From Powerless Village To Union Power Secretary

This book critically discusses the changing relationship between the Indian state and capital by examining the mediating role of society in influencing developmental outcomes. It theorizes the state’s changing context allowing the discussion of its pursuit of contradictory economic and social welfare goals simultaneously. Both structural and ideological factors are argued to contribute to a shifting context, but the centrality of re-distributive politics and the contradictions therein explain a lot of what the state does and cannot do. The book also examines what the state aspires to do but structurally cannot accomplish either because of the scale of the problem or the dysfunctionality that sets in with continuous reforms. The collection provides rich evidence on the contested forms of governance arising from changing contexts and shifting roles of the state. Readers will benefit from this recasting of the Indian state in terms of the actual forms of intervention today. Changing Contexts and Shifting Roles of the Indian State is a timely book. At a time when the question of the role of the state in promoting more inclusive forms of development has never been more urgent, this book provides a range of powerful and insightful case studies of how a changing Indian capitalism is impacting and in turn being impacted by the multi-stranded role of the Indian state. Patrick Heller, Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Brown University, Providence. Since the early 1990s, the Indian economy has moved away from a statist model of development to a more market-oriented one. However, very little scholarship exists that attempts to analyse India’s recent development experience from a political economy lens. This book, which is edited by two of India’s reputed scholars in the political economy of development, addresses this important gap in the literature. It provides an insightful account of the role of the state and the market in India’s economic resurgence in the last three decades. The book also contributes to a fresh understanding of what is meant by a twenty-first century developmental state in a globalised world. The book will be valuable reading for all scholars of India, as well as to researchers in the political economy of development. Kunal Sen, Director, United Nations University – World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki. This collection gives us a richer and more layered understanding of the Indian contemporary State. Rather than see the State as an unchanging entity with unchanging interests, the book argues that the role of the State changes with the context and with the change in political regime. Thus, taking contradictory decisions such as greater dispossession of land from the peasantry and expansion of the universe of economic rights is explainable. The argument is that we can have a better understanding when we see the Indian State as dealing with the ebb and flow of a democracy. C. Rammanohar Reddy, Former Editor, Economic and Political Weekly, Mumbai.

Deepak Gupta did his BA from Allahabad, MA from St Stephen’s college and MPhil in International relations from JNU. From the IAS batch of 1974, he has spent many years in the field in the erstwhile state of Bihar, including two districts (Saharsa 1979–80; Rohtas 1986–88) as Collector. He served in many departments in state and center and was also posted in India Trade Centre, Brussels and spent a year as WHO Advisor on TB in Delhi. He retired in 2011 as Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy. After retirement he consulted with the World Bank and UNIDO and writes on issues of energy and sustainable development. He was Chairman of UPSC from November 2014 to September 2016. His published works include Documentation of Participatory Irrigation Management, Covering a Billion with DOTS, Achieving Universal Energy Access in India: Challenges and Way Forward, and Caught by the Police.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the administration in India from independence to date. It examines the major transformation in the administrative service initiated by the ‘Minimum Government and Maximum Governance’ initiative of the Government of India in 2014. In spite of enormous diversity and population, India has made remarkable progress in various fields such as health, education, infrastructure, and technology. Structured in three parts, (1) social sector, (2) infrastructure and economy, and (3) e-governance and service delivery, the book examines challenges of governance and provides insight into different innovations undertaken to address these challenges. E-governance lies at the core of this transformation of accountability, transparency, and time-bound service delivery. Contributions in this book are written by experts working in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), academia, and the private sector and cover a wide spectrum of administration from the point of view of different departments of government, as well as the experiences of the authors ranging from senior bureaucrats to mid-career officers and analyses of researchers on administration and its challenges. The initiatives covered in this book can serve as solutions to similar challenges faced by other developing countries in the world. The book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of administration and policy, civil service, public management, South Asian politics, and Development Studies.

"The story of a union organizer who found a second career in community organizing and helped a Jim Crow city become a a more equitable place."--Provided by the publisher.

Sundar (S.Sundar Rajan) is an Indian Revenue Service officer, hailing from one of the southernmost districts of our country, Tiruneveli, Tamil Nadu. Before joining the civil services in year 2007, Sunder had a brief stint with Tata Chemicals Ltd. An engineering graduate from BITS, Pilani, and the author completed his MBA from SIBM, Pune (2004). A person with no specific interest, Sundar is fond of many things in life like – movies, writing, a bit of reading, traveling, photography, some cricket, music etc. Married to one of his IRS batch-mates, Jayanthi, the author is currently serving as an Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax in Goa. This is the author’s first work of fiction. Earlier he had co-authored along with his elder brother, S.Nagaranjan IAS, a preparation guide for the civil service exam – “Topper’s Tips”.