Description
Book SynopsisThis book challenges the ongoing debates on poor people's negotiations with democracy. It analyses the varied ways in which the poor participate in a democracy. Based on fieldwork, Roy argues that poor people neither assimilate into the universal values associated with democracy nor maintain their difference vis-à-vis democracy.
Table of ContentsList of tables, maps and charts; Acknowledgements; Glossary; Introduction: against false binaries; 1. The perspectives of the study: towards an Agonistics of democracy; 2. Political spaces: institutional opportunity structures; 3. Political spaces: social relations of power; 4. From clientelism to citizenship?: The politics of supplications; 5. From moral vocabularies to languages of stateness?: The politics of demands; 6. From backwardness to improvement?: The politics of disputation; 7. From tradition to modernity?: The politics of imagination; Conclusion: the politics of the poor: agonistic negotiations with democracy; Annexure 1: the dramatis personae; Annexure 2: the census survey; Annexure 3: the Multidimensional Poverty Index; Annexure 4: Schedule for BPL Census 2002; Annexure 5: Schedule for BPL Census 2002 West Bengal; Annexure 6: BPL Cutoff List for West Bengal; Annexure 7: Bihar Mahadalit Vikas Mission Mandate; Bibliography; Index.
