Human rights and state politics in india: case studies of west bengal, punjab and assam

Author: 
Koyel Basu

The proposed article tries to find answers to such questions in the context of three states. The research has studied the political orientation and human rights discourses of three select states namely West Bengal, Punjab and Assam to find suitable explanation of its fundamental research question, namely, why formal democratic structures consistently violate human rights. The case selection merits some explanation. These states have been selected because they have historically provided significant challenges to Indian federalism in general, and to the trajectory of union politics in particular. These states, therefore, are marked by radical political tendencies, with wide divergence in the constitutive character of the main political forces active in them. As a result, there has been steady confrontation among divergent political groups in these states, making them ideal test cases for the problem, selected by this dissertation. In a sense, these had not been quite regular or normal states within the Indian Union, and their generic volatility quantifies them as valid cases for the research work.

Download PDF: 
DOI: 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24327/ijcar.2017.8217.1312
Select Volume: 
Volume6