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This chapter focuses on the right to food as one of the economic and social rights confirmed in the Directive Principles of State Policy. The chapter begins by describing the nutrition emergency in India. It specifically argues that the continuity of a severe nutrition crisis in India reflects the fact that Indian democracy is confined in a ‘vicious circle of exclusion and elitism’. Because unfortunate sections of the population are excluded from active participation in democratic politics, their aspirations and priorities are not reflected in public policy. The elitist orientation of public policy, in turn, continues the deprivations (poverty, hunger, illiteracy, discrimination) that disempower people and precludes them from participating in democratic politics. Examples of right to education and right to information are given. In addition, the chapter explains how recent experience with mid-day meals shows the potential roles of the right to food. The right to food is a slightly complex right that does not readily translate into well-defined entitlements and responsibilities.

This chapter introduces Japan, and also takes up India and Indonesia, where the problems of securing consent to the authority of the state and democratic constitutional rules were potentially immense. Forty-four allied states met at Bretton Woods to discuss post-war monetary and exchange-rate matters, reaching an agreement that contained three central provisions. The inter-war experience in Europe had suggested that the internal authority of modern states did depend on governments. The West German economy had become the locomotive of west European growth. The internal authority of the French state and French democracy proved far less pliable to American power than the British. Indian democracy succeeded without American support, while Indonesian democracy owed its existence to American power. Where the state's internal authority was weak, low inflation proved politically impossible and democracy tended to fail.

This chapter examines how India's Left assigned the blame for the rise of Hindu nationalism to its rival factions. In particular, it scrutinizes the common accusation that anti-secularism is complicit with Hindu nationalism and questions whether other voices on the Left have been able to answer meaningfully to Hindutva by way of an alternative. The chapter concludes that neither state secularism nor anti-secularism answers meaningfully to Hindu majoritarianism, but that the latter, like Parekh's multiculturalism, moves towards the ‘politically sensitive imagination’ required to rehabilitate the project of Indian democracy.

This section begins with Ashis Nandy presenting his views about Indian political identity. He then moves on to discuss the relevance of the caste system; India in the twenty-first century; India's alter-ego, namely Pakistan; secularism and religious fundamentalism; Indian democracy without secularism; and religion as an anti-democratic element.

The previous chapter showed how the Dalit popular booklets, instrumental in arousing Dalit consciousness, reached the Godampatti of Shahabpur village, which is chiefly inhabited by Dalits. All the residents of this hamlet gather at the tea stall in the patti and discuss various issues related to the emancipation of Dalits, which they have gathered from these booklets. This chapter shows how these discussions lead to the creation of a Dalit public at the grassroots that is facilitating the acquisition of political power by the Dalits — a group that is able to put increasing pressure on the Indian democracy.

This book explores the causes as well as the meaning and significance of political violence in Northeast India, focusing on the formal and informal structures of governance and the democracy deficit in the region. It looks at the life and times of the United Liberation Front of Assam(ULFA), the conflict between the Indian government and the Nagas, as well as the cultural politics that animate the militias of the region, and their relationship to their constituencies and to ‘mainstream’ social and political forces. In addressing the politics of militancy in Northeast India, the book focuses on areas both inside and outside the borders of what is called Assam today. Instead of reinforcing a false separation between ‘insurgency’ and the ‘mainstream’ of social and political life, the book argues that ethnic militias, counter-insurgency operations, state-backed militias, developmentalist practices, and the deformed institutions of democratic governance constitute a coherent whole, known as durable disorder.

This chapter seeks to outline the nature and extent of the elbow-room Indian democracy provides to various players and delve a little deeper to examine how well the established theories explain the Indian reality. It summarizes of the post-Independence institutional development of Indian politics before delving into a systematic exposition of major policy making frameworks. The theories expounded include, a) incrementalism; b) public choice; c) institutional rational choice; d) subsystems; e) advocacy coalition; f) punctuated equilibrium; and g) multiple streams approach. Next it provides a summary of the nine case studies covered in the subsequent chapters connecting them to the theories discussed. It concludes by pointing to the several questions that the case studies beget about policymaking in India. The observations from case studies would be held against the relief of these established models to check how well the models apply to the Indian setting.

The concluding chapter draws all strings to finally consolidate the identity of the Jads in terms of how they are viewed by others, how they view themselves (inner selves), and how they respond to the viewing by others (outer selves), while giving a historical overview. This consciousness is not unitary or static, but a continuous process of adjustment that also attempts at consolidating a viable identity. This chapter specifically focuses on power relations, the construction and imagery of the nation and state powers, policy, and negotiations. It also makes some final remarks on definitional categories like tribe, nation, ethnic group, culture, and borders. It discusses the present-day negotiations of the Jads to build upon an identity that will give them a legitimate place in the Indian democracy that has eluded them so far being always identified as a ‘border people’.

The conclusion relates the book’s findings about perceptions of the cinematic public in late colonial India to lingering tensions at the heart of Indian democracy and to developments in India’s postcolonial mediascape. After independence, the Indian state continued to be suspicious of the entertainment industry, withholding substantive support and strengthening colonial regimes of film censorship and taxation. Even though the media landscape changed dramatically after 1991, as economic liberalization opened the media sector, colonial-era images of the mass public continue to cast a shadow across contemporary discourses about media audiences.

The creation of institutions was a distinctive feature of Indian democracy. This chapter examines two public institutions: the National Commission for the Scheduled Castes (NCSC) and the National Commission for Minorities (NCM). Created in 1992 as part of a network of institutions aimed at implementing constitutional protections against discrimination, the NCSC has been effective in promoting the political empowerment of Scheduled Castes and Schedules Tribes. But other areas, such as education and employment, show less improvement. The NCM, first launched in 1978 and achieving statutory status in 1992, has been relatively ineffective. The rise of the Hindu Right is the main reason why progress in securing equality and nondiscrimination for minorities has been stalled. A stronger policy framework for the NCM is needed, one that would ensure that improve its ability to protect the rights of minorities.