About the Author
Atul Kohli is professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of The State and Poverty in India: The Politics of Reform (1987), and Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability (1990). The present article draws on both these works and his essay, “From Majority to Minority Rule: Making Sense of the ‘New’ Indian Politics,” in Marshall Bouton and Philip Oldenburg, eds., India Briefing, 1990.