Publisher : Human Rights Forum

Ear to the Ground was first published in 2011 and this revised edition with one additional essay 'Caste and Law' issued fifteen years later, remains as relevant. There is prescient value to the essays - especially those that call attention to the political consolidation of the Hindu Right. As important are the appraisals of the contradictions that lie at the heart of the Indian republic: between constitutional promise and institutional and social impunity; a productivist vision of development and its, often, violent outcomes; a hierarchical social order, and its rebellious anti-caste constituents and finally between an unevenly constituted patriarchy and an evenly distributed misogyny.

Drawing on his intimate knowledge of the Andhra-Telangana regions, gained through civil rights work, and grounded in a philosophical commitment to the human rights movement, Balagopal rethinks the social totality. On the one hand, he foregrounds Dr Ambedkar's ideas and the concerns of anti-caste movements and on the other hand, asks for a re-examination of extant communist and democratic politics. He also calls attention to the unregenerate politics of entitlement that lies at the heart of casteist violence, and shows us how ruling caste-class hegemony is asserted and kept alive. What shines through these essays, though, is a spirit of hope and faith - in our capacity to strive against inequality and injustice, however ambiguous the outcome of these strivings.

V. Geetha