This book traces the trajectory of the Indian Parliament from its formation to present day. The essays presented here explore parliamentary democracy through the formative years and highlight the Parliament’s function as a representative and accountable institution, its procedures and responsibility, its connection with the other arms of the state, its relationship with grassroots democracy and the press, and its critical role in framing foreign policy and national security. The volume frames major debates surrounding the Parliament through historical, conceptual and contemporary political perspectives. It also looks at how politics in practice is being continuously changed and challenged by new social media and further views the transformation of India’s apex legislative institution in terms of democratizing processes, constitutional values and changing mores. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Indian politics, history, comparative politics, political science and modern India.

In its in depth focus on the Lok Sabha, the volume highlights the way the Parliament has come to encompass India's proverbial diversity. It especially demonstrates the route this institution has taken to engage with fractious issues of diverging linguistic and regional demands. --Book Jacket.

Since the structural change in Indian society that began in the 1990s - the result of the liberalisation of the economy, devolution of power, and decentralisation of the government–an unprecedented, democratic transformation has been taking place. This has caused the emergence of unexpected coalitions and alliances across diverse castes, classes, and religious groups according to the issues involved. In this volume, we intend to understand this deepening of democracy by employing a new analytical framework of the 'vernacular public arena' where negotiations, dialogues, debates, and contestations occur among 'vernacular publics'. This reflects the profound changes in Indian democracy as diverse social groups, including dalits, adivasis, and Other Backward Classes; minorities, women; individuals from rural areas, towns, and cities; the poor and the new middle classes–the 'vernacular publics'–participate in new ways in India’s public life. This participation is not confined to electoral politics, but has extended to the public arenas in which these groups have begun to raise their voice publicly and to negotiate and engage in dialogue with each other and the wider world. Contributors demonstrate that the participation of vernacular publics has resulted in the broadening of Indian democracy itself which focuses on the ways of governance, improving people’s lives, life chances, and living environments. An original, comprehensive study that furthers our understanding of the unfolding political dynamism and the complex reshuffling and reassembling taking place in Indian society and politics, this book will be relevant to academics with an interest in South Asian Studies from a variety of disciplines, including Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This volume offers the most significant analysis of how parliament re-emerged in Myanmar in the span of a post-junta decade (2011-2021).

While there is overwhelming support for democracy in India and voter turnout is higher than in many Western democracies, there are low levels of trust in political parties and elected representatives. This book is an attempt to look beyond Indian elections, which has increasingly occupied analysts and commentators. It focuses on the Lok Sabha (The House of the People), comprising 543 members directly elected for five years by a potential 800 million plus voters in 2019. The book seeks to answer two questions: Is the Indian Parliament, which has the unenviable task of representing a diverse nation of a billion-plus people, working, if not in an exemplary manner, at least reasonably well, to articulate the diverse demands of the electorate and translate them into legislation and policy? To what extent has the practice of Indian democracy transformed the institution of parliament, which was adopted from the British, and its functioning?

The Parliament is the visible face of democracy in India. It is the epicentre of political life, public institutions of great verve, and a regime of Rights. In a first-of-its-kind study, this book delves into the lived experience of the Indian Parliament by focusing on three distinct phases—the 1950s, the 1970s, and the 1990s and beyond. The authors argue against the widely held notion of its ongoing decline, and demonstrate how it has repeatedly, and successfully, responded to India's changing needs in six decades of existence. This comprehensive and authoritative study examines the changing social composition and differing modes of representation that make up the Lok Sabha and critically explores its relation with the Rajya Sabha. Developments in the institutional complex of the Parliament, including the functioning of the Opposition and the Speaker are traced over time, along with the processes of legislation and accountability. Major debates in the House are scrutinized, and much of the analysis is based on empirical data gathered from surveys circulated among prominent politicians and public intellectuals. It also addresses the intricate issue of relations between the Judiciary and the Parliament. In its in-depth focus on the Lok Sabha, the volume highlights the way the Parliament has come to encompass India's proverbial diversity. It especially demonstrates the route this institution has taken to engage with fractious issues of diverging linguistic and regional demands.

What terms are currently up for debate in Indian society? How have their meanings changed over time? This book highlights key words for modern India in everyday usage as well as in scholarly contexts. Encompassing over 250 key words across a wide range of topics, including aesthetics and ceremony, gender, technology and economics, past memories and future imaginaries, these entries introduce some of the basic concepts that inform the 'cultural unconscious' of the Indian subcontinent in order to translate them into critical tools for literary, political, cultural and cognitive studies. Inspired by Raymond Williams' pioneering exploration of English culture and society through the study of keywords, Keywords for India brings together more than 200 leading sub-continental scholars to form a polyphonic collective. Their sustained engagement with an incredibly diverse set of words enables a fearless interrogation of the panoply, the multitude, the shape-shifter that is 'India'. Through its close investigation and unpacking of words, this book investigates the various intellectual possibilities on offer within the Indian subcontinent at the beginning of a fraught new millennium desperately in need of fresh vocabularies. In this sense, Keywords for India presents the world with many emancipatory memes from India.

PART TWO: EXTERNAL ACTORS

This study of the national parliaments of India, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand is inspired by four major theoretical discourses: neo-institutionalism, parliamentarianism versus presidentialism, majoritarian versus consensus democracy, and transition theory. The book examines the specific role of parliaments in political decision-making, regime change, democratization, and consolidation of democracy in a comparative perspective. It argues that parliaments play a greater part in the political decision-making than is often asserted and that there is no cogent causal relationship between parliamentary performance and system of government.