Rethinking State Politics in India : Regions Within Regions

Focusing on the twin issues of identity and development that are often signifiers of the unravelling politics in the federal polity, the book make a concerted attempt to look at (and beyond) the states by exploring the specificities of the regions within these states. It does so through a comparative study from the vantage point of democratic politics as it unfurls in recent India. Emphasising that regions within the states are not merely politico-administrative instituted constructs but are also imagined or constituted, among others, in historical, geographic, economic, sociological or cultural terms, it argues that any meaningful comparative study of the regions would naturally straddle the disciplinary boundaries of social sciences. The book attempts to go beyond the states and look at the regions within them as a distinctive analytical category for an in-depth study of the democratic politics of identity and development unfolding at the state level.

Ashutosh Kumar is Professor, Department of Political Science, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India.