Indira Gandhi's last years in office as India's prime minister ran from January 1980 to her assassination in October 1984 but until now no book has been devoted to her final term. Among the principal themes discussed in this innovative volume are how Indian politics and society changed in the 1970s, including the State of Emergency (1975-77); Congress's response to insurgency in Punjab, Assam and Kashmir; the rise of new forms of political mobilisation in the early 1980s; and the prime minister's relationship with the key institutions of state. Maiorano also reveals how Mrs Gandhi's policies in the 1980s impacted on the big industrialists, the middle class, the rich peasantry and the poor, thereby crucially re-orienting India's economic strategy. 'Autumn of the Matriarch' is the first major study of Mrs Gandhi's last years in power, an important juncture in India's recent history, as it was then that trends emerged that influenced the country for the next three decades.

"In an elegantly written and compact study, [Maiorano] sketches the shift Gandhi brought about from a Congress with a strong base in India's rural areas to one that relied critically on a threeway alliance combining the state, the urban middle class and India's corporate sector ... This account of the weakness and vulnerability of India's institutions makes sobering reading." - Survival journal

"Maiorano's study of Indira Gandhi's final term in office is illuminating. His carefully crafted analysis, interweaving national and state level dynamics, contributes to our understanding of Indian politics during this period, and of her legacies to contemporary Indian politics, economy and society." - University of Nottingham

"'Diego Maiorano has ... produced an analytical study that offers some original insights into an important if dark period in Indian political life. ... perhaps the most original finding of his book is its argument that Mrs Gandhi used her final term to inaugurate a new alliance between the state, the corporate sector and the middle class. ... [Maiorano's] enthusiasm for his subject is infectious and his research very impressive. He has painstakingly read the Indian daily press for the period on which he focuses and has also interviewed a wide range of Indian politicians, journalists and political scientists." - Standpoint

"[Maiorano] provides an important insight into the later implications for India of Gandhi’s time in power." - The World Today