Change and Mobility in Contemporary India Thinking M. N. Srinivas Today

This book studies caste and community dynamics in India and offers a critical view of social mobility from below. Building on the theories of the eminent sociologist M N Srinivas, the essays in this volume reformulate the debate on caste as they document the changing inter-caste dynamics and caste-based violence in contemporary India.

The volume showcases the new language of change in caste relations, articulated mostly from the perspective of the marginalised as experiences, differences, contestations, assertions and as citizenship rights. It focusses on the clash between traditional structures of inequality and the ideals of equality and justice in a liberal, democratic India. It also highlights the persistence of caste and endogamy and the interlocking nature of caste, gender and disability, struggles of ethnic groups and informal workers in the market economy, discrimination in the labour market and the dissolution of dissent in the public sphere.

With contributions from leading scholars of social change and development in India and abroad, this volume will be useful for scholars and researchers of sociology, social anthropology, minority and subaltern studies, and development studies.

List of Figures. List of Tables. List of Contributors. Foreword. Acknowledgements. List of Abbreviations.Glossary. M N Srinivas and the Kaleidoscope of Social Change in Modern India: A Critical Introduction,Sobin George, Manohar Yadav, and Anand InbanathanPart I – Caste Today: Resilience, Conflicts and Contestations 1. Some Debatable Arguments about Changing Inter-Caste Dynamics in Rural India James Manor 2. On the Veracity of the Processes of Social Mobility and Change in India Manohar Yadav3. Recasting Political Mobility: Scheduled Caste Gram Panchayat Presidents and the ‘Dominant Lower Castes’ in Tamil Nadu Anand Inbanathan4. Caste and the Business of Democracy: Insights from Rural Karnataka Kripa Ananthpur and Radhika Viswanathan Part II – Caste and Mobility: Views from Below 5. M.N. Srinivas and his ‘Field-View’ of Society: Some Critical Reflections Joseph Tharamangalam 6. One Village and Many Changes: The Problematique of Understanding Mobility of Dalits SobinGeorge 7. Caste, Religion and Recognition: Trajectories of Pasmanda Muslim Movements Tanweer FazalPart III – Marginalities and Development 8. Youth, Endogenous Discrimination and the Development Conundrum S Madheswaran, Smrutirekha Singhari and B P Vani9. Multiple Marginalities: Educational and Occupational Mobility of Differently-Abled Persons Across Social Groups in India C M Lakshmana10. Economic, Occupational and Livelihood Changes of Scheduled Tribes of North Eastern Region Reimeingam Marchang11. ‘Outsourcing’ in Coal Mining: Understanding Labour, Livelihood and Mafia Politics in the Coalfields of Dhanbad, Jharkhand Sujit Kumar12. From Mobilisations to Mediations: Shifting Trajectories of Latin Catholic Church’s Engagements to Neo-Liberal Development Projects in Kerala Abdul RaoofC K Appendix. Index.

Sobin George is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Study of Social Change and Development, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. He is the author of the book Caste Embeddedness of Rural Public Health Services and Work and Health in Informal Economy. He has also published several research articles in national and international journals.

Manohar Yadav is a Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. He has published extensively on issues concerning subaltern and marginalised sections of the society in India. He is an active member of Dalit movements in Karnataka

Anand Inbanathan was an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru. He has been engaged in research on decentralization and local government and has also worked on health and development as well as on migration. He is the author of the book Migration and Adaptation: Tamils in Delhi.