While being the world's largest electoral democracy, India contains more people in poverty than any other country in the world. Moreover, poor people – oppressed though they are – are central to India's democracy. Political parties routinely seek legitimation from them, and governments are wary of being perceived as antagonistic to their interests. This chapter synthesizes key literatures to present the opportunity structures that inhere in India's democratic institutions and which impinge upon the politics of the poor. I will first highlight three general features that India shares with other postcolonial democracies before I unpack its formal, participatory and social components (Huber and Stephens, 1996). In this context, I highlight the country's majoritarian electoral system as well as the privileging of civil and electoral rights over social and economic rights that is hard-wired into the formal component of Indian democracy. I follow up this discussion with an examination of the participatory aspect of India's democracy, through which I call attention to the advances and limits of electoral participation among India's poor. I finally discuss the social component of democracy to remind readers of the widening inequalities in India and the concentration of poverty among members of certain historically oppressed communities. A discussion of these three dimensions persuades us to appreciate contemporary India's unequal democracy.

If an overview of the formal, participatory and social dimensions of India's postcolonial democracy offers general insights into the opportunity structures available to the country's population, a consideration of the economic geography and social history of eastern India, where this study is based, helps to specify them: this is the purpose of the second section. While doing this, I signpost two points. One, I emphasize the salience of manual labour to the region's paddy-based agrarian economy. Access to manual labour is mediated through the social category of caste, making it central to any analysis of social relations in the region.