LIST OF TABLES AND APPENDICES LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION INTRODUCTION (NIRAJA GOPAL JAYAL AND PRATAP BHANU MEHTA) PART I: THE INSTITUTIONAL SETTING: PART II: SOCIAL CLEAVAGES, IDENTITY, AND POLITICS: PART III: POLITICAL PROCESSES: YADAV) PART IV: IDEOLOGICAL CONTESTATIONS IN INDIAN POLITICS: 25. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS (AMITA BAVISKAR) PART VI: POLITICS AND POLICY: PART VII: INDIA AND THE WORLD: PART VIII: WAYS OF LOOKING AT INDIAN POLITICS: NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS INDEX

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The Oxford companion to politics in India

This article reports on an empirical enquiry undertaken in India’s ITES-BPO (offshoring-outsourcing) sector to ascertain the presence of workplace bullying, the influence of sociocultural factors, ...

Bullying in the Indian workplace: A study of the ITES-BPO sector:

textWhat does it mean when a corporation claims to have a ‘license to operate’ in a local community? How does a member of an indigenous tribe make it to London to protest against a multinational mining company? How do managers perceive and speak about protest against their company and how does this discourse matter for social movement repression? First, I argue, based on a literature review, that responsiveness to local community needs has become an important factor influencing the ability of multinational enterprises to successfully internationalize their operations. Then, I explore the practitioner concept of the license to operate and develop this into a theoretical framework. Based on a case study of an anti-mining movement, that grew from the initial local community resistance in a remote Indian mountain range into a translocal movement, I try to answer the remaining questions empirically. To shed light on the organizing processes in anti-corporate movements, my co-authors and I trace the journey of a young man who for a short time became one of the leading figures in the anti-mining movement but later changed sides to support the company. We also highlight the importance of national advocacy networks for successful movement building across borders. Finally, I analyze the managerial discourse about the anti-mining resistance and link it to the repression of social movement actors by the police and other stakeholders. Overall, this dissertation builds on and advances the growing literature on anti-corporate social movements.

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A license to mine? : Community organizing against multinational corporations

The enactment of the national Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005 has been produced, consumed and celebrated as an important event of democratic deepening in India both in 
terms of the process that led to its enactment (arising from a grassroots movement) as well as its outcome (fundamentally altering the citizen-state relationship). This thesis problematises this narrative and proposes that the explanatory factors underlying this event may be more 
complex than thus far imagined. 

First, the leadership of the grassroots movement was embedded within the ruling elite and possessed the necessary resources as well as unparalleled access to spaces of power for the movement to be successful. Second, the democratisation of the higher bureaucracy along with the launch of the economic liberalisation project meant that the urban, educated, high-caste, upper-middle-class elite that provided critical support to the demand for an RTI Act was no longer vested in the state and had moved to the private sector. Mirroring this shift, the framing of the RTI Act during the 1990s saw its ambit reduced to the government, even as there was a concomitant push to privatise public goods and services. Third, the thesis locates the Indian RTI Act within the global explosion of freedom of information laws over the last two decades, and shows how international pressures, embedded within a reimagining of the role of the state vis-a-vis the market, had a direct and causal impact both on its content, as well as the timing of its enactment.

Taking the production of the RTI Act as a lens, the thesis finally argues that while there is much to celebrate in the consolidation of procedural democracy in India over the last six decades, existing economic, social and political structures may limit the extent and forms of democratic deepening occurring in the near future.

The right to information act in India: the turbid world of transparency reforms

Gender scholars and legal theorists have long worried that feminist interventions against violence tend to govern the very women they aim to emancipate, encouraging certain ways of being, desiring subjects, and affective commitments. If anything, these tendencies are supposedly exaggerated in postcolonial contexts, where feminist commitments to liberal rights butt heads with alternative social and cultural arrangements. Using data collected from twenty-two months of participant observation within three separate women’s organizations in India, this article proposes a more context-specific theory of feminist interventions. While all three of the organizations I studied aimed to “empower” survivors of domestic violence, each organization adopted a distinct empowerment model. Models varied by institutional capacity, namely, the degree to which the organization was internally cohesive and externally embedded in broader communities. Organizations that were both cohesive and embedded were able to secure ...

G.S. Aurora

Papers

Social Movements in India