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Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674980875
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
An Economist Best Book of the Year How India’s Constitution came into being and instituted democracy after independence from British rule. Britain’s justification for colonial rule in India stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. And the empire did its best to ensure this was the case, impoverishing Indian subjects and doing little to improve their socioeconomic reality. So when independence came, the cultivation of democratic citizenship was a foremost challenge. Madhav Khosla explores the means India’s founders used to foster a democratic ethos. They knew the people would need to learn ways of citizenship, but the path to education did not lie in rule by a superior class of men, as the British insisted. Rather, it rested on the creation of a self-sustaining politics. The makers of the Indian Constitution instituted universal suffrage amid poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. They crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution—the longest in the world—came into effect. More than half of the world’s constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries characterized by low levels of economic growth and education, where voting populations are deeply divided by race, religion, and ethnicity. And these countries have democratized at once, not gradually. The events and ideas of India’s Founding Moment offer a natural reference point for these nations where democracy and constitutionalism have arrived simultaneously, and they remind us of the promise and challenge of self-rule today.
Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674980875
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Get Book Here
Book Description
An Economist Best Book of the Year How India’s Constitution came into being and instituted democracy after independence from British rule. Britain’s justification for colonial rule in India stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. And the empire did its best to ensure this was the case, impoverishing Indian subjects and doing little to improve their socioeconomic reality. So when independence came, the cultivation of democratic citizenship was a foremost challenge. Madhav Khosla explores the means India’s founders used to foster a democratic ethos. They knew the people would need to learn ways of citizenship, but the path to education did not lie in rule by a superior class of men, as the British insisted. Rather, it rested on the creation of a self-sustaining politics. The makers of the Indian Constitution instituted universal suffrage amid poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. They crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution—the longest in the world—came into effect. More than half of the world’s constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries characterized by low levels of economic growth and education, where voting populations are deeply divided by race, religion, and ethnicity. And these countries have democratized at once, not gradually. The events and ideas of India’s Founding Moment offer a natural reference point for these nations where democracy and constitutionalism have arrived simultaneously, and they remind us of the promise and challenge of self-rule today.
Author: Tirthankar Roy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679914X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
An essential history of India's economic growth since 1947, including the legal reforms that have shaped the country in the shadow of colonial rule. Economists have long lamented how the inefficiency of India's legal system undermines the country’s economic capacity. How has this come to be? The prevailing explanation is that the postcolonial legal system is understaffed and under-resourced, making adjudication and contract enforcement slow and costly. Taking this as given, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy examines the contents and historical antecedents of these laws, including how they have stifled economic development. Economists Roy and Swamy argue that legal evolution in independent India has been shaped by three factors: the desire to reduce inequality and poverty; the suspicion that market activity, both domestic and international, can be detrimental to these goals; and the strengthening of Indian democracy over time, giving voice to a growing fraction of society, including the poor. Weaving the story of India's heralded economic transformation with its social and political history, Roy and Swamy show how inadequate legal infrastructure has been a key impediment to the country's economic growth during the last century. A stirring and authoritative history of a nation rife with contradictions, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand India's current crossroads—and the factors that may keep its dreams unrealized.
Author: Devesh Kapur
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509927735
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 492
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Book Description
The rise of the regulatory state has been a major feature of modern constitutional democracies. India, the world's largest democracy, is no exception to this trend. This book is the first major study of regulation in India. It considers how the development of regulation in India has altered the nature and functions of the state; how it is reshaping the relationship between business and the state; how it has called for the refashioning of established legal principles; and how it has raised new questions about the relationship between technical expertise and the rule of law. The chapters cover topics ranging from the foundations of the Indian regulatory state to the form of regulation across different sectors to regulation in practice. Together, the chapters reveal the challenges, promise, and limitations offered by contemporary regulatory practices, and they capture the close if sometimes fraught relationship that regulation must inevitably share with the political economy and constitutional schema within which it operates.
Author: Rohit De
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691210381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308
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Book Description
It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.
Author: Dag-Erik Berg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108855601
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
Dynamics of Caste and Law breaks new ground in understanding how caste and law relate in India's democratic order. Caste has become a visible phenomenon often associated with discrimination, inequality and politics in India and globally. India's constitutional democracy has had a remarkable goal of creating equality in a context of caste. Despite constitutional promises with equal opportunities for the lower castes and outlawing of untouchability at the time of independence, recurring atrocities and inadequate implementation of law have called for rethinking and legal change. This book sheds new light on why caste oppression persists by using new theoretical perspectives as well as Bhimrao Ambedkar's concepts of the caste system. Focusing on struggles among India's Dalits, the castes formerly known as untouchables, the book draws on a rich material and explains, among other things, mechanisms of oppression and how powerful actors may gain influence in institutions of law and state.
Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher: OUP India
ISBN: 0198075383
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
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Book Description
The Indian Constitution is one of the world's most important and longest political texts. This short introduction presents an illuminating tour of the text, explaining not only what the Constitution says but also inviting readers to think critically about the theory and practice of constitutionalism in modern India.
Author: Glenn Patmore
Publisher: ANU Press
ISBN: 1925022064
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 183
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Book Description
Law and Democracy: Contemporary Questions provides a fresh understanding of law’s regulation of Australian democracy. The book enriches public law scholarship, deepening and challenging the current conceptions of law’s regulation of popular participation and legal representation. The book raises and addresses a number of contemporary questions about legal institutions, principles and practices: How should the meaning of ‘the people’ in the Australian Constitution be defined by the High Court of Australia?How do developing judicial conceptions of democracy define citizenship?What is the legal right to participate in the political community?Should political advisors to Ministers be subject to legal accountability mechanisms?What challenges do applied law schemes pose to notions of responsible government and how can they be best addressed?How can the study of the ritual of electoral politics in Australia and other common law countries supplement the standard account of democracy?How might the ritual of the pledge of Australian citizenship limit or enhance democratic participation?What is the conflict between legal restrictions of freedom of expression and democracy, and the role of social media? Examining the regulation of democracy, this book scrutinises the assumptions and scope of constitutional democracy and enhances our understanding of the frontiers of accountability and responsible government. In addition, key issues of law, culture and democracy are revealed in their socio-legal context. The book brings together emerging and established scholars and practitioners with expertise in public law. It will be of interest to those studying law, politics, cultural studies and contemporary history.
Author: Devesh Kapur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019909313X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383
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Book Description
One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.
Author: Arun K Thiruvengadam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1849468702
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
This book provides an overview of the content and functioning of the Indian Constitution, with an emphasis on the broader socio-political context. It focuses on the overarching principles and the main institutions of constitutional governance that the world's longest written constitution inaugurated in 1950. The nine chapters of the book deal with specific aspects of the Indian constitutional tradition as it has evolved across seven decades of India's existence as an independent nation. Beginning with the pre-history of the Constitution and its making, the book moves onto an examination of the structural features and actual operation of the Constitution's principal governance institutions. These include the executive and the parliament, the institutions of federalism and local government, and the judiciary. An unusual feature of Indian constitutionalism that is highlighted here is the role played by technocratic institutions such as the Election Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and a set of new regulatory institutions, most of which were created during the 1990s. A considerable portion of the book evaluates issues relating to constitutional rights, directive principles and the constitutional regulation of multiple forms of identity in India. The important issue of constitutional change in India is approached from an atypical perspective. The book employs a narrative form to describe the twists, turns and challenges confronted across nearly seven decades of the working of the constitutional order. It departs from conventional Indian constitutional scholarship in placing less emphasis on constitutional doctrine (as evolved in judicial decisions delivered by the High Courts and the Supreme Court). Instead, the book turns the spotlight on the political bargains and extra-legal developments that have influenced constitutional evolution. Written in accessible prose that avoids undue legal jargon, the book aims at a general audience that is interested in understanding the complex yet fascinating challenges posed by constitutionalism in India. Its unconventional approach to some classic issues will stimulate the more seasoned student of constitutional law and politics.
Author: Debasish Roy Chowdhury
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192588273
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
India is heralded as the world's largest democracy. Yet, there is now growing alarm about its democratic health. To Kill a Democracy gets to the heart of the matter. Combining poignant life stories with sharp scholarly insight, it rejects the belief that India was once a beacon of democracy but is now being ruined by the destructive forces of Modi-style populism. The book details the much deeper historical roots of the present-day assaults on civil liberties and democratic institutions. Democracy, the authors also argue, is much more than elections and the separation of powers. It is a whole way of life lived in dignity, and that is why they pay special attention to the decaying social foundations of Indian democracy. In compelling fashion, the book describes daily struggles for survival and explains how lived social injustices and unfreedoms rob Indian elections of their meaning, while at the same time feeding the decadence and iron-fisted rule of its governing institutions. Much more than a book about India, To Kill A Democracy argues that what is happening in the country is globally important, and not just because every third person living in a democracy is an Indian. It shows that when democracies rack and ruin their social foundations, they don't just kill off the spirit and substance of democracy. They lay the foundations for despotism.
