Author Description

Who are the people of India? What are their rights? What are their claims on the Indian Constitution and on democracy? As a part of Samruddha Bharat Foundation's series Rethinking India, We the People brings together a collection of essays that explores the interesting process of the germination and growth of undisputed universal rights, and of them being developed as tangible entitlements in India. The essays also examine the continuing challenge of establishing, realizing and protecting these entitlements. The authors are academics, activists and practitioners with a strong relationship with social movements and therefore uniquely placed to link practice to theory. Their narratives trace the use of the rights-based framework of the Indian Constitution by socio-political movements in order to strengthen the economic, cultural and social rights of ordinary Indians. The multiple perspectives draw upon and contextualize the complex relationship of the citizen with the state, society and the market in democratic India. Their sharp critiques have a counterpoint in stories of creative, successful alternatives designed by peoples' collectives. There is both an explicit and implicit challenge to conservative notions of 'market-led development' that see competition and profits as central to 'progress' and success. These essays look at the theoretical demands for changing the status quo, but also for working out the nuts and bolts of such change. The essays showcase the continuing dialectic between established constitutional rights and shifting state policy. The crisis unleashed by the response to COVID-19 has exposed the fault lines of this dilemma dramatically. It is an irony that when the government has to exponentially expand its capacity to deliver health, employment and food to people, it has no recourse but to the framework of the same rights-based legislation it has constantly tried to run down. These essays provide invaluable insight at a time when m