{"title":"Bypassing the Patronage Trap: Evidence from Delhi Assembly Election 2020","authors":"A. Barthwal, Asim Ali","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043081","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have long theorized on the limits of patronage politics and the possibility of counter-mobilization it produces against clientelist strategies. Analysing the recent win of the Aam Aadmi Party in the 2020 Assembly election in Delhi, this article shows that programmatic policies of welfare can help parties to circumvent this trap and avoid targeted patronage networks. We find that this broad-based appeal increases the social base of the party to even include those segments of voters who remain aloof to patronage-based exchanges. Additionally, we test the salience of majoritarian issues in the presence of universal welfare. We find that by locating themselves on issue positions of relative advantage, and reducing the ideological distance with their chief competitor, a policy-focussed party may capture not just ideology-agnostic, but also peripheral voters who might be opposed to the other challenger. Using a logistic regression model, we find that policy concerns catapulted AAP to victory, while its ideological distance from the BJP added to this. Our analysis has significance for understanding the underlying changes to patronage-based linkages, especially in the presence of heightened ethnic appeals that increasingly characterizes electoral contexts in the country.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"254 - 272"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46907041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Behind the Popular Narrative: Negotiating Life and Political Engagement in Conflicted Kashmir","authors":"Wahid Ahmad Dar","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043076","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on the subaltern system of micro appropriations or Jugaads used by young Kashmiris to survive within precarious situations inflicted due to armed conflict. More particularly, it argues that such Jugaads are invoked by the subaltern consciousness of Tehreeq-e-Azadi, which offers space for not just the negotiation with the state but also the creative improvisation of daily political actions. It is illustrated that young people’s political participation is entangled with the attempts to overcome the uncertainty around their lives, thereby offering them pragmatic solutions in advancing their interests. It is further elaborated that the existing polarization between separatism and mainstream is obscure at the experiential level, living within precarious situations has taught young people to silently craft possibilities of a good life without looking confrontational to either side. The article argues that localized forms of engagement are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of how modern states operate.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"179 - 191"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47598806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Double Life of Dissent: Art, Politics and the Predicaments of Democracy in India","authors":"Malvika Maheshwari","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043019","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on two moments in India’s political history, in which out-rightly expressed dissent underlines analytical shifts in the nature and course of the country’s democracy. It asks two questions: First, what does a self-proclaimed, democratic state do with peaceful dissenting artists? The second question follows from this. If indeed the state stigmatizes and suppresses that dissent, what does the artist do? By foregrounding the relationship between the dissent and offence-taking, the article shows the increasingly complex changes in the nature of the democratic state, role of the art market therein, the dynamic patterns of dissent itself, which underline the cyclic outbursts of violence against artists.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"165 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42238431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Governance and Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir: Measuring Public Trust in Formal Institutions","authors":"A. Wani, Muzamil Yaqoob","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043080","url":null,"abstract":"The common association of political trust, legitimacy and participation within democratic states has engaged scholars to answer questions like: what are the bases of trusting the state and its institutions? And how enculturing trust can strengthen democratic governance? In this direction, institutional trust, which is invariably linked to political legitimacy, is critical to measure the health of governance. This article reflects upon the state-centric approach to governance, by exploring the interplay of institutional trust and public legitimacy in Jammu and Kashmir. The study of the state of institutional trust, as reflected in the post-2002 empirical data, enriches the theoretical discourse on governance in a conflict region.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"192 - 207"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49208513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Education Policy: Notes from Academic Hinterlands","authors":"Rajeshwari Deshpande","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043195","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043195","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"273 - 274"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47944467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Teaching Political Science in the Margins","authors":"Abhay Datar","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043312","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"275 - 277"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46421654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letters from a Province: Harekrushna Mahtab to Jawaharlal Nehru, 1947–1949","authors":"R. Ankit","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043018","url":null,"abstract":"On 1 November 1947, Harekrushna Mahtab, premier of Orissa, British/independent India’s youngest province, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This was in reply to the first of Nehru’s famous letters to the provincial chiefs. In it, Nehru had expressed his wish to read similarly from them and Mahtab responded in kind. For the next 2 years, Mahtab wrote to Nehru, before leaving Orissa to become a union minister. These letters, present among the Mahtab Papers (NMML, New Delhi), provide an often-downplayed vantage of the province, to view the concerns of the nation contained in Nehru’s letters. Where the latter were meant ‘to educate and exhort’, the former comprised a return catalogue of official information, societal caution, and the Congress Party’s particularities.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"449 ","pages":"208 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41280793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction to Special Section on the Politics of Knowledge in Development","authors":"Madhulika Banerjee","doi":"10.1177/2321023021999159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2321023021999159","url":null,"abstract":"The twenty-first century search of offering alternatives to the hegemonic development paradigm, whilst responding urgently to climate change, seeks to answer a specific question. What kind of knowledge of production in society could possibly be the best to opt for, to develop at this point in history? It is not the first time that this question has either been asked or an answer to it, attempted. Scholarly debates on the relevance and significance of ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous’ knowledge for development, wherever the failure of modern knowledge was clearly in evidence, had taken place earlier. Then why now, again? This Special Section of the SIP argues that in the last five decades, or so, several streams of practice on the ground have worked on this possibility to demonstrate a tangible significance of ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous’ knowledge as ‘alternative’ systems of knowledges to those of the modernist, capitalist knowledges of production and, therefore, deserve careful analysis. Second, that studies of how these have evolved towards contemporary relevance show a complexity of contestations at several levels and spaces that make it possible—namely, historical context, state policy, political economy, collective action and institutions. It is clear from the ground that all of these spaces actually contribute to the making of the epistemology of knowledge systems. Therefore, to understand whether already existing knowledge systems can contribute to contemporary processes of ‘development’ or ‘well-being’, it would be helpful to analyse how all these spaces actually transform or reconstitute them. So the debate on knowledge, which has focused in the main, on the realm of epistemology, needs to extend well beyond that—whether in the natural or social sciences. For this, an analytical frame that enables an understanding, analysis and interpretation of this process of transformation of these knowledges of production through all the above five spaces is required. The first article offers precisely this, naming it the ‘Politics of Knowledge’, as also offering a new term for ‘traditional’ or ‘indigenous’ knowledge, namely, ‘already existing knowledge’. Using this frame as a point of reference, two articles are offered, each of which will take up a specific knowledge system and present an analysis of how that knowledge has adapted to the contemporary, helping it qualify as an alternative to the modernist/technicist/capitalist ones. These two articles are on seeds and flood management. Each of these has been selected because they are very important aspects of the essentials of people’s lives, forming a core component of ‘development’. They analyse how these five spaces interact in order to produce the structures of power these knowledges are located in. Together, these constitute the arguments of the politics of knowledge in development, though in a summary format. They also provide a framework of how other such knowledges may be studied. The intent is","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"76 - 77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2321023021999159","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45513500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Jennifer Bussell. Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies","authors":"P. Singh","doi":"10.1177/2321023021999180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2321023021999180","url":null,"abstract":"Jennifer Bussell. Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 2019. 369 pages. ₹1,100.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"132 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2321023021999180","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42931442","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Jason Keith Fernandes, Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa","authors":"M. Jha","doi":"10.1177/2321023021999189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/2321023021999189","url":null,"abstract":"Jason Keith Fernandes, Citizenship in a Caste Polity: Religion, Language and Belonging in Goa. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Co-published by New India Foundation. 2020. 380 pages. ₹975.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":"9 1","pages":"134 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/2321023021999189","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43882987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}