Rising Power, Precarious Citizens

Enthusiastic narratives surrounding India's international rise have long celebrated the rapid rates of the country's economic growth resulting from the liberalisation of its economy. On the other hand, critics of the same processes have lamented the continued prevalence of poverty and increased inequality across the country. Looking beyond such polarised perspectives, Roy examines the wider process of social change of India's economic growth and explores the agency of the people whose labours have shouldered India's economic growth and its international rise.Using a sociologically informed perspective "from below" that emphasises the practices of citizens whose influence is often dismissed as ordinary, Rising power, Precarious citizens, tells an alternate story of India's rise. Away from the glitz and glamour of liberalisation, economic growth, and policy entrepreneurs, it shines a light on the social and political actors that assaulted caste hierarchies in the countryside, thereby loosening traditional restrictions on labour mobility. Such efforts, however, found little support from the Indian state—resulting in the exacerbation of precarity among Indian citizens. By shining a light on the agency of working Indians despite enormous adversity, it salvages them from the scorn of the present and the pity of posterity.