Manoranjan Mohanty

Kalpana Kannabiran

Asha Hans

Pushpendra

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a mass exodus of India’s migrant workers from the cities back to the villages. This book explores the social conditions and concerns around health, labour, migration, and gender that were thrown up as a result of this forced migration. The book examines the failings of the public health systems and the state response to address the humanitarian crisis which unfolded in the middle of the pandemic. It highlights how the pandemic-lockdown disproportionately affected marginalised social groups – Dalits and the Adivasi communities, women and Muslim workers. The book reflects on the socio-economic vulnerabilities of migrant workers, their rights to dignity, questions around citizenship, and the need for robust systems of democratic and constitutional accountability. The chapters also critically look at the gendered vulnerabilities of women and non-cis persons in both public and private spaces, the exacerbation of social stratification and prejudices, incidents of intimidation by the administration and the police forces, and proposed labour reforms which might create greater insecurities for migrant workers. This important and timely book will be of great interest to researchers and students of sociology, public policy, development studies, gender studies, labour and economics, and law.

Pandemic Vulnerabilities and States of Exception in India

Migration, Workers, and Fundamental Freedoms

George Mathew

Richard Baum

Rong Ma

In both India and China, economic reforms have generated challenges for local institutions. This book studies the political experiences in India and China from an interdisciplinary perspective. It examines the process of democratisation, highlighting the demands for participation and the power structures interjecting them.

The Right To Participate

Grass-Roots Democracy in India and China

Both India and China have experienced economic changes and growing social consciousness which have generated new challenges for local institutions. This volume closely studies the resultant grass-roots political experiences in these countries from an interdisciplinary perspective. It examines the process of democratisation and highlights the growing demands for participation and the complex power structures interjecting them. The contributors to this volume discuss issues relating to institutional structures and the dynamics of local governance in a changing socio-economic environment that panchayati raj in India and village committee system in China represent. In addition to the political economy of rural areas, they also focus on the role of gender, caste, class, ethnicity and religion in local political processes.

The Political Philosophy of Mao Tse-Tung

The book provides insights into the economic and social transformation that China has undergone from 1979 to the present. Based on the author’s research in China for over three decades, China’s Transformation: The Success Story and the Success Trap shows how its ‘reform and open door’ policy evolved and helped achieve tremendous economic success. However, it also generated serious social and environmental problems. The book presents that the consequences of this success story of growth are so strong that it has been difficult for China to change its main development path to achieve a desirable level of equity and sustainability. The author describes this as the ‘success trap’ that China is currently grappling with. The author argues that China’s reform path is grounded in the premises of the European Industrial Revolution backed by strong sociopolitical forces at home, indicating that a major change in the development path is unlikely. However, all indications point to a strong and prosperous China as a rising world power in the coming decades, trying to cope with the sociopolitical problems in its own way.

Manoranjan Mohanty

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