Law and Democracy in Contemporary India PDF Download

Author: Tatsuya Yamamoto
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319958372
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This book analyses legal orders, actors and democracy in contemporary India, with a particular focus on the everyday contexts and dynamics of human rights, citizenship and socio-economic rights and laws. The contributions explore both ‘institutionalization from above’, where the judiciary and legislative body aim to govern people, and ‘institutionalization from below’, where the governed attempt to expand their substantive rights embedded within their everyday lives. This analysis identifies contact zones between the two directions, which act as spaces for democratic participation and negotiation. Such a perspective should be useful to both those who are interested in Indian politics, and anthropologists and sociologists working on dynamics of laws and rights.

Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher:
ISBN: 0674980875
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
"How did the founders of the most populous democratic nation in the world meet the problem of establishing a democracy after the departure of foreign rule? The justification for British imperial rule had stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. At the heart of India's founding moment, in which constitution-making and democratization occurred simultaneously, lay the question of how to implement democracy in an environment regarded as unqualified for its existence. India's founders met this challenge in direct terms-the people, they acknowledged, had to be educated to create democratic citizens. But the path to education lay not in being ruled by a superior class of men but rather in the very creation of a self-sustaining politics. Universal suffrage was instituted amidst poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. Under the guidance of B. R. Ambedkar, Indian lawmakers crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable of conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian constitution-the longest in the world-came into effect. More than half of the world's constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late-eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries that are characterized by low levels of economic growth and education; are divided by race, religion, and ethnicity; and have democratized at once, rather than gradually. The Indian founding is a natural reference point for such constitutional moments-when democracy, constitutionalism, and modernity occur simultaneously"--

Author: Tirthankar Roy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022679914X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
An essential history of India's economic growth since 1947, including the legal reforms that have shaped the country in the shadow of colonial rule. Economists have long lamented how the inefficiency of India's legal system undermines the country’s economic capacity. How has this come to be? The prevailing explanation is that the postcolonial legal system is understaffed and under-resourced, making adjudication and contract enforcement slow and costly. Taking this as given, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy examines the contents and historical antecedents of these laws, including how they have stifled economic development. Economists Roy and Swamy argue that legal evolution in independent India has been shaped by three factors: the desire to reduce inequality and poverty; the suspicion that market activity, both domestic and international, can be detrimental to these goals; and the strengthening of Indian democracy over time, giving voice to a growing fraction of society, including the poor. Weaving the story of India's heralded economic transformation with its social and political history, Roy and Swamy show how inadequate legal infrastructure has been a key impediment to the country's economic growth during the last century. A stirring and authoritative history of a nation rife with contradictions, Law and the Economy in a Young Democracy is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand India's current crossroads—and the factors that may keep its dreams unrealized.

Author: Niraja Gopal Jayal
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This study examines the relationship between state, society and democracy in India over the last decade of the 20th century, by exploring how the Indian state has fared vis-a-vis its three major goals in independent India: welfare, secularism and development. In exploring some aspects of the discursive terrain of Indian politics, the book provides a narrative which bridges the gap between political theory and empirical political analysis.

Author: Devesh Kapur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019909313X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.

Author: Melvil Pereira
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351403664
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
This book offers a multifaceted look at Northeast India and the customs and traditions that underpin its legal framework. The book: charts the transition of traditions from colonial rule to present day, through constitutionalism and the consolidation of autonomous identities, as well as outlines contemporary debates in an increasingly modernising region; explores the theoretical context of legal pluralism and its implications, compares the personal legal systems with that of the mainland, and discusses customary law’s continuing popularity (both pragmatic and ideological) and common law; brings together case studies from across the eight states and focuses on the way individual systems and procedures manifest among various tribes and communities in the voices of tribal and non-tribal scholars; and highlights the resilience and relevance of alternative systems of redressal, including conflict resolution and women’s rights. Part of the prestigious ‘Transition in Northeastern India’ series, this book presents an interesting blend of theory and practice, key case studies and examples to study legal pluralism in multicultural contexts. It will be of great interest to students of law and social sciences, anthropology, political science, peace and conflict studies, besides administrators, judicial officers and lawyers in Northeast India, legal scholars and students of tribal law, and members of customary law courts of various tribal communities in Northeast India.

Author: Shivalingappa A. Palekar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Democracy
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description

Author: Devesh Kapur
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509927735
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
The rise of the regulatory state has been a major feature of modern constitutional democracies. India, the world's largest democracy, is no exception to this trend. This book is the first major study of regulation in India. It considers how the development of regulation in India has altered the nature and functions of the state; how it is reshaping the relationship between business and the state; how it has called for the refashioning of established legal principles; and how it has raised new questions about the relationship between technical expertise and the rule of law. The chapters cover topics ranging from the foundations of the Indian regulatory state to the form of regulation across different sectors to regulation in practice. Together, the chapters reveal the challenges, promise, and limitations offered by contemporary regulatory practices, and they capture the close if sometimes fraught relationship that regulation must inevitably share with the political economy and constitutional schema within which it operates.

Author: Philipp Dann
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781789901566
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Comparing the structures and challenges of democratic constitutionalism in India and the European Union, this book explores how democracy is possible within vastly diverse societies of continental scale, and why a constitutional framework is best able to secure the ideals of collective autonomy and individual dignity. It contributes to an emerging comparative discussion on structures of power, separation of powers and a comparative law of democracy, which has been long neglected in comparative constitutional studies. This timely and invigorating book showcases a novel comparative approach termed 'slow comparison', counters the conceptual focus on nation-states in comparative studies and develops a broader understanding of democratic constitutionalism. In the context of the contemporary crisis of constitutional democracy, triggered by populism, majoritarianism and authoritarianism, chapters continue older ongoing debates about multiculturalism, identity politics and democratic equality that hold important insights for both India and the EU to deal with contemporary challenges. This book will be an important read for scholars of comparative constitutional law and theory. It will also benefit those studying EU law and Indian constitutional law.

Author: Chris Thornhill
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107199905
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 599

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Book Description
Provides a new legal-sociological theory of democracy, reflecting the impact of global law on national political institutions. This title is also available as Open Access.