Changing Contexts and Shifting Roles of the Indian State

This book critically discusses the changing relationship between the Indian state and capital by examining the mediating role of society in influencing developmental outcomes. It theorizes the state’s changing context allowing the discussion of its pursuit of contradictory economic and social welfare goals simultaneously. Both structural and ideological factors are argued to contribute to a shifting context, but the centrality of re-distributive politics and the contradictions therein explain a lot of what the state does and cannot do. The book also examines what the state aspires to do but structurally cannot accomplish either because of the scale of the problem or the dysfunctionality that sets in with continuous reforms. The collection provides rich evidence on the contested forms of governance arising from changing contexts and shifting roles of the state. Readers will benefit from this recasting of the Indian state in terms of the actual forms of intervention today.
“…At a time when the question of the role of the state in promoting more inclusive forms of development has never been more urgent, this book provides a range of powerful and insightful case studies of how a changing Indian capitalism is impacting and in turn being impacted by the multi-stranded role of the Indian state.”- Patrick Heller, Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Brown University, USA.“…This book, edited by two of India’s reputed scholars in the political economy of development, addresses [an] important gap in the literature. Providing an insightful account of the role of the state and the market in India’s economic resurgence, the book contributes to a fresh understanding of a twenty-first century developmental state. It provides valuable reading for scholars of India and political economy of development researchers.”- Kunal Sen, Director, UNU-WIDER, Finland.“This collection gives a rich and layered understanding of changing role of the State. The State is not seen as an unchanging entity with unchanging interests because of a shifting context and political regime change. Thus, the State’s contradictory decisions such as greater dispossession of land from the peasantry and expansion of the universe of economic rights is explainable as the State is dealing with the ebb and flow of a democracy.”- C. Rammanohar Reddy, Former Editor, Economic and Political Weekly, India.
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