Politics in India

This third edition of Politics in India provides a timely counter-narrative to pessimistic prognoses about the future of Indian democracy. It focuses on the resilience of India's democratic political system and its strategic reorientation in response to electoral mandates emerging from the country's vigorously competitive elections. In a comprehensive analysis of the country's democratic processes, Mitra brings together political theory and historical perspective in order to provide a comparative analysis and interpretation of issues that have occupied the Indian state since Independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Based on the rationality of the Indian voter and the strategic acumen of the political leaders, this is the first comprehensive explanation of how India has achieved a seamless transition from colonial rule to a robust and resilient democracy. Mitra explains how India has sought to balance development with social justice, consent with force, and pursue strategic autonomy in the global arena. As a result, the book demonstrates that, despite occasional breakdown of orderly rule, the political process consistently restores dynamic equilibrium of the system. The chapters, cross-referenced, can be read both as stand-alone essays on specific themes, as well as parts of a single narrative. Supplemented with tables, boxes, illustrations, and comprehensive notes on further reading, the new edition will continue to be an essential reading for students and researchers in Indian and South Asian studies, introduction to political science and world politics, development studies, sociology, comparative politics, and political theory. General readers interested in how the world's most populous democracy functions on a day-to-day basis may find the volume a useful introduction to Indian politics.

Subrata K. Mitra was Head of the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany (1994-2014). In the course of his years in teaching, research, and academic collaboration, he has applied his specialisation in rational choice theory and quantitative methods to a diversity of fields which include Indian and comparative politics; democratisation; the post-colonial state and social change; governance; elections and political parties; state-formation and sub-national movements; foreign policy; religion and art history; and transcultural studies. This diversity can be seen in the range of his publications which include India: Statecraft and Foreign Policy (with Jivanta Schottli, and Markus Pauli, 2023), The 2019 Parliamentary Elections in India: Democracy at the Crossroads? (with Rekha Saxena and Pampa Mukherjee, 2022), 'The 2024 parliamentary elections in India: nation, region and religion' (with Harihar Bhattacharyya, forthcoming, 2026); Governance by Stealth: The Ministry of Home Affairs and the Making of the Indian State (2021); Kautilya's Arthashastra: An Intellectual Biography - the Classical Roots of Modern Politics in India (with Michael Liebig, 2017); Citizenship and the Flow of Ideas in the Era of Globalization (2012); Re-use: The Art and Politics of Integration and Anxiety (with Julia Hegewald, 2012); When Rebels Become Stakeholders (with V.B. Singh, 2009) and The Puzzle of India's Governance (2005).

PART I: Introduction 1 Indian politics in the 21st century: democracy, diversity, and governance 2 The 'idioms' of Indian politics: culture, context, and the rational voter PART II: History, society, and identity 3 The past in the making of the present: the longue durée of Indian politics 4 Caste, language, and religion: politics and social cleavages in India 5 Nationising India: politics in quest of a collective identity PART III: Government and the political process 6 Strength with accountability: the institutional arrangement of the Indian state 7 India's symmetric and asymmetric federalism: balancing national unity and regional autonomy 8 Elections and political parties: democracy's workhorses 9 Radical politics, 'demand groups' and consolidation of democratic governance 10 Force in the making of legitimacy: the keepers of order, and the consolidation of Indian democracy PART IV: Economy, social justice, and India's global outreach 11 The state and the economy: the challenge of democracy and development 12 The state and social justice: poverty, social vulnerability, and welfare 13 India and the world: statecraft and foreign policy PART V: Conclusion: consolidating democratic governance 14 The resilience of India's counterfactual democracy, and its anomalies 15 Consolidating democratic governance in India: prospects and problems Further reading Appendix Bibliography Index