Globalisation and the Challenges of Development in Contemporary India

Book Details:

• Author(s): Sita Venkateswar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (Editors)

• Publisher: Springer

• ISBN: 9789811695902

• Language: English

• Binding: Hardcover

• Pages: 284

• Release Date: 23-04-2022

• Sale Territory: This edition may not be sold outside India

About the Book:

This volume offers a multidisciplinary and nuanced exploration of the complex socio-economic and political issues framing contemporary India. In the context of a rapidly changing India, the book presents a departure from typical binary interpretations and aims to provide fresh insights into the challenges facing India in the 21st century.

The editors focus on three central themes that frame the contemporary landscape:

• Framing the Macro-Economic Environment: Examining the impact of globalization on India’s economy and socio-economic changes over the past few decades.

• Food Security and Natural Resources: Investigating the critical issues around feeding a growing population, including climate-induced challenges and the resilience of both people and planet.

• Development, Activism, and Changing Technologies: Exploring social challenges and inequalities in India, while also highlighting the transformative role of emerging technologies and digital activism in shaping an active citizenry.

The collection integrates diverse perspectives and is an essential read for those interested in understanding India’s socio-economic and political fabric as it evolves.

Contents:

1. Globalisation and the Challenges of Development: An Introduction – Sita Venkateswar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay

Part I: Framing the Macro Environment
2. Compressed Capitalism, Globalisation and the Fate of Indian Development – Anthony P. D’Costa
3. India’s Economic Performance in the Post-reforms Period: A Tale of Mixed Messages – Ranjan Ray
4. Post-industrial Development and the New Leisure Economy – Adrian Athique

Part II: Food Security
5. India’s Evolving Food and Nutrition Scenario: An Overview – Srikanta Chatterjee
6. Beyond Basmati: Two Approaches to the Challenge of Agricultural Development in the ‘New India’ – Graeme MacRae
7. Millet in Our Own Voices: A Culturally-Centred Articulation of Alternative Development by DDS Women Farmers’ Sanghams – Jagadish Thaker and Mohan Dutta

Part III: Activism, Development, and Changing Technologies
8. Investment-Induced Displacement and the Ecological Basis of India’s Economy – Felix Padel
9. Urban Neoliberalism and the Right to Water and Sanitation for Bangalore’s Poor – Vicky Walters
10. Bastis as “Forgotten Places” in Howrah, West Bengal – Lorena Gibson
11. ICT4D and Empowerment: Uneven Development in Rural South India – Rakhee Chatbar
12. Paradigms of Digital Activism: India and Its Mobile Internet Users – Paula Ray

Part IV: Conclusion
13. Approaching Contemporary India: The Politics of Scale, Space and Aspiration in the Time of Modi – Douglas P. Hill

About the Authors / Editors:

• Sita Venkateswar is a socio-cultural anthropologist at Massey University, New Zealand. Her research focuses on social inequities, gender, poverty, and structural violence in postcolonial South Asia. She is also the author of Development and Ethnocide: Colonial Practices in the Andaman Islands (2004).

• Sekhar Bandyopadhyay is the Director of the New Zealand India Research Institute and a Professor of Asian History at Victoria University of Wellington. His research specializes in the social and political history of colonial and postcolonial India. He has published extensively, including the award-winning Decolonization in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Post-independence West Bengal, 1947-52.