Magsaysay Award winner Aruna Roy is a social activist, professor, union organiser and former civil servant, has been living and working with people. She was the president of the National Federation of Indian Women and founder of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan. 

Suchi Pande is Scholar in Residence, Accountability Research Center at American University in Washington DC. She was Secretary of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information in India.

Abbreviations
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Aruna Roy and Suchi Pande

Musings on Music
Unpacking the Links between Culture and Democracy
S. Anandalakshmy

1. Culture and Democracy
T. M. Krishna

2. Social Accountability through Decentralisation
Learnings from a Quarter-century of Experience in Kerala
S. M. Vijayanand

3. From the ‘Right to Information’ to ‘People’s Data Rights’
The Digital Frontier for Participatory Democracy
Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami

4. Desiderata
C. K. Mathew

5. Poor Implementation of ‘Power to the People’ in Urban Areas
A Case Study of Karnataka
Kathyayini Chamaraj

6. Including the Excluded
Mamta Jaitly

7. Notes on Building Democracy in Rural India
Kenneth Winston

8. Building a Culture of Democracy
Brick by Brick
Nikhil Dey and Rakshita Swamy

9. Including the Wisdom of Pastoral Peoples in India’s Democracy
Rosamma Thomas

10. Participatory Democracy
How Did it All Go Wrong?
Shaheen Anam

11. Right to Information
Curtailed Illegally and Unconstitutionally
Shailesh Gandhi

12. Before Corona Infected the Indefinite Protests
The (Il)legal Story behind Shaheen Bagh
M. Sridhar Acharyulu

13. Participatory Democracy and Institutional Amnesia
India
Teesta Setalvad

A Coda
Aruna Roy

Notes on the Contributors
Index