Contents: Introduction/Gurpreet Mahajan, Ila Patnaik and Surinder S. Jodhka. I. Politics: 1. India’s Political Transition/Rajni Kothari. 2. Social Background of the Indian Cabinet/Satish K. Arora. 3. Electoral Participation of Minorities and Indian Political System/Moin Shakir. 4. Compensatory Discrimination in Political Representation: A Preliminary Assessment of India’s 30-year Experience with Reserved Seats in Legislatures/Marc Galanter. 5. Social Mobility and Caste Violence: A Study of the Gujarat Riots/Pradip Kumar Bose. 6. Communal Violence in India: A Study of Communal Disturbance in Delhi/Gopal Krishna. 7. Biology and Gender Bias: Some Issues in Discrimination against Women at the Workplace/Vimal Balasubrahmanyan. 8. Measurement of Poverty and Undernutrition/D. Banerji. II. Society: 9. Changes in the Indian Family: An Examination of Some Assumptions/A. M. Shah. 10. Strains in Leadership Structure: From Status Group to Pluralism in East UP Village/Hira Singh. 11. Semi-Feudalism or Capitalism? Contemporary Debate on Classes and Modes of Production in India/Alice Thorner. 12. The Indian Institute of Technology: Do They Contribute to Social Mobility?/C. Rajagopalan and Jaspal Singh. 13. Transformation of Tribal Society: Integration vs. Assimilation/K. S. Singh. 14. A “Harijan Elite”? The Lives of Some Untouchable Politicians/Oliver Mendelsohn. 15. Women’s Studies: New Perceptions and the Challenges/Vina Mazumdar and Kumud Sharma. 16. The Communalising of Punjab, 1980-85/Dipankar Gupta. 17. The Ideology of Population Control/Mahmood Mamdani. 18. Migration, Urbanisation and Interregional Inequality: The Emerging Sociopolitical Challenge/Amitabh Kundu. III. Economy: 19. Controls and the Current Situation: Why Not Let the Hounds Run?/Arun Shourie. 20. Indian Development Strategy: Some Comments/Jagdish Bhagwati and T. N. Srinivasan. 21. Industrial Growth in the 1980s: Emerging Policy Issues/Vijay L. Kelkar and Rajiv Kumar. 22. MNCs and Export Development/C. K. Prahalad. 23. On Benefits of Tapping Foreign Portfolio Investments: An Indian Perspective/Vihang R. Errunza. 24. Financial Scenario of the 1990s: Agenda for Reform/N. A. Mujumdar. 25. Federal Fiscal Transfers in India: Performance of Six Finance Commissions/M. Govinda Rao. Since 1966, when Economic Weekly formally expanded its mission and became the Economic and Political Weekly, it has been a significant space for critical, constructive and innovative thinking on political, social and economic issues. Reading India, Vol. II, the second of the three volumes commemorating 50 years of the EPW, brings together a selection of articles from 1966-1991. Divided into three fields of inquiry—the political, social and economic—it presents an analysis of the issues and concerns that dominated this period, and in some ways, shaped the discourse of the following decades. The first section, dealing with politics, focuses on two concerns of this period - democracy and equality. The essays examine issues related to: political representation, electoral processes, policies of reservation, inter-caste and inter-religious conflict, status of women, and measurement of poverty. The second section takes up the concerns highlighted by sociologists and social anthropologists: the changing Indian family, rural leadership patterns, economic and social changes taking place in India’s rural economy, affirmative action and the marginalisation of religious minorities. The final section showcases trends in economic thinking during this period, which questioned the economic policies of the era and shaped the direction and nature of the post-1991 reforms. Together, this collection presents analysis, research and debates that are relevant even today for understanding India.