Niraja Gopal Jayal – författare

Breaking new ground in scholarship, Niraja Jayal writes the first history of citizenship in the largest democracy in the world—India. Unlike the mature democracies of the west, India began as a true republic of equals with a complex architecture of citizenship rights that was sensitive to the many hierarchies of Indian society. In this provocative biography of the defining aspiration of modern India, Jayal shows how the progressive civic ideals embodied in the constitution have been challenged by exclusions based on social and economic inequality, and sometimes also, paradoxically, undermined by its own policies of inclusion.Citizenship and Its Discontents explores a century of contestations over citizenship from the colonial period to the present, analyzing evolving conceptions of citizenship as legal status, as rights, and as identity. The early optimism that a new India could be fashioned out of an unequal and diverse society led to a formally inclusive legal membership, an impulse to social and economic rights, and group-differentiated citizenship. Today, these policies to create a civic community of equals are losing support in a climate of social intolerance and weak solidarity. Once seen by Western political scientists as an anomaly, India today is a site where every major theoretical debate about citizenship is being enacted in practice, and one that no global discussion of the subject can afford to ignore.

This volume-in the Themes in Politics series-brings together the finest scholarly writings on several dimensions of Indias democracy. It analyses Indias experiment with democracy and its successes and failures. It also situates Indian democracy in the context of the basic principles of democratic theory as well as contemporary debates about the relationship of democracy with civil society, cultural diversity, and development. The volume addresses the crucial concern as to whether the state has contributed to the decline of democracy or whether democratic politics has undermined the states capability to govern the city. It discusses Indias unique experience of negotiating cultural diversity through democratic institutional mechanisms.

This volume analyses the complexity of local governance, both rural and urban, in contemporary India. It argues that there is more to local governance today than a focus on decentralization. The essays illuminate some of the lesser known aspects of the interface between panchayats and other institutions of local governance, whether district administration or parastatal agencies and civil society organizations. Sections in the book look at the relationship between these institutions and panchayats, sectoral experiences in health and primary education, local governance in the urban and rural setting, and finally issues of transparency, representation and accountability in local governance. Providing a unique analytical perspective to the issue of local governance in India, this volume will be useful to political scientists, sociologists, activists and bureaucrats in local governance mechanisms.