In the annals of India’s history, a monumental uprising unfolded in 2020, echoing the resilience and coming together of large sections of its agrarian base. Instigated by the contentious farm laws of 2020, the Farmers’ Movement burgeoned into a year-long saga of protest and perseverance, ending only in December 2021 after the passing of the Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021 by the Indian Parliament. From the initial demand for law repeal to the multifaceted growth of the movement, the book traces the journey of the Farmers’ Movement, as each essay dissects the socio-political dynamics, cultural nuances, and mass solidarity that underpinned the protests, including focused analyses from Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom. This anthology chronicles the ebb and flow of a nation’s spirit, encapsulating the symbiotic relationship between theory and praxis, between change and continuity. It serves as a testament to the power of collective resistance and a roadmap for future struggles, ensuring that the legacy of the Farmers’ Movement endures beyond the pages of history. This volume is an interdisciplinary project and will be of interest to scholars from diverse fields such as economics, sociology, public policy, political science, history, political geography, gender studies, cultural studies, international studies, architecture, media studies, psychology, and ethnomusicology.

Since the structural change in Indian society that began in the 1990s - the result of the liberalisation of the economy, devolution of power, and decentralisation of the government–an unprecedented, democratic transformation has been taking place. This has caused the emergence of unexpected coalitions and alliances across diverse castes, classes, and religious groups according to the issues involved. In this volume, we intend to understand this deepening of democracy by employing a new analytical framework of the 'vernacular public arena' where negotiations, dialogues, debates, and contestations occur among 'vernacular publics'. This reflects the profound changes in Indian democracy as diverse social groups, including dalits, adivasis, and Other Backward Classes; minorities, women; individuals from rural areas, towns, and cities; the poor and the new middle classes–the 'vernacular publics'–participate in new ways in India’s public life. This participation is not confined to electoral politics, but has extended to the public arenas in which these groups have begun to raise their voice publicly and to negotiate and engage in dialogue with each other and the wider world. Contributors demonstrate that the participation of vernacular publics has resulted in the broadening of Indian democracy itself which focuses on the ways of governance, improving people’s lives, life chances, and living environments. An original, comprehensive study that furthers our understanding of the unfolding political dynamism and the complex reshuffling and reassembling taking place in Indian society and politics, this book will be relevant to academics with an interest in South Asian Studies from a variety of disciplines, including Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Aruna Roy resigned from the IAS in 1975 to work with peasants and workers in rural Rajasthan. In 1990 she helped co-found the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). The MKSS struggles in the mid 90s for wages and other rights gave birth to the now celebrated Right to Information movement. Aruna continues to be a part of many democratic struggles and campaigns. This book is a collective history that tells the story of how ordinary people can come together and prevail against great odds, to make democracy more meaningful.

Corruption, a major problem in the present, global world, is a very complex phenomenon. It has economic, political and ethical aspects and is simultaneously a global and a local issue. This anthropological study shows how actors in Indian society are entangled in hierarchical relations of social, economic and political inequality that breed corruption, yet also how resistance against corruption takes place in local context. By exposing the complexity of corruption and also by questioning apparently simple remedies, this rich study certainly contributes to "making sense" of corruption in India.

This book examines how micro contextual issues inspire collective social action forms against everyday situations of crises and crimes through an inter-disciplinary, ethnographic, and comparative research conducted among Bishnois and Indian South Africans. Exploring the role of the publics that practise and mobilise their social movement imaginations, the work delves into peoples’ ability to move beyond their immediate contexts and politicise multiple social spaces and discursive spheres around them to project their causes. Mapping an anti-poaching movement spearheaded by the Bishnois of Western Rajasthan in India and an anti-substance abuse movement led by the historical Indian diaspora of South Africa, the author argues that such contemporary forms of organised social action replete with alternative frames, symbols, and repertoires possess key requisites to be understood as the ‘Newer Social Movements’ of the Global South. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of social and protest movements, migration and diaspora studies, political science, social anthropology, and ethnography.

Although the princes of India have been caricatured as oriental despots and British stooges, Barbara Ramusack's study argues that the British did not create the princes. On the contrary, many were consummate politicians who exercised considerable degrees of autonomy until the disintegration of the princely states after independence. Ramusack's synthesis has a broad temporal span, tracing the evolution of the Indian kings from their pre-colonial origins to their roles as clients in the British colonial system. The book breaks ground in its integration of political and economic developments in the major princely states with the shifting relationships between the princes and the British. It represents a major contribution, both to British imperial history in its analysis of the theory and practice of indirect rule, and to modern South Asian history, as a portrait of the princes as politicians and patrons of the arts.

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.

The Right to Know is a timely and compelling consideration of a vital question: What information should governments and other powerful organizations disclose? Excessive secrecy corrodes democracy, facilitates corruption, and undermines good public policymaking, but keeping a lid on military strategies, personal data, and trade secrets is crucial to the protection of the public interest. Over the past several years, transparency has swept the world. India and South Africa have adopted groundbreaking national freedom of information laws. China is on the verge of promulgating new openness regulations that build on the successful experiments of such major municipalities as Shanghai. From Asia to Africa to Europe to Latin America, countries are struggling to overcome entrenched secrecy and establish effective disclosure policies. More than seventy now have or are developing major disclosure policies or laws. But most of the world's nearly 200 nations do not have coherent disclosure laws; implementation of existing rules often proves difficult; and there is no consensus about what disclosure standards should apply to the increasingly powerful private sector. As governments and corporations battle with citizens and one another over the growing demand to submit their secrets to public scrutiny, they need new insights into whether, how, and when greater openness can serve the public interest, and how to bring about beneficial forms of greater disclosure. The Right to Know distills the lessons of many nations' often bitter experience and provides careful analysis of transparency's impact on governance, business regulation, environmental protection, and national security. Its powerful lessons make it a critical companion for policymakers, executives, and activists, as well as students and scholars seeking a better understanding of how to make information policy serve the public interest.