Sunila Kale

University of Washington, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Faculty Member

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I'm a scholar of Indian politics, political economy, yoga studies, development studies, and energy studies. My most recent publication is the book, The Yoga of Power: Yoga as Political Thought and Practice in India, co-authored with Christian L. Novetzke.

You can read more about my research, publications, and teaching here: https://sites.uw.edu/kale/ and at my faculty profile here: https://jsis.washington.edu/people/sunila-kale/

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Papers by Sunila Kale

Crime, Corruption, and Political Order in Nigeria and India

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and The Middle East, Dec 1, 2019

The subjects of crime and corruption remain perennially important for social scientists concerned... more The subjects of crime and corruption remain perennially important for social scientists concerned with the nature of power, authority, and order. Steven Pierce's Moral Economies of Corruption: State Formation and Political Culture in Nigeria and Milan Vaishnav's When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics present two very different approaches to the study of crime and corruption, both rich, complex, and lucidly conveyed. As a scholar of South Asia, Kale's approach in the essay is to use insights from Pierce to reflect on the methodological and theoretical choices in Vaishnav's account of India's criminal politicians. In discussing each author's contributions, rather than providing a comprehensive account, Kale focuses on the parts of their arguments that are useful for comparative discussion.

Business and State in Odisha’s Extractive Economy

Business and Politics in India

Among India’s states, Odisha stands as a paradox. Unlike other states with episodes of marked hos... more Among India’s states, Odisha stands as a paradox. Unlike other states with episodes of marked hostility to business, Odisha has had an almost unbroken succession of probusiness governments from independence onward. However, unlike developmental probusiness states that nurtured industry to produce jobs and higher rates of economic growth, economic policies in Odisha have failed to produce either sustained economic growth or a substantial economic transformation. Business-state relations in Odisha instead display “neopatrimonial tendencies”; the government extends support to entrepreneurs with no attendant discipline, and in order to succeed, economic actors access personal connections rather than proceed via institutionalized channels. This chapter surveys Odisha’s neopatrimonial state-business relations over three time periods in Odisha: from independence through the 1960s, 1970s–1980s, and the period from the early 1990s onward.

Electrifying India

Indigenous Welfare, Tribal Homelands, and the Impact of Civil Society Organizations

Inside Countries, 2019

From company town to company village: CSR and the management of rural aspirations in eastern India’s extractive economies

The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2020

In India's contemporary model of extractive industry, the Company Town has been replaced by the '... more In India's contemporary model of extractive industry, the Company Town has been replaced by the 'company village.' Private sector firms throughout India's mineral belt now occupy sectors that were, until recently, almost exclusively state-owned. Once the great hope for India's industrial modernization and developmentalist effort, extraction continues to cause immense social and environmental dislocation but now offer few avenues of employment. Operating in the resettlement colonies of those displaced by land acquisition and in peripheral villages, extractive companies' Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs attempt to mediate and redirect rural aspirations away from plant gates and mine sites, though often with only limited success.

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A Collection of Insights on the Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States

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The yogic ethic and the spirit of development

India's Dark Night

Foreign Affairs, 2012

Electrification in Colonial India

eginning in the mid- n ineteenth century, innovations in irrigation, communications, and transpor... more eginning in the mid- n ineteenth century, innovations in irrigation, communications, and transpor- tation began to transform imperial rule. These new technologies extended the territorial reach of empires and accelerated the process that incorporated new colonial territories into the global economy. While some of these projects, like many of the railroads and canal systems, were propelled by metropolitan investment capital, over time many of the largest of these were absorbed into a growing public works apparatus that became a bulwark of colonial rule. While communications and rail transpor- tation facilitated the more rapid deployment of coercive power, irrigation networks legitimated colonial rule as a positive agent and promised to expand colonial revenue by creating new markets in irrigated land. Infrastructural development became a standard- b earer of modernizing colonial governance. Scholars of the colonial period specify the adverse effects of these new infrastructural techn...

Rural land dispossession in China and India

The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2020

The twelve articles in this special issue feature the work of scholars studying the dispossession... more The twelve articles in this special issue feature the work of scholars studying the dispossession of rural land in China and India. Each offers new insights about the extent and patterns of dispossession, the complex dynamics driving it, the consequences for farmers, as well as the factors shaping resistance or compliance. Although each article treats developments within one country, the collection helps uncover features common to rural land dispossession in China and India, and illuminates differences that shape the processes of dispossession in each country. Comparison of the two countries helps us to not only understand the future implications of this enormously important issue for economic growth, social inequality and politics in both countries, but also contributes insights useful for understanding this issue elsewhere in the world.

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Crime, Corruption, and Political Order in Nigeria and India

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2019

Solar ‘power’: Socio-political dynamics of infrastructural development in two Western Indian states

Energy Research & Social Science, 2018

The growth and development of solar energy, which is so important in the current global context, ... more The growth and development of solar energy, which is so important in the current global context, is determined by political economic factors, and in turn, has varied implications for energy justice. India's western region presents a complex context within which to examine why these trajectories unfold in particular ways and to what end. This article first situates India's renewable energy policy within the dynamics of its federal politics. It then focusses on the trajectory of renewable energy development in two Western Indian states, Rajasthan and Gujarat, highlighting how regional particularities and path dependence have shaped the emergence of solar energy, often in ways that run counter to both expected and hoped for results. The idea of energy justice is subsequently introduced as a way to evaluate whether solar energy infrastructural growth in its present form is best serving the multi-pronged needs of climate justice, economic development, and social equity. By combining a political economy of renewable energy that accounts for the political and institutional factors conditioning the growth of solar capacity with the normative arguments embedded in the energy justice literature, this study contributes to a growing understanding of the intersection of solar power and development.

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Structures of Power

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2014

Mirroring the cross-national variation in how electricity became enmeshed in polities and societi... more Mirroring the cross-national variation in how electricity became enmeshed in polities and societies around the world in the twentieth century, within British India, too, the emerging electric systems differed by fuel source, ownership, and usage. This heterogeneity was a product of decentralized authority over electricity to provincial governments and the ambiguous freedoms of indirect colonial rule. Rather than being governed according to any discrete logic of colonial governance, electric systems became terrains in which a variety of views about the proper role of the state in industrial transformation as well as the suitable means to promote economic development were elaborated. In turn the emergent electrical systems shaped both politics and governance in the late colonial period and left a strong imprint on politics after independence. If railroads and canals—the quintessential infrastructural technologies of the colonial state—revealed a uniform sense of the state as a particu...

Cutting Chai

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2017

In its most common usage, a ‘cutting chai’ is a half order of tea, often implying a single order ... more In its most common usage, a ‘cutting chai’ is a half order of tea, often implying a single order that is shared among friends. This is also sometimes called a ‘one-by-two’ order. ‘Cutting chai’ is a phrase associated with the western Indian city of Mumbai, although it can be heard in other cities in Maharashtra as well as in other parts of the country. It is a common request at tea stalls along city streets and in the kinds of modest restaurants, roadside dhabas and cafes that cater to middleand lower-income Indians. It is customary to hear ‘cutting chai’ ordered at tea stalls in working-class neighbourhoods, near train stations and bus stands, in recreational areas like Mumbai’s Chowpatty Beach, and in and around college and university campuses. These small tea stalls are often called tapri and they can consist of a single table, a rolling cart with an awning, or a slightly larger space with a few benches or stools for customers. Often tea stalls will also sell biscuits or toast from large glass jars to dunk in the tea. Historically, many of these tea stalls have been male-dominated spaces, although it is now commonplace, especially at tapris patronised by college students, to find both men and women customers enjoying their ‘cutting chai’. Sometimes a ‘cutting chai’ is ordered in transit, as a quick stop on the way to someplace else; at other times, ordering and lingering over a ‘cutting chai’ with friends or neighbours is a ritual part of ‘timepass’. The request for ‘cutting chai’ is widespread enough that many chai-wallahs in western Indian cities keep smaller glasses for service, just large enough that the smaller portion still seems satisfying. As with the multivalent meanings of cut and cutting in English, ‘cutting chai’ too has multiple valences. In addition to the most common reference to a smaller portion, as in a cut of the whole, a ‘cutting chai’ can also imply extremely hot tea. Sometimes it also indicates tea that is an unusually potent condensation of spicy and sweet flavours. Such ‘cutting chai’ is to tea what espresso is to coffee. These latter meanings accord with the use of ‘cutting’ in English to index intensity, as in a ‘cutting remark’. The two ideas around ‘cutting chai’—a half portion and an unusually strong brew—may indicate the effort of chaiwallahs to appeal to their customers with portions small in size and big in flavour. There could be many possible reasons to order a ‘cutting chai’ as a half portion. It serves an economic function, enabling customers to stretch their rupee and making a tea break accessible to many income groups. It also lets people enjoy multiple breaks over the

Maharashtra and the Politics of Selective Rural Development

Electrifying India, 2014

Democracy and the State in Globalizing India: A Case Study of Odisha

India Review, 2013

How are the contours and practices of the state changing under the regime of economicliberalizati... more How are the contours and practices of the state changing under the regime of economicliberalization in India? To address these questions in the context of India, in this essay I turn to the relatively understudied state of Odisha. The most common sites of research about the political economy of globalization in India are the technology clusters around Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, and the dynamic spaces of the burgeoning service sector. By analyzing politics in globalizing Odisha, however, we get a different sense of the messy, complicated, and sometimes contradictory politics of globalization in India, as well as how the state is adapting to these changes. The relative success of Odisha in attracting investments in mining and mining-related sectors is due both to the opening of the Indian market generally as well as efforts by the state government to promote industrial investment in these sectors.

Introduction: India, Sixty Years on

India Review, 2009

At independence in 1947, it was not quite certain whether the newly founded Indian state would be... more

Natural Resources, Development Strategies, and Lower Caste Empowerment in India’s Mineral Belt: Bihar and Odisha During the 1990s

Studies in Comparative International Development, 2014

Despite having equally vast endowments of natural resources and similar socioeconomic profiles, t... more Despite having equally vast endowments of natural resources and similar socioeconomic profiles, the Indian states of Bihar and Odisha pursued markedly different development strategies during India's first decade of economic liberalization. Whereas Bihar turned away from its natural resource sector and adopted policies of social empowerment, Odisha courted private investment in extractive industries and aggressively pursued market reforms. To account for this divergence, we argue that the social composition of political power in each state directly shaped the strategies that leaders embraced towards the natural resource sector and overall development. This paper makes contributions to the writings on natural resources and the political economy of India. We show that the presence of abundant natural resources does not necessarily result in a predictable pathway of sectoral and economic policy outcomes. Instead, social factors can be a powerful determinant of how resource-rich states approach their economies.

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Extractive Industrialization and Limited Electrification in Odisha

Electrifying India, 2014

Electricity as New India's “Strategic Railway”

Electrifying India, 2014

Crime, Corruption, and Political Order in Nigeria and India

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and The Middle East, Dec 1, 2019