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In post-colonial India, the process of political democratization and radically altered legal enactments, especially relating to marriage and inheritance, have changed the dynamics of power relations. The essays included in Political Economy of Production and Reproduction are selected with a view to achieve an understanding of contemporary north India, along with all its social, familial, and legal contradictions. Spanning the mid nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the author presents a special case study of Haryana, which elucidates how the richest regions in the area continue to be regressive instead of moving towards the modern egalitarian statehood. The in-depth analysis, however, is broadly applicable to the whole of northern India in sharing socio-cultural concerns.
The new, greatly liberalized, political economy of the post-Green revolution; globalization marked by conspicuous consumption; and the quasi-urbanization that rural north India has undergone; have all had their fall-out on rural society. These have led to new class formations, westernization, and changes in the notions of social status and power relations. They have, in turn, impacted familial, inter-generation, and gender relations.