According to this volume, the conventional understanding of citizenship is inadequate to capture the complex challenges a large majority of India’s marginalized people face in actualizing their rights and making their voices heard. It offers instead an extended connotation of citizenship and participation from the perspective of those bearing excluded identities – namely, the low caste, the poor, women, and tribals. Based on the experiences of these groups in their everyday relationships with the state and with society at large, the contributors to this volume detail and explore the possibilities and the problematics of their inclusion in attempting a change in existing relations. They discuss ‘participatory citizenship’ as a way of altering the existing relationship between the state and its vulnerable citizenry; rescuing citizenship from its universal legal status to include the differential positioning of subjugated groups; and conceptualize participation not merely as a voting /electoral mechanism but as one where all citizens have a legitimate and equitable stake in the processes of development and governance. Combining theoretical discussions with empirical case studies, this volume delineates the possibilities and potentials of excluded people seeking inclusion, as well as the complexities and contradictions inherent in the process.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rajesh Tandon
Rajesh Tandon has a doctorate in organizational behaviour from the Case Western Reserve University. Cleveland, in 1978. He founded the Society for Participatory Research in Asia in 1982 to provide support to the grass root initiatives in India and since then has advanced the cause of building organizations and capacities of the marginalised through their knowledge, learning and empowerment. He has advocated for a self reliant, autonomous and competent voluntary sector both in India and at the global level. A renowned authority on participatory research, through his research and practice, Dr. Tandon has contributed to the evolution of new thinking and methodologies in people centered development. He has written extensively on various aspects of development, voluntary sector, the relationship between the state and voluntary sector and in recent times has helped advance the concept of civil society and citizen participation world wide.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ranjita Mohanty
Ranjita Mohanty has a doctorate in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 1996. Beginning with her doctorate research which Beginning with her doctorate research which looked at the local struggle against development such a big dams, she has been exploring various dimensions of collective action relating to natural resource management and issues relating to people's participation in development. This has helped her understand and analyse the issues pertaining to development planning and policy, problems of displacement, loss of survival resources of the poor, issues of ownership and control of poor people over the resources on which they survive, coming together of people for their common interest, and the complex and changing relationship between civil society and the state. In her work she has strived to bring theory and practice closer to each other so that reflection and action can influence social transformation. She is currently working with the Society for Participatory Research in Asia, New Delhi.
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