The Kisan Andolan or the Indian farmers’ protest of 2020–2021 is one of the longest and biggest (and victorious) social movements in the history of independent India. This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach to contextualise the movement in the long run. It engages with the historical, social and religious roots of the Andolan, examining what makes it so unique and transformative for Indian polity. It explores the (dis)continuities with previous resistance and contestation movements in India and globally, and debates the role so far of regional, religious and class-caste-gender identities. Through interviews, the volume also gives a specific voice and platform to grassroots activists and farmers from the movement. Part of the Social Movements and Transformative Dissent series, the book will appeal to scholars, activists and a wider audience interested in social movements and dissent politics in India and the Global South. It will also be of interest to students of economics, political science, anthropology, sociology, government, agrarian studies, Sikh and Punjab studies, politics, international relations and diaspora studies.

A child with unique traits. A mystery older than human civilization. A secret worth killing for. When undocumented children in ICE detention center become sick from food poisoning, one little boy seems immune. Only nobody knows who he is or where he came from, and the boy isn't talking. A pharmaceutical company turns the child into a lab animal to crack the puzzle of his immunity and turn it into profit. The mystery deepens when the boy reads from a book that can't be decoded for hundreds of years. Jenny Williams and Sonia Ruiz are determined to save the boy and travel to one of the most remote parts of the world to return him to his parents. They try to stay one step ahead of the thugs sent by the pharmaceutical company that wants the child back.

Popular struggles in the global south suggest the need for the development of new and politically enabling categories of analysis, and new ways of understanding contemporary social movements. This book shows how social movements in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East politicize development in an age of neoliberal hegemony.

In the annals of India’s history, a monumental uprising unfolded in 2020, echoing the resilience and coming together of large sections of its agrarian base. Instigated by the contentious farm laws of 2020, the Farmers’ Movement burgeoned into a year-long saga of protest and perseverance, ending only in December 2021 after the passing of the Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021 by the Indian Parliament. From the initial demand for law repeal to the multifaceted growth of the movement, the book traces the journey of the Farmers’ Movement, as each essay dissects the socio-political dynamics, cultural nuances, and mass solidarity that underpinned the protests, including focused analyses from Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and the Sikh diaspora in the United Kingdom. This anthology chronicles the ebb and flow of a nation’s spirit, encapsulating the symbiotic relationship between theory and praxis, between change and continuity. It serves as a testament to the power of collective resistance and a roadmap for future struggles, ensuring that the legacy of the Farmers’ Movement endures beyond the pages of history. This volume is an interdisciplinary project and will be of interest to scholars from diverse fields such as economics, sociology, public policy, political science, history, political geography, gender studies, cultural studies, international studies, architecture, media studies, psychology, and ethnomusicology.

The author, a former Special Secretary of India's external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), examines a series of interconnected events that led to the rise of the Khalistan movement, Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the anti-Sikh violence unleashed thereafter. With a timeline that moves from seven years before to a decade after 1984, the book strives to answer critical questions that continue to linger till today. The narrative moves from Punjab to Canada, the US, Europe and Delhi, looking to sift the truth from the political obfuscation and opportunism, examining the role that the ruling party allegedly played, and the heart-rending violence that devoured thousands of innocent lives in its aftermath.

The book argues that an increasing corporatisation of agriculture in India that is enabled by its neoliberal State, in the name of ‘development’, is contributing towards deepening of inequality in the rural India. It says that Contract Farming (CF) acts as a conduit that enables the coming together of myriad production relations (mercantile, finance, productive) to sell agri-commodities to the capitalist peasant. It is an accumulation strategy that brings together various factions of domestic and foreign capital together. It shows that CF as an accumulation strategy is enabled by an active interventionist state and this neoliberal Indian state mediates the relation between the agri-capital and Indian peasantry. The book further analyzes contract farming as a part of the totality of the capitalist mode of production in context of developing countries with a large agrarian base--- asking three fundamental questions – what is CF, how and why is it done and what are the implications of it.

This book details the movement against India's Emergency based on newly uncovered archival evidence and oral histories.