ALTERNATIVES TO NEOLIBERALISM IN INDIA

Human Geography, 2013

This paper examines the tensions and contradictions within the Indian state in its production of socio-economic policies. Pressure of global governance institutions, multinational corporations, and neoliberal states of the global North that back such corporations, have been instrumental in the production of -friendly economic policy in India. Additionally, in representing the interest of the national bourgeois, the Indian state has been receptive to ideas that favor marketization of the economy. However, public pressure, where the poor constitute the majority of the Indian population, has compelled the Indian state to also strengthen welfare. In examining this contradiction of the simultaneous production of neoliberal and welfare policy, we analyze the case of the public distribution system (which is being marketized) on the one hand, and the employment guarantee scheme (that demonstrates strengthening of welfare) on the other.

Sociology, 2020

The Globalisation of Liberalism

World Review of Political Economy, 2023

His area of interest includes critical development studies and Marxian political economy. He is the co-editor of Global Political Economy: A Critique of Contemporary Capitalism (2022). He has published widely in reputed international and national academic journals.

Routledge, 2018

Series: Routledge/Edinburgh South Asian Studies Series This book presents a reappraisal of the political economic history of the CPIM/Left Front regime against the backdrop of the Indian reform experience. It examines two distinct areas: the conditions that necessitated the regime to engineer a transition from an erstwhile agricultural-based growth model to a more pro-market economic agenda post-1991, and the political strategy employed to manage such a transition, attract private capital and at the same time sustain the regime's traditional rhetoric and partisan character.

This article intends to explore how neoliberal market economy impacts social democracy in globalising India and examines its implications for the millions of Dalits. It argues that the institution of social democracy, which flourished in India during the Nehruvian era of mixed economy and welfare state, seems to be fast approaching its demise under the ongoing process of neoliberalism. It further argues that the fast-expanding domain of the corporate sector and the free flow of global capital, in conjunction with the gradual withdrawal of the welfare state, will not only widen inequalities, but also stifle the growth of social democracy in the country.

Contributions to Indian Sociology, 2013

This article introduces the concepts of untimely coincidences of modes of production and structural contingencies in global capitalism to the study of neoliberalism in India and beyond. I argue that these concepts are crucial to revive a historical anthropology, which shows that neoliberalism is one of several possible manifestations of capitalism, past and present. The analytical gain of such a revised view on neoliberalism is then exemplified by a historical–anthropological account of the development of India’s first special economic zone, the Kandla Foreign Trade Zone, from 1965 to the late 1980s. Based on these findings, I conclude my plea for conceptual changes in anthropology’s approach to periodising national and global histories of neoliberalism.

The neoliberal turning point in India was marked the adoption of economic reforms and liberalization policies in the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1991. “1991” was a watershed moment of “great historical significance.” The story of “1991,” however, is not singular. In fact, there are many interpretations of India’s neoliberal turn. This paper, a literature review of the various economic, political, and social explanations of and theories on “1991,” presents a synthesis of four separate “1991” storylines. This composite of stories is not meant to act as a normative classificatory schema—that is, four coherent and distinct interpretations of 1991 into which the literature can be cleanly categorized. Instead, it acts as an interpretive schema, inferred from the literature, which tries to both give an account of what happened while articulating four analytically distinct explanatory logics of “1991.” Which is to say that the stories represent somewhat distinct strands of explanations of the neoliberal turn. These storylines will discuss some of the prominent literature on interpretations of “1991” while also try to give a sense of how they either complement or critique each other.