Development and Democracy in India / / Shalendra D. Sharma.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Lynne Rienner Press Complete Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Sharma, Shalendra D.,
• Place / Publishing House: Boulder : : Lynne Rienner Publishers, , [2022]; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (281 p.)

This broad, historically grounded study examines the relationship between democratic governance and economic development in postindependence India (1947-1998). Sharma addresses the fundamental paradox of India’s political economy: why have five decades of democratically guided strategies failed to reconcile economic growth with redistribution or to mitigate the condition of extreme poverty in which some 350-400 million Indians—more than 40 percent of the population—live? Drawing on an exhaustive empirical review of India’s rural development and reform policies over the past fifty years, Sharma demonstrates that the wide discrepancies between development goals and actual outcomes have been fundamentally shaped by the manner in which the various constituents of the democratic polity coexist with and are inextricably embedded in rural society. His study challenges traditional concepts of democracy and development, as well as the relationship between the two.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Map of India -- Introduction -- 1 Democracy and Development: The State-Society Approach -- 2 Nationalism, Democracy, and Development: The Making of a “Weak-Strong State” -- 3 Rural Development During the Nehru Era: Limits to Reform and Redistribution -- 4 The State, Public Policy, and Agricultural Modernization -- 5 Contradictions of the Green Revolution: Growth Without Redistribution -- 6 The New Agrarianism and Rural Development -- 7 Democracy, Neoliberalism, and Development with Equity: India in Comparative Perspective -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Book