ABSTRACT
Processes of the vernacularization of democracy have produced similar outcomes in other parts of India and South Asia. Research on democracy and democratization has tended to emphasize macro-level explanations of transition and consolidation, which stress the roles played by institutions and elites. This chapter explores how the processes of the vernacularization of democracy have affected other communities. It focuses on the political economy of the processes of the vernacularization of democracy by showing the interplay of ethnicity and caste-based political parties like the Samajwadi Party known as the party of the Yadavs and the Bahujan Samaj Party known as the party of the Dalits in UP. Both communities have strongly benefited from affirmative action policies over the last three decades. The political ethnography of the Yadavs and Dalits in UP shows that studying democratization processes through the anthropological method is highly productive and offers a new theoretical angle to enable an understanding of the relation between democracy and diversity.
