Includes index

The forms of liberal government that emerged after world War II are in the midst of a profound crisis. In I am the people, Partha Chatterjee reconsider the concept of popular sovereignty in order to explain today’s dramatic outburst of movements claiming to speak for “the people”. drawing on thinkers such as Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and ernesto laclau, and with a particular focus on the history of populism in India, I am the people is a sweeping, theoretically rich account of the origins of today’s tempests. To uncover the roots of populism, Chatterjee traces the twentieth-century trajectory of the welfare state and neoliberal reforms.