Manohar Publishers and Distributors: 10/11/12

11 October, 2012

Education and Democracy in India

By- Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee (ed)

Published in association with

Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi

Since Independence, India’s educational performance has been regularly put under scrutiny. Meeting the original mandate of providing free and compulsory education to all children up to the age of 14 has proved to be an uphill task. Various reforms and programmes have been initiated over the past decades to achieve the somewhat elusive aim of universal elementary education (UEE). The National Policy of Education (1986) formulated after a nation-wide debate still stands out as a landmark in the country’s educational policy along with the 1992 Programme of Action which outlined its implementation strategy. A framework of partnerships aiming to launch centrally sponsored schemes at the state level followed later. A spectacular innovation, post-1991, was the multiplicity of donor-assisted programmes.

Against this backdrop, the enduring class, caste and gender imbalances in education called for a political will to make access to schools a priority. Moreover, as schools form a natural arena for the construction of nationalism, it is not a surprise that the gradual withdrawal of the state from the educational sphere has created a vacuum for its use by ideological groups and organizations.

Some of these significant changes and present trends are reflected and commented upon in the present volume, which is the outcome of two international conferences organized by the Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi. Cutting across research fields, the two seminars gathered on a common platform, historians, political scientists and educationists from India and Europe to reflect on the most central issues in the education sector: its history and development, its decentralization, its finances, its sociology and some of its ideological trends.

Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee, is currently Political Adviser at the Delegation of the European Commission to India. A graduate in international relations from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris), she holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). The major part of her research on contemporary Indian politics was conducted as a fellow and research coordinator (Political Science) at the Centre de Sciences Humaines (New Delhi).

ISBN 978-81-7304-604-9 2004 270p. Rs.695/Pounds 45

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Coalition Politics in India: Problems and Prospects

By- Mahendra Prasad Singh and Anil Mishra (eds)

With the replacement of the dominant party system in India, minority and/or coalition governments in New Delhi have become the order of the day. Except for the Congress minority government of P.V. Narasimha Rao and National Democratic Alliance government of Atal Behari Vajpayee, all such governments since 1989 have been unstable. Yet instability apart, coalition governments have been effective in enhancing democratic legitimacy, representativeness and national unity. Major policy shifts like neo-liberal economic reforms, federal decentring, and grass roots decentralization, in theory or practice, are largely attributable to the onset of federal coalitional governance. Coalition governments in states and at the centre have also facilitated gradual transition of the Marxist-Left and the Hindu-Right into the political establishment, and thus contributed to the integration of the party system as well as the nation. The same major national parties which initially rejected the idea of coalition politics have today accepted it and are maturing into skilled and virtuoso performers at the game.

In a rather short span of over a decade, India has witnessed coalition governments of three major muted hues: (a) middle-of-the-road Centrist Congress minority government of P.V. Narasimha Rao, going against its Left of Centre reputation, initiated neo-liberal economic reforms in 1991; (b) three Left-of-Centre governments formed by the Janata Dal-led National/United Front; and (c) two Right-of-Centre coalition governments formed by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Aliance under Atal Behari Vajpayee, a votary of secular version of Hindu nationalism.

In the wake of the decline of Congress dominance, the fragmentation of the national party system and the emergence of party systems at the regional level have turned India into a chequered federal chessboard. The past and likely future patterns of coalition governments in New Delhi are suggestive of at least three models of power sharing: (a) coalition of more or less equal partners, e.g. the National Front and the United Front, (b) coalition of relatively smaller parties led by a major party, e.g. National Democratic Alliance; and (c) coalition of relatively smaller parties facilitated but not necessarily led by a prime minister from the major parties formed in 2004 around the Indian National Congress, avowing secular Indian nationalism.

The fifteen papers in this book analyse the various dimensions of coalition government at the Centre and in some of the states of the Indian federation against the background of a theoretical framework that seeks to integrate coalitions among parties, castes and communities and tribes, as well as classes at electoral, parliamentary, and cabinet levels.

Mahendra Prasad Singh, Professor of Political Science, University of Delhi, Delhi.

Anil Mishra, Department of Political Science, PG-DAV College, New Delhi.

ISBN 978-81-7304-573-8 2004 338p. Rs.795/Pounds 50