Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power, and Politics

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The role of social movements in Indian politics has always been important, even before independence from colonial rule in 1947. During the Nehruvianera, poverty alleviation was a foundational standard against which policy proposals and political claims were measured. At that time, movement activism was directly accountable to this state discourse. Today, however, the nature of social movements have undergone a transformation. In this volume–the first to focus on poverty and class in its analysis of social movements–a group of leading India scholars shows how they have had to change because poverty reduction no longer serves its earlier role as a political template. With key cases from across states and sectors, the book analyses their role in the constantly changing political landscape. It has distinctive chapters on gender, lower castes, environment, the Hindu Right, Kerala, labor, farmers, and biotechnology mirroring change and social movements in a comprehensive fashion. With contributions from renowned academics, this informed, accessible, and analytical anthology will be of immense importance to students and researchers in political science, sociology, and history. It will be indispensable for postgraduate courses on social movements. Policy planners and an informed general audience will also find it useful.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mary Fainsod Katzenstein

Mary Fainsod Katzenstein is professor of government and faculty member of the feminist, gender, and sexuality studies (FGSS) program at Cornell. Her books and articles address issues of gender and race in the United States; the women's movements in Europe, the United States, and India; and issues about equality, ethnicity, and social movements in India. Her book, Faithful and Fearless; Moving Feminist Protest Inside the Church and Military (Princeton University Press, 1998) won the Victoria Schuck prize from the American Political Science Association. In the last several years, her work has focused on prison reform activism in the United States.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Raka Ray

Raka Ray is associate professor of sociology and South and Southeast Asia studies and chair of the Center for South Asia Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her areas of specialization are gender and feminist theory, social movements, and relations between dominant and subaltern groups in India. Publications include Fields of Protest: Women's Movements in India (University of Minnesota, 1999; Kali for Women, 2000), "Masculinity, Femininity And Servitude: Domestic Workers in Calcutta in the Late Twentieth Century" in Feminist Studied (26.3), and (with Seemin Qayum) "Grappling with Modernity: Calcutta's Respectable Classes and the Culture of Domestic Servitude" in Ethnography (4.4, 2003).