STAGGERED DEVELOPMENT: Close-Ups form Delhi’s Margins

Despite a long history of development planning and achieving one of the highest growth rates in the world over the last decade, indices of stark underdevelopment such as high levels of informality, underemployment, undernutrition and negligible social security for labouring masses continue to mar India’s economy.
The present book combines ethnographic and quantitative approaches to analyse the problem of slow development in marginalised Bharat (India) by tracking living standards and welfare delivery in a slum and a village, which were selected as instances of rural and urban spaces around Delhi’s margins. It systematically compares the similarities and contrasts visible in the local economies and changes over time through repeated surveys conducted between 1988–2014 in these two communities. The timing of these surveys broadly coincide with policy shifts like the launch of various technology missions under the Rajeev Gandhi government at the centre; limited liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991; the move towards ‘inclusive growth’ strategy between 2004 and 2014 and major improvements in welfare delivery with curbs on corruption under first Modi government; thus presenting a window on their successive fallouts in the studied field.
In a clear and lucid style, the book also offers reflections on concepts and perspectives related to issues of underdevelopment and staggered development. Some of the novel insights on the logics of underdevelopment emerging from this multi-level study are: the sheer range of livelihoods being pursued by families that are often labelled as farmers, labourers, homemakers etc. in official records; the paradox of some decline in poverty and illiteracy but rise in ‘privations’ like worsening health environment, growing pollution, morbidity, water wars, growing crime, drunkenness, suicides etc. In light of these insights, the study finally lists several policy reforms to unshackle development at the bottom of our society today.

Devesh Vijay is a social scientist who was teaching in the Department of History, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi. He took early retirement from teaching career to pursue his multi-disciplinary interests in development studies, cultural history and political discourses. With over thirty years of teaching experience to both undergraduate and postgraduate classes, he has consistently paid attention to brevity, clarity and multi-level broad analysis while writing for academics as well as lay readers. He has a rare record of published books and articles in reputed journals across various disciplines. His recent publications include Writing Politics: Left Discourses in Contemporary India; Dalits and Democracy: Transitions in Two North Indian Communities and Sanskritik Itihas: Ek Tulnatamak Sarvekshan (Hindi).