Urban Activism in India

This book explores the intersections between good governance initiatives and rights activism, between different normative conceptions of how the citizen-state relationship should be, and the projects and practices which flow from them. In an era in which subscribing to transparency, accountability, anti-corruption, good governance and state reform have become key markers of national development and modernisation, the book addresses the dearth of accounts of how these concepts take hold in people’s everyday lives. Focusing on the lives of transparency and accountability activists in Delhi.

The book introduces the reader to different settings, life stories, and encounters with bureaucracy, transparency and accountability to show how these encounters are inflected by social position and practical knowledge. It demonstrates how concerns about transparency, accountability and anti-corruption flow from a range of social locations and political perspectives rather than being the preserve of specific, often elite, groups, and how initiatives and social action emerge at the intersections of the interests of disparate actors. Innovatively applying an analysis influenced by actor oriented perspectives within the anthropology of international development, and insights generated by ethnographic work on brokerage, mediation and the state, to the study of urban governance activism in India, the author makes us think of transparency, accountability and anti-corruption as social, political and material processes which are firmly embedded in social life and enrol a multiplicity of actors, crucially including those living in the informal and marginal spaces of the city.

The book will be of interest to academics studying development and urban studies, governance, corruption, socio-legal studies, anthropology/ethnography/political science and South Asian studies.