Participatory Citizenship

"The book is well organized, with a clear structure and focus. It raises and attempts to answer a set of questions regarding the possibilities and potential of participatory citizenship." -- Ashwini Swain * Pacific Affairs *

This volume argues that the conventional understanding of citizenship is inadequate to capture the complex challenges a large majority of India’s marginalised people face in actualising their rights and making their voices heard. It offers instead an extended connotation of citizenship and participation from the perspective of those bearing excluded identities, namely, the low caste, the poor, women and tribals.

-- The Pakistan Development Review

In many ways the volume helps address an issue that arises in the context of assessing the role of non-governmental organizations versus the need to politically mobilize the marginalized and the governed. As the essays in this volume highlight, despite the need for political mobilization, there is the need to enable the marginalized to emerge and be endowed with an ability to be politically active.

-- The Book Review
This book will be value addtiton to the existing literature and it also offers deep insights on theoretical understanding of the issue and empirical case studies reveal the ground reality. -- Social Change

The volume offers a wide array of experiences of exclusion and inclusion in contemporary India and the varied roles the stare, civil society and people themselves play in these inherently conflict-ridden processes…it successfully brings the discourse on citizenship to development, and thereby plugs an important gap in the field of development studies. The editors deserve our thanks for reminding us once again that development is essentially a political act.

-- Development Policy Review