Oral Democracy

Paromita Sanyal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University. She has written Credit to Capabilities: A Sociological Study of Microcredit Groups in India (Cambridge, 2014), which won an Outstanding Book Award from the American Sociological Association. Her work has also been published in leading sociology journals, including the American Sociological Review. Vijayendra Rao is Lead Economist in the Development Economics Research Group at The World Bank. He co-edited Culture and Public Action (2004), and co-authored Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? (2012). He has published in the leading journals in economics and development studies, and he is a member of the Successful Societies Program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Discursive political culture; 3. Political construction, state enactments, and citizen performances; 4. The role of literacy in deliberative democracy; 5. Conclusion: oral democracy.

'Using a detailed analysis of gram sabha deliberations in over two hundred villages bordering four states, this book provides a rich picture of participatory grassroots democracy in South India. Instead of the usual preoccupation with quantitative indicators of service delivery outcomes, Rao and Sanyal focus on development of civic capacity, engagement between civil society and state officials, and political legitimacy of the state, and how these vary with historical inequality, literacy and state policy.' Dilip Mookherjee, Director of the Institute for Economic Development, Boston University