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Maharashtra Cabinets
Social and Regional Prole, 1960-2010
Abhay Datar, Vivek Ghotale

The politics of Maharashtra has long been characterised by the domination of the Maratha community. A few studies have tried to quantify this domination by mapping the social and caste prole of the members of the state legislative assembly. This article analyses the composition of selected state cabinets from 1960 to argue that while Maratha dominance has remained intact, it has acquired a sharp regional prole, with power being increasingly concentrated in the hands of Maratha political leaders from western Maharashtra.

Abhay Datar (abhaydatar@hotmail.com) is with the Peoples College, Nanded and Vivek Ghotale (vivekgkpune@gmail.com) is a PhD student at the University of Pune.
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he vehement demand for reservations for the Maratha community, allegations of a regional bias in implementing relief measures to tackle the severe drought facing the state, and the debate on intra-state regional economic imbalance, revived after the recent appointment of a high-powered committee by the state government to suggest measures to address it are some of the major issues that have emerged in the politics of Maharashtra in the recent months. The discussion of the last two has led to debates on whether the policies of the state government are inherently biased against the backward regions of Maharashtra, while the issue of reservations for the Marathas has once again focused attention on the communitys position in the politics of the state. As many scholarly studies of Maharashtras politics have noted, it has been characterised, since the formation of the state in 1960, by two distinctive features. The rst is the domination of the members of the Maratha-Kunbi caste cluster, or the Maratha community. (The terms Maratha-Kunbi and Marathas have been used interchangeably for purposes of convenience.) The second is the nearcomplete hold over power of a single party, the Congress, for nearly three decades. Maharashtra, in common with other states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, has seen the continuation of the control over political power by those who belong to the dominant castes of each of the states. But unlike these states where different dominant castes are politically strong in particular regions, the Marathas are spread throughout the state (Lele 1982: xii). Moreover, unlike most other states in India, the Congress never lost power in the state till the 1990s, except briey in
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the late 1970s, and then from 1995 to 1999, when the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance came to power. However, in 1999, a breakaway section of the Congress led by Sharad Pawar formed the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and contested both the Lok Sabha and state assembly elections held that year separately. But the Congress and the NCP have been jointly ruling the state since then after having formed a post-election alliance. It can be argued that the Congress-NCP alliance is in a sense a continuation of the Congress predominant position in the politics of Maharashtra for the social prole of the leadership of both these parties is largely the same besides being similar to that of the pre-1999 Congress Party in the state. These two features are closely interrelated. Indeed, it could be argued that the second is a consequence of the rst. Since 1960, these two features have been strengthened by the communitys near monopoly over the cooperative sector in rural Maharashtra, especially control over the cooperative sugar factories. These cooperatives have served as building blocks for the political careers of many a Maratha politician, as also those from other communities, in the state. The Maratha-Kunbis have been described as constituting the dominant caste in Maharashtra (Lele 1990: 115; Vora 2009: 231), since they possess the characteristics of such a caste, identied by M N Srinivas. These are numerical preponderance over other castes and the wielding of economic and political power. Another feature which Srinivas identies of a dominant caste is that it does not have too low a position in the local caste hierarchy (Srinivas 1955: 18). This is also a characteristic of the community. Dominance has been dened as exercise of authority in society by groups who achieved politico-economic superiority, and claimed legitimacy for their commands in terms of superior ritual status, or through alliances with those who controlled status distribution (Frankel 1989: 2). In the precolonial period, substantial control over cultivated land and the
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structures of revenue collection underpinned the Maratha-Kunbi domination of social life in Maharashtra, one that it shared with the brahmins. (For a historical overview of this dominance see Lele 1990: 124-39.) The legacy of the nonbrahmin movement, in which the Maratha-Kunbis played a signicant role, also assisted in the process of the community acquiring a leading position in the politics of the state. The dominance of the Congress in Maharashtra rested on the fact that it in turn was dominated by the Maratha-Kunbi community. The members of the community rst entered the Congress in large numbers during the 1930s, which enabled the party to strike deeper roots in the rural areas, especially in western Maharashtra. After Independence, the astute and adroit leadership of the rst chief minister Y B Chavan managed to draw behind the Congress the bulk of the community. He also managed to win the support of other numerically signicant communities. Chavans encouragement of the cooperative sector in Maharashtra in turn strengthened the economic foundations of both the dominance of the Congress and the Maratha-Kunbis. Quantifying Political Dominance The signicant studies of the politics of Maharashtra (Lele 1982 and 1990; Sirsikar 1976 and 1995; Vora 2009) have always emphasised the phenomenon of the political domination of the state by the Maratha-Kunbis, who have been described as a caste cluster (Lele 1990: 115) rather than as a discrete and homogeneous caste. Indeed, the distinguished sociologist-anthropologist Irawati Karve described the Marathas and the Kunbis as being made up of numerous endogamous sub-castes (Karve 1975 (1968), 29). This dominance has also been described as Maratha hegemony (Lele 1982: xii). Attempts to break the Maratha political dominance have not succeeded. Claims made in the early 1980s that Maratha caste dominance in state politics has been broken unalterably (Omvedt 1983: 439) have been proven spectacularly wrong. Studies of the electoral politics of the state have conrmed the continued political domination of the Marathas.
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An enquiry into the social composition and caste prole of the members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) and the state cabinets would naturally assist in quantifying the extent of this political dominance. However, such studies have been few and far in-between. One such study has demonstrated that in every state assembly election from 1967 to 2004, the percentage of the MLAs belonging to the Maratha community has never been less than 36% (Vora 2009: 228-30). This strong position of the Marathas in the state assembly was also evident in its social composition after the 2009 elections, where almost 45% of the MLAs belonged to the community (Palshikar, Deshpande and Birmal 2009). In the case of the social composition of the state ministries, only one study has traced the share of the Marathas vis--vis the non-Marathas (Lele 1990). Earlier studies of the politics of Maharashtra discussed Maratha dominance in general terms without quantifying it at the legislative or executive level (Joshi 1968; Lele 1984 and Sirsikar 1967 and 1976). An exception was the claim made by Baba Adhav, a leading socialist activist of the state, that while the community constituted approximately 38% of the states population, individuals belonging to it occupied between 75% and 80% of the positions of power in Maharashtra (Adhav 1971: 32). But this absence of any quantitative data on the caste prole of legislators, particularly that of MLAs, or the members of the state cabinets, in order to make any statements about the nature of the politics of a given state was not peculiar to Maharashtra. Studies of state politics in India in the 1960s and 1970s (Weiner 1968; Narain 1967 and 1976) simply did not utilise such data to any appreciable extent. Only two studies of Rajasthan extensively mapped the caste prole of the MLAs and ministers to analyse changes in the politics of the state

(Sisson 1972 and Shrader 1968). However, since the 1990s, the studies of state politics have extensively used quantitative data on the caste prole of MLAs and ministers in individual states (Jaffrelot 2003; Jaffrelot and Kumar 2009 and Frankel and Rao 1989 and 1990). Prior to the formation of Maharashtra, the Maratha community was well-represented in the cabinets of the states of Bombay and Madhya Pradesh. In the cabinet of the Hyderabad state, however, the Marathi-speaking ministers were either brahmins or Marwadis. But the near absence of systematic data on the caste prole of the cabinets in Maharashtra since 1960 has made it impossible to state the relationship between Maratha dominance at the legislative level with that at the executive level with any element of certainty. Most studies of Maharashtra politics have assumed that the rst has been reected in the second. It is often noted that of the 16 individuals who have served as chief ministers of the state, 10 belonged to the Maratha community, and in terms of region, only ve hailed from western Maharashtra. Furthermore, the fact that unlike the rest of the state, the Maratha community does not occupy a numerically strong position in Vidarbha and hence has to share power with other communities has been often overlooked. Similarly, there has been no exploration of the regional composition of Maharashtras ministries. This is particularly important since regional imbalance and developmental backlog have often, with varying intensity, been key issues in the politics of the state. There exists a widespread feeling that regions other than western Maharashtra have been unfairly neglected in terms of development. This has fuelled the demand for a separate state of Vidarbha. There is a feeling that most regions of the state lack strong leadership that would draw

Table 1: Caste Profile of Cabinet Ministers in Selected Maharashtra Cabinets since 1960
Maratha-Kunbi Upper Caste Intermediate Castes Caste Group OBCs SCs STs Muslims Others Total

78

14

19

18

15

16

173

Source: The list of cabinet ministers and their portfolios has been compiled from the Year Books published by the Publications Division, Government of India, the Whos Who published by the Maharashtra Legislature, and the relevant issues of the leading daily newspapers. The caste background of individual ministers has been compiled on the basis of the data on caste profile of MLAs collected by the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Pune. The caste background of those ministers who were members of the legislative council has been identified through local enquiries.

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resources towards them which deepens lack of development, and that leaders from western Maharashtra have been successful in diverting resources to the region. A total of 16 cabinets formed in the state since 1960 have been selected for the analysis of their caste and regional composition in order to quantify Maratha dominance in Maharashtra. The sample includes a total of 173 individuals, whose social prole can be seen in Table 1 (p 38). As Table 2 shows, barring the exception of the Shiv Sena-BJP cabinet formed in 1995, the Marathas have constituted the largest group in the state cabinets. The upper castes no longer have a presence in the cabinet. The cabinet ministers belonging to the scheduled tribes (STs) were absent till 1980 but have increased their numbers since then. Other social groups have by and large maintained their presence. Of these 16 cabinets, the ministers belonging to the Maratha community constituted a majority in 10 cases. As regards the exceptions, the Marathas constituted only a quarter of the members of the state cabinet formed after the 1972 assembly elections. This can be attributed to the growing interference of the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi,
Cabinets Maratha-Kunbi Upper Caste

in the politics of Maharashtra in an attempt to reduce the political standing of Y B Chavan, who by now had been a minister in the union cabinet for almost a decade. In the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance cabinet, the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) constituted the largest group with the Marathas a close second. This can be attributed to the relative paucity of legislators belonging to the Maratha community in and the strong base among the OBCs cultivated by the two parties. The last was the outcome of a systematic attempt, particularly by the BJP, to build an alternative social coalition wherein the Marathas would not occupy a dominating position. Furthermore, though the Marathas constituted a majority in the state cabinet formed after the 1980 assembly elections, practically all of them were considered second-rung leaders then. Leading Maratha contenders for the membership of the Maharashtra cabinet had been removed from state politics by making them contest the Lok Sabha elections, held earlier that year. Thus, while the imposition of A R Antulay as the chief minister by the Congress central leadership in 1980 was a deliberate attempt to break the Maratha dominance, the communitys majority in
Caste Group Intermediate Castes OBCs

the state cabinet was kept intact perhaps in an attempt to ensure that it did not drift away from the party. Regional Patterns However, a regional analysis of the state cabinets shows a mixed picture. As Table 3 (p 40) shows, no clear pattern over time can be discerned. Generally, either western Maharashtra or Vidarbha have provided the largest number of cabinet ministers vis--vis other regions in each of the state cabinets, barring one exception, selected for analysis. This is hardly surprising since western Maharashtra and Vidarbha always have occupied the rst and the second position respectively in terms of the number of MLA s in the state assembly. Besides, regional considerations and a desire to maintain a regional balance have always been crucial considerations in the formation of state cabinets in India. Interestingly, till the late 1960s, Vidarbha had a higher representation than western Maharashtra in the state cabinet. This could be attributed to Chavans concern to win over the political leadership of Vidarbha to the cause of a single unied state of Maharashtra and deate the demand for a separate state of Vidarbha. Furthermore, the only exception where a region other than either western Maharashtra or Vidarbha individually contributed the largest number of cabinet ministers was the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition cabinet. Mumbai had the largest number of cabinet members, followed by Konkan and north Maharashtra then. This can be explained by the strong performance of the alliance in Mumbai and given that the Senas orginal political base was the metropolis. However, the situation has changed since the late 1990s. Western Maharashtra has had the highest number of members among all three cabinets selected for analysis formed since 1999. In the Vilasrao Deshmukh cabinet formed after the 1999 state assembly elections, members from western Maharashtra actually constituted a majority. In the other two cabinets, membership from this region was a little more than 40%. This can be explained by the fact the NCP has had a
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Table 2: Caste Profile of Selected Maharashtra Cabinets (1960-2010)

SCs STs Muslims Others Total

Y B Chavan 1960 Y B Chavan 1962 V P Naik 1967 V P Naik 1972 S B Chavan 1975 Vasantdada Patil 1977 Vasantdada Patil 1978 (Coalition) Sharad Pawar 1978 (Coalition) A R Antulay 1980 Vasantdada Patil 1983 S B Chavan 1986 Sharad Pawar 1990 (Coalition) Manohar Joshi 1995 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 1999 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 2004 (Coalition) Prithviraj Chavan 2010 (Coalition)
Source: Same as Table 1.
Economic & Political Weekly

6 9 10 4 9 14 8 8 9 6 5 9 4 16 13 15

2 1 1 1 0 1 1 2 1 0 0 0 5 0 0 0

1 1 1 2 2 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0

1 2 2 2 1 2 3 1 1 2 0 1 6 4 4 4

1 1 1 0 0 2 1 2 0 2 1 3 2 2 2 3

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 3 3 3

1 1 1 2 2 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2

2 2 1 1 0 0 1 3 2 1 0 0 2 0 2 2

14 17 17 12 14 23 14 17 15 14 8 15 22 26 27 29

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strong base in western Maharashtra. Since 1999, the largest share of the partys MLAs has come from this region and hence, the majority of its cabinet members have come from the same region. This in turn might have prompted the Congress to give substantial representation to the region in its own share of cabinet membership, thus enhancing the overall share of western Maharashtra in the state cabinets. Region, Caste and Dominance The Maratha dominance coupled with the fact that the community is spread throughout the state, though its numerical strength varies regionally would lead to the assumption that positions in the cabinet would have been shared among
Cabinets Western Maharashtra Vidarbha

cabinets. Interestingly, the S B Chavan cabinet formed in 1986 had no Maratha ministers from western Maharashtra. But what is more striking is that in the selected cabinets formed since 1999, those from western Maharashtra constitute an overwhelming majority of the Maratha ministers. Thus in the state cabinets, rather than Maratha ministers per se forming the largest group, as has been largely the case till the 1990s, now Maratha ministers from western Maharashtra constitute a plurality. But these statistics also mask an even more striking reality. Since the 1990s, the distribution of key portfolios in the state cabinets has reinforced this dominant position of the Maratha leadership from western Maharashtra. This can be
Regions Marathwada Mumbai Konkan North Maharashtra Total

Table 3 : Regional Profile of Maharashtra Cabinets (1960-2010)

Y B Chavan 1960 Y B Chavan 1962 V P Naik 1967 V P Naik 1972 S B Chavan 1975 Vasantdada Patil 1977 Vasantdada Patil 1978 (Coalition) Sharad Pawar 1978 (Coalition) A R Antulay 1980 Vasantdada Patil 1983 S B Chavan 1986 Sharad Pawar 1990 (Coalition) Manohar Joshi 1995 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 1999 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 2004 (Coalition) Prithviraj Chavan 2010 (Coalition)
Source: Same as Table 1.

3 4 4 2 5 6 3 5 3 3 1 5 3 15 11 12

5 5 5 2 3 7 5 4 4 2 3 3 3 4 5 5

2 2 3 2 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 3 3 3 4

3 4 3 2 0 1 1 4 3 3 1 4 5 0 2 3

1 1 1 2 1 2 0 0 1 1 1 0 4 1 2 2

0 1 1 2 2 4 2 2 2 3 0 2 4 3 4 3

14 17 17 12 14 23 14 17 15 14 8 15 22 26 27 29

the Maratha leadership from the various regions in a somewhat fair manner. While this was true till the 1990s it is no longer so. The continued strong position of the members of the Maratha community since 1960 masks the reality that cabinet positions are now increasingly being concentrated in the hands of Maratha leaders from western Maharashtra, as Table 4 (p 41) shows. Since 1960, western Maharashtra and Vidarbha have contributed the largest number of Maratha ministers in the state
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shown by tracing the pattern of distribution of key portfolios in the state since 1960. The following 10 portfolios have been identied as being key ones since they are regarded as being politically crucial: home, nance, revenue, agriculture, public works (earlier known as buildings and communication), industries, irrigation, cooperatives, rural development and urban development. As Table 5 (p 41) shows in the rst few decades since 1960, some kind of regional and caste balance in the
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distribution of portfolios can be discerned. Whether this was accidental or a matter of deliberate design can only be speculated. Two signicant patterns can be identied on the basis of Table 5. The rst is the clear marginalisation of non-Maratha leaders or cabinet ministers in the allocation of key portfolios. In the early decades, while individuals belonging to the Maratha community constituted a plurality in the state cabinet, they constituted a majority as far as the allocation of these portfolios is considered. The only exception is the V P Naik cabinet formed after the 1972 assembly elections. Thus nonMaratha majorities in the state cabinets in the early phase did not translate into control over crucial levers of power. The trend identied above continued till the late 1990s. In this period, the only exception was again the Shiv Sena-BJP cabinet, which had only one Maratha minister holding one of these 10 key portfolios. He happened to be from western Maharashtra, and represented an urban constituency in the state assembly. The second trend is the near-monopoly of the Maratha leaders from western Maharashtra over these key portfolios. This trend has emerged since the late 1990s, and can be said to have begun with the assumption to power of the Congress-NCP coalition government in 1999. With regard to these portfolios, Maratha ministers from the region came quite close to constituting a majority in the rst Congress-NCP coalition cabinet while they did constitute a majority in the second cabinet formed by Vilasrao Deshmukh in 2004. In the present cabinet in the state, headed by Prithviraj Chavan, seven of the 10 key portfolios are held by Maratha leaders from the region. Thus, the Maratha leadership from western Maharashtra has established an unprecedented control amounting to a stranglehold over political power in the state. Reasons and Implications The relative lack of success of the leadership from regions other than western Maharashtra and particularly the Maratha leadership from these regions to match their counterparts
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Table 4: Regional Background of Maratha-Kunbi Cabinet Ministers (1960-2010)
Cabinets Western Maharashtra Vidarbha Regions Marathwada Mumbai Konkan North Maharashtra Total

Y B Chavan 1960 Y B Chavan 1962 V P Naik 1967 V P Naik 1972 S B Chavan 1975 Vasantdada Patil 1977 Vasantdada Patil 1978 (Coalition) Sharad Pawar 1978 (Coalition) A R Antulay 1980 Vasantdada Patil 1983 S B Chavan 1986 Sharad Pawar 1990 (Coalition) Manohar Joshi 1995 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 1999 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 2004 (Coalition) Prithviraj Chavan 2010 (Coalition)
Source : Same as Table 1.

2 3 3 2 4 4 3 3 2 1 0 4 2 10 10 10

2 2 4 1 3 6 1 1 2 0 2 2 0 2 1 2

1 2 2 1 2 2 3 2 2 2 2 1 0 3 2 2

0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 2 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1

0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0

6 9 10 4 9 14 8 8 9 6 5 9 4 16 13 15

from western Maharashtra in the politics at the state level can be attributed to the absence of an adequate material basis for their leadership. Maratha political leadership from western Maharashtra has always been underpinned by the cooperative sector, particularly the sugar cooperatives and the agricultural credit cooperative societies, and more recently forays into agro-industries. Attempts to develop and sustain cooperatives in other regions of the state have not succeeded, with Marathwada being an exception to a certain extent. Vidarbha has been the states leading cotton growing region. This crop could have served as the basis of a strong and ourishing cooperative sector, but this could not happen. NonMaratha leaders, even those belonging to agrarian castes have also not been very successful in developing an economic base for themselves. Conspiracies by Maratha leaders from western Maharashtra have often been blamed for this state of affairs. There might be more than a grain of truth in these assertions, but the Maratha leadership of other regions of the state also has much to answer. Hence the dominance of Maratha leadership from western Maharashtra is equally a consequence
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of their political strategies, and the relative inability of the leaders from other regions to sustain their own politics. This relative inability might be the outcome of the different political histories of these three regions. If in western Maharashtra, the Maratha community

was quick to learn modern organisational techniques primarily due to the non-brahmin movement, their counterparts in Vidarbha were slow to catch up, again mainly due to the limited spread of the same movement. Marathwada till 1948 was under the reactionary rule of the Nizam of Hyderabad that restricted almost all forms of political activity, while the Maratha leaders had a secondary position in the uppercaste dominated Congress leadership of the region. This might have had an impact on the capacities of the leadership of the region to forge ahead in politics. This skewed regional and caste composition of the state cabinets since the late 1990s has serious implications for the development of the state. The regional imbalance of development in Maharashtra has been evident since the 1970s onwards. Notwithstanding the establishment of statutory development boards for the backward regions of Vidarbha and Marathwada, developmental policies continue to be tilted towards western Maharashtra. It is self-evident that one of the reasons for the failure of the state government to pursue policies which would encourage balanced economic

Table 5 : Region-wise and Caste-wise Distribution of Key Portfolios

Cabinets Marathas from Western Maharashtra Cabinet Ministers Marathas from Other Regions Non-Marathas Total Number of Ministers Holding Key Portfolios

Y B Chavan 1960 Y B Chavan 1962 V P Naik 1967 V P Naik 1972 S B Chavan 1975 Vasantdada Patil 1977 Vasantdada Patil 1978 (Coalition) Sharad Pawar 1978 (Coalition) A R Antulay 1980 Vasantdada Patil 1983 S B Chavan 1986 Sharad Pawar 1990 (Coalition) Manohar Joshi 1995 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 1999 (Coalition) Vilasrao Deshmukh 2004 (Coalition) Prithviraj Chavan 2010 (Coalition)
Source : Same as Table 1.

1 2 2 2 3 2 3 3 2 2 0 4 1 4 6 7

4 4 6 2 3 5 4 4 5 4 4 2 1 4 2 1

4 4 2 5 3 3 3 1 2 2 2 3 8 1 1 2

9 10 10 9 9 10 10 8 9 8 6 9 10 9 9 10

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growth has been the absence, since the 1990s, of strong political leadership from outside western Maharashtra. This has meant that the backward regions of the state no longer possess leaders with adequate clout at the state level to ensure a regionally fair distribution of resources. Thus, the concentration of political power among the Maratha leaders from western Maharashtra has the potential to lead to a deepening of the existing sharp economic divide on regional lines in the state, an ominous portent indeed. Methodological Note: An analysis of the caste profile of only the state cabinet, and not the entire council of ministers, has been undertaken since the membership of the former can serve as a better indicator of the pattern of dominance. Only those cabinets that were considered politically significant by the authors have been included for analysis. Those excluded either had almost the same composition as their predecessors or were too short-lived to have any meaningful political impact. Furthermore, only those portfolios which the authors regard as being politically important have been considered.

References
Adhav, Dr Baba (1971): He Ta Shetji Bhatjinche Aadhunik Dasacha (Pune: Sadhana Prakashan) (In Marathi). Frankel, Francine and M S A Rao, ed. (1989): Dominance and State Power in India, Decline of a Social Order, Vol I (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). (1990): Dominance and State Power in India, Decline of a Social Order, Vol II (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Frankel, Francine (1989): Introduction in Francine Frankel and M S A Rao (ed.), Dominance and State Power in India, Decline of a Social Order, Vol I (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 1-20. Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003): Indias Silent Revolution, The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India (New York: Columbia University Press). Jaffrelot, Christophe and Sanjay Kumar, ed. (2009): Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies (New Delhi: Routledge). Joshi, Ram (1968): Maharashtra in Myron Weiner (ed.), State Politics in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 177-212. Karve, Irawati (1975 (1968)): Maharashtra, Land and Its People (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra). Lele, Jayant (1982): Elite Pluralism and Class Rule (Bombay: Popular Prakashan). (1984): One-Party Dominance in Maharashtra: Resilience and Change in John R Wood (ed.), State Politics in Contemporary India, Crisis or Continuity (Boulder: Westview Press), pp 169-96. (1990): Caste, Class and Dominance: Political Mobilisation in Maharashtra in Francine Frankel and M S A Rao (ed.), Dominance and State Power in India, Decline of a Social Order, Vol II (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp 115-211.

Narain, Iqbal, ed. (1967): State Politics in India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan). (1976): State Politics in India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan). Omvedt, Gail (1983): Review of Jayant Leles Elite Pluralism and Caste Rule, Journal of Asian Studies, 42 (2): 438-39. Palshikar, Suhas, Rajeshwari Deshpande and Nitin Birmal (2009): Nishpattiche Satatya Pan Samajik Aadharanchi Asthirta: Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha Nivadnuk 2009, Samaj Prabodhan Patrika, 47 (187-88): 411-20. Shrader, Lawrence L (1968): Rajasthan in Myron Weiner (ed.), State Politics in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press), 321-96. Sirsikar, V M (1967): Politics in Maharashtra: Problems and Prospects in Iqbal Narain (ed.), State Politics in India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan), 192-202. (1976): Maharashtra: The Politics of Linkage Elites in Iqbal Narain (ed.), State Politics in India (Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan), 220-39. (1995): Politics of Modern Maharashtra (Bombay: Orient Longman). Sisson, Richard (1972): The Congress Party in Rajasthan, Political Integration and InstitutionBuilding in an Indian State (Delhi: Oxford University Press in arrangement with the University of California Press). Srinivas, M N (1955): The Social System of a M y sore Village in McKim Marriott (ed.), V illage India, Studies in the Little Community (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 36-52. Vora, Rajendra (2009): Maharashtra or Maratha Rashtra? in Christophe Jaffrelot and Sanjay Kumar (ed.), Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies (New Delhi: Routledge), 215-44. Weiner, Myron, ed. (1968): State Politics in India (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

Women and Work

Edited by

Padmini Swaminathan
The notion of work and employment for women is complex. In India, fewer women participate in employment compared to men. While economic factors determine mens participation in employment, womens participation depends on diverse reasons and is often rooted in a complex interplay of economic, cultural, social and personal factors. The introduction talks of the oppression faced by wage-earning women due to patriarchal norms and capitalist relations of production, while demonstrating how policies and programmes based on national income accounts and labour force surveys seriously disadvantage women. This volume analyses the concept of work, the economic contribution of women, and the consequences of gendering of work, while focusing on women engaged in varied work in different parts of India, living and working in dismal conditions, and earning paltry incomes.

Authors:
Maithreyi Krishnaraj Maria Mies Bina Agarwal Prem Chowdhry Ujvala Rajadhyaksha, Swati Smita Joan P Mencher, K Saradamoni Devaki Jain Indira Hirway Deepita Chakravarty, Ishita Chakravarty Uma Kothari J Jeyaranjan, Padmini Swaminathan Meena Gopal Millie Nihila Forum against Oppression of Women Srilatha Batliwala Miriam Sharma, Urmila Vanjani J Jeyaranjan

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