This book presents numerous discussions of specific aspects of democratic politics, showing how 'democracy' can be projected as a model of deliberate imperfection - a model that tolerates various loose ends in the system - and how democracy recognizes a multiplicity of possible courses open to the system at any point in time. Against this backdrop, the book carefully analyzes the lifetime work of D.L. Sheth, which, seen as a whole, offers us with a theory of Indian politics. The selection of fifteen essays has been clustered into five sections that signify the major domains of democratic politics: State, Nation, Democracy; Parapolitics of Democracy; Social Power and Democracy; Representation in Liberal Democracy; and Emerging Challenges of Democracy. These essays give a sense of the transformations and struggles that are underway in India, brought about by the dynamics of democratic politics. Each of the fifteen chapters focuses on one aspect, providing a unique analysis of the deepening of democracy in India.

The majorconflicts between the Global North and the South can be expected toresult from the confrontation of alternative conceptions of democracy,mainly between liberal or representative democracy and participatorydemocracy. The hegemonic model of democracy, while prevailing on aglobal scale, guarantees no more than low-intensity democracy. Inrecent times, participatory democracy has exhibited a new dynamic,engaging mainly subaltern communities and social groups that fightagainst social exclusion and the suppression of citizenship. In thiscollection of reports from the Global South-India, South Africa,Mozambique, Colombia, and Brazil-De Sousa Santos and his colleaguesshow how, in some cases, the deepening of democracy results from thedevelopment of dual forms of participatory and representativedemocracy, and points to the emergence of transnational networks ofparticipatory democracy initiatives. Such networks pave one of the waysto the reinvention of social emancipation. This is volume 1 of the Reinventing Social Emancipation project, edited by Boaventura de Sousa Santos.