Five achievements of Rajni Kothari

Rajni Kothari was the eminent scholar and political scientist of India. He was also the member of Planning Commission during National Front government of V.P. Singh. He established the ”Centre for the study of developing societies” (CSDS) in 1963 at Delhi, a social sciences and humanities research institute. He floated a forum in 1983, for interaction of intellectuals and activists, called Lokayan (Dialogue of the people). In 1985 this forum was awarded with the ”Right Livelihood Award”, also known as the People’s Nobel Prize. His other achievements are as follows:

• He was a pioneer in brining to India the concept of scientific analysis to election data.
• He was one the three members that laid the outlines for establishing the JNU (Jwahar Lal Nehru University).
• He characterized the India political system as One Party Dominance system, which is even relevant today. Earlier it was congress and now BJP is trying the same.
• He and his colleagues saw the limitation of university system and mono disciplinarily of university departments, thus they established CSDS. Also later he established Lokayan as mentioned in above paragraph.
• His main works included: Politics in India (1970), Caste in Indian politics (1973), Rethinking democracy (2005).