Democracy, Development, and the Countryside Urban-Rural Struggles in India [Paperback]

This book examines how the rural sector in India uses its numbers in a democracy to further its economic and political interests.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.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.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.Preface; Introduction; 1. Town-Country struggles in development; 2. Nehru's agricultural policy: a Reconstruction; 3. Policy change in the mid-1960s; 4. Rise of Agrarian power in the 1970s; 5. Organizing the countryside in the 1980s; 6. Has rural India lost out?; 7. Paradoxes of power and the intracacies of economic policy; 8. Conclusion: democracy and the countryside; Endnotes.