This seminal anthology embeds the study of social movements just where it belongs, in the workings of state-society relations and democratic politics. It carefully charts changing patterns of social mobilization while identifying diverse and contradictory trends in each epoch. It underlines both the extraordinary significance of social movements and the extraordinary challenges of combining commitments to redistribution and poverty alleviation with other issues and identities.

Amrita Basu, Amherst College

This book is important to social movement scholars who wish to expand their theoretical boundaries by centrally considering lessons from "the South."

Bandana Purkayastha, University of Connecticut, Mobilization

This collection provides a valuable examination of Indian social movements and poverty in historical perspective and asks important questions about the role of social movements in the present, even if the answers are not so clear.... It offers scholars interested in such movements in the era of globalization a range of cases with varying implications for poverty, and it invites India scholars to dig deeper to identify the outcomes of current social movement approaches.

Jana Everett, Professor of Political Science, University of Colorado Denver

This collection provides a valuable examination of Indian social movements and poverty in historical perspectives and asks important questions about the role of social movements in the present . . . This work offers scholars interested in such movements in the era of globalization a range of cases with varying implcations for poverty, and it invites India scholars to dig deeper to identify the outcomes of current social movement approaches.

Perspectives in Politics

This analytically sophisticated collection of work on what is arguably the world's most complex set of social movements will be a key source for future scholarship. Ray and Katzenstein's examination of how the evolution of India's political context has reshaped the panorama of Indian social movements has powerful comparative resonance.

Peter Evans, University of California, Berkeley