**Special Issue**
Experiencing the State: Marginalized People and the Politics of Development in Contemporary India
Marginality, Agency and Power: Experiencing the State in Contemporary India
By Philippa Williams*, Bhaskar Vira* and Deepta Chopra^ *University of Cambridge, UK, ^Institute of Development Studies, UK
Keywords: The state, development, politics, India, marginality
The idea of the state has shown remarkable resilience over the last couple of decades, despite assaults on it from neoliberal doctrines and the forces of globalization. During this period, the abiding presence and role of the state has been particularly evident in the contemporary political life of the Asia Pacific region. This article pays special attention to the contemporary Indian state in the context of development. It reflects upon the ways in which the
state is experienced, by focusing on questions of marginality, agency and power as they intersect the politics of development. By reading the empirical insights documented within this special issue against a rich trajectory of scholarship on the Indian state, the article argues that there has been a recent qualitative change in the way in which the contemporary Congress-led UPA government has presented itself to the common person. The implementation of pro-poor and more inclusive policies has altered the discursive landscape within which state-society interactions have taken place over the last five years. Importantly, these policies have functioned to reconfigure not only the material interactions between the state and India’s marginalized, but also the imagined spaces within which marginal groups renegotiate their relationships with the state.
Spaces of Opportunity: State-Oustee Relations in the Context of Conservation-Induced Displacement in Central India
By Kim Beazley, University of Cambridge, UK
Keywords: Displacement; relocation; conservation; India; power; everyday state
This article draws from detailed fieldwork on the recent conservationinduced displacement of a Maharashtrian village in central India to contest the simplicity of conventional treatments of such displacement as a straightforward enactment of state power. Reflecting certain broader theories of power, agency and the state, the case of Botezari village presents a more nuanced reality in which state-society relations were transformed and retransformed. In the village’s pre-relocation phase, a set of conducive factors came together to create a small opening which enabled a fundamental reworking of familiar state-oustee power relationships. This opening was ultimately short-lived, with spaces of oustee opportunity to direct change largely closed off in the post-relocation context. However, the villagers’ memories of their pre-relocation liberating moment, and the strategic capacity, confidence and expectations honed in that moment, persisted to an extent that challenges the permanency and inevitability of displacementinduced marginalization in the conservation setting.
Spaces for Negotiation and Mass Action within the National Rural Health Mission: ‘Community Monitoring Plus’ and People’s Organizations in Tribal Areas of Maharashtra, India
By Brendan Donegan, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, UK
Keywords: Health, anthropology, community, civil society, state, politics
The first phase of the Community-Based Monitoring of Health Services program of the National Rural Health Mission has seen involvement of civil society actors at every stage, from the formation of policy in Delhi to program implementation in villages across the country. For many of the civil society actors involved, the program presents a unique opportunity to advance their rights-based agendas from within the government system by making creative and innovative use of the spaces that the program opens. In the implementation of the program by people’s organizations in tribal areas of Maharashtra, “innovations” have been introduced that go beyond the scope of the guidelines set in Delhi; these have been dubbed “community monitoring plus.”
Drawing upon actor-network theory and recent work in the anthropology of development, this paper explores the dynamics, achievements and tensions of “community monitoring plus” through a narrative that travels the length of the policy process. The analysis describes how categories such as “state,” “civil society” and “community” are constructed within spaces of policy and practice, and examines the crucial enabling role that such constructions play in the policy process. The necessity of such constructions leads to a disconnect between policy making and implementation, so that policy makers remain ignorant of the realities of implementation practice and subordinate actors can carve out spaces for carrying out their own agendas around and against the policy framework. The implications of the analysis extend beyond the case study, as the dynamics described are also features of policy processes elsewhere.
Questioning Borders: Social Movements, Political Parties and the Creation of New States in India 
By Louise Tillin, University of Cambridge, UK
Keywords: India; statehood; movements; political parties; federalism
As the world’s largest multi-ethnic democracy, India has a federal constitution that is well-equipped with administrative devices that offer apparent recognition and measures of self-governance to territorially concentrated ethnic groups. This article analyzes how demands for political autonomy—or statehood—within the federal system have been used as a frame for social movement mobilization. It focuses on the most recent states to have been created in India: Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, which came into being in 2000. These are the first states to have been created in India on a non-linguistic basis. Their creation has triggered questions about whether the creation of more, smaller states can improve political representation and help to make the state more responsive to diverse needs in India. This article draws attention to the processes which have brought borders into question, drawing social movements and political parties into alignment about the idea of creating new states. It ultimately looks at why the creation of states as a result of such processes may not lead to more substantive forms of political and economic citizenship on the part of marginalized communities. While the focus of the analysis will be on the processes that led up to statehood, the conclusions offer some insights into why pro-poor policy shifts at the national level in India have uneven regional effects. Despite the change in national political regime in India with the election of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2004, marginalized groups in India continue to experience the state through the refractive lens of multiple regional political histories.
Policy Making in India: A Dynamic Process of Statecraft
By Deepta Chopra, Institute of Development Studies, UK
Keywords: State, Policy making, Statecraft, India, Politics
This paper problematizes the concept of the state by studying its role and interactions with society in the realm of making policy. To achieve this, the case of a recently formulated social policy in India, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), is examined. The paper provides empirical evidence of policy making as a complex and iterative process, which is mediated by a multiplicity of actors who operate in relation to each other. In tracing the formulation process of the NREGA, theoretical claims regarding the understanding of the state as an ideological construct as well as comprising of material practices are substantiated. The paper sees policy making as an act of governing, and contributes to ethnographic understandings of fuzzy and porous boundaries between the state and society that are redefined through the act of policy making. This dynamism, it is argued, results in the two-dimensional phenomenon of statecraft: how the state pursues policy making as a strategy for governing its population, and in turn, how the state itself gets reconstituted in the making of policy.
Books Reviewed In This Issue
Asia General
From Asian To Global Financial Crisis: An Asian
Regulator’s View of Unfettered Finance in the
1990s and 2000s. By Andrew Sheng.
Reviewed by Cyn-Young Park
Economic Meltdown and Geopolitical Stability. Edited
by Ashley J. Tellis, Andrew Marble and Travis Tanner.
Reviewed by Pascale Massot
American Sanctions in the Asia-Pacific.
By Brendan Taylor.
Reviewed by Ted Galen Carpenter
Geopolitics and Maritime Territorial Disputes
in East Asia. By Ralf Emmers.
Reviewed by Cheng Guan Ang
Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon.
Edited by Carol Gluck and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. Reviewed by Arif Dirlik
China and India: Prospects for Peace.
By Jonathan Holslag.
Reviewed by David A. Rosenberg
The Rise of China and India: A New Asian Drama.
Edited by Lam Peng Er and Lim Tai Wei.
Reviewed by Hong Zhao
Political Booms: Local Money and Power in
Taiwan, East China, Thailand, and the Philippines.
By Lynn T. White.
Reviewed by Netina Tan
Politics and Change in Singapore and Hong Kong:
Containing Contention. By Stephan Ortmann.
Reviewed by M. Ramesh
Gendered Traject ories: Women, Work, and Social
Change in Japan and Taiwan. By Wei-hsin Yu.
Reviewed by Glenda S. Roberts
Photographies East: The Camera and Its Histories
in East and Southeast Asia. Edited by Rosalind
C. Morris.
Reviewed by Hyung-Gu Lynn
Decentralization Policies in Asian Development.
Editors: Shinichi Ichimura, Roy Bahl.
Reviewed by Hal Hill
Reviewed by Peter J. Buckley
China and Inner Asia
The Mind of Empire: China’s History and Modern
Foreign Relations. By Christopher A. Ford.
Reviewed by John E. Wills, Jr.
Negotiating Asymmetry: China’s Place in Asia.
Edited by Anthony Reid, Zheng Yangwen.
Reviewed by Xiaorong Han
Management Training and Development in China:
Educating Managers in a Globalized Economy.
Edited by Malcolm Warner and Keith Goodall.
Reviewed by Ilan Alon
Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization.
By Anita Chan, Richard Madsen and Jonathan Unger.
Reviewed by Graham Johnson
Oil in China: From Self-Reliance to Internationalization.
Series on Contemporary China, V. 18. By Lim Tai Wei.
Reviewed by Jianhai Bi
Oil and Gas in China: The New Energy Superpower’s
Relations With its Region. By Lim Tai Wei.
Reviewed by Jianhai Bi
State’s Gains, Labor’s Losses: China, France,
and Mexico Choose Global Liaisons, 1980-2000.
By Dorothy J. Solinger.
Reviewed by David Zweig
Communist Multiculturalism: Ethnic Revival
in Southwest China. By Susan K. McCarthy.
Reviewed by Janet Sturgeon
Collect ive Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests
Succeed or Fail. By Yongshun Cai.
Reviewed by Neil Diamant
Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student
Uprising of 1989. By Philip J. Cunningham.
Reviewed by Bob Nixon
A Foreign Missionary on the Long March:
The Memoirs of Arnolis Hayman of the China
Inland Mission. By Arnolis Hayman; edited with
an Introduction by Anne-Marie Brady.
Reviewed by John S. Conway
La Révolution Fourvoyée: Parcours dans la Chine du
XXe Siècle. By Lucien Bianco.
Reviewed by Rene Goldman
Voices in Revolution: Poetry and the Auditory
Imagination in Modern China. By John A. Crespi.
Reviewed by Lucas Klein
Once Iron Girls: Essays on Gender by Post-Mao
Chinese Literary Women. Edited by Hui Wu.
Reviewed by Norman Smith
Women Journalists and Feminism in China,
1898-1937. By Yuxin Ma.
Reviewed by Stephen R. MacKinnon
Cinema, Space, and Polylocality in a
Globalizing China. By Yingjin Zhang.
Reviewed by Jason McGrath
The Birth of a Republic: Francis Stafford’s
Photographs of China’s 1911 Revolution and
Beyond. Edited by Hanchao Lu.
Reviewed by Wenhsin Yeh
Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in
Postsocialist China. By Tiantian Zheng.
Reviewed by Sophia Woodman
Developing China: Land, Politics and Social
Conditions. By George C.S. Lin.
Reviewed by Wei Xu
Northeast Asia
Conflict and Change: Foreign Ownership
and the Japanese Firm. By George Olcott.
Reviewed by Hendrik Meyer-Ohle
Changes in Japanese Employment Pract ices:
Beyond the Japanese Model. By Arjan B. Keizer.
Reviewed by Ellen Fuller
Challenges to Japanese Education:
Economics, Reform, and Human Rights.
Edited by June A. Gordon, Hidenori
Fujita, Takehiko Kariya and Gerald LeTendre.
Reviewed by Ryota Nishino
The Transformation of the Japanese Left :
From Old Socialists to New Democrats.
By Sarah Hyde.
Reviewed by Aurelia George Mulganr
Japan’s Remilitarisation. By Christopher W. Hughes.
Reviewed by You Ji
The Ideology of Kokugo: Nationalizing Language
in Modern Japan. By Lee Yeounsuk; translated by
Maki Hirano Hubbard.
Reviewed by Wesley Jacobsen
Making Japanese Heritage. Edited by Christoph
Brumann and Rupert Cox.
Reviewed by Etsuko Kato
Women’s Rights?: The Politics of Eugenic Abortion
in Modern Japan. By Masae Kato.
Reviewed by Sabine Frühstück
The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and
Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan.
By C. Sarah Soh.
Reviewed by Seungsook Moon
Perversion and Modern Japan: Psychoanalysis,
Literature, Culture. Edited by Nina Cornyetz
and J. Keith Vincent.
Reviewed by Nicola Liscutin
South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation
of a Neoliberal Welfare Society. By Jesook Song.
Reviewed by William Hayes
Born Again: Evangelicalism in Korea.
By Timothy S. Lee.
Reviewed by Motokazu Matsutani
Questioning Minds: Short Stories by Modern
Korean Women Writers. Translated with an
introduction by Yung-Hee Kim.
Reviewed by Ann Y. Choi
North Korea Caught in Time: Images of War and
Reconstruction. By Chris Springer; with an essay
by Balazs Szalontai.
Reviewed by Hee-Jeong Sohn
The Hidden People of North Korea:
Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom.
By Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh.
Reviewed by Andrei Lankov
The Art of the Gut: Manhood, Power, and Ethics
in Japanese Politics. By Robin M. LeBlanc.
Reviewed by Scott North
Reviewed by Keiko Hirata
South Asia
Inclusion and Exclusion in Local Governance:
Field Studies from Rural India. Edited by
B.S. Baviskar and George Mathew.
Reviewed by Subrata K. Mitra
Indian Youth in a Transforming World: Attitudes
and Perceptions. Edited by Peter Ronald deSouza,
Sanjay Kumar, Sandeep Shastri.
Reviewed by Craig Jeffreyr
Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India.
By Anand Pandian.
Reviewed by Annu Jalais
India and the United States in the 21st Century:
Reinventing Partnership. By Teresita C. Schaffer.
Reviewed by William L. Richter
The Maoist Insurgency in Nepal: Revolution in the
Twenty-first Century. Edited by Mahendra Lawoti
and Anup K. Pahari.
Reviewed by Mallika Shakya
Global Power: India’s Foreign Policy, 1947-2006.
By B.M. Jain.
Reviewed by Vernon M. Hewitt
The Partition of India. By Ian Talbot and
Gurharpal Singh.
Reviewed by Farzana Shaikh
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War. By Ang Cheng Guan.
Reviewed by Yuen Foong Khong
Rand in Southeast Asia: A History of the
Vietnam War. By Mai V. Elliott.
Reviewed by Michael E. Latham
Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical
Experience and the Makings of Globalization.
By Neferti X.M. Tadiar.
Reviewed by Francis A. Gealogo
Multiethnic Malaysia: Past, Present and Future.
Edited by Lim Teck Gee, Alberto Gomes,
Azly Rahman.
Reviewed by Clarissa Lee
Economic Crises and the Breakdown of
Authoritarian Regimes: Indonesia and Malaysia in
Comparative Perspective. By Thomas B. Pepinsky.
Reviewed by Richard Robison
Workers and Intellect uals: NGOs, Trade Unions
and the Indonesian Labour Movement.
By Michele Ford.
Reviewed by Olle Törnquist
Reconciling Indonesia: Grassroots agency for peace. Edited by Birgit Bräuchler.
Reviewed by Thushara Dibley
Anwar on Trial: In the Face of Injustice.
By Pawancheek Marican.
Reviewed by Johan Saravanamuttu
“If You Leave Us Here, We Will Die”:
How Genocide Was Stopped in East Timor. By Geoffrey Robinson.
Reviewed by Joseph Nevins
Australasia and the Pacific Region
The Warm Winds of Change: Globalisation in Contemporary Sämoa. By Cluny Macpherson and La’avasa Macpherson.
Reviewed by Ilana Gershon
Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery
of Tahiti. By Anne Salmond.
Reviewed by Kareva Mateata-Allain
Suffering and Sentiment: Exploring the
Vicissitudes of Experience and Pain in Yap.
By C. Jason Throop.
Reviewed by Glenn Petersen
A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on
Rossel Island. By John Liep.
Reviewed by John Barker
Society of Others: Kinship and Mourning in a
West Papuan Place. By Rupert Stasch.
Reviewed by Naomi McPherson
Reviewed by Dominik Schieder
