Rethinking Democracy
Rajni Kothari
Price
1225
ISBN
9788125028949
Language
English
Pages
176
Format
Paperback
Dimensions
140 x 216 mm
Year of Publishing
2005
Territorial Rights
World
Imprint
Orient BlackSwan
Catalogues

Rethinking Democracy is an insightful and reflective monograph on democracy in general and Indian democracy in particular. In this work, Rajni Kothari revisits the core arguments he has laid down in his various writings in the past four decades—Politics in India, State Against Democracy, Communalism in India, etc. While revisiting his writings, Kothari reflects, interrogates and even contests some of his earlier formulations on democracy, state and civil society, developing a new paradigm on the basis of his intellectual experience and activist experience. Kothari makes a powerful critique of prevailing democratic theory and practice in a changing global as well as Indian contaxt and concludes that democracy has failed to achieve its objective of human emancipation and survives merely as a dream. However, this disillusionment with democracy does not deter him from searching for an alternative model of a decentralized, participatory and emancipatory democracy.

Professor Rajni Kothari is known in India and abroad as a scholar and an activist. He has been responsible for the setting up of institutions like CSDS (Centre for the Study of Developing Socities) and Lokayan (Dialogue of the People). He has produced seminal works like Politics in India, Footsteps into the Future, State Against Democracy,Caste in Indian Politics, etc.