State of Justice in India : Issues of Social Justice

Volume I: Social Justice and Enlightenment: West BengalEdited by Pradip Kumar Bose, Professor of Sociology, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, Kolkata and Samir Kumar Das, Professor of Political Science, Calcutta University, KolkataThis first volume of the series The State of Justice in India: Issues of Social Justice is a collection of writings on the state of social justice in the present-day West Bengal. It studies the strong disjunction between the notion of enlightened politics, on which the constitutional Left in West Bengal has thrived for several decades, and social justice. The articles probe the question: is there a necessary connection between the politics of communism and attainment of social justice?Social Justice and Enlightenment: West Bengal is based on ethnographic studies which suggest that while there is a general regime of justice in West Bengal, the rule of law as the main mechanism of justice makes little sense in the presence of specific local judicial practices. It questions why the archaic rule of law still remains fundamental in the state governance and concludes that the West Bengal experience demonstrates that while democracy may widen through the mass entry of workers, peasants and the rural and urban poor, and though this may facilitate long-denied political justice for them, this does not ensure social justice per se.Volume II: Justice and Law: The Limits of the Deliverables of LawEdited by Ashok Agrwaal, Lawyer, researcher and civil rights activist and Bharat Bhushan, Editor of the Daily Mail NewspaperThis second volume of the series The State of Justice in India: Issues of Social Justice brings together the tension that brews between law and justice in India. It begins with how our legislators had engaged in the discourse on justice at the time of the making of the constitution. The articles highlight the way law has created dichotomies in its attempt to be the guardian for justice. The authors have coined the idea of 'justice gap', which unveils the gap between the claims for justice and governmental regime of justice.Justice and Law: The Limits of the Deliverables of Law also deals extensively with the issue of reservation. It has one article documenting the history of reservations in India, in the background of political contentions, elections, and judicial activism. The other article traces how the 'policy game' goes on in the language of courts and law. Both the articles indicate how the issue of justice is closely linked to the issue of expansion of democracy. Another article measures the success of the legal system in providing justice to those in the margins.This one-of-its-kind book will be an invaluable resource for academics and researchers studying sociology, law, social justice, political theory and Indian democracy. It will also be useful for human rights activists, policy makers, policy analysts and NGOs.Volume III: Marginalities and JusticeEdited by Paula Banerjee, Head of the Department of South and South East Asian Studies, University of Calcutta, Kolkata and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata and Sanjay Chaturvedi, Professor of Political Science at the Centre for the Study of Geopolitics and Honorary Director, Centre for the Study of Mid-West and Central Asia, Panjab University, ChandigarhThis third volume of the series The State of Justice in India: Issues of Social Justice shows how marginalities in social spaces marked by power raise the issue of justice.It deals with the situation of people living in the margins of the society and their relationship with communities that enjoy enough material well being to secure