Summary
Contents
Subject index
Maoism, democracy and globalization are three distinct but inseparable currents marking Indian politics today. They are distinct in terms of their goals, direction, and modalities of forging social, political, economic and even cultural change, while mutually influencing each other in the emergent political process. This book is an attempt to precisely map processes that are internal to each of these currents while exploring and identifying the moments of mutual influence, areas of conflict and mutually exclusive pulls they bring to the contemporary politics in India.
Backward Classes: Reservations, Recognition and the Republic
Backward Classes: Reservations, Recognition and the Republic
Since 1990s, India's democracy has been witness to what has been referred to as the ‘second democratic upsurge’ (Yadav 1999) marking a phenomenon of ‘deepening democracy’ to include new social groups, especially in the rural hinterland. However, this process happened alongside another phenomenon of ‘secularisation of caste’, which included de-ritualisation and politicisation of caste. The consequence of this was to aspire not for higher ritual status but for an entry into the ‘new middle class’.
However, the ‘new middle class’ cannot be seen as constituting a pure class category—a construct which is in fact a theoretical fiction. It carries some elements of caste within it, insofar as the entry of an individual in ...
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