Subject(s): Politics and government -- Development planning -- Centralization and Powerlessness -- Culture of Politics -- Modern states in India -- Political culture of the Indian state -- Social character of the Indian state -- Economic development -- Political economy of reform in India -- Decline of the moderate state -- Centralization and powerlessness: India's democracy in a Comparative perspective -- Social order -- Changing terms of elite discourse: the case of reservation for backward castes -- Religion and politics in a secular state: law, community and gender -- State protection for the rural proletariat of south Gujarat -- Corruption, culture of politics and the imagined state