'Indian politics is at the cusp of a profound transformation'
Amulya Gopalakrishnan Posted online: Thursday , Feb 04, 2010 at 0150 hrs
New Delhi : A 600-page doorstopper of a book, The Oxford Companion to
Politics in India, was launched by Union Minister for Human Resource
Development Kapil Sibal on Wednesday. Co-edited by distinguished
academics and public intellectuals Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu
Mehta, the volume is a guide to the many facets of Indian politics, at
a moment of major transition.
The essays in this collection are "many windows into the house of
Indian democracy," said Jayal — a "phenomenon more celebrated than
understood". Contributors (who include political scientists,
economists and sociologists) had a demanding mandate — to be valuable
to specialists as well as accessible to a general reader. Like the
recent Oxford Companion to Economics, this is a reference work with
all the boldface names of Indian social science — from Kanti Bajpai to
Ramachandra Guha, Partha Chatterjee to Christopher Jaffrelot and many,
many more.
The Indian democratic experiment had not been spectacularly responsive
to the needs of citizens, said Jayal. In India, "a reasonably robust
democracy has not yielded a reasonably egalitarian, let alone just,
social order". Applauding the editors for taking on Indian politics
"in its historical context, thematic context and narrative context",
Kapil Sibal took on Jayal's statement to deliver an expansive take on
India's achievements. "When colonial rule ended, we were left with a
command economy, no enterprise worth its name, no industrial economy,
and rain-fed agriculture — how could you have served an egalitarian
agenda?" As a minister formulating education policy, Sibal said he was
constantly confronted with India's staggering diversity, and the
awareness that one model would never fit all. He also discussed the
Constitution — "one of the most democratic documents in the history of
mankind".
"Despite all the problems and challenges of Indian democracy, we are
on the cusp of a profound transformation," said Pratap Bhanu Mehta.
The challenge of describing these momentous times lies in telling the
difference between what is structural and necessary, and what is
contingent about these changes. Mehta said it was exhilarating to be
reminded of "the stakes of what it is we are studying", and "what an
extraordinary subject the study of Indian politics is".
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