Politics and Society in India

Introduction: Politics and Society in India

The relationship between politics and society in India is unique in world history. No other country of comparable scale attempted to graft universal adult franchise onto a society still structured by caste, patriarchy, illiteracy, and mass poverty in a single constitutional moment. The sociological study of politics in India therefore asks not whether democracy is formally present but how it actually works: which social forces it empowers, which it excludes, how it is being transformed by caste mobilisation, regionalism, religious nationalism, and economic liberalisation.

Caste and Democracy: The Central Paradox

The relationship between caste and democracy in India has been the most debated question in the sociology of Indian politics. Two opposing predictions were made at independence: modernisation theorists predicted that industrialisation, urbanisation, and formal legal equality would dissolve caste; Marxists predicted class would replace caste as the primary axis of political mobilisation. Both predictions turned out to be wrong.

Rajni Kothari, in Politics in India (1970), made the most influential sociological argument. He distinguished two directions of influence. Caste enters politics ("politicisation of caste"): caste groups mobilise as political units to compete for power, benefits, and representation. Democracy simultaneously enters caste ("democratisation of caste"): within each caste group, old hierarchies are challenged as ordinary members demand voice, accountability, and equal shares. The result is not the dissolution of caste but its transformation into a modern vehicle of democratic competition. Caste does not weaken democracy: it shapes and mediates democracy's operation.

Kothari observes that in a plural society like India, with cleavages and divisions on both horizontal and vertical lines, Western models of political development are often inadequate. He searches for a model to understand the complex nature of Indian polity by analysing "kinds of political parties and interest groups," "social and national integration," and the "infrastructure of society." He shows that the response of traditional society to modernisation in India retained a secular element because of India's cultural unity: traditional identities were not simply swept away but became the building blocks of modern competitive politics.

Dipankar Gupta disagrees with the standard view of caste in politics. He argues that caste in elections produces, reproduces, and perpetuates caste consciousness: not some secular group interest. Rather than making political choices that reflect the "real interests" of caste communities, electoral mobilisation reinforces the very category of caste identity as the primary frame of political life. Friendship, leadership quality, and local issues also matter: but caste provides the structural foundation within which these operate.

Dominant Caste in Village Politics

M.N. Srinivas built the concept of the dominant caste from his Rampura fieldwork ("The Dominant Caste in Rampura", American Anthropologist, 1959). Its political point is that power in the village rests less on ritual rank than on numbers and land. In Rampura the peasant Okkaligas, not the Brahmins, settled disputes, controlled the panchayat and spoke for the village to officials and politicians.

• Regional examples: Okkaligas (Vokkaligas) and Lingayats in Karnataka, Reddys and Kammas in Andhra Pradesh, Marathas in Maharashtra, Patidars in Gujarat, Jats in Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, Yadavs in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and Vanniyars and Thevars in parts of Tamil Nadu.
• Role in village politics: the dominant caste arbitrates disputes, including those of other castes, controls access to land, credit and work, heads the panchayat, and acts as broker between the village and the party, the bureaucracy and the market. Lower castes often copy its style of life, so it also sets the local model of mobility.
• Factions: dominance does not mean unity. Oscar Lewis (Village Life in Northern India, 1958) found Jat factions competing for clients across caste lines, and party politics often runs along such faction lines.

The Origin of the 'Vote Bank'

Srinivas also coined 'vote bank', in "The Social System of a Mysore Village" (1955, in McKim Marriott's Village India). He used it for the votes a patron could deliver because his clients and dependants followed his lead. F.G. Bailey (Politics and Social Change: Orissa in 1959, 1963) widened it to caste leaders and brokers who delivered a whole caste's votes to a party in return for favours. The term now covers any community voting as a bloc for sectional benefits, as with the KHAM coalition (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) in 1980s Gujarat or the Muslim-Yadav base of the RJD in Bihar.

Changing Rural Power Structure

• From ritual rank and landlordism to numbers: in Sripuram, Andre Beteille (Caste, Class and Power, 1965) found that caste, class and power had once coincided in the Brahmin landlords, but after independence land passed to non-Brahmins and power to those who could mobilise votes through parties.
• Rise of peasant castes: zamindari abolition, land reform and the Green Revolution made middle peasant castes the new dominant castes, and their weight fed OBC assertion after Mandal.
• Panchayati Raj: the 73rd Amendment (1992) reserved seats and chairpersons' posts for SCs, STs and women. Dalit and women sarpanchs now hold office, though proxy rule by husbands ('sarpanch pati') and violence against Dalit office-holders show that old dominance resists.
• Looser vote banks: the secret ballot, education, migration and direct benefit transfers weaken patrons' control. Election surveys such as the CSDS-Lokniti National Election Studies find that caste still shapes voting but seldom moves as a single bloc delivered on command.

The Congress System (Rajni Kothari)

Kothari introduced the concept of the "Congress system" to describe India's distinctive party system in the first two decades after independence. It was not a one-party system in the sense of a monopoly on power but a system of one-party dominance in which competing parts played dissimilar roles. The Congress functioned as a party of consensus: representing the historical synthesis of the nationalist movement. Other parties were parties of pressure, functioning on the margin of this consensus.

The internal structure of the Congress system rested on factionalism. Political competition was internalised: competing interests and social groups battled within the Congress rather than across party lines. This produced vertical "faction chains" linking national, state, district, and local levels. Structurally, the system displayed two features: plurality within the dominant party (making it more representative and sustaining internal competition) and the capacity to absorb movements from outside (preventing other parties from gaining strength). The Congress concentrated resources, controlled patronage, and made mobilisation a function of political participation rather than bureaucratic control.

The opposition's role in the Congress system was to constantly pressurise, criticise, and censure: posing a latent threat that if the ruling group strayed too far from public opinion, it would be displaced. This threat ensured the mobility and life of the Congress's internal power structure. Kothari warned that the delicate balance on which the Congress system's legitimacy rested could be rudely disturbed, allowing a more authoritarian system to emerge: a prediction that seemed to come true with the Emergency (1975-77) and was confirmed again in different ways by subsequent political developments.

Ramachandra Guha's critique of Kothari: The bulk of Kothari's analysis was devoted to the then-dominant Congress party. His judgement: "because the Congress managed to be in power continuously and there was no united or effective threat to its authority, the country's political process gained incomparable advantages of continuity and unity": was valid for its time. His prediction that Congress would retain widespread local presence even when not in power at the state level proved accurate for several decades but eventually failed as the third party system displaced Congress dominance.

India's Electoral Party Systems: A Historical Overview

India's electoral history from 1952 to the present can be divided into four broad party systems, each with distinct characteristics (following Yogendra Yadav's framework):

First Party System (1952-1967): Congress Dominance

Between 1952 and 1967, the Congress Party dominated Indian politics at both the centre and across most states. As the party primarily responsible for independence and home to the most respected nationalist leaders, the Congress benefited from widespread popular appeal. Opposition forces were badly fragmented, limiting their ability to mount a serious campaign. The most salient social category for politics was jati (discrete caste groups within umbrella varna categories): highly embedded in local context.

Second Party System (1967-1989): Growing Opposition at State Level

The year 1967 was a critical inflection point. The Congress retained its grip on the Centre but its hold on state capitals began to fade. New expressions of caste and regional identities chipped away at the party's monopoly of subnational politics. Jati-level identities retained importance, but political parties worked to build state-wide alliances of individual jatis to construct minimum winning coalitions. The Emergency (1975-77) demonstrated the fragility of democratic consensus; the 1977 Janata wave showed the Congress could be defeated.

Third Party System (1989-2014): Coalition Politics

Congress dominance ended in 1989, which marked the start of coalition governance in New Delhi. Three powerful forces disrupted Indian politics: "Mandal, Masjid, and Market."

The Mandal Commission (1980, implemented 1990 under V.P. Singh) recommended quotas for OBCs in higher education and civil services. This catalysed what Yogendra Yadav called a "second democratic upsurge": the catapulting of traditionally disadvantaged groups into political power. Caste-based parties representing Dalit and OBC interests (BSP, SP, JD-U, RJD) firmly entrenched themselves. The social composition of the representative class changed: the combined share of OBC and SC legislators superseded that of upper-caste and intermediate castes in northern Hindi belt states for the first time.

The demolition of the Babri Masjid (1992) and the BJP's rise from two seats in 1984 to the only national alternative to Congress by 1999 reflected the power of Hindu nationalist mobilisation. The economic liberalisation of 1991 transformed the market, creating new middle-class constituencies and shifting political discourse toward development and economic management.

Six defining attributes of the third party system: absence of a central pole in national politics; era of political fragmentation (370 parties contested in 2009); markedly more competitive elections with lower victory margins; highly federalised political system (state-level outcomes directly influencing national verdicts); subdued national voter turnout compared to rising state-level turnout; and a clear change in the social composition of the representative class with OBC and Dalit ascendance.

Fourth Party System (2014-present): BJP Dominance

The BJP's victory in 2014 represented a structural break. Suhas Palshikar characterised BJP under Modi as a classic example of a hegemonic political party: one combining ideological hegemony with electoral dominance. Three elements constitute the BJP's nationalist narrative: selective deployment of Hindutva in parts of the country where it consolidates the electoral base; a muscular territorial nationalism centred on sovereignty and resentment toward liberal elites; and pro-business developmentalism alongside a welfarist image. In 2014, the BJP won India's first single-party majority in the Lok Sabha since 1984. In 2019, they repeated this feat with an even larger majority and the first time male and female voter turnout reached virtual parity.

The BJP's three pillars of dominance: ideology (Hindutva nationalism plus new developmentalism saturating political space); organisation and financial prowess (panna pramukh system: party workers assigned to individual pages of voter rolls; twenty-to-one financial advantage over Congress); and charismatic leadership (both 2014 and 2019 elections functioned as referenda on Modi's personal leadership, presidentialising a parliamentary election).

The decline of Congress after 2014 shifted the umbrella caste categories (OBC, Dalit) that had defined third party system politics back toward jati-level alliances: but with a new twist. The BJP broke wedges between dominant jatis and subordinate groupings within the OBC and Dalit umbrella, incorporating new social groups (Dalits, Adivasis, many OBC communities) into a Hindu nationalist coalition that transcended traditional upper-caste-only Hindutva.

Regionalism and the Politics of Identity

Regionalism in India is both a product of state-formation and a challenge to it. It refers to ideological and political movements seeking to advance the interests of particular regions: a process of "othering" for outsiders that simultaneously represents a "return to self" for natives.

Historical Background

Upon the recommendation of the States Reorganisation Committee (1953, headed by Fazal Ali), provinces were reorganised on the basis of language. Bombay was divided into Maharashtra (Marathi) and Gujarat (Gujarati); Punjab was trifurcated into Punjab (Punjabi), Haryana (Hindi), and Himachal Pradesh (Pahari); Kannada-speaking areas formed Karnataka; Telugu-speaking areas formed Andhra Pradesh. Then demands for autonomy emerged in the Northeast. Manipur, Tripura and Meghalaya became states in 1972. NEFA was granted statehood as Arunachal Pradesh in 1987. The Nagas and Mizos achieved statehood only after violent encounters with the Indian state: Nagaland in 1963 (insurgency continues today), Mizoram after the 1986 accord with Laldenga. The 2021 violent clashes between Assam and Mizoram forces demonstrated that even settled state boundaries remain contested.

Factors Producing Regionalism

Relative deprivation is the most important factor constructing the argument for regionalism. If people of a particular region feel more deprived than others in terms of distribution of resources and infrastructure, regional affiliation emerges. The Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) movement in Darjeeling reflects a clear case where the region's perception of underdevelopment relative to southern West Bengal generated a regionalist movement. Growing regional inequalities in income and consumption in the post-reforms period have accentuated perceptions of neglect: coastal regions and developed regions have benefited far more from private investment than peripheral, conflict-affected, or infrastructure-poor regions.

Language and culture constitute the second significant factor. Every individual's identity is rooted in language and culture: and once politicised, these become powerful forces in region formation. Edward Sapir argued that language plays a vital role in the creation and determination of a region. The resistance of southern states to the imposition of Hindi as the sole official language reflects linguistic-cultural identity generating political regionalisation.

Other factors include: unequal access to political power (local elites complaining of reverse discrimination as elites from other regions corner financial grants and portfolios); administrative neglect by ruling parties; elite power ambitions (DMK, AIADMK, Akali Dal, Telugu Desam, Asom Gana Parishad encouraging regionalism to capture power); failure of national politics to absorb diverse group interests; and the son of the soil theory: competition for employment between migrants and local educated middle-class youth generating nativist movements in cities.

Outcomes and Criteria for Recognising Regions

Regionalist movements have produced several important outcomes: regional identity, culture, and geographical differences are now better recognised as valid bases for administrative division; separate statehood movements are no longer automatically stigmatised as antinational; new states (Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, 2000) have been formed on grounds of good governance and development rather than language alone; dialect communities have asked for territorial homelands (Bundelkhand, Ruhelkhand, Mithilanchal).

SR Maheshwari (quoting Rasheeduddin Khan) proposes that the criterion for recognising a region should be "maximum homogeneity within and maximum identity without": established across ten counts: language/dialect; social composition (jatis); ethnic features; demo-geographic features; geographic contiguity; cultural patterns; economic life; historical antecedents; political background; and psychological group identity and felt consciousness.

A Kumar argues that the underlying principle in India's accommodations of regional identity has remained internal self-determination: which has served to weaken the bases of political secessionism without defeating the principle of self-determination itself. Ashok Behuria argues the Indian federation has temperamentally behaved as a "union" and not a "federation": leadership must adopt federal principles and gradually devolve financial powers to units to contain ethnocultural assertions. Creation of "dependent" states without genuine devolution of powers will not improve conditions.

Cultural Pluralism and Nation-Building

Cultural pluralism is a condition, and a policy, in which distinct groups keep their languages, religions and customs while sharing common political institutions. Horace Kallen's Culture and Democracy in the United States (1924) introduced the term against the American 'melting pot', which expected assimilation. The plural alternative is often called the 'salad bowl'. Nation-building is the creation of a shared political identity and loyalty to a common state among diverse people. Reinhard Bendix (Nation-Building and Citizenship, 1964) tied it to extending citizenship to all, and Karl Deutsch to dense social communication.

India chose the plural path, summed up in Nehru's 'unity in diversity':

• Language: linguistic states from 1956, 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule, the three-language formula, and retreat from imposing Hindi after the 1965 anti-Hindi agitation in Tamil Nadu.
• Religion: freedom of religion (Articles 25-28), minorities' cultural and educational rights (Articles 29-30), separate personal laws and secularism as 'principled distance'.
• Tribe and region: the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, special provisions for several states under Article 371, and accords that turned insurgents into stakeholders, such as the Mizo Accord (1986).

Does nation-building depend on strengthening pluralities? Largely, yes. Recognition has weakened secession: the DMK dropped its demand for Dravida Nadu in 1963, and Mizoram has been peaceful since its accord. Where identities were denied or met mainly by force, as in Punjab in the 1980s and parts of the Northeast, alienation grew. Bhikhu Parekh (Rethinking Multiculturalism, 2000) argues that a multicultural society needs a shared public culture built through dialogue between communities, not one imposed by the majority.

Role of religion: religion can integrate. Pilgrimage networks gave India a sacred geography long before it was one state, the Bhakti and Sufi traditions created a composite culture, and Gandhi used religious idiom (Ram Rajya, prayer meetings, ahimsa) to bring the masses into the national movement. Religion can also divide: separate electorates, the two-nation theory, Partition and later riots show religion used to define the nation against an internal 'other'. A nation defined by one faith makes minorities second-class citizens, while one that respects all faiths can draw on their shared ethic of duty and fellowship.

Is a single dominant culture a hindrance? Majoritarian pressure for one language, religion or way of life strains the plural compact, as the 1965 agitation and recent policing of food, festivals and interfaith marriage show. Multicultural India is strengthened by protecting minority rights, decentralising power, a shared constitutional patriotism and everyday contact across communities.

Political Parties in India

A political party is an institution consisting of leaders, followers, policies, and programmes whose principal purpose is to capture power. Political parties provide the crucial connection between social processes and policy-makers: they link individuals, state, and society; influence debates on issues affecting various social groups; and educate people while formulating public opinion.

Classification of Parties

The Election Commission classifies parties into national parties (requiring at least 2% of Lok Sabha seats from at least three states, or 6% of votes with at least four Lok Sabha seats, or recognition as a state party in four or more states), state parties (parties meeting EC's state-level criteria), and registered/unrecognised parties (more than 2000 registered). In 2020, India had seven national parties: INC, BJP, BSP, CPI, CPI(M), NCP, and AITC.

Regional parties are central to India's multi-party democracy. Between 1996 and 2014, roughly 50% of votes went to the two national parties and 50% to hundreds of regional players. In 2019, the regional party vote share plummeted to 43.2% as BJP's pan-Indian expansion absorbed constituencies previously held by regional parties.

Pressure Groups in Indian Democracy

An interest group is any organised body of people who share a common interest, whether or not they act on it politically. It becomes a pressure group when it actively presses the government, legislators or parties to shape policy in its favour. Unlike a party, it does not contest elections or seek office. Every pressure group is an interest group, but not every interest group is a pressure group. Myron Weiner's The Politics of Scarcity (1962) was the first major study of how Indian business, labour, student, caste and linguistic groups pressed a state that controlled scarce resources.

• Business: FICCI, CII and ASSOCHAM lobby on taxation, trade and industrial policy, often as insider groups with direct access to ministries.
• Labour: AITUC, INTUC, BMS and CITU are each tied to a party, which makes them partly party wings rather than autonomous groups.
• Farmers: the Bharatiya Kisan Union, Sharad Joshi's Shetkari Sanghatana and the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha pressed for remunerative prices. The Samyukt Kisan Morcha won the repeal of the three farm laws in 2021.
• Professional and caste groups: the Indian Medical Association, bar councils and caste associations, including the quota agitations of Jats, Patidars and Marathas.
• Civil society and promotional groups: the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan's campaign led to the Right to Information Act (2005), and the National Alliance of People's Movements links struggles against displacement.
• Religious groups: the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board press on temples, personal law and conversion.

Role in democracy: pressure groups articulate interests between elections, give governments specialised information, widen participation for those whom parties neglect and hold officials to account. In pluralist theory (Robert Dahl) competition among many groups disperses power. Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (In Pursuit of Lakshmi, 1987) found Indian interest groups fragmented and dependent on a dominant state, a pattern they called "involuted pluralism".

Critique: access is unequal. Well-funded business lobbies reach decision-makers while the unorganised poor rarely do. Money can buy influence, a concern behind the Supreme Court's striking down of the electoral bonds scheme in Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India (2024). Groups built on caste or religion can also deepen sectional divides.

Decentralisation and Panchayati Raj

The 73rd Constitutional Amendment (1992) created a three-tier Panchayati Raj structure (gram panchayat, panchayat samiti, zila parishad) with constitutional status, reserved seats for women (one-third), SCs, STs, and OBCs, and mandatory elections every five years. The 74th Amendment did the same for urban local bodies (nagar panchayats, municipal councils, municipal corporations).

The sociological significance of Panchayati Raj extends beyond administration. For the first time, women from the most disadvantaged communities could hold elected office. Studies show that female sarpanchs, despite initial resistance, have changed the priorities of local government: toward water, schools, health centres, and roads rather than prestige projects. Devolution of funds, functions, and functionaries (the "3Fs") however remains incomplete across most states: panchayats have constitutional legitimacy but limited financial resources and administrative capacity.

Secularism, Communalism, and the Politics of Religion

The Indian Constitution established India as a secular state: not in the Western sense of a wall of separation between state and religion, but in what Rajeev Bhargava calls a model of "principled distance." The state maintains an equal, if not always identical, relationship with all religions rather than distancing itself from all. It can intervene in religious practices that violate fundamental rights (sati, untouchability, child marriage) while also funding and protecting religious institutions of all communities.

TN Madan argues that secularism is a minority viewpoint in India: of Hindu elites who have internalised Enlightenment values but who represent neither the majority of Hindus nor Muslim, Christian, or Sikh communities for whom religion is not separable from public life. For Madan, secularism in India is therefore "an impossible project." Ashis Nandy similarly argues that Western secularism cannot solve Indian communalism: it requires privatising religion in societies where religion is inseparably public. Partha Chatterjee and Amartya Sen respond that however imperfectly realised, the secular-democratic framework remains the best available framework for managing India's religious diversity.

Communalism has been the central threat to India's secular polity. Bipan Chandra identifies three stages: the belief that co-religionists share common secular interests; liberal communalism (different but reconcilable secular interests); and extreme communalism (fundamentally antagonistic secular interests, the logic of the Two-Nation Theory). Colonial divide-and-rule policy, separate electorates (Morley-Minto 1909), the trauma of Partition, political mobilisation of religious grievances, and the growth of Hindu nationalism have all contributed to communal politics in independent India.

Secularisation as a Social Process

Secularism is a doctrine about the state: how it should treat religions. Secularisation is a social process in which religion loses its hold over thought, institutions and conduct. A secular state can preside over a society that is not secularising. M.N. Srinivas (Social Change in Modern India, 1966) described secularisation as a process in which what was earlier regarded as religious ceases to be so, and in which the economic, political, legal and moral spheres become more distinct from one another. He saw it as closely tied to Westernisation.

• Desacralisation: rational and scientific explanation displaces religious explanation of events such as illness or drought.
• Differentiation: law, education, economy and government separate from religious authority, and caste panchayats lose ground to courts.
• Rationalism: customs are judged by reason and usefulness rather than sacred sanction.
• Weaker purity and pollution rules: trains, buses, restaurants, factories and offices force contact between castes, especially in cities.
• Simpler ritual: life-cycle rites are shortened and become occasions for display rather than sacred duty.

Impact on religious communities: the educated urban middle class of every community has moved furthest, rural and poorer groups least. Among Hindus, ritual has shrunk in daily life even as festivals and pilgrimages have grown. Among Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, reform movements have often stressed scriptural purity, so modern education has sometimes produced a more self-conscious religious identity rather than a weaker one. The same pattern appears in Hindu reformism.

Is India becoming more secular? Education and economic growth have advanced the institutional side of secularisation, but belief and public religiosity remain strong. The Pew Research Center's survey of 29,999 Indian adults (2019-20) found that 97 per cent believe in God and 84 per cent say religion is very important in their lives. Religion has also become more visible in politics, media and consumption. Secularisation in India is therefore partial and uneven: strong in institutions and the professions, weak in belief and identity.

Caste Associations and Their Sociological Significance

Caste associations are formal organisations of caste groups that emerged in colonial India when print capitalism, modern education, and census enumeration gave caste communities new tools to claim rights, resources, and recognition. Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph (The Modernity of Tradition) identified caste associations as the mechanism through which traditional caste identities were transformed into modern interest groups compatible with democratic competition. They described dominant agricultural castes like the Marathas, Patidars, Jats, Reddys, Lingayats, Yadavs, and Kapus as "bullock capitalists": politically organised, economically progressive farmers who used caste associations to articulate demands for land rights, irrigation, price supports, and educational reservations.

Rajni Kothari argued that caste associations do more good than bad: they fight for educational opportunities, welfare resources, and political representation for their communities. They are a form of associative democracy (in Durkheim's sense): groups holding people together and providing intermediate institutions between the individual and the state. The negative assessment of caste associations as "communal" or "fissiparous" is ideologically loaded; the same organisational logic governs trade unions, professional associations, and ethnic lobbies in other democracies.

Gender and Politics

The Constitution guarantees equal political rights to women, but the political sphere has been among the most resistant to gender equality. The representation of women in the Lok Sabha has remained chronically low: hovering between 10-15% in most elections. The Women's Reservation Bill (demanding 33% reservation in Parliament and state legislatures) was passed as the Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam in 2023, with implementation linked to delimitation after the next census.

The 73rd Amendment's one-third reservation for women in Panchayati Raj has been the most transformative intervention. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo's randomised study found that villages headed by women invested more in drinking water, roads, and primary school infrastructure than villages headed by men. The study confirmed that women leaders have different policy priorities and that reservation is necessary to realise them: because without structural change, existing political networks and gatekeeping exclude women candidates systematically.

Feminist sociologists distinguish between women's participation in politics (being present as voters and candidates) and feminist transformation of politics (changing the substantive agenda to include women's concerns: reproductive rights, domestic violence, equal wages, child care). While the former has grown significantly, the latter remains limited. Politics continues to be organised around men's issues, men's networks, and men's leadership styles.

Dalit Politics and the Question of Representation

Dalit political assertion represents one of the most significant developments in independent India's political life. BR Ambedkar's vision, constitutional rights plus education plus organised political power, has found partial institutional expression through reservation in legislatures and government employment, the rise of Dalit political parties (Republican Party of India, Bahujan Samaj Party), and the social movements (Dalit Panthers, BAMCEF) that have challenged Brahminical cultural hegemony.

The BSP's rise under Kanshi Ram and Mayawati, particularly the "social engineering" coalition strategy that brought Dalits, OBCs, Muslims, and upper castes together in UP in 2007, represented a new high-water mark of Dalit political power. But the BSP's subsequent decline and the BJP's success in drawing Dalit voters (through welfare schemes, symbolic recognition, and co-optation of Dalit icons like Ambedkar) illustrates the complexity of Dalit political choices in a context where vote banks are fluid and economic aspiration competes with social dignity as the primary electoral driver.

Subaltern Studies scholars (Ranjit Guha, Partha Chatterjee) argue that Dalit political consciousness cannot be captured through the frameworks of elite politics: it has its own autonomous modes of organisation, resistance, and aspiration that mainstream party politics regularly domesticates and co-opts. Upendra Baxi: Dalit rights claims are not merely political demands but legal and moral claims that challenge the foundational legitimacy of the social order.

Ambedkar's Final Speech in the Constituent Assembly (25 November 1949)

Closing the debate on the Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar argued that democratic institutions alone would not secure democracy. He named three tasks.

• Constitutional methods only: once constitutional ways of pursuing social and economic goals are open, civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha lose their justification. He called such methods "the Grammar of Anarchy".
• No hero-worship: citing John Stuart Mill's warning against laying one's liberties at the feet of even a great man, he said that "in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship."
• Social democracy: "Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy." Social democracy is a way of life that treats liberty, equality and fraternity as a "union of trinity". Liberty without equality produces the supremacy of the few, equality without liberty kills initiative, and without fraternity both would require "a constable to enforce them."

He warned that on 26 January 1950 India would "enter into a life of contradictions": one man, one vote, one value in politics, but graded inequality in social and economic life. If the contradiction lasted, "those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy". He added that "the castes are anti-national", since they separate social life and breed jealousy, and that without fraternity "equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint."

Is social democracy a precondition? For Ambedkar it was: political democracy rests on habits of equality and fellow-feeling that a constitution cannot create by decree. Persisting atrocities, untouchability and economic inequality under regular elections partly bear him out. Yet political democracy has also built social democracy, through reservation, Dalit and OBC political assertion and rights legislation, so the relationship works both ways.

Ambedkar as a wise democrat: he joined faith in parliamentary institutions with a sober sense of their social limits. In a 1952 lecture at Poona he defined democracy as a form of government that brings about revolutionary changes in social and economic life without bloodshed, and listed as its conditions the absence of glaring inequalities, an effective opposition, equality in law and administration, constitutional morality and a working public conscience. His concern was how institutions survive, not only how they are designed.

OBC Politics and the Mandal Commission

The Mandal Commission (1980, chaired by BP Mandal) recommended 27% reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in central government jobs and educational institutions, in addition to the existing 22.5% for SCs and STs. The report gathered dust for a decade before V.P. Singh's government implemented it in 1990. The anti-Mandal agitation, dominated by upper-caste students, and the pro-Mandal counter-mobilisation fundamentally restructured Indian politics. The three forces of "Mandal, Masjid, and Market" that disrupted the third party system all had their roots in this period.

The Mandal Commission represented the sociological recognition that OBCs, a population constituting over 50% of India's citizens, had been systematically excluded from state employment and educational opportunity despite formal democratic equality. Its implementation produced the "second democratic upsurge" (Yogendra Yadav): the entry of OBC communities into the representative class in numbers commensurate with their population weight. This transformation continues to reshape Indian politics as OBC leaders and parties dominate state and national politics across the Hindi belt and increasingly beyond it.

Federalism, Centre-State Relations, and Fiscal Autonomy

India's Constitution establishes a federal system but with a strong unitary bias: the Centre retains powers to impose President's Rule, to create and dissolve states, and to override state legislation through the Concurrent List. The trend since the 1990s has been toward greater de facto federalism as coalition politics at the centre made regional parties indispensable partners and gave them leverage to demand greater state autonomy.

The 14th Finance Commission (2015) recommended increasing the states' share of central taxes from 32% to 42%: the largest transfer in Indian fiscal history. GST (implemented 2017) created a new federal tax architecture but also centralised revenue in ways that reduced state fiscal autonomy. The abolition of the Planning Commission (2014) and its replacement by NITI Aayog removed the institutional mechanism for Centre-state dialogue on development planning, shifting decisions further toward the Centre even as formal devolution increased.

Citizenship in Contemporary India

Citizenship is full membership of a political community, with rights against the state and duties towards it. T.H. Marshall traced its growth from civil to political to social rights. Niraja Gopal Jayal (Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History, 2013) studies Indian citizenship as legal status, as rights and as identity or belonging. Her central finding is that the law has moved from birth (jus soli) towards descent (jus sanguinis).

• The Constitution and the 1955 Act: Articles 5-11 settled citizenship at the commencement of the Constitution, and the Citizenship Act 1955 made almost everyone born in India a citizen.
• 1986 amendment: for those born on or after 1 July 1987, at least one parent had to be an Indian citizen.
• 2003 amendment: for those born on or after 3 December 2004, both parents had to be citizens, or one a citizen and the other not an 'illegal migrant'. It also provided for a National Register of Indian Citizens and for Overseas Citizenship of India.
• Assam: Section 6A (added in 1985 after the Assam Accord) made 25 March 1971 the cut-off for migrants to Assam, and the Supreme Court upheld it in 2024. The Supreme Court-monitored National Register of Citizens, published on 31 August 2019, left out about 19 lakh people, many of them poor with weak documents, whose status now rests with Foreigners Tribunals.
• Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019: it offers a faster path to citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who entered India on or before 31 December 2014. Its rules were notified in March 2024. Critics argue that leaving out Muslims brings religion into the test of belonging, against the equality guarantee of Article 14, and the Shaheen Bagh protests (2019-20) made it a national issue. Supporters present it as relief for persecuted minorities.

Substantive citizenship: rights on paper are unevenly enjoyed. Migrants lose rations and welfare when they leave their home state, Dalits and Adivasis meet discrimination in claiming rights, and women's citizenship is mediated by family and community. Reservations and minority institutions are group-differentiated rights of the kind Will Kymlicka calls multicultural citizenship (1995).

Nation and citizenship under globalisation: the nation-state remains the gatekeeper of citizenship, but globalisation loosens the tie between territory and belonging. Aihwa Ong's "flexible citizenship" (1999) describes mobile elites who hold rights in several countries. India has no dual citizenship, yet the Overseas Citizenship of India card gives the diaspora lifelong visa rights and a stake in the homeland. Meanwhile migration and refugee flows provoke harder borders, documents and registers. Citizenship is stretched outward for the mobile and tightened against the undocumented.