| ID | 157940 |
| Title Proper | Insecure peace |
| Other Title Information | understanding citizen and local government relations in a Maoist-affected region in India |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Ray, Subhasish ; Dutta, Mohan J |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This paper examines emerging citizen and local government relations in a village in the Junglemahal region of the state of West Bengal, once a major bastion of the Maoist insurgency in India. Since 2014, Junglemahal has not experienced a single Maoist-related incident. This has been widely attributed to the West Bengal government’s “model” handling of the insurgency, which rests on the rapid mobilization of public services through the non-elected arms of local governments, bypassing elected officials. How have Junglemahal’s residents experienced this particular form of post-conflict governance? Drawing on the culture-centered approach that ethnographically observes the processes of identifying development problems and developing community-grounded solutions to these problems, our findings indicate that the hyper-developmental state was paradoxically experienced by our respondents as a very distant entity. A recurrent theme in our interviews is the absence of a locally embedded party leadership that could be approached regarding issues of distributive justice. We argue that this desire for party mediation in public service delivery is an expression of a powerful social norm that has survived the conflict and ought to be integrated into post-conflict governance structures if the current peace is to endure. |
| `In' analytical Note | Critical Asian Studies Vol. 50, No.1; Mar 2018: p.37-57 |
| Journal Source | Critical Asian Studies 2018-03 50, 1 |
| Key Words | Bureaucracy ; Maoist Insurgency ; Local Government ; Post-Conflict Reconstruction ; Culture-Centered Approach |