Dr. Priyavadan M. Patel

Dr. Priyavadan Patel has been teaching Indian Government and Politics at the Department of Political Science, M.S. University of Baroda in Gujarat, India, since 1989. Prior to that he worked as a Research Associate at the Centre for Social Studies, Surat. Presently, he is at the University of California, Berkeley (until November 2004) on a Fulbright Visiting Scholar Fellowship. Dr. Patel is working on a project entitled Democracy and Development in India: A State-Society Perspective. This has been his broad area of academic interest for the last two-and-a-half decades, and has included work in the areas of environmental politics, religio-communal violence, human rights, and local self-government. Dr. Patel has also authored the book Tribal Development in Gujarat (CSS, 1986) and co-edited Reviewing the Role of Bureaucracy in India (MSU, 1999). In addition to writing articles in professional journals and popular magazines, he has conducted national and state election-studies surveys since 1996 as a part of a nationwide network of researchers at CSDS, Delhi. Dr. Patel is also an active member of the People’s Union of Civil Liberties in Baroda, Gujarat.