Politics of the Poor
Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India

Based on diverse sorts of data and fieldwork in India, this book analyses how the poor participate in a democracy.

Indrajit Roy (Author)

9781107117181, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 February 2018

538 pages
23.7 x 15.9 x 3.8 cm, 0.82 kg

This book challenges the ongoing scholarly debates on poor people's negotiations with democracy. It demonstrates the varied ways in which the poor engage with their elected representatives, political mediators and dominant classes in order to advance their claims. Roy explains the variations by directing attention to the dynamic interaction between the opportunity structures available to the poor and the social relations of power in which they are embedded. He analyses these intersections as 'political spaces' which both enable and constrain popular practices. Through examination of the 'political spaces' available to the poor in four different localities, Roy outlines a new analytic framework to understanding poor people's politics. Based on these observations, the book makes a strong case for an approach to democracy that appreciates people's ambivalences towards democracy. Roy urges researchers of democracy to step beyond either enthusiastic narratives - the inevitability of democracy or apocalyptic accounts of democracy's impending death.

List of tables, maps and charts
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Introduction: against false binaries
1. The perspectives of the study: towards an Agonistics of democracy
2. Political spaces: institutional opportunity structures
3. Political spaces: social relations of power
4. From clientelism to citizenship?: The politics of supplications
5. From moral vocabularies to languages of stateness?: The politics of demands
6. From backwardness to improvement?: The politics of disputation
7. From tradition to modernity?: The politics of imagination
Conclusion: the politics of the poor: agonistic negotiations with democracy
Annexure 1: the dramatis personae
Annexure 2: the census survey
Annexure 3: the Multidimensional Poverty Index
Annexure 4: Schedule for BPL Census 2002
Annexure 5: Schedule for BPL Census 2002 West Bengal
Annexure 6: BPL Cutoff List for West Bengal
Annexure 7: Bihar Mahadalit Vikas Mission Mandate
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Political structures: democracy [JPHV], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP]