Interrogating Social Capital

Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya is Fellow at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. He did his doctoral research on the agrarian politics of the Left at the University of Cambridge, UK, and taught at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, for close to a decade. His main interests are related to democracy, decentralization, civic community and political mobilization in recent times.

Niraja Gopal Jayal is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU, and is also Director of the Ford Foundation project 'Dialogue on Democracy and Pluralism in South Asia'. Her current research interests include gender and governance, ethnic inequality and the governance of public institutions, and environmental political theory. Among her previous publications are Democracy and the State: Welfare, Secularism and Development in Contemporary India (1999); Drought, Policy and Politics in India (1993, co-authored); Democracy in India (2001, edited); and Democratic Governance in India: Challenges of Poverty, Development, and Identity (2001, co-edited with Sudha Pai).

Bishnu N Mohapatra is Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU, where he has been since 1994. He studied in Orissa, Delhi and Oxford. Besides social and cultural history, his recent interests cover areas like democracy, civil society and governance, social exclusion and indignity. He is also Programme Officer for Local-Global Governance at the Ford Foundation's South Asia office at New Delhi.

Sudha Pai is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. Apart from articles in reputed journals on electoral politics and the party system in India, her recent publications are Dalit Assertion and the Unfinished Democratic Revolution: The Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh (2002) and Democratic Governance in India: Challenges of Poverty, Development, and Identity (2001, co-edited with Niraja Gopal Jayal). Her current interests include issues of governance and globalization in India.