INDRAJIT ROY

 

2016 (with Manali Desai) Development discourse and popular articulations in Urban Gujarat, Critical Asian Studies.

 

This article discusses how members of marginalized groups in the Indian state of Gujarat make sense of hegemonic discourses about national development in light of their own experiences and material circumstances. For many, the idea of development resonates even when they do not experience material progress in their lives. This partial hegemony of development discourse can be explained by the concept of “political articulation.”. This captures the political process by which parties succeed, at specific historical moments and under certain circumstances, in joining different, even potentially conflictual interests by referring to a common idea and project. The article focuses on Ahmedabad city where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has created a cross-caste bloc through the trope of development. The BJP has been particularly effective in linking the idea of development to mundane concerns about security, identity and spatial order. However, anxieties about the degradation of labour by increased casualization, informalization, and socio-spatial marginalization have disrupted this common sense linkage and weakened the hegemony of the BJP's model of development.

Keywords: development, parties, caste, Hindu nationalism, Gujarat

 

2015 (with Matthew McCartney), A consensus unravels: NREGA and the paradox of general welfare in India, European Journal of Development Research.

 

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was launched in India in 2006, and a widespread view is emerging that though flawed the NREGA has been successful in providing employment to the poorest. There was wide agreement among scholars before 2006 that India would not be able to promote such a regime of rules-based welfare and that schemes providing targeted patronage, open to political and bureaucratic manipulation and clientelism, would continue to be the norm. This article confirms that the NREGA was indeed a paradox and constructs a number of hypotheses using a political economy framework to explain it.

Keywords: India; welfare; employment; patronage; political economy 

 

2006 (with Uma Pradhan) Pluralism and Civil Society Partnerships: Perspectives from South Asia, Contemporary South Asia, 15(1): 55-74.

 

Hitherto, South Asian governments have found it convenient to arbitrate between different sections and communities. Increasingly, however, as a multiplicity of demands surface articulating the democratic aspirations of marginalised castes, creeds, tribal peoples and other ethnic groups, governments must work in collaboration with actors in civil society. As monolithically constructed communities are splintered along ‘local’ constituents and development agencies relate rights-based programming with disaggregated data on caste, class and gender, the possibilities for multiculturalism become manifold. Democratic pluralism is key to development. This paper is based on fieldwork in two contiguous regions of South Asia; the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal, and the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. On the one hand, this region has been the hotbed of linguo-religious identity construction and contestation since at least the 1870s, and especially after the 1920s. On the other hand, it has recently been witness to the emergence of strong political movements among hitherto ‘untouchable’ Dalits and landless classes, and the active interest of development agencies. Three broad themes are explored through this paper; the impact of development and markets on Dalit communities, cultures of subjugation and protest among them, and the impact of community-based groups on how they are able to negotiate and contest their disadvantages. The emergence of community-based organisations, especially those formed during the course of the struggle for labour rights, are seen as contributing to democratic pluralism. At the same time, the paper advises caution by emphasising that the formation of community-based organisations is no substitute for political advocacy or technical solutions; rather, they must be grounded in local traditions of protest to be effective.