The Social Lens: Insights on Institutions, Inequality, and Innovation

The buzz surrounding the Indian elections has been building for the past two years. Disenchantment and disillusionment with the United Progressive Alliance’s policies made people impatient to welcome a new government—one that would drive the country towards prudent economic policies, better governance, the enactment of entitlement-based rights, and robust foreign policies. The name that comes to mind almost synonymously with the 2014 election is that of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) poster boy, Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi has been a long-standing member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and was chosen as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001, following the Bhuj earthquake. During his tenure, Gujarat witnessed a massive anti-muslim communal riot in 2002 after the burning of a train in Godhra. Modi has been named in multiple cases for his alleged involvement in the post-Godhra riots. Some Gujarat government officials also accused him of failing to deploy state machinery...

The biggest festival of India, parliamentary election, is planned in April and May 2014. This is not a mere number game for Indians but this is the question of their survival and a chance to gain prosperity in the economic, political, and social spheres of their life. In democracy, we do not choose only leaders to represent us but also assert our rights to have freedom, liberty, equality, and justice. These are the basic rights that one should have to live a decent life. In this election, everyone knows which party is going to get highest number of seats. The main problem is the formation of government at the centre in a coalition era asserted by ‘regional parties’ based on ‘primordial identities’. This time, the expectations from the government is very high after seeing the misrule for last five years. Irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies, corruption in government and governance, weak foreign policy and especially diplomacy, inefficient administration and insufficient result...

WP-07 Democracy means popular government and the Parliamentary form of democratic system was adopted in India by the nationalist leaders of Indian freedom struggle. The parliamentary or representative form of democracy is best defined by John Stuart Mill in his classic, Consideration on Representative Government . It is a government wherein “the whole people or some numerous portion of them exercise through deputies periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power which in every constitution must reside somewhere… this ultimate power they must possess in all its completeness” 1 Parliamentary democracy allows a form of government in which the people of the nation-state rule through elected representatives in the parliament, chosen by free and fair elections and adult suffrage. There should be existence of two or more political part is necessary, fundamental rights are guaranteed and there must be coordination between the legislature and the executive. The In...

Censorship debates in India are not new, and both the Indian state and its citizens have played roles as both perpetrators and victims in these discussions. The recent controversy surrounding Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History , once again highlighted the reluctance of certain sections of Indian society to accept criticism or alternative perspectives on religion and culture. Despite the constitutional guarantee of free expression as a fundamental right, Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) grants the state the power to penalize speech that maliciously insults or attempts to insult any religious belief. In this sense, Section 295A operates in a secular manner, as it applies to all religious communities. This provision was not part of the original IPC of 1860 but was introduced in 1927 through an amendment following the Lahore Court’s decision in Rajpal vs. King Emperor (1927) . At that time, legal experts, politicians, and scholars debated the amendment ...

We live in a country that grants us various rights classified into fundamental, legal, and statutory rights. These rights embody absolute values, reinforcing the idea of the "Kantian Man." They provide individuals with the motivation to believe in political and social constructs such as the nation-state, territory, and citizenship. Every human being is deemed equal and enjoys the freedom to practice religion, access information, express opinions, and exercise other fundamental liberties. Additionally, the legal system promises justice in cases of discrimination or crime. In essence, this framework aligns with the "Social Contract" theory, wherein individuals are free to manage their personal affairs while the state ensures broader governance and order. However, when one examines daily news and social events, this idealistic vision of rights and justice appears far from reality. Society is not a binary of black and white but a complex puzzle. The more one attempts ...

Debyani Khobragade was charged by U.S. authorities with visa fraud and providing false information, leading to her arrest and strip search. The Indian government reacted furiously, framing the incident as a matter of national identity. Public protests erupted across India, straining India-U.S. relations. Some media analysts linked the controversy to broader geopolitical issues, including the civil-nuclear deal and other ongoing diplomatic tensions. For many Indians, this episode was perceived as a humiliation inflicted by a militarily and economically dominant nation. However, India’s historical and civilizational pride, rooted in its ancient traditions and spiritual ethos, shaped the collective outrage. In contrast, little attention was given to the other side of the story—the Indian domestic worker, a poor and marginalized woman, who was allegedly a victim of exploitation. Her narrative remained largely overlooked, as it lacked the glamour and political significance of the diplomat’...

The discourses surrounding colonialism have been actively examined by historians and social scientists. Some, such as the Cambridge School, have adopted an orthodox approach, viewing colonial history primarily from a European perspective. In contrast, historians of the colonized have sought to move away from a Eurocentric narrative, often neglecting the discursive and non-discursive dimensions of colonialism. Foucault, through his concept of “governmentality,” demonstrated how political rationalities of power facilitated the acceptance of colonial transformations by the subjects themselves. A significant focus of recent discussions on colonialism has been its exclusionary practices, including the racial exclusion of the colonized from humanity and their political marginalization through false liberalism. On one hand, critiques have revealed how colonial textuality operated at the level of images and narratives, distorting representations of the colonized and denying them autonomy, v...

“[Sociology is]   ... the science whose object is to interpret   the meaning of social action   and thereby give a   causal explanation   of the way in which the   action proceeds   and the   effects which it produces . By 'action' in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as   subjectively meaningful   ... the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the 'meaning' to be thought of as somehow objectively 'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, and any kind of   priori ...

The progress of civilizations in different parts of the world has taken a definite shape, with certain common institutions emerging across cultures and historical periods. Patriarchy is one such institution that has been deeply entrenched in societies worldwide, including India. In patriarchal societies, the distinction between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres for women is rigidly defined, with various boundaries imposed. These boundaries determine the extent of women’s freedoms and significantly impact their life chances in areas such as health, education, and employment. Societal norms and values often justify these restrictions in the name of preserving patriarchy. The most powerful among these values is the perceived right to make decisions that shape not only the lives but also the desires of women, reinforcing the notion that control over their bodies and choices rests with men. The power embedded in gender difference has profoundly influenced societal structures, leading ...

The subject matter of anthropology has undergone many changes and so the research methods and evidence collection methods. Ethnography, which shows the way of life of the people, was first introduced into the social sciences by the anthropologists for the study of small-scale, pre- industrial societies. Malinowski is regarded as the one who brought ethnography in the realm of anthropology while studying Trobriandars. The initial debate in anthropology was related to the use of the methodologies and various questions were posed before the anthropologists like should anthropology use natural science methods or it is not science at all. In the intellectual tradition, there was division between ‘Nomothetic’ and ‘Ideographic’ disciplines on the line of Kantian division of knowledge. German intellectual tradition developed by Kant and Hegel out rightly rejected the polarisation of disciplines into two different blocks. Hegel says that all branches of knowledge developed out of the human co...