The revised edition of Ear to the Ground, first published in 2011, offer us a rare insight into the making of modern India. They deal with representations and practices of class power as they exist in tandem with state authority and caste identities.
‘As a human rights worker active since 1981, and slightly older than Balagopal, I remember him as a magical figure. The writings in this volume help interpret the often chaotic developments in Andhra Pradesh, and provide a model tool for understanding other regional realities of India’—Binayak Sen
 ‘For students and activists of three generations, Balagopal’s voice was an ethical and political compass’ Biblio: A Review of Books
 ‘Every article shines with the originality of his insight and the fury of his concern’—Wall Street Journal–Mint
"Balagopal maps Indian society with unflinching clarity, showing caste and class not as discrete variables but as interwoven infrastructures of power ... his work remains crucial to any serious understanding of contemporary India because of his refusal to treat caste and class as analytically separate domains. Against liberal frameworks that relegate caste to cultural identity or electoral arithmetic, and against orthodox Marxist approaches that reduce it to a residual or dissolving contradiction, Balagopal insists that caste is constitutive of class formation, political mobilisation, and state power.
Anand Teltumbde