the colonial to the constitutional order. It will be of interest to those in politics, history, South Asian studies, policy studies, and sociology.

The debate on whether to privilege economic growth over ecological security is passé. Environmental considerations must be at the heart of economic growth, especially for a country of 1.25 billion people destined to add another 400 million by the middle of the century. Green Signals chronicles the '1991 moment' in India's environmental decision-making, telling the story of how, for the first time, the doors of the environment ministry were opened to voices, hitherto unheard, into the policy-making process. It details efforts to change the way environment is viewed both by proponents of environmental security and those who prize economic growth at all costs. Told from the perspective of a pivotal decision maker, the book addresses the challenges involved in trying to ensure economic growth with ecological security. It takes us through India's coming of age in the global environmental and climate change community to take on a leadership role that is progressive, proactive, and steeped in national interest. Using speaking orders on high-profile projects, notes and letters to the Prime Minister, ministerial colleagues, chief ministers and others, Jairam Ramesh gives an insight into the debates, struggles, challenges, and obstacles to bringing environmental considerations into the mainstream of political and economic decision-making. This collection reveals the story of the author's attempt at the highest levels of governance to introduce effective decision-making, a transparent and accountable administration, and to make environmental concerns an essential component of a nation's quest to accelerate economic growth and end the scourge of poverty and deprivation.

This look at economic development in India focuses on interactions between the central state and regional elites. India is widely regarded as a "failed" developmental state, seemingly the exception that belies the prediction of a triumphant Asian century.

The second edition of this textbook brings together general political theory and the comparative method to interpret socio-political phenomena and issues that have occupied the Indian state and society since 1947. It considers the progress that India has made in some of the most challenging aspects of post-colonial politics such as governance, democracy, economic growth, welfare, and citizenship. Looking at the changed global role of India, its standing in the G-20 and BRICS, as well as the implications of the 2014 Indian general elections for state and society, this updated edition also includes sections on the changing socio-political status of women in India, corruption and terrorism. The author raises several key questions relevant to Indian politics, including: • Why has India succeeded in making a relatively peaceful transition from colonial rule to a resilient, multi-party democracy in contrast to its South Asian neighbours? • How has the interaction of modern politics and traditional society contributed to the resilience of post-colonial democracy? • How did India’s economy moribund—for several decades following Independence—make a breakthrough into rapid growth and can India sustain it? • And finally, why have collective identity and nationhood emerged as the core issues for India in the twenty-first century and with what implications for Indian democracy? The textbook goes beyond India by asking about the implications of the Indian case for the general and comparative theory of the post-colonial state. The factors which might have caused failures in democracy and governance are analysed and incorporated as variables into a model of democratic governance. In addition to pedagogical features such as text boxes, a set of further readings is provided to guide readers who wish to go beyond the remit of this text. The book will be essential reading for undergraduate students and researchers in South Asian and Asian studies, political science, development studies, sociology, comparative politics and political theory.

Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India and its companion volume Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo-liberal age, should be studied as the central question within the history of post-colonial democracy. The volumes offer hitherto unexplored analyses of governance — political and ideological aspects along with technological characteristics — in a historical framework. This volume discusses: ideas and issues at the core of governance in post-colonial India constitution, state-making and government formation the asymmetrical nature of the anti-colonial foundations of governance In breaking new ground in the study of what constitutes the political subject, these volumes will be indispensable to scholars, researchers and students of politics, public administration, development studies, South Asian studies and modern India.

India will soon be the world’s most populated country and its political development will shape the world of the 21st century. Yet Hindu nationalism – at the helm of contemporary Indian politics – is not well understood outside of India, and its links to the global neoliberal trajectory have not been explored. Covering 30 years of Indian politics, this book shows for the first time the importance of education in propagating the acceptance of Hindu nationalism within a neolberal system, including the reframing of the concept of Indian citizenship. The first five years of Modi rule failed to bring about the development that had been promised and have seen India’s rapid change from a largely inclusive society to one where religious minorities are denied their basic rights.

The work of environmental educators and activists in India and South Africa offers new models for schooling and environmental activism. Education has never played as critical a role in determining humanity’s future as it does in the Anthropocene, an era marked by humankind’s unprecedented control over the natural environment. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic project among schools and activist groups in India and South Africa, Peter Sutoris explores education practices in the context of impoverished, marginal communities where environmental crises intersect with colonial and racist histories and unsustainable practices. He exposes the depoliticizing effects of schooling and examines cross-generational knowledge transfer within and beyond formal education. Finally, he calls for the bridging of schooling and environmental activism, to find answers to the global environmental crisis. The onset of the Anthropocene challenges the very definition of education and its fundamental goals, says Sutoris. Researchers must look outside conventional models and practices of education for inspiration if education is to live up to its responsibilities at this critical time. For decades, environmental activist movements in some countries have wrestled with questions of responsibility and action in the face of environmental destruction; they inhabited the mental world of the Anthropocene before much of the rest of the world. Sutoris highlights an innovative research methodology of participatory observational filmmaking, describing how films made by children in the Indian and South African communities provide a window into the ways that young people make sense of the future of the Anthropocene. It is through their capacity to imagine the world differently, Sutoris argues, that education can reinvent itself.

A country’s stature in global politics is often determined by its popular image and public perceptions, as reflected in global media. While ‘nation branding’ as a term and a tool of analysis in Social Sciences has emerged prominently since the 1990s, the practice of ‘positive’ projection of states, regions and locality along with non-state institutions has deeper historical roots. Apart from nation branding, the cultural turn in ‘International Relations’ has led to popularisation of analytical concepts like ‘soft power’ and ‘civilisation’ or ‘civilisational states.’ The present work focuses on two of these concepts: ‘nation branding’ and ‘civilisation state’ and traces the historical process of evolution in Indian nation building project. It analyses the evolving concept of ‘civilisation state’ and its association with the strong urge for autonomy along with the self-perception of national and cultural greatness shared by the Indian elite leading to a search for identity and recognition of the intra-regional and extra-regional linkages in terms of shared cultural and historical identity. It also looks into the process of continuity from independence to present times and to what extent this has influenced Indian elite thinking and conceptualisation of India’s status in global affairs. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

This collection of essays inverts the way we see the Cold War by looking at the conflict from the perspective of the so-called developing world, rather than of the superpowers, through the birth and first decades of India's life as a postcolonial nation. Contributors draw on a wide array of new material, from recently opened archival sources to literature and film, and meld approaches from diplomatic history to development studies to explain the choices India made and to frame decisions by its policy makers. Together, the essays demonstrate how India became a powerful symbol of decolonization and an advocate of non-alignment, disarmament, and global governance as it stood between the United States and the Soviet Union, actively fostering dialogue and attempting to forge friendships without entering into formal alliances. Sweeping in its scope yet nuanced in its analysis, this is the authoritative account of India and the Cold War. Contributors: Priya Chacko, Anton Harder, Syed Akbar Hyder, Raminder Kaur, Rohan Mukherjee, Swapna Kona Nayudu, Pallavi Raghavan, Srinath Raghavan, Rahul Sagar, and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu.