We the People: Establishing Rights and Deepening Democracy – eBook

Who are the people of India? What are their human rights? What are their claims on the Indian Constitution and on democracy?

As a part of Samruddha Bharat Foundation’s series Rethinking India, We the People: Establishing Rights and Deepening Democracy (ePub) brings together a set of essays that explores the interesting process of the germination and growth of unquestionable universal rights, and of them being developed as solid entitlements in India. The essays also explore the continuing challenge of establishing, realizing, and protecting these entitlements.

The authors are activists, academics, and practitioners with a strong relationship with social movements and thus uniquely placed to link practice to theory. Their narratives track the use of the rights-based framework of the Indian Constitution by socio-political movements in order to strengthen the cultural, economic, and social rights of ordinary Indians.

The numerous perspectives draw upon and contextualize the complicated relationship of the citizen with the state, society, and the market in democratic India. Their sharp analyses have a counterpoint in stories of creative, successful alternatives designed by peoples’ collectives. There is both an implicit and explicit challenge to conservative notions of ‘market-led development’ that see rivalry and profits as central to ‘progress’ and success. These essays look at the theoretical demands for changing the current situation, but also for working out the nuts and bolts of such change.

The papers showcase the continuing dialectic between established constitutional rights and shifting state policy. The crisis unbridled by the response to COVID-19 has exposed the fault lines of this dilemma dramatically. It is a satire that when the government has to exponentially expand its capacity to deliver employment, health, and food to people, it has no recourse but to the framework of the same rights-based legislation, it has continuously tried to run down. These essays provide priceless insight at a time when many sacred pillars of neoliberal ‘globalization’ are disintegrating, and the capitalist superstructure is itself turning to the state for survival. They will encourage understanding, scholarship, and enliven debates as we continue to search for answers in uncertain and challenging times.

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NOTE: The product only includes the ebook, We the People in the original ePub format. No access codes are included.