Leela Fernandes Livres

Focusing on the jute mills of Calcutta, the book explores how politicized cultural identities—rooted in religion, ethnicity, gender, and race—impact the dynamics of worker relations and political actions. Leela Fernandes examines the complexities of overlapping identities and the representation of group interests, highlighting the significant role these factors play in shaping labor movements and political engagement among workers.

Exploring the rapid growth of India's middle class, this book examines its profound impact on culture and politics amidst economic liberalization. Leela Fernandes delves into the complexities of caste, religion, and gender, highlighting how this demographic shapes electoral politics and consumer culture. Using ethnographic data, she analyzes employment patterns and the evolving labor market, offering a nuanced perspective on class formation in a globalized context. This work challenges simplistic views, revealing the middle class's significant role in India's socio-political landscape.

Intensifying droughts and competing pressures on water resources foreground water scarcity as an urgent concern of the global climate change crisis. In India, individual, industrial, and agricultural water demands exacerbate inequities of access and expose the failures of state governance to regulate use. State policies and institutions influenced by global models of reform produce and magnify socio-economic injustice in this "water bureaucracy."Drawing on historical records, an analysis of post-liberalization developments, and fieldwork in the city of Chennai, Leela Fernandes traces the configuration of colonial historical legacies, developmental-state policies, and economic reforms that strain water resources and intensify inequality. While reforms of water governance promote privatization and decentralization, they strengthen the state centralized control over water through city-based development models. Understanding the political economy of water thus illuminates the consequent failures of the state within countries of the Global South.