ABSTRACT
As India enters a new economic phase,1 the relation between the contested ideological imperatives of law and the economic structure has acquired new dimensions. In other ways, however, law-making in India continues a colonial tradition of oscillation between the promotion of market capitalism and the protection of particular identities (Washbrook 1981). This paper seeks to explore the tension as well as the creativity in law-making made possible by the combination of colonial laws and a constitutionally democratic state. Both the dominant capitalist class and ‘people’s movements’ representing peasants and workers have an interest in working on the state to change existing laws, but often to quite different ends.
