What does living in a democracy mean for the poor of India? This book goes to the people to find out

Very few books on poverty in India are as nuanced as Indrajit Roy’s Politics of the poor: Negotiating Democracy in Contemporary India. From its very first page, Roy has his readers agog when he informs them that “the world is richer than it has been at any time in recorded history”.

This observation sets the stage for the relational perspective of poverty adopted in the book, which compels us to appreciate how poverty and inequality are enmeshed. Thus, even as the proportion of people living under US$2 a dollar a day is declining, the share of the bottom half in the world’s wealth is also falling. And yet, as Roy reminds us, more people live in democracies than ever before.

Coalitions and conflicts

What does living in a democracy mean for the poor? Roy answers this question by drawing on ethnographic evidence from the Indian States of Bihar and West Bengal. Democracy is of course not only about elections and institutional checks and balances: it is a relationship of equality and membership in the political community.

After outlining the broader context of democracy and development in India, Roy introduces us to an array of people in rural parts of these States and how they assert their equality,…

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