In the socio-political milieu of the forties in India, the most contentious decade of the last century, ravaged with war, the Quit India movement, famine, partition and the civil war, the author draws our attention to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the father of the Indian Independence Movement, who, as he puts it, 'symbolised the conflicts and paradoxes of that time of transition'. As one critically examines Gandhi's views during the period of India's passage to political independence on issues such as war, decolonisation, nationalist challenge, state sovereignty, problems of governance and so on, a pertinent question surfaces: was Gandhi as confident in his political agenda and methods as history has asserted to the present day? Gandhi, again a satyagrahi, an ardent propagator of non-violent resistance to injustice throughout his life, appears in the eyes of the Englishmen, as an extremist and saboteur of the Allied democratic cause in the World War II. Using his scholarly acumen, the author unveils a new dimension to Gandhi's towering personality with the suggestion that time was closing down on him. It was a situation of classic aporia, when exit from the problem that Gandhi struggled to escape from became impossible in its own terms.

This book seeks to explicitly engage Marxist and post-colonial theory to place Marxism in the context of the post-colonial age. Those who study Marx, particularly in the West, often lack an understanding of post-colonial realities; conversely, however, those who fashion post-colonial theory often have an inadequate understanding of Marx. Many think that Marx is not relevant to critique postcolonial realities and the legacy of Marx seldom reaches the post-colonial countries directly. This work will read Marx in the contemporary post-colonial condition and elaborate the current dynamics of post-colonial capitalism. It does this by analysing contemporary post-colonial history and politics in the framework of inter-relations between the three categories of class, people, and postcolonial transformation. Examining the structure of power in postcolonial countries and revisiting the revolutionary theory of dual power in that context, it appreciates and explains the transformative potentialities of Marx in relation to post-colonial condition.

This book offers an original analysis and theorization of the biopolitics of development in the postcolonial present, and draws significantly from the later works of Michel Foucault on biopolitics. Foucault s works have had a massive influence on postcolonial literatures, particularly in political science and international relations, and several authors of this book have themselves made significant contributions to that influence.

While Foucault s thought has been inspirational for understanding colonial biopolitics as well as governmental rationalities concerned with development, his works have too often failed to inspire studies of political subjectivity. Instead, they have been used to stoke the myth of the inevitability of the decline of collective political subjects, often describing an increasingly limited horizon of political possibilities, and provoking a disenchantment with the political itself in postcolonial works and studies.

Working against the grain of current Foucauldian scholarship, this book underlines the importance of Foucault s work for the capacity to recognize how this degraded view of political subjectivity came about, particularly within the framework of the discourses and politics of development, and with particular attention to the predicaments of postcolonial peoples. It explores how we can use Foucault s ideas to recover the vital capacity to think and act politically at a time when fundamentally human capacities to think, know and to act purposively in the world are being pathologized as expressions of the hubris and underdevelopment of postcolonial peoples. Why and how it is that life in postcolonial settings has been depoliticized to such dramatic effect? The immediacy of these themes will be obvious to anyone living in the South of the world. But within the academy they remain heavily under-addressed. In thinking about what it means to read Michel Foucault today, this book tackles some significant questions and problems: Not simply that of how to explain the ways in which postcolonial regimes of governance have achieved the debasements of political subjectivity they have; nor that of how we might better equip them with the means to suborn the life of postcolonial peoples more fully; but that of how such peoples, in their subjection to governance, can and do resist, subvert, escape and defy the imposition of modes of governance which seek to remove their lives of those very capacities for resistance, subversion, flight, and defiance.

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This volume looks at how accumulation in postcolonial capitalism blurs the boundaries of space, institutions, forms, financial regimes, labour processes, and economic segments on one hand, and creates zones and corridors on the other. It draws our attention to the peculiar but structurally necessary coexistence of both primitive and virtual modes of accumulation in the postcolony. From these two major inquiries it develops a new understanding of postcolonial capitalism. The case studies in this volume discuss the production of urban spaces of capital extraction, institutionalization of postcolonial finance capital, gendering of work forms, establishment of new forms of labour, formation of and changes in caste and racial identities and networks, and securitization-and thereby confirm that no study of contemporary capitalism is complete without thoroughly addressing the postcolonial condition. By challenging the established dualities between citizenship-based civil society and welfare-based political society, exploring critically the question of colonial and postcolonial difference, and foregrounding the material processes of accumulation against the culturalism of postcolonial studies, this volume redefines postcolonial studies in South Asia and beyond. It is invaluable reading for students and scholars of South Asian studies, sociology, cultural and critical anthropology, critical and praxis studies, and political science.

This important and topical volume is composed around the debt and migration crisis in Europe in 2015 (known as the Greece crisis), and written almost concurrently as the two crises developed in quick succession. The central argument here is that Europe's present crisis suggests a post-colonial bind, or to put in stronger terms, a post-colonial destiny of Europe. The European situation bears remarkable similarity with the post-colonial condition elsewhere in the world and suggests a strong bond between Europe's present situation and the post-colonial bind in which much of the world finds itself. The purpose of this volume is to examine in the light of 21st century capitalism notions such as debt, crisis, rupture, dialogue, mobilization, neo-liberalism, war and migration, and the old, never to be settled, question of ideology. The volume ends with reflections on Europe's migration crisis, and reinforces the point that a critical post-colonial sense of history, accumulation, globalization, and the resilience of the nation form will help us reflect on the present European crisis, and draw appropriate lessons.

This book explores the idea that alternatives to our present condition are available in the present, such that a search for alternatives must involve rigorous study of some of its central texts, events, and thinkers. Through engagement with selected modern thinkers, texts, and events, it imagines a different future from the position of the current postcolonial moment, indicating the possibilities that emerge from the present and which shape contemporary radical thinking. An invitation to imagine a possible future marked with alternative possibilities of conducting struggles, and living through contentions and social restructuring, it will appeal to scholars with interests in social and political theory, political philosophy, colonialism and postcolonialism, and historical materialism.

A sudden announcement was made by the government on 24 March 2020 of a complete lockdown of the country, due to the spectre of Coronavirus. India's Migrant Workers and the Pandemic was being written as the crisis was unfolding with no end in sight. Migrant workers from different parts of India had no choice but to trek back hundreds of kilometres carrying their scanty belongings and dragging their hungry and thirsty children in the scorching heat of the plains of India to reach home. How did caste, race, gender, and other fault lines operate in this governmental strategy to cope with a virus epidemic? The eight papers in this collection, highlight the ethical and political implications of the epidemic-particularly for India's migrant workers. What were the forces of power at play in this war against the epidemic? What measures could have been taken and need to be taken now? Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

This book critically examines the question of migration that appears at the intersection of global neo-liberal transformation, postcolonial politics, and economy. It analyses the specific ways in which colonial relations are produced and reproduced in global migratory flows and their consequences for labour, human rights, and social justice. The postcolonial age of migration not only indicates a geopolitical and geo-economic division of the globe between countries of the North and those of the South marked by massive and mixed population flows from the latter to the former, but also the production of these relations within and among the countries of the North. The book discusses issues such as transborder flows among countries of the South; migratory movements of the internally displaced; growing statelessness leading to forced migration; border violence; refugees of partitions; customary and local practices of care and protection; population policies and migration management (both emigration and immigration); the protracted nature of displacement; labour flows and immigrant labour; and the relationships between globalisation, nationalism, citizenship, and migration in postcolonial regions. It also traces colonial and postcolonial histories of migration and justice to bear on the present understanding of local experiences of migration as well as global social transformations while highlighting the limits of the fundamental tenets of humanitarianism (protection, assistance, security, responsibility), which impact the political and economic rights of vast sections of moving populations. Topical and an important intervention in contemporary global migration and refugee studies, the book offers new sources, interpretations, and analyses in understanding postcolonial migration. It will be useful to scholars and researchers of migration studies, refugee studies, border studies, political studies, political sociology, international relations, human rights and law, human geography, international politics, and political economy. It will also interest policymakers, legal practitioners, nongovernmental organisations, and activists.

This book maps the convergence of governance and connectivity within Asia established through the spatial dynamics of trade, capital, conflict, borders and mobility. It situates Indian trade and governance policies within a broader Asian and global context. Focussing on India's North-East, in particular on India's Look and Act East Policy, the volume underscores how logistical governance in the region can bring economic and political transformations. It explores the projected development of the North-East into a gateway of transformative cultural interaction among people, just as the Silk Road became a conduit for Buddhism to travel along with musical instruments and tea. Comprehensive and topical, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of political studies, international relations, governance studies, development studies, international trade and economics and for think tanks working on South and Southeast Asia.

Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India and its companion volume Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo

Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India and its companion volume Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo

This book explores how the management science of logistics changes working lives and contributes to the making of world regions. With a focus on the port of Kolkata and changing patterns of Asian regionalism, the volume examines how logistics entwine with political power, historical forces, labour movements, and new technologies. The contributors ask how logistical practices reconfigure both Asia's relation to the world and its internal logic of transport and communication. Building on critical perspectives that understand logistics as a political technology for producing and organizing space and power, Logistical Asia tracks how digital technologies and material infrastructure combine to remake urban and regional territories and produce new forms of governance and subjectivity.

The book seeks to critically examine the implication of a constitution of law for a political society. It presents a collection of essays that seek to investigate how power acts on power, how limits produce excess, how separation of powers produces the union of powers (sanctified by the very constitution that had guaranteed the division in the first place), and how the theory of separation is, at the same time, a myth and a reality. At the backdrop of the book, of course, is the theory that every good constitution rigorously separates the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary from one another to guarantee the independence of each of these powers, such that this separation results in life, liberty, and security. If a constitution, however, symbolises and produces power, precisely because it separates one site of power from another, it follows that it is power itself that is the limit of power. Constitutionalism as a political culture of laws, therefore, must explain the dynamics of power. The book addresses both constitutions and the societies in which they emerge. Many of the essays in this collection show how institutional practices originating from a legal text create a matrix of power that owes its life, neither to a contract between men, nor between the state and men, nor even between the society and men, but rather to relations established, organized, and formalized by laws. The collection is significant because it gives colonial and post-colonial experiences a justified place in studies of law and constitutionalism, for it shows that while Montesquieu, Kant, and Burke each in their own way were promoting the spirit of laws, a more significant history of law-making was being enacted in order to defend a particular rule, and a particular type of government on another side of the world. Based on comparative studies in several countries across three continents, the book centrally deals with issues of constitutionalism, political representation and citizenship.

The Rohingya of Myanmar are one of the world's most persecuted minority populations without citizenship. After the latest exodus from Myanmar in 2017, there are now more than half a million Rohingya in Bangladesh living in camps, often in conditions of abject poverty, malnutrition and without proper access to shelter or work permits. Some of them are now compelled to take to the seas in perilous journeys to the Southeast Asian countries in search of a better life. They are now asked to go back to Myanmar, but without any promise of citizenship or an end to discrimination. This book looks at the Rohingya in the South Asian region, primarily India and Bangladesh. It explores the broader picture of the historical and political dimensions of the Rohingya crisis, and examines subjects of statelessness, human rights and humanitarian protection of these victims of forced migration. Further, it chronicles the actual process of emergence of a stateless community - the transformation of a national group into a stateless existence without basic rights.

Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India and its companion volume Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo-liberal age, should be studied as the central question within the history of post-colonial democracy. The volumes offer hitherto unexplored analyses of governance - political and ideological aspects along with technological characteristics - in a historical framework. This volume discusses: ideas and issues at the core of governance in post-colonial India constitution, state-making and government formation the asymmetrical nature of the anti-colonial foundations of governance In breaking new ground in the study of what constitutes the political subject, these volumes will be indispensable to scholars, researchers and students of politics, public administration, development studies, South Asian studies and modern India.

Neo-liberal Strategies of Governing India and its companion volume Ideas and Frameworks of Governing India tell the story of governance in independent India and address the critical question: how is a post-colonial democracy governed? Further, they attempt to understand why the process of governing a post-colonial democracy, particularly in the neo-liberal age, should be studied as the central question within the history of post-colonial democracy. The volumes offer hitherto unexplored analyses of governance - political and ideological aspects along with technological characteristics - in a historical framework. This volume discusses: a contemporary history of democracy - ways of governing, resistance and their engagement political economy, development and neo-liberal governance governance as a strategy of accommodating claims and facilitating accumulation In breaking new ground in the study of what constitutes the political subject, these volumes will be indispensable to scholars, researchers and students of politics, public administration, development studies, South Asian studies and modern India.

This book examines the politics behind, and the socio-economic and ecological repercussions of, the making of a new township, variously called New Town, Megacity or Jyoti Basu Nagar, in Rajarhat near Kolkata. Conceived by the West Bengal state government in the mid-1990s, in pandering to the vision of urban planners of creating a hi-tech town beyond an unruly, crowded Kolkata, and feeding the hunger of realtors and developers, the city is built on the foundations of coercive, even violent, land acquisition, state largesse and corruption - and at the cost of erasing a self-sufficient subsistence economy and despoiling a fragile environment. Yet, after its completion and departure of construction labour, the new town appears as a necropolis, a ghost city, that belies its promised image of an urban utopia, even as the displaced locals lead a precarious, mobile existence as 'transit labour', engaged in odd and informal jobs. Written on the basis of intensive fieldwork, government documents, court records, and chronicles of public protests, this book broadly analyses the politics and economics of urbanisation in the age of post-colonial capitalism, particularly the paradoxical combination of neoliberal and primitive modes of capital accumulation upon which the global emergence of 'new towns' is based. Departing from the dominant styles of urban studies that focus on cultural or spatial analysis of cities, the authors show the links between changes in space, technology, political economy, class composition, and forms of urban politics which give concrete shape to a city. It will immensely interest those in sociology, political science, economics, development studies, urban studies, policy and governance studies, and history.

This volume explores the transition from colonial to constitutional rule in India, and the various configurations of power and legitimacies that emerged from it. It focuses on the developmental structures and paradigms that provided the circumstances for this transition, and the establishment of the post-colonial state. Different articles interrogate the idea of liberal constitutionalism, the spaces it provides for rights and claims, the assumptions it makes about citizenship and its attendant duties, and the assumptions it further makes about what it can, or has to, become in the particular situation of India. The book locates these questions in the reconfiguration of society, power, and the economy since the shift in the identity of the state after Independence, and deals with issues of constitution-making in a historical and political setting and its outcomes, especially the centrality of law and legalisms, in shaping civil society. With a companion volume on the transition to a constitutional form of governance and the consequent moulding of the citizens, this book emphasises continuity and change in the context of the movement from the colonial to the constitutional order. It will be of interest to those in politics, history, South Asian studies, policy studies, and sociology.

This volume looks at the ways in which governance in the exercise of its strategies also acts as a process of production of subjects. It argues that governance is not a one-sided affair starting and ending with those who rule and govern, producing fiats, decrees, and diktats, but a productive process - one that produces subjects of governance who in turn respond to the process, and make the field of governance a contentious one. Against the backdrop of the first transition of democracy in India from its origin in a colonial polity to the first phase of its independent life after the promulgation of the Indian Constitution in 1950, this volume explores the second transition towards developmental democracy, examining the interrelations between globalisation, development and structures of governance. The volume suggests that while there is need to reflect on the governance of transition, it is important to question how democracy negotiates this transition.

'The Materiality of Politics' uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying 'materiality' of political processes. The political subject of the study is the collective political actor poised against governmental rules for stabilizing order. Samaddar's tour de force propels readers through an account of blood, violence, bodies, controls, laws and conflicts. Politics is examined not as an abstraction, but as a 'real' field of dynamic factors rooted in everyday life.

Volume 1, subtitled 'The Technologies of Rule' discusses the techniques of modern rule which form the basis of the post-colonial Indian state. Beginning with the rule of law, the volume analyses the nature and manifestations of constitutional rule, the relation between law and terror and the construction of 'extraordinary' sovereign power. The author also investigates the methods of care, protection, segregation and stabilization by which rule proceeds. In the processes, the material core of the 'cultural' and the 'aesthetic' is exposed.

'The Materiality of Politics' uses a series of historical illustrations to reveal the physicality and underlying 'materiality' of political processes. The political subject of the study is the collective political actor poised against governmental rules for stabilizing order. Samaddar's tour de force propels readers through an account of blood, violence, bodies, controls, laws and conflicts. Politics is examined not as an abstraction, but as a 'real' field of dynamic factors rooted in everyday life.

Volume 2, subtitled 'Subject Positions in Politics' focuses on the political subject emerging from post-colonial politics. The 1940s are closely examined in order to trace the genesis of the modern Indian political subject, his/her dreams of liberty and recognition of freedom's qualifications. Contentious politics illuminates the dual tendency of the political subject to demand justice in court, and engage in rebellious street politics, clamouring for justice and equality. As the author demonstrates, the subject's desire for the autonomy of politics manifests itself in various ways.

The partition of the Indian subcontinent, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the reunification of Germany, the continuing feud between two Koreas, the Irish peace process, the case of Israel/Palestine and the lingering division of Cyprus, have together given rise to a huge body of literature. However, studies of partitions have usually focused on individual cases. This innovative volume uses comparative analysis to fill the gap in partition studies and examines cross-cutting issues such as: * violence * state formation * union and regional unification * geopolitics * transition.

This book examines the politics behind, and the socio-economic and ecological repercussions of, the making of a new township, variously called New Town, Megacity or Jyoti Basu Nagar, in Rajarhat near Kolkata. Conceived by the West Bengal state government in the mid-1990s, in pandering to the vision of urban planners of creating a hi-tech town beyond an unruly, crowded Kolkata, and feeding the hunger of realtors and developers, the city is built on the foundations of coercive, even violent, land acquisition, state largesse and corruption - and at the cost of erasing a self-sufficient subsistence economy and despoiling a fragile environment. Yet, after its completion and departure of construction labour, the new town appears as a necropolis, a ghost city, that belies its promised image of an urban utopia, even as the displaced locals lead a precarious, mobile existence as 'transit labour', engaged in odd and informal jobs. Written on the basis of intensive fieldwork, government documents, court records, and chronicles of public protests, this book broadly analyses the politics and economics of urbanisation in the age of post-colonial capitalism, particularly the paradoxical combination of neoliberal and primitive modes of capital accumulation upon which the global emergence of 'new towns' is based. Departing from the dominant styles of urban studies that focus on cultural or spatial analysis of cities, the authors show the links between changes in space, technology, political economy, class composition, and forms of urban politics which give concrete shape to a city. It will immensely interest those in sociology, political science, economics, development studies, urban studies, policy and governance studies, and history.

This volume explores the transition from colonial to constitutional rule in India, and the various configurations of power and legitimacies that emerged from it. It focuses on the developmental structures and paradigms that provided the circumstances for this transition, and the establishment of the post-colonial state. Different articles interrogate the idea of liberal constitutionalism, the spaces it provides for rights and claims, the assumptions it makes about citizenship and its attendant duties, and the assumptions it further makes about what it can, or has to, become in the particular situation of India. The book locates these questions in the reconfiguration of society, power, and the economy since the shift in the identity of the state after Independence, and deals with issues of constitution-making in a historical and political setting and its outcomes, especially the centrality of law and legalisms, in shaping civil society. With a companion volume on the transition to a constitutional form of governance and the consequent moulding of the citizens, this book emphasises continuity and change in the context of the movement from the colonial to the constitutional order. It will be of interest to those in politics, history, South Asian studies, policy studies, and sociology.

This volume looks at the ways in which governance in the exercise of its strategies also acts as a process of production of subjects. It argues that governance is not a one-sided affair starting and ending with those who rule and govern, producing fiats, decrees, and diktats, but a productive process -- one that produces subjects of governance who in turn respond to the process, and make the field of governance a contentious one. Against the backdrop of the first transition of democracy in India from its origin in a colonial polity to the first phase of its independent life after the promulgation of the Indian Constitution in 1950, this volume explores the second transition towards developmental democracy, examining the interrelations between globalisation, development and structures of governance. The volume suggests that while there is need to reflect on the governance of transition, it is important to question how democracy negotiates this transition.