Gender, Governance and Empowerment in India

This book is an ethnography of the Indian state and its policy of legislated entry of women into political life. It argues that political participation of women is necessary to change the political practices in society, to make institutions more gender, class and caste representative, and to empower individual women to negotiate both formal and informal institutions. Its locus is the everyday life contexts of elected women representatives in the southern Indian state of Karnataka who negotiate their own meanings of politics, state, society, empowerment and political subjectivity.

Sreevidya Kalaramadam is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at William Paterson University, USA.

1. Introduction 2. The State as Field 3. Decentralization and the Conditions Of Participation 4. EWRs and the Burden of "Bringing Development 5. Negotiating a Fine Balance: "Private" in the Public Sphere 6. EWRs and the Politics Of Parties, Civil And Political Society 7. Conclusion: Unleashing the Potential of PRIs