In an era of liberalization, should social movements shift strategies to mirror the state in demoting poverty alleviation as a central concern? In their edited collection on social movements and the Indian state since Independence, Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod Katzenstein examine the complex historical legacy and current conundrums confronting the strategies of social activists and their implications for the poor. While most scholars of Indian politics have focused on the state and economic elites to explain the persistence of poverty in India, Ray and Katzenstein argue that “the picture is incomplete and distorted” (p. 10), without also considering the role of organized social forces that have mobilized constituents and confronted and/or cooperated with the state in ways that have important implications for the success or failure of poverty alleviation. The editors adopt a broad conception of social movements, including labor unions, political parties, mass organizations, and nongovernmental organizations, as well as protest-oriented movements.

The editors acknowledge building on Gail Omvedt's Reinventing Revolution: New Social Movements and the Socialist Tradition in India (1993), which explored the emergence of movements in the 1970s that broadened struggles against oppression to include issues of gender, caste, environment, and farmers (which is sometimes characterized as Bharat-versus-India). Omvedt's work does not address the dramatic changes in Indian politics since the late 1980s. Ray and Katzenstein claim to take a more comprehensive approach that identifies three cohorts of movement activism since Independence that respond to “the shifting master frame of the state” (p. 6): first, the Nehruvian master frame of democratic socialism (1947–66), followed by deinstitutionalization (1967–88), and the more recent dismantling of the Nehruvian frame and its replacement by liberalization and religious nationalism (1989–present). The central questions posed by these essays concern the extent to which social movements in the current era continue to foreground issues of poverty, and the movement strategies to alleviate poverty that are effective when national and international institutions have jettisoned democratic socialism in favor of neoliberalism.

During the first phase (1947–66), the strong hand of the Nehruvian state meant that social movements had to choose commitment to or repudiation of bureaucratic redistributive strategies. Choosing the former, the labor movement was subsumed by the state, and its commitment to redistribution was diluted. Two movements repudiated the Nehruvian master frame, but in opposite ways. The organizational forces of the Hindu Right put forward a cultural nationalist ideology with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) based in vernacular elites in provincial towns, arguing against equality as a Western concept and stressing the spiritual superiority of Hindu unity against outsiders—whom the RSS equated with Muslims and Christians. A tenant-worker-peasant alliance in Kerala, under the leadership of the Communist Party, instituted redistributive reforms far beyond what were undertaken by other Indian states.

The second phase (1967–88) involved the rise of the movements analyzed by Omvedt. Under conditions of institutional fragmentation and rising poverty, diverse groups articulated class-plus frameworks, such as the “red and green” environmental movement. Ray and Katzenstein note that the Nehruvian master frame of democratic socialism endured for two decades after his death in the conscience of these social movements, even as they rejected the top-down approach of the centralized state.

The main contribution of these essays is their analysis of whether and how social movements in the period since 1989 have continued a commitment to redistributive strategies in a climate increasingly hostile to the poor. In essays on movements of women, dalits, and farmers, and against genetically modified organisms, Mary John, Gopal Guru and Anuradha Chakravarty, Omvedt, and Ron Herring describe major divisions between opposition to and (qualified) support for liberalization. Amita Baviskar argues that the environmental movement, under the influence of transnational actors, has reconstituted its claims around a romantic notion of indigenous people safeguarding the environment and abandoned the material interests of the poorest people.

The most innovative current approach is the People's Campaign for Decentralized Planning launched in 1996 by the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM)–led Kerala government. Patrick Heller recounts how the Kerala CPM dramatically shifted from centralized state allocation to redistribution from below, engaging citizens in the planning process with special emphasis on previously excluded social groups. Decentralization involved the allocation of 40% of planning funds by ward-based local assemblies and local elected bodies. The CPM partnered with the People's Science Movement to mobilize rural populations to participate in these local assemblies. Heller explains the initiative in terms of the history of competitive programmatic parties, horizontal forms of association, and engaged citizenry in Kerala, as well as the failure of centralized bureaucratic redistribution because of the lack of accountability leading to patronage and corruption.

The divided social movements are in disarray, both sides maintaining that their own strategies are the correct way to reduce poverty. Perhaps the social movement initiatives described in this volume with the most potential in addressing poverty currently are those that attempt to follow the Kerala model. They would work by mobilizing local communities marginalized by class, gender, caste, and religion to hold accountable the institutions of local governance—panchayats and municipal councils—reconstituted by the 73d and 74th Constitutional Amendments as more powerful and inclusive (with reservations for women, Other Backward Classes, dalits, and adivasis). Although many states have not devolved sufficient powers and resources to local government, social movements can use the decentralization mantra to pressure states to comply, and then secure benefits for the poor and redistributive policies from local bodies.

The social force that the progressive movements fear the most in the current period is the Hindu Right, which has assumed prominence with its success in demolishing the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya in 1992 and the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power nationally from 1998 to 2004. Tanika Sarkar explains the Hindu Right's compromise with international capitalism through its promotion of liberalization in terms of the attachment of the Hindu Right's middle-class constituency to the consumer boom brought about by liberalization. In this period of market ascendancy, Nehru's planned economy and commitments to the poor are dismissed as failures. Instead of poverty alleviation, the Hindu Right offers the poor an enemy to blame and membership in a strong Hindu nation. Not covered in this survey of social movements are current efforts by the Hindu Right to create their own local organizations to influence panchayats.

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. The compelling history of Indian social movements is not as well known in political science as it deserves to be. This work 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.