Remaking the state : women, development and counterinsurgency in India / Lipika Kamra

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kamra, Lipika, 1987- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Counterinsurgency--India--West Bengal.

Counterinsurgency.

Economic development--India--West Bengal.

Economic development.

Women--India--West Bengal--Social conditions.

Women.

Women--Social conditions.

India.

India--West Bengal.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2026

Summary:

"Remaking the State: Women, Development and Counterinsurgency in India examines how development becomes a tool of governance in India’s counterinsurgency efforts, with a particular focus on women’s experiences in the Jungle Mahals of West Bengal. Through a rich ethnography of the state’s non-military response to Maoist insurgency, the book explores how policies designed to win ‘hearts and minds’ intersect with gendered assumptions of empowerment and pacification. Kamra shows how programmes like Muktidhara, a microcredit initiative for rural women, function as mechanisms of both governance and negotiation, as women neither resist nor acquiesce. Situating these dynamics within broader histories of colonial and postcolonial statemaking in insurgent margins, the book develops a compelling framework for understanding how states are remade from both above and below. Bridging political science, feminist development studies and critical security studies, this book offers a timely intervention in debates on democracy, sovereignty and gendered governance in South Asia"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Counterinsurgency and colonial statemaking

State, society and politics in the Jungle Mahals

Radical politics, regime change and the changing ‘party society’

The expanded state

The dramas of statemaking : the didactic, the everyday and the spectacular

Seeking out the state : women and self-making

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Cambridge Core, viewed August 13, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Kamra, Lipika, 1987- Remaking the state

ISBN:

9781009671026

1009671022

9781009670975

1009670972

OCLC:

1573376457

Publisher Number:

CIPO000397060

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license