Five of the case studies look at the rule of law. They
complicate different aspects of such rule for example:
(i) Law that facilitates corruption and rent-seeking,
(Collusion in Government and Corruption) (ii)
Law that is inaccessible to the common man and therefore
new institutions need to be created to fill the void
(Jan Sunwai: A New Instrument of Democracy in India)
(iii) Law that is used to seek personal gain (An
Ethnography of the Legal Process: A Case Study of a
Land Dispute in Nepal) (iv) Law that is seen in
terms of denial of citizenship, i.e., Madhesi people
in Nepal, (In a State of Statelessness: A Case Study
of the Citizens without Citizenship in Nepal) and
(v) Extraordinary law – construction of the other,
i.e., AFSPA in Manipur (Production of the ‘Extraordinary’:
Violent Self-Infliction of a Political Paranoia).
The additional advantage of the case
study approach is that it encourages the use of different
methodologies. For example the use of analytical
studies to engage with the general normative and
theoretical issues in the democracy discourse as in
the case of the study on, ‘Collusion in Government
and Corruption’. A political anthropological
approach can be used to detail the actual dynamics of
an institution and/or a process in a working democracy
as was done in the ‘Life of a File’ which
traces what happens when a citizen seeks his/her entitlements
from the state. Then again we could do a policy
study of a particular domain to highlight the implications
of certain policy packages as was done in the study
on the impact of the education of the policies of the
Government of India. The case study could also support
institutional studies such as the study of
‘jan sunwai’ which is an institutional form
that is developed to remedy the democratic deficit of
existing institutions. While a case study, by itself,
does not offer a basis for generalization since it is
an examination of a unique case it offers insights into
the dynamics of a working democracy which help us better
understand, and better generalize, from the data that
emerges from surveys and dialogues.
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