Power and Politics in Contemporary India: A Sociological View

By Prof. Lalatendu Keshari Das | IIT Roorkee

Learners enrolled: 65

ABOUT THE COURSE:

Power and Politics in Contemporary India: A Sociological View offers a comprehensive introduction to political sociology through the lens of India’s complex social landscape. The course examines how power operates across institutions, communities, and everyday life, and how citizens negotiate authority, inequality, and representation. It introduces foundational thinkers—Marx, Weber, Gramsci, Bourdieu, Foucault—and connects their ideas to contemporary Indian debates on caste, class, gender, nationalism, state formation, social movements, and political culture. Drawing on rich scholarship and Indian case studies, including agrarian change, Dalit-Bahujan politics, Adivasi citizenship, communalism, NGO-led development, judicial activism, and media politics, the course helps learners understand how political life unfolds beyond elections and formal institutions. Designed for students across social sciences, humanities and Civil Service Aspirants, it equips learners with conceptual tools to critically analyse state-society relations and recognise the diverse forms of power shaping everyday political experiences in India today.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Students of Sociology, Political Science, Development Studies, Gender Studies, Civil Service Aspirants

INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Corporate Social Responsibility divisions of all corporate houses, including the Public Sector Units like NTPC, ONGC, Coal India, Civil Servants, Development sector (NGOs and INGOs)

Summary

Course Status :	Upcoming
Course Type :	Elective
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	12 weeks
Category :	Humanities and Social Sciences Sociology
Credit Points :	3
Level :	Undergraduate/Postgraduate
Start Date :	19 Jan 2026
End Date :	10 Apr 2026
Enrollment Ends :	26 Jan 2026
Exam Registration Ends :	13 Feb 2026
Exam Date :	25 Apr 2026 IST
NCrF Level	4.5 — 8.0

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1: Introducing Political Sociology

1. What is Political Sociology? Scope and Key Concerns

2. Classical Origins: Karl Marx

3. Classical Origins: Max Weber

4. Marx, Weber and Conservation Practice

5. Power Elites and Reproduction of Inequality

Week 2: Power, Authority, and Legitimacy

6. Bourdieu and Reproduction of Classes

7. Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony

8. Foucault and Governmentality

9. Steven Lukes and Three Dimensions of Power

10. Ranajit Guha: Dominance without Hegemony and General Configuration of Power

Week 3: State Formation and the Postcolonial State

11. Nature of State: Louis Althusser and Ideological State Apparatus

12. Nature of State: Miliband-Poulantzas Debate

13. Sudipta Kaviraj: Critique of Passive Revolution in India

14. Pranab Bardhan: India’s Ruling Elites and Development Politics

15. Partha Chatterjee: Civil and Political Society

Week 4: Political Subjectivity and Citizenship

16. Nations and Nationalism: Anthony Smith

17. Nations and Nationalism: Benedict Anderson

18. Nations and Nationalism: Partha Chatterjee

19. Nations and Nationalism: G. Aloysius

20. Citizenship and Social Class: T.H. Marshall

Week 5: Kinship, Caste, and Community

21. Kinship and Political Authority in South Asia

22. Political Articulations of Caste: From Hierarchy to Mobilisation

23. Intersections of Caste and Democracy

24. Community, Identity, and Moral Economies

25. Case Study: Dalit-Bahujan Politics and Assertion

Week 6: Class, Inequality, and Political Economy

26. Class, Hegemony, and Political Mobilisation

27. Political Sociology of Agrarian Change and Land

28. Urban Informality and Class Politics

29. Labor, Precarity, and Informal Workers' Movements

30. Political Lives of Labour in India

Week 7: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Difference

31. Ethnicity, Community, and State Recognition

32. Sociology of Communalism and Secularism

33. Religion, Morality, and the Political Field

34. Political Rituals and Symbolism

35. Subnationalism: Separate Koshal Statehood Movement in India

Week 8: Social Movements and Collective Action

36. Classical and New Social Movement Theories

37. Political Process Model and Resource Mobilisation

38. Subaltern Movements: Adivasi, Dalit, Women

39. Urban Protests and Anti-State Mobilisations

40. Case Study: Chipko Movement

Week 9: Governance, Development, and the NGO State

41. Sociology of Development and Post-development Critique

42. From Government to Governance: Neoliberal Transitions

43. The Role of NGOs and Donor-Driven Agendas

44. The State, Welfare, and Targeted Governance

45. Case Study: The Rise of Self-help Groups and Micro-politics: Kudumbashree, Kerala

Week 10: Law, Justice, and Political Legitimacy

46. Legal Pluralism and the Sociology of Law

47. Rights-based Mobilisation and Judicial Politics

48. Courts as Sites of Negotiation and Performance

49. Customary Law, Gender, and the State

50. Case Study: PIL, Judicial Activism, and Chilika Bachao Andolan

Week 11: Media, Representation, and Political Culture

51. Political Communication and Public Discourse

52. Visual Politics: Symbols, Posters, and Performances

53. Popular Culture and the Construction of the Political

54. Media, Surveillance, and the Manufacturing of Consent

55. Case Study: Human-Elephant Conflict in Media

Week 12: Rethinking the Political

56. Politics of the Margins and Hidden Transcripts (James Scott)

57. Gender and Political Sociology: Beyond Representation

58. The Political in the Everyday: Affect, Emotion, and Intimacy

59. Decolonising Political Sociology: Southern and Indigenous Epistemologies

60. Final Synthesis: What is the Political Today?

Books and references

• Agarwala, R. (2013). Informal Labor, Formal Politics, and Dignified Discontent in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Baruah, S. (1999). India Against Itself: Assam and the Politics of Nationality. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

• Bottomore, T. B. (1979). Political Sociology. New York: Harper & Row.

• Chatterjee, P. (1993). The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

• Connell, R. (2007). Southern Theory: Social Science and the Global Dynamics of Knowledge. Cambridge: Polity Press.

• Deshpande, S. (2003). Contemporary India: A Sociological View. New Delhi: Penguin India.

• Dirks, N. B. (2001). Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

• Guha, R. (1997). Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Jeffrey, R. (2000). India’s Newspaper Revolution: Capitalism, Politics and the Indian-language Press. New Delhi: Oxford.

• Li, T. M. (2007). The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Durham: Duke University Press.

• Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A Radical View. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

• Mitchell, T. (1991). The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics. American political science review, 85(1), 77-96.

• Nilsen, AG. And Roy, S. (Eds.) (2015). New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualising Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

• Pratiksha Baxi (2014). Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

• Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press.

• Shah, G. (Ed.) (2002). Social Movements and the State. New Delhi: Sage.

• Tarrow, S. (1998). Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Touraine, A. (1981). The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Instructor bio

Prof. Lalatendu Keshari Das

IIT Roorkee

Dr. Lalatendu Keshari Das, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.

The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).

Date and Time of Exams: April 25, 2026 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.

Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 8 assignments out of the total 12 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Roorkee .It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team