Manohar Publishers and Distributors

11 November, 2012

State Politics and Panchayats in India

By- Buddhadeb Ghosh and Girish Kumar

Since independence several attempts were made to find a space for the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) in Indian polity. However, barring Maharashtra, Gujarat and West Bengal, the PRIs could never survive elsewhere in the country. This led to the necessity of constitutionalizing panchayats in 1992, an attempt which also met with limited success.

Why were PRIs retained in certain states even without a constitutional mandate? Conversely, why did others lag behind? These facts draw attention to the question of ‘political will’. But what prompts certain political regimes to adopt a pro-panchayat approach and others to oppose them, even though all states are operating within the same democratic system?

In their quest to answer theses questions, the authors have tried to look into the linkages between the panchayats and state level politics. This, in turn, has enabled them to identify the political factors that have so far determined the course of decentralization in this country. Their findings are based on the case studies of four states, namely, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal and Bihar. Apart from highlighting the political variables whose presence or absence make or mar the prospects of panchayats, this volume also raises serious questions about the capacity of the present political system to provide genuine support to the project of decentralization and local democracy.

Buddhadeb Ghosh is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi. Earlier, he served the Government of West Bengal in various capacities including a stint as Director, State Institute of Panchayats.

Girish Kumar is a Fellow in Political Science at the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi. Earlier, he worked with the Institute of Social Sciences and also at the LBS National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie.

ISBN 81-7304-487-2 2003 244p. Rs.475/Pounds 40

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Social and Political Change in Uttar Pradesh : European Perspectives

By- Roger Jeffery and Jens Lerche (eds)

The state of Uttar Pradesh—India’s most populous, but also one of its poorest—is in crisis, lagging behind the rest of the country in terms of social development, economic growth, and women’s empowerment, with inefficient and ineffective democratic institutions. In this timely book, established scholars and new voices from Europe reflect on aspects of the perilous condition of UP, addressing a range of issues, all drawing on intensive and extended fieldwork.

What used to be UP’s strength has turned into its weakness. Its position in India—as the quintessential Indian state – is unique, but no specific UP-identity has been developed. In papers discussing people’s own perceptions of core social and political issues, local ideas of what is needed for development are discussed. Gender relations are a central concern of two papers, one on customary marriage and divorce practices at village level and the other on changing notions of education for girls and the images of the UP plains held by those in the hills. Other papers deal with the social bases and ideology of the separatist movement in the UP hills; with Dalits and farmers, and the political organizations aiming to represent their interests; with farmers, and how far the BKU is articulating their demands in western UP; and with how Jats in western UP are changing the way they maintain their dominance. The two final papers discuss how modern mass media—TV and newspapers—are shaping developments in UP.

The book—a major advance in our understanding of contemporary patterns of social change in UP—will be essential reading for concerned citizens, students and academics alike.

Roger Jeffery holds a personal chair in the Sociology of South Asia in the University of Edinburgh. His research interests are in social demography, rural social change, social aspects of forestry and education and social inequality. Since 1982 he has carried out three extended periods of research in Bijnor district, each concerned with gender relationships.

Jens Lerche has taught Development Studies at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) since 1994. His main research interests are rural labour relations and the role of government institutions in India and Nepal. He has researched Uttar Pradesh since 1992, investigating socio-economic and political processes influenceing the livelihoods of the rural poor, the feminization of agricultural labour; emergence of new types of labour relations within modern agriculture; and violent dominance of rural workers.

ISBN 81-7304-500-3 2003 318p. Rs.625/Pounds 50

07 November, 2012

Social and Cultural History of the Punjab : Prehistoric, Ancient and Early Medieval

By- J.S. Grewal

The ‘Punjab’ of this book is a metaphor for the geographical region surrounded by the Himalayas, the Great Indian Desert, the Aravali Hills and the river Jamuna. During a period of about 4000 years up to ad 1000, the cultural boundaries of this region did not coincide with its geographical boundaries and there were sub-regional differences as well. There was a great deal of interaction with the outside world and between sub-regions. The socio-cultural dynamics of the region are well reflected in the different periods of its history.

Seen from the regional angle, the Harappan civilization reveals sub-regional diversities and continuation in a rural setting. The Rigvedic culture appears to be a regional rather than an ethnic articulation. The formation of states within the region and its incorporation in empires set the stage for trade and urbanization, and for new socio-cultural formations. For the first time the great importance of Buddhism in the region gets underscored. Gradually, however, it was replaced by Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism.

Changes in religious history are related to the changing contexts of polity and economy in their bearing on the social order, languages, literature and the arts. The book should be of equal interest to the student, the professional historian and the general reader.

J.S. Grewal, formerly Professor of History and then Vice-Chancellor, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, and Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, is an eminent historian of the Punjab, and of medieval and modern Indian history in general.

ISBN 978-81-7304-565-3 2004 186p. Rs.465/Pounds 35

Small Hands in South Asia: Child Labour in Perspective

By- G.K. Lieten, Ravi Srivastava and Sukhadeo Thorat (eds.)

Published in association with

Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development

Child labour has become a hot issue. International attention has often been focused on South Asia, and initiatives have been undertaken to use pro-active policies, such as a trade boycott, to pressurise governments in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh to implement a complete ban on child labour and to realize universal education.

A gathering of outstanding international scholars, financed by the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development, has discussed these issues on the basis of empirically grounded research papers. A selection of these papers has been edited for this volume.

The volume contains papers on the extent of child labour in South Asia (and the spread across regions and sectors), its correlation with education, some of the worst forms of child labour, and best practices. The papers are a good mix of social anthropology, economics and political science approaches.

The expertise of the contributors and their concern for what continues to be a stark reality in South Asia make this book an invaluable source of reference on the issue of child labour, academically rigorous and politically relevant. It will be highly relevant to policy makers, scholars, journalists and practitioners.

Kristoffel Lieten holds the Child Labour chair at the University of Amsterdam and at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. He has been the chairman of the IREWOC Foundation (Institute for Research on Working Children) and has initiated several research projects on child labour and child agency.

Ravi K. Srivastava earlier worked at the University of Allahabad and is now professor of economics of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He has published extensively on the agrarian problem in India and has recently conducted various studies on human development, particularly on education, in the rural areas of north India.

Sukhadeo Thorat is a professor at the Centre for Regional Development at the Jawaharlal Nehru University and is the Director of the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi. He has published various articles on agriculture development, poverty, caste, the discrimination of dalits and inequality.

ISBN 978-81-7304-531-8 2004 342p. Rs.650/Pounds 50

06 November, 2012

Saffron Versus Green: Communal Politics in the Central Provinces and Berar 1919-1947

By- Kanchanmoy Mojumdar

Communalism was a factor in the politics of the Central Provinces and Berar after the Montford Reforms. The problem of adjustment of the interests of the entrenched Hindu and emerging Muslim elite was coeval with the process of administrative changes brought about by successive constitutional measures adopted by the British government. The social fall-out of the problem was the riots that raged in the region.

This work is a pioneering attempt at tracing the course of communalism in this particular politically backward province. The role of the British administrators in this growth of communalism has been critically analysed alongside the involvement of their politically ambitious Indian collaborators. The influence of the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS and many Congressmen’s involvement in the Hindu unity movement have been explained. This is the first full-length study of the growth of Muslim political activity in central India both before and after the Muslim League became a factor to reckon with in this region.

Kanchanmoy Mojumdar has given lectures and seminars at Australian and American universities under the Commonwealth Universities Interchange Programme and Fulbright (Indo-American Cultural Exchange) Fellowship scheme respectively. In 1996 and 2000 he taught a course on the history of Modern India at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA.

He was a Reader at Behrampur University, Orissa and later Professor and Head of the Department of History, Nagpur University.

ISBN 81-7304-527-5 2003 260p. Rs.550/Pounds 45

RSS’S Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan

Pralay Kanungo

This RSS is perhaps the most controversial organization in contemporary India. This book explores the mission, method and motive of the RSS and suggests that the ideological core of the RSS—Hindu Rashtra—is political and not cultural. It argues that K.B. Hedgewar the founder of the RSS, had a clear political mission, while M.S. Golwalkar, his successor, despite his saintly appearance and overt distaste for ‘politics’, sharpened and amplified its ideology Nevertheless, deep down the RSS remained political.

This book goes on to delineate how Balasaheb Deoras, the third chief, who did not have much of a fancy for ‘culture’, plunged into Indian politics on the organizational and ideological foundation created by his predecessors. Deoras seriously pursued the homogenizing agenda of the RSS to integrate different sections like the Dalits, tribals and women into the fold of the Hindu Rashtra. Rajendra Singh, the successor of Deoras, consolidated the political mission by getting control over the State and reaching out to civil society more effectively. K.S. Sudarshan, the present chief, while attempting to retain a tight control over State power, simultaneously reinforces Hindutva.

The author concludes by arguing that the RSS—from Hedgewar to Sudarshan—continues its tryst with politics to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra.

Highly readable and of contemporary relevance, this book would be of immense interest to political scientists, political sociologists and all those interested in present-day India.

Pralay Kanungo is Reader at the Department of Political Science, Ramjas College, University of Delhi. His current research is on aspects of Hindu identity and diaspora in the United States, for which he has been awarded a Fellowship by the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi.

ISBN 81-7304-506-2 2003 314p. Rs.325/Pounds 18.99

Punjab Politics, 1936–1939

The Start of Provincial Autonomy

Governor’s Fortnightly Reports and other Key Documents

By - Lionel Carter (Comp. and ed.)

This volume produces the texts of 123 fortnightly reports and other documents sent to the Viceroy by the Governors of the Punjab or their secretaries between 1936 and 1939. The Governors’ descriptions of their many tours throughout the Province provide a vivid picture of the Punjab in these last self-confident years of the Raj. There is much discussion of political developments taking place within the various communities. Congress was relatively weak in the Punjab at the start of the volume but its growing importance is evident at the close. The volume is dominated by the personality and activities of the Muslim Premier of the ruling Unionist Party, Sir Sikander Hyat Khan. His negotiation of a Pact with Jinnah’s Muslim League in October 1937 was to prove a milestone of the pre-independence years. The documents show the problems which arose in the actual working-out of the arrangements then agreed.

For more than 10 years. Lionel Carter was a member of the team (led by Nicholas Mansergh) which produced the British Government’s series of Documents on the Transfer of Power to India, 1942-47. From 1980 until 1999, Carter served as Secretary and Librarian of the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge. Carter has compiled a volume of Chronicles of British Business in Asia, 1850-1960 (Manohar, 2002) and has edited Mountbatten’s Report on the Last Viceroyalty (Manohar, 2003).

ISBN 978-81-7304-568-4 2004 444p. Rs.995/Pounds 60