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Masks of Authoritarianism
This edited book investigates how life is affected by the increasingly authoritarian regime in Bangladesh.Earlier a flawed but real electoral democracy, over the last several years Bangladesh has been characterised as a ‘hybrid regime’ in The Economist’s Democracy Index. Today it is a country in which law still rules and leaders are still chosen – but only on paper. The uniqueness of this book is not in defining regime type or investigating trajectories. It is in its efforts to study how these changes affect everyday life. All chapters are based on intimate knowledge of a field, on first-hand experience, and on interviews and ethnography. This book will interest political scientists and scholars of Bangladesh, the Islamic world and beyond, with findings of broad relevance to hybrid regimes.
Outrage
Whether spurred by religious images or academic history books, hardly a day goes by in South Asia without an incident or court case occurring as a result of hurt religious feelings. The sharp rise in blasphemy accusations over the past few decades calls for an investigation into why offence politics has become so pronounced, and why it is observable across religious and political differences. Outrage offers an interdisciplinary study of this growing trend. Bringing together researchers in Anthropology, Religious Studies, Languages, South Asia Studies and History, all with rich experience in the variegated ways in which religion and politics intersect in this region, the volume presents a fin...
The Wild East
The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses such as red sanders, coal, fire, oil, sand, air spectrum, land, water, real estate, procurement and industrial labour. The 11 case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined. By pioneering the field-study of the politicisation of economic crime, and disrupting the wider literature on South Asia’s...
Patronage as Politics in South Asia
Western policymakers, political activists and academics alike see patronage as the chief enemy of open, democratic societies. Patronage, for them, is a corrupting force, a hallmark of failed and failing states, and the obverse of everything that good, modern governance ought to be. South Asia poses a frontal challenge for this consensus. Here the world's most populous, pluralist and animated democracy is also a hotbed of corruption with persistently startling levels of inequality. Patronage as Politics in South Asia confronts this paradox with calm erudition: sixteen essays by anthropologists, historians and political scientists show, from a wide range of cultural and historical angles, that in South Asia patronage is no feudal residue or retrograde political pressure, but a political form vital in its own right. This volume suggests that patronage is no foe to South Asia's burgeoning democratic cultures, but may in fact be their main driving force.
Social Justice Through Inclusion
What are long-term effects of India's extensive electoral quota systems? This book's insightful discussions, backed by rich empirical data, show how the quotas have shaped incentives for politicians, parties, and voters, and indicate the trade-offs inherent in how such policies of group inclusion are designed.
The Politics of Caste in West Bengal
This volume offers for the first time a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the making and maintenance of a modern caste society in colonial and postcolonial West Bengal in India. Drawing on cutting-edge multidisciplinary scholarship, it explains why caste continues to be neglected in the politics of and scholarship on West Bengal, and how caste relations have permeated the politics of the region until today. The essays presented here dispel the myth that caste does not matter in Bengali society and politics, and make possible meaningful comparisons and contrasts with other regions in South Asia. The work will interest scholars and researchers in sociology, social anthropology, politics, modern Indian history and cultural studies.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh is a country of paradoxes. The eighth most populous country of the world, it has attracted considerable attention from the international media and western policy-makers in recent years, often for the wrong reasons: corruption, natural disasters caused by its precarious geographical location, and volatile political situations with several military coups, following its independence from Pakistan in 1971. Institutional corruption, growing religious intolerance and Islamist militancy have reflected the weakness of the state and undermined its capacity. Yet the country has demonstrated significant economic potential and has achieved successes in areas such as female education, population control and reductions in child mortality. Ali Riaz here examines the political processes which engendered these paradoxical tendencies, taking into account the problems of democratization and the effects this has had, and will continue to have, in the wider South Asian region. This comprehensive and unique overview of political and historical developments in Bangladesh since 1971 will provide essential reading for observers of Bangladesh and South Asia.
Rural Politics in India
This book discusses the forms and dynamics of political processes in rural India with a special emphasis on West Bengal, the nation's fourth-most populous state. West Bengal's political distinction stems from its long legacy of a Left-led coalition government for more than thirty years and its land reform initiatives. The book closely looks at how people from different castes, religions, and genders represent themselves in local governments, political parties, and in the social movements in West Bengal. At the same time it addresses some important questions: Is there any new pattern of politics emerging at the margins? How does this pattern of politics correspond with the current discourse of governance? Using ethnographic techniques, it claims to chart new territories by not only examining how rural people see the state, but also conceiving the context by comparing the available theoretical frameworks put forward to explain the political dynamics of rural India.
The Gangs of Bangladesh
This book presents a study of street children’s involvement as workers in Bangladeshi organised crime groups based on a three-year ethnographic study in Dhaka. The book argues that ‘mastaans’ are Bangladeshi mafia groups that operate in a market for crime, violence and social protection. It considers the crimes mastaans commit, the ways they divide labour, and how and why street children become involved in these groups. The book explores how street children are hired by ‘mastaans’, to carry weapons, sell drugs, collect extortion money, commit political violence and conduct contract killings. The book argues that these young people are neither victims nor offenders; they are instead ‘illicit child labourers’, doing what they can to survive on the streets. This book adds to the emerging fields of the sociology of crime and deviance in South Asia and ‘Southern criminology’.
