How Does India Achieve Change in Its Policies?

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India has been known to be a state that never changes. Since the 1980s, and especially after the 1990s, however, India’s growth trajectory has begun to evolve and change from its static status quo. RAHUL MUKHERJI has investigated the reasons for this change, as he explains in this video. For this, he looked at historical processes and compared processes that have achieved successful change to processes that have failed to achieve change. He found that India performs despite its slow developments in policies because they gradually achieve a consensus among political and social actors. Once this critical mass of ideas has been reached, changes in policies occur, for instance in the area of welfare policies, such as the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21036/LTPUB10531

Tags:

Indian Politics

Researcher

Rahul Mukherji is Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University. Some of his previous affiliations include the University of Singapore and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Furthermore, he has undertaken research at Columbia University and City University New York and the Australian National University, Canberra. He is specialized in comparative politics, international relations and governance in South Asia. Twice, he has won the Award for Research Excellence of the National University Singapore.

Institution

Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg)

"Heidelberg University, founded in 1386, is Germany’s oldest university and one of the strongest research universities in all of Europe. The successes in both rounds of the Excellence Initiative and in internationally recognised rankings prove that Heidelberg’s excellent reputation and leading role in the scientific community are well deserved. In terms of educating students and promoting promising early-career academics, Heidelberg relies on research-based teaching and an outstanding, well-structured training for doctoral candidates. Heidelberg University is a comprehensive university, offering the full spectrum of disciplines in the humanities, law and the social sciences alongside the natural and life sciences, including medicine. As a comprehensive university, Heidelberg aims to continue to strengthen the individual disciplines and to further interdisciplinary cooperation, as well as to carry research results over into society and industry. With its aspiration of connecting traditional values with future-oriented scientific concepts in research and teaching, the university is building bridges to the future – Zukunft. Seit 1386." ( Source )

Original publication

Is India a Developmental State?

Mukherji Rahul

The Asian Developmental State: Reexaminations and New Departures

Published in 2016

Governance Reform in a Weak State: Thirty Years of Indian Experience

Mukherji Rahul

Governance

Published in 2016

Globalization and Deregulation: Ideas, Interests, and Institutional Change in India

Mukherji Rahul

Published in 2014

Political Economy of Reforms in India: Oxford India Short Introductions

Mukherji Rahul

Oxford India Short Introduction

Published in 2014

Bureaucratic Rationality, Political Will and State Capacity: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in Andhra Pradesh

Mukherji Rahul and Jha Himanshu

Economic and Political Weekly

Published in 2017

Reading recommendations

India and Global Economic Governance: From Structural Conflict to Embedded Liberalism

Mukherji Rahul

International Studies Review

Published in 2014

Beyond

A Ground-breaking Scientific Revolution

An Alarming Challenge for Society

If I Had a Second Life

A Personal Reading Recommendation