Is it not interesting that at a time when the idea of a global "clash of civilizations" is reverberating so mightily and so ominously, how India puts up with the challenge of forging national unity amidst its intricate diversity? What is the key to her comparative success as an integrated state? The question has assumed added significance after the disintegration of the former multiethnic Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The present study, informed by a modified neo-institutionalism, seeks to identify the key to India's success as an integrated democracy amidst a whole lot of trajectories. As an answer to India's relative success in state formation and political order, this study emphasizes the role of democratic multicultural decentralization, which is a distinctive institutional-political formulation grown out of India's specific contexts, and which has served as a method of effective governance in India.
The book is primarily aimed at first degree undergraduate and postgraduate students. It is aimed at students specializing in India politics, post-colonial studies, Third world politics and those studying decentralization in non-Western countries. The work would have direct appeal political scientists, sociologists, policy makers, research institutes, activists, and development agencies.