A book by CISRUL alumnus Dr Aditya Mohanty, ‘Subaltern Brokers: Unpacking Community Leadership in Urban India’, will be published by Routledge in March 2026. The book draws on ethnographic evidence to discuss emergent patterns of community leadership in urban India and follows completion of Dr Mohanty’s PhD at CISRUL in 2023.
The book ‘holistically integrates social, cultural, economic and political factors that determine the understanding of community leadership’, aiming to ‘bring a positive change in the behaviour, attitude and perception of common people about the new vocabularies of political mobilization at different levels’ (Mohanty 2026).
‘Subaltern Brokers: Unpacking Community Leadership in Urban India’ is divided into six chapters. It begins by outlining a theoretical framework which contrasts civil versus political society, and the contextual framework of urban governance in Delhi, before discussing Patterns of Community Leadership Among the Valmikis, and Fluid Brokerages in Different Valmiki Neighbourhoods. Mohanty notes the book will be of relevance to students, researchers, activists, and teachers alike in the fields of subaltern studies, political science, urban sociology and political sociology.
Dr Mohanty is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Lucknow in India. Prior to this, he gained extensive experience working at the Central University of South Bihar, where he taught a range of courses on NGO Management, Urban Development, and the Political Economy of Development. Dr Mohanty’s PhD thesis at CISRUL was titled ‘Fluid brokerage among community leaders in Urban India’, and involved examining how the creation of Resident Welfare Associations in urban subaltern or marginalised Dalit neighbours of Delhi transformed the modalities of political clientelism from patronage to brokerage.
To pre-order his book, follow this link.