This volume offers a collection of lucid, theoretically stimulating articles that explore and analyse the institutions and values which are salient in understanding political practices in South Asia. Combining a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches, and blending the work of experts long established in their respective fields with refreshing and innovative approaches by younger scholars, this collaborative and cross-disciplinary endeavour facilitates a deeper understanding of the subcontinent's diverse and complex political and democratic practices in the 21st century.

Peaceful legal and political ‘changing of the guards’ is taken for granted in developed democracies, but is not evident everywhere. As a relatively new democracy, marred by long periods of military rule, Bangladesh has been encountering serious problems because of a prevailing culture of mistrust, weak governance institutions, constant election manipulation and a peculiar socio-political history, which between 1990 and 2011 led to a unique form of transitional remedy in the form of an unelected neutral ‘caretaker covernment’ (CTG) during electoral transitions. This book provides a contextual analysis of the CTG mechanism including its inception, operation, manipulation by the government of the day and abrupt demise. It queries whether this constitutional provision, even if presently abolished after overseeing four acceptable general elections, actually remains a crucial tool to safeguard free and fair elections in Bangladesh. Given the backdrop of the culture of mistrust, the author examines whether holding national elections without a CTG, or an umpire of some kind, can settle the issue of credibility of a given government. The book portrays that even the management of elections is a matter of applying pluralist approaches. Considering the historical legacy and contemporary political trajectory of Bangladesh, the cause of deep-rooted mistrust is examined to better understand the rationale for the requirement, emergence and workings of the CTG structure. The book unveils that it is not only the lack of nation-building measures and governments’ wish to remain in power at any cost which lay behind the problems that Bangladesh faces today. Part of the problem is also the flawed logic of nation-building on the foundation of Western democratic norms which may be unsuitable in a South Asian cultural environment. Although democratic transitions, on the crutch of the CTG, have been useful in moments of crisis, its abolition creates the need for a new or revised transitional modality – perhaps akin to the CTG ethos – to oversee electoral governance, which will have to be renegotiated by the polity based on the people’s will. The book provides a valuable resource for researchers and academics working in the area of constitutional law, democratic transition, legal pluralism and election law.

Both India and Europe have been undergoing a difficult process of negotiating cultural, religious and ethnic diversity within their democratic frameworks. In fact, recent incidents of xenophobic backlash against multiculturalism and minority communities in Europe, as well as myriad movements for constitutional recognition of castes, tribes and languages and the emergence of Islamophobic terror in India, question the conventional idea of democracy as the idyllic preserver of diversity. This volume contests the simplistic connection between democracy and diversity by proposing that democracy, in fact, produces, sediments and reinforces cultural heterogeneity. It argues that in democratic polities, disparate cultural practices are often converted into identity categories, with disturbing implications for national identity, constitutionalism, political governance and citizenship. While mobilizations on the plank of cultural differences are typically viewed as being born in undemocratic spaces with little toleration for diversity, they also find fertile soil in democracy insofar as democracy celebrates diversity and allows cultural dissent to thrive. Such dissent, while essential for democracy, has difficult consequences. Examining the fundamental conflict between constructions of particular cultural identities and mandates of a unifying democratic ethos, the book brings forth the complexities underlying the politics of identity recognition and national integration. In making a radical intervention in the discourse, this volume offers a critique of existing paradigms of multiculturalism. It will interest scholars and students of political science, sociology, and postcolonial and comparative studies.

Pakistan is about to play a pivotal role in global politics. Serving as a gateway to the Middle East and a conduit to Central and South Asia, it will be a crucial partner as the United States contends with China’s rise as an emerging global superpower and seeks to maintain its hegemony in the region. The problem is, for many people in the West, Pakistan is somewhat of a black box, with few Westerners understanding the country’s complex history and current political reality. The Political Ecology of Pakistan aims to change this by outlining the geopolitical history of Pakistan since the country gained independence in 1947, focusing in particular on the military’s ongoing role in state affairs and the struggle for democracy to take root in the region. In addition, this book outlines Pakistan’s improved economy, internal security, religious harmony, equality of opportunity, corruption-free society, and growing transparency and accountability, all of which will make the country a vital partner in securing and maintaining peace in the region. This information will be of interest to policymakers as well as those who are seeking to understand Pakistan’s geopolitical significance.

Since its Independence in 1971, Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in terms of reducing poverty levels, achieving high levels of economic growth over a sustained period of time, and meeting its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets set by the United Nations. With some justification, Bangladesh is considered an international development success story, and the country appears to be well on track to meet its policy target of becoming a middle-income country by 2021, the same year the country will celebrate 50 years of Independence. This book explores the central issue of Bangladeshi politics: the weakness of governance. The coexistence of a poor governance track record and a relatively strong socioeconomic performance makes Bangladesh an intriguing case which throws up exciting and relevant conceptual and policy challenges. Structured in four sections - Political Settlement, Elites and Deep Structures; Democracy, Citizenship and Values; Civil Society, Local Context and Political Change; Informality and Accountability – the book identifies and engages with these challenges. Chapters by experts in the field share a number of conceptual and epistemological principles and offer a combination of theoretical and empirical insights, and cover a good range of contemporary issues and debate. Employing a structurally determinist perspective, this book explains politics and society in Bangladesh from a novel perspective. Academics in the field of governance and politics in developing countries, with a focus on South Asia and Bangladesh will welcome its publication.

This book looks at a series of citizen-led campaigns to provide information about and energise the institutions of local self-governance in India following the 73rd and 74th Amendment Acts. Staggering in their outreach and magnitude, the campaigns, popularly known as PEVACs (Pre-election Voters’ Awareness Campaigns), reached out to huge swathes of the population, particularly in rural India, through a unique network that incorporated civil-society organisations across the country, the media and the State Election Commission itself. The book journeys through the heat and dust of these extraordinary campaigns, drawing from a repertoire of field reports and interviews to reflect on the significance of this ‘experiment’ on deepening democracy in India. In particular, it analyses the methodology of the campaigns and posits that this itself became an extraordinary exercise in democratic practice, indicating the shape that deliberation and dialogic practices could actually take on the field. As the campaigns moved from district to district, through their street plays, posters, pamphlets, jagrut yatras, candidate–voter dialogues, rehearsals of voting procedures, setting up of information booths, and participatory workshops for newly elected representatives, a new dialogical experiment was born and shaped. By examining these campaigns, this book emphasises the idea that governance is not just the business of central (federal) governments but also of citizens outside the formal institutions of governance, without whose active participation democracy cannot be deepened.

Over the past decade India has witnessed a number of land wars that have centred crucially on the often forcible transfer of land from small farmers or indigenous groups to private companies. Among these, the land war that erupted in Singur, West Bengal, in 2006, went on to make national headlines and become paradigmatic of many of the challenges and social conflicts that arise when a state-led policy of swiftly transferring land to private sector companies encounters resistance on the ground. Land Dispossession and Everyday Politics in Rural Eastern India analyses the movement by Singur’s so-called unwilling farmers to retain and reclaim their farmland. By foregrounding the everyday politics of popular mobilization, the book sheds new light on the movement’s internal politics as well as on contentious issues rooted in everyday caste, class and gender relations.