Democracy, Development, and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India

by Ashutosh Varshney

• ISBN13: 9780521646253
• ISBN10: 0521646251
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-09-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

What happens to the rural folk--to their power and economic well-being--when development takes place in a democratic framework? Focusing on India where, unlike most of the developing world, a democratic system has flourished for four decades, this book investigates how the rural sector uses its numbers in a democracy to further its economic and political interests. The book also argues that identities constitute a powerful constraint on the pursuit of economic interests.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix	(2)
A note on primary sources	xi
Introduction	1	(9)
1 Town-country struggles in development: A brief overview of existing theories	10	(18)
2 Nehru's agricultural policy: A reconstruction (1947-1964)	28	(20)
3 Policy change in the mid-1960s	48	(33)
4 The rise of agrarian power in the 1970s	81	(32)
5 Organizing the countryside in the 1980s	113	(33)
6 Has rural India lost out?	146	(28)
7 The paradoxes of power and the intricacies of economic policy	174	(17)
8 Democracy and the countryside	191	(12)
Appendix: Liberal trade regimes, border prices, and Indian agriculture	203	(4)
Index	207