Books in the Oxford India Paperbacks series

This book chronicles how the concept of organizing people to serve economic ends emerged in early modern and colonial India. It examines rules of cooperation, why people decided to join forces, how disputes were settled, and how cooperative communities became increasingly unstable in more modern times. It focuses on five dimensions: actor, agent, time, purpose, and region.

The author, in this book, underlines the importance of Bahudha as an instrument of public policy for harmony and also discusses the global imperatives of following such an approach. It highlights the central role of education and religion in the building of a harmonious society and advocates the strengthening of the United Nations to become an effective global conflict resolution mechanism.

Anyone who has seen a wedding procession in northern India would have heard and seen the band of professional musicians accompanying the procession. This book is a detailed and colourful study of India's wedding bands.

Policymaking in India evokes an image of rational decision-making and technical optimality. However, the arena of policymaking is characterized by conflict and contestation resolved through processes of negotiations and compromises. A significant amount of research in India focuses on policy goals and consequences, and less on policy processes. Breaking away from that approach, Public Policy and Politics in India directly addresses policy processes and discusses therole of institutions in policymaking in India.

This book provides an insight into the functioning of formal, legal, and political institutions in the Indian democracy. It discusses the role and the importance of the rule of law, constitutional morality, and the opposition in its functioning.

In the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's assassination, the Congress party swept the polls in 1984. It reached its zenith with Rajiv Gandhi at the helm. However, due to shifts in Indian polity, economy, and society, this period marked the end of the Congress epoch. It was only a couple of decades later that the Congress was able to emerge as a dominant party again.

The book focuses on the role of courts in understanding and interpreting the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression, interrogating judicial premises and reasoning from the point of view of the text, structure, history of the Constitution, the philosophies of speech, as well as the reasoning of similarly-placed constitutional courts.

This book examines the contemporary nature of caste disparities in India by using a framework that integrates discussions on caste from other social science disciplines with those from within economics. It brings together quantitative evidence on different dimensions of caste disparities based on two large national-level data sets, in order to analyse the degree of change in the caste system over the last two decades. Offering evidence based on economic analysis, itquestions commonly-held views and challenges traditional wisdom.