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217 results in South Asian government, politics and policy

Page 1 of 11

Living the Tides in the Bay of Bengal
  • Multispecies Meetings on Muddy Shores
  • Willem Van Schendel
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    February 2027
    Print publication:
    01 January 2028

The Making of a New Kirati Religion
  • Phalgunanda Lingden and the Satyahangma Movement in Nepal and India
  • Martin Gaenszle
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    January 2027
    Print publication:
    01 January 2028

Embers of Reason
  • The Secular Imagination and the Contemporary Indian Documentary
  • Veena Hariharan
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2026
    Print publication:
    01 January 2028

West Bengal 1947–2020
  • Growth Distribution and Politics
  • Abhirup Sarkar
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    01 January 2028

Central Margins
  • Sri Lanka's Violent Frontier
  • Thiruni Kelegama
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    October 2026
    Print publication:
    30 November 2026
  • Why do development projects so often fail to deliver progress, yet succeed in strengthening states? Central Margins answers this question by exposing the paradox at the heart of development: economic failure masking political success. Through vivid ethnography and deep archival research, the book shows how Sri Lanka's ambitious programmes – most notably the World Bank–funded Mahaweli Development Scheme – collapsed as projects of prosperity but triumphed as tools of militarisation, demographic engineering, and state consolidation. Introducing the concept of 'hidden state transcripts', it reveals how governments project images of benevolent development while embedding surveillance, displacement, and majoritarian nationalism in everyday life. By analysing state power from the contested margins of the Sinhala-Buddhist state, Central Margins demonstrates how postcolonial regimes weaponise development and environmental governance to remake sovereignty. This original account speaks not only to scholars of South Asia, but to anyone interested in how development reshapes power and politics across the Global South.This title is Open Access.

The Cambridge Companion to the Indian Constitution

Making the Periphery Legible
  • State-making in Nagaland
  • Vikas Kumar
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    01 January 2028

Contesting Populism
  • Mamata and Bengal in Indian Politics
  • Edited by Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    01 January 2028

Empire and Peripheries
  • Tribalism, Resistance and British Colonialism in Balochistan
  • Jahanzeb Baloch
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2026
    Print publication:
    31 October 2026

Democracy against Equality
  • Caste, Institutions and Power in Postcolonial Punjab
  • Nicolas Martin
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • This book traces the shifting contours of caste and agrarian inequality, revealing how older hierarchies are being reconfigured in new forms and how they impact democracy. It offers a compelling ethnographic account of how democratic mechanisms-including political participation, elections, and protest movements-actually function in rural India. Focusing on Indian Punjab, it reveals the often stark disconnect between formal democratic ideals and ground-level realities. Engaging with major debates on clientelism, identity politics, and the criminalisation of politics, the book sheds light on the complexities of political representation and accountability. The book also fills a critical gap in the political anthropology of Indian Punjab, offering valuable insights into the region's current political discontent. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

The Cambridge Companion to Indian Politics and Society
  • Edited by Indrajit Roy, Manali Desai
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • India has been underdoing widespread and far-reaching political and social transformation since 1989. Such shifts require us to seriously consider novel approaches to the study of political institutions, social mobilizations and ideas of India. The institutions that framed Indian politics and society since Independence have been challenged through patterns of mobilization and new forms of elite capture. Economic liberalization, anti-caste mobilization and Hindu nationalism have transformed the ideas that once underpinned political institutions and social mobilisation, requiring a change in the way we understand India. This companion aims to offer readers new theoretical, methodological and empirical approaches to studying politics and society in India. It introduces readers to key transformations in the study of institutions, mobilizations and ideas pertaining to India. The contributions are interdisciplinary, given that no single discipline can exclusively explain the complexities of ongoing political and social change in India.

Dissentiments
  • Non-religion, Violence and the Politics of Visibility in South Asia
  • Jacob Copeman, Amélie Blom, Ben Laws, Johannes Quack, Mascha Schulz
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    August 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • In 2013 and the years that followed, a series of attacks unfolded across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – attributed to militant Hindu nationalist, Islamist, and sometimes complicit state actors – targeting irreligious dissenters. These included the murder of rationalist leader Narendra Dabholkar in India, the machete attacks on 'atheist bloggers' in Bangladesh, and the death sentence imposed on academic Junaid Hafeez in Pakistan. Amid a vast literature on Hindutva, militant Islam, communal politics and the legal regimes that surround them, Dissentiments approaches these dynamics from a distinctive angle: their fraught and sometimes violent relationship with people labelled as non-religious. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Europe, it examines how these individuals navigate the risks of public expression where religion remains intertwined with nationalism and political authority, and perspectives on how non-religious critique becomes both vulnerable and politically productive. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Remaking the State
  • Women, Development and Counterinsurgency in India
  • Lipika Kamra
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    30 September 2026
  • Remaking the State examines how development becomes a tool of governance in India's counterinsurgency efforts, with a particular focus on women's experiences in the Jungle Mahals of West Bengal. Through a rich ethnography of the state's non-military response to Maoist insurgency, the book explores how policies designed to win “hearts and minds” intersect with gendered assumptions of empowerment and pacification. Kamra shows how programmes like Muktidhara, a microcredit initiative for rural women, function as mechanisms of both governance and negotiation, as women respond not with resistance, but with strategic engagement. Situating these dynamics within broader histories of colonial and postcolonial state-making in insurgent margins, the book develops a compelling framework for understanding how states are remade from both above and below. Bridging political science, feminist development studies, and critical security studies, this volume offers a timely intervention in debates on democracy, sovereignty, and gendered governance in South Asia.

Crime and Punishment in India
  • Police, Judiciary, and Access to Justice
  • Nirvikar Jassal
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    06 August 2026
  • How does the state deliver justice to citizens? Are certain groups disadvantaged whilst seeking help from law enforcement and the courts? This book charts, for the first time, the full trajectory of accessing justice in India's criminal justice system, highlighting a pattern of multi-stage discrimination and unequal outcomes for women seeking restitution from the state. To probe how discrimination can be combated, the book tests whether gender representation in law enforcement — in the form of all-female enclaves or women-only police stations — affects change. The book demonstrates how certain forms of representation can lead to unintended consequences. By utilizing a range of research designs, the book not only casts a light on justice delivery in the world's largest democracy, but also transports readers into the world of crime and punishment in India.

Twenty-First Century Media Aesthetics and the Political
  • Edited by Ravi Sundaram
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2026
    Print publication:
    01 December 2027

Making Sense of the University
  • A Manifesto for our Times
  • Debaditya Bhattacharya
  • Published online:
    10 June 2026
    Print publication:
    30 July 2026
  • Debating the 'publicness' of the public university provokes the following questions: what lies in common between the university and the communities it excludes? What is the place of non-secular knowledges within the secular-modern instance of the university? How does the university solidarise with publics that never find place within it? Does academic freedom imply freedom against public opinion? This book looks at the current fortunes of the public university in India to call for a deep historical examination. It argues that perhaps the university's pursuit of 'thought' has not been as successful as we have imagined. The history of the public university might give us a cue for understanding the rise of authoritarian tendencies across the world.

Immoral Traffic (South Asia Edition)
  • An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India
  • Vibhuti Ramachandran
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2026
    Print publication:
    01 January 2028

The Logic of Corruption
  • Why it Persists and Why Reforms Fail
  • Chandra Shekhar
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    April 2026
    Print publication:
    31 August 2026
  • Corruption continues despite abundant government legislation, public protests, and an overwhelming consensus that it threatens modern liberal institutions, hard-earned global prosperity, human rights, and justice. While we understand corruption better than the ancients, the puzzle of why it remains a timeless societal vice remains unsolved. This book addresses that puzzle by challenging assumptions about individual behavior and bureaucratic design. It analyzes corruption in three of India's major state bureaucracies. The book argues that corruption is organized into grand and petty forms, rather than being uniform. Several markets for grand and petty corruption exist within bureaucracies, linked to and driven by the market for grand corruption in bureaucratic transfers controlled by politicians. The nature, strength, and stability of these linkages explain the persistence of corruption and why top-down approaches fail. The book offers an original account of corruption's 'sticky' nature and proposes an agenda for reform.

Becoming Allies
  • Civil Liberties Activism in India
  • Ankita Pandey
  • Published online:
    24 March 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
  • What motivates individuals to stand up against injustices that don't personally affect them? Becoming Allies explores a vital but often overlooked dimension of social movements: the role of those who support a cause without being directly affected by its injustices. While most scholarship centres the conflict between social movements and the State, this book shifts the focus to allies-individuals who stand in solidarity and amplify marginalised demands. Drawing on interviews conducted with civil liberties activists and on documents from their private records, this book traces the evolving politics of allyship in India. Anchored in the histories of groups like the People's Union for Civil Liberties and the People's Union for Democratic Rights that rose in the context of the Naxalite Movement and the Emergency, the book sheds light on the ethics, dilemmas, and strategies of standing alongside others in struggle.

The Other Nepal
  • Alterity in Nepali Literature and Culture
  • Edited by Puspa Damai
  • Published online:
    03 March 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026
  • This book revisits a rich but overlooked field of Nepali literature and culture. Compared to the extensive research available on Nepal's South Asian neighbors, there is a notable scarcity of published scholarship devoted to Nepali literature and society. This book addresses the gap by offering groundbreaking scholarship by a global collective of researchers specializing in Himalayan Studies, South Asian Studies, Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. It offers a nuanced and complex picture of Nepali society and history, focusing on caste, geography, gender, sexuality and ethnicity as sites of discrimination, exclusion and othering. It exposes orientalist discourses which portray Nepal as a Himalayan Shangri La and it critiques neoliberal narratives which focus on Nepal's dismal developmental indices. Switching gears by exploring a diverse body of canonical and contemporary multi-genre literary works, the book presents an alternative picture of Nepal from the perspective of those silenced by nationalism, patriarchy and casteism.

Page 1 of 11