Uploaded November 2016 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours ago
www.aii.unimelb.edu.au
Indian citizens have a fundamental right to equality, recognized in the 1950 Constitution. But caste, religious, gender and sexual equality remain elusive for many Indians. Indians also debate whether recent market liberalization is making things better or worse. This talk explores the meaning and reality of equality in post-independence India, how things are changing today, and the prospects for greater equality in the future.
Steven I. Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University, where he also chairs the Political Science department. He has worked on the causes of ethnic violence, and his book, Votes and Violence: electoral competition and ethnic riots in India (Cambridge, 2004), examines the political roots of communal conflict in South Asia. He is also interested in corruption in politics, and co-edited the book Patrons, Clients or Politics: Patterns of Political Accountability and Competition (Cambridge, 2007) with Herbert Kitschelt. His most recent book is Army and Nation, which came out in January 2015 from Harvard University Press (Permanent Black in South Asia), and examines India’s success in managing the imbalanced colonial army it inherited in 1947.
He is currently working with Saumitra Jha (Stanford GSB) on a book on War and Political Change, the first part of which, on the role of veterans in the partition of India, was published in December 2012 in the American Political Science Review. The next part of this project looks at the role of returned veterans from the American war of Independence in the French Revolution.
www.aii.unimelb.edu.au
Indian citizens have a fundamental right to equality, recognized in the 1950 Constitution. But caste, religious, gender and sexual equality remain elusive for many Indians. Indians also debate whether recent market liberalization is making things better or worse. This talk explores the meaning and reality of equality in post-independence India, how things are changing today, and the prospects for greater equality in the future.
Steven I. Wilkinson is Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Yale University, where he also chairs the Political Science department. He has worked on the causes of ethnic violence, and his book, Votes and Violence: electoral competition and ethnic riots in India (Cambridge, 2004), examines the political roots of communal conflict in South Asia. He is also interested in corruption in politics, and co-edited the book Patrons, Clients or Politics: Patterns of Political Accountability and Competition (Cambridge, 2007) with Herbert Kitschelt. His most recent book is Army and Nation, which came out in January 2015 from Harvard University Press (Permanent Black in South Asia), and examines India’s success in managing the imbalanced colonial army it inherited in 1947.
He is currently working with Saumitra Jha (Stanford GSB) on a book on War and Political Change, the first part of which, on the role of veterans in the partition of India, was published in December 2012 in the American Political Science Review. The next part of this project looks at the role of returned veterans from the American war of Independence in the French Revolution.
